How Cezary Nowowiejski Completed 38 Fix-and-Flips in 2 Years | Real Estate Investing

Cezary Nowowiejski (00:00)
my philosophy is there’s more deals than there are investors willing to buy them. I try to help people, I try to, give them all the knowledge. I don’t keep secrets, I don’t tell half truths. And so it’s actually paid off over the years because, you never know when someone’s gonna have an opportunity at hand and they can’t take it down and they bring it to you and so I’ve done some really great deals because of that. Just people I’ve helped bringing me deals.

Issa Hanna (01:02)
Welcome back to another episode of the Real Estate Pros Show. I’m your host, Issa Hanna, and today we have Cezary Nowowiejski with us. Nowowiejski with us. Welcome, Cezary.

Cezary Nowowiejski (01:12)
Hi, how are you?

Issa Hanna (01:13)
Good, good. I’m doing good. we were talking earlier, man. you are a wealth of knowledge in the real estate space. So for my viewers at home, can you kind of give them a rundown of a day to day in Cezary’s world?

Cezary Nowowiejski (01:24)
so usually first thing in the morning I take my golden retriever out so she can do her thing and the coffee’s perking and I actually look at MLS and I’ll get on Redfin or Zillow, I’ll do filters, and what that does is that allows me to understand the local market, see where prices are, see what days on market are, all that data is right there and free and accessible to everybody. And so if you’re gonna be in this industry, you should know everything you can about it.

Issa Hanna (01:56)
One hundred percent. information is crucial. Underwriting. a lot of investors, not a lot, majority, the smart ones, right? We’re gonna run our numbers. We’re gonna know what this house is worth, what it could potentially be worth, what it could rent for, everything we need to know, how much is gonna cost us to fix this thing estimated wise. a lot of that information you can get from the MLS. So I love that you start your days off J with the research, man. That just shows that you’re on top of it and you’re a serious investor.

Cezary Nowowiejski (02:26)
Yeah, and I like to mix it up. Sometimes I’m looking at land. sometimes I’m just looking at what’s pending. I’m always interested in what the market’s doing, even outside my zone that I’m working in. and so a lot of times opportunity comes at you from out of nowhere. And so you should be informed and ready to go. after that, I usually jump on some phone calls. I have a little office that I work out of. I have an assistant. she and I will talk. she does a lot of marketing for deals for me and she does my bookkeeping. By the way, if you can hear that noise in the background, they’re running air compressor. They’re I’m in a flip house that we’re working on as we speak. And so I do it.

Issa Hanna (03:10)
True man of the game, the true investor right there. Coming in, live from the investment home, you guys.

Cezary Nowowiejski (03:17)
Yeah, this is gonna be a midterm rental. It’s gonna be a two unit midterm rental and we’re gonna be targeting people like traveling nurses fully furnished.

Issa Hanna (03:28)
Love that, man. And that’s a huge business. for people at home, if you guys don’t know about this midterm rental thing, fun fact, I’m actually married to a travel nurse, right? So for a long time we would travel and we would have to get these short-term and midterm rentals when she’d be on contract. So amazing, amazing business opportunity. You can definitely make more money in rent, and then the tenants are a lot more dependable, let’s just say so. Man, amazing. You already dropped a golden nugget on the viewers with the midterm rentals already. So

Cezary Nowowiejski (03:57)
Yeah.

Issa Hanna (03:59)
I wanted to steer in a little bit real quick, Cezary, to what you said earlier. You said that you look in different markets because you never know when an opportunity might come along. From the story you shared with me, you went from one side of the country all the way to the other side of the country for an opportunity. Can you share the Seattle to Nashville story with us.

Cezary Nowowiejski (04:19)
Yeah, so 2008, I got a divorce. I had nothing holding me down. My ex-wife kept the house. I moved out. I actually moved in with my brother for a few weeks. then I rented an apartment and I’m just sitting there, kind of wondering what I want to do. I decided I was a professional fishing guide at the time. I would take people fishing for salmon and steelhead up here in our local rivers in the Seattle area. And my buddy had just moved from Vegas to Nashville. He bought some rental properties out in the Nashville area. he called me and one day he’s like, C’s. He called me C’s. I just bought a house for 25 grand. Dude, you gotta come out here and invest with me. And he was really pumped on it. And so kicking and screaming, I moved to Nashville. And we did 38 fix and flips in two years together. And it took me quite a long time to get my first one actually. But once we got the first one, it snowballed. it took us about 11 months to get our first deal. And it was a bank owned. And if you’re interested, it’s kind of a funny story. Bank of America owned it. They had listed it for a hundred and twenty thousand dollars in a town called Antioch, Tennessee. And I did the numbers and I offered them fifty six grand. And 10 months goes by, the realtor that wrote the offer calls me and says, Hey, do you remember that house on Piccadilly Road? And I didn’t, but she refreshed my memory and she says, Well, it’s yours if you want it. And we ended up selling it after it was repaired for 120. That’s how out of touch the bank industry was back then with where the market was.

Issa Hanna (06:40)
No, definitely, man. And it’s crazy. Ten months for them to get back to you. but yay, it was a deal in the pipeline that came through, right? And

Cezary Nowowiejski (06:48)
a Ted if you’re writing MLS offers, do non expiring offers. if you’re

Issa Hanna (06:54)
Yeah, because you can throw that in if they don’t accept it, whatever it is, they might, circle around and just, hey, this guy’s ready to go. Let’s see if he wants it. it’s a good way. You’ll never know unless you actually ask, right? What do they say? Close mouths don’t get fed. so you throw that off or you do your numbers and you don’t go higher than your numbers. If they don’t want it, they don’t want it. If it’s meant to be, it’s meant to be. and ten months later it was meant to be for you guys and Hundred and twenty K you ended up selling the property for. I love that. I wanted to go a little bit farther back now. I wanted to go to a young Cezary’s life, right? What made you jump into the real estate game?

Cezary Nowowiejski (07:30)
so when I was married and working as a fishing guide, I was always interested. I was always looking at real estate. I didn’t really know that much about it, but I did know that I happened to get lucky, and someone when I was really young taught me how to develop credit. And so when I was 20 years old, I got a letter in the mail from GreenPoint Mortgage. Saying I was pre-qualified for a loan. And so I bought a house when I was 20. And we sold it five years later and made $38,000. And it was a lot of money to us back then. And so I it’s planted a seed in my mind that you can make money by owning real estate. But my ex-wife was dead set against it. She was risk averse, wanted to nothing to do with it. So I was kind of shackled until the divorce.

Issa Hanna (08:21)
Amazing. Yeah, man. You all real estate investors. I when I talk to them, I always ask them the origin story. And they always have. They said, It’s been in my mind for years. I’ve always wanted it. Something stopped me from doing it. One day I decided I’m gonna do it. Then he got bit by the bug. And usually the bug is that big fat paycheck. when you flip the house, you’re like, my goodness, I can make this much money. I should have done this sooner. but kudos to you, man. Twenty years old, you bought your first house. That is almost unheard of. I mean, that’s probably in the top one percentile of people in the last thirty years. So man, I’m loving your story already. We talked about the past, let’s talk about the future a little bit. You told me there’s some future opportunities on the horizon that you might be planning to get into. So can you share with the viewers?

Cezary Nowowiejski (09:05)
Yeah, so I actually right before the show started I was on a website that they train you on how to do assisted living facilities in single family homes. And that’s something that I’m getting really interested in because we have an aging population, there’s more and more demand. the senior living housing the the large scale stuff is getting so expensive, a lot of people can’t afford it. And so there’s a lot of Medicaid and Medicare, state subsidies, federal subsidies. the money’s there to pay for it, but maybe not the high scale, high dollar stuff. So as investors, especially if you don’t have a lot of resources, you can start with one house. And you retrofit it for, wheelchair access and all the things you need to be ADA compliant and they’re cash cows. Typical four bedroom house can net ten twelve thousand dollars a month profit.

Issa Hanna (10:01)
Definitely. I mean, just like the midterm rentals and the short term rentals, you’re maximizing your profits. So it’s not the traditional rent way. You’re gonna get guaranteed government subsidies for it. and it’s basically doing the same kind of work. You’re just making more money. So amazing, amazing opportunity. It takes a lot of knowledge to be able to spot future things, but I love that because the boomer, the baby boomer generation is aging. A lot of them are coming into Their golden years. A lot of them are retiring now, more and more of them. It’s the largest generation in human history, you guys. So whatever is on the market right now for the seniors, 10 years from now, it’s going to be nowhere near enough. the fact that you are identifying this and already jumping on it years of a ahead of a lot of people, it’s gonna be very lucrative for you. I could see it being one of the premier guys in your market in it here in the next five years or so. and now I wanted to ask you your advice for the younger viewers, right? I have a lot of professionals just starting out, a lot of new investors, new flippers, new realtors, loan officers, but the business game is the same. It depends on growing your network. And the way you grow your network is through business relationships. So if you had to give these young guys One piece of advice on growing their network, what piece of advice would that be?

Cezary Nowowiejski (11:19)
It as it pertains to doing real estate, don’t think about it, don’t talk about it, do it. you have to act. If you don’t act, nothing will happen. And I can’t tell you how many people I’ve met over the years that want to do it but never do it. It’s because they don’t take the first step. And that can be anything from just starting to research real estate, watch YouTube videos on how to do it, to, just looking at Zillow and Redfin and seeing what where prices are, looking for foreclosures. you can’t go wrong. buy real estate. That’s what I that’s what I say.

Issa Hanna (11:55)
It only goes up over time, you guys. So, buy it, hold it. your future self will definitely thank you. and another great way to network and grow your network and business relationships is by joining a group. And you told me that you’ve joined a pretty prestigious one. So I’m gonna let you tell us more about that.

Cezary Nowowiejski (12:12)
Yeah, so actually I belong to two groups. One is the National REIA, which is the Real Estate Investors Association. And I also belong to Sub2, which is Pace Morby’s group. And they’re both wonderful. REIA is great for networking locally, meeting people, and Sub2, same thing. There are a bunch of members locally here. We can get together, brainstorm. So it’s a great way to build your business. Just surround yourself by with people that are doing it and you’ll do it.

Issa Hanna (12:41)
100%. And when you’re in these groups, you guys, it kind of becomes like a family because you’re meeting up every week, you’re bouncing ideas off each other, you’re asking for each other’s advice, so a lot of that knowledge that you may not have, or you may not know one aspect, there’s gonna be somebody in that group that knows that’s gonna take you and tell you. and I love that you told me that was one of your strengths, is you are. more than willing to help a new guy. You’re more than willing to share your knowledge. Can you kind of tell us more about that too?

Cezary Nowowiejski (13:10)
Yeah, my philosophy is there’s more deals than there are investors willing to buy them. I try to help people, I try to, give them all the knowledge. I don’t keep secrets, I don’t tell half truths. And so it’s actually paid off over the years because, you never know when someone’s gonna have an opportunity at hand and they can’t take it down and they bring it to you and so I’ve done some really great deals because of that. Just people I’ve helped bringing me deals.

Issa Hanna (13:39)
Golden knowledge on how to be successful in the real estate world. Hold yourself to integrity, you guys. your name is your game in this thing, right? When people know you, they know you as somebody who’s willing to help, who’s willing to roll up their sleeves and go that extra mile. they’re gonna like you that much more. So when they have something that they think they can throw your way, they’re gonna throw it your way. that’s I mean golden knowledge, you’re just telling us just by talking to us today. Cezary, so I’m loving it. I want to give you the floor now. if people wanted to get a hold of you, they wanted to reach you, have anything you want to plug on our network?

Cezary Nowowiejski (14:48)
We have a website. It’s Cezar Homes. you can just type in C E Z A R H O M E S and my website will pop up. cezarhomes.com. And there’s a way to get in touch with us in there. That’s probably the best way to do it. I don’t have a Facebook page as of yet. I do have a marketing company working on getting us optimized on Facebook. So that’s coming this year. yeah, other than that, I just wanna tell people don’t be scared to do it. the world belongs to the people that are brave, not the people that are meek and scared.

Issa Hanna (15:24)
Hundred percent. what does it say? Fortune favors the bold, right?

Cezary Nowowiejski (15:28)
There you go.

Issa Hanna (15:28)
100%. So Cezar Homes.com. C E Z A R Homes.com. Yeah. Make sure you guys go check him out. get involved. You have any questions? bounce them off. He’s like I said, his strength is he’s more than willing to share his knowledge with the viewers. Cezary, it was it was a true honor having you bring your knowledge and sharing your business and philosophy with us on the show today. Thank you so much.

Cezary Nowowiejski (15:55)
All right. happy to be here. Thanks for the opportunity.

Issa Hanna (15:58)
I enjoyed the conversation and to my viewers at home. If you enjoyed my conversation and want to see more like it, make sure to hit like and subscribe. I talk to people every day that could bring us different knowledge on every aspect of the real estate industry. Until next time, the Real Estate Pros are out.