How Firefighter Ian Horowitz Built a $100M Real Estate Portfolio

Ian Horowitz – LFG (00:00)
we went out and did it. I just remember by the time I completed that whole project and at the end of it, I was like, damn dude, I’m getting $600 a month cash flow from one property and that was like two overtime shifts for me at that point. I was like, yo, this is a no brainer. How do I do this again? And that was it, man. That was it.

Kristen Knapp (01:52)
back to the Real Estate Pros Podcast. I’m Kristen and I’m here with Ian Horowitz, who’s the co-founder of Equity Warehouse. So we’re going to get all into his career and some new opportunities that you might be interested to hear about. So thanks for being here, Ian.

Ian Horowitz – LFG (02:06)
Yeah, thanks

for having me bright and early first thing in the morning. ⁓ But yeah, I’m excited to be here.

Kristen Knapp (02:11)
Amazing. Well, let’s start at the beginning. How did you fall in love with real estate?

Ian Horowitz – LFG (02:16)
Uh, you know, the,

way I fell in, fell in love with real estate was really just out of necessity. Um, you know, a really long story short, I was a fireman for the city of Baltimore. Uh, when I got hired in, my business partner got hired in 07, I got hired in 08. You know, the market started to crash and we were dealing with furloughs and pensions going bankrupt and all these other things. And I was laying there at work one night going, damn, like my wife wants to have a family. Um, what happens if I die at work? What happens?

if I get like incapacitated, like how do I provide for a family? I don’t want my kids to go to daycare. And I said, how do I make money while I’m laying here in this bed or I’m out on a fire in the middle of the night?

I luckily stumbled on real estate. was the only business that I could think where it was like, man, like someone rents a house and they’re paying you 24 seven. It was the only business that I could think of. and that’s really how I fell in love with it. And you know, fast forward a couple of months later, we buy, buy a house and that was, it was the end all be all and off we went.

Kristen Knapp (03:07)
Thanks.

That’s amazing. mean, yeah, I think that’s a really good perspective on it. Real estate can just build this wealth where it can be really passive if you want it to be.

Ian Horowitz – LFG (03:27)
Yeah.

Yeah.

100%. And that was the thing is like, there was also the, the equity ability at the end of it. Like, you know, there was also the out to say, well, if I only buy 10 houses and they’re only worth a million bucks, I say only now then it was like, uh, it was an obtainable item. it was like, man, I’ll have a million dollars in 30 years when I retire and the houses will be paid off and I’ll sell them. And, know, there was multiple opportunities and multiple exit strategies, which I think makes real estate very, very interesting compared to a lot of other businesses where it’s just very block and tackle. I sell you.

roof, I put a roof on your house, that’s the end of our life together. Maybe call me in 20 years if I’m still in business, right?

Kristen Knapp (04:06)
And what did that first deal look like? Walk me through how that felt to take the risk.

Ian Horowitz – LFG (04:12)
Yes,

sir.

The first deal I did, you know, and I was nowhere where I should have been. I stumbled on it by going to a networking group. ⁓ And the guy was like, dude, I love firemen, first responders. You all should be taken care of. If you ever want to learn the business, call me. So I call him and he brings me a deal. And I said, well, I guess this is it. And it wasn’t in the best area. It wasn’t the best deal. I didn’t do it the best. My credit score was all jacked up. I had no clue how I was going to get out of this thing.

Kristen Knapp (04:26)
you

Yeah.

Ian Horowitz – LFG (04:43)
But

we went out and did it. I just remember by the time I completed that whole project and at the end of it, I was like, damn dude, I’m getting $600 a month cash flow from one property and that was like two overtime shifts for me at that point. I was like, yo, this is a no brainer. How do I do this again? And that was it, man. That was it.

Kristen Knapp (05:52)
Yeah, I mean it’s good that the first deal went your way, with a lot of people’s first deal, it’s usually a struggle.

Ian Horowitz – LFG (06:00)
Yeah, no, mean, I think that I think if you know your mission and like what you want to do, I think there’s probably a lot more struggles than I probably remember. But I was so focused on all I care is if I could just get this house done and I would get cash flow and getting that first six hundred dollar check to say, holy shit, like you excuse my French. Sorry. ⁓ You did it right. Like it’s like, my God, you did it. And then when you do house number two and the same thing happens, it’s easy to like.

Kristen Knapp (06:18)
That’s okay.

Ian Horowitz – LFG (06:26)
watch out for what else happened. And look, I bought houses in like really not the best areas. They’re like very, very transitional areas in Baltimore. If you ever watched the wire, it wasn’t that bad. That’s where I worked. But I bought like the next neighborhood over, you know, so it was like, not great. I would go there at night. I don’t know if I’d send you there at night or my wife at night, but I would go there at night. And it was like, all right, it’s like sketch enough, but it’s not bad enough, but it’s good enough type deal. And the other thing was the financial risk. Like I bought that house and

I know it sounds probably wild to some of your people, but I paid 20 grand for that house and I put like 50 grand into it and I got $1,250 rent. Is that repeatable today? Probably not. But I knew in my position, I said, you know what, the financial risk here, if I screw up, told you guys my credit was messed up. Who cares? Like if I mess this whole thing up.

Kristen Knapp (07:00)
Wow.

Ian Horowitz – LFG (07:17)
whatever, I’ll just continue to work my 30 year career. So I already have my plan B, my plan A was my plan B. So that allowed me to make my plan B my plan A and we just went for it. And I think that allowed us to, you know, I know people have problems off front, but I don’t think people spend enough time to really understand like, well, yeah, you did a project and you didn’t make money, but you did the project. That’s the win. Right? Like, and I think you need to learn from that. And most people don’t learn from, you know, whatever these guys are selling me or these girls are selling me. It’s, it’s a scam. No, it’s not a scam. You just didn’t learn from what, right?

to go do the next one you know so

Kristen Knapp (07:50)
Totally, and I mean what would be an example of something that did go wrong that you learned from?

Ian Horowitz – LFG (07:55)
I did all the work myself like a dumbass. ⁓ you know, and I don’t know if I did the plumbing right. didn’t pull permits. I was out there demo in the site. I was doing anything I can, but I had to save money, right? Like I didn’t, I didn’t know any other way, but to use these two things here. and so we did, you know, the stuff that I really didn’t know how to do, I hired out and the stuff that I knew enough about I did, and it was probably dumb, but I did it. And the next house, I quickly learned like, Hey, if I pay

Kristen Knapp (07:57)
you

Ian Horowitz – LFG (08:25)
an

extra 20 or 30 grand, I could be done instead of six months, I could be done in three months. And then I could get to cashflow faster and then I could go because at the time the bank would count the rental income towards your DTI even though you didn’t own it for a year. So it wasn’t popping up on your taxes, all those mortgages. So I was basically building

cash flow net worth before it would show up. So like I buy a house at the end of the year, I was like, well, I got to hurry up and get done. And I think that’s what I was able to learn is like, hey, like, I know I can do all this, but it’s not the best way to grow the business.

Kristen Knapp (09:01)
Right. How did you go about building out your team? Like vetting people and finding people you like and trust.

Ian Horowitz – LFG (09:07)
Yeah,

so part of that came from the guy who taught me the business that I met at that networking event. He passed me a couple subs and then you you talk to those guys and they’re like, well, I’m too busy. Call this guy and you just play the hey, who do you know game? And that’s probably the hardest piece of this business that I think a lot of people get scared about because.

The guys with the nice vans, sure, like they’ll get your work done and they’re probably way more reliable. But we were looking for the guys that were at Home Depot at 6 a.m. in the white van that’s on marked going to Home Depot. Hey, who do you know going down to Home Depot? Hey, we’re doing a demo job picking up a bunch of day laborers. Whoever’s the best guy. Yo, everyone else has gone tomorrow. ⁓ Give me you come back with your friends tomorrow and let’s just keep going. You just keep refining until you find the right guy, until you find the right guy, until you find the right guy. And eventually you land on

the right person to do the job for you.

Kristen Knapp (09:58)
So yeah, you definitely stepped more into a passive role or you’re at least trying to rather than so, you know in the weeds

Ian Horowitz – LFG (10:42)
Yeah, in the weeds of the day to day of doing the construction, there’s no way that we would be here where we are today if we would have done that. We’ve definitely taken more of a passive role on that, but really it’s just more of a leverage of other people’s expertise and time for us to be more highly productive.

Kristen Knapp (10:46)
Yeah.

Yeah. And at what point were you able or when did you transition from being a firefighter to doing this full time or did that ever happen?

Ian Horowitz – LFG (11:09)
⁓

yeah, no, that took way too long. So we were firemen. That’s all we wanted to do our whole lives. Had a little bit of an identity crisis. We probably should have left. We wound up staying about 15 years.

We probably should have left in year like six or seven, but you know, part of it was scared. Part of it. didn’t know what we were doing. Part of it was that’s all we wanted to do was be big city firemen. And you know, we were, you know, I guess lucky enough to be in a city that went to a lot of fires, which sounds stupid, maybe to some of your audience, but it’s what we wanted to do. If you want to be a fireman, you want to get a fires and we were in a place that was not the best and we were able to do that. um, fast forward to about year 14 or 15. Well, it was probably year 13. Um,

we get an opportunity to buy a 76 unit apartment building and the lady was going to own her finance 90 % of it. And we’re like, oh my God, this is it. And, uh, you know, all these years of just doing these single family houses, just rinse and repeat over and over and over again. We bought a little seven unit building, bought a little warehouse, bought a couple of two and three units. This was the one. And she was willing to own her finance 90 % of it. And just so everybody knows, this is like a $5 million purchase.

Kristen Knapp (11:56)
along.

Ian Horowitz – LFG (12:20)
We only got to bring 500 grand. We raised the money from our friends and family. But anyway, what happened is we go in, we execute the project during COVID times. 16 months later, we refinance it. We make the $5 million building worth $9.5 million. We refinance it, walk away with seven figures. And we said, you know what? If we can’t figure out how to make money over the next three to five years with this money that we’re getting back, then we shouldn’t be in business. And so we took the leap of faith. The day we left our

our business literally tripled like overnight and here we are today with you know just shy of a nine-figure portfolio out here grinding away every single day.

Kristen Knapp (13:00)
Wow, and when you left your job and it tripled, was it because you were able to spend more time on the project?

Ian Horowitz – LFG (13:06)
I think a lot of it was just like.

A lot of it was like, okay, now we have this is this is what we do every day. You know, it’s going to be serious about it. We have more time to think about it. Do it. I think we have more free time with our families. That also helped a lot. Right. Like, because instead of being like going to work was fun. Right. It’s like essentially going to a frat house without the beer. And well, it depends on the day. But anyway, without the beer and, know, so you would sometimes you just come off work and you’d be so tired and you would just be going through you weren’t in the best mental clarity.

Kristen Knapp (13:26)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Ian Horowitz – LFG (13:40)
Like leaving the fire department, I swear like I felt a weight lifted off my shoulders and it just allowed us to be free and go explore what we wanted to do. We had more freedom to move about the country. We had more freedom to move, be a part of groups, have the freedom to really just explore what we want to explore, but then also have reserved time for our families where before you’re trying to pack it all into one, all as one. So yeah, I think leaving the fire department,

allowed us to really spread our wings and say, I think the biggest thing that messed me up, I had a friend of mine, he would always say, well, you don’t want to bet on yourself. I’m like, shut up, Terry. Like, you know, like, what do you mean bet on yourself? I already am. He’s like, no, you leave the fire department. You like really bet on yourself. And I think that just like resonated with me for a really long period of time. And when we did, it was like, all right, we bet on ourselves. Game on. Like, let’s go, you know.

Kristen Knapp (14:30)
Yeah. Yeah. But what’s so interesting with your business, Equity Warehouse, so you’re not just, you know, you’re not just doing this independently. You are, you have clients that you help build their portfolios and you help them access more wealth and capital or wealth and equity. ⁓ When did you kind of trans, like when did you go into that model? Was it after the apartment complex when you pooled the money from friends and family?

Ian Horowitz – LFG (14:57)
Yeah, like leading up to the apartment complex, were, you know, we’d have some friends like, you know, especially on the firehouse, you remember, got a bunch of type A personalities, men and women that are like, that’s a scam, whatever, you know, like, you’re not making, okay, whatever. So every once in a while, a couple of guys would be like, hey, like, I really want to do something, but I don’t want to do all the hard work.

Kristen Knapp (15:08)
you

Ian Horowitz – LFG (15:56)
So, you know, 10 grand, 25 grand, we’d borrow some hard money, we’d use some of their money, we would do a deal.

And then when we got this apartment building, was the first time we ever went out and raised money. We raised a million bucks. I had to work really, we were in business for seven, eight years at this point. Dude, I should say do debt. I apologize. ⁓ But anyway, ⁓ we were in business for seven, eight years at that point. And it was like a grind. And I can’t believe it took me forever to raise a million dollars, but we did it.

Kristen Knapp (16:27)
Where did you go out and find it?

Ian Horowitz – LFG (16:29)
I

will be completely honest with you guys. I literally went out for anyone that’s watching. I wrote down, I said, okay, I need 40 people to give me $25,000 to invest in this deal. And I already knew like five or 10. And was like, this can’t be that hard. I probably wrote down 300 people’s names and I just started calling, texting.

and doing all that stuff and it was a grind but I got it done and after I did that deal you know everyone says well it’s the law of the first deal I did that first deal fast forward six seven months later we raised another million and a half dollars to do another deal because people are like wait you guys are actually real then we raised four million dollars to do a storage facility then we raised another six million dollars to do another group of storage facilities and it just like it grew really quick you know and

I always had people saying like, you know, it’s so easy to raise money. was like, no way, but it really is once you get that ball rolling.

Kristen Knapp (17:32)
Yeah, once you establish the credibility. ⁓

Ian Horowitz – LFG (17:34)
100 %

and I it really just comes down to making sure you’re in a partnership that’s mutually beneficial to both parties and I think that’s where a lot of people lose sight of it and People get very greedy or they give it all away So if you get real greedy and you’re not giving enough people won’t do it And if you give it all away people would be like, well, this is a scam There’s no way you can get that return but you as the operator aren’t making any money So for us it was really coming to an agreement that worked for everyone and then once we had some success by doing that

finance walking away with seven figures people getting distributions are like oh my god i want to do this again and then they tell their friends and family and they tell their friends and family i mean we’re two burnt firemen now retired um that we’ve raised like 20 million bucks and never in a million years if you ask me you know 15 you know whatever however 13 years ago 14 years ago

Hey, like, you know, you’re gonna be able to raise 20 million bucks. I would have laughed in your face, right? But it all just comes from simple $25,000 investments or whatever number you’re comfortable with asking someone for money with and for us 25 grand now 25 grand turns into hey, know people are starting to invest well into the six figures with us and it’s seven figures with us and it’s like wow It works. You just got to be transparent honest Tell people exactly what you’re doing and most people want to support you and be a part of what you’re

And I think if they feel that they are in the game with you, they will support you side by side.

Kristen Knapp (19:05)
100%. I mean, yeah, this is a great business where once you make a relationship and you prove that you’re reliable, they’ll come back and you’ll get repeat clients. You mentioned storage. I know that you guys do a lot of deals in storage. I would love for you to talk about the opportunity there.

Ian Horowitz – LFG (19:23)
Yeah, so once we did the apartment building, it was hard for us to scale just because, you know, there’s a lot of competition there. ⁓ And we stumbled on storage by complete accident, bought a facility out in Little Rock, Arkansas, kind of figured out what and we’re based out of at that time, we’re based out of Baltimore. We’re now up in Philly. ⁓ And we were kind of just like dilly dallying around like, all right, this is something that we can rinse and repeat across the country. We’re not dealing with tenant laws, right? This is dirt.

So we’re dealing with all the BS consumer laws that revolve around COVID. We’re dealing with, ⁓ not to make it about politics, but Baltimore is a very blue city in a very blue state that makes it very, very hard to operate when it comes to consumer protection laws. And it’s just like, okay, well, let’s go find something else. And the other thing is storage is an operating business that has real estate that you’re underwriting behind it. And I think that’s what makes it interesting, because it’s something we’re very comfortable with, but then it’s

Scratches the itch of like hey, I want to own a business. I want to do the fun marketing stuff I want to be able to increase my revenue. I want to do specials and all that other kind of fun stuff So and in the end, there’s no toilets. There’s no there is 12 o’clock calls I don’t want to don’t want to lie to you a lot of people pitch that but the biggest thing is there’s no toilets There’s no water running water. Nobody’s living or should not be living in your unit You’re literally running a 10 by 10 metal box. And if you look at it from that

standpoint, just the operational risk or what you have to do to a site is exponentially easier because when I was doing single family or multifamily, you got to compete with whatever’s on HGTV, right? Doesn’t matter financially what’s going on.

People know when they watch HGTV, they want a granite countertop stainless steel appliances, even though I was putting those in section eight houses and I didn’t even have it in my house at that time. know, so ⁓ I just it’s funny in a way. Right. So with all that being said, ⁓ the storage, just the opportunity is there’s a lot less like operational risk per se. It’s a little more streamlined and you’re literally running a metal box that’s most likely on some sort of gravel or pavement lot.

Kristen Knapp (21:39)
Yeah, yeah, very simple and streamlined. So to wrap this up, we’re getting towards the end of our time. What would be maybe a piece of advice that you wish you learned earlier in your career?

Ian Horowitz – LFG (21:51)
⁓ to get into commercial real estate earlier. And I’ll expand on that a little bit just because single family real estate for me and my business partner, we probably just weren’t mature enough early enough to understand it, right? We had to go through, we had to get our butts whooped, we had to have a lot of cool wins, but we also had to get our asses whooped a lot.

But I think what we learned was we learned how to build system and processes that are then much more rinse and repeatable at that next level. In commercial real estate, you you hear people say, I can barely get a loan for a house. I can get a million dollar, $2 million loan for an apartment building. No problem. That’s 100 % true for us. We had to build our net worth with the single family and our system processes, our team, our credibility to allow us to get to that next level and for us to feel like we were allowed to get to that next level. And I

I if you recognize the ability, the opportunity that lies in commercial real estate, the numbers are just bigger. There’s just an extra zero. Yes, there’s a little more financial risk, but it’s just one more zero. If you can run a 10 house portfolio, you can most likely run a 10 unit apartment building. And that 10 unit apartment building will be worth way more money than your 10 single family houses in a shorter period of time. That you can force the value add in commercial real estate.

And I think that’s the missing piece that’s in residential real estate because you’re confined by your neighbors.

Kristen Knapp (23:17)
⁓ I think that’s great advice. Where can people find you? ⁓

Ian Horowitz – LFG (23:21)
Yeah, best

place to find us. all over all the social medias at Equity Warehouse or you can go to equitywarehouse.com. You can learn how our friends co-invest and co-lend with us. I don’t do all the spam email. I don’t have any free giveaways. I don’t do anything fun like that. We’re just normal dudes doing deals. If something you’re interested in, come and find us. that’s us, Equity Warehouse.

Kristen Knapp (23:37)
Bye.

Amazing, well everybody please check that out and thank you so much for being here, Ian.

Ian Horowitz – LFG (23:48)
Thank

you so much.

Kristen Knapp (23:50)
Awesome. And thank you everyone for listening and we’ll see you back next time. Bye.