How Real Estate Builds Long-Term Wealth Through Buying and Holding

Alex Szinegh (00:00)
Buy now. you know, it’s, wish, I look at some of those properties, every time I go up to Canada to visit my kids, I go by and look at those properties. I was selling lakefront property that nobody wanted. They said nobody will ever go up that far at the lake for $14,900. You can’t find a piece of property for less than a million and a half on that same lake that touches the water.

I wish I would have kept, I had like 50 lots. I wish I would have kept all those lots.

Michelle Kesil (02:01)
Hey everybody, welcome to the Real Estate Pros podcast. I’m your host, Michelle Kesil. Today I’m joined by someone I’m looking forward to chatting with, Alex Szinegh who is a real estate investor who’s been in the industry 43 years, has done fix and flips, as well as hard money lending. And excited to have you here today, Alex.

Alex Szinegh (02:24)
Thank you, Michelle.

Michelle Kesil (02:24)
Awesome, let’s dive in. So first off, for those not familiar with you and your work yet, can you share what your main focus is?

Alex Szinegh (02:32)
Sure, no problem. Well, right now, I’m still selling real estate. I’ve been doing it for 43 years. Excuse me. I got into real estate in 1983, October 15th. I went to a seminar, there was this guy. I’m originally from Hungary, and this guy who’s a Hungarian guy invited me to the seminar.

I’ve never finished high school, I only finished grade 10. And this guy was making a million and a half a year in real estate and he only had a grade nine education. So I figured if he can do that, I can do that too. So I went to the seminar and he convinced me to join real estate. And the first six months I didn’t even make a penny. I’d made nothing. I was flat broke. I had this old beater car that I used to park around the corner so now the customer’s seen me. And when a customer came I said, let’s take your car.

My Mercedes is in the shop. Well, it was because I haven’t bought it yet. So I was so broke. and from my background, come, I was born in Hungary and emigrated to Canada in 1963.

We actually arrived October 31st, which is Halloween and there was no Halloween in Hungary. And so was a big shock and a big surprise to us. Didn’t speak a word of English, didn’t understand anything, didn’t even know how to say hello or anything. First English words I learned were trick or treat, give me something good to eat. That’s what I learned. Our Hungarian friends gave us some masks, we went out and we went around.

this bag and we collected a whole bunch of candy. We were out till midnight. I thought, what a cool country that give you free food. We didn’t have anything like that in Hungary. And I was even talking to my wife the other day and she said, were you really surprised when you first went to a grocery store because…

We didn’t have grocery stores like that in Hungary. You went to the grocery store in the morning at six o’clock and they gave you rations. You got half a loaf of bread, you got six eggs, you know, got five decagram of butter, and you have to eat that that day. We didn’t have refrigerators or anything like that, so it’s not like you could shop for a week or anything. So first time I went to a grocery store, was like, wow, this is the coolest.

And we lived in this dungeon apartment that had no windows, no bathroom inside or anything like that. So I come from a really modest background. And in 1956, we had the revolution in Hungary. The Russians invaded Hungary. There was an uprising. It’s like similar to what they did to Ukraine, except ours was only a couple of weeks long, not like Ukraine.

So it was pretty tough living there and my father had to escape because he was part of the revolution and all the refugees went to England and in England they gave him a choice. You can go to Canada or can go to Australia. He went to Canada. So he kept trying to get us out for years and from 1956 to 1963 that’s when we were able to get out.

So we didn’t understand anything. I never owned a property. Never had anything that we owned ourselves. And my father, didn’t believe in real estate. He didn’t believe in buying a piece of real estate. He didn’t trust the banks or anything like that. And we were living in Toronto, Canada, and he was renting a house for 100 bucks a month.

and for $120 a month he could have bought that house and that was 1964 and that house was worth 10 grand in 1964. My father died in 1973 and that house in 1973 was worth 110 grand so if he would have bought that house he could have left my family some money but he never believed in it so I bought my first house then when he was sick.

I bought my first house for $30,000 with $1,500 down because they could do that. That was my first entry into real estate.

A couple of years later that property went up to 50,000 so I sold it, took the equity, bought a bigger house and I just kept doing that. I kept seeing that if you hang in there then real estate changes, you know. And that house, the first house I bought, I checked the other day with my daughter. It’s right now selling for about $700,000. So it’s pretty amazing what happens. But over the years I just kept buying and then eventually

moved from Canada, moved to Nevada, moved to Las Vegas, Nevada. I opened a real estate company there. I opened a real estate company in Hawaii. And I always wanted to have a house on the beach. And looked in Hawaii and they wanted two and a half, three million dollars for a house that was far back from the beach. And you could see the beach between the other houses with binoculars.

And I had this desire. And then somebody said to me, what about Costa Rica? And I never heard of Costa Rica. I didn’t know where it was or what happened. And I went there 25 years ago to Costa Rica and met this German guy who just bought a couple of hundred acres. And he showed me these houses that were overlooking the water. They were fantastic. They were luxury homes. And he was building them at that time for like 350 grand.

So I had some money in real estate because I sold a lot of real estate. I was selling 100 homes a year, me and my wife at the time.

So I had a bunch of money sitting around doing nothing and so I bought a bunch of houses off the guy. I bought eight houses and said build me the houses so he built them houses for me for $350,000, $400,000 and I was selling for $550,000, So that was my first really big jump into real estate and I made a bunch of money in Costa Rica there.

and I was going to retire but my wife, I was married to at that time, she passed away in Las Vegas, she had breast cancer and so my plans changed and I was there I was and my wife you know gave birth to a baby even though she had cancer we had a baby who is now 24 this year it was kind of fluky

You know, because I’m pretty old and I was old, I was in my 50s and here I am with a new baby. My wife passed away so there I was as a single dad with a six year old. But the good thing was that I owned my house, I paid for it, I didn’t have a mortgage and I bought a whole bunch of houses in Florida because Florida market in 2008 fell apart.

and you could buy a house that was selling for $250,000, $300,000 for $50,000 bucks so I bought a few of those and then when my wife passed away I moved to Florida. So I flipped some of those houses and I saw a great opportunity here. I lived in Orlando and then I met my wife now in Orlando who is from Tampa.

and eventually we moved to Tampa and Tampa is a great marketplace and we just kept buying houses, we kept flipping houses and you know, fix and flip, they seemed like a good thing. I bought a house for 150,000, put 25,000, 30,000 into it, sold for 270,000, you know what mean, 100 grand. So it was a good deal. So I liked that part of it and as I accumulated more more real estate and I made more money,

I had a whole bunch of money sitting around and…

all these investors that were coming to Florida. I joined an investor club and all these guys needed money. And lot of the fix and flippers and these wholesalers, they don’t have the cash. They all want to get rich, but they don’t have money. And it does take money. It’s a misconception that you don’t need any money to make money in real estate. You need some money. You need some kind of a base. And I had a bunch of money. So I started lending money. I started doing hard money lending. And I was getting between

9 and 18 percent which was really good much better than the bank so I started doing that because then I didn’t have to take a risk buying a property what I did is lend the money let them take the risk and I just collected the money every month so that was a pretty good deal and I own some property up in Canada which I sold recently and I’m doing a lot of hard money lending in Canada

right now so I have a bunch of mortgages out there because I don’t know if you know about the money Canadian money is about 30 % 35 % less than US dollars so if I bring the money here I lose 35 % so I didn’t bring the money here I just keep it there and I keep lending that money out so that’s kind of like the way I got around to things because

You know, when seeing my mother never owning anything and my dad never owning real estate, I thought, that’s the way to go. And so I keep doing that and I’m always looking for opportunities. I have a friend of mine here. He’s the contractor. He does all the construction and, you know, he’s also from my country. He’s Hungarian and he’s got a crew of guys and we go in, we buy something that’s like a wreck.

and he’s really good visionary, he’s really good with all the trades and he goes in, he gives the estimate and if it makes sense we buy it and then we flip it. I provide the cash, he provides the labor. So that’s the way we’ve been doing it now for years and we’ve done a lot of these fix and flips which is really good. And ⁓ that’s kind of like my path along the way of what I’ve been doing.

And I’m always out there like I was looking at some property yesterday to see if it would make any sense. I got my buddy to go there. He does an evaluation. He goes, nope, we’re not going to make any money on this deal. So we just let him go. But we’re always looking for stuff off market because once it hits the MLS,

I had a lot of properties that people asked me to list for sale and I’m like, no sense listing this, I might as buy it myself because if it’s a good deal, it’s never going to hit the MLS. The realtor is going to buy it usually or I have a whole list of investors that are ready to buy stuff right now and all I have to do is as soon as I got something that looks like a good deal, I just call them and say, I’ve got this thing here, you want to go look at it and I can sell it right away.

That’s how I was able to sell 100 homes a year, which made me a really good living. And like I said, my wife is also a realtor, so if I have a problem or anything, she can always step in. Last September, I had a major, major illness. had heart surgery. I had a five bypass.

open-heart surgery and so my wife took care of the business for a few months because I couldn’t drive, I couldn’t go anywhere, I was stuck inside the house. But we’re at the stage where you know we’re enjoying our money that we made you know and

but we still stay in the business. People say, when you gonna retire? Why don’t you retire and go to the house in Costa Rica? go, what I’m gonna do? He can only drink so many Margaritas beside the pool. I love real estate, I love doing real estate, I love negotiating, I like wheeling and dealing. I said, I’m gonna get out of real estate the day I die. That’s kinda like my story.

love the business and I also coach people in real estate. coach agents and I help some up-and-coming investors. I show them some of the ropes and I put money in with them if it makes a sense and I lend them the money and so I stay I keep my fingers in the business that’s my thing. I love doing the business I enjoy it. Why would I change?

and it gives me great flexibility. I make really good money and it gives me great flexibility. I work when I feel like it. We take six, seven vacations a year, two, three weeks at a time. So we have the flexibility and the money so that we can travel.

And like I said, as I get older, especially after that surgery that I had back in September, I’m thinking I got a lot less time ahead of me than when I was behind me. So I’m going to have to enjoy life and travel around and go places and see the places I’ve never seen before. I got four kids and two of my kids are in real estate. Two of my older daughters are in real estate.

and my son is a contractor up in Canada and my oldest daughter is still up there and I have two daughters down here. So, you know, I got a 55 year old son, 52 year old daughter, 47 year old daughter and a 24 year old daughter.

It’s kind of, I’ve been trying to set them up, all of them own real estate. My father never got me to own real estate, so I make sure that my kids all own real estate and they understand how it goes. It’s been a good business for me. It’s took care of me and my family really well.

I just keep looking for deals as time goes along.

Michelle Kesil (17:07)
Amazing Alex, thank you so much for sharing your journey. What is a piece of advice you’d give to someone that’s earlier on in their career?

Alex Szinegh (17:16)
Buy now. you know, it’s, wish, I look at some of those properties, every time I go up to Canada to visit my kids, I go by and look at those properties. I was selling lakefront property that nobody wanted. They said nobody will ever go up that far at the lake for $14,900. You can’t find a piece of property for less than a million and a half on that same lake that touches the water.

I wish I would have kept, I had like 50 lots. I wish I would have kept all those lots.

But I didn’t. I had the time I was buying and selling. I was buying 200 acres, 300 acres, we were subdividing it, doing that, the lots, and then selling it. My advice to everybody is buy real estate now and continue buying it and look for deals and hang on.

because it’s going to go up. When you look at the market, even in 2008 when the market dropped, I lost some money on some of the properties, but overall I made a ton of money because I had a lot of real estate. And over time, it takes care of it. Time heals everything. know, even now the market is lower than it was a couple of months ago, a year ago. It’s a buyer’s market right now in Florida.

There is just a lot of inventory and prices are dropping.

I just sold a couple of properties, I sold my daughter’s condo, I had to keep dropping the price until I could sell it to somebody. And I was lucky because we paid cash, so I took a mortgage back on the property, that’s the only way I could sell it because people couldn’t get a mortgage and at 7%, 8 % at the time, they couldn’t get a mortgage, didn’t make sense. So I gave them a break on the mortgage rates, I dropped it down a little bit for them because it was my property and I had to get rid of it.

give me an opportunity to maneuver funds around. If you’re getting into the real estate business right now, just go out and buy something and hang on to it and then buy some more.

Even in Costa Rica, when I first went down there, the guy was selling for $350,000, $400,000. I bought eight lots. I had enough money to buy eight of them, give him deposits on eight properties. All he needed was $30,000, $40,000 per property. And I bought them up. And on one deal, I made over $300,000. So there’s always opportunity. You just got to look for it.

Michelle Kesil (19:14)
Perfect.

Yeah, amazing. Thank you so much for sharing. And before we wrap up here, if someone wants to reach out, connect, learn more about where can people find you.

Alex Szinegh (19:44)
my name alex sinig at gmail dot com is my email that’s pretty easy my phone number is a vegas number i used to live in vegas i lived there for seven years so it’s seven zero two three three four five five seven zero and i’m easy to find you you type that name alex sinig into google

anything you see is me. You’re not going to see another person. I’ve got three brothers and they’re up in Canada, so none of them are down here. And we only have a couple of boys in our family, so the family name, unless my kids reproduce, the family name is going to disappear. Because we’re the last of the Senex. So, I’m pretty easy to find.

Michelle Kesil (20:26)
Perfect, we’ll appreciate your time.

Alex Szinegh (20:26)
And I’d be more than happy to help anybody.

If you’re getting started or you need some advice, reach out to me. I can help you with your business. I can show you some ways. Like I said, I’ve lived all over the US. I lived in Alabama. I lived in Vegas. I lived here in Florida, in Orlando.

Tampa, Fort Myers area, Daytona Beach. So I know different markets. I lived in Canada for years. For 40 years, I lived in Canada. Sometimes I think to myself, why the heck did I live there that long? It’s so cold up there. Yeah. My kids were like, are you going to visit us? Not right now. You know? I got to wait until June, July before I’m going up there. got to get warm weather.

Michelle Kesil (21:00)
Hehehe

Yeah, perfect. Well, appreciate

your time and your story. Thank you for being here.

Alex Szinegh (21:10)
Yeah, well thank you Michelle with two L’s. My oldest daughter’s name is Michelle with two L’s.

Michelle Kesil (21:16)
Awesome. And for those tuning into the show, you got value, make sure you’ve subscribed. We have more conversations with operators like Alex, who are building real businesses and we’ll see you on our next episode.