Investing in Multifamily Properties: Must-Know Secrets Revealed

Dylan Silver (00:00.79)
Hey folks, welcome back to the show. I’m your host Dylan Silver. And today I have this on the show. have Robert Damigella out of the Boston area, seasoned finance, real estate professional, 30 years of experience, private equity, portfolio management, Robert, welcome to the show.

Robert Damigella (00:18.618)
Dylan, thanks so much. You know, I thought I was going to see Mike, but I’ve been fortunate. I get to meet with you tonight. So there we go.

Dylan Silver (00:25.166)
That’s right. That’s right. I’m over here in North Dallas, quite literally situated Denton, which is really 30 minutes south of Oklahoma, closer to Oklahoma than it is Dallas. But we still consider ourselves DFW and I’m on a ranch over here. So if you hear chickens, cows or or some other farm animal, it’s probably that’s what it is. But at the top of the show, I always like to ask my guests.

Robert Damigella (00:30.368)
North Dallas.

Dylan Silver (00:53.24)
How did they get into the real estate space? Was it in your blood? Was it divine intervention? How did you get into the space?

Robert Damigella (01:00.686)
man, well I have a story for you that probably will never be repeated again. Not that it’s anything bad, by the way, but it is a great story. By the way, I digress when my daughter goes to SMU, so I get to Dallas now and then.

Dylan Silver (01:13.006)
That’s San… That’s San Marcos? That’s in Dallas. Okay.

Robert Damigella (01:15.744)
No, that’s yeah, yeah. It’s what’s it? SMU. Yeah. It’s the Dallas school, whatever the heck it is. So.

Robert Damigella (01:26.912)
Right, right, right, right. I call it Southern Methodist University is what it is. I caught a mind blank there for a minute. So, all right. So look, you’re right. I’ve been around for 30 years. It really is more than 30 years in real estate and finance. And I hate to admit it publicly, but the way that I got started was I worked on Wall Street for a good couple of decades and I was senior vice president with Lehman Brothers. That’s how I started in finance.

Dylan Silver (01:30.616)
That’s right, okay, very cool.

Robert Damigella (01:55.309)
But the way I cut my teeth in real estate was I was on the equity raise team for Rockefeller Center of Properties back in the early 90s, I believe. And we were doing a multi-billion dollar equity raise for that to be the first publicly traded REIT. And it went public. we raised, I was on the team to raise the equity. And that’s how I cut my teeth. I became exposed to that intersection.

Dylan Silver (02:02.766)
Mmm.

Robert Damigella (02:24.246)
are that Venn diagram between real estate and finance. And ever since then, I’ve been in real estate and finance for my whole career, and that’s why I focus on finance.

Dylan Silver (02:35.448)
Let’s talk about being on Wall Street, raising capital. I’ve spoken with a number of folks who’ve gone from Wall Street to real estate. One of them directly went from raising capital on Wall Street to raising capital with, I believe it was one of his clients or someone that he worked with regularly and it was just the natural fit. But what I’ve heard routinely from folks is it’s two different careers. Specifically the people that were working

as as stock brokers are in that in that realm. Were you when when you were in the Wall Street space? Did you love Wall Street? Were you one of those guys or when you got a taste of real estate where you’re like, well, let me do this. Let me figure out how to make this my life.

Robert Damigella (03:07.19)
Right.

Robert Damigella (03:18.594)
Yeah, it was, you know, they are, they’re very similar, but not the same, especially when you’re raising equity, because you’re really raising money for an investment deal either way, right? At the end of the day, if you’re doing an equity raise. But, you know, it was a natural progression for me because I loved real estate and I already had the finance background. So I, over time just morphed to where, you know, I now I head of capital markets for markets in Millichap in Boston.

in New England.

Dylan Silver (03:49.304)
So going from Wall Street to then real estate, was it a conscious move or was it, basically what I’m asking is, were you aware, hey, I love real estate, let me see how I can get more involved here, or was it you were in charge of raising equity for this REIT and then you scaled within that organization and had opportunities come across your plate that way?

Robert Damigella (04:12.628)
Right. Okay, I get your question. And I think it was conscious. I think I always knew I wanted to make my way over to the real estate side. And I think that that’s an important component for anybody that wants to be in the real estate space. You have to make your way over there. It isn’t just going to happen by itself. I got my taste. I got exposed to it with Rockefeller Center. That’s where I cut my teeth. But at the end of the day, it was a conscious decision. Go from there to here. And I’m still here today. So.

Dylan Silver (04:41.614)
So when you make that transition, is it also physical? Are you staying in New York? Did you go up to Boston at that point in time? Where is life for you here in the mid to late 90s?

Robert Damigella (04:52.266)
Yeah, it’s always been in Boston. I’ve spent most of my career in Boston. Lehman Brothers had an office in Boston. So I’ve been around, you know, here for many, many years and still reside in Boston. So, and you know where I told you that I’m buying a building right now is in an area which is five minutes out of downtown, right next to where you were in Jamaica Plain, being highly gentrified. And you want to talk about it? It’s pretty amazing. Huh?

Dylan Silver (04:54.797)
Okay.

Dylan Silver (05:04.344)
Okay.

Yeah.

Dylan Silver (05:15.906)
Let’s talk about that. Let’s talk about that. Yeah, so let me tell you. Let me tell you where I lived. I was in H block. I don’t know if you’ve heard of this. So H block was Hummelt, Harold, Harashoff and one other. And it was like a gang territory. And I lived there. Yeah. Yeah.

Robert Damigella (05:33.014)
Yeah, you were in the public housing area. Yeah, I know exactly where you were. Yeah. yeah. Yeah, totally. Well.

Dylan Silver (05:40.802)
So are you guys close to that area? Tell us about this project.

Robert Damigella (05:45.323)
No, we’re not, I’m not close to that. mean, yes, but not next door. Okay. I mean, I’m not really in that area. If you go back to the late nineties, I bought, do you remember all the brown stones in the South end? Tall brick, right? We have the largest collection, beautiful, largest collection of brown stones in the city of, in the country in the South end of Boston. So this borders the South end. Okay. Great historical story here. So, the,

Dylan Silver (05:49.976)
Right.

Dylan Silver (05:58.734)
Of course, you’re beautiful.

Robert Damigella (06:16.002)
I bought a brownstone back in the late nineties and literally the area hadn’t turned yet behind the Prudential Center, know, that area, an amazing area. There was a crack house next door to me and I bought it for about $650,000 and I was a real estate genius and sold it a year later for $950,000, which is now worth about $5 million. Okay. What’s my point? My point is that gentrification is moving out even more to this area, which is

Dylan Silver (06:22.99)
Yeah, beautiful,

Robert Damigella (06:44.8)
But all these areas have some sort of public housing or co-ops or whatever. had one at the end of my street. And you know what? At the end of the day, everybody lives together in harmony. And that’s exactly. So I found myself a 1899 church rectory, which was converted, right? It was converted into nine apartment units for $5.5 million. I bought it. It’s been appraised at six, but here’s the kicker.

Because I know finance, because I understand creative financing, because I know how to present a deal, and this is the things that I teach. I have a program, maybe we’ll talk about it later, where we teach finance to real estate investors. I managed to secure 75 % loan to value, 4.125 million at 5 % interest only for five years.

Dylan Silver (07:39.255)
Hmm.

Robert Damigella (07:40.065)
So if I’ve got a six and a quarter cap that I’m going in, I’ve got positive leverage in the deal. It’s going to casual like a pig. It’s unbelievable. And these are all A rated. They converted it to nine units, condo quality, boutique building, panoramic views of the city from the penthouse. All the bathrooms have heated floors. It’s AAA plus all the way. That’s what’s happening in this neighborhood. So where you were, I understand where you were, but we’re not really quite there. But the whole area is really…

Dylan Silver (08:03.532)
Wow.

Robert Damigella (08:09.602)
turning out to be quite the place to live five minutes. We’re close to Harvard Medical. We’re close to Harvard University. We’re close to Boston Children’s Hospital, the Prudential Center. Everything’s within two miles. It’s an incredible spot. So yeah, that’s what we accomplished there. And that’s what you do with creative financing. Great, great, great deals.

Dylan Silver (08:22.734)
Yeah.

Dylan Silver (08:28.792)
That’s this really interesting talk about creative finance at a scale like that. And I haven’t delved into it with any of my guests. So when I hear creative finance, I think about subject to loan assumptions, seller finance. I think about people doing other deals within the real estate space, like even like rental arbitrage, although that’s not creative finance directly, it’s related.

Robert Damigella (08:52.79)
Right.

Dylan Silver (08:54.146)
But we’re talking about at scale and commercial projects. Give us an idea of what this looks like, the deal cycle of a creative finance deal in the commercial space.

Robert Damigella (09:04.842)
Yeah, that’s a super question. you know what? This is the stuff I teach in my own programs, really drilling down on the finer points of real estate finance. And in terms of creative financing, well, first of all, you should know creative financing is both debt and equity side. Right? The goal for any deal, especially for people that are starting out, is to buy only with other people’s money, right? Okay, so other people’s money can mean

bank loan plus syndicated equity or however, JV partnered equity, whatever. But also there’s ways to obtain creative financing and deals that is on both, as I say, debt and equity side. So on the debt side, there are probably two or three most significant and they’re timely today because of where interest rates are. Okay. First of all, you mentioned loan assumption. Okay.

That’s much more typical right now. We’re seeing a lot of the folks that I work with that are in my group, we see a lot of them being exposed to loan assumptions. That’s typically a Fannie or a Freddie loan where they’ll allow you to assume a loan. That’s creative financing. And you can often lock in interest rates that are in the three still. We can find the right deal. Now there’s some pitfalls that you need to know how to get through those pitfalls and avoid causing yourself a problem, but very definitely seller financing.

There’s then of course, seller financing, I might have misspoken assumption. Then there’s seller financing. The seller financing is what I just described to you. There’s an actual method in order to obtain seller financing. You need to know the kind of client or prospective seller that you want to work with. And I’m going to just tell you, it’s your typical retirees, own the property for eons and he’s ready to go and no more depreciation left.

And he’s just looking, you know, he wants cash flow. He’s looking to, he doesn’t want to pay the taxes, a lot of different things. And those are your candidates, but you have to know how to structure the offer in such a way. My offers have two different prices on them. And that’s how I got it. And I showed him the underwriting, how I could only give them a lower price at current rates, but I could give them a higher price if he provided seller financing any bit down. So that’s a second form of financing.

Robert Damigella (11:33.035)
Okay. Or of creative financing. We teach about 15 creative financing strategies to the folks we work with. Okay. our members. And then the third, which I think I just touched on, but this is on the equity side, of course, is the, the, the Holy grail, is syndication. And syndication, as you know, is how you raise your equity. Frankly, you can tie the two of them together. I certainly can syndicate the equity and have get the seller financing and,

create great returns for my investors and be the GP in the deal and participate in the economics. So if you know how to put these pieces together, you can be lethal in terms of the amount of money that you can make and the amount of property you can control, but you need to know these strategies inside and out.

Dylan Silver (12:21.976)
You mentioned two points, Robert, that I want to touch on. You mentioned being able to acquire these deals creatively, which when I hear it, I of course, I’m a licensed realtor here in DFW, wholesaler by trade. And so I think of creative deals and I think lowering your barrier to entry, right? So for folks who might not have the capital to buy a deal for cash or aren’t trying to take on…

a bunch of debt traditionally there’s other ways to do it. But in doing so as a wholesaler specifically I would have to go and find these deals creatively. So it’s also more work. I’m typically not just pulling them off the MLS although that is a strategy. It would be foreclosures. It would be pre foreclosures. It would be people who are distressed of some variety or know probate issues. And so I’m dealing with a degree of turmoil in these deals and I get

paid as a result of solving someone’s problem. But in finding a creative deal commercially, are you finding similar types of sellers or is it a totally different process entirely? And don’t give away all the game because I’m sure I can’t ask for all this for free. But what’s the what’s the process like?

Robert Damigella (13:30.499)
No, that’s fine. That’s fine. No, it’s, you know what? You really did hit the nail. It’s not that much different. You’re obviously first looking for a deal that meets your buy box, right? I’m buying, if it’s commercial or non-commercial, I want to buy in this neighborhood. I’m looking for a two family or 50 unit property, whatever you’re looking for. But it’s really the same outcome. And I’m going to give you an example. For this particular seller,

He happens to be, I described him as a retiree, but he’s really not. He happens to be ill. Okay. You may remember up here, had Lyme. You remember Lyme disease. You catch it from ticks in the forest. He’s got, he was misdiagnosed and has a very advanced form of Lyme disease. And he, he spent the last five years redoing this building over with love. I mean, it’s incredible the work that he did here. And it’s got details from the 1800s. It’s got marble fireplaces. It’s unbelievable. Right. But he.

Dylan Silver (14:08.888)
Yeah. Yep.

Robert Damigella (14:28.94)
can’t handle it anymore. So he just was happy to get it off of his plate, capture an income stream for the next five years where he’ll then capture actually in the end, if you add the income he captured over five years plus the sales price, he’ll end up with more than he asked for in the first place. And that made him very happy. So you’re looking for the person that you can help. You you might find a divorce and maybe you’re just buying a regular residential home. Don’t you want to find that couple that’s divorcing that they just

want out, they got to get away from each other and they’ll sell it rock bottom. Of course, same thing, right? So yes, you are looking, you said it, how do you solve somebody’s problems? And that’s Right, right.

Dylan Silver (15:09.518)
problem. That’s it. That’s the name of the game. The second point that you mentioned that I it’s it’s related, but it’s also specific to Boston. I’ve had guests on the show that build trauma centers, hospitals, Tampa, Minnesota, I’ve had guests in a healthcare space, right? I’ve had guests that do cost segregation analysis in Boston, there’s a gentleman in Boston who does this. And it got me thinking about the medical space.

right medicals of course huge and it’s expanding now because instead of everyone going to the hospital to get worked on they’re now going to outpatient and so on and so forth. Yeah and so I imagine that you’ve dealt with this on some level or maybe to a fair degree especially being in Boston. If people are interested and if people are thinking you know I’m going to be doing commercial deals I might as well.

Robert Damigella (15:46.198)
The emergency care places.

Dylan Silver (16:06.104)
try to hit a home run because if I’m going to be putting in my effort, me shoot for a big fish. If someone wanted to find or get involved in a commercial deal to open up an MRI imaging center or let’s just say a lower level, you see these wellness centers, the IV drips and red light therapy and so on and so forth, do you think that there’s creative plays where people can acquire these types of deals or is that an asset class totally different?

Robert Damigella (16:32.482)
Yeah, you know, I mean, I’d like to opine on it for you, but I don’t think I’d give you a valuable answer. I don’t know. Drip centers. don’t know. I mean, if you’re just talking about acquiring the real estate on a triple net basis, because let’s say you put a business in there. If you have a CVS, they’ll buy a bill, you you, you’ll own the building and then CVS will be your tenant and it’ll be a triple net tenant.

Dylan Silver (16:42.147)
Yeah.

Dylan Silver (16:52.194)
Lease. Yeah.

Robert Damigella (16:53.482)
It’s lease, Exactly. In which, you know, they pay all the costs of maintenance and so forth and you just collect your rent, right? Well, maybe these drip centers or others are those kind of tenants. TripleNet, would imagine they are as businesses. And then it gets down to…

Are you going to be able to find one that is having issues? And probably not. if you got, know, Walgreens now, Walgreens now you can probably buy those triple net assets all day long, but who wants a Walgreens there and credit watch, they got all kinds of problems, you know? So.

Dylan Silver (17:15.724)
Yeah.

Dylan Silver (17:25.272)
So let’s actually talk about that because I haven’t spoken about this with any of my guests. I think it’s interesting. You think you would think there needs to be a pharmacy on every corner. Walgreens isn’t doing too hot. What are what are some reasons that you would see a business like a Walgreens fail? Is it just poor asset management? Because you would think if you’re going and you need something Walgreens has it. CVS has it too. But how is this possible that Walgreens could not be doing well?

Robert Damigella (17:38.613)
No.

Robert Damigella (17:55.233)
Yeah, it’s a great question. All I know is, and sometimes you got to go just on your intuition on this stuff. In my area, and I probably similar in Dallas, because I know how concentrated the population is there. So a lot of businesses, but if I have a Walgreens and a CVS across the street from one another.

Dylan Silver (18:14.84)
going to CBS.

Robert Damigella (18:14.924)
For me personally, I’m going to go to CVS. I think the buildings are more well kept because if they’re triple nets, are, if they’re not spending money, they look more run down. All Walgreens up here look more run down. But economically why it’s not working, I don’t know exactly. I can’t say exactly because I’m not in that business. But I do tell you that it could represent an opportunity to buy that building. One of the Walgreens up here is being turned into a Trader Joe’s. Great location. So they closed.

Dylan Silver (18:17.836)
Now…

Dylan Silver (18:31.5)
in that business.

Dylan Silver (18:40.942)
Robert Damigella (18:44.042)
Trader Joe’s is reopening. For whatever that means, or for whatever that’s worth, but I think it tells you that they’re definitely struggling.

Dylan Silver (18:52.928)
Is there a specific buy box that you favor as far as duplexes or a grader? Are you looking at Walgreens as a business that you would be looking at acquiring due to the distress? What’s your buy box out there?

Robert Damigella (19:09.174)
Well, remember I would finance triple nets because remember as head of capital markets in New England for markets. So all I do is finance deals all day, every day. I’ve done about 3 billion in debt and equity in my career. mean, tons of debt and equity placement. But, and so I don’t have a buy box for a, a drug store cause that’s not my area. I have buy box for my multifamily. I might do some, storage, you know, that kind of stuff, but overall, in terms of a triple net, I do finance them. just don’t.

Dylan Silver (19:34.019)
Yeah.

Robert Damigella (19:39.138)
have a specific buy box because I don’t buy them.

Dylan Silver (19:42.318)
Let’s talk about storage here for a minute. So many different things that we could probably have two whole podcasts talking about all the different strategies involved here. But I had a gentleman on the show who did storage. This is Texas, so it’s a different market. He liked storage. And then he saw an opportunity in RV parks. OK, I don’t know if RV parks are a thing in Massachusetts. I don’t know. But I imagine in New England, there has to be some somewhere. Right. And so.

Robert Damigella (20:09.387)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dylan Silver (20:11.212)
Talking about RV parks and then as I’m driving here in Denton, North Dallas, I’m starting, it’s like the red car theory or whatever it’s called. Like someone says, take a look at the red car and then you start to see red cars everywhere. I’m starting to see the RV parks everywhere and he’s talking about these were owned by family, distressed, they’re retiring or trying to sell, get out of it and so you have an opportunity to take a RV park and transform it into something else and also

Robert Damigella (20:14.828)
Thank

Robert Damigella (20:18.636)
Right.

Dylan Silver (20:40.15)
Apparently there’s even a luxury RV park space. And so I was totally taken aback by this, didn’t know anything about that. Do you have any familiarity with RV parks and what’s perspective on that?

Robert Damigella (20:44.46)
Yeah.

Robert Damigella (20:52.0)
Yeah, no, those are great points and great questions. mean, self storage and I think RV parks are very similar to just the multifamily space in very many ways. I have heard a lot more interest lately in RV parks. But again, their assets in an inflationary environment, assets do well. But I do hear a lot of good things. Self storage is just multifamily, without toilets and sinks, pave every month. But I the multifamily is really where I feel

And it’s where I focus both on an investment standpoint personally, on the finance side of things, and as well as on helping folks learning how to finance their multifamily asset acquisition. So that’s the real area of expertise I have. And I understand RV parks and could certainly finance one, but I think multifamily is still an exciting asset class. For sure.

Dylan Silver (21:47.704)
For multifamily specifically, when folks are listening to this podcast and they may be thinking about doing single family, maybe they’re looking at fix and flip, maybe they’re looking at multifamily and they don’t know where to start, right? My, from my money and from the guests that I’ve seen and talked to, it’s kind of tough to do your first deal as a fix and flip, especially right now, especially in New England, definitely in the greater Boston area. I don’t know how you’re gonna do that. But in Texas, Dallas specifically,

Robert Damigella (21:58.017)
Right.

Robert Damigella (22:09.214)
yeah. Yeah.

you

Dylan Silver (22:15.808)
it’s getting harder, the margins are getting slimmer. For folks who are like, well, I mean, I’m just a brand new real estate investor, how am I going to get started as owning multifamily? Can they? Is there a way for someone who’s a brand new real estate investor to get started in multifamily or do they got to start on some level with single?

Robert Damigella (22:32.64)
Well, you know, I’m going to go back to the deal that I’m buying right now. That’s not a deal that just I alone can do. You don’t have to be…

It’s experience. You have to just have the knowledge of finance to be able to structure the deal. But if you buy the deal with seller financing and then syndicate the equity, you and you have no money. You can do that money with zero money. And I got to tell you something. I think for people that are starting out to understand that the reality is it’s easier for you to acquire, especially using a bank and bank financing to acquire a multifamily property six

units or higher, okay, because that’s when you get into commercial, then it is to buy an individual residential home. And I don’t know if you know the reasons why, excuse me. Yeah, cashflow, exactly. I mean, to summarize it, the banks looking to the nine units paying rent versus, you know, Mr. And Mrs., you know, blue hair.

Dylan Silver (23:22.094)
because of the cash flow.

because of the cash flow.

Robert Damigella (23:38.039)
that just retired and they get their social security check and that’s their only source of income or someone that’s working and loses their job. when deals get financed often, believe it or not, for some of your listeners that may not be aware of this, they won’t even check your credit numbers, your credit scores because they’re looking literally Fannie and Freddie. Freddie, they don’t even take tax returns.

Because they’re only looking to the cash flow from the asset and the collateral as their collateral at the end of the day, the real estate as their collateral. So you can buy, if you’re new, you can buy real estate with no good credit score. You can buy it with no money. You might need to team up. It’s a team sport. We know this, Dylan, right?

Dylan Silver (24:28.078)
Yeah. Yeah.

Robert Damigella (24:30.326)
You you might have to team up with someone with little more experience in the GP of the syndication. Someone that maybe has a net worth balance sheet that they can bring in to bear for the approval of the bank lending. In fact, what’s that?

Dylan Silver (24:43.662)
But you can find the deal. But you can find the deal. You can source the deal. That’s how you get in. Yeah.

Robert Damigella (24:47.658)
Find a deal and just put a team together. Yeah, absolutely. And so much so going back to Freddie and Fannie, the agency lenders, right? Government lenders. They will and also many banks will do the same, but they’ll allow you to aggregate the net worth of the team. So if you and me decide to buy a property and we need to have a net worth and that’s a whole nother conversation of what they require. But if you need to have a net worth of a million dollars, well, as long as Dylan’s got a net worth of 500.

and Robert has a net worth of $500,000 and they require a million, we’re good. We can team up, buy that deal, and it could be our first deal. They look at experience, but they can look past it if you’ve got a good deal. So yeah, without a doubt, there’s a lot of ways, and if you really understand finance, how to move the pieces around the board game and make, and actually win.

Dylan Silver (25:42.412)
You know, I think it’s a super interesting topic to dive into. I haven’t actually had the opportunity myself to talk with a guest about comparing entering in single family versus multi until right now. And I think we could probably dive into this for a whole other podcast talking just about that specifically and about the strategy logistically, what you do from, hey, I’m a W-2 employee, don’t have any real estate people in my family.

Robert Damigella (25:55.222)
Right.

Dylan Silver (26:09.954)
I don’t have any of these people to bounce ideas off of thinking about this, thinking about that. Where do I go? Well, here’s how you can source the deal. Here’s how you’re going to network and then get your first multifamily. That’s a whole other show. But we are coming up on time here, Robert. Where can folks go to get a hold of you?

Robert Damigella (26:21.964)
Yeah. Sure.

Yeah, if you don’t mind, I’m going to share a screen. That’d be okay, because I have all my contact info there and I’m going to do my best because I told you at the outset that I’m not technologically super, super excellent, but I think I can get there. Yeah. Okay. Can you see my screen? Not yet. There it is. How about now? There we go. So that’s me and my, my handsome golf shirt.

Dylan Silver (26:29.144)
Go ahead, go ahead.

Dylan Silver (26:48.684)
Not yet, not yet. Here we go, there it is, there it is.

Robert Damigella (26:54.946)
But there’s my, whoop, that’s my email. We don’t want that. Definitely don’t want that there. Hold on. just lost my, give me one second and all. There’s some contact information down below there, but I’m going to give you, if you don’t mind, a QR code that I can put up there on the screen. But I think that, you know, without a doubt, that is a whole nother program that we could discuss and very much go in depth about.

Dylan Silver (27:10.978)
Yeah.

Robert Damigella (27:24.16)
Hang on, here it is. got it. All right. Thanks for your patience, Dylan.

Dylan Silver (27:28.226)
Now you’re good.

Robert Damigella (27:30.654)
Here we go. So if you need to contact me, this is what my group, I think I mentioned to you, you know, during the day, I’m like one of like, what do you call it? Superman by day and by night. By day, I work at Markets and Millichap, managing director, head of capital markets in New England. We’re national lenders. So we do lend all around the country. And I help, I, then I also do very niche.

finance training so that we’re able to train folks on the very important aspects. mean, every deal, Dylan, you’ve been around, it’s always about the finance, right?

Dylan Silver (28:11.82)
It is. How you coming up with the money?

Robert Damigella (28:13.836)
how you’re gonna do the deal, structure it, come up with the money. And that becomes that, it’s very little play. In fact, there’s very few out there that have the experience and knowledge to be able to really drill down on this stuff. And I’ll tell you real quick, we all know the name Grant Cardone, right? The way that I ended up doing this was as a member, we all have to learn, all stay educated and take courses. I was part of his group and I got drafted by a bunch of Cardone students. He’s a wonderful guy with…

Dylan Silver (28:27.374)
Sure, sure.

Robert Damigella (28:41.644)
tons of knowledge and he’s been really successful, but he didn’t drill down as much on the finance side and they drafted me. said, please, please, please teach us the finer points of financing. So I launched finance insider and we have a mastermind group much similar to yours. I not only help people network, work on their deals, I opine on their underwriting, how the DSCR looks, if they’re overpaying for the deal, whatever the case may be. And then if they get a deal on the contract, I’ll help them get the financing.

There’s a whole bunch of things that we bring to the table. Great networking. We have great amount of tools. We have a school platform for our students and it’s been really successful for them. And I also have a six week program called the Pro Bootcamp, which I get on a call like this, but it’s a Zoom call with a group of students. And we go through creative financing, debt, equity, how to structure a deal, doing a syndication right through to completing a deal and then scaling up their portfolio.

So yeah, there’s a lot out there and if you’d like to learn more about our programs, can you see my QR code okay on your side there or is it covered up?

Dylan Silver (29:49.9)
I can’t see it. Also, that’s a goat that I’ve got outside the podcast studio if you’re hearing this. I see the Robert Damigella, but I don’t see the QR code.

Robert Damigella (29:54.705)
okay. How about now? Yeah.

QR code is right there. don’t see it on the bottom. Okay. Well, if you need to find us, I don’t know why the QR code is not showing up, it’s multifamilyfinanceinsider.com or you can reach us at 617-356-0421 and certainly be able to help any of you learn the final points of financing and structuring deals.

Dylan Silver (30:05.164)
No.

Dylan Silver (30:26.53)
Robert, thank you so much for your time. Thank you for coming on the show. Thank you for giving us some value, talking to us about really something that’s very niche and that many people may think they don’t have access to, but you do. And that’s creative deals, creative financing in the multi-family space. Robert, thank you for your time and thanks for coming on the show.

Robert Damigella (30:46.433)
It’s my pleasure, Dylan. Thank you so much. now.