Lessons from a Seasoned Real Estate Investor

Dylan Silver (00:00.844)
Hey folks, welcome back to the show. I’m your host, Dylan Silver. And today on the show, I have Arpan Patel, investor based in Chicago, has been in the industry for 15 years and is in the middle of scaling to purchase one property a day. Arpan, welcome to the show.

Arpan Patel (00:18.791)
How you doing, buddy?

Dylan Silver (00:20.172)
I’m doing great, I’m doing great. I see the weather in Chicago is cold, but it looks nice.

Arpan Patel (00:26.095)
It’s so pretty out there, it’s very deceiving.

Dylan Silver (00:29.23)
I’m out here in DFW in Texas and so I moved up here from San Antonio last year We had such a cold winter. I couldn’t believe that two parts of the same state could be this Bipolar San Antonio, I’m sure it was not that cold and then I get up to DFW and there’s tornadoes like I had a tornado Touch the ground and almost destroy my car. It was chaos up here

Arpan Patel (00:55.441)
Wow, I mean, tornado alley is real.

Dylan Silver (00:58.296)
Tornado Alley is real. But I digress. Let’s talk about your real estate journey here. How did you get into the real estate space?

Arpan Patel (01:07.239)
Yeah, I got in 09, so I have a couple of engineering degrees and couldn’t find a job. I’ve flown all over the country on onsites and just hiring for you is everywhere. So I came home, my best friend from my grade school had done, I think, two flips in a rental or two rentals in a flip, one of the two. And he goes, bro, what are you going to do? And I was like, I don’t know, what’d you do? He’s like, oh, I did a few deals. And I was like, wait, you did some deals?

He’s like, yeah. And I was like, no, no, no. Like you did it? He’s like, yeah. And I was like, well, if you could do it, I could do it. That’s why I told him. He’s like, okay, that’s me. And I was like, well, whatever. Do you want a partner? He’s like, okay. So we did that. And then from there it was, mean, lost 50 grand first deal, took two and a half years in construction, sued the city twice. Second deal took a year and a half in construction. Lost 20 grand.

And just, you know, from there, like scratch the third, he went more the realtor route. I went more the investor route. And from there.

Dylan Silver (02:12.6)
Very cool man, so were you investing in Chicago at that point in time? Was that the area?

Arpan Patel (02:17.956)
Yeah, the Chicago land area, like till the suburbs and stuff, yeah.

Dylan Silver (02:21.228)
I can imagine not the easiest place to be a real estate flipper.

Arpan Patel (02:25.894)
I mean, it’s just hard for guys who flip, let’s say all across America, to break into Chicago. It’s just a different animal here. You have to know so much more local knowledge than I think in most other places.

Dylan Silver (02:41.976)
I would agree. would agree. And it’s not easy in Texas right now either. It was to a point where years ago you could pretty much buy things for what they were going for on the MLS, rent them out or short term rental it out and you would be great because of the way rates were. Now you can buy things at 70 percent of the market value and try to do a flip. You get off in your rehab estimate or you buy it wrong and you’re screwed. So it’s definitely an interesting time to be an investor anywhere.

Arpan Patel (03:12.518)
Oh, that’s nuts. You can’t buy things at 30 % ARV and expect to make any money.

Dylan Silver (03:17.89)
Yeah. What are your deal numbers looking like out there?

Arpan Patel (03:21.51)
Yeah, we buy about 50 % ARV right around there. And then we rehab.

Dylan Silver (03:25.25)
I think a lot of people who are listening to this are going to be like 50%. That’s phenomenal. How are you doing that?

Arpan Patel (03:31.537)
Honestly, like so we buy a lot of deals on market honestly, like we just know how to scour it in our local area, right? But yeah, there’s wholesalers a whole network. I run seven events here locally a month, right? So just mean people as well and but overall like the market’s still good for BERS. BERS still work here. Short terms work here. Every strategy you want works here like midterms. Like we have an Airbnb this crazy.

hyper creative deal where I don’t even own the property and I like I write a first refusal like this nuts but anything you want to do can work here it just won’t work everywhere

Dylan Silver (04:10.85)
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that’s just true. would say for sure parts of Texas are like that. Like, for instance, I had a wholesale deal in San Antonio. I’ve told this story before where this deal would have changed my life. I’d been about a year and a half into no less than that, a year into my wholesale journey at that point in time, had left the car business to go pursue real estate, had this assignable contract in an area just south of San Antonio. It was a mobile home and land. And I had buyers. I had

a $30,000 spread in there and then the deal couldn’t end up coming to fruition because I didn’t understand how note buyers worked and I didn’t understand that traditional lenders aren’t going to lend that on mobile home and land. Fast forward to today, I now know all the people that I needed to know to make that deal happen and I look back and I was like, man, it was just wrong place, wrong time.

Arpan Patel (05:04.07)
A lot of this game is what you know when you know it and who you know that can help you if you don’t know the first two.

Dylan Silver (05:12.204)
When you were getting in, you had your buddy. Was there other… that you used to educate yourself?

Arpan Patel (05:20.602)
Yeah, I joined this like mentorship group that was here and so I learned a lot about the techniques and stuff, right? But it’s a little bit like looking at a Jackson Pollock like there’s just a lot going on. You don’t know which like what’s what or maybe like a magic. Yeah, right. So you don’t know foreground and background that well. Maybe like a magic eye would be a better example. But like you just don’t know what you should be paying attention to when and then when to use different heuristics, right?

Dylan Silver (05:34.222)
That’s exact.

Arpan Patel (05:48.143)
Like sometimes you gotta be stern with the contractor, but sometimes you gotta like follow his advice. Like you’re not in combat with him, right? So when to use which heuristics really do matter. the, yeah, like it’s everything. So I learned like the textbook, right? From all of that mentorship class, but like that gets you somewhat of the way, mostly just for confidence sake.

Dylan Silver (05:58.263)
It’s huge.

Arpan Patel (06:09.626)
But then you get in it and then it’s like, okay, now you gotta figure this all out. And luckily the community was somewhat helpful, but I shied away because I was failing. So I ran away from the community, not towards it. That was my big error.

Dylan Silver (06:21.966)
How did you start to see success? The first two deals lost money, next deal broke even. What was the difference makers for you? Was it just underwriting?

Arpan Patel (06:33.03)
One was a lot of fear. So I could underwrite the deal, but if you couldn’t execute it, it didn’t matter what your numbers were, because you couldn’t execute. So a lot of it was execution. So my next partner that I had was a lot about execution, but that guy ghosted me and left me with 2 million in debt, 13 projects in construction. so I just had to put my…

Yeah, I put my pants on and like get to work for four years, you know to kind of dig out of that I didn’t file bankruptcy or anything but like Bro, it was wrong, you know, and so yeah, execution was kind of my biggest thing So I looked for that my next partner and I thought I had it we were going pretty well for a while till it Didn’t go, you know

Dylan Silver (07:16.46)
You know, I sometimes think that it’s very easy to outgrow your partners. And I get the sense in talking with you that that was something that happened in these situations. I’ve seen it so many times where just the level of ambition that someone has can sometimes rub someone else the wrong way. And then also, too, where someone just has a different methodology. One person might be really, hey, we have to do things.

in a way that is trackable. Like we have to be able to understand our KPIs. Another person might just be like, no, we’re just going to do it. We’re just going to do it. And the one person who’s like the just do it guy is like, you’re moving too slowly. And the person who’s like, let’s track it is like, we don’t even know what we’re doing. We can do 100 things, but we’re just throwing paint at a wall.

Arpan Patel (08:03.846)
And like no one’s wrong, right? Like part of the other issue is that if you don’t if you’re not around the kind of people who Have kind of made it to the level you’re trying to hit You don’t know if what you’re doing is actually helping you get there Like we’re all really afraid of like wasted move right now efficiency is on everyone’s mind Like how do I not waste time? How do I not waste whatever? To some degree that’s useful right and that I think that stops more people than it than it helps but overall like

There is this kind of anxiety like if we don’t track we’re not gonna know or like if we don’t do then we’re not gonna get somewhere like everyone’s just trying to play The strategy that they think is best but no one knows unless someone’s been there and has kind of told you yo that strategy first that strategy Second like we all know the basic steps, right? We don’t know what order to put them in and what to like emphasize when that’s more of what

People are missing nowadays. You can chat tbt how to flip a house right, but what to do when And that seems to be what’s lacking right now

Dylan Silver (09:08.514)
Yeah, I couldn’t agree anymore. The invaluable nature of having someone who’s done it alongside you cannot be understated. And so what makes real estate unique, specifically as I reflect to how I got in, was that with everything else, specifically coming from a family in a background where this is like, there’s no real estate happening. Like people have one home, maybe, and then also two.

they’ve been in the same job for forever and they’re not trying to be entrepreneurs in any light, probably even view it negatively. So my perception was that I had to learn a whole bunch of stuff, which there’s some truth to that. I did. But more so than doing that, I had to learn how to fanatically network and how to get in the rooms with these people and then how to be comfortable enough to then find the information that I didn’t know that I needed. Right.

So oftentimes I’ll walk into these rooms now and I’ll leave with a totally different result or a totally different thought than I had gone in even in search of and now I’m acting on that.

Arpan Patel (10:16.326)
Yeah, it pays to be around people you don’t like that you know and admire, but also you don’t know because the value you’re going to get walking out of a place is not the value you expected walking into a place like you said. And I think we don’t leave enough room for serendipity of learning. It’s very like causational. Like I did this, I learned that. Don’t do it that way.

or do this that way. But we don’t really allow ourselves to kind of open up. And real estate is a little bit different than other businesses, because we all know it’s a team game. It just is. So you have some of that. But overall, more people don’t ask people, even if they know, more questions.

Like this is a social game, unless you attack it socially by leaving lots of room open to be inspired, to learn something new, to try something different or whatever, then you’re never gonna pick up the things that you were gonna need later, but you may not need now and didn’t even know you would need later.

Dylan Silver (11:15.97)
Yeah, I couldn’t have said that any better. You know, when I think about the things that have been huge leaps in my progression, I think about things like certain tools that I never would have come across if I hadn’t made a connection. I think about walking into someone’s office, asking them for actually a job in the real estate space, them telling me that they weren’t hiring for then me seeing them at a foreclosure auction months later and me being like, I know that guy from where, right?

Arpan Patel (11:44.859)
Yeah.

Dylan Silver (11:45.506)
And it’s crazy how these connections happen. I’m actually in an ADU, an alternative dwelling unit, on a ranch in DFW because I cold call the guy off of Investor Lift with a deal that I had west of Dallas in Azel. He didn’t buy the deal. Fast forward two years later, I’m doing a podcast out of a ranch that he owns. Like this is crazy, look what we’re talking about here.

Arpan Patel (12:10.456)
Yeah, the the best part of this job, I think is the social aspect and I think people don’t treat this game like Like like if you’re more social you get more out of it like social media is social talk to people Right if they follow you whatever like dm them, right? Go to networking events talk to them take them out to founders dinners like do founders lunches like do lunch and learns You know have your own never give it like whatever like the more you talk to people in this game the better off you’re gonna be

Dylan Silver (12:39.97)
I completely agree and what it made me realize, I’m sure you’ve had probably a similar experience, engineering background, right? Is that when people are in a job, most of the time, doing all this networking may not feel like it’s gonna benefit them. But then when you get to the higher levels of an organization, that’s when you start to see that all of this is kind of similar. Like if you wanted to scale within a company and it’s a big company, how do you do that? By doing a lot of this. If you get to the heights of a company and you’re like, well, what do I do to…

increase, you know, our profits or to increase our bottom line to increase efficiency. It’s a lot of the same thing. So with real estate entrepreneurs, it’s almost like you gave yourself a promotion and a lot of risk and then at the same time, because you’re having to jump now, you’re having to be the front guy, but you’re also having to be the one that does the high level stuff. And you have to do it from day one.

Arpan Patel (13:32.999)
Like it’s funny the amount of times I meet corporate attorneys Who are responsible for bringing their own book of business? Was mind-boggling to me like I sponsor with my friends like a word ceremony last year and I was talking to some of the people who also won awards alongside her and they were like they’re all like becoming like Like junior partners like they’re on that track, right?

And they’re like, yeah, yeah, did pro bono work in the beginning because that’s what the company gave me. And then, yeah, I just had to figure out clients. And I was like, you’re an attorney. What do you mean you figured out clients? And they go, yeah, it’s our responsibility to go track down more business. And I was like, that’s a thing lawyers have to do? Like not salespeople, lawyers? And they’re like, yeah, we that’s what and there’s an expectation. Like they have a quota, essentially, this many billable hours per year. And it’s insane.

Like year three, year four, it’s insane. okay. Like, I guess we’re all in sales if the lawyer has to sell their own, you know what saying? Like, they don’t even own the, they’re not even a partner. There’s like the hope to be a partner. They gotta sell. it’s, it’s, everyone’s in sales. No one.

Dylan Silver (14:28.172)
Yeah.

Dylan Silver (14:41.282)
Yeah.

Arpan Patel (14:45.38)
No one thinks about that way. Like people kind of think about it dating. They go, got to myself when I’m dating. But they don’t think about that when they’re, you know, like an attorney or an accountant or you know, they’re like, like we’re good. Like you’re not good. You need to talk to people.

Dylan Silver (14:59.084)
My perspective on that is the same way. You have to be looking at it from the perspective of sales, networking. And here’s why. Let’s say you’re a doctor, right? And you’re trying to either become a more senior doctor, or you’d like to have some equity in something that you’re doing, or there’s so much private equity going into the medical field. Now, how do you get into that, right? Well, the only way you’re going to be able to do that is through networking. Now, you might not love sales, right? But if you love

where you want your career to get to, I tend to think that there’s actual strategic things that people can do, regardless if they’re in sales or not, to advance their career. One of those, and I think the big thing is networking, things like keeping an eye out for when there’s opportunities to meet new people, going on a podcast, having your own podcast, gaining exposure. If you want to do it the LinkedIn way, the most corporate way possible, you can still do that.

Arpan Patel (15:54.631)
Yeah, I love that way of thinking about it. Networking is everything. There’s different avenues for it, I podcasting, getting to networking events, meeting, you know, whatever it is. There’s a bunch of those. for us, like what we really good is we’re attack good at getting into communities and kind of like attacking the community. we’re like, all for as much value as we can. We have all these events and then we try and help them out as much as we can. And then in turn, you know, we all like there’s some value exchange.

Dylan Silver (16:20.77)
That’s the critical thing. You know, this podcast is sponsored by an investor fuel mastermind. We just had a three day event this Monday through Wednesday, and it was my first event being there and seeing these rooms and seeing the takeaways from it. Just like you said, there’s speakers, but the real takeaways are from the people exchanging information and chopping it up and providing value to the room and vice versa.

Arpan Patel (16:49.348)
Yeah, it’s everything. We’re in a team sport, whether you like it or not, whether you think so or not, it doesn’t matter what industry you’re in or what job you have. You’re in a team sport.

Dylan Silver (16:58.744)
Pivoting a bit here, let’s talk about the Chicago real estate market versus other markets. Have you invested it elsewhere? Are you really focused on Chicago?

Arpan Patel (17:09.592)
No, I’m in Chicago. That’s what we do. Maybe one day we will, but there’s so much opportunity here. We just play here.

Dylan Silver (17:16.822)
And so for folks who are in Chicago thinking about being real estate entrepreneurs, is there any generic advice that you would give people without giving away all the gold?

Arpan Patel (17:27.686)
can give away all the gold, I don’t care. Like, I would say if you have a couple of bucks, what I would do is pay to be in some sort of community. Like, be on the inside paywall of a community. Because I think that we have a whole way of doing that, but you’re around people who, one, are behind a paywall, so they also take it seriously.

Two, they’re learning the same stuff you do and it’s actually a lot easier to raise money inside of those groups because the lenders know that you learned what they learned. So there’s not a knowledge issue as much. So most of the time I get like, yo, where do I get the money? That’s the first question I always have. I’m sure you guys get the same thing. Like how do I do this? I don’t have any money.

If you have a couple of bucks, get inside a community. If you don’t have a couple of bucks, then just get around more people that do it seriously. Like, and there’s a ton of media groups. I run a bunch. There’s private groups. There’s like open to everybody groups. There’s like 50 bucks free. We run a bunch of free ones, but 50 bucks free, you know, whatever. Just get around people that are serious and that are doing it. And then you will just naturally draft into it.

Dylan Silver (18:36.312)
Yeah, I completely agree. call it progression through osmosis. Like you don’t really know what you’re doing correct. But then all of a sudden, you’re like, Whoa, I’m better now. Like, what was I doing differently? And it’s like small things. I genuinely believe I have no scientific evidence to back this up. But I genuinely believe that by living alongside people that are doing what you’re doing, even if they’re not talking to you, like I’ve had guests who’d be like, my father was a contractor, he never taught me anything about the business. So it’s not like I learned from him.

Arpan Patel (18:40.374)
around.

Dylan Silver (19:05.654)
I’ve not said this to them, but I’ve been like, buddy, you learned a bunch from him just by being around him.

Arpan Patel (19:12.1)
Yeah, it’s wild. you said, as most of that’s a great way of putting that the amount of that people just pick up just being around other people that do it and like the habits like you just find yourself one day and you go, I started doing this at some point.

Dylan Silver (19:27.948)
Yeah, yeah, that one of the big things actually for me for this podcast, and I get the sense that there’s so many Americans who are doing this, probably people around the world who are doing this is now I live off of my zoom calls, Google Calendar, but it’s like the only way that I know what’s happening in my life that day. Like if I do not have it in my Google Calendar, there’s no like perception in my mind that this is happening at all. Like it’s not even a fringe thought.

And before I was doing this podcast, I would have like a daily written calendar, but now I’m like changing stuff so much and there’s all this moving components that I can’t have a daily written calendar. So if it’s not on my Google calendar, like it doesn’t exist. It’s not even a figment anywhere in my imagination.

Arpan Patel (20:11.43)
I do like I have an assistant, right? And if if it’s not on the calendar and she’s approved of it like it didn’t go on my counter if I want to put it there I ask her if we have the time for me to do something that I want to do like she she owns my time like that’s her job, right? And so she doesn’t approve of what goes in for this that a reason then it just doesn’t get on the calendar. So.

Dylan Silver (20:37.71)
I might have to do that. How long ago have you had an assistant?

Arpan Patel (20:42.726)
A few months. Yeah, a few months.

Dylan Silver (20:45.73)
Has it been like a game changer for you?

Arpan Patel (20:47.962)
Dude, I can’t even tell you, have you read Buy Back Your Time from Martell? Dude, dude, I’m telling you, it’s changed everything about what I do. Like, she owns my calendar, she doesn’t own my email yet, because we’re working on stuff, like we’re phasing her in, but she’s gonna own my email soon, and she’ll start learning how to send emails like me. So I’m gonna teach her how I speak, right? And I’m already building out some AI tools that like, well,

Dylan Silver (20:52.215)
No, I’m gonna.

Arpan Patel (21:15.224)
Evaluate the entire like let’s say someone emails me and I sent them like 10 emails in the past It’ll evaluate that she’ll she’ll figure out she knows how I write She knows what we’re trying to do as far as a company. So she’s my external brain And then she’ll just pop that through so I no longer want to ever forget zero emails. I want zero inboxes

Dylan Silver (21:38.325)
Wow.

This just hit me like a ton of bricks. What was the book called? by Martell?

Arpan Patel (21:46.151)
Buy back your time. I think I actually have it right here on the side here. Buy back your time. Yeah, it’s like baby blue. You’ll see it right away. It’s fantastic, bro. It has been a changer in so many different respects, but overall, my assistant, her job is my time. She’s head of time. So like you’re saying, nothing happens in your life that’s in your Google Calendar.

Dylan Silver (21:48.878)
I’m buying this book

Dylan Silver (21:54.572)
Okay, I’m getting it.

Dylan Silver (22:07.053)
Wow.

Arpan Patel (22:12.88)
Nothing happens in my life unless she looks over what I’m doing and make sure that that’s still in accordance with what we’re trying to-

Dylan Silver (22:19.182)
That’s phenomenal. That’s good work. I’m reading this book. Maybe this is a game changer for me. We are coming up on time here. Working folks, we’re gonna get ahold of you.

Arpan Patel (22:26.255)
Yeah.

Yeah, so I I was mentioning this before. I think what would be kind of helpful for maybe your audience and stuff like that is we have a whole playbook on how to like get into communities, how to mind communities, how to offer value. Like we call it the the the goat, right? So you get into a community, you’re a rookie of the year, you try and become rookie of the year, then you try and become an All-Star, then you try and become an MVP, then you try to become a Hall of Famer, then try to become the the goat, right?

So have a whole system for like how to get into these communities, how to then offer value, exchange value, right? Getting noticed by the right people, like, right? And that way you extract the most amount out of anywhere you work. And we all know this is a team game. So the more you can get in front of more of these kinds of people who go, that guy can be my testimonial for my course. Like there’s a way of doing this, right? And so I’ll give that to your group. So.

just hit me up on Instagram, investwitharpan, A-R-P-A-N, investwitharpan, and just DM me, dylan-community, right? So dylan-community, so I know it’s from you, and then I’ll send that free guide out, just a Google Doc, just give me a follow and I’ll send that over.

Dylan Silver (23:43.874)
Arpan, thank you so much for coming on the show here today.

Arpan Patel (23:49.222)
Yeah, I appreciate it, buddy. Appreciate it.