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Show Summary
In this episode of the Investor Fuel Podcast, host Leo Wehdeking speaks with Joice Castillo and Dierl Bagusto, a real estate agent and investor, about her journey in the real estate industry. Joice shares her experiences managing properties remotely, the challenges she faced, and the importance of networking and mentorship in achieving success. She discusses her transition from single-family homes to multifamily investments and emphasizes the value of building relationships in the real estate business.
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Investor Fuel Show Transcript:
Joice Castillo and Dierl Bagusto (00:00)
one of the deals that we had, we had purchased it, we had it under contract. we already bought it as a matter of fact. And I think we were going into the winter season for us here in Hawaii. We don’t have a winter. So we don’t know what that means in terms of like, ⁓ getting a house ready for winter. You know, the lines have to be, I forgot what the term is. I don’t even know, but you had to, what?No, but you have to do something with the piping in order to make sure that it doesn’t break when it ices up. Those things, we had no clue.
Leo Wehdeking (02:05)
Hey everyone, welcome to the Investor Fuel Podcast. I’m your host, Leo Wehdeking and today I am joined by someone I’ve been looking forward to chatting with, Joice Castillo, who’s been making serious moves in the real estate industry. Hey Joice, glad to have you here.Joice Castillo and Dierl Bagusto (02:20)
Thankyou. Thank you for the opportunity.
Leo Wehdeking (02:23)
I’m also glad to have you over here. Joice, I think our listeners are really going to take something away from how you’ve been approaching the real estate business, alright? And the way that you ⁓ do it.So for the people that might not be familiar with your world, can you tell us what is your main focus these days?
Joice Castillo and Dierl Bagusto (02:47)
It’s all real estate. ⁓ So right now I am a real estate agent operating here in Maui, but we are also managing our properties remotely. They’re out in Kansas City on Missouri and Kansas side. So we’ve got eight properties that are out there. We are also managing our own properties here on Maui. We’ve got about four rentals that we’re renting out. We manage that. And on top of that also we’rerebuilding, doing construction on our builds for the houses that we had lost in the Lahaina wildfire back in 2023. So we have our plates full, but a lot of it just is in the real estate realm, ⁓ something that we’re truly passionate about and love doing every day. Don’t forget about the Wisconsin O-12. We have a Wisconsin shopping mall that we invested in as a syndication.
Leo Wehdeking (03:40)
Hey, that’s cool. That’s cool. Love it. Now, Joice, something that actually caught my attention about you is the way that you’ve been able to acquire a properties ⁓ in a year by doing it remotely. ⁓ Can you explain us a little bit, you know,achieved ⁓ that number working remotely in real estate, which is something new. And I think the audience will like your perspective when it comes about the experience that you’ve had ⁓ working remotely as a real estate agent. ⁓ I think, you know, that’s something that a lot of people are going to start doing in the future. So.
I think the audience will benefit from hearing something like this coming from a person that is actually doing it right now.
Joice Castillo and Dierl Bagusto (05:22)
Yeah, absolutely. So I think it is an opportunity that everybody has. It’s just, you know, being able to jump in and do it. I think that’s the biggest fear that people have is they’re in a market that they don’t know and they just don’t know how to do it. So that’s how we were able to get into it. I was in the corporate world. I was an engineering manager for years at a resort out here on Kanapali. That was my full-time job.And I think the reason why I jumped into it was because real estate here on Maui is just so expensive. Your down payment comes out to, you know, $50,000, $100,000 at a time when you’re buying an investment house. So it was a lot more capital for us to come up with to invest here in our backyard. And when the program came up where they were teaching us how to invest out of state,
it’s called WNN properties, but they’re able to, we jumped onto that program. We jumped on that mentorship and they kind of held their hand, how to analyze deals, how to get out in the market that they’re in, which is out in Kansas city. They have real estate agents, have contractors, they have property managers there. So they have the boots on the ground already established. It made it easy for us to jump into doing that because we knew that we were going to be, that we were going to have people that, that was going to hold our hand during the process.
So we, the first property that we ever bought was with the agent that they referred, with the contractor that they referred, and we managed it ourselves, you know, being on the phone, ⁓ doing the negotiations and the purchase and the price on the construction. it was, it was, it was very, it was easy to kind of go through that process because if I ever had any questions.
I had a mentor who was already there that could help us, guide us through the process to let us know, you know, that’s probably not the way to do it. You should find another contractor or that’s, you know, we had mentors that helped us along the way.
Leo Wehdeking (07:26)
⁓ it’s good to have always a manager. I think it’s better when you have someone to help you than doing it by yourself. Now Joice, I know that every operator at some time they see that things got real. So maybe a deal that went sideways ortime that they had to be real fast. Do you mind sharing one of those moments?
Joice Castillo and Dierl Bagusto (07:58)
⁓ yeah, I guess I’ll share… Let’s see, I’ll share one property where, ⁓ it was a really good deal. can you hear me, Leo? Sorry.Leo Wehdeking (08:13)
Yes, I can actually hear you.Joice Castillo and Dierl Bagusto (08:14)
Okay. Okay.Good. Sorry. You went silent there for a second. ⁓ but
one of the deals that we had, we had purchased it, we had it under contract. we already bought it as a matter of fact. And I think we were going into the winter season for us here in Hawaii. We don’t have a winter. So we don’t know what that means in terms of like, ⁓ getting a house ready for winter. You know, the lines have to be, I forgot what the term is. I don’t even know, but you had to, what?
No, but you have to do something with the piping in order to make sure that it doesn’t break when it ices up. Those things, we had no clue.
I like, I don’t even know what you’re talking about. So we bought this house. were getting contractor bids on it. And before we were even able to do any construction work, I had a property manager go visit the site. And what he found was just water coming out of.
everything like the second floor, the ceiling was, the drywall was gone, water was coming down and he was running all over the place to shut off water because we didn’t, it was like the pipes froze essentially and it just, we spent maybe $30,000 on getting that house repaired because it was so bad, there was so much damage on the flooring, walls, the plumbing, everything had to be gutted out.
We ended up spending a lot more money than we anticipated for that house. it’s challenging because we’re not there to see the extent or the gravity of the damages, but to see it in photos, ⁓ that was still an unreal experience. But what made it better was the fact that I had a property manager who was on site who knew what to do.
It’s like, okay, let me get this guy over to make sure that we can do the mitigation, the water mitigation and get it repaired. Here’s a quote to get it fixed. Here’s our timeline. Here’s what we’re looking at. ⁓ But it was just super helpful to have that team on the ground just because we wouldn’t know what to do. mean, pipes freezing is not something that we deal with out here and winter and just these things that happen out in the Midwest that never happens here. We just had no clue.
so learning with Lexi because now that now we should include was it water damage and that was a that was actually a pretty good one because then you yeah our insurance we had to make sure that like the insurance coverage was proper for ⁓ water damages whatever the coverages were if it was five thousand we upped it to ten thousand just to make sure because we spent thirty thousand on the damages out of pocket from our own yeah yeah yeah
Leo Wehdeking (11:37)
your own money.Joice Castillo and Dierl Bagusto (11:40)
Yeah. So yeah, those are learning lessons.Leo Wehdeking (11:43)
Choice, let me ask you this. ⁓Joice Castillo and Dierl Bagusto (11:43)
Thanks.Leo Wehdeking (11:47)
anything next.Joice Castillo and Dierl Bagusto (11:48)
We want to transition out of single family, not completely, but I’d like to see us scale out, scale up to multi-family or apartments. Trading in these single tenants to a building that has multiple tenants and so our vacancy rate is a whole lot less. ⁓ Easier for us to manage, I think.with everything that’s under one roof. So that’s our goal. That’s what we’d like to see next.
Leo Wehdeking (12:21)
Alright, okay, perfect, that’s Now,I know that a lot of people that are listening, they’re either early in their journey or they might be looking to level up, alright, and I think they could benefit here in something like this. Now, when it comes to building relationships and growing up your network, what’s made the biggest difference for you?
Joice Castillo and Dierl Bagusto (12:46)
⁓ Attending conferences have been huge for us and getting outside of our comfort zone. know, anytime that we go into a big room where there’s so many people there, we don’t look at it anymore as being scared or ⁓ being ashamed that we have nothing to offer. I think we look at it more as an opportunity now to see all these people have so much wealth of knowledge to offer us, you know, thatwe are there to share information with them. So in the beginning, it’s still uncomfortable because you’re not, you don’t know people, but I think we’ve gotten to the point where we’re just like, Hey, you know, we’re, we’re out of Hawaii and that usually gets their attention, right? I love it out there in Hawaii. that I usually break the ice, but it leads us into the conversation of what do you do? Like, are you in multifamily? Hey, we’re really looking to find, you know, deals in, this state or, ⁓ you know,
how do you finance multifamily or processes? What are the processes you’re doing? So I think that’s been a huge part of it is just networking through conferences and getting outside of what we’re comfortable in and outside of people that we know. You know, we’ll go out to Miami or we’ll go out to Texas or we’ll go out to places we’ve never been just to open our eyes into what’s possible, like the realm of possibility, you know, people in the oil industry, people in
There’s just so much ⁓ amazing people out there with so much knowledge that we can learn from. And I thrive on that. I’ve always been a lifelong learner. So I like to just ask questions and get to know what people are doing and how I can use that in our journey in business to grow.
Leo Wehdeking (15:16)
Yeah, I definitely agree with you totally. ⁓ Actually, you need to build up your network because you never know who you know.So sometimes you need to be in those places in order to meet the right person, all right? The person that is going to take you to that level that you wanna be.
Joice Castillo and Dierl Bagusto (15:37)
Mm-hmm, yep, 100%.Leo Wehdeking (15:38)
Yeah, sometimes,sometimes I’m not going to say that, you know, doing it by yourself, you know, if you’re comfortable, like if you’re in a comfort zone, OK, you know, I do two, three deals locally, you know, and that’s it. I don’t want to do anymore. ⁓ But if you are, you know, a big player, you got to go networking. You got to go knocking on doors. You got to go look for that.
Joice Castillo and Dierl Bagusto (16:01)
Yeah.Leo Wehdeking (16:05)
person or for that company that is gonna be a Game-changer in your life. All right, so ⁓ I believe you know, and this is my personal opinion and I totally agree with you that networking it’s Very I would say that it is one of the most important things not only in the real estate area but in any area of life in any areaJoice Castillo and Dierl Bagusto (16:32)
Angry. Yeah.Leo Wehdeking (16:35)
Cool, cool, yeah, that’s something that you cannot fake, actually. I believe that relationships are everything. All right, Joice, before we wrap up, if someone wanted to reach out to you, connect with you, maybe collaborate or learn more about what you’re doing, what’s the best way for them to reach out to you?Joice Castillo and Dierl Bagusto (16:56)
Right now I do a lot of my marketing, I guess, of what we do out on Instagram, social media. So I’m under rejoice in real estate. If anybody want to reach out to me. And then I have email, I have phone number too, but I think the Instagram thing is the fastest way to get a hold of me and see what I do, what we do in terms of real estate, you know, both sides on island, off of state and how we’ve been.in our journey throughout the year. So that would probably be the best way to get a hold of us much more quickly.
Leo Wehdeking (17:30)
All right, perfect. Perfect. Well, listen, Joice, I really appreciate ⁓ your time, your story and your perspective. ⁓ We actually need more people in this space who are actually doing it the right way. So thanks again for being here. All right. I really appreciate it. And for those of you that are just tuning in, if you got value from this, make sure you’re subscribed. OK, we got more conversations coming up with operators just like Joice.they’re building real businesses. Until then, see you in the next episode, guys.
Joice Castillo and Dierl Bagusto (18:03)
Thank you.
