Networking for Success: Transform Your Real Estate Investments Today

Michael Stansbury (04:22.058)
Hello everybody, welcome back to the Real Estate.

Bill Rabello (04:32.174)
What’s that?

Bill Rabello (04:37.64)
You’re right.

Michael Stansbury (04:48.856)
Pro’s podcast, I’m Mike Stansbury. got a very special guest from San Diego, California, Bill Rabello. Bill, how are you today? Awesome, Bill. Look forward to getting to your story in just a second. Gotta pay the bills though. And at Investor Fuel, they are the sponsor of the Real Estate Pro’s podcast. At Investor Fuel, we help real estate investors, service providers, and real estate entrepreneurs, two to five X their businesses to allow them to build the businesses they’ve always wanted and

Bill Rabello (04:56.686)
I’m doing great, Michael, how about yourself?

Michael Stansbury (05:17.76)
allow them to live the lives they’ve always dreamed of. Bill, are you living the dream in San Diego? What’s it look like? What’s temperature out there right now?

Bill Rabello (05:25.922)
It was about a rough place to live. It’s actually overcast today. talking, we might get some rain, but it’s probably about 68 right now.

Michael Stansbury (05:34.23)
Alright, now are you a lifelong Californian? Have you been out there all your life?

Bill Rabello (05:37.962)
I grew up here in San Diego in the small little sleepy beach town of Ocean Beach. In the 70s it was all bikers and hippies and now it’s all gentrified but still a fun quirky little town. I’ve since moved inland. live in Santee now but yeah, San Diego my whole life.

Michael Stansbury (05:57.849)
San Diego your whole life. Okay, but before we get into your real estate career and what you’re doing, tell us a little bit about how you got started in business. What did you do for a living before real estate? How did that prepare you for what you’re doing now? Tell us about it.

Bill Rabello (06:12.088)
Well, so the early part of adulthood I did a lot. I worked in construction. I worked, you name it, I’ve done it. I was a chef for a while. I…

did a lot of different things. I worked for the railroad for a number of years and then decided to switch into the computer field. Done that for the majority of my life. Everything from desktop support all the way up to network engineering and work on cyber teams. Working most recently for the Navy as a federal employee. But I’ve always been interested in real estate. My grandfather, he moved my mom and uncle out here.

know the erp, gosh 1940s actually they were they moved out here and he just started building homes and that’s kind how got into it. We had a couple of properties that that I helped manage you know pretty much ever since I was old enough to hold a paintbrush that’s how I got my start and you know then just working in tech you know it’s a very

It’s kind of a favorite job. You move from job to job a lot, work with a lot of people, same thing. And I realized…

You know, it’s not like our parents would work somewhere, have a build up a retirement. And so I knew that kind of real estate was my way probably forward for having a retirement for myself. And that’s kind of how I got started. Just really had the interest and liked real estate and thought that that would be the way I could build it up and maybe even do that full time at some point. And that’s kind of where I’m at now.

Michael Stansbury (07:53.581)
So obviously W2 job and then you said okay in order to be able to have to build some wealth we needed to think creatively and think about different things and you you grew up around real estate, families was in the building and then but what was it maybe during your W2 life what kind of education what were you listening to were there some books or podcasts that you got a hold of that that steered you where you’re at now or how did that

Bill Rabello (08:09.507)
Yeah.

Michael Stansbury (08:23.106)
Play out.

Bill Rabello (08:23.854)
Well, so here in San Diego, we have a pretty active, uh, reed club. was, one of the oldest ones, oldest longest running ones in the country. It’s called SDCIA San Diego creative investors association. I, I don’t know early part of the two thousands, I started attending these, they have a meeting once a month. And so I would go kind of off and on. And I really kind of attribute that to be in the start of my, my, uh, education in real estate really. And then through there, I met, you know, kind

some different gurus, know, sort of been through the guru mill myself. I don’t if you’ve heard of Dave Lindahl, he does multifamily. So I went through some of his training back around 2010, 2012, then. Got kind of close to a couple properties, but never ended up getting one that way. But really got a good education through there. And…

Let’s see who else. So more recently, I had heard Marco Rubel and I kind liked the way he was talking about creative financing. And so I started doing single family stuff here in town. And I’ve been kind of running that business for about the last three and a half years on the side. And while I’ve had some success, it just never scaled the way I was hoping to because we just

have a lot of equity here everybody the house is really doubled in value during COVID and so even somebody that was fairly motivated would just rather hold off and you know sell on the MLS for a full price you know which I get I understand but so then I I was selling a fourplex that my grandfather passed down to between my cousin and I and so we had some people move out some long-term tenants we’re gonna need a lot of money to put into it it was in a

Michael Stansbury (10:04.141)
Right.

Bill Rabello (10:21.232)
part it down doesn’t get the best rent so we decided to sell and I’ve always been interested in storage and had decided well hey I’m gonna you know maybe maybe I’ll move into storage now this was after looking at some duplexes around town here just nothing has I mean I think the one if it was fully occupied and no problems I’d make like $18 a month on yeah so it pretty easy choice to get and it was actually kind of during that time

Michael Stansbury (10:44.424)
barely by lunch. Yeah.

Bill Rabello (10:48.99)
Exactly. So in kind of searching for stuff online about storage, came across AJ Osborne, who’s pretty famous in that area. And he has a podcast and he does some education on it as well. And that’s really how I got my start.

So I ended up using that money to invest. partnered up with him on one of his deals and I was doing a 1031 exchange. I was running into really close timelines and I was a little hesitant to kind of pull my trigger on my first one, you know, with that money. Cause I wanted to make sure that that was something that could make work for me. So did that. That’s been a great deal already. I really learned how cost segregation works where, you can get bonus depreciation.

things and I mean I got a third of my investment back just in taxes and we haven’t even pulled any money out of the deal yet so we’re still stabilizing it but really showed me how powerful that you know real estate in general but you know especially commercial real estate can be and then really when it comes to commercial real estate I mean for me by far the I think the best asset really is self storage it’s it’s it goes through the downturns it’s good on the up

turns and it’s just it’s one of the most I think stable assets in real estate.

Michael Stansbury (12:15.736)
So you got steered into self-storage, got your first deal done. Is it local to you or is that a state or what’s that look like? Idaho, okay, awesome. Yeah, self-storage is one of those verticals that a lot of people talked about over the last couple years and there’s a lot of gurus and there’s a lot of durus, there a lot of people that do it. And the people that let you partner in on the deals is a sign that they’re actually

Bill Rabello (12:21.132)
No, it’s actually up in Idaho. Yeah.

Bill Rabello (12:39.842)
Yeah.

Michael Stansbury (12:45.474)
getting leads, closing the owners, and making sure that they solve the problem. So is self-storage what you’re leaning into?

Bill Rabello (12:46.626)
Yeah, for sure.

Bill Rabello (12:54.638)
Yeah, that’s my whole focus right now. I I do some other stuff. I do a little bit of tax deed and lean investing, but really this is my focus. mean, it’s really just one of those things like there’s a million different ways you can go and there, you know, lot of them are good, but you know, my advice when people talk to me is just really, you got to kind of pick one thing and go because it’s easy to squirrel off in 50 different directions.

Michael Stansbury (13:21.078)
Right, and then one of the things we talked about in your pre-show is you worked for the federal government and recently you took a deal. Tell us about that. And how did that launch you into kind of real estate, of maybe before you wanted to or full-time? Tell us about that.

Bill Rabello (13:37.09)
Yeah, well, it was sort of my goal was this year to be able to walk away. have some rental properties that are bringing in, know, okay money. I have brought my finances down to where, you know, we could hopefully do it by the end of this year. And my goal is also to, you know, we have one more storage property. And if I was able to do that this year, I was going to walk away. And they made this offer to federal employees that

You know if we could be basically take a deferred resignation and get bought out if we Full pay and benefits till the end of September which is the end of the fiscal year for the government And so I sat down with my wife we talked about it and you know she said hey when you’re get another opportunity to do this because you know I was trying to juggle both and it was was tough trying to do both things and So, you know, I took the leap of faith and hey, we’ll see how it works out I got a little bit of a runway here and

things are going good though I’ve got some deal flow coming in and I think it’s just a matter of time till we close on that right property

Michael Stansbury (14:43.33)
That’s it. So tell us about that. Now that you’ve got that runway, what are we doing day to day to kind of procure leads and the self-storage? And how is that all happening right now?

Bill Rabello (14:57.58)
Well, so yeah, looking for leads is the big thing. That’s probably my biggest focus right now. And I was really, really diving hard into, you know, doing all the numbers on the deals too, you know, that part, even if you’re not the main numbers guy and you’re creating a partnership, everybody needs to really understand it. And so, but yeah, so I got a membership with Craxi and it’s a good way to actually find owners and actually, you

find the areas that you want to work in and you can actually pull up information for the owners and that’s kind of what I’ve been doing and making calls and actually

taking a page out of my single family playbook and actually doing, know, sending out letters and you know, been getting some, some returns on that. Not better than I, I wasn’t sure really what to get. I mean, I did all right with the single family stuff with letters, didn’t know. The other thing I’m going to do is getting ready to go on a road trip pretty soon. My buddy and I, going to, we’re going to go through the kind of all the way up to the Pacific Northwest. It’s really kind of the Western States are where I’m buying.

And so we’re going to make a run through and try to just meet with some owners and just talk shop with them and see where that goes. You know, see if they know what he’s selling in their area or maybe they’re interested and, and who knows, maybe I’ll come back with a deal.

Michael Stansbury (16:22.112)
Yeah, so are you gonna hop on a motorcycle or hop on a…

Bill Rabello (16:25.344)
No, we’re gonna jump in my truck and do a road trip.

Michael Stansbury (16:29.144)
That’ll be fun. So, but that’s interesting because, you know, people sometimes, you know, they get squeamish, but the fundamentals are you gotta talk to people and you gotta knock on the door, you gotta make the phone call and find out. And you never know, I always tell people you never know when you’re gonna catch them. Because, you know, Monday everything’s great. Tuesday life could have happened and you made that call and Monday they were the furthest away from ever selling any of their assets. But something happened Monday night and Tuesday they’re ready to.

Bill Rabello (16:38.061)
Yeah.

Bill Rabello (16:45.198)
Sure.

Michael Stansbury (16:59.234)
to do something, or they’re closer than they thought they were. And you only know that by talking to people. So, yeah.

Bill Rabello (17:03.32)
Yeah.

Bill Rabello (17:07.8)
for sure. And planting those seeds for the future too, because they might not be ready now, but they might be in a few months or a year, you never know. But yeah, the life’s all about timing and being in the right place at the right time. And, you know, I won’t be there by sitting at home, you know.

Michael Stansbury (17:25.196)
That’s right. So Bill, you mentioned earlier that you did some single family stuff. Are you just buying the hold or are you doing some fixing flips in San Diego?

Bill Rabello (17:33.292)
Yeah, well, so my plan was to…

you know, do some buy and hold flip, but you know, kind of flip as needed. I’m trying to, was trying to buy stuff that didn’t really need too much work. I’m not a full flipper, but I do have some people that I would work with in that instance. But so mainly what I was looking for were, you know, nice looking homes where, you know, we could work out some sort of creative financing and then I would turn around and sell them either lease option or owner financing. That’s kind of what I do with my, my deed investing too.

is those are all out of state. And so if I find a property, most of those all just kind of wholesale really. But if I find something that I want to keep and fix myself, I don’t really want to be an out of state landlord. So I’ll do owner finance on that so we can still get the passive income but not have to be the day to day person there, you know.

Michael Stansbury (18:28.824)
So one of the things about self storage facilities, you could get a small one and you can get big ones that are millions of dollars. How are you going about raising capital for your deals? Are you trying to do deals where you’re the 100 % owner and you’re raising capital for maybe a loan for the purchase? Or how are you structuring the future deals? Or what would be best case scenario for you?

Bill Rabello (18:37.112)
Right.

Bill Rabello (18:57.24)
So right now what I’m doing is partnering up with friends and family and

You know, I’ve kind of set the stage for doing some syndications, but I’m not really quite ready for that yet. But I’m looking to partner up with some people right now. have a couple of friends that I’m talking to that are, that have, you know, it’s all about having the right, knowing your strengths and weaknesses. You know, I recently read who not how, and it kind of opened my eyes to a lot of things of you don’t need to do it all yourself. And really you can’t. I mean, this is definitely a team sport.

So, you know, I’m looking for somebody that’s lot better than I am at social media and being able to raise capital. But yeah, kind of for this next deal that I’m working on right now, we’re looking to just, you know, bring in a little bit of just, you know, close friends and family and then go from there.

Michael Stansbury (19:51.705)
Well, that’s the best, if you have a, obviously if you have a good relationship with your family, they trust you and they like you and there’s a benefit to that. You know, can show them a return, then everybody wins, which is great. So in the meantime, so what I’m thinking is deals come and, you know, self-storage deals for the guys that I know that do the deals, they come, but sometimes it’s once or twice or three times a year.

depending obviously on your deal flow and your marketing and things like that. Do you find yourself, hey, I am leaning hard into self storage, but is there anything else you’re gonna be doing to generate income in real estate besides self storage?

Bill Rabello (20:23.278)
Sure.

Bill Rabello (20:34.094)
Yeah, yeah, I’m not giving up on the tax deeds. A matter of fact, next week is an auction in Indiana that I’m a part of. They have something special where they’re actually a tax lien state. supposed to tax lien and tax deed states. They’re particularly a tax lien state, but they have these ones that don’t sell. They go in these special commission sales that each county does one a year. And Lake County is one of the bigger counties in Indiana. And their big sale of the year is coming up next

week so I’ve been kind of gearing up for that. We’ll see how it goes. It’s the first time I’ve participated in one of those there so we’ll see. But yeah, my hope is to get something to just make a little bit of active income. Probably just flip something to some local contractor, buy it low that it’s in decent shape and needs some work and flip it to somebody. That’s kind of my goal with that.

Michael Stansbury (21:29.496)
And now, how are you taking a look at those properties? How are you looking at those? Do you have boots on the ground there? What’s that look like?

Bill Rabello (21:41.538)
Well, so I have a big list that we printed out and sorted through just for single family stuff.

first thing was just kind of going through, bringing it up on the county website, looking at it on Google maps and hey, if it has a roof, I’m going to make that one green and we’ll come back and look at it. So after I’ve carried the list down, it was just sort of breaking it down, looking at, looking at all these and then, you know, just really reaching out to people that through like fiber stuff like that to find somebody like, Hey, these are some properties that I’m looking at. want to, can you go by and take some pictures of it for me? You know, pay a few bucks to take pictures.

Michael Stansbury (22:00.658)
Yeah.

Bill Rabello (22:22.628)
I’ve talked to some local realtors and that’s a great resource actually because I’m going to need to work with a realtor to handle all the stuff there. So they’re more than happy to tell you, yeah, this neighborhood is good, stay out of there. This side of the tracks is good, that side you don’t want to even bother with.

So yeah, it’s doing that. So pair down this list, we’ll see how it goes. I don’t know. I’m curious for this one. liens are interesting because there’s also lot of over-the-counter sales in different states. So I’m probably starting messing with that. It looks like Florida’s got some options there that work out pretty well.

I’m trying not to spread myself too thin right now because I’m also still doing my single-family stuff. I’ve got letters that go out every week to like pre-foreclosure lists and the expired MLS lists and I have a lady that hand addresses my letters.

Michael Stansbury (23:09.91)
Right? Yeah.

Bill Rabello (23:25.268)
So that part’s kind of on autopilot. I only need to spend maybe two, three hours a week on getting those out and then whatever calls I get. that’s still active. I still get a decent amount of deal flow through that. And it’s really helped me prepare for, I think, the storage side because we’re in really kind of a great, it sounds weird to say this, because of the interest rates being so high, it’s really become a bit of a buyer’s market in storage because

Michael Stansbury (23:49.58)
Yes.

Bill Rabello (23:55.144)
people were getting incredibly crazy numbers over the last couple of years. And because a lot of people were moving matching from multifamily into storage and they were really overpaying for things, but still doing well because the interest rates were so low and it’s just such a good asset. You didn’t even need to know what you were doing really.

Michael Stansbury (24:04.972)
Right?

Bill Rabello (24:15.042)
But when the interest rates went up, it took a while for the sellers to realize that they weren’t gonna get what they were gonna get for these properties. So the chances of doing owner financing, things like that are a lot better now. You can get them more money for the deal. And so it’s kind of swung back in that direction. So I feel like these last couple of years of talking to so many home sellers here really kind of prepared me well for talking to these potential sellers.

and storage side.

Michael Stansbury (24:46.776)
Yeah, I like it. And so the other thing that you’re doing though, you know, you you were in the tech sector for a long time now you’re in real estate full-time and You’re gonna help people by writing a book about how to quit their w2 job. Tell us about that

Bill Rabello (24:54.157)
Yes.

Bill Rabello (25:02.85)
Yeah.

Yeah, so it’s sort of both like if that’s what you’d like to do, it’s a lot of advice on how to do that, but it’s also advice for somebody that just, hey, I know I need this for my retirement. I understand that real estate is a good foundational asset to put money into. And so the bookstore is good for learning how to do these different things. I feel like I’ve kind of done a little bit of everything. And so it’s going to be fairly broad. I mean, I’m not going to go super deep into

to any of the topics, but somebody that wants to build up their retirement, they really need to know the language. They need to know what they’re talking about to know if it is a good deal that somebody’s presenting to them. And then if it is something where you’d like to break the shackles as I like to say it, then it’ll help you in that too. Exactly. Exactly.

Michael Stansbury (25:57.731)
The golden handcuffs, yes the shackles, the bear trap, however you want to adjudicate it.

Bill Rabello (26:02.862)
Yeah, I’m trading our time for money, you know.

Michael Stansbury (26:06.42)
Yeah, well, there’s a lot of people that are trapped and they need the stories to say, if this guy could do it, this is how he did it, and this is the unglamorous and the glamorous things about it. So it’s always good to hear that perspective. Well, Bill, where can people find more about you on the socials? What does that look like? They wanted to work for you. Maybe they have a self-storage facility and they’re like,

I didn’t talk to that guy, I need to sell mine or maybe I need to partner up with him. Where can they find you at Bill?

Bill Rabello (26:38.542)
Yeah, well, so my company is American Residential Solutions and my website is www.ars-properties.com. And then if you look for me, if you look up my name, you can find me on Facebook or Instagram. And it’s also American Residential Solutions has a Facebook page as well.

Michael Stansbury (27:02.348)
Awesome. Well, Bill, it’s been awesome having you and learning more about you. And you’re a success story. Somebody that does a W-2 and then takes action, has a deal, what that tells me is you know, this is a rinse and repeatable process. I don’t have to go. I can choose to go back if I want to, but I don’t have to. I’ve got other options. And that’s available to people too. Other people can do that as well.

Bill Rabello (27:24.226)
sure.

Bill Rabello (27:28.13)
Yeah, hey, our times are best asset. We need to protect as much of it as we can, right?

Michael Stansbury (27:33.782)
Yes sir, time and focus is the best asset. That’s a great way to end it, Bill. Bill, thanks for being part of the Real Estate Pros podcast. Folks, thanks for watching. Like and subscribe and we’ll see you next time.

Bill Rabello (27:45.41)
Thanks Michael.