Opportunity In Chaos: How Smart Real Estate Investors Find Deals When Everyone Else Waits

ALEX (00:00)
I told the gentleman, I said, I’m not going to buy this property for you because it might not happen until 2040. And I know for the fact that Sigma is going to be extended beyond 2040 for at least another 20 years, because this problem is not going to go away. The water issue. He said, why? said, it’s very easy for me to sell a $5 million, do the transaction of $5 million, get a six digit, you know, ⁓

Commission check and enjoy it and spend it.

Scott Bursey (02:05)
Welcome back to the Real Estate Pros podcast. I’m your host, Scott Bursey. And today we’re thrilled to welcome a true authority in the real estate investment strategy, Alex Emdadi of Alex Emdadi, real estate investment advisor. Alex is known for providing clear, actionable guidance on building wealth through property and helping investors navigate complex market cycles. Welcome to the show, Alex.

ALEX (02:34)
Thank you for having me, Scott.

Scott Bursey (02:35)
It is a pleasure. is a sincere pleasure. Alex, before we dive into the market dynamics, please give our audience the story of your journey. How did you first get into real estate?

ALEX (02:47)
⁓ As a matter of fact, I was a real estate agent back in Maryland, Virginia, when I was living there prior to the time that I came to Unite to ⁓ California 10 years ago. ⁓ At that time, I was involved with the full-time job working as a manager for a logistics company, and it was very hard to take away from that the role and practice.

real estate. But I’ve been involved since then ⁓ because indirectly after a couple of years that I had my license, I gave it up because I was not practicing. But I started helping my friends and family by finding the best choices available in the market based on their ⁓ lifestyle. ⁓ Real estate transactions are transactions for the real estate

agents to buy and sell and make the commission. On the other hand, because I have learned throughout the years that the investors focus on price is one thing, but making that ⁓ property an asset that is going to return the investment, it’s entirely different story. ⁓ I believe we all have a personality and we all have a need.

We all have what we want and we also have a desire ⁓ of what would satisfy our taste. ⁓ My job has always been to show what the client needs, then show them what they really want based on their characteristics, and then finally show them what they have always desired and leave it up to them to make a decision.

to purchase a house for half a million dollars or a million dollars or two million dollars, depends on their budget. But at least it’s my job to plant the seed in the head of the people

that they are coachable and they like to have their mind and their brain stimulated in order to see the real capabilities that they have.

You know, if I would talk to an investor who’s looking for a multifamily student housing close to UCLA or USC and their budget is $5 million, of course, I would gather the leads and the properties that they’re in that range. But that does not stop me to show them what $8 million with the 6.7 cap rate could bring to the table.

reverses a fight $4.9 million with the 4.8%. So my job is to just show the people that you’re allowed to go beyond what you think you’re capable of as long as you not dig a hole for yourself. And as long as you know the capabilities that you have to do it as much as you can.

for the best result. Some investors like to make the quick money, get into the, you know, some sort of investment, purchase it a couple of years, make, you know, 10, 20, 50, you know, I mean, not 50, I’m sorry, 30%. And some others would rather to have a safer, studied type of the property and make 5%, but for…

another 30 or 50 years because they’re thinking about the next generation and then, you know, their family, their kids, their trust, you know, I can’t so they’re going to. So my strength is to listen to the people.

Scott Bursey (07:43)
That is absolutely, and that is fascinating. Alex, many people call themselves agents, but you’ve carved out a specific niche as an investor advisor. To kick things off, what is the single biggest shift you’ve seen right now in how sophisticated investors are viewing, let’s say, risk versus opportunity in today’s market?

ALEX (07:43)
and see what they want.

Right now, all the investors that I know, at least in Southern California, are just waiting to see what would happen. This had started from the fourth quarter of 2025 because of so many rumors that it was going on. And right now, because of the war, circumstances are entirely different. I don’t blame anybody not to know what would be the

the future of anything and nevertheless ⁓ the real estate. there are people who know there’s always a good opportunity to find ⁓ nice fishes, could be small, could be medium, could be large in a muddy water.

Everybody have that thick of a skin or the courage or the spirit to risk it? No, I would say probably about 95 % of the people that I know, they’re just waiting. But during this wait, because of the so many different things that is happening, and that’s not the only thing, know, because of the tariffs, because of the political situation between ⁓ China and United States, between 2020,

and 2025, the agricultural supplies have gone down from 1.2 billion.

down to 550 million. That’s a 64 % decrease.

A lot of people are hurt. There are some farmers in the Central Valley that they are about to just give up the land because they don’t want to go through the expenses because of the generational. Farmers are entirely different than the, I would call them Wall Street farmers.

because they don’t have the financial backup. know, 40,000 acres of grapes are just about to be fallowed. ⁓ That’s devastating for the wine industry and with all the fires that they’ve had for the past couple of years. I mean, these are the commodities that there may be a little bit luxury, but the fact of the matter is

The state of California provides in a given years between 13 to 17 % of the food supply for the other 49 states. That is huge. Not everybody knows what a terrible situation we’re in. Not to mention that we just came out of the droughts after 25 years, but this year again, I was talking to the farmers today.

There’s no snowpack. Everything is melted. And it’s only March. We’re just going to April and we have to go through April, May, June, July and start harvesting in August and you know, October. I really don’t know where we are heading. There are deals on the table if anybody wants to make the deal and make the money. And there are desperate people that they want to sell. at the beginning of 2025,

They were about 17 different companies, some turnkey businesses from the point that they could sell their own seats all the way to harvest and packing and selling the defiled bankruptcy.

Nobody writes about those. Nobody knows about those.

Scott Bursey (12:47)
That’s a powerful distinction. How are you actually finding those opportunities when the rest of the market is looking the other way?

ALEX (12:56)
I was fortunate starting working with a ⁓ investor about 10 years ago. And just because he was not in the state of California and he came out of the retirement, he really didn’t have much time. So I was the face of the company and now there are four companies that I’ve been managing ⁓ in the different aspects of the real estate. ⁓ I have worked for

finding properties for any kind of use. Agriculture, which was my main ⁓ focus, I have managed to buy properties from dirt and turn them to the ⁓ orchards, ⁓ almonds and pistachios. ⁓ I have purchased properties that they have multi… ⁓

purposes such as shop or house and you know farm for row crops at which I have done the lot line adjustments, separated the APNs, sold the parts that it was not a real moneymaker for the investors and then kept the shopping and sold the shop, sold the house, you know decreased the expenses as far as the ⁓

cost of the property and increase the value because ⁓ we changed it from 84 acres to 420 plus acres that someone could come and build a ⁓ ranchette an hour away from Bay Area and enjoy the nice beautiful weather and have their own lifestyle. Their own lifestyle that they could not afford to have that around San Francisco and Bay Area

for

not even $20 million, I would make it affordable for them to be able to achieve what they have for the weekend gathering, as many as family members that they want for only $2 million. These are the things not everybody knows and not everybody has the source. It’s just because at the time that I started working for this investor, I had to become himself and invest in things

just the way it’s my own money, it’s my own bank account. At some point, I had 168 different properties in my Excel sheet and the CRM in order to just make sure to identify which properties have not only the value, they have a better investment value for the investor, short term, mid term, long term, and compare with each other.

My job was actually finding at least two, if not three different scenarios, that what is the best investment? Not just what the investment is, but what’s the best investment? There’s a 57 acres in Tehachapi that I single-handedly, with the backup of the architects and the engineers ⁓ and the investor, ⁓ after going through about

151 different versions. ⁓ I had to stand in front of the planning commission and get the approval for 238 single family homes, which everybody hated it because if you look at the ⁓ stories that they’re available or the clips that they’re available at the most affordable California cities, top

15, Tehachapi is number four, which is the most affordable. And this is in this town. In the most affordable small town of the 9,000 people and the whole entire area being 15,000 people, nobody likes you to come and build 238 single family homes because you bring chaos. You bring traffic. You bring noise. You bring commotions.

You bring… ⁓

the wealth to the city, but your people who are supposed to support you and they are the people who actually live there, they don’t want this commotion. They ran away from Woodland Hills, from Los Angeles, from Bakersfields for all different reasons to have a nest there. And now you’re there to interrupt them.

everybody was against me. So I have to give the speech.

which two people who came strongly to shut me down, to just be my ally and be my side and see it with my own vision and eyes by standing right next to me and talk about, I call it FAB, the features, the advantages and the benefits. And once I was done with my 15 minutes,

The room was quiet. And anonymously, all five people in the board voted yes to our.

Scott Bursey (19:22)
That is phenomenal.

Let ask you this, this has been on my mind for a while now. How are you advising your capital partners to structure their exit from these tighter deals if the first plan hits a snag?

ALEX (19:39)
You know?

We’re all human beings. We all make mistakes.

The worst enemy of ours is neglect or ⁓ doubts. If I would have an investor who needs to invest for their kids and their cousins and their uncles and their relatives and their wives and their husbands and they need to take four or five days in order to come up with the information that they need to have.

they’re going to lose their money. They never invest and they never make the right decision. Unlike the people that would say, it looks good. Let me see how good it is. Let me put the money in my mouth. This is my 5%, 3%, 5%, 10 % down. Let me open this escrow. We’ll find out everything in it during the due diligence. They have my guarantee that I’m going to look at it in a way that I would

want to go back to them and say, this is not the right property for you. I’m not going to buy it for you. You are not in a position to do that because of all the reasons. had an investor wanted to buy a house in Moorpark area. The house was 20 acres, $4.9 million. They wanted to plant. And I said,

Have you ever heard about the law about the water in California? And they were like, what law? I said, not everybody can just take any ground and water it as much as they want.

the ground sustainability.

strategy Sigma It’s been introduced in 2014 in 2020 it started it out of all the water districts that they were supposed to figure out the way to decrease the amount of the water that is being used in California or extracted from the ground because of the wells They all had to provide a plan 20 years plan between 2020 and 2040

at how they’re going to manage this Sustainability Ground ⁓ Water Management Act. They all have failed. And these people have been in business since 1960, since the aqueduct was built. And

I told the gentleman, I said, I’m not going to buy this property for you because it might not happen until 2040. And I know for the fact that Sigma is going to be extended beyond 2040 for at least another 20 years, because this problem is not going to go away. The water issue. He said, why? said, it’s very easy for me to sell a $5 million, do the transaction of $5 million, get a six digit, you know, ⁓

Commission check and enjoy it and spend it.

what’s gonna happen to my caution? I cannot sleep. If they ever show up at your door and said, after the money that you spent, all the trees that you put in the ground, all the watering that you’ve done, all the expenses that you’ve gone through, planting, ⁓ cultural expenses, irrigation, ⁓ electricity.

Four or five years, now it’s coming to the fruitation. Now you’re getting your commodity coming out. And we come and say, stop it. And you have to go down to the one tenth.

You’re gonna hate me. I’m not gonna do anything that is inhuman.

Scott Bursey (23:48)
I find…

I find this fascinating. Fascinating. Alex curious beyond capital. What is the most important non-negotiable metric you advise your clients to track for, you know, long-term portfolio health?

ALEX (24:07)
I always try to let my investors know that if you diversify your portfolio, that you would be able to get the money from one source and put it in another source to minimize the risk, have this opportunity to have the exit strategy once and if it’s needed.

and be able to pay from one pocket for another pocket in order to have this flow and also the income coming in. You know, if you only specialize, because unfortunately the degeneration of farmers who are hurting so bad now after these many years, it’s because they have always done all of it. They always have done

raw crops. always have done one. They have found the niche and they stuck to it because for so many years and so many decades was profitable. Well, the time has changed. The world has changed. We’re not worried about the same things that we were before. Even to my friends and family who own houses, I said, why don’t you just get rid of the trees and just plant a fruit tree? Enjoy it.

I can walk around where I live in Encino and the majority of the houses because back in the day used to be a ⁓ citrus orchard, big citrus orchard capital of the valley. People have the trees, they have the fruits, nobody picks them.

Scott Bursey (25:55)
Understood point. Well, it’s taken for granted and that’s something you know that that really shouldn’t be taken for granted Let me ask you this. How do you help your clients to find their ideal deal and What are the two to three filtering questions? Alex you used to quickly disqualified leads that look good on paper, but are fundamentally flawed

ALEX (25:56)
We take it for granted. We take it for granted.

You know, different investors have different ideas. And the investors in the level that they are with the exposure to the social media and all the sources that they’re available, they all are very, very well educated. They’re very, very sophisticated. They run their own businesses. They have number of different

type of employees or businesses. And I’m talking about, I’ve dealt with an investor who had 11 different real estate related entities, not to mention the properties. First of all, I earned their trust because I’m honest. I don’t do anything for my own ⁓ sake and for my own ⁓ financial

benefits. I put them before myself. And as I said, I sit down and I listen to them and I try to find out what they’re trying to achieve. You know, because if you have the trust account for your children and grandchildren, if you’re doing this kind of business and you’re making this kind of money and you, you can buy whatever you want and you can fly anywhere you want to go to and

Why do you need another headache?

and how much of a headache you can tolerate to have. Based on their lifestyle, based on their needs, based on what they want and based on what they desire, I sit down and I make recommendations. And it’s their choice to see, do I want to risk this or do I want to just be safe? Once they make a decision,

then I would change my role to as I am the buyer. And I look for every single wrong thing in that operation or that property to just turn around. And I have emails that I’ve turned around, sold, I mean told XYZ, ⁓ don’t buy this 40 acres, don’t buy this 140 acres, don’t do this, don’t do that.

And if they came back after four years and said, well, it was an even thing and good thing. We got out of it because it could have been getting ugly. And I would turn around and I send the email from five years before and said, I told you not to buy it. You were persistent and you wanted to buy it. There is so much I can do in order to advise people if they want to make the

the decision and they want to invest, I would make sure they’re not going to lose their pants. They’re not going to lose their money. But when I see the threat, I said, now it’s time to sell. And I never bought and I never sold those properties for them. I always gave it to the other realtors in the different parts of the Central Valley. I was their competition.

but I didn’t want to compete with them. Those sources have the ears and the eyes in the local areas and they bring me businesses and they bring me the deals that nobody else knows because those people have just got to the first step. Hey, Scott, I’m thinking about selling my house for $2.5 million right outside of Las Gatiss. What do you think?

And he would turn around and said, well, let’s wait until end of spring. But that person could tell me that if you know somebody who wants to buy a $2.5 million, very, very good shake in the area, let me know because I could just introduce you and we would make the deal.

Scott Bursey (30:47)
And those relationships are unparalleled. Alex, beyond capital, what is the single biggest bottleneck you see right now for real estate professionals trying to move from a transaction focused business to a scalable enterprise?

ALEX (31:04)
Educate yourselves in a different type of the products to sell. ⁓ If you’ve been selling houses, if you’ve been focusing on ⁓ flipping houses or investment properties, ⁓ first find out what you like. What is the next second, third or fourth market?

that is appealing to you, you know. ⁓ Don’t be scared. Reach out to your brokers. Reach out to your fellow ⁓ realtors and ask for help. Ask for education. Ask for ways to educate yourself because knowledge is power. You know, the more knowledge that you have, the more powerful you can be in the market. I could easily tell you

and I don’t want to brag about this, because of all the water district that I have dealt with in the past 10 years in the Central Valley, and I know who sells what for what price and what is the psychology of the pricing, I can talk to any water district because I have the knowledge of 17 other water districts. The people in that water district are only doing their job.

in that water district area and that’s all they know. So even as somebody who has only been in California for 10 years, I would walk into any water district and I mentioned something, they think I’m a water guru. I am not. Nobody knows everything. I don’t know everything and I never claim that I do. But by sharing my knowledge with other people, I’m not trying to impress them, I’m trying to educate.

Because if they see this sincerity in my voice and in my personality that I’m trying to educate them, they would make sure they would educate me as much as they could. And I was blessed to be very honest with you, Scott. The first people that I got to know in the first year, they introduced me to the second person. The second person introduced me to the third person. The third person introduced me to the fourth.

The fourth person was more valuable relationship and network than the third and as the third was compared to the second and second one was to the first. To the first one, I always keep sending them emails and cards for Christmas and New Year.

but I might not even talk to them more than once. But I always show the appreciation of because of where I am and what I do, which right before COVID, I was hearing from people that were saying, do you know so-and-so? And I was like, no. I said, he knows you very well. I was like, I don’t know how, I don’t know why. I was like, he had talked to you about this project at that time.

I had talked to the people about the projects had nothing to do with my investor. And I have given them the feedback to the point that when I was with the Keller Williams in 2023, of the meetings that we were in, one of the realtors called me and said, can you help me out with this 5,000 square feet flat ground right in the middle of the city in Hawthorne? I don’t even know how to price it. I said, sure.

And several times I’ve talked to her. I’ve talked to her maybe like six times in the past three years. She called me after the fire in, ⁓ in LA. And she was like, you know, I have people that have lost their houses, which, you know, help me out. Then I told her about some, you know, manufactured housing in California that they could deliver for a fraction of the price. They do all the jobs for them. Everything from A to Z for,

⁓ permitting and you know, everything and they would just set it up and just come over there. And you know, the good thing about the new house compared to the old house is it’s not, you know, ⁓ fireproof, but it takes eight hours to be in the middle of the, you know, fire to be burned, not 30 minutes. ⁓ It’s soundproof because it’s manufactured, you know, it’s earthquake proof.

because it’s a new technology. So I always try to find, to show the benefits of the different kind of product right out of the box. And because I’ve been doing research for the past 10 years, like a lot of people ask me these days, do you use the AI? I said, I’ve had chat GPT since 2023 when nobody knew anything about chat GPT, you know?

You just, if you educate yourself, that education opens a curiosity that you would need to open another door and another door and another door. And then you get to the point that you know so much, you can do so much for the people. As a matter of fact, I always tell my friends, even my friends and family, if you want to do anything because of my background, because of the different businesses that I’ve been, just pick up the phone and call me first. Call me first. I might not have…

any suggestion, any advice whatsoever. But after that phone call either you are one or many steps ahead or you’re still in same same place as you are. You don’t have anything to lose.

Scott Bursey (37:00)
Absolutely. And on that note, Alex, what is the best way for our audience to contact you if they want to follow your journey?

ALEX (37:08)
I’m not very big in social media. One of my friends was saying that, you know, how come your Instagram is not updated? I said, I haven’t touched it for three years, you know, because I’m researching so much. am researching so much, but ⁓ my email is the best. ⁓ I can even create a different email, which I have different ones that I could share it with you. ⁓

later and I would be able to provide my another phone ⁓ besides the phone that I have because the number that I have I was getting so many calls I had to put it on a do not call list national do not call list so unfortunately everything goes to the but I would offer my help not only just with this program and just this episode but whenever it’s needed ⁓

I like to serve people because I know ⁓ once you expand your ⁓ network, ⁓ it pays off in a long run. And I don’t want to brag about anything, but my last name, Emdadi in Farsi, in Persian, means helpfulness. So it’s somehow, someway it’s written on my forehead. ⁓ It’s not always, you know, financial benefits. ⁓

The network, as we mentioned, it’s priceless.

Scott Bursey (38:42)
Yes, absolutely. Alex, this has been a sincere pleasure. Thank you for being on the show.

ALEX (38:50)
It was my honor and the pleasure was all mine,

Scott Bursey (38:54)
And thank you to all of our listeners for tuning in. If you found this episode valuable, please subscribe. Until next time, keep your standards high and your vision clear. We’ll see you in the next episode, everyone.