Stop Overthinking Real Estate: How New Investors Can Take Action and Build Wealth

Akshay Devendra (00:00)
I would say if you are agnostic or if you are too fearful about getting into real estate you should reach out to the ones who are already doing it, pick their brain, take their lead, ask for guidance, you should always seek out to…

ask for help because that’s where your fears can be overcome just by sitting and thinking over thinking it is the biggest hurdle for your progress or even growth

Scott Bursey (02:00)
Welcome back to the Real Estate Pros podcast powered by Investor Fuel. I’m your host Scott Bursey and we are kicking off this episode with pure energy because today’s guest is a powerhouse in strategic development and market foresight. He is the visionary leader behind vyom realty, guiding massive projects and creating value. is joining us and trust me, the feel.

he brings to understanding complex real estate cycles is pure high octane knowledge. If you want to know how the biggest moves are structured and executed, you need to stay tuned. Break out your notepad. Akshay is in the house. Akshay welcome to the show.

Akshay Devendra (02:44)
Thank you Scott, thanks for your introduction. I really appreciate you for whatever you spoke about me. Thank you for this opportunity.

Scott Bursey (02:51)
Absolutely. It is our pleasure having you here in studio and Akshay for our listeners who may not be familiar with your journey. Please tell us how did your career begin and what is your main focus now?

Akshay Devendra (03:04)
So I began as a regular person curious about getting into real estate because I was looking around at some of my relatives very involved in investing in real estate. So I didn’t know much about where to begin like anybody else. I was looking for partners, maybe somebody who I can trust and work with and

To find a partner, what I did creatively was I started my own networking group and then

I had some wonderful people come over and then I was able to zero in on a good partner who was also looking for one. So that’s how we started investing in ⁓ real estate.

We went out this was just around the COVID time. That’s when we got our first few properties. The interest rates were low over the market. You’re finding some good deals, great cash flows. So that gave us a really good head start to investing. So we got into turnkey investments and then we were more and more looking into better cash flows as interest rates went up. You know, the cash flows were going down, the property values were going up and

You have to pay more and more so we’ve started finding creative ways of investing in real estate starting from by looking for off-market deals deals which were going to be available before it hits the market going to the auctions doing fixer-uppers and Then now providing a full service end-to-end real estate services for everybody if they want to work with us starting from

buying and selling, you know you do fix up your properties, property renovations, property management and even turnkey rentals. So that’s where we are right now.

Scott Bursey (04:44)
Akshay that is just a wonderful journey. And if someone’s listening to this and they’re thinking, hey, this is somebody that I like to partner with or learn from, what do you want them to know first about your business?

Akshay Devendra (04:55)
Okay, Viome Reality is all about providing end-to-end real estate solutions. We are licensed in Ohio, so we can help you buy and sell properties on the market for you. And one of the major things that we do is we do a lot of renovations that can be…

help to build your portfolio. We help in building portfolios. Basically, we help you build cash flow. We help you build passive wealth. We help you manage the properties and ⁓ cater to your real estate demands in wealth building and strategizing your next move in the market in the Cincinnati and Dayton market. So basically we offer end to end real estate solutions at this point.

Scott Bursey (05:36)
That deep specialization is exactly what separates the pros from the amateurs. Hyper focus equals hyper profit.

And let me ask you this, if you could walk us through, in your experience, what is the most common blind spot among high growth real estate firms today?

Akshay Devendra (05:53)
I would say protecting yourself from any unknowns, anything that you’re not expecting. Be prepared to expect anything at any time because that’s when the worst can happen. If you’re looking to buy a property, make sure you do the inspections beginning from

I mean the regular inspections are good but you need to look into the sewer lines because those are the ones which can be a bigger putting a bigger hole in your pockets and also you should be looking at other things like the roof and hedgeback the major big ticket items are the ones you should be aware of and then the insurance the insurance is really important when you’re renovating because a lot of people don’t know there is a difference between a builder’s risk insurance and the regular

landlord insurance landlord policy. So I think you should focus on protecting yourself like even the entity creation maybe talk about LLCs and then you know protecting assets from any lawsuits. Those are the things I insurances and ⁓ the structuring of your assets to protect your personal assets would be the bigger blind spots you need to be aware of according to me.

Scott Bursey (06:59)
That’s a critical point. Thank you for sharing that level of expertise.

And you’ve had a really good journey. Take us back to your relationships, your networking. What’s your philosophy on networking?

Akshay Devendra (08:02)
Be honest, be transparent, the expectations upfront. Don’t over-commit if you’re not able to deliver.

and then give more than what you promise. think that’s how you build trust with your build trust and build your network transparency and obviously transparency and honesty is good but integrity is like when nobody’s watching you that’s where you you showcase your real side of you because integrity is based on your own your own inner values. So I think these are the few foundational principles that I think is

really important in growing any business for that matter let alone being in real estate. think trust honesty integrity and transparency those four principles are really important.

Scott Bursey (08:48)
Shaya those four principles are everything. You can’t have a business. You cannot excel to the level that you have without those four core components. That was a nice breakdown and let’s get back to the turnkey properties a little bit. Please elaborate a little bit more on your your forte if you would.

Akshay Devendra (08:52)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

So the turnkey properties, I mentioned, we, our journey began with turnkey properties. We went, we, before I got my real estate license, we used local realtors that we know knew of. We took them around.

you know, pick their brains, their expertise in looking for the properties which were going to give good cash flows because when we set out in investing in real estate, we set a target for ourselves as to we want to make this much amount of money as part of the cash flow by end of a certain period of time. So which we were able to luckily achieve it because the property prices were going up in the initial phases.

were able to act fast because acting fast is really important we had to take a little bit of risk which I said you should not be doing it but we did to take a risk of fun

exempting the inspections, you know, some of the contingencies that we had to let go of to win the deal because we were growing more and more confident that we will be able to, you know, take care of any problems that can come across. the third gear properties gave us the cash flow with the low interest rates that we had. And then, you know, we were looking for good school districts. We were also doing house hacking back then. We have purchased

the property which is like had a five bedroom and then we rented out each one separately to an individual working person so our mortgages or mortgage the purchase price of the house was about 210,000 and it had five bedrooms and we were able to

once fully occupied and rent once fully rented we were able to make about two thousand dollars in cash flow from that particular deal. So our initial investment was 20 percent of 210,000 I think it was about 42,000 or something and then we made our money the recouped our investment initial investment well within two years so that was one of the best return key investments that we made initially.

gave us a lot of confidence because we were having positive cash flow we were able to reinvest onto the next one and then onto the next one onto the next one that’s how we could scale fast by the time we scaled the market dynamics changed interest rates went up property prices went up the same cash flow was not being achievable at that point so we were looking for creative ways

Scott Bursey (11:39)
That explanation is a game changer for our listeners.

Akshay Devendra (11:43)
Mm-hmm.

Scott Bursey (11:43)
Where do you see the single greatest overlooked opportunity in the current market, specifically around adaptive or distressed commercial assets?

Akshay Devendra (12:25)
So fixer operas and the renovation side of it because the side of the affordable housing is very tight. The supply is tight because affordable housing has not been possible because of the inflation, the cost of material, cost of labor, everything going up. So anybody who’s trying to build a house cannot keep it well under the price that could be yielding them good cash.

flow. So to fill that gap, fill that need, you need to find distress properties. You need to find properties that requires attention, put in some DLC, you know, the tender love and care and bring it up to the market needs. And then once it is ready, you don’t need to over invest into such for real that innovations. All you need is everything functional, clean, devoid of pass, good air conditioning, heat,

you know the appliances so basic necessities no leaks no mold

clean house is what you need and then I think the biggest opportunity is there if you can buy cheap renovated to the market levels you know bring it up to the value and if you can even rent it in affordable range you don’t have to expect too much because you are addressing the affordable market the rents needs to be in the affordable range so I think that is where the biggest opportunity is the fixer uppers and the burrs that’s where you can tap into

because affordable market is really tight you can always make your money there.

Scott Bursey (13:57)
It’s all about where the market shifts next, isn’t it?

Akshay Devendra (14:00)
Yep.

Scott Bursey (14:01)
Thanks for watching.

Akshay Devendra (14:02)
Yeah, the deal finding good deals is always a challenge access to capital. Yes, if you are established player access to capital becomes little easier. But when you’re setting out initially, you definitely need your own financial clean financials. Firstly, you should have to work on building your credit. You know, you should build your

brand basically as a person you had to be you had to be able to go to a bank and they should be able to lend you money. So that is like having a clean credit trying to try to earn make more money whatever ways possible because income is everything before you start investing right. And then we spoke about networking if you can find good people with good capital that’s where your capital needs can be met. But finding the good deals you have to go to

keep looking for opportunities in the wholesale side of things go to the auctions you can also find ways to get those leads you know cold call reach out to individual owners if they are willing to sell their property so deals finding deals and capital is definitely a bottleneck but

If you are in the market long enough and understand how it works, I think you can still find those good deals every now and then and that should be enough to make yourself a good portfolio or even make good money out of that.

Scott Bursey (15:25)
Awesome breakdown Akshay and curious to know what piece of market data or consumer behavior are you currently basing your next moves on?

Akshay Devendra (16:15)
Any market I would look at the population growth. If the city has good opportunities for people to come in, there is always going to be a need for housing and also real estate.

And it all and the economy is basically determines whether the population comes into the city or not. You also look for new is the new newer companies coming into the market. Is there new employers coming in looking? Is there more hiring happening? Is there out of state people coming in? Because I’m into this industry for a few years and I know that for a fact that Cincinnati market is a really good market for out of state investors.

They see value here the property prices are not too high for the cash flow analysis and for their cap rate analysis and for their taxation benefits and stuff like that people working in California they make a lot of money they’re looking for avenues to reduce their tax liability by investing in real estate and stuff like that so this market has been a really good market particularly to me because I cater to a lot of out of state clients and then they do see

I do see population growing steadily here. The inflation not too crazy, affordability still in a good range. I think those are the key indicators that I look for, similarly if I’m investing anywhere else in the country.

Scott Bursey (17:36)
Akshay I love that framing. And now it’s time for the money question designed to get a pro secret from you. If you had to distill your expertise into one pro secret about securing capital partners for large scale deals and that most investors miss, what would it be?

Akshay Devendra (17:44)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

I mean, some of…

A lot of people are sitting on untapped equity in different forms. know, they have a HELOC. They know they think whatever is on their primary residence is just sitting there and they don’t realize how much it can be utilized to scale further invest and even grow. And also if you want a secure way of investing, I think you should probably look at note investing. You know, you can invest into notes that gives you a lot of security for your money because

it’s either most likely the first lien on the property or sometimes the second lien so it’s the one of the safest form of investments and also a lot of people who have switched jobs their IRA is sitting idle not growing much they could do the SDIRA into real estate so those are the different ways you can raise capital or tap into the existing capital that you already have obviously the 401k is always there and other forms

are

like you have to you have private networks, hard money loans, know, small banks, you don’t have to always go to bigger banks, the conventional loans and stuff like there are other ways like hard money, private money, your HELOC, your note investing, the IRAs. So those are the different avenues. On top of that, if your money is sitting in the savings account earning two and a half percent, three percent, I can help you earn

8 to 10 percent that money that you invest with us.

Scott Bursey (19:19)
That was a masterful breakdown. And Akshay, is there any golden nuggets or words of wisdom you’d to leave with our listeners here today?

Akshay Devendra (19:28)
I would say if you are agnostic or if you are too fearful about getting into real estate you should reach out to the ones who are already doing it, pick their brain, take their lead, ask for guidance, you should always seek out to…

ask for help because that’s where your fears can be overcome just by sitting and thinking over thinking it is the biggest hurdle for your progress or even growth

So you should reach out to people or go join a real estate group or networking events and then start with one. Maybe you should work with your friend or a partner and then invest together to reduce the risk. Once you understand the

in and out of the real estate including how to work with the tenant, how to answer the issues. If you can go through one property, one cycle, one year, you will be expert. think you can do more. I think you need to take action. I think that’s the golden word I would like to say. You need to make the move, take action, take that little bit of risk, calculated risk.

but you have to take action before you do anything else you need to move make that move

Scott Bursey (20:43)
100 % and for our listeners who would like to follow your journey and collaborate with you, what is the best way for them to reach you?

Akshay Devendra (20:52)
So we are on Instagram. That’s where our biggest presence right now.

It’s vyom.realty We are working on building our website but right now the best way to reach out is through our Instagram and the phone number for me and my company is listed there it’s 937 768 6517. So you’ll find all that we do we do post updates about our renovation projects the properties that are going to be hitting the market.

coming listings and then potential collaborations. If there is a capital raise, we all, we all, keep posting stuff about all the things that we do. So that’s the best way to connect with us.

Scott Bursey (21:37)
Thank you so much for joining us here today, Akshay.

Akshay Devendra (21:40)
Thank you, thank you Scott. Thanks for giving me this opportunity. Thanks again for giving me this opportunity.

Scott Bursey (21:43)
This has been a sincere pleasure. It’s been.

you’re most welcome and you’re welcome back anytime. And to our listeners, we appreciate you, each and every one of you. If you got value from today’s episode, please subscribe. We’ve got a lineup of exceptional guests, just like Akshay, who are making huge moves in the market. Until next time, keep your standards high and your vision clear. We’ll see you on the next episode, everyone.

Akshay Devendra (21:51)
Thank you.