The Net Worth Nurse Strategy with Savannah Arroyo

Savannah Arroyo, RN, MSN (00:00)
And so we started learning about it. We joined a formal coaching program. We paid $30,000 to learn how to do this. I mean, that was more than my master’s degree, but we were so sold on it and knew that this was our ticket out of the rat race. This was a way that we could build a real estate portfolio and do it with friends and family and other people who wanted

to working with us.

Cody Crabb (02:00)
Welcome back to the Real Estate Pros podcast. I’m Cody Crabb with Investor Fuel and today I’m joined by Savannah Arroyo, the founder of the Networth Nurse, where she helps healthcare professionals invest in real estate. We’re going to talk about how she built this niche group and how she’s scaling into larger deals going forward and how she helps people, regular people get started. Savannah, thanks so much for joining us.

Savannah Arroyo, RN, MSN (02:22)
Yeah, we’re here. No, thanks for having me.

Cody Crabb (02:25)
Of course. Well, so ⁓ I’m curious, know, this is it seems like you have two very specific niches here. First of all, I’d love to know which came first, but then also like how do you how do you go from one to the other? Do you see it as like a pivot or not so much?

Savannah Arroyo, RN, MSN (02:41)
Yeah, definitely a pivot. Background first, ⁓ registered nurse. I really knew at a young age I wanted to go into nursing. So right out of high school, started pursuing my nursing degree. Even when I graduated and started working as a nurse, I loved process improvement and operations so much that I went back to school and I got my master’s degree in healthcare administration. And although I loved patient care, I really just loved ⁓ helping the nurses and supporting them even more.

Worked in a career mostly in management overseeing large departments in the healthcare system and it wasn’t until 2020 after having my second daughter that a lot of my priorities started changing up until then I wanted to be a C &O a chief nursing officer of a large health care organization and then once I had my two daughters really all those priorities shifted I started looking at my day-to-day and my financial constraints and having to go back to work when both of them were

or

three months old, was dependent on my W-2 income. I wasn’t bringing in any money unless I was trading time for it. And so in desperation, I set to Google ⁓ researching passive income, how to build income streams, ⁓ how to invest, how to build wealth, and started looking for ways that I could become less dependent on my W-2. And real estate investing kept popping up again and again and again. And I quickly learned that it is

one of the best ways out there to grow wealth.

Cody Crabb (04:14)
You know, so many parts of that are very familiar to me in this kind of hearing the origin stories. My priorities shifted, I Googled how do you make passive income and real estate was everywhere. ⁓ Very good. ⁓ So, okay, so let’s see here. ⁓ I love that that was really just like a, guess let’s try this and it kind of just ended up working. ⁓

What was your first real deal? Like what did that look like? I mean did you have anyone to help you? Was this kind of just on your own doing your own research?

Savannah Arroyo, RN, MSN (04:51)
Yeah, so it was initially doing a bunch of research online, watching YouTube videos, listening to podcasts, I found bigger podcast, I was listening to an episode for 40 minutes on my commute to work every morning and 40 minutes a different episode on my commute home from work every single day. So I was doing this for a solid probably six months and then got in touch with a mortgage lender because at that point I had owned a primary residence in Los Angeles and I got on the phone with the

Cody Crabb (05:11)
Yes.

Savannah Arroyo, RN, MSN (05:21)
Lender just started having the conversation that I wanted to start investing, looking into that. And he told me that I had $100,000 worth of equity in my primary residence. And I was so novice, I didn’t really know what that was at the time or how to even tap into that or what it meant. And he told me that I could leverage it on an 80 % LTV loan to value ratio.

Cody Crabb (05:34)
Wow.

Savannah Arroyo, RN, MSN (06:31)
So I pulled out $80,000 and use that as down payments on two build to rent single family

homes across the country in Atlanta, Georgia. So up until that point I was sold on the Burr method because I only had a fixed amount of capital and so learning about all the different strategies I thought that the Burr method would allow me to have that fixed amount of capital and continue to repeat and rinse and repeat and use it again and again. For anyone who’s unfamiliar with the Burr method you’re buying a property at a very low value, you’re renovating it, you’re renting it out, getting a tenant in there and

that’s now paying the pain for it. So you’re cash flowing. You refinance to essentially pull out all the money that you put into it, hoping that you’ve you’ve pushed some equity into it then you repeat. So that’s how you can kind of grow your portfolio. And so we were sold on that. My husband and I, we were looking at places over in Atlanta, Georgia, because we were based in Los Angeles and just money doesn’t go too far in that city. And so we were looking over in Atlanta, Georgia. And at that point, we had two children under the age of two.

and ⁓ this was going to be our first entry into real estate and overseeing a complete renovation across the country just it made us feel really uneasy and ⁓ ended up looking into a build to rent project because the home values are very low over there that we were able to get in with a developer who was building this home brand new so we were thinking okay not a lot of repairs and renovations capex needed on it and that we could slowly cash flow

Cody Crabb (07:49)
I

Savannah Arroyo, RN, MSN (08:08)
And ⁓ yeah, that’s how we got started on our first investment.

Cody Crabb (08:12)
Wow, that’s a heck of a story. Because a lot of times people are like, and so then I went back and got my real estate license. You’re just kind of like, how to make passive income send and you just took off after that. So that’s pretty amazing. ⁓ So ⁓ I guess my other question is, so okay, so you did the research, you got that first deal. ⁓ And so then at that point you were a real estate investor. But now you’re not just a real estate investor.

You have this community where you help other people. Tell me about that.

Savannah Arroyo, RN, MSN (08:47)
Yeah, so after we bought that, those two single family homes and they were cash flowing a little bit, we had one large turnover at six months and we had to repaint the entire home. It was like $3,000. And so it wiped out all our cash flow. We were looking at single family homes and like, is this really the best way? Is this the biggest use of our money? Luckily, during 2020 and 2021, there was huge appreciation across the entire country. And so we were able to exit those two properties still at a profit, although we negatively kept this is how

powerful real estate investing is, right? We negatively cashflowed on them, but we still sold them, each of them, for a $70,000 profit each. And so within a year and a half, like 18 months. And so walked away with that and then started looking at multifamily and became very interested in multifamily apartment complexes. We learned that they were extremely resilient. They were one of the first asset classes to bounce back after the 2008 housing crisis. And we were watching

during the pandemic and learning about the multiples, having 20 units under one roof as opposed to just one unit and being able to mitigate a lot of risk when you have people move out, they’re still covering rent because you have other tenants in place and ⁓ really the expense ratio at that point, having the power of multiples and so became really zoned in on multifamily and ⁓ started looking for deals and it

By

that time, some friends and family had heard what we were doing, that we had purchased the properties across the country and they wanted to join with us in some capacity. And we didn’t even know this at the time, but that’s what real estate syndications are. So real estate syndications are people pooling together their resources and going out and buying an asset class that they normally couldn’t buy on their own. Like for instance, the Empire State Building is one of the biggest syndications, right? A bunch of wealthy investors put money

into that passively and they own that as a group.

And so we started learning about it. We joined a formal coaching program. We paid $30,000 to learn how to do this. I mean, that was more than my master’s degree, but we were so sold on it and knew that this was our ticket out of the rat race. This was a way that we could build a real estate portfolio and do it with friends and family and other people who wanted

to working with us.

And so at that point, that’s when I launched my brand Net Worth Nurse right at the end of 2020, because I started learning about how powerful real estate investing could be in my life and how it could offset some of the time I was spending at the hospital. mean, most health care professionals, most nurses out there are thinking that the only way to build wealth is to sacrifice your physical and mental health and pick up shifts at the hospital, work double time, work that extra shift. And when I started

learning about these real estate investments and how you could earn money passively through these syndications, I became very passionate about sharing it with healthcare professionals because they don’t know about it. And so that’s what motivated me to launch Networth Nurse was to really get the word out there about financial literacy and investing and more specifically these real estate syndications. And ⁓ the healthcare community loved it. ⁓ still take

calls

every week with health care professionals in the community who are looking for ways to build wealth outside of double time and picking up shifts. And so it has been an amazing opportunity to connect now with thousands of health care professionals. And to date we have almost 100 health care professionals who have invested with us, who have partnered with us on syndication deals. I’ve raised close to $7 million to go out and buy. have six apartment complexes.

Cody Crabb (13:14)
Wow.

Savannah Arroyo, RN, MSN (13:20)
purchased two buildings that were turning into assisted living facilities. So it’s a really great way. It’s become a win-win for us as we’re growing our business and then for the healthcare professionals who want to get involved with real estate investing, but they don’t want to deal with the tenants, toilets and trash. You know, they don’t want to have an active role in real estate investing, but they still want to reap the benefits of appreciation and cash flow and the tax benefits that come even as a passive investor in these real estate

So it’s been, yeah, an amazing, amazing road.

Cody Crabb (13:55)
So, wow, that’s amazing. ⁓ as hard as know nurses especially work, I’m sure that that’s a relief to hear. There are other ways to do this, yeah. So, what’s been the hardest part for you about scaling? mean, it sounds like you went from just a couple of properties, now you’re digging into multifamily and other things. What has been your biggest challenge in scaling this?

Savannah Arroyo, RN, MSN (14:09)
Yes.

Yeah, I would say the unknown. But for me, that’s

Also, what is scary but equally as exciting, right? So there’s many things that I didn’t even know about real estate investing when I started jumping into this, but a big learning curve at first. But I love ⁓ learning. I love figuring things out. If I don’t know the answer to something, it is, mean, now AI, Chachi BT has really turned the corner for us in our business over the last couple of years. But I mean, before

that

the book who not how I mean just getting on the phone with people. mean I’ve been just very very proactive of picking up a phone and calling lenders and calling brokers and talking to investors and I mean I we’ve done close to 10 transactions multifamily transactions and I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard no from a lender. You know it usually takes six seven knows trying to get money on a deal before you get that yes and

I just have never been put off by that. mean, for me, it’s just even made me want to push even more. ⁓ But I would say, yeah, that learning curve of not knowing is is a little, yeah, tedious at first getting on the other side of that.

Cody Crabb (16:27)
Yeah, that makes sense because like you said, for some people I think it’s an advantage because you can’t be scared of what you don’t know. So you just dig in and you’re like, well, that sounds like your initial investment was a lot like that where you’re just like, well, I’ll figure it out and you didn’t even know what to be afraid of. So if right now…

Savannah Arroyo, RN, MSN (16:35)
Yeah.

Cody Crabb (16:52)
What’s taking the most of your time? are you mostly focused on the real estate investing part or on the mentoring and coaching side?

Savannah Arroyo, RN, MSN (17:00)
Yeah, definitely real estate. I’m always open and available to coaching. I’ve connected with many other healthcare professionals who want to learn how to do this stuff. And I still do that very regularly. But right now ⁓ we’re opening up two assisted living facilities here local to where I’m at in Northern California. And that was, so I just left my nursing career last year after 10 years. Yep, 10 years working as a registered nurse. I finally tipped the scales with the real estate investments and was able

Cody Crabb (17:23)
Whoa.

Savannah Arroyo, RN, MSN (17:30)
to leave nursing completely last year. And ⁓ quite ironic how quickly I jumped right back into healthcare through these assisted living facilities. So I’ve always learned, heard about assisted living, but we were just always very narrowed in and focused on multifamily and have been so very successful with our multifamily portfolio over the last five years. ⁓ But yeah, once I left nursing in February of last year, I started looking more into these assisted living facilities.

and what it takes to own and operate one and to start one from scratch. And so here in Northern California, we bought two properties. We’re doing full renovations, like half a million dollar renovations on each of them. And then we’re turning them into assisted living facilities. So and I saw this all the time in the hospital. So I mean, these are people who who fell, they fractured their hip and they can’t go back home. It’s not safe for them. But they really they don’t need really skilled nursing care. They just need help.

with laundry and meals and medication management, you know. ⁓

Cody Crabb (18:34)
Yeah.

Savannah Arroyo, RN, MSN (18:35)
transportation to and from doctors appointments. And so the care level is very low. ⁓ And a lot of the time it’s people who don’t have family in the area. They’re really isolated in their home and it’s just really not safe for them. And so the option is for them to move into these assisted living facilities and started learning more about just the trends in the baby boomers, the aging population, the inventory for these homes.

and the beds across the country is at an all-time low. So there’s just really not enough of these places to house our aging population. And so really feel like we’re kind of jumping in on the wave and riding it out, but it’s really fun getting involved in it because I do love healthcare. I have such a passion for caring for others and providing those resources and support. And so being able to blend real estate now with healthcare has been

been

super powerful and really has lit up a new passion within me. I mean, I’ve always loved real estate investing like multifamily, but being able to add this healthcare piece with the assisted living facilities is really, really fun. So ⁓ that’s really my biggest focus right now. We just did two ⁓ raises for that. we have a bunch of, mean, most of them were existing investors who have invested it with us in other deals. And when they found out we were doing assisted living facilities,

Cody Crabb (19:40)
Yeah.

Savannah Arroyo, RN, MSN (20:05)
I mean most of them are healthcare professionals, right? So they were very very excited. I mean they see this every single day They’re going into work the opportunity here and so had a very very big interest from our existing investors for this asset class and Yeah, we’re wrapping up renovations on both the buildings I’m working with the Department of Social Services to get licensing on the buildings and bringing in employees a little bit different than multifamily We do have employees

Cody Crabb (20:12)
Yeah.

Wow.

Savannah Arroyo, RN, MSN (20:34)
⁓ We are going to be caring for people in a different capacity, I’m really excited about it.

Cody Crabb (20:34)
Yeah.

Yeah, I think one of the neat things about real estate is whatever other passions you have, there’s probably a way to tie it back to real estate. Like if you love live music, like you could open up a music venue if you’re into healthcare. So it’s neat that it’s a way to kind of merge a lot of interests while also still being able to provide that for your family and for people around you too. ⁓ So other than the employees, how is investing, and the licensing of course, but. ⁓

Savannah Arroyo, RN, MSN (20:48)
Absolutely.

Yes.

Cody Crabb (21:10)
Other than that, how is investing in assisted living different from multifamily? Obviously, it’s very different, but what do you see the biggest differences are?

Savannah Arroyo, RN, MSN (21:17)
Yeah.

Yeah, so that would be more like from an expense side, like if we’re looking at income and expenses for an expense side, you do have the extra staffing that you’re now being accounted for, different things in the home, you’re furnishing it all completely. But the income, I mean, it is drastically different too. So for example, here in Santa Rosa, California, where I live, ⁓ the average rent for a private room and assisted living facility is seven, $8,000.

for

one room. So we have a 15 bed facility where we can easily earn, you know, a hundred plus thousand dollars a month in income on that. Yes, you do have the extra expenses of the staffing and that sort of thing, but the income is just drastically different. So for us being able to achieve really great returns for investors is always what we’re looking at. mean, for us, ⁓ we’re looking at, we’re aiming for ⁓ over 20 % average to annualized returns.

for our investors on all our deals. So we’ve done that with multifamily and have been able to exit three deals so far achieving those returns for our investors. And that’s the number that you’d want to compare to the stock market, which historically does around six, 7%. So as you can see, if you’re earning 20 % average annualized return, I mean, that’s a big difference than what most healthcare professionals or people are used to when they’re just investing in their 401k or a brokerage account.

That has always been a goal for us and what our investors are looking for. And as we go out and pursue these deals and as we started looking at the numbers and the returns on these assisted living facilities, we were able to see, we can easily achieve those returns for our investors and even more. And so from that standpoint, it has been a huge shift in what we’re acquiring with my investment company, Willow Investment Group. So that’s the investment company that

my husband and I started. And that’s where we go out and put together these syndications for investors. And yeah, like I said, we had a handful of multifamily deals. We have a self-storage facility as well, but now we’re all in on these assisted living facilities. We’ve bought two in the last six months and we’re already looking to add more to our portfolio.

Cody Crabb (23:39)
Wow, wow,

okay, so it sounds like that’s very exciting for you, because it’s like you get to merge these two worlds that are so exciting for you. So as far as, ⁓ you talk to a lot of healthcare professionals in general, but these are people with W-2 jobs, they’re busy, they’re tired, they work a lot of hours. ⁓ So what is it that you see?

Savannah Arroyo, RN, MSN (23:44)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Cody Crabb (24:04)
that what’s a mistake people tend to make when they’re in that type of career, ⁓ when they want to get investing in real estate? We’re kind of winding down here in the last few minutes, but I’d just be curious to know what’s something that you see happening with people like that?

Savannah Arroyo, RN, MSN (24:22)
Yeah, so a lot of people don’t even think they can jump in. So our usual minimum investment in most first syndications is around that $50,000 mark. ⁓ I work with different investing groups who allow you to get in a lot lower than that if that’s not feasible for you. But for a lot of health care professionals, they don’t know and most people don’t know is that you can actually invest in these syndication deals through retirement accounts. So many nurses work many different jobs. And when they leave a job, you have

Cody Crabb (24:47)
Hmm.

Savannah Arroyo, RN, MSN (24:52)
an old 401k just sitting there collecting dust ⁓ really easily with a click of a button. And I just did this when I left my employer last year. I had fidelity. You can go into the account with a click of a button. You convert that old 401k account that’s not doing anything. You convert it into ⁓ rollover IRA and then you can move it into what’s considered a self-directed IRA. And these self-directed IRA accounts have been around since the 70s. Most people don’t know about it.

or introduced to them because they don’t want to have an active role over their finances. They don’t want to go and seek out where their money is going. It’s easier to just kind of set it and forget it. But as I start talking to health care professionals and people who are interested in investing and want to be more proactive over their finances, they learn that it’s very easy to just move this over into a self-directed IR account. And with these accounts, you can invest in things like gold and jewels, ⁓ things like that, also real estate.

And so this allows a lot of people who think that they don’t have the available funds, but they have these older retirement accounts to jump into these investments. So you can invest ⁓ through these retirement accounts. The only caveat is that all the distributions that we’re sending out, so all the money that you’re earning on it, do go back into the retirement account. So it’s not as liquid as if you were investing with $50,000 cash, but still a great, great way to ⁓ grow.

grow your portfolio. I mean, Albert Einstein compounding interest is the eighth wonder of the world, right? I mean, being able to grow your money at a 20 % rate as opposed to that 6, 7 % rate. I mean, that is huge. I mean, over a 5, 10 year period. I mean, the returns that you get are massive on that. So that would I would say is ⁓ something that most people don’t know that I’m always very happy to ⁓ share with them. I have a whole page on my website dedicated to it.

Cody Crabb (26:36)
Yeah, that’s massive.

Savannah Arroyo, RN, MSN (26:51)
you

Cody Crabb (26:51)
Well that brings us nicely into,

I wanna definitely connect our listeners to you online. So where can they go to find you online?

Savannah Arroyo, RN, MSN (26:59)
Yeah, my website, so networth nurse.co has a lot more about my personal brand and coaching, but you can always get to our investment company from that website and vice versa. You can bounce back and forth. The other website is willowinvestmentgroup.com. So that’s more about our syndication deals, how you could potentially partner with us on one of these investments and be very passive and still earn amazing returns and investing. And then Net Worth Nurse, I share a little bit more about just my

life, my life as an investor and what I’m doing is a little more personal.

Cody Crabb (27:35)
That’s wonderful. Just one last question I’d love to ask you. let’s ⁓ rewind a little bit. 10 years ago, I would love for you to, if you could go back and tell yourself something 10 years ago, what would that be? Because that’s before you started any of this, right? So what would your message be to Savannah 10 years ago?

Savannah Arroyo, RN, MSN (27:45)
Yeah.

Yep. Mm-hmm. Yeah, for sure.

I would just say follow my heart. think following your intuition and listening to yourself. ⁓

you people and it’s different for everyone, know, different things light different people on fire in different ways. And ⁓ for me, it can be and everyone so easy to get into the mind and mentally start talking yourself out of things. But deep inside, you know, you know, you have this passion and you want to do it. And there have been many times over the years where I’ve talked myself out of things logically and gotten into that mental space. And now I’ve just been very honed in on following my heart, my intuition.

and listening to myself from that capacity.

Cody Crabb (28:44)
Savannah, thank

you so much for joining us today. You’ve given us a lot of great stuff. And listeners, if you got something out of this episode, which I know you did, go ahead and hit subscribe so that you get notified about future episodes. And we will see you next time on the Real Estate Pros podcast.