The Real Estate Blueprint: Scaling From Nothing to Massive Wealth with Scott Lurie

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Show Summary

In this conversation, Scott Lurie shares his extensive journey in real estate, starting from zero experience to building a diverse portfolio worth $750 million. He discusses the importance of relationships, accountability, and the role of technology in the industry. Scott emphasizes the potential for anyone to succeed in real estate, regardless of their background, and highlights key milestones and challenges faced along the way.

Resources and Links from this show:

• • • Investor Fuel Real Estate Mastermind
    • Investor Machine Real Estate Lead Generation
    • Mike on Facebook
    • Mike on Instagram
    • Mike on LinkedIn
    • F Street’s Website
    • The Hard Money Co.’s Website
    • Scott Lurie on Instagram
    • The Hard Money Co on Instagram
    • F Street Invest on Instagram
    • Scott Lurie on LinkedIn
    • Scott Lurie’s Email Address: [email protected]

  Listen to the Audio Version of this Episode

  Investor Fuel Show Transcript:

  Scott Lurie (00:00)
  there’s only one industry in our country, in my opinion, that you can start with nothing today, whatever the day is, January 2026, you can start with nothing on a journey with nothing, with only a motivation and a commitment to being successful that you can build a $10 million, $5 million.

  hundred million dollar, billion dollar portfolio. There’s not two industries, there’s only one. And that’s the real estate industry. There’s no other place in the world you can do what you can do in the real estate space. And to me, that is so motivating because you don’t need a college degree. You don’t even need a high school degree. You don’t need a license. You can get licenses, but you don’t need them. You only need

  motivation, hustle, and determination, and the ability to grow a portfolio. You can do that only in the real estate industry.

  Quentin Edmonds (02:27)
  Hello everyone. Welcome to the real estate pros podcast. I’m your host Q Edmonds. I’m excited to be here today. I have someone who has a wealth of knowledge, 20 years of experience doing what he do. And so I’m excited. I’m gonna let them tell you all, listen, as he was talking, I was writing, trying to list everything, but listen, you’re gonna see, this is gonna be a great episode. You’re gonna get a lot of nuggets, but I wanna introduce you all to Mr. Scott Lurie. Mr. Scott, how you doing today, sir?

  Scott Lurie (02:55)
  Doing great, great to be with you.

  Quentin Edmonds (02:56)
  man, great to have you here. I’m excited to have you here. And listen, I want to dive right in. I want you to tell the people what your main focus is these days. If you want to give us a little bit of an origin story of how you got into real estate, we love the hero’s journey. So we would love to know that. And then man, tell us where you are in the world, what markets you’re operating in. So Mr. Scott, sir, you have the floor,

  Scott Lurie (03:16)
  Yeah, great. It’s great to be with you, Q. Thanks so much for having me. My name is Scott Lurie. I started my real estate journey in August of 2003 with no experience, no knowledge, no assets, but just a pursuit for what is generational wealth and cash flow. I looked around the room and saw a lot of people, but most of the people that had the characteristics I was seeking, generational wealth, cash flow, all had some connection back to the real estate industry. So I said,

  Gosh, I got to get into that industry. And that’s when I started in 2003. My journey through Homevestors, which was a franchise program that I started from 2003 to 2008, left me with a wealth of experience flipping houses, wholesaling the old school way, and then ultimately building a rental portfolio of 1,500 apartments. And while we disposed of those, or we had a disposition of the 1,500 apartments,

  Our portfolio today really consists of three different at verticals. We do multifamily ground up building and we buy we do ground up industrial where we buy and build and then we have a private credit fund or a hard money lending business that lends to other real estate investors We’ve got 550 active loans almost 130 million dollars of portfolio value and we continue to grow in all three of our verticals and You real estate has really been one of the most important parts of my career

  It has set me to achieve the goals personally and professionally I’ve been trying to achieve and our pursuit continues every day. So that’s a little bit about me. It’s great to be here with you and with your audience and I’m excited to hear more about real estate and share my journey and any questions you might have.

  Quentin Edmonds (04:54)
  I love it, man. Well, thank you for setting this up. Thank you for taking us a little bit through your journey. How you got to where you are now. I have a saying where I say destiny has no wasted moments. Right. Meaning as we go through life, there are different things that happen in our life that kind of fortify who we are now. So I would love to know, man, do your journey, your destiny through real estate, stop at different destinations. What has the journey through real estate taught you about yourself? Like what it has it revealed to you about you?

  Scott Lurie (06:11)
  Yeah, it’s an interesting well great saying. I’ve never really looked at it at each milestone or each destined destination is what I’ve learned, but there’s been material destinations that have had implications on me. You know my first was obviously a pivot which was in August of 2003 when I was working for a family business and I and I knew it wasn’t the right fit right? Something was off. My equilibrium was off and.

  I had to tell my parents that was leaving the business and that experience was rewarding for them and for me. And I went on my own and that was the start, right? So that pivot, that destination or that destiny of August of 2003 really was the first day. Day one, I opened up an office. I looked around, I was by myself. I said, what did I just do? And then I got on the phones and started doing what I needed to do, which was start to perform the business. ⁓

  And that created the work ethic that I didn’t have anything to do that day, but I had to be there at seven in the morning and I had to leave at seven at night. And I had to put in the time because I knew I had to be there. And so that was step one. I look at some other milestones. I had my largest wholesale deal I ever did, which was in 2006. I wholesale the home. It was a contract. made $75,000 on it overnight.

  That was a lot of money. It still is a lot of money. And I was like, wow, that was a pretty big pivotal moment where I wanted to do more of that. I bought my first rental property in 2005. I didn’t know I did, but I bought a duplex I couldn’t sell. So I became a rental. So that was a great step in the journey. And then I think the biggest.

  milestone journey for me was really in January of 2010. We just came out of 08, 09. The world was kind of, I don’t know, all over the place. It was not stable by any means, but it was, the sun was kind of trying to peek around the clouds and I closed on 410 apartment units in two weeks. In the month of January, I bought 200, 400 units essentially.

  ⁓ That moment was really the aha moment when I walked into these vacant class C apartments or I walked into some neighborhoods I’ve never been in before and realized what did I just get myself into? And that moment was the moment where I said you’re either going to go to the moon or you’re going to go down. going down wasn’t an option. we started managing the asset. We had some nights where I was up kind of wondering what I just did. ⁓ Some deep

  stomach moments where I would push through, persevere, and then ultimately realize this was it. It was rewarding to fill a 30 % occupied building to renovate them and make them 100 % occupied and to then reap what would be the benefits of the cash flow and the banking industry, the getting to know people. those were the really big journeys for me. I conclude those with when I sold

  the 1500 apartments in 2022. That was a big moment for me. I bought my first industrial building in 2015 through a 1031 exchange from a multifamily unit. So that was a big moment. I remember these moments, even though I’ve done hundreds of transactions, I can today at random ask of a question, off the years and the times of me making these pivotal movements in my journey.

  And so it’s fun to reflect on those for sure. It’s fun to actually look back and say, ⁓ those were the moments and I relish those moments because they certainly make you who you are today.

  Quentin Edmonds (09:53)
  Man, thank you so much man for saying thank you guys. Thank you for taking us through the journey the pivot points in your life, man I’m sure those are golden nuggets for somebody listening and I want to ask you man sound like you are no stranger to overcoming adversity So if I had somebody out there that’s facing adversity While they’re doing real estate maybe at a pivotal time in their life when they have the pivot What advice would you give to somebody that’s kind of facing adversity based on your experience?

  Scott Lurie (10:52)
  Yeah, adversity, people handle adversity differently. And it’s interesting to me because I see it every day and I see it generally through the lens of a real estate investor who’s struggling through a loan. That’s generally what I see. ⁓ What I would call a problem, right? Whether the problem is monetary, whether the problem is contractor, whether the problem is. ⁓ Knowledge, whether the problem.

  the problems range, it’s very interesting to me who ultimately, who you actually reveal underneath that email when they respond or when they even don’t respond and stick their head in the sand or when their responses are incoherent and off center or when their comments are ⁓ non-direct and don’t answer the problems, which is an escape of the solution.

  When you have all of these things happening, in there, there’s a silver lining is that you find the people that call and say, I have a problem. I need some help, right? Raise their hand. need help. Those people win. What we find, what I find is the people that are facing adversity, problems, challenges that point fingers at others or don’t take accountability for it or become

  Beliger is the wrong word because most people still maintain professionalism but become ⁓ I would call ⁓ Not accountable for their actions are the ones that generally never make it right and if you look at the real estate space Or look at most industries, right if you look at the realtor space 90 % of the business is made up by 10 % of the realtors That’s the same in every other industry. There’s parallels right because most people ⁓

  don’t have either the tools to be successful, or they don’t have the connections, or they don’t have the mind. I blame it all on the mind, because every problem has a solution, so long as you can work towards that. so, no, the mind can’t make money for you, no, the mind can’t pay your bills for you, but the mind can get you to those solutions.

  We see this all the time. ⁓ Here’s what I’ll tell you. I started with nothing. I don’t have any Superman powers. I don’t have any extra skills. I didn’t have ⁓ a trust fund. I didn’t have a billion dollars. I had nothing. I had zero in August of 2003. So if you have nothing today, plan your goals to get to a hundred million. My goal today is to get my portfolio to be worth $1 billion.

  It’s currently 750 million. If you would have asked me in August of 2003 what my goal was, my goal then would be to probably flip a house or to buy a rental. And that goes from a rental to a duplex to a four family to an eight family to $750 million of assets. My goal today is a billion dollars. And I told our team, our goal after a billion is two billion, not a billion and a half. And so,

  Everybody should have the comfort of setting your own goals. You should be fair and honest to yourself. You should not make them easy because goals are not intended to be easy. They’re intended to be worked for and you should be achieving them with 100 % dedication and commitment, not 80, not 70, not excuses, not 10, but 100%. And our team, my team gives me 110%. I give them 110 % back and we worked towards our common goals.

  Most people don’t know what 110 % looks like is really the reality. And so they have all of these distractions or all of these things called life that interfere. those parties continually are the ones that are struggling. My plea is put all of the nonsense aside, look yourself in the mirror each day and go out and get it.

  Quentin Edmonds (14:57)
  Love it man. Love it. I’m actually just I want to talk about I know you talk about your team Guys are dedicated seem like you guys are on the same page So I want to talk a little bit about relationships in relationship building has building relationships been important to you within business What’s your strategy when it comes to building relationships like give me your outlook when it comes to building relationships within business?

  Scott Lurie (16:00)
  That’s a great question and relationships are probably the one most paramount part of this business, right? I still have the same banker from 2003. I still go to lunch with that banker often. I still use the same title companies I used in 2003 and beyond. I still ⁓ interact with the same survey companies. I still talk to the same environmental companies. We still use the same general contractors. All of those parties are

  What started as a business relationship, many have manifested into a personal relationship. ⁓ My contractor, one of my contractor’s kids ⁓ just asked my son to be a best man in his wedding. So the evolution of life is pretty remarkable. ⁓ my son wasn’t born probably when I met the guy, but 20 years later, they’re now attending each other’s weddings as groomsmen. So ⁓ you nail it.

  very properly is this business, any business, is a relationship business. We focus exclusively on relationships. We want to do business with people that are our partners, our friends, our peers, goals, commonality across everything we do, ideologies that are the same, responsibilities that are the same. So yeah, absolutely. I mean, they say birds of a feather and that is very true. We all kind of hang out together, right? And we all want to…

  see each other succeed. And when I see one of my other investors that people call competitors and I don’t, cause there’s enough land in my lifetime that I’ll never have a competitor, but I see them succeeding. I’m proud of them. I’m proud of what they’re doing and want to support them. And we see all that all over the place. So relationships are built over years and can be ruined in a minute. So you need to be mindful of how a relationship is a ruin. And that’s generally

  Generally, relationships get ruined when someone lies to you, when someone breaches trust, or when they steal money from you, right? And that’s in the business world, right? If I tell you I’m gonna do something, I’m gonna do it. I always tell people, I wanna put what I’m gonna do in writing so you see it, and then I’m gonna do it. And so long as that happens, you should feel really good about our relationship, because I’ll do everything I say I’m gonna do, always. And my expectation is very simple, for you to do the same thing.

  And so long as that’s the case, our relationships are great. And we do bumps in the road. Things happen, but you got to solve them with ⁓ a mature, responsible response and reaction.

  Quentin Edmonds (18:32)
  Yeah, nah man so eloquently said about relationships. I mean you didn’t you talk about generational relationships that you’re building you started now your son is carrying on the relationship tree branches that you connected So that’s awesome, man, and I loved how you talked about trust within relationships I like to say trust is earned and drops and learned and Trust is learned is earned in drops and they are Why I can’t get my words out that earned

  in drops and they’re lost in buckets. That’s what I was trying to say. It’s. Yeah, so so I was trying to follow you up, man. You’re so eloquent the way you live it. Relationships are appreciate you, man. But listen, Mr. Scott, if it is there any topic that we have not talked about that you would like to talk about, or is there any other words of education, motivation, inspiration that you want to leave? If it is, I would love to hear that.

  Scott Lurie (19:04)
  And that’s right. That’s well said.

  only thing, the only motivation, maybe a motivational discussion we can have is

  there’s only one industry in our country, in my opinion, that you can start with nothing today, whatever the day is, January 2026, you can start with nothing on a journey with nothing, with only a motivation and a commitment to being successful that you can build a $10 million, $5 million.

  hundred million dollar, billion dollar portfolio. There’s not two industries, there’s only one. And that’s the real estate industry. There’s no other place in the world you can do what you can do in the real estate space. And to me, that is so motivating because you don’t need a college degree. You don’t even need a high school degree. You don’t need a license. You can get licenses, but you don’t need them. You only need

  motivation, hustle, and determination, and the ability to grow a portfolio. You can do that only in the real estate industry.

  And so when I started with zero, right, so your balance sheet in August of 2003, read zero dollars. It didn’t have a dollar on it, it said zero. And if you fast forward to the long game that you’re in today where there’s 22 years of experience and education.

  And you can have $750 million of assets or a billion dollars of assets or $10 million of assets or a million dollars of assets. There’s no other place like real estate. I encourage people to educate themselves through podcasts, through YouTube, through all of the channels that are right and wrong, because not everyone’s preaching the right stuff, but through right and wrong, where you can understand and decipher right and wrong to get to the goals, whatever your goals are. If you want to.

  I was the first person in my family to get involved in real estate. My families were involved in a family business. And I remember sitting at the dinner table and listening to the gripes and the pains of my grandfather and my uncle. No one liked each other. I’m like, I don’t really want that. So you move into this space and I’m fortunate to have my cousin as my partner now. And we have a great relationship and life is evolving.

  we get to continue to do what we love, which is a passion for real estate. And so you can take that passion today, whoever you are on listener, who have zero, whoever you are, and you can make it worth whatever you want with real estate. There’s nothing else like it in the country. ⁓ It’s very unique. It’s very open and it’s on you. The burden is on you to achieve your goal, whatever your goal is.

  Quentin Edmonds (22:10)
  And I love I love everything you said. Thank you so much for being here today. This is Mr Scott. Is someone want to reach out to you if they wanted to connect with you? Collaborate with you, learn more about what you’re doing. How can I get in contact with you, sir?

  Scott Lurie (22:24)
  Yeah, absolutely. So we have a couple different ways to reach me. Scott, S-C-O-T-T at fstreet.com is my email. fstreet.com is our website. We also have a ⁓ lending website called thehardmoneyco.com. Thehardmoneyco.com is a way that you can submit an application or learn more about our private credit or how we support 550 investors throughout the country.

  You can learn more about us. We have Instagram handles, ScottJLurie is my personal one, but we use at hard money co for our business or at F street underscore in INV. ⁓ So I’m accessible as can be. If you Google me, you’ll find me, but scottatfstreet.com. I’d love to hear from anybody. Tell me your story. I love reading these success stories and ⁓ we want to continue to be part of the real estate community. That’s positive. That’s moving people forward.

  that’s giving people financial independence, generational wealth, cashflow that they’ve never dreamt of, all through proper means of real estate. And so it’s so great to be with you today and I look forward to hearing from you or your audience at any time.

  Quentin Edmonds (23:29)
  Man, thank you so much. Let me say three things to you, sir. First, thank you for your time. You know time is valuable. You know, we could put a premium on time. So thank you for your time. She definitely thank you for your story, man. Thank you for sharing, sharing from a transparent place, a place of integrity and authenticity. I greatly appreciate that. And lastly, man, thank you for your perspective. Thank you for your mindset and bringing that perspective to this platform. I really appreciate you being here today, Scott.

  Scott Lurie (23:53)
  Absolutely. Thank you so much. It’s great to be with you.

  Quentin Edmonds (23:55)
  Absolutely. So listen y’all said I said it from jump You can’t tell me you didn’t get value from that conversation. You can’t tell me you didn’t get nuggets So check the show notes check on Scott get with him collaborate with him now I love Scott but definitely make sure you are subscribed here because I promise you we’re gonna continue to bring up amazing people Just like mr. Scott. So thank you again Scott. It’s everyone else. I have a fantastic day