The Real Estate Investing Strategy That Survives Every Market Cycle | Elijah Castelli

Elijah Castelli (00:00)
hard work outworks talent when talent don’t work. Folks, you’ve not got to be that talented to get ahead. You just gotta work at it. And I’m gonna say this too. Sometimes you win, sometimes you learn.

It ain’t all about the wins. It’s all about the learning. You’re going to have a lot more failure in this process than what you could probably ever imagine. But in that, in you’re going to have more failures than you’re going to have win wins, right? Like if we look at a national championship football, basketball, baseball team, there’s only one person that’s going to get that championship ring. And they’re going to take a lot of losses to get to that. So you got to get comfortable with that process. You’ve got to get real comfortable with being okay with failure.

and learning from that and adjusting and we’re in a market that’s always changing. So you’re never gonna know it all.

Scott Bursey (02:20)
Welcome back to the Real Estate Pros podcast powered by Investor Fuel. I’m your host, Scott Bursey And today we’re sitting down with Elijah Castelli from Elevate Real Estate. Elijah has been a licensed realtor for over 21 years and has sold hundreds of properties. He’s a guy who didn’t wait around. He bought his first rental at age 16. Pros today, you can expect to hear how a faith-driven approach creates incredible longevity.

in this industry and how to stay the course through any market cycle. Elijah, welcome to the show.

Elijah Castelli (02:55)
Glad to be here, Scott. Appreciate you all having me. Thank you.

Scott Bursey (02:58)
It is

awesome having you here and to help our listeners get up to speed. Please give us the ninety second highlight reel of how your career ignited and where you’re pouring your fuel now. Yeah.

Elijah Castelli (03:09)
Okay, so how did my career create get started in ninety seconds? That’s a great question. And I can say that for me, my mom had a few rentals. Unfortunately, me and my mom didn’t get along that well, and at the age of fifteen, she passed away.

So she left life policy and it got split three ways. I took a portion of that life policy, bought a rental. I did see mom have rentals. I did go to auctions at a young age. And when mom passed away she left that life policy. I took ⁓

Scott, I think it was $13,500 and bought my first rental. And Scott, I watched that rental pay itself off probably three times in five years. One, ⁓ when ⁓ the insurance, the roof came off it, insurance paid me pretty much what I paid for the mobile manufactured home, ⁓ and we put the roof back on ourselves.

Secondly, ⁓ through renting it, it paid itself off in that first five years. And then when I sold it, I believe I sold it a little below market value. But again, three times in five years, I helped my dad with construction. He was a small business owner. And you know, during winter he did paving and sale coating. So during winter I didn’t have any money coming in. So that little rental started to teach me a little bit then about passive income.

Fast forward that to probably the age of about twenty one or two. Back back then, Scott, you’d go into a real estate office and they would have boards up. And I just walked into a Century Twenty-one office. I went and I pointed to the very cheapest house and I asked an agent, it was a lease made well. I said, Can you take me out to go see this home? We went and looked at it. I made an offer on it, ⁓ got that home for like thirty-three thousand, fixed it up, rented it.

And years later, ⁓ ended up selling that for like three times what I gave for it. But Scott, in that process, I began to realize if you’re going to have an investment property, you’re probably gonna work through a real estate agent. Now again, I was at a young age the way I earned a the way I got money was through cutting out coupons as an allowance. So whatever we saved in coupons, I ended up getting. So I began to realize like if I ain’t gonna pay that three percent or that six percent.

then it was just like saving money. Plus I realized the real estate agents were going to see him first. So man, I launched into getting my real estate license and I could tell you again we’re doing this in 90 seconds or less. So I could go on a lot further, but that’s how I kind of got my start brother.

Scott Bursey (05:39)
That is a powerful story. Thank you for sharing that with us, Elijah. And what really caught my attention about you was the way that you’ve been able to maintain such high level of success for over two decades while staying deeply grounded in your faith. It’s rare to find that kind of balance. And on that note, we’re curious to know looking back at that 16-year-old buying your first rental, what was the

moment where you realize real estate wasn’t just a side hustle, but your life’s calling.

Elijah Castelli (07:00)
Yeah, that’s a great question. ⁓ man, I thought I was gonna help my dad with the paving and tree work. That Scott I found a lot of joy in just helping my dad. Unfortunately

My brother had and I had developed some bad habits and ⁓ it carried over to the workplace. August the eighth, nineteen ninety-eight, I show up at a little country church, a friend of mine who continued to prospect me and come talk to me about going to church and God, and I and I was thinking, you know, John, I’m real happy for you. Your life’s going great. ⁓ I’m happy for you, but I’m still like doing what I like doing here. Eventually he caught me on a day that things weren’t going so good. My girlfriend was

My best friend, the cops had impounded my vehicle, and I’d like lost my license three times in one year. So I was like, brother, what do we got to do? And I don’t know that he knew, but he said, Let’s pray. Shortly after that, Scott, I ended up in a little church. I do not remember what the pastor said, but I I do remember ending up at a little altar dealt town. Scott, I said these simple words. I said, God, I don’t know if you can do what these people say you can do or not, but if you can, I’ll serve you.

And I got up from that altar never needing another drug, never needing another relationship to be whole again.

I knew if I didn’t put my hands back to something, I could fall back into some old bad behaviors. So I went out and I bought that home. I was twenty-two years old and I went to the Century Twenty-one building and man, that place was a mess. We found bedrooms and rooms in it that we didn’t even know was in it when we went in there and started fixing it up. And I had a church family come in and give me a hand with that. They were so kind and so generous. ⁓ and at that same time I got sent out to a missionary school.

In South Carolina, Wallahalla. ⁓ and and these were missionaries that had gone all over the world. Prior to that, Scott, the people that I’ve seen in my life that were in their mid fifties and sixties were playing cards and making bad jokes pretty well, just like big kids. And those were the people I looked up to. So when I went to this missionary school

I began to look up to a whole different group of people. And I seen these people in their 60s and 70s just going all over the world and living life to the fullest. Not what you would see if you were me growing up in a little area like Doyle, Tennessee. So I was excited. I brought that back with me. And I began to lean in a lot to John Maxwell’s books. And I believe that whatever we have, it’s we have a marketplace ministry. So wherever we’re at.

That’s our ministry. And man, being able to help people navigate through buying or selling real estate, you know that’s one of the most stressful situations. And then for me, having the experience of doing investing since I was 16, I’m now 50, July 18th, you know, we can really help people walk through that process and take out a lot of the fear and a lot of the mistakes that, you know, we all made when we had to hit the windshield head on.

Scott Bursey (09:46)
And Elijah, you just released a book, How to Elevate Your Rental Wealth. Could you give us a little bit of ⁓ a background on that publication? Yeah.

Elijah Castelli (09:57)
So

You know, it was Coach Burt up here in Nashville, it’s called the Greatness Factory. And he he ⁓ talks a lot about the value of putting out a book. And he got me understanding that a book doesn’t have to be like this big novel, that it can be a very small, basically a how-to tool to help people in whatever your profession is. Howard Partridge and Michelle Prince, great friends of ours, part of an inner circle small business owner group, they do something called book bound. So me and

My dad went out there probably about a year ago, we went through their course and

And Michelle said, just go back and think about when you were young and you know, kind of write out a timeline. Well, I came pretty quickly to 16 buying my first rental. And so from that I began to write that book. It flowed out so easily. You know, it was just a very simple, very practical. You’d probably read it over the weekend. You know, if you picked it up, you could read it before you you could have it read in two hours. Very simple read. But from 16 to 50, I’ve learned a thing or two.

And buying a rental is so simple. It’s a you know, really what I did was I just said, what’s the ideal rental? And I I doing some research, I realized that Scott, less than five percent of all people in America own a second home. Less than five percent own a second home. Now me and you both know that that would be a lot more than that if people, you know, what happened who ever hi who in here has ever hired their first employee?

Right? Like I remember my first employee. I remember the lady inviting me to McDu or ⁓ Burger King and crying her eyes out saying, This is too stressful. I just can’t handle this. Right? I remember my first rental. I remember kids running up on the roof of that second one I bought and and and doing damage. And like, you know, there’s all these hard lessons that you can just absorb and take out because we’ve learned them. And I put that into a book. There’s really three simple pr principles. You know, it’s it’s cash.

Flow, where you buy, and ⁓ and how much time is it going to take to get it ready to go on the market? You shouldn’t have to put a lot of money in your first rental.

You should buy in a good location and it should cash flow for you pretty quickly. Then you need a team, right? Like you know, you need realtors, you need contractors, you need CPAs, you need insurance guys, you need to build a team. And I just basically walk you through it. It’s so simple that when you’re done, if you’ll go out there and just start the process, you’ll you’ll be a pro at it. And my goal is to see that 5% of second homeowners, let’s get that number up to 15 or 25.

Why not retire wealthy?

Scott Bursey (12:34)
Elijah, we all have blind spots. How do you manage the tension of maintaining a faith driven life while competing in the aggressive high stakes world of real estate sales?

Elijah Castelli (13:20)
Yep. Scott, I think it’s that’s just a really simple answer to that. It’s the people you put yourself around. You know, if I if I ho if I go to the gym, I wanna look like the people that are in the gym, right? For the most part, I wanna be in good shape, I wanna I wanna be fit. ⁓ I’m very

intentional about the people I work with, the people I partner with. It’s you know, I’ve made some bad partnerships and when I look back, a lot of times I let greed get in front of core values. And when that’s happened, thank thankfully it’s always come back to bite me. And it’s always happened pretty quick. And I go back and you know sometimes you win, sometimes you learn. And you think, man, that looked really good. Everything right there looked like it should have worked out just fine. ⁓ but our core values didn’t align.

So those type of things, putting yourself around the right people and realizing when you don’t, what can happen.

Scott Bursey (14:06)
Elijah, with your deep experience, where do you see the biggest untapped opportunity for new investors in the current market climate?

Elijah Castelli (14:15)
Yeah, well you know, I don’t know what this number would be nationally, but in the state of Tennessee, thirty-three percent of of all eighteen up and older ⁓ are are are renters. Like they’re gonna be occupants, they’re gonna be tenants. And that has not gotten no easier. Scott, in the last five years, we’ve seen our prices increase so much in this state. So people that like for me to buy my first rental at f 16, my son bought his first rental at 15, my wife’s fairly competitive, and she’s if your dad did that at

16. You should be able to do that before him. And and so he did it. At fifteen he bought his first one. But I’m looking at Noah. He’s he’s fifteen. I’m looking at my daughter Emmy, she’s thirteen.

And I’m thinking, man, how are these guys ever going to be able to afford to buy a $400,000 home at a 6.5% interest rate and and really be able to afford to make that a payment on you know $40,000, $50,000 a year job? And how are you going to even make that at 20 years old? So the sad truth is, Scott, the reality is you’re going to have a lot more occupants, a lot more tenants than ever before. They can’t afford to buy.

So, you know, again, being faith-led, being a part feeling like we should be coaching and mentoring that next generation coming up, I think we need to be offering them more opportunities. And we don’t want we want a five-star service in the rental market. Meaning that if you’re having an issue with your plumbing or electric, we’re gonna have somebody come right over there and take care of that. meaning that when these people need to rent, that they’re gonna have a good place at an affordable price. ⁓ and it don’t have to be the top.

Mahaw. You know, I know for a lot of those younger folks, they’re probably thinking I’ve got to have ⁓ a certain lifestyle. Look, you can give up a certain lifestyle for a little while to end up with a lot more later in life. So don’t try to keep up with the Jones, but don’t put yourself but put yourself in a good situation. So for us man, I think that rental market is a big, a big market to be looking into.

Scott Bursey (16:11)
Elijah, having seen multiple market cycles, what do you think is the biggest threat right now to agents or investors who are just starting out?

Elijah Castelli (16:20)
Yeah, the biggest threat to agents or investors just starting out. You know, I got my license again in two thousand and five. Two thousand and six, seven. ⁓ things were still okay. But what I had looking back, I didn’t realize I was doing this. I just wasn’t paying enough attention.

But in 2008, I built two new construction homes. About 78% through with these homes, my dad looked at me and he Elijah, you could stop building these homes right now. I thought, are you crazy? Why would I stop building these homes? But he seen something I wasn’t aware of at that time in my young, you know, go back twenty years ago.

I didn’t realize that the whole market was fixing to fall apart. Now, do I think the market’s fixing to fall apart right now? Absolutely not. I’m not saying that. I think we’re gonna be okay as a a market. But I did know that, Dan, and I think you need to be aware of the fact is at some time the market will shift. Warren Buffett said, when the tide goes out, you can see who’s skinny dipping. Well, I’m here to tell you. I did a little research, nineteen twenty nine, Great Depression, the market had dropped about nationally on average, the real estate market

decreased thirty percent. The housing crisis of two thousand and six, seven, eight, nine, the the housing recession, it only dropped thirty-five percent nationally. So I think looking at that and being wise with your debt to income, you’re like I I think as long as you’re keeping yourself at about no more than 70% debt, you’re almost for the last century you’d have been fine.

So you’re not going to have to worry about it if you don’t go into debt up to your eyeballs. If you’re 95% maxed out and the market shifts just a little bit, that can be a very, very tense situation. If you keep it 70% or a little lower, you’re for the last hundred years, you’d have been okay. You’d have waited, you’d awaited that storm. So to me, I think you just need to be careful. I like debt’s a good thing. I think it’s a healthy thing to have. I just think you need to be careful with how you use it.

Scott Bursey (18:50)
What is the most ⁓ significant personal transformation you’ve gone through since closing those first deals back when you were sixteen?

Elijah Castelli (18:58)
Hey brother, that’s a great question, Scott. And you I’m gonna always give God all the credit for everything good in my life. And then I’m gonna say it was getting a coach. Like we we really So my wife and I got married, ⁓ be nineteen years ⁓ in December of this year, and we worked really well together. We could close about thirty, thirty-four deals a year in real estate sales.

I I got a real estate coach with Mike Ferry, the Mike Ferry organization. We had a coach, coach Joe Lehman for for thirty minutes. Once a week he’d call me, man, he just kicked my butt. You know, why haven’t you made your phone calls? Why hadn’t you gone on more appointments? You know, how how come you didn’t close the deal this this month?

And ⁓ and so man, but I had this coach that just, you know, kinda like Rocky had Mickey, you that old crusty guy that would come beside him and just kind of Rocky. You know, I had coach Joe and Joe just he beat me up a lot, but I needed that.

I needed somebody that was gonna toughen me up, not tell me what I want to hear. And but you know, there needs to be a little encouragement there too. And and and I didn’t get, you know, I’d say that that I might need somebody tougher for me personally. But I think you need to balance that with some pretty good encouragement too. But Coach Joe Man was such a blessing to me. I was a part of that coaching for over 13 years. We went from selling 34 or five homes a year to, you know, easily can sell 75 to 100 homes a year. I could sell more than that if I

Wanted to, Scott, but at the end of the day, I really love building people pouring into our community. So at 75 to 100 homes, we we are blessed to be able to have a very good living, and I still have time to build the elevate community. And eventually I know I gotta let go of the sales and and and and and grow the brokerage and the property management side more. I’m still having fun doing that. I could do that the rest of my life, but at the end of the day, the bigger picture is pouring into people.

Scott Bursey (20:44)
Elijah, if you could walk us through what does your professional network look like right now?

Elijah Castelli (20:49)
Yeah, d you know that’s a good question. you always hear like if you’re the biggest fish in the pond, you’re in the wrong pond.

And so I feel like for me I have to work a little harder to get myself outside of Tennessee to latch on to some of those people. ⁓ not really latch on maybe a good word, but to get connected with those people. You know, so ⁓ the Howard Partridge, the Inner Circle, that’s a group of business owners that has really helped me grow a business mindset. You know, when you go from learning how to sell 75 to 100 homes a year and you look at team and then brokerage, then a property management company ⁓ then flips a new build, it’s like, okay, you’re really running a business.

And so nobody really tells you. So I really had to kind of get a coach for that section too. And I found that with Howard Partridge in the inner circle. They’re good business owners. Now, Coach Burt up here in Nashville, the Greatness Factory, he does a great job of attracting really good people. Like Roy Vaden’s gonna be coming in August, a great all author, great, you know, he can get you to become a New York Times bestseller. but but man, here’s the deal: I pay for it, ain’t none of that stuff free.

There’s always a fee. When I was with the Mike Ferry Coaching Association, it it used to kill me to spend a thousand dollars a month to be able to get some of the best coaching in the world. But the value was always there. And when I look back, I think, did I make twelve thousand dollars being a part of this group? Every year, ten times. So, you know, when you go w out to Nashville with Coach Burton, so there’s always a price to pay in a bigger pond.

But the best investment you can make is in yourself. Those billboards, they’re only gonna last while you’re around. If you invest in you, no matter where you go, you get to take that with you.

Scott Bursey (22:27)
That’s powerful. And where do you see that power taking your company elevate real estate here in the next, let’s say 12 to 24 months?

Elijah Castelli (22:38)
Great question. we really gotta get focused in on attracting more good sales agents.

And we’ve really got to work hard to get a great property management team. And we’ve got most of the we’ve got all the foundation laid strong, I feel. ⁓ I believe that. And we’ve got the systems and processes. You know, I heard Billy Cox say this not too long ago. You’ll make your first hundred thousand through your sales skills. You’ll make your first million through your systems and processes. You make your first ten million through your reputation. And ⁓ and so I feel like we’re we’re really working

We got the systems and processes. Now we just need to do a little better job of pro intentionally proactively recruiting great sales agents that we can plug into. See, I’m gonna in in my profession, Scott, after the first five years only thirteen percent of all real estate agents that started will still be in business.

five years from now. So we’re only looking for the thirteen percent. We’re not looking for the eighty the s you know the seventy-seven. We’re looking for the thirteen percent. And it and it’s hard when your old country boy grew up in the state of Tennessee to kind of run through people. But at the end of the day

That is the name of the game. To find the good ones, you’re gonna have to go through a bunch. And I happen to be a good one, and I don’t know if that just came from, you know, my dad doing paving and tree work and standing on ha hot asphalt driveways and then basically pinching myself when I get to show up in a suit and sell real estate. I I I don’t think I’m any better than anybody else. But I didn’t think I’d be that hard to replace or find. And the longer I’ve been around to find people that really want to come in and go to work and grow a business and be successful. ⁓ and

not take the shortcuts and not get too greedy along the way, those folks are hard to find.

Scott Bursey (24:25)
Let’s continue down that path. If you were forced to start over today with only ten thousand dollars and the knowledge that you have now, what is the exact first move that you would make to to get back to where you are currently?

Elijah Castelli (24:39)
Yeah. W ⁓ d b okay, so what would come to top of mind pretty quickly was I would go find a good the best flip I could find, use that ten thousand for the down payment and try to get that on the market, get it sold as quick as I could so I could do the next one. And maybe if I bought it right, I could go ahead and pull a little equity out of that one and start moving on the next one a little quicker.

Scott Bursey (25:01)
That is some incredible advice and you have been very insightful here today. Is there any additional advice that you could leave with the pros?

Elijah Castelli (25:10)
Yeah, that’s a great question, Scott. I just say this that you know hard work outworks talent when talent don’t work. Folks, you’ve not got to be that talented to get ahead. You just gotta work at it. And I’m gonna say this too. Sometimes you win, sometimes you learn.

It ain’t all about the wins. It’s all about the learning. You’re going to have a lot more failure in this process than what you could probably ever imagine. But in that, in you’re going to have more failures than you’re going to have win wins, right? Like if we look at a national championship football, basketball, baseball team, there’s only one person that’s going to get that championship ring. And they’re going to take a lot of losses to get to that. So you got to get comfortable with that process. You’ve got to get real comfortable with being okay with failure.

and learning from that and adjusting and we’re in a market that’s always changing. So you’re never gonna know it all. You’ve got to be able to adapt to that a little bit and just pay attention. And I think if you do that, you’re gonna be you’re gonna turn out so good it’s not even gonna be it’s gonna be amazing.

Scott Bursey (26:12)
Thank you for that, Elijah. And for those of our listeners that want to keep this conversation moving, stay in your lane or collaborate with you, what’s the best way for them to reach you?

Elijah Castelli (26:21)
Okay, so website tnelevate.com, tnelevate.com, and then you can reach out to me directly. Text will come right to me,

Scott Bursey (26:32)
Elijah, thank you for joining us today on the Real Estate Pros podcast. This has been just sensational.

Elijah Castelli (26:38)
Thank you. Thank you, Scott. I appreciate it. Appreciate your listening, audience.

Scott Bursey (26:42)
It’s been just a pleasure having you here. And to our listeners, we appreciate you. If you received value from today’s episode, please subscribe. We’ll be filling your tanks with a lineup of elite guests, just like Elijah, who are accelerating and setting the pace for the rest of the industry. Until next time, keep your standards high and your vision clear. We’ll see you in the next episode, everyone.