In today’s packed episode of ‘Multifamily Real Estate Investments with Don and Eden’, we’re joined by Dave Zook- a successful business owner and an active real estate investor in sectors such as multifamily apartments, self-storage, and ATMs. He’s also written a book on syndication “8 Real-Life Lessons for Syndicators and Their Investors.” 

In today’s episode, Don & Dave discuss the secrets to success, the do’s and don’t of the business, and the steps needed to have a strong foundation & longevity. Dave also touches on how a tax problem led to him dive deeper and deeper into the world of real estate, what he learned from watching his father and gives us an insight on this family modular storage sheds and garage business. 

Highlights:

-Discusses his focus on Multifamily Apartments, Self-Storage, and ATMs

-Explains how he was ‘Chased into Real Estate.’

-What’s the Modular Storage & Garage Business?

-Current Projects & plans for the future

Contact Dave:

Email:  info@therealassetinvestor.com 

His Book: “8 Real-Life Lessons for Syndicators and Their Investors”

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TRANSCRIPTION 

[00:00:08 ] Hello, everybody. I hope you guys are excited for another episode where you learn a lot about commercial real estate and real estate in general. I want to say personally that we are so grateful to have you guys as listeners and we work hard on these shows and try our best to give you quality content with as little fluff as possible. Doing this isn't always easy and it requires a lot of time and energy. I'd like to ask you to give back by checking our new Website, which is being developed by my partner Eden. He's the best at it. You can find ways to connect with us, learn about us and see what kind of properties we invest in. So the Web site address is DonandEden.com. Again, that's DonandEden.com. No shocker there. And you can always send us an email at hello@donandedend.com. It's Hello@donandeden.com. So thank you very much. We appreciate the feedback and you can take the time to do that. Our guest today on the show is Dave Zook. Dave invests in many asset classes as well. And his main focus is multifamily and self-storage assets, which is an asset class that picked up tremendously. So let's hear more about it. 

[00:01:33 ] Welcome to the Real Estate Investing Podcast with Don. Any time where we cover all aspects of real estate investing with special attention to multi-family apartment buildings and off-market strategies. 

[00:01:51 ] Hey, Dave, welcome to the show. 

[00:01:53 ] Hey, it's good to be on your show. 

[00:01:56 ] Thank you very much. How's your day been going so far? 

[00:01:58 ] So far, so good. It's been very busy. But looking forward to talking to you and your listeners. 

[00:02:06 ] Yeah. Thank you. So, yeah, busy is always good. So does first of all, so that we get to know you. I know a little bit about you, but our listeners don't. So give us some background and tell us a little bit about yourself. 

[00:02:18 ] So I was born into a very successful entrepreneurial family, very fortunate there. I grew up in our family business. It was a modular building business, still active in that business, along with my three brothers and my dad. 

[00:02:34 ] I saw my dad invest in real estate as I was growing up and I saw him taking the capital that he was making from his business and put them in real estate. He was buying arms and land and as single-family homes, I saw him sort of self manage some of the single-family homes. And I just realized at an early age that I was not a path that I was interested in being on. So I started investing in businesses and started a couple of businesses. 

[00:03:06 ] I partnered in a couple of businesses. 

[00:03:08 ] I sold a few and got to the point number of years ago where I was doing well and I had to pay a big, big tax bill. 

[00:03:21 ] At that point, I realized after doing some studies and reading a lot of Robert Kiyosaki his content, I realized that real estate not only can be a real wealth-building tool in the form of cash flow and appreciation, but it can also be a real tax protection vehicle. And that caught my attention. So I went from not wanting to have any real estate to want and all I could get my hands on. And the timing just so sort of aligned that the timing was great to be a buyer. And that was coming out in 2009. It started to allow timely real estate in 2010, 11. And so the timing was great and got myself in a position where I went from paying a half a million dollars a year in tax to pay zero federal tax and not so that was sort of the start. People asked me how I got and I got involved in real estate. I always tell em I got chased into it for tax reasons. 

[00:04:20 ] That's very interesting. So I already have a lot of questions to ask you about what you said. So the first question I have is what exactly is that modular business? So what does your company do? What do you guys do? 

[00:04:30 ] So we build modular outbuildings, modular garages, and not necessarily homes. 

[00:04:36 ] But think about this. So you as our customer, you're getting up in the morning, going to work. We put in with a modular two-bay, two-story garage and we get to work. And when you come home from work, you're ready to pull a car into your brand new car to the bay, two-story modular garage, which is a ton of them all over the country. 

[00:05:03 ] Nice to see you guys also. You manufacture them and you deliver them. 

[00:05:06 ] We do. So we're one of the few companies here in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, that kind of focus on retail. We've got some other. This is kind of the hub of the modular storage sheds and garage business, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. And so there's a bunch of different builders in this area. But we sort of found our niche and that is we build. But we're also the retail retailer. So most of the other builders in the county are, you know, primarily wholesale sell into and that network of dealers. And they may have 5 or 10 percent of their business may be local or retail. Yeah, we're just the opposite. We're 90 percent retail and 10 percent wholesale. 

[00:05:52 ] So you're able to offer better prices, better prices. 

[00:05:56 ] We control the service quality. We're the only person you're dealing with. So you come into our facility, you get to tour the plant, you get to see firsthand where the more the buildings get built. You're dealing with our salespeople and we bring the building out to you. And it's a one-stop-shop. 

[00:06:15 ] It's very understandable why you guys are so successful because you have a great model. And it brings me to talk about the next thing that I wanted to ask you or not even ask more of a statement. So, you know, I talked with my friends and we always talk about business. And so we figured out that it doesn't matter what you do, if you're going to be successful, you're going to end up in the real estate. So we're all becoming real estate investors. 

[00:06:39 ] We have no choice but to interact with real estate at some level. 

[00:06:44 ] Yeah. If you are successful, then that's what I figured out. You have no choice whether you made your money in retailing. You made your money in. I don't know. Developing something or like like a patent or an idea. You're going to end up making, you know, investing or parking that money in real estate. And I think that's what your father understood. 

[00:07:00 ] But he probably didn't understand how to scale it up or how to make it work for you instead of working in it. So tell us a little bit more about your father's experience and what was going on there. 

[00:07:12 ] You know, it worked out quite well for him. I mean, he bought farms and land and single-family homes and, you know, 18, 15, 18, 20, 25 years later, I helped him transfer some of those farms that he bought and ten thirty-one, you know, ten thirty-one. Those farms there were kind of sitting there not making any sense, but they did have a ton of appreciation and you know, 15, 20 years in land value, in land value. 

[00:07:39 ] So I then helped him rule those farms into multifamily apartments back soon after the recession. And we're in the process now of selling one of those apartment buildings. We're supposed to close tomorrow. Wow. And it's going to work out quite well for him. 

[00:07:58 ] So, you know, being able to get in, you know, the ground level on the front end and then seeing all that appreciation and turnaround into and rolling into an apartment building at the right time and to realize some more appreciation, it's gonna work out well for him. 

[00:08:12 ] Yeah. I haven't met a lot of people that invest in real estate for the long term, and we're not successful. I mean, maybe before the crash, people that, you know, we're buying a lot of properties, right, Dan? But, you know, and any other scenario, I don't see how, you know, where the compounding interest and the appreciation of real estate. I don't see how you could lose long term. So what exactly you're doing right now in real estate? 

[00:08:38 ] So we've done we've bought a ton of multifamily over the last couple of years. We've accumulated well over 3000 units. I've syndicated most of those. I started out buying multi-family apartments on my own because I had a tax problem. Turns out there are a lot more people like my