Antonio is a software engineer who started investing in multifamily in Ewing, NJ.  He uses a methodical approach to analyzing the deals and breaking them down to make sure they make sense.  Keeping to his investment criteria, Antonio analyzes hundreds of deals before finding one that fits his criteria.

Motivated by lifestyle design and helping his family, Antonio is laser-focused on building his real estate portfolio and teaching others how to do it too.

You can connect with Antonio through TikTok (@investarters), email, LinkedIn, or learn more about his real estate mentoring program through his website or YouTube channel.

 

You’re a software engineer.  Can you tell me a little bit more about that?  How did you get started?  What do you do now?

I went to TCNJ, The College of New Jersey.  It is a small school in New Jersey, not known for engineering.  It’s an education school, but I went for computer engineering.  And then while I was there, I really noticed that I liked the software side of things way more, which sucks because all my classes were all about electrical engineering.

When I had an internship in software development and I was like, all right, this is what I like to do more.  Then I got my first full-time job outside of school.  I was working on C++ and MATLAB doing eye detection, iris detection work.  I was just cool, but it was outdated technologies.

Then I couldn’t get a job in web development, which is what I wanted to do.  So then I quit that job and I started learning web development from my roommate who was is a software developer as well.  And he was mentoring me a little bit about web development because he had been a web developer for a few years.

Then I got into Alexa skill development, Google assistant actions, and Facebook messenger bots. Then I worked at NBC for a little while as a conversational AI engineer. I started making YouTube videos about the stuff that I was working on.  And I wrote some blog posts on and I posted some stuff on hacker news, that kind of thing.

After NBC, I got a job at Reprise Digital as a senior software developer working on Facebook Messenger bots primarily, but also some Alexa stuff.  And then I got moved from under Reprise to Interpublic group.  So now I’m part of the innovation team there.  And we work on cool ways to target people better with advertising.  It’s shifted a little bit from what I was doing with the conversational chatbot stuff, but that’s where I’m at now.

 

You went from AI to real estate.  How did you get into real estate?

Yeah, great question. Day one at my software engineering job, sitting at my desk and I’m like … (Not the software part because I liked the software part) …  But just being trapped at a desk is not what I want to do for the rest of my life.

I like the freedom of being able to work from 6:00 AM to 8:00 AM and then take a break for two hours and then get back to working for a few hours. I like having my own schedule and having my own time.  I like being in control.  And I literally didn’t even know what, entrepreneurship was at that time, but a friend mentioned real estate investing.

That day, I bought the book on rental property investing by Brandon Turner. So from there for four years, I’m trying to invest.  I’m like, okay, I really want to, I really want to do this. But every time I feel like I’m ready, I get scared.

And then I go ahead and I buy another book or I watch another YouTube video or a podcast or something to try to make me get over this fear of “Oh, I don’t have enough money. I don’t know what to do.”  I live in New York City. “How do I even do this thing?”  It wasn’t really that I took that information and I was like, “all right, I’m doing this”.  It was when my landlord in the city actually said, “ we’re raising your rent 15%.”

I was a good tenant, I paid on time, and never complained about anything.  I’m like, this is a load of BS. I don’t want to be on this side. I know I need to be on that side of things.  So that’s what got me to “I’m going to do this”.

I finally sat down. I broke it down into a process, which I think actually the engineering part helped with as a software developer.  People throw requirements.  I wanted to do this.  When I code, that means I need to write this, and this.  The ability to break things down gave me the ability to take the high-level information and all these books and these YouTube videos. And break it down into a process and then I felt comfortable doing it.

 

Let’s talk about your first investment.  What kind of property was it?

The first one was I got was a tri-plex in Ewing, New Jersey.  I bought it for 195k.  It was renting at the time for 2,600/month.  And I had been looking over there for two months or so at this point.  I knew I wanted a multifamily. I wanted it under 200k.  And it’s got a cashflow at 8% returns, minimum and $150 per unit.

I set that bar, and everything that came through in Ewing I analyzed within five minutes of it being on the market, as long as I was awake to analyze it.  Then I remember I was sitting in the car on the way home from my cousin’s birthday party. And I think it was, I’m not too familiar with Yonkers, but it’s Yonkers area and then I pulled out my phone, I got this notification for this property.

I’m running the numbers.  I’m like, this is amazing.  I need to go see this. Now it was a Sunday afternoon.  I called my agent.  I was like, “I need to go see this.”  And the funny part was is that it was almost shady activity happening. The seller’s agent wanted to give it to a specific person that had a specific buyer’s agent work with them.

My agent came with me to go look at it.  And I ended up getting it. That was last November. We’ve done some fixes that we put about $6,000 worth of work into it.  Fixed it up a little bit. Raise the rents about 230 overall across all the units in total.  And then we also rented out the garage, fixed it up and rented out the garage for a hundred dollars a unit.  It’s cash flowing nicely for my first one.

 

What did you learn from that experience?

The big thing that I learned was that it was all about the numbers.  If I can bring it to the numbers and get what the current landlord or current owner was getting, then I would know for a fact, if this thing would make me money or not.  It wasn’t a question anymore.

It wasn’t something that I was like, “Oh, I hope this works out.  I’m putting $60,000 into this thing. And I hope it works”.  That’s a lot for beginners to put their entire down payment.  That was my entire life savings into this property.  It was scary, but at that point in time, I realized that, okay, it’s just the numbers that matter. And then that’s it.

 

How has your background in tech and engineering helped you with investing in real estate?

First off, the breaking down problems that I mentioned earlier.  The ability to look at this big overwhelming thing.  And pull it into pieces.  Do this first, then this in order to get it up like a functioning program.  It’s a similar concept.

“How do I get the cashflow?” Let’s work backward are at first.  I need to first figure out what the heck I’m doing.

“What kind of strategy am I going to go for a focus on?”

Then pick a location.

Then pick how I’m going to buy this thing.

And then analyze deals.

It’s just a process like that.  Breaking that down into pieces was huge for me.

And then the second was math.  It’s a formula. If you understand the different pieces of the formula, then you know okay, if rents go up, then my cash on cash goes up.  ROI is going to go up.  My cashflow is going to go up.

If my mortgage payment goes up or if my down payment goes up, then my cash on cash and ROI is going to drop.  My cashflow may go up.  Knowing the relationship between all the numbers in the formula and understanding how to calculate it is key.  It’s a way simpler formula than most formulas we have to learn in engineering.  It wasn’t hard, but it definitely helped.

 

Did you build your own model to evaluate these deals?

I started using the BiggerPockets one. And then I just recently for my mentoring students, created a spreadsheet to do it for them because I realized that not a lot of beginners want to pay $500 for a year for a calculator.  Because they’re not even a hundred percent confident about it.  As a beginning step, a spreadsheet is the best. They just need to know the numbers.  They don’t need to have all the fancy graphs and everything.

 

How many deals have you done so far since that first one?

Since that first one, I got two more duplexes at the start of the pandemic. And currently right now, while in Austin, I have an offer in, on a place right now. I’ll find out later today, a condo that is going to be a live-in fix and then rent.  Because it’s something I’m going to be living in versus the other ones which are completed investments, I could get in with a lower down payment and use my Roth IRA, which I don’t plan on having that be my way of being financially free.

 

And are the two other duplexes in the same market in New Jersey?

Yeah, one duplex is actually one block away from the first triplex and the other one is in Hamilton, which is like the town right next to you and very similar demographics, very similar type of people there.  I knew that area from again, going from TCNJ in Ewing, New Jersey.  That’s how I knew the area.

 

That’s great.  One triplex, two duplexes, and potentially a condo in a year.

Yeah. I want to get out of the job and I want to be doing this.  This is a lot of fun.  I love the process of acquiring and I love the process of acquiring and expanding.

For me, I’m actively looking for partners and trying to get more properties. That’s how I do it.

 

What is your long-term goal for your real estate business?

The long-term goal in terms of numbers is to be making a million dollars a year from real estate investing at 560 units at $150 per door.

That’s my goal. But the reason why I’m doing it is really for my family. My parents came from Italy; they sacrificed a lot.  My dad’s a contractor.  He’s 58 and he still works on his hands and knees every day.  And he has arthritis in his shoulder, his hip, and his knee on both sides.  He’s in a lot of pain and I want to stop that pain and have them enjoy the rest of their lives.

Then, secondly is for my future family to be able to provide them with the things that I had a lack of things growing up.

The third is to be able to make an impact, like helping beginners. Because I feel like you get this new sense of control over life when you realize that you can start building the passive income yourself.  That first step for me was the most difficult.  And I want to help people do that as well.

Those are like the three motivating, huge motivating factors behind why I’m doing what I’m doing.

 

In terms of you teaching others about real estate, how far along are you in that process?

Yeah, I was teaching a live class–a four-week live class that started in April. It was my first session.  I have 13 students.  And now what I’m trying to do is switch it to a six-month mentoring program with the guarantee of you buy your first investment property, in six months or you get your money back.

That’s the basis.  Now I’m building that up and I’ve been taking calls for people.  I have one later today to try to get people into that.  I help them on the call for about an hour, and then if they feel like they’re a good fit, I asked them if they want to join.

 

Is it one-on-one coaching or is it in a group setting?

That’s a group. That’s a group one.

 

What advice would you give other engineers who are thinking about investing in real estate, or just getting started?

Engineers have been programmed their entire lives for the most part because of school to have the mindset of being really scared to fail. And it’s good because it protects them from having a loss. It’s good. But, it hurts them because they never end up taking the risk.

In the beginning, there’s an obvious risk, right?  You’re putting this money down for this thing that you hope gives you a return.  I just want to encourage them that if you have this fear use the thing that makes you feel better, which is numbers for the most part, to quell that fear and trust that those numbers work.  All you have to do is just trust that those numbers are going to work.

The other thing is that engineers tend to have the ability to just wanting to read and learn about a topic.  But that’s one of the worst things you can do because you’ll get stuck in analysis paralysis and you really have to get your way out of that as soon as possible.  Otherwise, it just digs a deeper and deeper hole for yourself.

That’s my advice is start doing less reading, and start doing, and trust the numbers because they tell the truth.