As someone who grew up in the Bay area seeing his parents invest in real estate when it wasn’t crazy expensive, Bonifacio knew that real estate was a great way for income and building wealth.

He finally made the leap by investing out of state with a serious rehab project.  He leans on his engineering skills to make sure the numbers make sense and continues to build his portfolio by investing from afar.  He embodies the mentality of “live where you want, but invest where the numbers make sense”.

You can connect with Bonifacio via LinkedIn or via email.

First, tell me a little bit about your engineering background.

I’ve actually been living in Silicon Valley, the Bay area (South Bay) for all my life.  I was born and raised here.  I was born into technology for lack of a better term.  Out of high school, I got a business degree.

But then since I lived in Silicon Valley, I decided to get a tech job.  I’ve always taken to computers my entire life.  Right out of college, I just jumped into a security company.  When I started, I was in cybersecurity.

I’ve been doing that for my entire career.  Over 18 years, I’ve worked with tons of companies in Silicon Valley.  I floated in between security engineering and then software engineering as of the last six years.

There’s a lot of the evolution of cybersecurity is learning to code.  I think in any technical position that you’re going to have long-term, you’re going to have to learn how to code.  I have experience with almost every technology ranging from the security side: forensics fraud, discovery, threat, hunting, operations, firewall management, identity management, Oracle, big data all that.

And then on the software side, I know all the platforms: Azure, AWS, VMWare.  I could code in PHP, Pearl, Python, MySQL.  I’m really learning JavaScript right now, trying to get my skill set up on JavaScript right now.  I’m a senior security engineer at ServiceNow, and my responsibility is developing and managing their vulnerability management response application.

How did you become interested in real estate investing?

My parents immigrated here in the seventies and they just settled in Silicon Valley.  They bought a home every time they moved. They would buy a new one and rent the old one. So that’s how they moved up.

Since the seventies in the Bay area, my parents have been buying and selling and they’ve been worked full-time jobs.  But that real estate money was able to put their four kids through college and put us through private school. That’s always been in the back of my head – that real estate is a good tool.

My cousin also inspired me.  He has 30 plus units in Hanford, California, which is in central California.  And it made him live a comfortable life.  Financial independence is the goal and real estate can provide that.

How did you get started investing?

It took a long time.  Probably eight-plus years to actually get into the deal.  For a long time, I just couldn’t afford in California.  I grew up in California and my parents could afford it in the seventies, eighties, but when I graduated in 2000 with a college degree, it was hard for me.

I couldn’t find any deals here.  That was the problem.  I just started looking out of state and I started signing up for alerts.  Then finally I saw an email that said: “go buy a house for a couple thousand in the Midwest”. That is what started me along the journey.

The first investment was a single-family house in Dayton, Ohio.  I paid $5,000.  I think the original listing was $10,000 and we just said $5,000.  Then I took it and dumped another $22,000 into it.  $5,000 was the cash I had laying around.  And then I put another $22,000 into it to actually make it habitable.

It was 800 square feet.  It’s a three bed one bath.  That was in 2016.

So that was an inexpensive one. How did you find it?

I would just look down on the MLS, realtor.com.  I just sorted from lowest to highest price.

What did you learn from this first deal?  Was there something that helped you get over the fear?

It was like a term we use in technology–proof of concept.  First of all, can I pull this off?  And what are the steps to do it?  That was my proof of concept (POC) just to see if this actually works.  And it was a long-distance investment too.  It was a risk with money that I could afford to lose.  It was money that I may see or may not see ever again.

But right now, it is currently renting at $750 a month.  That’s pretty good because that’s $27,000 in.  There’s been turnover and all those other expenses et cetera.  But at the moment it’s $750 a month and it’s free and clear.  There’s no mortgage.  You are getting the rent minus management fees, taxes, insurance, etc.

How many deals have you done so far?

I’ve done five deals in total.  I did a flip, which was hard.  I did two single families. I have two single families and two duplexes.  So I have six units right now that are cash flowing at the moment.

They all in the same area in Dayton, Ohio.

How has your engineering background helped you to with these investments?

I have my spreadsheet.  I’m pretty sure everyone has a spreadsheet.  I also look at the 1% rule, the cap rate, and the cash-on-cash return.  I like my own spreadsheet where I run my own numbers.

I also have my own database that I created through MySQL, which has all my information: financial contact information, prices, past rehab costs.  All my property management, Excel spreadsheets I put them in there.  I’m making sure I’m looking at every aspect, every detail of each investment property.

When I first got into real estate to get me over the hump, I watched every episode of the first season of flip or flop.  I slowed down every episode and recorded the cost of the kitchen, the cost of the bathroom, the landscaping, just so that I could know the average costs of each one, just to get me comfortable about the costs.

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

The long-term goal is to move up in asset classes.  I’m probably going to go into multi-family and maybe get into commercial multi-family.  I’m not a hundred percent sure yet. I’m also open to different portfolios.  I’ve invested in Fundrise.  I’m trying to do a diversified mix.

My siblings are actually very interested as well too because they see what I’m doing.  They want to get into real estate as well.  I’m just trying to find a way to structure the deal.  I don’t know how to yet. I already have a full-time job and I don’t want to syndicate.

From your experience, what advice would you give other engineers that want to get started?

Do the numbers.  All engineers like numbers, right?  We’re all detail-oriented when it comes to creating software.  Everything has to work exactly the way we designed it.  And so that’s how you could also manage your risks is by doing your numbers.  You can also factor in variances like rehab costs.

I bought an off-market deal through Facebook and we never even talked on the phone.  Even if you’re not a people person, you can get a deal.  We just texted and Facebook messaged.  We never talked on the phone and we did it through a title company and no real estate agent.

Technology nowadays, there’s a lot of things you can do without even picking up a phone.  I think there are a lot of opportunities for engineers and they’re some of the smartest people.