Underground RE Business Secrets with TJ Kosen

TJ Kosen is experienced in all aspects of real estate from acquisition through renovation, management, and sales. I have owned and managed renovation projects from 1 unit to over 100 units. He source, purchase, renovate, wholesale, and sell investment real estate in the DFW area. In addition, he helps investors meet their acquisitions, cash flow, renovation, and sales goals through sourcing off-market and on MLS properties.

He’s a licensed Texas real estate agent, California real estate broker in California and general contractor.

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Brett:

I’m excited about our next guest. He spent some time in San Diego now he’s in the great state of Texas. He’s experienced in all aspects of real estate from acquisition to renovation, management, and sales in his own managed renovation projects from 100 from one unit to over 100 units. He and his team help their clients and their partners as well as teach others how to source purchase renovate wholesale and sell investment, real estate, and the Dallas Fort Worth area. In addition, they help investors meet their acquisition cash flow, renovation, and sales goals through sourcing off-market and on MLS properties. He’s a licensed Texas real estate agent, California real estate broker in California and general contractor please welcome the show with me, TJ Kozen. TJ, how are you doing?

TJ:

Fantastic. Thanks for having me, Brett, I appreciate it.

Brett:

Absolutely excited to get to know you a little bit more, and we’re gonna be talking all things underground real estate business secrets with TJ Kozen. It’s gonna be a little bit different show than just talking real estate more like building your business, and we’re gonna get into some of those here in a minute. But before we go there, TJ, would you give our listeners a little bit more about your story and your current focus?

TJ:

Currently, we have a real estate operation in North Texas buy we basically source off-market real estate direct to seller, primarily in the single-family space right now. We do a lot of off-market marketing, direct-to-seller marketing, and then where we bring value to the seller, obviously is kind of take care of the problems. Where we bring value to the investors that work with us is really on the property side we focus on like kind of an individual property basis, we’re not locked into one exit strategy. One property maybe makes sense for a rental one property makes sense for maybe a buy and resell with a lot of work. Flip one property maybe makes sense as like for maximizing kind of ROI, and, and the velocity of money maybe makes sense for just dusting it off-putting it on the market as-is and taking, a little piece of the pie. We really focus on kind of what makes sense on a per deal basis, and that’s the current business and the past. I’ve been in real estate actually, since 2006. My first deal was 112 units of distressed apartments in Memphis. My second deal not to double down on something that’s maybe not the best idea was another 98 units. We structured that with some seller financing some existing. What was it? I guess it was a private money lender at the time, and then went out there did a lot of value, add leased up stabilized management, and kind of went from there. That’s the long story short.

Brett:

That’s really good today, a little background, and I love that you dove in 212 units in your first year. That’s amazing. I think that’s really wise. But we’ll talk about the other side of that too, as well. As far as building a business in real estate here. I want to take one other step back, though, I want to go back maybe to the high school days, or even the college days, I believe we’ve been given certain gifts in this life. Some people call them strengths, I’m having to call them superpowers, I think their God-given gifts that are given to us to be a blessing and help to others. I’m curious, what are those one or two gifts that you’ve been given? How’s that helping? How do you help him bless people today?

TJ:

The biggest one is? Let’s see. Good question. I hadn’t really thought about that. What’s really been the most, the biggest blessing to our business and to kind of our life path probably happened about the time probably about two and a half, three years ago, when it really switched my realization when my daughter was born two and a half years ago, three years ago, obviously, there’s a nine-month build up to it, I guess, and that’s where I really kind of changed the mindset from I can make a lot of money doing like buying selling houses myself going on acquisition appointments going on all this other stuff. But it gets old, it really gets old as a business model. The where the mindset shift came was, well let’s build the business for the sake of the business, and in doing so, obviously, hopefully, we benefit from it too. But it really provides an enabling force for other people to people that work here or people that are investors, if you’re doing more deals, you provide more opportunities for more people, investors, employees, contractors, just throughout the entire kind of vertical supply chain, and that’s an I don’t know if that started in college. I think that’s probably more of a two-year-old thing. In college, I was a little unfocused. In college I got two degrees, I got two minors, and I didn’t really know what I wanted to do when I grew up. I’m not one of those entrepreneurs that, see student crappy dropped out, hustler kind of mindset. That was a pretty good student just kind of enjoyed and the dread learning process and I think that applied later in life actually something a lot of people maybe don’t really think about that much.

Brett:

Enjoying this journey of learning, and the curiosity of multiple degrees, as well as wanting to build something that just was more than just yourself helping and blessing others. Would you say those are a good summary of your gifts?

TJ:

I think absolutely.

Brett:

Now, let’s dive right into the topic, underground real estate business secrets TJ Kosen, and by the way, you can find more about TJ Kozen, at TJKosen.com, that’s TJ Kosen and spelled with a K, and it’s O S E N. TJ, what’s the number one secret to building a real estate business go?

TJ:

Finding out. First of all, finding out what your niches and then focusing on it, I think is maybe that’s two different secrets. But if you figure out each one of those and just focus on kind of one, one linear thing, then that’s the way to have success, too many people that get into real estate, start out doing one thing, and then they get the shiny object syndrome, they go well, I can do this too, and I can do that too, and they go all over the place, and really like the, it takes like a marketing strategy. For example. Most marketing strategies in real estate can work if you do them correctly. But they can absolutely work wrong if you just like superficially, touch on them, and then bounce to the next one and kind of grift around. I think if you want to build a rental portfolio, you ought to focus on maybe what your ROI is, what your target like property demographic is your property kind of profile is, and then focus on building that and try not to get distracted until you’re ready to get distracted. Once you have one solid core business competency that you’re really, really good at, then you can start adding on separate kinds of, either verticals or horizontals that complement OR supplement your business. But start with one thing and do that really well.

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