October 7, 2024 • 59 mins
This episode's guest is Pasha Esfandiary. Pasha has been a Professional Poker Player, Emotional intelligence Coach, and over the past 10 years a successful Real Estate Developer and investor. In Real Estate, Pasha's experience spans the breadth of buying properties at Auction, Hillside development, and now Mobile Home Park acquisition and management.
Pasha's drive and focus were extremely inspiring as well as his commitment to the development of the character traits and discpline necessary to become successful at all aspects of entrepreneurship.
Pasha's offerings can be found at https://www.evokecapital.net/
and his social media is @pashaesfandiary
You can follow us
IG @educatedinvest
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Philip Hernandez @educatedinvest (00:04):
Alright Pasha Esfandiari. Thank you so much for coming on. The educated investor. Podcast I'm, so stoked to talk with you about your your journey. You've yeah. From what I can see, you went from being a professional poker player to now. You have around 350 million dollars in assets under management. And
(00:25):
yeah, really interesting story. So I'm I'm excited to hear about the journey of of how your career led you to where you are right now. But before we go on the journey I'd love to hear just a brief overview of you describe what your business looks like right now.
Pasha Esfandiary (00:40):
Sure. Well, thank you for having me on. Philip really appreciate, I do wanna correct. I have about a hundred 1 million dollars worth of assets under management. Right now I've done about 350 million dollars worth of transactions across my career, so forth. So
Philip Hernandez @educatedinvest (00:54):
Cool at some point in time the the money came in and and you were. You were a part of the deals. Perfect? Yeah.
Pasha Esfandiary (01:00):
Okay, so where I'm at right now. I'm I'm a co-founder of Evo. Capital. I have 2 other partners in this, and so we specialize in only and strictly mobile home communities across the Us. Mostly in the Midwest mid South. We have close to 22 to 24 parks under management at this point. And it's about 2,150 lots.
(01:24):
All comprising of that portfolio. We do have a property management company within our organization. So we are vertically integrated.
We have close to about.
I don't know. 2625 full time employees and a ton of other part time employees. So the business has really grown pretty immensely in the last, I would say. We. We syndicated our 1st deal little over 2 years ago, but we had been buying real estate
(01:51):
you know, before that for about mobile home and communities for about a year before that. So it's it's really taken off for us.
Philip Hernandez @educatedinvest (01:58):
Cool. Yeah.
that is, yeah. And I have so many questions that maybe we'll touch on later about really the property management aspect.
especially for our mobile home parks. That's like the thing that people don't really
talk about when they when they're looking at these like really great returns is
(02:21):
how important property management is to making sure.
Pasha Esfandiary (02:24):
Oh, yeah.
Philip Hernandez @educatedinvest (02:25):
As well.
So it's the big.
Pasha Esfandiary (02:27):
The biggest piece of the puzzle. I I will tell you right now, if you own a mobile home park community, or really any property. In general, you, the the execution of the property management is just such a bigger piece to tackle.
Philip Hernandez @educatedinvest (02:39):
Yeah, cool. Well, yeah, we'll we'll, I'm sure we'll we'll talk a lot about that. But yeah, you you before you were in the real estate game. You were a professional poker player. Can can you describe a little bit about that, and how that even became a thing.
Pasha Esfandiary (02:54):
Sure. So yeah, I definitely took a different path of my career. And in my life
you know, I think it. It always starts so that I I always excelled at school. I picked up concepts really quickly and and I was always a gamer when I was growing up so, but school ended up being very torturous and tedious for me, you know, I think, as we know now, there's different ways of learning, and and you know, being academic it was not for me to retain information, and and studious wasn't for me but concepts and visual learning, and
(03:26):
you know I could ace test here and there. So ace test ace tests very well. But then it's the homework and all those stuff that really got me. So once I graduated high school and I went into a community college cause. You know.
yeah, I went into a community college. And I just realized very quickly on. This wasn't for me, and I don't really have a master plan or anything like that. I just knew that I don't want to be here, and I don't want to spend my time and energy somewhere that felt torturous to me like I couldn't imagine it.
(03:55):
So.
I had quickly left that
schooling career. And then at that time my brother had won. A really big poker tournament. This is about a 2,004 range, and he won 1.4 million dollars. We're winning this tournament. And he became very popular. And he continues to be one of the the biggest names in poker as well, too, which is awesome. But I you know, at that time, being a naive, arrogant kid.
(04:23):
you know. I said my brother could do what I could do it. And so I started playing poker. I always played games, anyways, and I picked up the game and poker really quickly. I just. I just intuitively knew that when one person's acting a certain way, you have to act a a different way to kind of maximize your potential, and then poker for me just took off, I mean, really, ever since I was
almost 19 years old I've been playing poker, and then, when I was, you know, 21 I went to Vegas and did well, for you know, for being a 21 year old into the World Series, and I just said, Alright, there's something here, and I I really went. Then
(04:55):
a deep dive into poker and studied it, and moved to Houston to go play. And then I was, you know, for the next 5 or 6 years, traveled the world and
played poker professionally until I really realized
that it wasn't.
It wasn't gonna get me where I wanted to, even though I was making really great money for my age. Right? And so it was. It was a hard decision to give a poker, because then I would have to get into the real world of of making money because it's poker so easy. Come, easy go.
(05:27):
So I had to take. You know, a few steps backwards.
Do an internship unpaid to learn how to do real estate flipping? And then I I started. You know my career. There took my bankroll from Poker and flip my 1st home and
5 ever since then. What's okay?
Philip Hernandez @educatedinvest (05:41):
Cool. Yeah, be yeah before? Yeah, I'd love to hear. Maybe if there's any skills that you feel like you developed in that space where you're constantly reading people. You're constantly making probabilistic
bets, you know, which in a lot of ways that's any kind of investing and and transfer that into real estate. Yeah, like, what? What was the crossover that you felt was like?
(06:11):
Maybe a little more natural.
Pasha Esfandiary (06:13):
Yeah, you know, I think, some things that I don't think about when I 1st got into my real estate career that I now realize, like, Wow, I'm really glad I played poker 1st of all.
you know, absolutely the low hanging fruit that everyone thinks about us reading people. That's true. I love negotiating. I love knowing what you know where it's at. I call, you know all the bluffs that you know. All these sellers try to get over on us. And just so that part is just fun for me. I've you know that's what you do, you poker is a game of incomplete information, while real estates, typically a game of complete information. And you can do all of that. So that that's a fun part for me. But there are some things that set me pretty uniquely apart. You know poker
(06:51):
to be a really good poker player. You have to learn how to adapt faster than your opponents that sets a good poker player from away from somebody else. So in the real estate markets, what's beautiful about real estate compared to like, let's say the stock market is that
the the change happens slowly, and the writing is always on the wall, and it usually takes about 6 months to catch up. So you have a runway to adapt and change to the cyclical needs of of real estate, which is pretty amazing. Secondly, you know, if you know anything about poker. There's a style of poker play that's called tight, aggressive, which basically, that means you're very conservative, very conservative.
(07:27):
But then, when you are in a hand. You get very aggressive, right? And so that's kind of my style in business as well, too. It took me getting into
flipping homes, then developing residential from land up and then into multifamily, and then learned about Mobile home parks, where I said, Oh, this is it like mobile home parks
is
(07:47):
for me, the no brainer, and I just jumped all in. I mean, you know, I did everything on my own up until my career until I learned mobile home communities, and then started raising up capital for that. So, like, you know, I got really aggressive on that. Another thing to think about is
what I see a lot of
people get in trouble in real estate is that they don't try to diminish their variability right? And so what I mean by that is, there's other operators in the space that are in, you know, do big, multifamily and big mobile home communities like we do. And so they have a different model than us. And so we try to minimize our variability, because, you know, short term pain can always happen. For example, interest rates just rose.
(08:26):
immensely right, but with the strategy that we have and the way I look at things, I always think, for, you know, 10 years, 20 years down the line you can get away from short term variance. So the long term thinking really helps me with that. And then, you know, another low hanging fruit is,
is the educational piece like, you know, to be to be good at poker. You have to study your opponents, and you have to study what everyone else is doing. I think that's 1 thing that kind of sets me apart is that I am so studious, and I learn from everybody else, and without them teaching me
(08:57):
right. And so then I'll adapt that really quickly into our business. So one thing I always tell my employees like I I apologize. If you want stability cause I am always changing, and I will always be changing us for the better. Right? So you have to get comfortable, being uncomfortable with around me. So yeah.
Philip Hernandez @educatedinvest (09:14):
Nice.
yeah, I remember having. I mean, maybe this is a little too much personal information. But my my 1st wife, I
would have all these conversations where she would be upset with me because I would find some new thing that I would become obsessed with, and then I would become obsessed with it, and learn all the things that it takes to get better at that thing. And she'd be like, why are you always change? It seems like your what your your interests are is always changing like I I like I don't. I don't understand that, you know. And
(09:49):
it went from
this thing that seemed like a quirk to now in business it's like a superpower, you know, where I get to learn from other people. And I yeah, just find out what other people are doing, and how are they doing it successfully? And like, there, the yeah, I mean the
(10:11):
the details of like raising money, for example, go from, you know, borrowing $200 from someone to 20 million dollars or 50 million dollars. And
you can. You can find so much if you have a curious mind.
Pasha Esfandiary (10:26):
Yeah, isn't that a beautiful thing, though? Like so, you know, I always
stated, you know, that I used to my ad would always, you know, get in the way of where I thought I wanted to go. But what? When you figure out the that's part of being an entrepreneur when you figure out that puzzle piece and you figure out how to excel your career and get to a point where you're you have immense gratitude for where you're at, you start to really start to understand that everything about who you were, and maybe that you thought you maybe had imposter syndrome or insecurities around actually is. Now your superpower, right.
Philip Hernandez @educatedinvest (10:56):
Early.
Pasha Esfandiary (10:56):
And so now, you know, once I was a college dropout, I was like, Oh, man, it's my ad. This is a crutch, and
I had my, you know, imposter syndrome around there. Now, I realize, like holy crap. I'm so glad about the way my brain is, and I've learned how to control it, and I've learned how to take that energy and apply it to business and then run, you know, faster than typical. So.
Philip Hernandez @educatedinvest (11:23):
Yeah, it's.
Pasha Esfandiary (11:24):
It's really awesome.
Philip Hernandez @educatedinvest (11:25):
Yeah, I mean on that same note, this idea of the only reason why you went down the journey of poker and eventually real estate was a certain amount of dissatisfaction that you had with.
Pasha Esfandiary (11:37):
For sure.
Philip Hernandez @educatedinvest (11:37):
With the way that the system is was set up, and I
I over over the years I've thought like
I cause I went the whole
undergrad grad school, you know, like I taught high school for 14 years before I left, before my own dissatisfaction with, you know, being a cog in a machine.
(12:00):
Sort of forced me to change lanes. But there's a part of me that I was like
I if if I actually had a lower tolerance for being in an environment that doesn't feel like it supports my life.
I would have made some of these challenging decisions a lot earlier, you know. And so, yeah, I love this idea of, you know, in in what is your superpower, and maybe dissatisfaction with, you know, being in a classroom all day. That could be a superpower too.
Pasha Esfandiary (12:33):
You know, I think, on just a more philosopho philosophy kind of standpoint of this is that I think, unfortunately.
because society tells you, one way or another, what you should be doing, not should should be doing that we have forgotten to listen to our intuition.
and I have been blessed with the fact that I have been very
(12:57):
honorary about. If I don't like something I don't like something right, and so that may rep some people the wrong way, but you know I try to do as compassionate and, as you know, as as thoughtful as I can, but I don't have time
to waste. And so when you really realize that time is the only commodity. Yeah, money is great, but really money should only be used to buy more time in your life, and I think a lot of people get that the the wrong way.
(13:23):
and I just don't have time. I mean you. You were on this on. We're in this suit one time, right? And so. And that's it. And it's finite. And it's gonna it's it passes up so quickly, so
I don't have time to not do anything I I don't want to do. I think I've been pretty blessed with that.
Philip Hernandez @educatedinvest (13:40):
Yeah, I, yeah, I I very much resonate with that. It does bring to my mind this aspect of we were talking before we started the podcast how you, through different personal development courses that you took and you became an emotional intelligence coach.
(14:00):
and that that was part of your career as that led you in this sort of bridge between poker and the the focus that you have on mobile home parks right now can can you talk a little bit about what it means to be an emotional intelligence coach? What that meant for you? And you know how how it applies to what you do now.
Pasha Esfandiary (14:21):
Yes, let me make this statement that I?
Okay. I believe that every human has the capability. I mean within reasons. If there's mental illnesses or physical illnesses or whatnot, but within reason
to get the same results as everybody else does.
I truly believe that I believe there's so much education out there. I mean, I believe, like what you're doing with this podcast there's so much knowledge to be had now
(14:49):
that you could really do anything, it's about doing things differently. It's about getting different results.
When I transition from poker, you have to understand, I was just really always good at games. So I did really well at poker, and that was great. But when you have.
you know traumas from your childhood, and you have unresolved issues from your childhood, making fast money when you're young is not the greatest thing to to have happen to you. Right so, and I won't get into all that. But what happens at 26 or 2026 years old, I I joined a program, and it was
(15:23):
very deep emotional intelligence work, and I knew because of my long term thinking that
because of poker
that did these feelings that I'm experiencing, and this healing work that I'm doing in this different way of life. When I got in there.
I need to this, make this the my core foundation. And and so, you know, I also have. You know, humans are just
(15:46):
set of patterns reinforce in childhood. Right? And so. And if you believe that with me, then you know that you can change any other pattern in your life, it just takes more practice to do that. And so
the emotional intelligence work. I had a mentor said, Hey, if you really wanna make this a part of you. You have to be in here for 2 years, I said. Absolutely no problem. I'm in right, because I knew that if I gave up 2 years of my life for short term, success and money wise
(16:11):
that for the rest of my life I would have this foundation of who I really wanted to be. And so I did that. And what emotional Intelligence Coach really is at the end of the day, I actually believe a better term, for it is a results based coach which
I know everybody, and their their mom is a coach now, and I would argue that they shouldn't be coaches, but but nonetheless. I regress on that. So
(16:37):
results based coaching when it comes to emotional intelligence work is that you have a goal, Philip. Okay, if I'm your coach, you have a goal, and we say, Okay, here's your goal. Let's break it down. Let's break it down to smallest chunks, and you come to me and say, Hey, I didn't do this one goal for 2 weeks in a row. And I say, Phillip.
what's actually going on here? What's the story? What's the conversation that that you're having in your mind. And then what's the feeling you're having? Humpier cause? What's happening is if you're not getting your goal, you have. You're hitting a subconscious block. It's not.
(17:09):
It's not that you don't want to do it or whatnot. If you really wanted that goal, there's a subconscious block that. Now I have to ask you enough clarifying questions for you to discover why you're feeling what you're doing, and then how to get you across that subconscious block to have a breakthrough
right and then. Now, now, once you have that breakdown, you have a different platform of higher platform that you're operating on, and with the coaching we keep stacking that upon each other. And what happens is it's the compounding effect of each win and going further and going further, so you'll get up to a certain wall, and then we'll coach you to get over it by understanding why and what the conversation and where that came from
(17:49):
in your childhood, or what's coming up for you? Because it's typically our subconscious blocks that stop us from getting the results that we actually want in life.
Philip Hernandez @educatedinvest (17:58):
Yeah, with super interesting.
yeah, I
I practice Zen for a number of years. And in Zen this idea of the essentially clarity, like being able to see things clearly. It can happen in a moment like this idea of the of the breakthrough where you see your life and your goals and the things that are supporting you, and that are not necessary.
(18:30):
that you can see those things clearly. And there's so many stories about it happening in an instant.
and can be so so powerful.
And the the challenge that I see a lot of times is that people will have these breakthrough moments, and then it becomes like a little thing they put in a box
(18:51):
where they're like, wow! I remember when I had that breakthrough moment, but sometimes their their habits, the habits that that make up their personhood
still have some, some they're they're they're a little more concrete than the than the feeling or or the the clarity that's experienced in a moment
(19:13):
when when you were doing the
more emotional development coach work. What was your experience of either like yourself, or supporting other people in
having these moments of clarity, but then
getting the results long term that support their vision.
Pasha Esfandiary (19:33):
So I mean, that's the power of having a coach. That's the power of having people around you that call you out, in my opinion right, and you are the sum of the 5 people that you hang out with, you know, if you you, if your 5 best friends are lazy. Listen.
humans, we learn from each other. Have you ever seen a child stare at their parents and stare at their friends? We learn from each other. You can't go against human nature. We we pick up subconscious cues
(19:57):
from everybody else. Right? We're very tribal. And people forget how tribal we actually are. And so a you guys surround yourself with the right people. And then, secondly, this is why you have a coach to get you and push you and nudge you against that subconscious queue that sometimes is so hard. But you have to also understand human nature the way we've designed
through. You know, the millions of years or hundreds of thousands of years is to be complacent. Right? We if we don't have danger, we we wanna take the easy way because we we wanna make sure mental capacity is ready for danger. Right? And so that's not out of us, right? We still are. That's in our DNA and our genetics and everything.
(20:38):
So you have to understand why you're doing what you're doing and and and getting behind it, and so that when you do have a breakthrough.
This is what I always say. People go to a personal development course, or even they have these breakthroughs in ceremonies, or they are. They do all of these things. But there's people that I have found that just keep doing the same thing over and over again, even though they're having a breakthrough.
(21:00):
It's A. They want it. They stay complacent, or they're getting some kind of emotional need met staying in that way. But C, they're just not doing the work. And so
I find that humans tend to over complicate everything
because they forget the power of compounding right. And this goes back to investing. And I I think we're kind of convoluting to 2, which is, but it works perfectly because
(21:25):
the way I this is the way I operate. If I find something in a personal development course that I go and take.
I find one or 2 things, Max, Max
and I apply that into my next 90 days because it takes about 90 days, a hundred days of practicing one thing to make it more of a habit. Right? It's like going to the gym. After 2 weeks you start to get better after 3 weeks this becomes easier. After 5 weeks it just starts to get easier and easier and easier. And then you're like, I kinda wanna do it right.
(21:53):
and that's the things. When you learn something or have a breakthrough, just go apply one thing for a quarter, and then that will become a foundational habit of yours, and then you keep stacking your habits. What happens is 10 to 15 years from now you're gonna look back and say, Holy crap!
I've changed so much, and I've actually changed everlasting habits. So I think people try to take on and overestimate what they can do in a very short term, and instead of seeing the long term, and just say, Hey, what's the best decision I can make for myself 10 years from now, and that's going sometimes going a little slower.
Philip Hernandez @educatedinvest (22:28):
Yeah, I yeah, I fully agree with with everything that you said it reminded me of something my wife says she's a therapist where you know someone will have some kind of thing that they is a habit or pattern that they, you know verbally, they will say that they don't want to do, or they don't like that. They do it, or they don't like that. They feel it.
(22:53):
And one of her, the things that I've heard heard her say many times, is, what in what way is this serving you? Yeah, what? Yeah. In what way is your?
You're yeah. In what way is it serving you now, or did it serve you in the past? But it no longer serves you, you know, and.
Pasha Esfandiary (23:11):
I have a I have a beautiful story to share about that. When I 1st got into the program I don't wanna be in there. My brother got me in. I was like, I wanna join the business one. He's like you have to do this one to get to the business one, and I went. I was like, I'm joining a call like it looked like a call. I was like, you know, this is stupid.
Philip Hernandez @educatedinvest (23:24):
What's the name of the program? Sorry.
Pasha Esfandiary (23:26):
It's called choice It's like a landmark. If anyone's heard of.
Philip Hernandez @educatedinvest (23:30):
Yeah, yeah.
Pasha Esfandiary (23:31):
Steroids. It's just a lot more intense. And so I walked in. And you know, everyone's kind of talking about like you know, why the hell are they here? And I raised my hand as an arrogant 26 year old, and like, listen, I've I've read all the books, and I don't want to be here. I want to be.
and then like the next course over. So I'm just taking this one and this like she was so nice to all the other people who raise her hand, and she just looked at me straight in the eyes, and she just said, Bullshit Pasha Bullshit, you are exactly where you wanna be because of every subconscious and conscious decision you ever freaking, made in your life. So whatever you're telling yourself is serving your story right now, and I just started bawling like.
Philip Hernandez @educatedinvest (24:07):
Whoa!
Pasha Esfandiary (24:08):
You're right.
you know.
Philip Hernandez @educatedinvest (24:11):
Like you're so.
Pasha Esfandiary (24:12):
You're right, you're so right. And then I was just instantly bought in.
Philip Hernandez @educatedinvest (24:15):
Wow, that's awesome.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's like.
yeah. I mean, it's so interesting.
sort of on a note. Whenever I hear someone complaining about their life in some way.
It's like what is like. Somehow all of the choices that you made and everything that you've done up into this point has has led you to to hear, and and the only
(24:48):
the only way moving forward in any sort of way is, if
the you get to be the owner of all of those decisions, and and you get to own you know what is the next step like? It it feels in line with that.
Pasha Esfandiary (25:04):
Yeah, I mean, when I think, when when the most transformational thing I think that anybody could do
is just take responsibility like to the deepest level ever of responsibility for everything in their life. If someone treated you badly.
Philip Hernandez @educatedinvest (25:20):
So, yeah.
Pasha Esfandiary (25:21):
You showed up in a way where they allowed you to treat you badly right, and you know, and once you take that level responsibly that everything is your fault at all times, no matter what
you, you start to change yourself, which gets you different results.
Philip Hernandez @educatedinvest (25:36):
100%
cool. Yeah, love this. So you're doing all this deep work. You do all the poker poker work. I I like how you just glossed over doing new development and flips and new construction like it was like a like a little thing that you kept in your pocket. And you're like, Oh, look! I just built a house
maybe maybe mention talk. Talk about how the 1st the beginnings of before you started doing mobile home parks. What? What it was like the the 1st transactions you were doing. And yeah.
Pasha Esfandiary (26:07):
Yeah. So it was in Vegas. I was buying property site unseen at the auctions, and this was about 2,000, 12,011, Ish. And I.
Philip Hernandez @educatedinvest (26:16):
1st cut transactions in real estate. You did were at auction. Yeah.
Pasha Esfandiary (26:21):
Sight unseen, and so.
Yeah, I mean, like, you know, back then I I just it. It just seems so normal to me. Because that's a that's how I did my internship from, you know, my mentor, and so I I wasn't scared of it.
What I did know is that you got to play the numbers, and so he taught me really how to be super conservative
(26:42):
on my underwriting.
And so what I did is, you know, I I probably bid it on like 300 to 400 homes until I got my 1st one right. But I was bidding on, you know, anywhere from 10 to 25 a day, so it it took a little while for me to get it, and so.
and I knew that anytime I would land something is I I would have so much cushion built in into my my performa that it would be fine. And so again, I'm just a patient investor, right? And I just know what time I'll I'll pick up deals. And but once I got that one deal which actually was a mobile home in a Mobile Home Park community. I made my mistakes. I still netted $3,000, but I made all my mistakes. You know my 1st home. I thought I mean I knew what I was doing, but I kinda didn't at the same time, and
(27:27):
you know, but I made 3 K. Net. And so I said, This is it like I love it? I don't lose money on my 1st deal I can refine, and I can get better every single deal. And then I just took that, and I just bought some more, and I took and I I kept buying more, and I kept turning into when I was doing about 3 or 4 flips a time in Las Vegas, which was pretty awesome.
(27:48):
and built the systems and had the right crews, and, you know, had to learn all the things that I did, and then my wife wanted to move to La to pursue her acting career. And so when I I flipped one home in Los Angeles. And I just said, Wow, I went from being a pretty big fish, a a
somewhat bigger fish in a in a kind of Medium Pond in Vegas to like a yuppie in a ocean in Los Angeles, and I slipped my 1st home. But the the great thing was that the place where I flipped. My 1st home was that it was in a way of path of progression. And so, right up the street from us
(28:24):
some guy came over to our flip site and was like, Hey, I have some land, if you guys want to like, look at it. I was like.
no, but I want to look at it.
So we went and looked at it, and I started seeing this beautiful piece of land.
and across my eyes I saw
someone across the hill building a brand new house.
(28:46):
and across the way I saw somebody with like brand new cars.
Then I'm like, Okay, there's something here right like.
I don't think anyone really like is kind of figuring this out yet. And I just and then I started doing my research. And it was in the path of progression. Anyways, I ended up buying a bunch of land without ever knowing how to develop on land. And this is all hillside. By the way.
Philip Hernandez @educatedinvest (29:09):
Oh, my God! Yeah!
Ho! Ho! Ho!
Pasha Esfandiary (29:12):
But I also know that, you know, when there's less competition, and people don't want to solve headaches. I know that there's money into it, and I know that there's money into it. And I did my numbers. And I went and contacted people who built in Los Angeles, and I knew like exactly where I needed to be, and I knew my cushion. I knew how much I was getting land, and I knew that this area was going to blow up, and it did so. I took my all my money, bought a bunch of land.
(29:34):
and started developing on those pieces of land that that land has quadrupled in the in the few years that I was
developing there, and that area just shot up by at least 30 40. So it was. It was an awesome time to get in.
But you know, towards the end of that I started wanting to have a family.
and I said, hey? I don't wanna develop because it's it's it's like a fat, a feast or female famine. Or you know, I've I don't know the term, and I started buying some apartment complexes in Kansas, and I got some really good deals, and then I I hired to my 2 partners to overlook my shoulder, and they were experts, I mean experts, experts and mobile home communities and said, Let's buy our 1st mobile home community. I was like, Yeah, I don't. Wanna.
(30:15):
And they said, listen, this is a smoking deal. I started underwriting it. I didn't get it because I was coming through a multifamily lens.
and then that we still bought it because they're they want to put up their own money, and I trusted them. And I took their
teachings on on how to underwrite it. I was like, Okay, this makes sense. Now we bought it that one deal outperformed all of my smoking deals that I bought Kansas. And so I said, there's something here, and if I have a stigma on this, so does everybody else.
(30:47):
I did, and it didn't, so that I didn't, doing an immensely amount of research contacted. Everybody I knew took every course that I could, and I just said, there's an opportunity here, and we have to go all in, and that's what we did
so cause the the opportunity won't be around for 5 to 7 years. In my opinion.
Philip Hernandez @educatedinvest (31:02):
Yeah, I
I I am getting this. Well, 1st of all, I just wanna highlight. It's so funny. The the all the things that you did first.st The 1st things in real estate are like the quote, unquote, most difficult, you know, like auction, like buying properties at auction, I mean granted, is 2,010. So the different vibe, but like but buying properties at auction there, you're like
(31:32):
surrounded by sharks and a bunch of people that really know their numbers, and then doing hillside, new construction.
Pasha Esfandiary (31:41):
Yeah.
Philip Hernandez @educatedinvest (31:42):
In la like. I'm sure that there's no shortage of people that would tell you. You're an insane person for doing hillside new development, and it seemed like you got into a certain flow with with with doing it in in La.
Pasha Esfandiary (31:56):
Yeah, I I've I've never had this. This is the thing. I've never been. Once I've registered something, and I I know that I can make money, and I see other people making money into it. i i i know I can figure it out right. And so, yeah, I mean, when when I reflect back like, yeah, maybe that was kind of dumb. And yeah, maybe that like whatever. But I just you know what it is, what what comes back to me is that I let my my vision for myself guide me instead of the decisions in the in like the day to day, right?
(32:24):
So there's you. Everyone has a goal, right? And so what happens is like, you have your starting point A, and there's a there's a end goal. Z, right? And so
typically
it's a pretty straight line. I mean, it's like, not really. But when you elongate it out it's a straight line. There's always a straight line to get to Z. But us, we as humans, we like to complicate it and think about this way. And let's do this and that, that that that this, this we're really the answer at the end day is just
(32:51):
just go straight line, just go do it right. And so I I mean do it with being responsible right? I never put everything at risk. I don't jeopardize my life and my wife's life and all that, but I took some risks. And so,
yeah, I guess, reflecting back. Now, I'm just yeah. Alright.
Philip Hernandez @educatedinvest (33:10):
Interesting. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then
sort of transitioning into the Mobile Home Park conversation.
The
yeah, I do feel like, so
just in the last, like 4 years.
The word is kind of out
on Mobile, on Mobile, on mobile home parks where people are like.
(33:33):
Do you know how poorly people are managing these properties! Oh, my God! There's such an opportunity to
be a competent provider of of a service to to these people, and they will be extremely grateful. And the numbers just work at your entry price. And so yeah, in one sense, it's like.
(33:57):
it's great, because actually, a lot of people are getting better conditions there in mobile home parks and this kind of stuff.
But I, you know, hindsight is 2020. I'd love to be investing in mobile home parks about 7 years ago. But but yeah, how? How has been that journey to
focusing on mobile home parks? And how are you seeing things change?
Pasha Esfandiary (34:21):
Yeah, good question. So there's still opportunity. By way, Phillip.
I will say that I think
I think a lot of people the cats out of the bag about mobile home Park communities and and people want to get in. Unfortunately. And I just gotta say this. It it eats me up because we buy a lot of properties from
(34:42):
people who come into
real estate or mobile home communities and think they can manage
the properties. And these are I'm I'm talking about. These are big operators, and multifamily, and they have systems, and this and that, they don't know how to run up like they do not how to know how to operate a mobile home community. And what happens is a lot of times you bring on investors, or you bring on money or and and outside money to purchase these homes with you.
(35:06):
these parks with you, and they don't know how to operate. And the brutal thing about this sector
is that there are a lot of operators who a don't improve the conditions. And just jack up the rents because the thing about mobile home communities is that you have such a sticky tenant base that they own the home and they can't really move out. I mean, it doesn't happen in practice. So that's that's the ugly side of mobile home for our communities, in my opinion. And we're we often buy properties from.
(35:33):
you know, people who don't know what they're doing. They just jack up the rents on people like we. We really actually go in there and fix up the the the streets and the lights and the landscaping, and the skirting and kick out bad tenants. We really do make the community a lot better, which I know a lot of operators say they do, but they actually don't.
which actually is, you know, something I
quite passionate about. It kind of destroys me. And then so and then a lot of operators will jack up the rents whatever they want 100%, 200. It's just mind, look. So there's an ugly side to it all. But if you are a good operator and you can come into this business. The numbers are there. They're better than multifamily.
(36:09):
Yeah, you are improving people's lives, and there is no other sector of commercial real estate where the supply is dwindling and the demand is increasing. Unfortunately, in our economy, we're gonna keep printing money and inflation is gonna keep happening. The middle class is gonna keep getting squeezed. And so the demand for our product keeps growing every single year that we're in this sector. The demand just keeps increasing every single year for our properties and our homes.
(36:36):
And when I 1st got into it, just 3 years ago, we were buying for Mom and Pop sellers left and right. And now.
because of the the craziness that happened in (192) 019-2021 where people were just buying everything, cap rates were super compressed throughout the sectors of real estate. A lot of operators got into mobile home communities because of that.
(36:58):
Now, our opportunities because interest rates are so high, and Mom Pops aren't selling are those same operators who don't know how to run the communities are who we are buying from.
who have just
not done much to the Park. They've done some improvements. They've done, some rental increases, but they don't know what they're doing. They don't know how to deal with it. They don't know how to deal with it day to day, like we do.
Philip Hernandez @educatedinvest (37:20):
Yeah, can you speak a little bit more about
what?
Yeah, what are I mean? You did mention some specifics, but like, what are some of the things that that
you're like, mistakes that people you're seeing that people are making on operations, that yeah. And like, yeah, how how are you guys able to bring something different.
Pasha Esfandiary (37:44):
So you know, I think something that a lot of operators do that I see very naively, naively done is they just want to get anybody in right. And so.
There's there's, I mean, they just get anybody in which doesn't really better the community right? Because
and then also how to put on
put on essentially what you wanna do. The 1st thing you wanna do is attract a better tenant sometimes right in these parts. It it depends on each other. You wanna go and beautify the park, so a lot of them will do. Maybe they'll do the roads if we're lucky right, but then they won't do the landscaping. So then they're always having to deal with a lot of landscapers, and then they have to deal with a lot of bushes, and they. And then they all like man. Something that we see all the time is they don't know how to deal with trash, because technically they own their home.
(38:30):
and they don't know how to enforce. So so a lot of people will put their trash out, and it just starts to kind of pile up. So when you go through this parks, these parks, you see trash everywhere, and so we are very strict. There is no trash outside of your home like you have to take it to the Dumpster, and we're very adamant about that, because we wanna make sure that the people who
would live there
(38:51):
like to look at. Like like to see a nice park. They like to see that people are taking care of it. So we really do go in there and clean it up and clean up the act of it. And so we get in ton of tenants that say, thank you so much. I mean, you know we've been living here forever, and you know the last owners were slumlords essentially. And so
I I see those little things that add up to a bigger thing right? And then you get a better quality tenant. It's like a better positive feedback loop instead of the negative feedback loop of getting just anyone in there for money, and then just don't really do the things. Also, a lot of operators don't.
(39:25):
So one thing we do, even though they technically own the homes. We'll potentially most of the time do the skirting for them. The skirting is like that bottom kind of footing across the mobile home. We'll do that for them to beautify the park, and we'll we'll help
our tenants out, you know, and as much as we can. It's their home. At the end of the day, you know, with maybe a power wash with a cleaning so that we can help the park overall periods and the curbside appeal alongside with, you know, trimming the landscaping, and doing all that.
Philip Hernandez @educatedinvest (39:57):
Yeah, I hear you saying that some of these issues about landscaping, exterior beautification trash, all these kind of things
that. You're seeing them in Mobile home parks. But I I was literally. I was at a meetup last night talking to someone that is purchasing, you know, a 395 unit apartment complex in Houston, in A B area like a pretty nice area.
(40:25):
And this and the construction is like less than 30 years or something like that. It's not crazy, old, and
it was some level of institutional investor was just not paying for landscaping and not paying for a very exterior, superficial kind of things that are not really that expensive. But
(40:52):
you know, if you don't take care of them, it detracts from the quality of life of your tenant, and then the tenant that stays is not actually the tenant that you want. And then the people are just they're like what I don't wanna live here anymore, you know, and literally the the person I was talking to
like those exact same things that you said about really just basic beautification. And they've went. They've gone from 70% occupancy on the 395 units to like mid 80 S in a matter of months. Yeah. And yeah.
Pasha Esfandiary (41:26):
It's it's pretty, you know. People don't put enough attention on curbside Peel and and let me give you an example. So if you're gonna go shop for a single family home, and you're gonna buy a home for yourself. What's the 1st thing you do? You go on, Zillow or redfin? And you look at the pictures, and I'll be like, all right. These pictures look good. Now, when the pictures look good, you're like, Okay, I'm gonna go see this home as soon as you pull up to the home
(41:48):
we instantly judge. It's just who how we are. It's just how our brains work. You will instantly judge the home, and if the home looks good on the curbside appeal, you now have a better inclination for the home. So when you go into the home. You're looking for the things to make it better instead, if you're like. It's ugly! I actually
don't really like love. How it is you're already going into the home thinking you don't like it. Then you're gonna start looking for everything that you don't like. It's so important for curbside appeal. It's kinda like when you buy a car, you start seeing that car everywhere. If you're already gonna go into a home or into a park or into a community or an apartment complex. And you automatically see trash everywhere. And it's not clean.
(42:33):
You're not like you're not gonna.
Philip Hernandez @educatedinvest (42:34):
It's a lieutenant thing.
Pasha Esfandiary (42:35):
It's the most obvious thing you're not gonna get the right tenant.
Philip Hernandez @educatedinvest (42:38):
Yeah.
Pasha Esfandiary (42:38):
Have I have. I personally have an apartment complex
in Wichita, Kansas. As a I have a few in Wichita, Kansas, and so my property manager was doing great at all the other properties, and I secret shopped them, you know, a few months ago, and when I went to that park I was appalled, honestly appalled. There was trash everywhere. I was livid.
(43:01):
and I ripped into her. I'm I'm going to be candid. I like 1st of all like, how the hell are you? The property manager, and you haven't gone there for the last month. And then, secondly, how do you let the tenants
deal with all this trash everywhere, right? And so
I have been on her
ass about it. Maybe I shouldn't say out of pocket whatever.
Philip Hernandez @educatedinvest (43:21):
Sarah, everyone and.
Pasha Esfandiary (43:23):
And the whole park looks completely different. We had cleaned up the trash and we went from 71% occupancy now to 85% occupancy within 3 months.
Philip Hernandez @educatedinvest (43:34):
Oh, my God!
Pasha Esfandiary (43:34):
Because she kept saying, No one wants to move in. No one wants to move in. No one wants to move in, I said. There is so much demand
for low income housing. I do not understand what you're saying. This doesn't compute with me, and it's those little things of
picking up the trash, beautifying it, curbside appeal, and how to treat your tenants right and.
Philip Hernandez @educatedinvest (43:55):
Represent.
Pasha Esfandiary (43:55):
When they 1st come in. What's there are? They're automatically judging you right? So when
and then we we audited how their their process of getting a tenant in how fast you respond to them, and all that these things matter.
Philip Hernandez @educatedinvest (44:09):
Hmm! I I love that you secret shop this.
Pasha Esfandiary (44:13):
Of course.
Philip Hernandez @educatedinvest (44:13):
That you've owned for a while. Yeah, yeah, I could. Totally.
Yeah. I mean.
I guess.
Yeah, the
the challenges. You know that at the at the number of units that you have, I guess.
creating a way to. I guess you pay people the secret shop for you, you know, because, yeah, once you have the number of units that you have, it gets, it's it's it's not really feasible to be visiting them as as often and like watching the managing. The managers, you know, starts to look different, you know.
Pasha Esfandiary (44:51):
This is the beautiful thing about result. I mean, this kind of ties back into results based coaching. This is why I love about real estate, the numbers will not lie to you, the numbers will not lie to you. How many move ends do we have? How many leases do we have pending. How many people have viewed the the property? How? What's our Noi? And it all tells a story, and I know that it should be higher, and I know where we should be at. And I. So I just said, there's something's wrong here, right? Whatever whatever I'm being told is not right, because the numbers don't never lie.
(45:17):
So yeah. I personally went over there and secret shopped it. Now, I mean, I have a secret shopper that goes every few weeks.
Philip Hernandez @educatedinvest (45:23):
Nice that that sounds like good advice for any business owner. Honestly, you know, as opposed to
yeah, coming up with whatever excuse it's like, if you're not getting the result that you envisioned in your business plan, then there's something that's off about your execution or your business plan.
you know, and you know, give yourself a honest look at what that could be, and it might be something that you're doing, or someone that you've entrusted to to work for you
(45:51):
so
cool I'd love to hit you with some final quick fire questions to to end us off. But yeah, this has been awesome. I thank you so much. I really appreciate your time.
Oh, okay. Having done auctions and hillside new construction. What's the most amount of money you've lost on a deal.
Pasha Esfandiary (46:18):
So
I would say that I've I've sunk
a lot of money into a deal.
But the the beautiful thing about real estate is that you hold long enough.
you typically can make it back. So there is one deal
that I still have that's ongoing from my development days, and I've sunk close to about $800,000 into that deal.
Philip Hernandez @educatedinvest (46:41):
Okay.
Pasha Esfandiary (46:42):
So.
Philip Hernandez @educatedinvest (46:43):
But you're able to hold it.
Pasha Esfandiary (46:45):
I'm able to hold it. I'm gonna build on it. I'll I'll make a tiny bit of money. But for the pain and anguish for the last 7 years of my life, and being.
Philip Hernandez @educatedinvest (46:53):
Yeah.
Pasha Esfandiary (46:53):
Include 100.
Philip Hernandez @educatedinvest (46:55):
Oh, mate!
Pasha Esfandiary (46:55):
In time.
Philip Hernandez @educatedinvest (46:56):
Oh, well.
Pasha Esfandiary (46:57):
Yeah, one of my neighbors is a very litigious lawyer himself, and does not want any construction.
Philip Hernandez @educatedinvest (47:04):
Oh, my God!
Pasha Esfandiary (47:05):
Yeah. So I have been sued by him personally 4 times.
Philip Hernandez @educatedinvest (47:07):
Oh, my God!
Pasha Esfandiary (47:09):
Yeah. So you know, it's, you know, crap like that. But yeah, yeah, it's it's not fun.
Philip Hernandez @educatedinvest (47:13):
Yeah, I
remember I was at a conference that Tarak Al Musa was was speaking at this past year, and he essentially
his. His answer to this, this, that question that I just asked you. It was like, I mean, I was not interviewing him, but somebody asked the same question.
and
who's like
(47:34):
he lost like
2
point 5 million dollars on a flip, or something like that, and like at least a million and a half. The loss on a flip in a in a very nice area, and
from what I can tell, he's a fairly high net worth individual. And I and I was just thinking like.
(47:55):
And it was. This was like beach side kind of thing, luxury thing I was like.
why don't you just hold it like for a couple of years like.
Pasha Esfandiary (48:06):
It could be different. So.
Philip Hernandez @educatedinvest (48:08):
Yeah.
Pasha Esfandiary (48:08):
His defense a little bit. If it's on the beach front.
and
you may not be able to get enough rent to pay what the mortgage is already
right, and it.
Philip Hernandez @educatedinvest (48:18):
Oh, definitely, definitely, it would have been a loss, for, for, like a few, however long, he held it for sure.
Pasha Esfandiary (48:24):
And if you're doing well and everywhere else, sometimes it's good to consider the loss to write off your other gains.
Philip Hernandez @educatedinvest (48:31):
That's a good point.
Pasha Esfandiary (48:32):
There's also there's also something to talk about how much equity he has in the deal.
because if that if that equity is staying dormant inside of that one deal.
Then you're not making any money, either, off of what you could be potentially making. If you're making 2030% on that money every single year, and you have to sit on that property for, let's say, 4 or 5 years.
Philip Hernandez @educatedinvest (48:54):
Yeah.
Pasha Esfandiary (48:55):
It might not outweigh what you can potentially make. So it's all just kind of a mathematical equation. So there are. I just want to give some factors there.
Philip Hernandez @educatedinvest (49:01):
Those are all really good points. So like you've looked at all these perspectives for this deal for yourself.
Pasha Esfandiary (49:08):
Oh, for sure. Yeah. And I I knew that I knew the area was appreciating so much. So I like
I if I wanted to. I could have probably exited this deal about 3 years ago and built on it. But I was like, you know.
let's just let's just kind of see what happens.
Philip Hernandez @educatedinvest (49:21):
Cool
alright.
What do you do when you're not working on your business?
Pasha Esfandiary (49:28):
I am with my children
and at home.
And yeah, I mean.
Kylie, I just
6 months old twins.
Philip Hernandez @educatedinvest (49:38):
Whoa! Congratulations! Thank you.
Pasha Esfandiary (49:40):
I'm I'm really big into community. So whatever I do, it's like everyone comes over to my house. My house is a kind of community house. We just had a huge like raw fish boil
and
but it's it's basically community and traveling. But you know, really, ever since I had my children. I just want to be home all day like.
Philip Hernandez @educatedinvest (49:56):
That's great!
Pasha Esfandiary (49:58):
So.
Philip Hernandez @educatedinvest (49:58):
That's beautiful. Cool. Well, on this line of community. What's your favorite way to give back to your community? And you can define that? However, you want.
Pasha Esfandiary (50:08):
So I think there's a lot of ways that like one can give back. And I think my personal
one thing that I tell all, my friends. Whether it's
quite annoying, I'm sure, is that if you are in my circle I will push the hell out of you right? So you you cannot play small when you're around me. Now I'm gonna do as compassion as I can, but if you're my friend and you, I know you have a goal. I I will be the guy that say, well, why aren't you working on your goal?
(50:35):
Don't go out. Why aren't you working on your goal like, you know.
so I've lost some friends with that. But I just.
Philip Hernandez @educatedinvest (50:41):
List.
Pasha Esfandiary (50:42):
I, I. And I'm okay with that, you know, like I said earlier, we have one life in this suit, and it's kind of like
I wanna I wanna surround myself with with with like minded people. So that's how I give back. I also mentor.
I mentor a few college kids as well, who want to get into real estate. You know I mentor. I try to
(51:04):
partners partner up with my friends, to try to have them create their own like life and vision for themselves. And luckily I'm in a position of my life where I can have the resources to do that.
So it's a lot of that.
Philip Hernandez @educatedinvest (51:17):
Yeah, I I have this, a kind of similar relationship with with my friends, where like, if they call me, and they ask me for advice, like
they know I'm gonna kick their ass like more more or less, you know, like
like you didn't call me to let you off the hook, you know you call.
Pasha Esfandiary (51:39):
You know what you're getting yourself into.
Philip Hernandez @educatedinvest (51:40):
You called me, because you know what kind of a person I am that I? Yeah, that I
can see the potential for for what people can do in their life. And then so it's like.
well, yeah, I'm do you wanna pass like that's not why you called me, you know, like you like. You want somebody to kick your ass. So I'm sure if somebody calls you and asks you for advice.
(52:06):
it's they're like they. That's the pill that they are looking for.
Pasha Esfandiary (52:10):
That's true. I just, you know, if someone has a goal on a vision and I don't see them going towards that goal and vision. It's just I. There's something in me where I take on other people's goals and visions as much as I take on my own.
Philip Hernandez @educatedinvest (52:20):
Spoon.
Pasha Esfandiary (52:21):
You know, and so I get very passionate. I've even, you know, have to even even recently been like, Hey, if
I'm coming off too strong with this whole accountability thing. Just tell me to back off, because I don't.
you know. So yeah, that's that's that's 1 thing I think
within my community that I? Yeah, I do a lot.
Philip Hernandez @educatedinvest (52:42):
Cool. So on this line of mentoring, who who is a mentor or role model that you have had either in business or in life.
Pasha Esfandiary (52:51):
I have been incredibly blessed with a ton of mentors in my life. I have
I have 2
really main mentors that I have.
and one of them has 1,100 employees. So he's teaching me how to be a better CEO
cause? Yeah. And then the other mentor that I have allows me to kind of call him whenever I want, or take him to dinner and pick his brain because he has built the company that I want to build. I mean, he. He manages a few 1 billion dollars of assets under management, and he's been doing this for about 30 years. He was my original
(53:25):
mentor when I learned about the site and seed auctions and taught me essentially everything I knew as on a foundational level. So I've been very blessed with that. And then I also have a lot of incredibly incredibly successful friends where I get to pick their brains from time to time. So
you know. But I'm also a guy that I I'm in so many masterminds. And I read a lot, and I just love being around that energy where I can learn from other people and just be inspired from what others are doing. You know, anytime I I hear someone doing something. How can I apply that into my.
(54:00):
into my life, or into my business.
Philip Hernandez @educatedinvest (54:03):
Yeah, yeah, that's yeah. That's great.
what? What do you have? Do you have a any programs or masterminds, or coaching or books that that you would recommend somebody if they're let's say more. Starting out. Where would you? Where would you direct them to? To? To place their energies.
Pasha Esfandiary (54:25):
Starting out
in real estate, or starting out kind of getting
their life going.
You.
Philip Hernandez @educatedinvest (54:34):
Either one.
Pasha Esfandiary (54:37):
Okay.
I think.
my favorite book is, think and grow rich.
I think that's a foundational book, I think. Combine that with the slight edge.
and as a man thinketh.
it'll teach you that your brain really
can push you any way you want. It's about, how do you
(55:00):
think differently? Because at the on a foundational level for you to get different results.
you need to start thinking differently.
And then I would say, for real estate
it depends on what sector of real estate. But there's I wouldn't really recommend books anymore. I would just go join a mastermind or all these online courses that they'd now have from. When I used to have to learn this stuff.
(55:23):
I would just go join one of those meet up groups, learn from other people. The cool thing about real estate is that if you want to get into it, there's a lot of people who are about 2 years ahead of you that you need to go pick their brain. Don't go ask the guy who's 10 years ahead of you. Go ask the person that's 2 years ahead of you, and because it's fresh, they could tell you exactly what to do. You can avoid a lot of mistakes. You can actually streamline your results that way.
Philip Hernandez @educatedinvest (55:46):
Cool love this. Wow, Pasha, this has been great. Really appreciate your time
where I know you guys just closed a raise. So congratulations on that got another beautiful mobile home Park. It's literally it's called Swan Lake, right.
Pasha Esfandiary (56:03):
Called Swan Lake.
Philip Hernandez @educatedinvest (56:03):
Wow! That's pretty epic. But
you know, for for the future, where can people learn more about you and your offerings?
Pasha Esfandiary (56:15):
If anyone wanna learn about offerings, go to evo capital.net.
There's an investor portal login that you can go into and sign up. You have to be an accredited investor, of course, to participate in, or any of our deals, but that's where you could sign up there, and we'll we'll send out our
deals whenever we open up.
Philip Hernandez @educatedinvest (56:35):
Beautiful. Thank you so much, Pasha. Really appreciate your time.
Pasha Esfandiary (56:38):
Philip, I appreciate you, Buddy. Thank you.
Alright Pasha Esfandiari. Thank you so much for coming on. The educated investor. Podcast I'm, so stoked to talk with you about your your journey. You've yeah. From what I can see, you went from being a professional poker player to now. You have around 350 million dollars in assets under management. And
(00:25):
yeah, really interesting story. So I'm I'm excited to hear about the journey of of how your career led you to where you are right now. But before we go on the journey I'd love to hear just a brief overview of you describe what your business looks like right now.
Pasha Esfandiary (00:40):
Sure. Well, thank you for having me on. Philip really appreciate, I do wanna correct. I have about a hundred 1 million dollars worth of assets under management. Right now I've done about 350 million dollars worth of transactions across my career, so forth. So
Philip Hernandez @educatedinvest (00:54):
Cool at some point in time the the money came in and and you were. You were a part of the deals. Perfect? Yeah.
Pasha Esfandiary (01:00):
Okay, so where I'm at right now. I'm I'm a co-founder of Evo. Capital. I have 2 other partners in this, and so we specialize in only and strictly mobile home communities across the Us. Mostly in the Midwest mid South. We have close to 22 to 24 parks under management at this point. And it's about 2,150 lots.
(01:24):
All comprising of that portfolio. We do have a property management company within our organization. So we are vertically integrated.
We have close to about.
I don't know. 2625 full time employees and a ton of other part time employees. So the business has really grown pretty immensely in the last, I would say. We. We syndicated our 1st deal little over 2 years ago, but we had been buying real estate
(01:51):
you know, before that for about mobile home and communities for about a year before that. So it's it's really taken off for us.
Philip Hernandez @educatedinvest (01:58):
Cool. Yeah.
that is, yeah. And I have so many questions that maybe we'll touch on later about really the property management aspect.
especially for our mobile home parks. That's like the thing that people don't really
talk about when they when they're looking at these like really great returns is
(02:21):
how important property management is to making sure.
Pasha Esfandiary (02:24):
Oh, yeah.
Philip Hernandez @educatedinvest (02:25):
As well.
So it's the big.
Pasha Esfandiary (02:27):
The biggest piece of the puzzle. I I will tell you right now, if you own a mobile home park community, or really any property. In general, you, the the execution of the property management is just such a bigger piece to tackle.
Philip Hernandez @educatedinvest (02:39):
Yeah, cool. Well, yeah, we'll we'll, I'm sure we'll we'll talk a lot about that. But yeah, you you before you were in the real estate game. You were a professional poker player. Can can you describe a little bit about that, and how that even became a thing.
Pasha Esfandiary (02:54):
Sure. So yeah, I definitely took a different path of my career. And in my life
you know, I think it. It always starts so that I I always excelled at school. I picked up concepts really quickly and and I was always a gamer when I was growing up so, but school ended up being very torturous and tedious for me, you know, I think, as we know now, there's different ways of learning, and and you know, being academic it was not for me to retain information, and and studious wasn't for me but concepts and visual learning, and
(03:26):
you know I could ace test here and there. So ace test ace tests very well. But then it's the homework and all those stuff that really got me. So once I graduated high school and I went into a community college cause. You know.
yeah, I went into a community college. And I just realized very quickly on. This wasn't for me, and I don't really have a master plan or anything like that. I just knew that I don't want to be here, and I don't want to spend my time and energy somewhere that felt torturous to me like I couldn't imagine it.
(03:55):
So.
I had quickly left that
schooling career. And then at that time my brother had won. A really big poker tournament. This is about a 2,004 range, and he won 1.4 million dollars. We're winning this tournament. And he became very popular. And he continues to be one of the the biggest names in poker as well, too, which is awesome. But I you know, at that time, being a naive, arrogant kid.
(04:23):
you know. I said my brother could do what I could do it. And so I started playing poker. I always played games, anyways, and I picked up the game and poker really quickly. I just. I just intuitively knew that when one person's acting a certain way, you have to act a a different way to kind of maximize your potential, and then poker for me just took off, I mean, really, ever since I was
almost 19 years old I've been playing poker, and then, when I was, you know, 21 I went to Vegas and did well, for you know, for being a 21 year old into the World Series, and I just said, Alright, there's something here, and I I really went. Then
(04:55):
a deep dive into poker and studied it, and moved to Houston to go play. And then I was, you know, for the next 5 or 6 years, traveled the world and
played poker professionally until I really realized
that it wasn't.
It wasn't gonna get me where I wanted to, even though I was making really great money for my age. Right? And so it was. It was a hard decision to give a poker, because then I would have to get into the real world of of making money because it's poker so easy. Come, easy go.
(05:27):
So I had to take. You know, a few steps backwards.
Do an internship unpaid to learn how to do real estate flipping? And then I I started. You know my career. There took my bankroll from Poker and flip my 1st home and
5 ever since then. What's okay?
Philip Hernandez @educatedinvest (05:41):
Cool. Yeah, be yeah before? Yeah, I'd love to hear. Maybe if there's any skills that you feel like you developed in that space where you're constantly reading people. You're constantly making probabilistic
bets, you know, which in a lot of ways that's any kind of investing and and transfer that into real estate. Yeah, like, what? What was the crossover that you felt was like?
(06:11):
Maybe a little more natural.
Pasha Esfandiary (06:13):
Yeah, you know, I think, some things that I don't think about when I 1st got into my real estate career that I now realize, like, Wow, I'm really glad I played poker 1st of all.
you know, absolutely the low hanging fruit that everyone thinks about us reading people. That's true. I love negotiating. I love knowing what you know where it's at. I call, you know all the bluffs that you know. All these sellers try to get over on us. And just so that part is just fun for me. I've you know that's what you do, you poker is a game of incomplete information, while real estates, typically a game of complete information. And you can do all of that. So that that's a fun part for me. But there are some things that set me pretty uniquely apart. You know poker
(06:51):
to be a really good poker player. You have to learn how to adapt faster than your opponents that sets a good poker player from away from somebody else. So in the real estate markets, what's beautiful about real estate compared to like, let's say the stock market is that
the the change happens slowly, and the writing is always on the wall, and it usually takes about 6 months to catch up. So you have a runway to adapt and change to the cyclical needs of of real estate, which is pretty amazing. Secondly, you know, if you know anything about poker. There's a style of poker play that's called tight, aggressive, which basically, that means you're very conservative, very conservative.
(07:27):
But then, when you are in a hand. You get very aggressive, right? And so that's kind of my style in business as well, too. It took me getting into
flipping homes, then developing residential from land up and then into multifamily, and then learned about Mobile home parks, where I said, Oh, this is it like mobile home parks
is
(07:47):
for me, the no brainer, and I just jumped all in. I mean, you know, I did everything on my own up until my career until I learned mobile home communities, and then started raising up capital for that. So, like, you know, I got really aggressive on that. Another thing to think about is
what I see a lot of
people get in trouble in real estate is that they don't try to diminish their variability right? And so what I mean by that is, there's other operators in the space that are in, you know, do big, multifamily and big mobile home communities like we do. And so they have a different model than us. And so we try to minimize our variability, because, you know, short term pain can always happen. For example, interest rates just rose.
(08:26):
immensely right, but with the strategy that we have and the way I look at things, I always think, for, you know, 10 years, 20 years down the line you can get away from short term variance. So the long term thinking really helps me with that. And then, you know, another low hanging fruit is,
is the educational piece like, you know, to be to be good at poker. You have to study your opponents, and you have to study what everyone else is doing. I think that's 1 thing that kind of sets me apart is that I am so studious, and I learn from everybody else, and without them teaching me
(08:57):
right. And so then I'll adapt that really quickly into our business. So one thing I always tell my employees like I I apologize. If you want stability cause I am always changing, and I will always be changing us for the better. Right? So you have to get comfortable, being uncomfortable with around me. So yeah.
Philip Hernandez @educatedinvest (09:14):
Nice.
yeah, I remember having. I mean, maybe this is a little too much personal information. But my my 1st wife, I
would have all these conversations where she would be upset with me because I would find some new thing that I would become obsessed with, and then I would become obsessed with it, and learn all the things that it takes to get better at that thing. And she'd be like, why are you always change? It seems like your what your your interests are is always changing like I I like I don't. I don't understand that, you know. And
(09:49):
it went from
this thing that seemed like a quirk to now in business it's like a superpower, you know, where I get to learn from other people. And I yeah, just find out what other people are doing, and how are they doing it successfully? And like, there, the yeah, I mean the
(10:11):
the details of like raising money, for example, go from, you know, borrowing $200 from someone to 20 million dollars or 50 million dollars. And
you can. You can find so much if you have a curious mind.
Pasha Esfandiary (10:26):
Yeah, isn't that a beautiful thing, though? Like so, you know, I always
stated, you know, that I used to my ad would always, you know, get in the way of where I thought I wanted to go. But what? When you figure out the that's part of being an entrepreneur when you figure out that puzzle piece and you figure out how to excel your career and get to a point where you're you have immense gratitude for where you're at, you start to really start to understand that everything about who you were, and maybe that you thought you maybe had imposter syndrome or insecurities around actually is. Now your superpower, right.
Philip Hernandez @educatedinvest (10:56):
Early.
Pasha Esfandiary (10:56):
And so now, you know, once I was a college dropout, I was like, Oh, man, it's my ad. This is a crutch, and
I had my, you know, imposter syndrome around there. Now, I realize, like holy crap. I'm so glad about the way my brain is, and I've learned how to control it, and I've learned how to take that energy and apply it to business and then run, you know, faster than typical. So.
Philip Hernandez @educatedinvest (11:23):
Yeah, it's.
Pasha Esfandiary (11:24):
It's really awesome.
Philip Hernandez @educatedinvest (11:25):
Yeah, I mean on that same note, this idea of the only reason why you went down the journey of poker and eventually real estate was a certain amount of dissatisfaction that you had with.
Pasha Esfandiary (11:37):
For sure.
Philip Hernandez @educatedinvest (11:37):
With the way that the system is was set up, and I
I over over the years I've thought like
I cause I went the whole
undergrad grad school, you know, like I taught high school for 14 years before I left, before my own dissatisfaction with, you know, being a cog in a machine.
(12:00):
Sort of forced me to change lanes. But there's a part of me that I was like
I if if I actually had a lower tolerance for being in an environment that doesn't feel like it supports my life.
I would have made some of these challenging decisions a lot earlier, you know. And so, yeah, I love this idea of, you know, in in what is your superpower, and maybe dissatisfaction with, you know, being in a classroom all day. That could be a superpower too.
Pasha Esfandiary (12:33):
You know, I think, on just a more philosopho philosophy kind of standpoint of this is that I think, unfortunately.
because society tells you, one way or another, what you should be doing, not should should be doing that we have forgotten to listen to our intuition.
and I have been blessed with the fact that I have been very
(12:57):
honorary about. If I don't like something I don't like something right, and so that may rep some people the wrong way, but you know I try to do as compassionate and, as you know, as as thoughtful as I can, but I don't have time
to waste. And so when you really realize that time is the only commodity. Yeah, money is great, but really money should only be used to buy more time in your life, and I think a lot of people get that the the wrong way.
(13:23):
and I just don't have time. I mean you. You were on this on. We're in this suit one time, right? And so. And that's it. And it's finite. And it's gonna it's it passes up so quickly, so
I don't have time to not do anything I I don't want to do. I think I've been pretty blessed with that.
Philip Hernandez @educatedinvest (13:40):
Yeah, I, yeah, I I very much resonate with that. It does bring to my mind this aspect of we were talking before we started the podcast how you, through different personal development courses that you took and you became an emotional intelligence coach.
(14:00):
and that that was part of your career as that led you in this sort of bridge between poker and the the focus that you have on mobile home parks right now can can you talk a little bit about what it means to be an emotional intelligence coach? What that meant for you? And you know how how it applies to what you do now.
Pasha Esfandiary (14:21):
Yes, let me make this statement that I?
Okay. I believe that every human has the capability. I mean within reasons. If there's mental illnesses or physical illnesses or whatnot, but within reason
to get the same results as everybody else does.
I truly believe that I believe there's so much education out there. I mean, I believe, like what you're doing with this podcast there's so much knowledge to be had now
(14:49):
that you could really do anything, it's about doing things differently. It's about getting different results.
When I transition from poker, you have to understand, I was just really always good at games. So I did really well at poker, and that was great. But when you have.
you know traumas from your childhood, and you have unresolved issues from your childhood, making fast money when you're young is not the greatest thing to to have happen to you. Right so, and I won't get into all that. But what happens at 26 or 2026 years old, I I joined a program, and it was
(15:23):
very deep emotional intelligence work, and I knew because of my long term thinking that
because of poker
that did these feelings that I'm experiencing, and this healing work that I'm doing in this different way of life. When I got in there.
I need to this, make this the my core foundation. And and so, you know, I also have. You know, humans are just
(15:46):
set of patterns reinforce in childhood. Right? And so. And if you believe that with me, then you know that you can change any other pattern in your life, it just takes more practice to do that. And so
the emotional intelligence work. I had a mentor said, Hey, if you really wanna make this a part of you. You have to be in here for 2 years, I said. Absolutely no problem. I'm in right, because I knew that if I gave up 2 years of my life for short term, success and money wise
(16:11):
that for the rest of my life I would have this foundation of who I really wanted to be. And so I did that. And what emotional Intelligence Coach really is at the end of the day, I actually believe a better term, for it is a results based coach which
I know everybody, and their their mom is a coach now, and I would argue that they shouldn't be coaches, but but nonetheless. I regress on that. So
(16:37):
results based coaching when it comes to emotional intelligence work is that you have a goal, Philip. Okay, if I'm your coach, you have a goal, and we say, Okay, here's your goal. Let's break it down. Let's break it down to smallest chunks, and you come to me and say, Hey, I didn't do this one goal for 2 weeks in a row. And I say, Phillip.
what's actually going on here? What's the story? What's the conversation that that you're having in your mind. And then what's the feeling you're having? Humpier cause? What's happening is if you're not getting your goal, you have. You're hitting a subconscious block. It's not.
(17:09):
It's not that you don't want to do it or whatnot. If you really wanted that goal, there's a subconscious block that. Now I have to ask you enough clarifying questions for you to discover why you're feeling what you're doing, and then how to get you across that subconscious block to have a breakthrough
right and then. Now, now, once you have that breakdown, you have a different platform of higher platform that you're operating on, and with the coaching we keep stacking that upon each other. And what happens is it's the compounding effect of each win and going further and going further, so you'll get up to a certain wall, and then we'll coach you to get over it by understanding why and what the conversation and where that came from
(17:49):
in your childhood, or what's coming up for you? Because it's typically our subconscious blocks that stop us from getting the results that we actually want in life.
Philip Hernandez @educatedinvest (17:58):
Yeah, with super interesting.
yeah, I
I practice Zen for a number of years. And in Zen this idea of the essentially clarity, like being able to see things clearly. It can happen in a moment like this idea of the of the breakthrough where you see your life and your goals and the things that are supporting you, and that are not necessary.
(18:30):
that you can see those things clearly. And there's so many stories about it happening in an instant.
and can be so so powerful.
And the the challenge that I see a lot of times is that people will have these breakthrough moments, and then it becomes like a little thing they put in a box
(18:51):
where they're like, wow! I remember when I had that breakthrough moment, but sometimes their their habits, the habits that that make up their personhood
still have some, some they're they're they're a little more concrete than the than the feeling or or the the clarity that's experienced in a moment
(19:13):
when when you were doing the
more emotional development coach work. What was your experience of either like yourself, or supporting other people in
having these moments of clarity, but then
getting the results long term that support their vision.
Pasha Esfandiary (19:33):
So I mean, that's the power of having a coach. That's the power of having people around you that call you out, in my opinion right, and you are the sum of the 5 people that you hang out with, you know, if you you, if your 5 best friends are lazy. Listen.
humans, we learn from each other. Have you ever seen a child stare at their parents and stare at their friends? We learn from each other. You can't go against human nature. We we pick up subconscious cues
(19:57):
from everybody else. Right? We're very tribal. And people forget how tribal we actually are. And so a you guys surround yourself with the right people. And then, secondly, this is why you have a coach to get you and push you and nudge you against that subconscious queue that sometimes is so hard. But you have to also understand human nature the way we've designed
through. You know, the millions of years or hundreds of thousands of years is to be complacent. Right? We if we don't have danger, we we wanna take the easy way because we we wanna make sure mental capacity is ready for danger. Right? And so that's not out of us, right? We still are. That's in our DNA and our genetics and everything.
(20:38):
So you have to understand why you're doing what you're doing and and and getting behind it, and so that when you do have a breakthrough.
This is what I always say. People go to a personal development course, or even they have these breakthroughs in ceremonies, or they are. They do all of these things. But there's people that I have found that just keep doing the same thing over and over again, even though they're having a breakthrough.
(21:00):
It's A. They want it. They stay complacent, or they're getting some kind of emotional need met staying in that way. But C, they're just not doing the work. And so
I find that humans tend to over complicate everything
because they forget the power of compounding right. And this goes back to investing. And I I think we're kind of convoluting to 2, which is, but it works perfectly because
(21:25):
the way I this is the way I operate. If I find something in a personal development course that I go and take.
I find one or 2 things, Max, Max
and I apply that into my next 90 days because it takes about 90 days, a hundred days of practicing one thing to make it more of a habit. Right? It's like going to the gym. After 2 weeks you start to get better after 3 weeks this becomes easier. After 5 weeks it just starts to get easier and easier and easier. And then you're like, I kinda wanna do it right.
(21:53):
and that's the things. When you learn something or have a breakthrough, just go apply one thing for a quarter, and then that will become a foundational habit of yours, and then you keep stacking your habits. What happens is 10 to 15 years from now you're gonna look back and say, Holy crap!
I've changed so much, and I've actually changed everlasting habits. So I think people try to take on and overestimate what they can do in a very short term, and instead of seeing the long term, and just say, Hey, what's the best decision I can make for myself 10 years from now, and that's going sometimes going a little slower.
Philip Hernandez @educatedinvest (22:28):
Yeah, I yeah, I fully agree with with everything that you said it reminded me of something my wife says she's a therapist where you know someone will have some kind of thing that they is a habit or pattern that they, you know verbally, they will say that they don't want to do, or they don't like that. They do it, or they don't like that. They feel it.
(22:53):
And one of her, the things that I've heard heard her say many times, is, what in what way is this serving you? Yeah, what? Yeah. In what way is your?
You're yeah. In what way is it serving you now, or did it serve you in the past? But it no longer serves you, you know, and.
Pasha Esfandiary (23:11):
I have a I have a beautiful story to share about that. When I 1st got into the program I don't wanna be in there. My brother got me in. I was like, I wanna join the business one. He's like you have to do this one to get to the business one, and I went. I was like, I'm joining a call like it looked like a call. I was like, you know, this is stupid.
Philip Hernandez @educatedinvest (23:24):
What's the name of the program? Sorry.
Pasha Esfandiary (23:26):
It's called choice It's like a landmark. If anyone's heard of.
Philip Hernandez @educatedinvest (23:30):
Yeah, yeah.
Pasha Esfandiary (23:31):
Steroids. It's just a lot more intense. And so I walked in. And you know, everyone's kind of talking about like you know, why the hell are they here? And I raised my hand as an arrogant 26 year old, and like, listen, I've I've read all the books, and I don't want to be here. I want to be.
and then like the next course over. So I'm just taking this one and this like she was so nice to all the other people who raise her hand, and she just looked at me straight in the eyes, and she just said, Bullshit Pasha Bullshit, you are exactly where you wanna be because of every subconscious and conscious decision you ever freaking, made in your life. So whatever you're telling yourself is serving your story right now, and I just started bawling like.
Philip Hernandez @educatedinvest (24:07):
Whoa!
Pasha Esfandiary (24:08):
You're right.
you know.
Philip Hernandez @educatedinvest (24:11):
Like you're so.
Pasha Esfandiary (24:12):
You're right, you're so right. And then I was just instantly bought in.
Philip Hernandez @educatedinvest (24:15):
Wow, that's awesome.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's like.
yeah. I mean, it's so interesting.
sort of on a note. Whenever I hear someone complaining about their life in some way.
It's like what is like. Somehow all of the choices that you made and everything that you've done up into this point has has led you to to hear, and and the only
(24:48):
the only way moving forward in any sort of way is, if
the you get to be the owner of all of those decisions, and and you get to own you know what is the next step like? It it feels in line with that.
Pasha Esfandiary (25:04):
Yeah, I mean, when I think, when when the most transformational thing I think that anybody could do
is just take responsibility like to the deepest level ever of responsibility for everything in their life. If someone treated you badly.
Philip Hernandez @educatedinvest (25:20):
So, yeah.
Pasha Esfandiary (25:21):
You showed up in a way where they allowed you to treat you badly right, and you know, and once you take that level responsibly that everything is your fault at all times, no matter what
you, you start to change yourself, which gets you different results.
Philip Hernandez @educatedinvest (25:36):
100%
cool. Yeah, love this. So you're doing all this deep work. You do all the poker poker work. I I like how you just glossed over doing new development and flips and new construction like it was like a like a little thing that you kept in your pocket. And you're like, Oh, look! I just built a house
maybe maybe mention talk. Talk about how the 1st the beginnings of before you started doing mobile home parks. What? What it was like the the 1st transactions you were doing. And yeah.
Pasha Esfandiary (26:07):
Yeah. So it was in Vegas. I was buying property site unseen at the auctions, and this was about 2,000, 12,011, Ish. And I.
Philip Hernandez @educatedinvest (26:16):
1st cut transactions in real estate. You did were at auction. Yeah.
Pasha Esfandiary (26:21):
Sight unseen, and so.
Yeah, I mean, like, you know, back then I I just it. It just seems so normal to me. Because that's a that's how I did my internship from, you know, my mentor, and so I I wasn't scared of it.
What I did know is that you got to play the numbers, and so he taught me really how to be super conservative
(26:42):
on my underwriting.
And so what I did is, you know, I I probably bid it on like 300 to 400 homes until I got my 1st one right. But I was bidding on, you know, anywhere from 10 to 25 a day, so it it took a little while for me to get it, and so.
and I knew that anytime I would land something is I I would have so much cushion built in into my my performa that it would be fine. And so again, I'm just a patient investor, right? And I just know what time I'll I'll pick up deals. And but once I got that one deal which actually was a mobile home in a Mobile Home Park community. I made my mistakes. I still netted $3,000, but I made all my mistakes. You know my 1st home. I thought I mean I knew what I was doing, but I kinda didn't at the same time, and
(27:27):
you know, but I made 3 K. Net. And so I said, This is it like I love it? I don't lose money on my 1st deal I can refine, and I can get better every single deal. And then I just took that, and I just bought some more, and I took and I I kept buying more, and I kept turning into when I was doing about 3 or 4 flips a time in Las Vegas, which was pretty awesome.
(27:48):
and built the systems and had the right crews, and, you know, had to learn all the things that I did, and then my wife wanted to move to La to pursue her acting career. And so when I I flipped one home in Los Angeles. And I just said, Wow, I went from being a pretty big fish, a a
somewhat bigger fish in a in a kind of Medium Pond in Vegas to like a yuppie in a ocean in Los Angeles, and I slipped my 1st home. But the the great thing was that the place where I flipped. My 1st home was that it was in a way of path of progression. And so, right up the street from us
(28:24):
some guy came over to our flip site and was like, Hey, I have some land, if you guys want to like, look at it. I was like.
no, but I want to look at it.
So we went and looked at it, and I started seeing this beautiful piece of land.
and across my eyes I saw
someone across the hill building a brand new house.
(28:46):
and across the way I saw somebody with like brand new cars.
Then I'm like, Okay, there's something here right like.
I don't think anyone really like is kind of figuring this out yet. And I just and then I started doing my research. And it was in the path of progression. Anyways, I ended up buying a bunch of land without ever knowing how to develop on land. And this is all hillside. By the way.
Philip Hernandez @educatedinvest (29:09):
Oh, my God! Yeah!
Ho! Ho! Ho!
Pasha Esfandiary (29:12):
But I also know that, you know, when there's less competition, and people don't want to solve headaches. I know that there's money into it, and I know that there's money into it. And I did my numbers. And I went and contacted people who built in Los Angeles, and I knew like exactly where I needed to be, and I knew my cushion. I knew how much I was getting land, and I knew that this area was going to blow up, and it did so. I took my all my money, bought a bunch of land.
(29:34):
and started developing on those pieces of land that that land has quadrupled in the in the few years that I was
developing there, and that area just shot up by at least 30 40. So it was. It was an awesome time to get in.
But you know, towards the end of that I started wanting to have a family.
and I said, hey? I don't wanna develop because it's it's it's like a fat, a feast or female famine. Or you know, I've I don't know the term, and I started buying some apartment complexes in Kansas, and I got some really good deals, and then I I hired to my 2 partners to overlook my shoulder, and they were experts, I mean experts, experts and mobile home communities and said, Let's buy our 1st mobile home community. I was like, Yeah, I don't. Wanna.
(30:15):
And they said, listen, this is a smoking deal. I started underwriting it. I didn't get it because I was coming through a multifamily lens.
and then that we still bought it because they're they want to put up their own money, and I trusted them. And I took their
teachings on on how to underwrite it. I was like, Okay, this makes sense. Now we bought it that one deal outperformed all of my smoking deals that I bought Kansas. And so I said, there's something here, and if I have a stigma on this, so does everybody else.
(30:47):
I did, and it didn't, so that I didn't, doing an immensely amount of research contacted. Everybody I knew took every course that I could, and I just said, there's an opportunity here, and we have to go all in, and that's what we did
so cause the the opportunity won't be around for 5 to 7 years. In my opinion.
Philip Hernandez @educatedinvest (31:02):
Yeah, I
I I am getting this. Well, 1st of all, I just wanna highlight. It's so funny. The the all the things that you did first.st The 1st things in real estate are like the quote, unquote, most difficult, you know, like auction, like buying properties at auction, I mean granted, is 2,010. So the different vibe, but like but buying properties at auction there, you're like
(31:32):
surrounded by sharks and a bunch of people that really know their numbers, and then doing hillside, new construction.
Pasha Esfandiary (31:41):
Yeah.
Philip Hernandez @educatedinvest (31:42):
In la like. I'm sure that there's no shortage of people that would tell you. You're an insane person for doing hillside new development, and it seemed like you got into a certain flow with with with doing it in in La.
Pasha Esfandiary (31:56):
Yeah, I I've I've never had this. This is the thing. I've never been. Once I've registered something, and I I know that I can make money, and I see other people making money into it. i i i know I can figure it out right. And so, yeah, I mean, when when I reflect back like, yeah, maybe that was kind of dumb. And yeah, maybe that like whatever. But I just you know what it is, what what comes back to me is that I let my my vision for myself guide me instead of the decisions in the in like the day to day, right?
(32:24):
So there's you. Everyone has a goal, right? And so what happens is like, you have your starting point A, and there's a there's a end goal. Z, right? And so
typically
it's a pretty straight line. I mean, it's like, not really. But when you elongate it out it's a straight line. There's always a straight line to get to Z. But us, we as humans, we like to complicate it and think about this way. And let's do this and that, that that that this, this we're really the answer at the end day is just
(32:51):
just go straight line, just go do it right. And so I I mean do it with being responsible right? I never put everything at risk. I don't jeopardize my life and my wife's life and all that, but I took some risks. And so,
yeah, I guess, reflecting back. Now, I'm just yeah. Alright.
Philip Hernandez @educatedinvest (33:10):
Interesting. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then
sort of transitioning into the Mobile Home Park conversation.
The
yeah, I do feel like, so
just in the last, like 4 years.
The word is kind of out
on Mobile, on Mobile, on mobile home parks where people are like.
(33:33):
Do you know how poorly people are managing these properties! Oh, my God! There's such an opportunity to
be a competent provider of of a service to to these people, and they will be extremely grateful. And the numbers just work at your entry price. And so yeah, in one sense, it's like.
(33:57):
it's great, because actually, a lot of people are getting better conditions there in mobile home parks and this kind of stuff.
But I, you know, hindsight is 2020. I'd love to be investing in mobile home parks about 7 years ago. But but yeah, how? How has been that journey to
focusing on mobile home parks? And how are you seeing things change?
Pasha Esfandiary (34:21):
Yeah, good question. So there's still opportunity. By way, Phillip.
I will say that I think
I think a lot of people the cats out of the bag about mobile home Park communities and and people want to get in. Unfortunately. And I just gotta say this. It it eats me up because we buy a lot of properties from
(34:42):
people who come into
real estate or mobile home communities and think they can manage
the properties. And these are I'm I'm talking about. These are big operators, and multifamily, and they have systems, and this and that, they don't know how to run up like they do not how to know how to operate a mobile home community. And what happens is a lot of times you bring on investors, or you bring on money or and and outside money to purchase these homes with you.
(35:06):
these parks with you, and they don't know how to operate. And the brutal thing about this sector
is that there are a lot of operators who a don't improve the conditions. And just jack up the rents because the thing about mobile home communities is that you have such a sticky tenant base that they own the home and they can't really move out. I mean, it doesn't happen in practice. So that's that's the ugly side of mobile home for our communities, in my opinion. And we're we often buy properties from.
(35:33):
you know, people who don't know what they're doing. They just jack up the rents on people like we. We really actually go in there and fix up the the the streets and the lights and the landscaping, and the skirting and kick out bad tenants. We really do make the community a lot better, which I know a lot of operators say they do, but they actually don't.
which actually is, you know, something I
quite passionate about. It kind of destroys me. And then so and then a lot of operators will jack up the rents whatever they want 100%, 200. It's just mind, look. So there's an ugly side to it all. But if you are a good operator and you can come into this business. The numbers are there. They're better than multifamily.
(36:09):
Yeah, you are improving people's lives, and there is no other sector of commercial real estate where the supply is dwindling and the demand is increasing. Unfortunately, in our economy, we're gonna keep printing money and inflation is gonna keep happening. The middle class is gonna keep getting squeezed. And so the demand for our product keeps growing every single year that we're in this sector. The demand just keeps increasing every single year for our properties and our homes.
(36:36):
And when I 1st got into it, just 3 years ago, we were buying for Mom and Pop sellers left and right. And now.
because of the the craziness that happened in (192) 019-2021 where people were just buying everything, cap rates were super compressed throughout the sectors of real estate. A lot of operators got into mobile home communities because of that.
(36:58):
Now, our opportunities because interest rates are so high, and Mom Pops aren't selling are those same operators who don't know how to run the communities are who we are buying from.
who have just
not done much to the Park. They've done some improvements. They've done, some rental increases, but they don't know what they're doing. They don't know how to deal with it. They don't know how to deal with it day to day, like we do.
Philip Hernandez @educatedinvest (37:20):
Yeah, can you speak a little bit more about
what?
Yeah, what are I mean? You did mention some specifics, but like, what are some of the things that that
you're like, mistakes that people you're seeing that people are making on operations, that yeah. And like, yeah, how how are you guys able to bring something different.
Pasha Esfandiary (37:44):
So you know, I think something that a lot of operators do that I see very naively, naively done is they just want to get anybody in right. And so.
There's there's, I mean, they just get anybody in which doesn't really better the community right? Because
and then also how to put on
put on essentially what you wanna do. The 1st thing you wanna do is attract a better tenant sometimes right in these parts. It it depends on each other. You wanna go and beautify the park, so a lot of them will do. Maybe they'll do the roads if we're lucky right, but then they won't do the landscaping. So then they're always having to deal with a lot of landscapers, and then they have to deal with a lot of bushes, and they. And then they all like man. Something that we see all the time is they don't know how to deal with trash, because technically they own their home.
(38:30):
and they don't know how to enforce. So so a lot of people will put their trash out, and it just starts to kind of pile up. So when you go through this parks, these parks, you see trash everywhere, and so we are very strict. There is no trash outside of your home like you have to take it to the Dumpster, and we're very adamant about that, because we wanna make sure that the people who
would live there
(38:51):
like to look at. Like like to see a nice park. They like to see that people are taking care of it. So we really do go in there and clean it up and clean up the act of it. And so we get in ton of tenants that say, thank you so much. I mean, you know we've been living here forever, and you know the last owners were slumlords essentially. And so
I I see those little things that add up to a bigger thing right? And then you get a better quality tenant. It's like a better positive feedback loop instead of the negative feedback loop of getting just anyone in there for money, and then just don't really do the things. Also, a lot of operators don't.
(39:25):
So one thing we do, even though they technically own the homes. We'll potentially most of the time do the skirting for them. The skirting is like that bottom kind of footing across the mobile home. We'll do that for them to beautify the park, and we'll we'll help
our tenants out, you know, and as much as we can. It's their home. At the end of the day, you know, with maybe a power wash with a cleaning so that we can help the park overall periods and the curbside appeal alongside with, you know, trimming the landscaping, and doing all that.
Philip Hernandez @educatedinvest (39:57):
Yeah, I hear you saying that some of these issues about landscaping, exterior beautification trash, all these kind of things
that. You're seeing them in Mobile home parks. But I I was literally. I was at a meetup last night talking to someone that is purchasing, you know, a 395 unit apartment complex in Houston, in A B area like a pretty nice area.
(40:25):
And this and the construction is like less than 30 years or something like that. It's not crazy, old, and
it was some level of institutional investor was just not paying for landscaping and not paying for a very exterior, superficial kind of things that are not really that expensive. But
(40:52):
you know, if you don't take care of them, it detracts from the quality of life of your tenant, and then the tenant that stays is not actually the tenant that you want. And then the people are just they're like what I don't wanna live here anymore, you know, and literally the the person I was talking to
like those exact same things that you said about really just basic beautification. And they've went. They've gone from 70% occupancy on the 395 units to like mid 80 S in a matter of months. Yeah. And yeah.
Pasha Esfandiary (41:26):
It's it's pretty, you know. People don't put enough attention on curbside Peel and and let me give you an example. So if you're gonna go shop for a single family home, and you're gonna buy a home for yourself. What's the 1st thing you do? You go on, Zillow or redfin? And you look at the pictures, and I'll be like, all right. These pictures look good. Now, when the pictures look good, you're like, Okay, I'm gonna go see this home as soon as you pull up to the home
(41:48):
we instantly judge. It's just who how we are. It's just how our brains work. You will instantly judge the home, and if the home looks good on the curbside appeal, you now have a better inclination for the home. So when you go into the home. You're looking for the things to make it better instead, if you're like. It's ugly! I actually
don't really like love. How it is you're already going into the home thinking you don't like it. Then you're gonna start looking for everything that you don't like. It's so important for curbside appeal. It's kinda like when you buy a car, you start seeing that car everywhere. If you're already gonna go into a home or into a park or into a community or an apartment complex. And you automatically see trash everywhere. And it's not clean.
(42:33):
You're not like you're not gonna.
Philip Hernandez @educatedinvest (42:34):
It's a lieutenant thing.
Pasha Esfandiary (42:35):
It's the most obvious thing you're not gonna get the right tenant.
Philip Hernandez @educatedinvest (42:38):
Yeah.
Pasha Esfandiary (42:38):
Have I have. I personally have an apartment complex
in Wichita, Kansas. As a I have a few in Wichita, Kansas, and so my property manager was doing great at all the other properties, and I secret shopped them, you know, a few months ago, and when I went to that park I was appalled, honestly appalled. There was trash everywhere. I was livid.
(43:01):
and I ripped into her. I'm I'm going to be candid. I like 1st of all like, how the hell are you? The property manager, and you haven't gone there for the last month. And then, secondly, how do you let the tenants
deal with all this trash everywhere, right? And so
I have been on her
ass about it. Maybe I shouldn't say out of pocket whatever.
Philip Hernandez @educatedinvest (43:21):
Sarah, everyone and.
Pasha Esfandiary (43:23):
And the whole park looks completely different. We had cleaned up the trash and we went from 71% occupancy now to 85% occupancy within 3 months.
Philip Hernandez @educatedinvest (43:34):
Oh, my God!
Pasha Esfandiary (43:34):
Because she kept saying, No one wants to move in. No one wants to move in. No one wants to move in, I said. There is so much demand
for low income housing. I do not understand what you're saying. This doesn't compute with me, and it's those little things of
picking up the trash, beautifying it, curbside appeal, and how to treat your tenants right and.
Philip Hernandez @educatedinvest (43:55):
Represent.
Pasha Esfandiary (43:55):
When they 1st come in. What's there are? They're automatically judging you right? So when
and then we we audited how their their process of getting a tenant in how fast you respond to them, and all that these things matter.
Philip Hernandez @educatedinvest (44:09):
Hmm! I I love that you secret shop this.
Pasha Esfandiary (44:13):
Of course.
Philip Hernandez @educatedinvest (44:13):
That you've owned for a while. Yeah, yeah, I could. Totally.
Yeah. I mean.
I guess.
Yeah, the
the challenges. You know that at the at the number of units that you have, I guess.
creating a way to. I guess you pay people the secret shop for you, you know, because, yeah, once you have the number of units that you have, it gets, it's it's it's not really feasible to be visiting them as as often and like watching the managing. The managers, you know, starts to look different, you know.
Pasha Esfandiary (44:51):
This is the beautiful thing about result. I mean, this kind of ties back into results based coaching. This is why I love about real estate, the numbers will not lie to you, the numbers will not lie to you. How many move ends do we have? How many leases do we have pending. How many people have viewed the the property? How? What's our Noi? And it all tells a story, and I know that it should be higher, and I know where we should be at. And I. So I just said, there's something's wrong here, right? Whatever whatever I'm being told is not right, because the numbers don't never lie.
(45:17):
So yeah. I personally went over there and secret shopped it. Now, I mean, I have a secret shopper that goes every few weeks.
Philip Hernandez @educatedinvest (45:23):
Nice that that sounds like good advice for any business owner. Honestly, you know, as opposed to
yeah, coming up with whatever excuse it's like, if you're not getting the result that you envisioned in your business plan, then there's something that's off about your execution or your business plan.
you know, and you know, give yourself a honest look at what that could be, and it might be something that you're doing, or someone that you've entrusted to to work for you
(45:51):
so
cool I'd love to hit you with some final quick fire questions to to end us off. But yeah, this has been awesome. I thank you so much. I really appreciate your time.
Oh, okay. Having done auctions and hillside new construction. What's the most amount of money you've lost on a deal.
Pasha Esfandiary (46:18):
So
I would say that I've I've sunk
a lot of money into a deal.
But the the beautiful thing about real estate is that you hold long enough.
you typically can make it back. So there is one deal
that I still have that's ongoing from my development days, and I've sunk close to about $800,000 into that deal.
Philip Hernandez @educatedinvest (46:41):
Okay.
Pasha Esfandiary (46:42):
So.
Philip Hernandez @educatedinvest (46:43):
But you're able to hold it.
Pasha Esfandiary (46:45):
I'm able to hold it. I'm gonna build on it. I'll I'll make a tiny bit of money. But for the pain and anguish for the last 7 years of my life, and being.
Philip Hernandez @educatedinvest (46:53):
Yeah.
Pasha Esfandiary (46:53):
Include 100.
Philip Hernandez @educatedinvest (46:55):
Oh, mate!
Pasha Esfandiary (46:55):
In time.
Philip Hernandez @educatedinvest (46:56):
Oh, well.
Pasha Esfandiary (46:57):
Yeah, one of my neighbors is a very litigious lawyer himself, and does not want any construction.
Philip Hernandez @educatedinvest (47:04):
Oh, my God!
Pasha Esfandiary (47:05):
Yeah. So I have been sued by him personally 4 times.
Philip Hernandez @educatedinvest (47:07):
Oh, my God!
Pasha Esfandiary (47:09):
Yeah. So you know, it's, you know, crap like that. But yeah, yeah, it's it's not fun.
Philip Hernandez @educatedinvest (47:13):
Yeah, I
remember I was at a conference that Tarak Al Musa was was speaking at this past year, and he essentially
his. His answer to this, this, that question that I just asked you. It was like, I mean, I was not interviewing him, but somebody asked the same question.
and
who's like
(47:34):
he lost like
2
point 5 million dollars on a flip, or something like that, and like at least a million and a half. The loss on a flip in a in a very nice area, and
from what I can tell, he's a fairly high net worth individual. And I and I was just thinking like.
(47:55):
And it was. This was like beach side kind of thing, luxury thing I was like.
why don't you just hold it like for a couple of years like.
Pasha Esfandiary (48:06):
It could be different. So.
Philip Hernandez @educatedinvest (48:08):
Yeah.
Pasha Esfandiary (48:08):
His defense a little bit. If it's on the beach front.
and
you may not be able to get enough rent to pay what the mortgage is already
right, and it.
Philip Hernandez @educatedinvest (48:18):
Oh, definitely, definitely, it would have been a loss, for, for, like a few, however long, he held it for sure.
Pasha Esfandiary (48:24):
And if you're doing well and everywhere else, sometimes it's good to consider the loss to write off your other gains.
Philip Hernandez @educatedinvest (48:31):
That's a good point.
Pasha Esfandiary (48:32):
There's also there's also something to talk about how much equity he has in the deal.
because if that if that equity is staying dormant inside of that one deal.
Then you're not making any money, either, off of what you could be potentially making. If you're making 2030% on that money every single year, and you have to sit on that property for, let's say, 4 or 5 years.
Philip Hernandez @educatedinvest (48:54):
Yeah.
Pasha Esfandiary (48:55):
It might not outweigh what you can potentially make. So it's all just kind of a mathematical equation. So there are. I just want to give some factors there.
Philip Hernandez @educatedinvest (49:01):
Those are all really good points. So like you've looked at all these perspectives for this deal for yourself.
Pasha Esfandiary (49:08):
Oh, for sure. Yeah. And I I knew that I knew the area was appreciating so much. So I like
I if I wanted to. I could have probably exited this deal about 3 years ago and built on it. But I was like, you know.
let's just let's just kind of see what happens.
Philip Hernandez @educatedinvest (49:21):
Cool
alright.
What do you do when you're not working on your business?
Pasha Esfandiary (49:28):
I am with my children
and at home.
And yeah, I mean.
Kylie, I just
6 months old twins.
Philip Hernandez @educatedinvest (49:38):
Whoa! Congratulations! Thank you.
Pasha Esfandiary (49:40):
I'm I'm really big into community. So whatever I do, it's like everyone comes over to my house. My house is a kind of community house. We just had a huge like raw fish boil
and
but it's it's basically community and traveling. But you know, really, ever since I had my children. I just want to be home all day like.
Philip Hernandez @educatedinvest (49:56):
That's great!
Pasha Esfandiary (49:58):
So.
Philip Hernandez @educatedinvest (49:58):
That's beautiful. Cool. Well, on this line of community. What's your favorite way to give back to your community? And you can define that? However, you want.
Pasha Esfandiary (50:08):
So I think there's a lot of ways that like one can give back. And I think my personal
one thing that I tell all, my friends. Whether it's
quite annoying, I'm sure, is that if you are in my circle I will push the hell out of you right? So you you cannot play small when you're around me. Now I'm gonna do as compassion as I can, but if you're my friend and you, I know you have a goal. I I will be the guy that say, well, why aren't you working on your goal?
(50:35):
Don't go out. Why aren't you working on your goal like, you know.
so I've lost some friends with that. But I just.
Philip Hernandez @educatedinvest (50:41):
List.
Pasha Esfandiary (50:42):
I, I. And I'm okay with that, you know, like I said earlier, we have one life in this suit, and it's kind of like
I wanna I wanna surround myself with with with like minded people. So that's how I give back. I also mentor.
I mentor a few college kids as well, who want to get into real estate. You know I mentor. I try to
(51:04):
partners partner up with my friends, to try to have them create their own like life and vision for themselves. And luckily I'm in a position of my life where I can have the resources to do that.
So it's a lot of that.
Philip Hernandez @educatedinvest (51:17):
Yeah, I I have this, a kind of similar relationship with with my friends, where like, if they call me, and they ask me for advice, like
they know I'm gonna kick their ass like more more or less, you know, like
like you didn't call me to let you off the hook, you know you call.
Pasha Esfandiary (51:39):
You know what you're getting yourself into.
Philip Hernandez @educatedinvest (51:40):
You called me, because you know what kind of a person I am that I? Yeah, that I
can see the potential for for what people can do in their life. And then so it's like.
well, yeah, I'm do you wanna pass like that's not why you called me, you know, like you like. You want somebody to kick your ass. So I'm sure if somebody calls you and asks you for advice.
(52:06):
it's they're like they. That's the pill that they are looking for.
Pasha Esfandiary (52:10):
That's true. I just, you know, if someone has a goal on a vision and I don't see them going towards that goal and vision. It's just I. There's something in me where I take on other people's goals and visions as much as I take on my own.
Philip Hernandez @educatedinvest (52:20):
Spoon.
Pasha Esfandiary (52:21):
You know, and so I get very passionate. I've even, you know, have to even even recently been like, Hey, if
I'm coming off too strong with this whole accountability thing. Just tell me to back off, because I don't.
you know. So yeah, that's that's that's 1 thing I think
within my community that I? Yeah, I do a lot.
Philip Hernandez @educatedinvest (52:42):
Cool. So on this line of mentoring, who who is a mentor or role model that you have had either in business or in life.
Pasha Esfandiary (52:51):
I have been incredibly blessed with a ton of mentors in my life. I have
I have 2
really main mentors that I have.
and one of them has 1,100 employees. So he's teaching me how to be a better CEO
cause? Yeah. And then the other mentor that I have allows me to kind of call him whenever I want, or take him to dinner and pick his brain because he has built the company that I want to build. I mean, he. He manages a few 1 billion dollars of assets under management, and he's been doing this for about 30 years. He was my original
(53:25):
mentor when I learned about the site and seed auctions and taught me essentially everything I knew as on a foundational level. So I've been very blessed with that. And then I also have a lot of incredibly incredibly successful friends where I get to pick their brains from time to time. So
you know. But I'm also a guy that I I'm in so many masterminds. And I read a lot, and I just love being around that energy where I can learn from other people and just be inspired from what others are doing. You know, anytime I I hear someone doing something. How can I apply that into my.
(54:00):
into my life, or into my business.
Philip Hernandez @educatedinvest (54:03):
Yeah, yeah, that's yeah. That's great.
what? What do you have? Do you have a any programs or masterminds, or coaching or books that that you would recommend somebody if they're let's say more. Starting out. Where would you? Where would you direct them to? To? To place their energies.
Pasha Esfandiary (54:25):
Starting out
in real estate, or starting out kind of getting
their life going.
You.
Philip Hernandez @educatedinvest (54:34):
Either one.
Pasha Esfandiary (54:37):
Okay.
I think.
my favorite book is, think and grow rich.
I think that's a foundational book, I think. Combine that with the slight edge.
and as a man thinketh.
it'll teach you that your brain really
can push you any way you want. It's about, how do you
(55:00):
think differently? Because at the on a foundational level for you to get different results.
you need to start thinking differently.
And then I would say, for real estate
it depends on what sector of real estate. But there's I wouldn't really recommend books anymore. I would just go join a mastermind or all these online courses that they'd now have from. When I used to have to learn this stuff.
(55:23):
I would just go join one of those meet up groups, learn from other people. The cool thing about real estate is that if you want to get into it, there's a lot of people who are about 2 years ahead of you that you need to go pick their brain. Don't go ask the guy who's 10 years ahead of you. Go ask the person that's 2 years ahead of you, and because it's fresh, they could tell you exactly what to do. You can avoid a lot of mistakes. You can actually streamline your results that way.
Philip Hernandez @educatedinvest (55:46):
Cool love this. Wow, Pasha, this has been great. Really appreciate your time
where I know you guys just closed a raise. So congratulations on that got another beautiful mobile home Park. It's literally it's called Swan Lake, right.
Pasha Esfandiary (56:03):
Called Swan Lake.
Philip Hernandez @educatedinvest (56:03):
Wow! That's pretty epic. But
you know, for for the future, where can people learn more about you and your offerings?
Pasha Esfandiary (56:15):
If anyone wanna learn about offerings, go to evo capital.net.
There's an investor portal login that you can go into and sign up. You have to be an accredited investor, of course, to participate in, or any of our deals, but that's where you could sign up there, and we'll we'll send out our
deals whenever we open up.
Philip Hernandez @educatedinvest (56:35):
Beautiful. Thank you so much, Pasha. Really appreciate your time.
Pasha Esfandiary (56:38):
Philip, I appreciate you, Buddy. Thank you.
Popular Podcasts
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.