Scaling from 1 Property to Financial Independence with Feras Moussa

Full Transcript

Taylor   0:02  

What's going on guys? This is the passive wealth strategies podcast. Thank you for tuning in. today Our guest is Feras Moussa from disrupt equity. Feras has built a huge real estate portfolio, let's just say it honestly. He started in technology as a technology entrepreneur, a technology worker, and a project manager at Microsoft. he built up his real estate portfolio. Then at a certain point, he hit a huge inflection in his rate of growth and started buying really big properties with passive investors. today we're going through his story of how he bought those first properties, how he financed them, where he got the money, and then ultimately, why he decided to continue to scale his portfolio and get into real estate syndication. fun interview fairs, the fun guy to talk to you and brings a lot of energy to us today.

Thank you for tuning in. You're in for a good one. For those of you who are new to the show I'm a real estate investor and real estate syndicator. I buy real estate with passive investors and split the return. Thank you for tuning in. Once again, our guest is Feras Moussa. I'm your host and here we go with Feras. Feras, thank you for joining us today. No problem with intelligence mapping here. Great to talk with you. For those out there who don't know your story. Can you tell us about your history where you got started and, and your professional life before breaking out into the real estate world?

Feras Moussa  1:40  

No, absolutely. Man, my professional life goes way back started. I guess it was 14 years old. You know, I had a friend whenever I guess it was elementary school and had a book building HTML websites way back when so you know, kind of had a taste of web development. Then once I was 14 years old, that had another friend that was building a site like a Real sight using software and that kind of perked my interest off and learned that language and started building sites for myself that people started paying me for. I got a really good taste of entrepreneurship at a younger age.

That kind of naturally led to college. I gotta admit, I went off to college to be a doctor, my father's a doctor, I thought that's what I wanted it to be. After a year and a half into it, I realized I hate memorization, it was just not my cup of tea. you know, more problem solving. then I immediately changed into computer science, natural fit, I mean turbo through it did really well on the computer science side of things, and internet, Microsoft, right.

I did an internship there, loved it, loved the team, and then I went back full time, and moved to Seattle. that's kind of what you know, kind of led me down the corporate role to some degree, but I told myself before I started, basically to tell myself two and a half years now, so I ended up almost sticking to that I waited three years, and I left Microsoft, mostly cuz we're in the middle of our lease and I wanted to leave on really good terms. that was kind of Guess how I got to the corporate world and left back out for a little bit. So

Taylor   3:04  

nice. you sound like you know, the corporate world wasn't the right fit for you, being a busy professional wasn't the right fit for you. today, I wanted to talk about how you became a full time real estate entrepreneur. It sounds like from what I know of your story, there were some bumps along the way. Let's get into that first entrepreneurship experience, as you're leaving Microsoft was that in the real estate world, or was that elsewhere?

Feras Moussa  3:34  

No. it's a good question. I left Microsoft with a vision of building software for industries that don't have it. I love software, I still love it. I'm still involved in software today and originally it was that I saw the opportunity to build software in David industries. We had done a bunch of acting on it for the first two, three years and did really well with that, and then we're doubling down on building a real product because for those that know anything about app development, it's very efficient.

Right, the money comes and goes really quickly, we make a lot of money, but also goes just as quick. we knew that right? We kind of milked it for two, three years now on our list, double down, hire on staff and really build that out. coincidentally, we started building. I guess at that same time, I knew I was moving back from Seattle, I had started getting into real estate listening to podcasts, and getting into real estate investing.

essentially, at the same time, we forgot what we wanted to do in that building property management software of all things. kind of both things ended up aligning just from seeing gaps in the real estate investing side of things. That was kind of the first foray after Microsoft, and built the property managed stuff in parallel while I was buying real estate and kind of seeing the tracks and figuring out where the opportunity lies.

Taylor   4:43  

Cool. Cool. in your first real estate investment, what did you buy?

Feras Moussa  4:50  

Yeah, so you know, the thing that you hear about on all the podcasts, go buy duplexes, go buy four flexes and so I remember I was in Seattle and I spent three months two months looking for plexus. Houston, this was in the August timeframe because I knew I was moving back to Houston in, you know, the end of the year right around December. If there's not you know, the thing they don't tell you is that Houston is a which is where I live, a very different market than the rest of the country.

Land is very, very cheap here things are flat you don't see any mountains or hills, it's just keep going out and see if we don't expand up expand out, right. there's not a lot of fourplexes. Most of the four plexes that are here are in older areas, not great areas, right. I struggled to find something and then kind of one did show up in an area that I really I know very well and I really liked. I was like, that's the deal I want. I had already called the agent that was selling it and I ran the numbers and I'm you know, I'm a numbers guy, but systems numbers and process guy and I had already learned how to underwrite and do that. I knew I wanted that deal.

I went online, I found a random agent. I basically said, Hey, man, I already found the deal. I already know I want this. I need someone to transact it because I need agents to buy for me. I got that thing on a contract in December. You know what the four Plex in a gate area and then I bought it, what? February and so the first kind of taste so you know, two months later close on it bought it. honestly from had very little turnover that deal and I finally sold that deal actually two three months ago.

Finally Sold it and you know, it's been obviously a home run kind of deal and gives me a taste of what it's like to have four people living in the place versus one and kind of the pros and cons of that. Nice. based on those numbers, it sounds like you didn't buy the quad and then live in one of the units and rent the other three out you bought it as a pure investment play, is that right? Yeah, but down I think 20 25% down on that. got rid of one of the tenants that was not paying to begin with and then you know, the other people build a you know, my big philosophy is build a product that people want, right? I'm not a fan of the slumlord mentality. It's about how you make a nice unit and make it known to people like I remember one of the guys that He's the best tenant I've ever had.

I remember in our first year he told me he loves the Eagles fans as the first thing, it's all during due diligence, and like the eagles thing, he's always talking about him. a month after we moved in there, we just got him a whole Eagles gift basket just as a gift. That guy stayed there for the entire time we owned it. he just, he's the kind of guy that would say, hey, my garbage disposals busted. Can you guys just find me one and I'll install it? Sure. I mean it's just, uh, take care of your tenants. it becomes lucrative in the end. That deal was nice, because we really didn't have much turns.

Taylor   7:31  

Nice. one of the things that it sounds like you are probably pretty young still, when you know, you're not now but you know, pretty early in the era. I've no idea how old you are. for the record, but you were pretty young at that point. Right. It's fairly common for a young person to buy a quad and live in one of the units and you know what, and treat it that way. Why did you make the decision to just buy it as an investment And not live in it, as opposed to living in water? You

Feras Moussa  8:05  

know, that's a good question. for me personally, it's I I knew my wedding was literally four months. like two months after that purchase, I bought it a month afterwards, I bought a house for myself and then I had my wedding The following month. I knew you know, that was not at the side of town I wanted to live in to begin with, I had already kind of picked out the house that I wanted to live in. From the get go, it was kind of designed to be, you know, a horrible, right kind of just a four unit within the whole thing just purely as an investment.

Taylor   8:32  

Interesting. Okay. and then also it sounds like you self manage that quad Is that right? You are working with itself manage

Feras Moussa  8:38  

that. The other thing to note too: That was my first real estate purchase in my life and I had never even bought a house. when off my dad thought I was nuts and you know, rest is history.

Taylor   8:48  

Nice and about signing on the loan. Did you need to be able to qualify on your own? You didn't need anybody cosign or anything.

Feras Moussa  8:57  

You know, I meant you Honestly, the short answer is Houston Real Estate's cheap. Right. It's not some huge investment of that. I bought that for 160,000 I think, like, everything else in the unit, right. You know, sold that for quite double but you know, close to and so, um but it's not was not it was easy for me to qualify for that and it was from my house. Wow put that in perspective.

it was easier, but it was more about you know, the bigger thing for people to realize, right is if you're buying it for purely an investment, you need to have more down payment, right you know, the spread of the loan is different than if you're living in it. something to keep in mind.

Taylor   9:37  

Yeah, financing is one of the reasons people want to live in one of the units. The financing is pretty easy, relatively when you live in one of the units compared to an investment property, cheaper, all that kind of thing. Okay, so moving on to growing your real estate portfolio and buying that second one and continuing to to buy it What was that like? And obviously, we're going to lead to where you are now. But you know, I want to really understand, like what you were able to do and then you know, you I know you made a big leap in there. I understand it, that initial period of growing your portfolio

Feras Moussa  10:16  

so the four Plex you know, if you buy that thing and you're like, the sky's the limit man, our loan is so low or make it you know, each of those units are rented for like 850 bucks in our can't do the math, right? 850 times four and our note is 120,000. I think we put 40,000 down, right, I mean, we're making a capital deal. Yeah, so the sky's the limit and so then like I said, I bought my personal house, then two months later the broker that I brought the deal through right the guy that I just randomly called up, he actually brought me a deal so he made up for it later. I bought that deal.

you know, we did the purchases I think at 12 months and so I have never bought any real estate to do that. It was definitely all then you know, starting to learn, hey, I need to leverage more of my textbooks. Right, we build systems and processes and tracking and don't forget, at the same time had the software kind of come as well and realizing because the gap that we're solving was for people like me, the residential investors that are struggling to keep it the one to 10 units organized and how do I collect payments online? How do I do screenings, those kinds of things?

Taylor   11:21  

Okay, so you scaled your real estate portfolio pretty quickly. You did quite a few transactions in that first year. I think if I caught the number, right, it was eight transactions in the first year. Oh,

Feras Moussa  11:32  

yeah. That first year, so definitely this year.

Taylor   11:35  

That's Yeah, that's very impressive. if I'm, I can hear people out there listening, thinking, Okay, he said he bought the first quad for 160,020% down, that's $32,000 down plus closing costs, whatever, I might need $40,000 to buy that deal. then to go do eight more. That's a I might not have the cash. what have you got to get cash to do you know all those first eight deals.

Feras Moussa  12:03  

So for me, I mean, luckily, I had a good friend as a partner. Right? So I brought half and I brought half. But the other thing too people didn't realize it's a lot of times about structuring, right. I mean like, I'll give you an example, we had a deal that we bought, where the wholesaler hadn't listed and had asked the question about it. then I'd asked him how much they wanted, and it was like, 6070 grand, I'm like, it's just not worth it. That's what, that's what the market is. then, two weeks later, he messaged me out of the blue, and he's like, do you still want this deal? I'm like, 29,000, it's yours, but at the close by the end of the week, which is like three days later. I don't for 30,000 7200 cost basis 37.

We've had the same tenant living there for over three years, she's paid pretty much the whole cost of it for us. More importantly, that's a deal that went into so we could refi out and get 80,000 right? So not only am I getting 100% of my money back, I'm actually getting more and so people you know that you have to find a deal that's a good fit for what your current situation is. What is the risk? Right, but it's not just about having cash. You know, even the deal that the broker later brought me that's a similar situation, it was a deal that I think was a $130,000 purchase price, right? We brought 20% down, that deal is worth almost 200. Right? So if we wanted to, you can refi out and go on to the next deal.

it's about really understanding where you are, and there's a lot of ways to do it, whether you're partnering with people, and as people grow in there to really realize real estate is ultimately a partnership game. That's, that's what this business is about. The more people you know, the more opportunities that present themselves. That's why we do podcasts. I get to know each other and learn more about other people who know about us. Money is just one problem. Ultimately, this market even post Cova COVID and virus situations. It's more about the deals and finding good deals, because that's still hard to find.

Taylor   13:53  

Very true, very true. that's, that's interesting. You know that that seller if he had to close by the end of the week, And it was midweek already must have been pretty distressed. Do you know how that came about? I'm always just curious.

Feras Moussa  14:06  

And I know it's really the story. that one I think I called on Monday or Tuesday and it needed to close by Friday Hmm. essentially was a deal with them under contract. it was going to get the it was from an HOA, the HOA was going to take ownership of it, because the previous owner had not paid their dues and however long and so our closing was going to cover that cover them paying the dues, and then the wholesaler was making like 500 bucks. They knew they had lost the opportunity.

But what was interesting with that, and you know, it makes me really the question is, why the heck did the seller just walk away from this view? It's a nice location and we take ownership, we go into the unit and there's just all their stuff. It's like they got up and just left. I'm like, What happened here? It's just such a weird situation because I mean there's some nice stuff there, but it did. We did smell mold. All right. We'll talk to the neighbors. I guess what is the woman and her husband's officer? They both live there. The woman is super sensitive to mold. you know, they were just having Lee they couldn't figure it out and they just got up and left just said, screw it. I'm out of here.

Then that's kind of where we went through the process that made its way to us. Well, that's for we found them all. I mean, it was just a leak behind a little wall cut out little two by two and our guy replaced a little piping there and went away and then we redid all the floorings, all new pay, all new kitchen cabinets. It's a nice unit. yeah, it's kind of interesting. you know, someone had a problem. Someone else found the opportunity there. But then they got greedy, trying to sell for 70 to find a buyer and so we picked it up very, very cheap.

Taylor   15:39  

Wow, that's wild. I'm amazed somebody would walk like that. I mean, mold is not cheap to abate, but it's definitely a lot cheaper than taking a 50% haircut on your

Feras Moussa  15:50  

primary residence. Right here. their situation, if you don't have the cash to go buy another place, but you're super sensitive to mold. What are your options right? You know, maybe you could, maybe you bought the thing, let me know. there's a bank component, how long did it take you to sell? Do you have money to go buy another thing quickly enough beforehand. But if you're sensitive to mold, you need to get out immediately. to us, it seems crazy, right? But then sometimes you start to understand more of the context. maybe, maybe it makes a little bit more sense. But, yeah, generally to me, so.

Taylor   16:26  

Wow, that's something you know, I always like to learn about these distressed sellers, because we, at least I have a tendency in my mind to assume that nobody's gonna walk away from their primary residence that easily I mean, there are so many options. You know, I probably, we might not know the full situation, but there's so many options that they probably had available to themselves that maybe if they take an action very early on, then they could have had a better resolution. Who knows?

Feras Moussa  16:54  

Yeah, and it's sad to say it but I mean, ultimately most people aren't people that go out and educate themselves and go listen to podcasts and go learn how to do stuff. they don't know the options that are available. Right? That's because most people don't care enough, right? Most people have their day jobs, they have their evenings.

That's just kind of the two worlds they only think about. They don't spend as much time thinking about what if, or how do I learn more about the space in case this thing happens? Right? I mean, I'll give you in some time. again, it's I think wholesalers get a bad rep, right? But they are solving a problem and I'll give you a real example. the broker that bought me the deal, the first deal that I bought, I brought him that deal. He did transact it. Well, he brought me a house for sale, that he threw some, like some flyers in the mail, I think and he and his partner were looking to do bigger flips. This wasn't a good flip. It was a good rental.

it put me in touch with the seller. Earn 30,000 it was worth market value, probably 170, honestly, right. After rehab, it's worth two. Now. For that seller. We were solving a problem for them why that guy was happy to sell it at 130 knowing it was worth more. We let him stay there for two months. He got the cash out, able to hold on to us, we can go buy him a house that he was already planning. Again, we're solving that liquidity problem that we have. in return, right, we're getting a deal on a

Taylor   18:12  

pretty good deal. I mean, I guess we're solving a liquidity problem,

Feras Moussa  18:16  

but that way I'm talking about the good ones, the others. Luckily, we had others. Luckily, our deals have all done well, but it's not they're not all that homerun. Right. So,

Taylor   18:24  

yeah, yeah, that's great. At a certain point here, let's take the next step in your experience and get up with Ben and grow your portfolio and get into much bigger deals. Once you hit that 12 unit, Mark, we're what you are thinking, it seems like it's hard to manage a portfolio and have your own business on the side. let's, let's get in your mindset there right before you really left that portfolio.

Feras Moussa  18:57  

So you know, got the 12 and I'm like, this sucks. It doesn't suck. Very well yes, there's cash flow, but it just doesn't scale. Right? And like I wanted to keep growing okay. 12 becomes 15 becomes 20. now I have a bigger headache. Yes, you can pay a third party property management company, but they usually know, there's not a lot of transparency there. I was really looking at doing my own small apartment. I started educating myself on demons and said, I'll go listen to a lot of podcasts and hop in and figure it out.

I had offered on a 32 Pro quickly, right, because at the time, I didn't know enough about the syndication world. to me, it was probably Whoa, this is so big and hard, right? So I was thinking I do 232 you know, just like me and a few friends. luckily, I didn't win that one. then I started learning about syndication. I'm like, No, no, this is what I want to do, right? Because it's the, it's the, that I like, it's a people's game. It's a systems game. It's an operations game, right? It's how you marry these three things together. It started to disrupt equity, kind of tap back into the tech roots, right and you know, I was looking at a deal in Atlanta.

You know, at the time, I didn't know anyone we knew in Atlanta, but uh not done a deal Atlanta, and it was my first big deal. I met, I had known my partner Ben, who, at the time wasn't my partner, right? And I was like, hey, thinking about doing this deal? What do you think? And he came out, to look at the Elisa to this deal together and kind of join and become two parts of District equity, really grow that business. having kind of the right expectations and alignment there worked out well for them.

Taylor   20:31  

So let's talk about the first deal that you did to disrupt equity. You said, you made an offer on a 32 unit, and thankfully, you did not win, which is definitely an interesting thing to say. But you know, that first property, larger property that you did win, what was that? You know, like, and why did you pick it and let's also you know, what year was

Feras Moussa  20:52  

that too, I didn't win, it would have been so bombed, just being distracted, that 32 unit really is where we're at, right? And so it's learned about syndication It was a 99 unit deal. Ultimately, we're looking for a deal that we know would be a homerun no matter what, which part with work I don't care if after work, I'm willing to work hard, right? We knew we needed that kind of deal, because those can be our first deal on a new market. Right. it had to be a homerun, luckily found a deal as a 99 unit deal. This was the hardest deal of my life. Right. But I mean, we did really well for our investors, right. the 99 unit deal was 80% occupied on paper, the previous owner didn't know what they were doing.

They were like accidental landlords, they had a ton of deferred maintenance. on top of that, just a terrible bridge lender that made it really hard. But we took that deal from 80%, down to 40%, occupancy back to 90s. sold a deal a couple months ago, and it did extremely well. it's just about having a business plan and executing it right. sometimes whenever you're at 40% occupancy, I'm going to tell you this, you're not operating in the green here in the red. My partner Ben, you guys got to check this picture. He doesn't have much hair. Let's say he lost it. Pretty much the rest, whatever little he did have from that and the same here I've been losing here on that deal because it's tough, right? A lot of chaos going on and having to work through that but just stick to the plan and believe in the plan if you have a real plan. just not getting overwhelmed by that and you know, ultimately at Microsoft, I was a program manager and what I like to say is syndications really project management, program management, right, having a game plan executing, executing, executing and kind of working everything.

that was the first deal and so it's a fun deal we like to joke about till till today. I mean, I deal with take around security from day one, get rid of all of the drug dealers who always paid on time so you try to find a reason to get rid of them and take community to good and you know, pretty good area and turn it into the good community, cleaned it out and started building a real community, putting together you know, a playground make it a place people like being in for the families that were there throughout the transition. I mean, they're extremely thankful, right? They love the fact that we got rid of all the bad people and actually cared about the community.

Taylor   23:04  

Nice. That's awesome. Yeah, that I've been in a few deals where I buy it and then get out the people who are not adding value to the community so to speak. those also doing a lot of work on the property. Those times when the occupancy gets very low are very stressful because like you said, you're not operating in the black, you're in the red and you're concerned about how things are gonna go. definitely, we have very concerning so in doing, doing the second deal and really blowing that out let's walk through it to to where you are today. how many units you

Feras Moussa  23:46  

Were we doing due diligence on that deal? And we told the broker Hey, do you have anything else on the market? Again, I'm a believer of scaling, not just getting that one deal and getting lost, right? Because that's 10 things I think tend to happen. People get one deal and get overwhelmed. Whereas I knew we'd have to kind of hire on staff and better people that are better than us at every role, right? And Glee that broker had a deal. He's like, we have a deal, the exclusive salon. We're not, we haven't even listed it in a month.

Before we flew back to Houston, we literally drove through the property. We looked at this, this deals well. We were underwriting it on the airplane. we're like, this is a good deal. I just remember, I was poking you know, trying to poke holes at it, like this is a solid deal. We got back an offer and basically we're negotiating.

I know why before we even hit the market and we had a friend that was going to go out and fly out and go look at that property and pretty much had to get that and you know, it was nice, that was a simple deal, right? It's more stabilized it was just about getting in there and executing we're pretty quickly as well. then from that, that Leonardo's have done well there and continue to scale while we continue to skeleton.

Those are kind of the two areas. You know since then, I mean, without having the right team, the right processes and really feel that out. I think when earlier people who will get one or two deal water, get what to look out for, right, whereas like, we made a strategy, like, we have to pick up these deals, but really, that's the important thing to you, it's me and Ben who have the same long term goals. I don't care about me right now, it's not about making a quick buck, it's about making sure we have the right people managing the properties to make sure that we can perform for investors because you get one chance with investors, you don't get two chances.

making sure our deals perform, right, whether even if that means giving up all the money to get the right staff people, but then really building up on that, right. where we make our money is at volume and scale and having a team dedicated to that. we continue to kind of grow with that mentality. Even till now we have now that we have our property management in house, we have a company of 60 people, right, but me and Ben still want to come; they're still trying to keep scaling that out. Right. Yeah, I mean, that's kind of been how progression has been. thankfully, it's gone very well. we love it. it's a fun business. I think they're just kind of excited to see what the next couple years go to.

Taylor   26:10  

Nice, nice, that's great. that's a very business owner mentality to have is you want to get all the right people in place, and like you said, people who are better at those particular roles than than you guys are. Now I, I think this question of scaling is very important. There are a lot of landlords out there that are sick of being landlords, and they might have 12 properties, they might have 30, who knows, but they want to get out.  I mean, let's be real, not everybody wants to become a Feras and become an indicator. Some tired landlords just want to keep investing in real estate, and quit being tired landlords and you know, get more passive. What are your thoughts on why you didn't go that route? I mean, is it because you're the entrepreneur guy. That's, you know who you're going to be or what there's a decision to make there, right. I mean,

Feras Moussa  27:04  

I think a big part of it is the entrepreneurial kind of guy. I'm still young, I'm still figuring out what I wanted to do. I just love the aspects of it. Like I said, it's got the three things, I don't really like him and it can scale. That's what got me ultimately excited.

I mean, for me, I did invest, I guess, one part of the story, this gets invested in a few different deals as a passive investor, to learn what I liked and what I didn't like about other sponsors, right? My goal is to be the best sponsor, it's hard to be the best possible, I don't know what the other people are doing, and so on. That was a stepping stone. It's also nice to make money as a pure passive, right? I mean, it really is nice whenever you do very little writing, but for me, it was more about I guess, I just saw a lot of inefficiencies in the current landscape and just knowing that that is the value I can bring to really tie the whole story together. You know, I left Microsoft for the vision of building software in industries that don't have it. Right.

But I've since realized the real opportunity is leveraging all the stuff that I know from the tech world into this treated like real estate to make us more efficient than other people. Right and leveraging that that's the real opportunity, right? How do I tie these things together and make us hum along that much more quickly, that much more disruptive, you might say that everyone else.

Taylor   28:12  

So I think that's, that's smart. I mean, the hopeful I see things changing, but really, the efficiencies that we get out of technology and property management, there's still a lot of ground to be had whether for the small time landlord, or for those of us that are out there buying a couple hundred units. Fortunately, it seems like a lot of property managers are really getting on board with some of the more tech based solutions to either getting applications in or collecting rents, things like that, but I'm sure there's still areas that we can improve. That's a great insight. Right now we're going to take a quick break for our sponsor. All right, Feras, I've got three questions I asked every day. On the show, are you ready? Ready? Oh my god. First one, what is the best investment you've ever made? Other than in your education,

Feras Moussa  29:10  

best investment I ever made, I'd say probably booking my flight tickets to Disney and then road tripping to Atlanta to go look at the first property that ended up buying and then dragging the family with me and then dragging them to Memphis also to look at other properties that I didn't buy, let's say just getting out there. I tell people don't get lost in analysis paralysis. I see that all the time people sitting on the sidelines go learn, get comfortable with hoppin and you know, take it, take a chance, right? spend some money and figure it out, though, with a method to the madness.

Taylor   29:42  

Nice. I like that. On the other side of that, what is the worst investment you've

Feras Moussa  29:48  

ever made? The worst investment would be the debt that I did on that first deal. I mean, it was just that lender single plan, they made that deal twice as difficult as it can be. But those are for those in the audience that don't know. with that multifamily, typically there's two different types of debt. There's an agency, which is kind of Fannie, Freddie, probably people heard of them right there, the government backed institutes, and it's well regulated.

While the other side, those guys want to do deals that are cleaner, more stabilized. The other side of the coin is what's called bridge debt. Right, which I like to say is like the wild west of lending, you can't have the full spectrum of people. unfortunately, we had, we had it down to two lenders and we chose the wrong one. The other one is a quasi institutional publicly traded company that is not out there to screw people. Whereas we chose the one that was really their vulture, they're, they're like a lone tone shop.

You know, they made it impossible to get our money out for a rehab. They just want to keep us in the bread because they tried to see the fault. You know, we pump their own money into to kind of keep that deal going and just single handedly made that deal so much more difficult than, like I said, whenever we went to close the sale of the property, we got back 700,000 from the lender that they were just holding on to, and they said it was the best tournament they've ever seen. just yeah, be careful on the lending side. That's my worst enemy. Whenever. Wow,

Taylor   31:01  

wow, my favorite question, at the end of the show is what is the most important lesson that you've learned in business and investing?

Feras Moussa  31:11  

business? investing, I'd say I mean, honestly, probably have a team and partners with the right. same mindset, right? The same long term goals, the same work ethic. I've done multiple businesses throughout my career and having alignment there helps push everything along, right. You know, like, I work as much as I want to, and I know my partner will work as much as well, right? Like we complement each other in that sense. we're not out to make a quick buck. we're not pulling money out of it, right.

We just happen to keep it growing. Because our, our, our vision is a 50 year vision, not a quick one or two years. I think that's as I've kind of grown in my career, just having that alignment and knowing that both with partners was team members and staff is you know, critical, right and in structuring things to kind of make it one winter.

Taylor   31:56  

Nice. Nice. Well, Feras, thank you for joining us today. It's telling us about everything you learned going from that getting started with your portfolio all the way to blowing it up to disrupt equity. If folks want to learn more about you or about disrupting equity or the programs that you guys have, where can they find more?

Feras Moussa  32:18  

Yeah www.disruptequity.com or feel free to send me an email. [email protected].

Taylor   32:27  

Awesome. Love it. Well, thanks for joining us today. appreciate all the lessons, no problem. Thanks for having me. Really appreciate it. Great to talk with you for everybody out there. Thank you for tuning in. If you're enjoying the show, please leave us a rating and review on Apple podcasts. It's a very big help. Do you know anyone who could use a little bit more passive wealth in their lives, please share the show with them and bring them into the tribe. Thank you for tuning in. Once again. I hope you have a great rest of your day and a great rest of your week and we will talk to you on the next step.