Embark on a voyage into the dynamic world of real estate with the exceptional Rami Dietz, as he lays bare the twists and turns of his career, from a young licensee to a powerhouse in the industry. Discover the intricacies of apartment locating, where Rami found his niche, and learn how persistence, building robust relationships, and managing the challenges of income stability can pave the way to success. His candid reflections promise insights into not only the lucrative aspects but also the grit and determination needed to thrive in real estate.
Witness the transformative power of a well-structured team and the magnetic pull of a supportive environment in our latest episode. As we unravel the creation of my real estate team, you'll appreciate the significance of continuous mentorship and how Mindy Dennis's legacy of excellence in training became our brand's hallmark, long after her departure. The narrative unfolds to reveal how these practices became a beacon for attracting exceptional talent, reinforcing the importance of a nurturing team dynamic in the competitive realm of real estate.
Key Factors Podcast is Powered by ReviewMyMortgage.com
Host: Mark Jones | Sr. Loan Officer | NMLS# 513437
If you would like to work with Mark on your next home purchase or as a partner visit iThink Mortgage.
Embark on a voyage into the dynamic world of real estate with the exceptional Rami Dietz, as he lays bare the twists and turns of his career, from a young licensee to a powerhouse in the industry. Discover the intricacies of apartment locating, where Rami found his niche, and learn how persistence, building robust relationships, and managing the challenges of income stability can pave the way to success. His candid reflections promise insights into not only the lucrative aspects but also the grit and determination needed to thrive in real estate.
Witness the transformative power of a well-structured team and the magnetic pull of a supportive environment in our latest episode. As we unravel the creation of my real estate team, you'll appreciate the significance of continuous mentorship and how Mindy Dennis's legacy of excellence in training became our brand's hallmark, long after her departure. The narrative unfolds to reveal how these practices became a beacon for attracting exceptional talent, reinforcing the importance of a nurturing team dynamic in the competitive realm of real estate.
Key Factors Podcast is Powered by ReviewMyMortgage.com
Host: Mark Jones | Sr. Loan Officer | NMLS# 513437
If you would like to work with Mark on your next home purchase or as a partner visit iThink Mortgage.
Welcome back to another episode of Key Factors Podcast Real Estate AF and we did decide to change the name of the actual podcast. We'll talk about reasons why here later in the show, but in this episode, in this discussion, I brought along a friend that I've been trying to get on this podcast for quite some time. Not that he was afraid, he just was in the process of building. I totally understand. So, without further ado, let me introduce Rami Dietz. What's up, dude? What's the damn?
Speaker 2:deal man, how you doing. I'm doing great bro. How are you?
Speaker 1:Doing well, so it's nice to finally get you in that seat having a discussion about everything under the sun.
Speaker 2:so to speak For sure, man, and it was never anything personal for me, not jumping on, it's just like you said. I was building, kind of staying focused, and I was turning away a lot of podcasts, but now it's time to start building that personal. I like it, I'm excited about it.
Speaker 1:I like it. So a lot of the folks out there may or may not know who you are If they don't shame on them, but we're going to talk a little bit about you today. Cool, I want to show the listeners, the viewers, your journey from start to where we are today. So, picking that up, I'd like to kind of know how did you get in the business? Where did you come from? What did you do prior to? Let's go further back into what you did prior to real estate, cool man, I actually got to real estate.
Speaker 2:Cool man, I actually got into real estate when I was 18. So this has been about 13 years going on now. I've done a few full-time jobs in between. I've worked at Citibank. Actually, at Citibank that's when I started to find out how good in sales I was. I had a really good supervisor that kind of laid out the breadcrumbs for me, and then from Citibank I went to selling Nationwide. I've kind of sold anything you can think about. Man. I've sold Cutco door-to-door. I remember Cutco. I've sold insurance and the whole time while I had my license. It probably took me about a good three years until I jumped into real estate full-time.
Speaker 1:That makes sense. So you got your real estate license while you were doing all those different trades, gaining different sales tactics, best practices, even just the brunt of learning sales Because, let's face it, sales is not an easy game?
Speaker 2:No, not at all, Matt. Any sense of that and, honestly, almost all the above that you mentioned A lot of people that I've met throughout my journey is what shaped me into where I'm at today. I've had great supervisors. I had great mentors. I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for all these guys kind of showing me the ropes yeah, no.
Speaker 1:I believe that. So, rami, the first stint into real estate you had, I guess it was maybe part-time. You were doing it learning, picking up deals here and there, but I know that you jumped into the rental side and that was lucrative still is to this day, big time. But what was your journey like, going through that? What number one was the reason why you decided to go that way?
Speaker 2:It's kind of an interesting story, honestly, man, because it all happened by accident.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:There's one time I was talking to my Uncle Retta, you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2:He's the one that kind of encouraged me to get into real estate. He actually paid for my real estate license, so it was never really my intention to do real estate. He just knew that I would be good at it. So as I was doing my Citibank job, I've had a lot of people work in a call center so I had everybody looking for rentals. I let everybody know this is what I do. One month I accidentally made 10K. I had no idea that there was that kind of money in apartment locating and that's where I started to really hit it hard. On average I would do 20 to 30K once I hit it full time on my third year and it's just a very, very great business, man, and not only do you make great money doing it, but it helps you build your relationships, it helps you cross-sell, it helps you with just your relationship aspect of selling them next year. So there's so many avenues with apartment locating that it opens up a lot of doors for you.
Speaker 1:That makes sense. You said something that at first I was like wait a minute. You accidentally made this amount, but I believe you had told me before that when you do rentals there's kind of a lag in the pay structure because you're waiting for certain things. Can you explain that?
Speaker 2:Because treat me like I'm an infant. Yeah, I'd absolutely love to man. A lot of people have also wrong misconception with apartment locating. They think that you're going to make money and make money right away. It's very similar to a residential transaction. If you get somebody that is on a pre-owned home, it's taking 30 to 45 days. There are some apartments that pay 30, 45 days. But if you get a build that's brand new, it could take six months. There are some apartments, unfortunately, that will pay in six months. So there's nothing guaranteed. And in the management industry there's so much rotation going on I mean properties getting bought out, getting sold, new management it's not for the faint of heart man that makes sense. Yeah, it requires somebody to build good relationships and to combat that it's with volume. So for you to be successful in apartment locating you got to be hitting 15, 20k every month to make a living off of it.
Speaker 1:That makes sense. So you're essentially, once you close the next one, you've already started working on the next five, essentially because you're continuously stacking your pipeline and feeding that machine, so to speak.
Speaker 2:Absolutely man. And that pipeline just keeps going. A lot of people and I'm sure you can attest to this they're not buying because they don't know any better. Correct A lot of people thinking 20% down, still they need to have over a 700 credit score. Most of our clients are spending, on average, $2,000 to $2,500 on rent.
Speaker 1:I just got off of a phone call with a borrower that was speaking to another lender and I would imagine that that other lender was kind of an out of the box type lender in the sense that they only gave her the option of 20 percent down conventional, Wow and it was like OK, so is that what they told you? Your only option was yeah, that was our only option. Ok, so they didn't go over any other loan programs. No, I won't name who the lender was. It was an online lender, but essentially you're right. There are a lot of consumers out there and I call them consumers because we're all consumers. To be more specific, there are a lot of renters out there that have no clue that they could actually qualify for a property to own.
Speaker 2:Absolutely and at the same time, not even if they don't also know about it, because it's more of an education piece, right. But sometimes also they don't have the game plan on how to qualify, right. So somebody could have a 560 credit score, they're right there, and they don't know that they can reach out to somebody with credit repair, get it 20 points up, then qualify. They just haven't had the proper guidance. They just hear the news and interest rates going up and all the crazy stuff, man. So they instill fear into these buyers and they need somebody with experience that can talk through some of those fears.
Speaker 1:And we've spoken about the concept of the media and the fear and the misconception and the misinformation. Matter of fact, by the time that this airs, I've already had the discussion with John Hudson about the social media fear, misinformation that's being spread out there, and all it does is hurts the consumer more and more, and what I'm seeing is a lot of new to the business agents that don't know any better. So they're sharing that information without any explanation or without being able to explain it if they're being asked questions about it. So my advice to them is don't share information that you can't yourself explain.
Speaker 2:You know that and then also get you a right mentor that can really coach you and trade you. And I have a really big belief of if a client walks into my office, they should be able to walk away with the same product, no matter who they talk to somebody for 10 years or my brand new agent they should get the same results. A client shouldn't walk into an office and then two different realtors, two different results. That shouldn't be that way. So I invest a lot of time and energy into my agents, coaching them heavily involved with every single transaction, and I know that for a fact.
Speaker 1:I've been directly involved with that and seen it, but we're not there yet. So, before we get to that realm that hat, so to speak, that you now wear while you were producing I can imagine that you did pretty well for yourself. I mean, to be able to take the risk in opening up your own brokerage, to taking the risk in being a mentor for others, you've had to have gone through different transactions. You've had to have failed many times. You know and that's the one thing that I speak about quite often, because it's the one thing that most myself and the guests have in common We've all failed many times. Matter of fact, still failing today.
Speaker 2:Well, I mean, if you don't fail, you just have bad expectations. You're not trying hard enough. That's part of the process. I agree. You have to fail. If you're not failing, you're not getting uncomfortable, it's true, it's true, big time.
Speaker 1:So, with you focusing on the rentals back then. Now, how long were you an agent before you decided to do your own thing?
Speaker 2:I became a broker in 2018. Okay, so it was about six years. So six, seven years I was an agent. Good deal Right before I got it and what was okay?
Speaker 1:let me ask you this While you were an agent because most of us develop our own business plans and this is what I'm going to focus on so that I can get to my ultimate goal, et cetera, et cetera what was your business plan looking like? And you may not have had one, you could have, like me. I'll be honest in the beginning, my first several years in the mortgage business, I was just using my pure talent and experience, and I guess you know my lack of fear in talking to people and expressing my expertise, advising, asking the right questions. If I didn't know the answer, I was honest with them, told them I don't know, but I'll find out for you and I will get it back to you by this time. And what I found is that, as long as you do what you say you're going to do, when you say you're going to do it, you're going to be all right.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. So, yeah, go ahead For me. As far as business plan, this also may come off funny to you, but I had zero business plan. Actually, the way I opened up my office is I went to all my friends and I told every single person to go get their real estate license. So about six to eight months before I got my broker license, I was already planning all of this. When I first opened up my office, november 1st of 2018, it was nothing but all my close friends that I went to high school with. That I still went and partied with, hung out with. If you would have came to my office back in 2018, it's like a frat house, I believe it.
Speaker 1:I believe, it.
Speaker 2:There was no plan behind it. It was more so of I knew I had something special. My broker, daryl. He's one of the main ones that really inspired me and pushed me to believe in myself, to even be able to do this and we're talking Daryl, with 3D, Daryl Clinton yeah, that's where I parked my license for the last five years before I moved on Him and Trisha some of the best people you're ever going to meet. These guys really put me on man and he told me what I have with the apartments is something very special. He's never really seen anywhere. So I started coaching and helping some of his agents out in the office and that's whenever I realized, like man, I got something special here. And then we opened up my office, zero experience with everybody. Not one person had their license. Opened up my office, zero experience with everybody, not one person had their license and we figured it all out together. On our fourth month I think we already started billing out at $120,000, $130,000.
Speaker 1:So it picked up very fast. It did, and I think by that time you may or may not have had a plan, but to me you seem like someone that sets goals and goes after the goal and the path may not be clear, but you do know the path and reason being. Could have been a mentor, could have been your gut, and sometimes that's enough, you know. Hey, I feel like this is not going to be the right path. Let's go this way.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And I've seen it happen. I've been somebody that does that as I move forward. Of course, I had to put the plan together Once things start growing more and more. You're only one person, you know. So, that being the case, when you opened, you had agents, some had training, some didn't but when I came across you guys, you had a pretty solid machine. You walked into your office and it did not feel like a frat house. It felt like a very well put together and it still feels like a well put together organization with strong leadership, with strong leadership, with the pupils of that listening to the leadership, and almost a think tank, a conglomerate of melting ideas. And that's what I loved about being around you guys. So when you did set out to do that, what was the first couple of months like?
Speaker 2:you did set out to do that. What was the first couple of months like? Well, I'll be honest with you, man. Like you said, we all have goals and we want to accomplish those goals. Sometimes the path is not clear.
Speaker 2:I would be silly to think that I've built this all by myself. I've had so many different agents that have come in that almost you know one person comes in, takes it this far. Another person comes in, takes it this far. Another person comes in, takes it this far. What really got the structure mostly together is an agent that worked for me named Mindy Dennis. I don't know if you're a member. She came in and she provided us the structure that we needed with the onboarding, with having consistent trainings, and it was. It was something that may open up my eyes to what I was missing. So things didn't end up working out between her and I. Of course, we wish her well Hopefully she's killing it whatever she's doing but she really is the one that kind of structured us and put us together and since then we've been building from that.
Speaker 1:And I remember working with Mindy hand in hand and she had your training programs top notch. I mean, there was an agenda all the time. The agents were always getting something out of it, very hands-on of course, but in essence and not to say anything bad against Mindy, because she's great at what she does you were able to continue those trainings as she departed and still maintained that level of respect. In regards to, okay, if I'm a new to the business agent and I need mentorship because, let's face it, you go to eXp, any of the other places, you're on your own. There is very little mentorship unless you are strong enough of a person to reach out to the others within your group, or else you're spending your time at different seminars that you're really not going to get much out of. Essentially, it's marketing for X, y and Z person.
Speaker 2:I pick up a few agents from those cloud-based brokerage. There you go.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So, that being being the case, what was the edge that that gave you the ability to recruit strong, the ability to continue to add agents to your group. That complemented what you guys were doing that's a great question, man.
Speaker 2:I'll be honest with you, with most people I've gotten