HEATHER EWING: The CRE RUNdown
Are you intrigued by Commercial Real Estate? Join Heather Ewing, CCIM each week as she dives into CRE trends, Deals, and Developments throughout Madison, WI. Learn the crucial role of Mindset in CRE and Marathons! Success leaves Clues.
HEATHER EWING: The CRE RUNdown
Ep. 46 Tony Hudzinski - From Golf Courses to Real Estate Syndication and Community Building Success
Ever thought about transitioning from managing lush fairways to orchestrating thriving real estate ventures? Tony Hudzinski did just that, and he's here to share his story. Join us as Tony, a partner at Wisco Real Estate Services, recounts his journey from a golf course superintendent to a successful real estate investor and broker. Discover how Tony and his wife ventured into house hacking before it became a trendy buzzword and learn about their foray into the multifamily real estate scene. Tony breaks down the art of syndication, enlightening us on the roles of general and limited partners and why having a finger on the pulse of local property management is non-negotiable in the industry.
But that's not all. Tony also opens up about the power of mindset and community in real estate. From running a brokerage that caters to both residential and commercial clients to fostering a thriving community through the Wisco Investor Network, Tony champions the idea of sharing knowledge and nurturing relationships. Hear about the life-changing impact of goal-setting retreats and why maintaining a positive outlook is crucial in navigating this dynamic field. With a strong belief in the potential of multifamily real estate, especially in emerging markets like Madison, Wisconsin, Tony inspires us to blend local expertise with national insights to seize opportunities and triumph over challenges. Get ready to shift your perspective and embrace the limitless potential of real estate investing.
Welcome to Heather Ewing, the CRE Rundown. Today I have a special guest for you. It is Tony Pudzinski and he is one of the partners of Wisco Real Estate Services. Tony, welcome.
Speaker 2:Thanks, heather, happy to be here.
Speaker 1:Definitely Great to have someone from the Wisconsin area on. Actually it's been a while. So glad you could join me as we get going. If you could just share with my audience a little bit more about yourself so they can get to know you a little bit more.
Speaker 2:Sure, absolutely so. I am a full-time broker and real estate investor currently, but I certainly did not start there. I'm a broker and real estate investor currently, but I certainly did not start there. I grew up loving to play golf, actually, and I couldn't afford it, and so I got a job at a golf course and I did that all through high school and college, and part of the way through college I realized I could go to school to work in a golf course, and so I actually went to University of Wisconsin here in Madison and got a degree in turf management, and so my first career, as I call it, is as a golf course superintendent. So I did that for about 20 years.
Speaker 2:And then when I met my wife I would say like in 2007, somewhere in there we both we weren't married yet, but we both agreed when we bought our first house that it would be an investment property, it would be a duplex, and so we house hacked before that was a term and that was our first foray into real estate investing.
Speaker 2:And from there, a couple of years later, we bought our first commercial building, which housed a business that we operated, and eventually sold that business and really were enjoying just being landlords and so we thought let's just buy some more of these buildings and be landlords, right. And then, around 2020, I decided that I didn't have time to be a golf course superintendent and you know good at home with our three children and continue investing. So I left the golf industry and got my real estate license and became an agent then and now a broker, and have been investing ever since and primarily today. I focus on multifamily, larger multifamily deals and we use syndication to raise funds to buy those generally. So that's kind of a quick summary of my professional life.
Speaker 1:Right, definitely. Well, the interesting thing too is with the turf experience right. That ties in perfectly for land and other deals. I'm sure there's things that you've utilized in that sense that you carry forward. But if someone's newer to investing, share a little bit more about syndication, how that works and just real high level, some of the pros and cons.
Speaker 2:Sure, absolutely.
Speaker 2:I stumbled upon syndication just from an investor side realizing that you know, as a couple my wife and I we were only going to be able to buy so much property by ourselves before we were going to be overextended, over leveraged. We're going to run out of money for down payments, Right. And so I began a search for how to? How do people accumulate a thousand units, 10,000 units of apartments? You know, self-storage, whatever it is they're into.
Speaker 2:And I found the syndication concept, and it's essentially a person or group of people who are the general partners or GPs. They typically are the active real estate piece. They go out and find deals, they find financing for them, they get them under contract and then they find investors to come in as limited partners. So you have the general partners who operate it and the limited partners or LPs who just invest the money into the deal. And so we pool our money together with our limited partners and then we use those funds to go and buy the deal. And so we pool our money together with our limited partners and then we use those funds to go and buy the deals, and then we do all of the operations side, all the way through an eventual sale, and so it's in my mind it's really the one of the few ways you can truly passively invest in real estate.
Speaker 2:A lot of people think that real estate investing in general is passive. But buy yourself a duplex or a rental house on campus and then call me in six months and tell me how passive that is.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they would need to look up what passive means. But yeah, so with that you know, in case there is someone that's listening, what type of investment opportunities are you looking for? What's a real rough parameter in case that person is looking to sell?
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, I mean we will tackle anything. I mean we'll take anything from a house that looks like a good flip project. We have our own construction crew that works in our apartments and we'll utilize them to flip a single family home. We're actively doing that right now. But our real bread and butter is, I would say, 16 units and up, you know and the sky's the limit Like we will look at deals that are five or 600 units as far as apartments go Right, and so we prefer something with some scale. We do have our own management team. That's a separate business, but we manage all of our own properties and we're able to scale that as needed.
Speaker 2:And with the syndication piece, we feel very comfortable looking at deals that are $2 million up to $200 million, that we can find the investors and find the funds to make it happen, and we feel even more confident that we can operate those effectively. So really, you know, focusing around Dane County, madison area and we like to say Dane County and all the counties that touch it so really South Central Wisconsin is where we'd like to stay for as long as we can, so we run out of property to buy because we really feel strongly about personally managing the property. We're not one of those companies that's actively looking in Tampa or Phoenix because that's the hot market of today and really hoping whoever we find to operate those deals is a good operator. It's really important to us. It's one of our core values. We keep our thumb on this. We're raising money primarily from our friends and family and putting our own money into every single deal. So we really want these things to perform and we want to be, holding them to a very high standard.
Speaker 1:Definitely. I know that makes complete sense. And what would you say are some of the common pitfalls of investing for newer investors?
Speaker 2:Oh, I think I would start with just not knowing how to crunch the numbers appropriately, underestimating expenses and costs and potential downfalls that's the one I see trip people up the most right. Fortunately, with real estate, you don't tend to lose a lot of value quickly, right? So if someone gets into a bad deal, it's usually not going to go to zero. It's not like buying a stock in a startup company and then they just, they just fail. Right Now your ten thousand dollar investment is completely gone. But, yeah, I think, understanding how to operate or run the numbers properly and so you don't get yourself in over your head and underestimating how much work is involved, and so really finding experts and people who have been there and done that to mentor you is the key I've found.
Speaker 1:Definitely, which segues in perfectly. So my understanding is you have various entities from construction to, I think, different classes, right? Can you share a little bit more about that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. We have a brokerage, so we do residential and commercial brokerage. We really like to focus on the investment side. So, like that person that wants to buy their first duplex or rental house, I love working with those buyers and sellers. But we do regular residential real estate as well. So people want to buy a home.
Speaker 2:We do private lending, which is, you know, people who are flipping houses can come to us for funds to borrow to do those projects short term. On the other side of that is our investors who invest in our apartment deals. You know we don't have an apartment deal typically going on at all times and so the private lending allows them to invest in those loans. So if a flipper comes to us and says I need a thousand, a hundred thousand dollars to flip this house, we'll go to our investor pool and say who would like to borrow this person a hundred thousand dollars? They get paid a nice return. We facilitate the whole thing. We make sure the project is good, but we also teach people how to do that, as you alluded to, and we host a monthly meetup here at our office in DeForest, Wisconsin, just outside of Madison, and that's a free meetup.
Speaker 1:Give it a plug.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we call it the WIN, the Wisco Investor Network, and it's invitation only. So if anyone would like an invitation, if you're local, please shoot me an email at partners at wiscorealestatecom or tony at wiscolerealestatecom and I can put you on the list. But we get about 50 to 60 people a month who come and we feed them really good food, you know, have some drinks. We have really great networking afterwards and it's become really popular and it's fun to see this group of people grow, see the same people coming back, bringing friends. I've been craving a community like this for some time, so it's really neat to be able to give back. We like to say that we're self-proclaimed real estate nerds and one of the ways we feel like we can give back to our community is by just sharing what we've learned and what we know and our connections to, and also learning from the attendees. They all have things to share as well.
Speaker 1:Right. Well, and I think it's one of those too, like everyone, takes their beatings in real estate right, especially in the early years. If you're able to get through those, then it's an amazing arena, but for those that don't, you know, it's a very painful experience in that sense. So I like that you are giving it back, and of course, that's something that's near and dear to my heart too is philanthropy and sharing what we've learned and helping people forward. So I see that as an important and essential part of business. But segwaying in what would you say is the mindset that has helped you to shift from the early years to now, or just some of the different things that really stick out to you that people should be aware of.
Speaker 2:That's a good question. There's a lot of mindset set things, I think, having an abundance mindset, being willing to openly share. I will share my trade secrets. If I think I've got some really cool investment hack, I'm not afraid to tell anyone that wants to hear about it. If I tell 100 people the secret hack, there may be one or two that actually go through with it, but I don't look at other investors as competition. And that's one of the cool things about our meetups is we really stress that we want people to be able to speak freely and have that abundance mindset that there's more than enough for everyone to go around, and gatekeeping and holding things tight to the vest we don't think serves anybody, and so we're very forthcoming with our information and I really believe you need to give with no expectation of receiving right.
Speaker 2:That's a big core value of myself and our company too, Like we try to pour into people and I know you know that it'll come back at some point in the future, but I'm not doing it for that reason, right? And so I think, having that abundance mindset and just not having, you know, really not trying to eliminate limiting beliefs, right?
Speaker 2:If you would have told me 10 years ago that I would look at a $200 million apartment deal, I would have called you crazy. You know, when I, when I when I was before I was a real estate professional and I had brokers looking for me, I would say, all right, look for duplexes between 150 and $300,000. And to me that was as much as I could afford and that was all I was going to look at. And partially I joined a mentoring group to learn how to do the syndication piece and being around people who are, you know, that have raised a billion dollars, you know to buy real estate, really showed me, you know, that this is doable, right, and it really so. Now the sky's the limit. Like I said earlier, show me a 500 unit apartment complex and in the past I would have never even looked into it, but now I'll analyze them. If it makes sense, let's figure out how to make it go right. And so just taking out the limiting beliefs and believing that I mean that abundance mindset will carry you through.
Speaker 1:Definitely so. Which group was that that you you learned from the mentorship?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that group in particular it's run by actually have the longest running real estate investment podcast. It's called the Real Estate Guys Radio Show. Oh, I've heard of it, it's called the Real Estate Guys Radio. Show. Oh, I've heard of it. Yeah, I've stumbled upon their podcast and they were hosting their annual goal-setting retreat in Las Vegas. This is back in like 2019. And I asked my wife if she'd like to go and she's like I don't care who it is, let's go to Vegas.
Speaker 1:I just want to get out of.
Speaker 2:Wisconsin for a couple of days, and we met some just amazing people there that were involved in their we'll call it like their inner circle group, and it was enough to where, like wow, these people all have that abundance mindset. They're all so forthcoming with information Like. These are the people that, in our minds at the time, were the experts that we needed to figure out how to be around, and so we made a concerted effort to travel to all of their events and attend all their educational opportunities, and that's really what launched took our investment, real estate investment careers up, you know, 10 notches.
Speaker 1:I'm sure definitely. And what would you say is your go-to for mindset when you need to kind of revamp that right, because some days it's just like, oh wow, was that painful. And other days, right, it's like everything's clicking and the deals are, you know, coming together and penciling and the numbers are coming in. What would you say is your go-to one or two things for mindset of staying top?
Speaker 2:tier. I think the concept for me is is is thinking about how everything is happening for me and not to me. So even when you know you spill your coffee on your pants and you know bump into another car in the parking lot at the gas station on the way to work, like you can either let those things trigger you and set a bad tone and put you in a kind of a negative headspace for the whole day, or you can you can you can think of it as all right.
Speaker 2:All right I. This happened for a reason, and I might not realize what it is right now, but I probably will in the future if I reflect on it enough. And you know, maybe, maybe I got that flat tire because had I not gotten it, I would have gotten an accident on my way to my meeting, Right. And so I try to look at everything as happening for me and not to me, and just having that mindset really, really helps shift me away from that. Woe is me. Victim mentality to this is just. I'm just another step closer to where I'm supposed to be.
Speaker 1:Right, that's terrific. And what would you say? You know, as far as the next five, 10 years? What is there anything that jumps out to you as far as industry shifts, changes, anything like that?
Speaker 2:You know being very I'm very bullish on multifamily real estate right now just because I see as a realtor, I see pricing, I see a lot of people can't afford to buy their first home anymore. They would love to own a home, maybe, but they can only afford an apartment Right, and I don't see that changing the foreseeable future. There's just such a lack of of of housing in general and especially affordable housing, and I know a lot of builders. I know what it costs to build things these days.
Speaker 2:Labor costs for them are through the roof on top of materials and I just I see a lot of value to what we do in buying these older buildings and then using our construction crew to go in and make them nice, make them not just livable but almost like a brand new apartment, but for a fraction of a cost of what, in time, of what it takes to build a brand new facility.
Speaker 2:Um, so I I'm very bullish on on multi-family. And then you know, on the commercial side of things like retail and those sorts of things, restaurants, I think those things all need to be surrounding that right. So I don't see a slowdown anytime soon, especially in the next five years. I'm doubling down. We want to buy every apartment we can get our hands on in the next five years. I'll put it that way.
Speaker 1:Right. Yeah, I always have to chuckle at the number of calls I get for mixed use and different rent figures and this, that and the other thing for the triple net leases and it's liquid gold you either have it or you don't which all computes into those mixed use developments and things of that nature. So I agree, there's a lot of action and it's only going to increase with the density and the growth of Dane County, its projections, and a lot of people do want into the market. Right, Our costs are much less than California and the larger markets, so it's a free for all and quite easy to snap up the inventory when they've got the right contacts.
Speaker 1:So I think it's important to obviously have a local blend some of the national, regional, but definitely keeping you know some of those solid local operators too.
Speaker 2:Yeah, madison is such a wonderful place to live, right, these people that come and discover it from the coasts, um, you know there's a lot of people moving south right. For the last four years now, a lot of people moved to texas and tennessee and florida and arizona and, um, boy, aside from a little, a little cold like we're having, you know, for a month or two here in the winter, it's really hard to beat. It is much less expensive. The quality life, life's amazing. Another reason I'm bullish on apartments, but just real estate in general in the Madison area is just so strong because I teeter between wanting to shout it from the rooftops and keeping our little secret and keep, you know, all the institutional investors from the coast from coming and finding us, but they'll find us eventually and again, with that abundance mentality, I want everyone to know.
Speaker 2:You know all around the world how great of a place this Madison area is and I truly believe that.
Speaker 1:Definitely so. This is the hard hitting question, right. So the last one, the big one, is what does living fully mean to you?
Speaker 2:Yeah, living best for last? Yeah, that's a great question. Um, living fully is is it's not necessarily balanced. I don't know that. I believe you can achieve true balance. Um, for me, it's keeping my priorities straight and you know, my number one priority is myself and my health and keeping my my mental, emotional, physical health um in a good place and whatever it takes to do that, whether it's, you know, doing hobbies that I love, reading and growing but once I'm taken care of, I really focus.
Speaker 2:I'm very, very much lean towards taking care of others Like I'm an acts of service type of person. So I think I think to live a full life, I really need to feel like I'm very much being of service to those around me, especially my friends and family. And so I feel like if I can A keep myself in a good spot and keep myself strong, I'll be in a good place to be as helpful as possible to everyone else. And for sure, money and business and all that stuff is is cool, but it's it's a distant, you know it's down the list from those other things. So relationships, you know I've enjoyed starting to get to know you. I love just meeting new people and making connections.
Speaker 1:I really enjoy connecting people, you know if I can take two people, that I know should meet and put them together.
Speaker 2:That's super satisfying. So, yeah, living a full life is, I think, taking care of myself and then taking care of those around me, and and everything else is a bonus, right?
Speaker 1:well, and you know it's one of those two. It seems like you are living in a very aligned life, which would make sense why you're a happy person, good disposition, and you keep making choices that keep you on that path, which is neat and I think so frequently a lot of people don't realize the power that they yield in setting goals and in saying yes to some things, no to other things, that really help them get on that path. So I'd say kudos to you, tony. That's terrific. I'm excited for you, and I'm also excited to see how your company continues to grow and expand, and we'll have to do a deal together one of these times.
Speaker 2:Absolutely.
Speaker 1:I would love that. Yeah, we'll pay that house too.
Speaker 2:We're shooting to the moon, we're on a fast pace and it's really exciting and I look forward to working with you at any opportunity.
Speaker 1:Definitely, so. Share with our audience where's the best place for them to contact, and then I'll also include it at the end of the video.
Speaker 2:Yeah, linkedin is probably the best best place to find me. It's just Tony Hudzinski, t-o-n-y-h-u-d-z-i-n-s-k-i, feel free to add. Feel free to add me there. Yeah, I'd love to connect.
Speaker 1:Excellent, Tony. Thanks so much. It was great talking with you. Yeahasure talking to you also. All right, bye-bye, bye-bye.