Bryon Aponte, Florida's real estate arbitrage king, details his rise from a $6/hour custodian to a multi-millionaire collector of vintage cards and watches. He leverages owner financing and same-day flips in Tampa, avoiding banks and complex 1031 exchanges while targeting code enforcement violations for profit. Aponte advises overpaying top talent to prevent theft, using psychological counter-offers against bullies, and treating real estate as a relentless mental grind where problems directly correlate with financial gain. Ultimately, his strategy underscores that understanding market volatility and human psychology is the true key to wealth creation. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: CohereLabs/cohere-transcribe-03-2026, WAV2VEC2_ASR_BASE_960H, sat-12l-sm, script v26.04.01, and large-v3-turbo
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Buying and Selling Houses Daily00:14:59
Hello, world.
This episode of the podcast is all about making money.
Brian Aponte is a major player in Florida real estate.
He also owns millions of dollars worth of collectible trading cards, which he's constantly buying and selling every single day.
I met Brian at a restaurant the other day, and he must have done 10 deals on the phone within the hour I was there with him.
It's truly amazing the way his mind works.
And I immediately knew I had to get him on the podcast to get a better understanding of his perspective on real estate, money, and investing.
Please enjoy this invigorating episode with Brian Aponte.
Thank you.
What's up, Brian?
Not much, brother.
How are you?
Good.
It was great to meet you the other day, man.
Thank you for coming and doing this.
Oh, it's a pleasure.
This is going to be fun.
Got it.
Tell me, for people out there listening, give me like a brief little background on like who you are, where you came from, and what you do.
Like, what are you all about?
So basically, I was talk, get a little bit closer.
So basically, I'm from Jersey, originally.
Yeah.
Perth Amboy, real close to Elizabeth, Newark around that area.
And what I do is I just buy and sell anything, but mostly real estate, vintage cards.
baseball cards, stuff like that, jewelry, watches, anything that has a liquid value.
So growing up, I was born in 1970.
My uncle used to own hardware stores, liquor stores.
So I was always brought up in the grind.
You know what I mean?
Because in reality, there's really no money in school.
And back in those days, back in 76, Carter was the president.
We had a gasoline shortage.
You know um, the interest rates were like 20, so the only way to make money was to have cash.
You know, just like today, but the world's changed a little bit, but so the buying and selling game is where the money's at.
So, that being said, I moved out here in 19 um, I would say like 1989 1990, I had to get out of Jersey because it was just nothing but trouble.
So when I came here, my first job actually was um, I was a custodian at a high school in Brandon, making $6 an hour, walking seven, eight miles a day to go to work.
It was my favorite time of my life, the grind.
So then I bought a little flea market booth in Sefner, Florida, baseball cards from this lady for $2,000.
Within two, three months, you know, just kept stacking my bread, had about $20,000, $30,000.
I went to Tampa.
I bought a little baseball card shop in Fiesta Plaza.
Then I started hitting the country, going to the big shows, buying, selling.
I've always been a big sports fan.
And then in the meantime, you know, I would only work maybe Friday, Saturday, Sunday, do the grind.
And then, you know, I'd meet people, buy their collections, just buy out their tables.
And then one thing led to another.
And then you just deal with different businesses, jewelry stores, pawn shops, furniture, bail bonds, real estate.
And real estate's a good hustle because it has a lot of zeros at the end.
So if you buy something, let's say you buy a pair of sneakers for $500 and you sell them for $800.
Sounds cool.
You could be only making $300.
What are you going to do with $300?
Right, you buy a house for a hundred thousand, you flip it for a buck thirty, you just make 30 G's.
So, the bottom line is to make money, you just got to be well versed, well rounded, and you got to be able to pull that trigger immediately.
Because, in any game, nobody wants to deal with a procrastinator, it's either you're in or you're out.
There's really no in between, bro.
When I first met you, I think it was like yesterday, it was two days ago, I think.
You reminded me instantly of like you had you were like just Tony Soprano to me, like you were you're so much energy.
You hustle it.
Your hands are in so many different things, so many different types of businesses.
You have sneaker stores scattered throughout the state.
You have this warehouse full of trading cards.
Like how much money worth of trading, like baseball cards and basketball cards do you have?
So let's get back to the beginning where your question, like the sneaker store.
Yeah.
That belongs to a friend of mine.
And I was involved in the beginning and I still am a little involved.
It's a slower paced, fast paced game.
Let me tell you what I mean by that.
Then we'll get to the cards.
It's a hustle.
It's a grind and you're making $50, $60 a pair.
You got to push a lot of pairs.
You got to do a lot of work.
You got to pay high rents.
And, you know, it's just a good game for somebody who's looking to make a million a year.
You know what I mean?
I still work with the same people, but the trading card, the baseball cards, that's a hustle I like.
But to answer your question, the value of what I have, several million, but I constantly buy and sell every day.
The baseball card game is something that's really come up a lot because it's an asset without a paper trail and everybody's interested in it.
Like I was telling you, it's sort of like artwork, but on a different level because everybody knows about sports and everybody wants to get involved.
What's the number one most valuable card that you own?
You know, I own some PSA Jordan 10 rookie cards.
You know, they were bringing like $750,000 to $800,000.
You know, they've cooled off a little bit to about $4,000 to $500,000 basically because, you know, it's a new asset class that the smart money's coming into.
But, you know, I have 1988 Flair Basketball.
I probably have 800 graded packs.
You know, the tens are $3,000, $4,000 each.
But I have a lot of different stuff, you know, from Mickey Mantle to Ty Cobb to Babe Ruth to Jordan.
You know, I don't really do much with the newer stuff.
Because they're very volatile and I'm not interested in losing money.
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And you do all these transactions on eBay with the cards?
Yeah, we'll buy collections.
You know, a guy called me up.
Hey, I got this collection, 1957 tops baseball set.
Just use that as an example.
So we look at what they have.
Okay, cool.
We just add it up, figure it out, and just buy it from them.
Then we get the cards graded.
We'll just, you know, whatever we do with it, you know, you just crack the collections down.
That's what I did for numerous years.
I used to travel the country, you know, spend a few thousand, buy, you know, 100,000 here, 200,000 there, get some graded, wholesale some, retail.
It's just a fast-paced business.
How do you have time to balance all the real estate you're doing and buying and selling cards every day?
Because you're constantly doing this all the time.
How do you find the time?
Well, when you look at real estate, it's a fast pace, but it's really not.
And you just have to use your mind.
You have to take your mind in different avenues.
Let me give you an example.
New construction.
You already know what you're getting into because you already know what the product's worth before you even build it.
If a house is selling for $300 a foot and you're building for $100 a foot, your profit's based on what you pay for the dirt.
minus your expenditures.
And then at the same time, you're constantly looking for different avenues to make money.
Like, you know, I've used car lots.
I mean, that's a dead business, but, you know, there's some money there.
Anything that makes money and it doesn't take, swallow a lot of my time that I could pawn off to one of my people in my camp will figure it out.
Because there's always some way, where, and when to make money.
But in the real estate, I like real estate because everybody's your client.
Your mother, your father, your sister, your brother, your cousin, your neighbor.
Because everybody lives somewhere.
It's a necessity, a luxury.
It's an avenue to just make a lot of money, especially in today's day and age because the rental income is very high and we're in a market that's growing and the interest rates are low.
What kind of real estate do you own?
Well, you know, we own commercial real estate, trailer parks, single family homes, multiple family.
But when I own them, to be honest with you, I did a bad job because I don't like to own much.
I like to buy and sell it immediately.
You know, I've probably bought a few thousand houses in Tampa alone.
My thing is get it under contract and call one of my members and my team to dump it immediately.
90% of the stuff I bought, I bought it in one day and sold it the same day.
But the ones, the stuff I do, yeah.
That's insane.
Not really.
Think about it logically.
If you're buying $100 bills for 90, how fast can you sell them?
So because everything has a dump price.
You know what I mean?
If you're looking at an asset, you already know what it's worth based on the wholesale value.
And if you're looking at the retail value, you're looking at it wrong.
The money's made when you purchase it, not when you sell it.
You only realize your profits as you sell.
But now the game has changed because, you know, we live here in Florida, Tampa, St. Pete area.
So there's a lot of people moving here with no state tax.
Everybody wants to be here.
And the properties have gone way up due to the fact that people from up north, Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Boston, and in California, they're tired of dealing with the state taxes, dealing with a lot of liberalism.
They just want to come here and get out of that.
And their houses are worth so much more than ours.
So it's easier for them to purchase them.
Wow.
What's the most amount of houses you bought at one time?
Didn't you tell me you bought like a shitload of houses at once, like a couple hundred?
Well, you know, I sold one guy like 56 houses, I think, in 90 days, just buy and sell the same day.
But, you know, we bought 18-unit buildings.
We've bought beaches on the water, properties on the water.
You name it, I bought it.
The thing is, like, when you say what's the most I bought at one time, obviously, I think, you know, we could buy 50.
I think we bought 36 houses from one guy in a deal.
The way you structure it, owner finance.
So you always want to pay cash because it's easier to acquire.
But at the same time, you want to use owner finance.
This way you could control the deal with the seller's money.
You could manipulate the product using their money.
Yeah, that's another thing that you were telling me about.
You don't use banks.
We had a long discussion about that.
We were talking about another guy who I used to deal with.
We won't mention his name, but he uses banks.
And you were saying that why use banks?
Well, the thing with the banks, the banks, they want to lend money to people who don't need money or people who are desperate.
because the government backs FHA.
So if you work at a fast food chain and you're making a tad above poverty, they're going to lend you money because it's almost they're forced.
The Frank Dodd Act and all that.
So a guy who has money and who's going to sell the property immediately and they look at your track record, they don't want to lend you money because they can't see the profit in it for them.
The only way they're going to lend you money is if you leverage it and hold it for a certain amount of time as a rental asset.
And rentals are cool for certain people because it's like a fixed income, but I don't really care for the rental business.
No, even though I've only rentals.
Well, let me put it to you like this.
Let's say you buy a property for $100,000, use round numbers, and you rent it for $1,000 a month.
You're bringing in $12,000 a year.
By the time you pay your property manager expenses for taxes, insurance, maintenance, you might net $8,000.
So you're working on an eight cap.
That's good for an investment company because they're borrowing at 2%, so they're 400 times in their money.
But for a guy like me who bought the house for $100,000, I could sell it for $120,000 in one day.
So I can make 20% of my money in one day when I can make 8,000 in a year and deal with the headaches.
Because most tenants, 90% of the time is a headache.
But how do you find these buyers?
Say you find a house right now, you can go buy it right now and sell it.
How do you know who you're going to sell it to?
You just have a Rolodex people you know.
You can just like, I know I've sold to this guy.
So in my phone, I probably got a couple thousand people's numbers in my phone over the years.
And I know who buys what and what area and what they're paying, how they're buying it.
And, you know, there's a high demand for the asset.
You know what I mean?
So it's going to sell immediately at the right price.
Let's take the $100 bill example.
For $98, you're going to have a line a mile long.
For $101, you won't have one client.
So you have to know the bottom line, the razor thin line, where to buy and where to sell at.
That's where the money's made.
How do you so you tell me Tampa, Florida, like in the city limits, I know most I'd say 95% of the streets.
Okay.
I don't look at GPS.
I already know what the house is worth before I get there.
Right.
Because everything is based on retail minus the expenditures minus your expenses.
And most people want to make a certain amount of dollar amount.
So you already know what they're going to pay before they buy it.
Okay.
That makes a lot of sense.
So let's get back to the sports shit, the baseball cards.
Yeah, no problem.
Are you going to buy or sell any cards today?
Like this is a daily thing you do?
Yeah, daily.
Are you like riding the market day to day?
Are there any cards, any things that you hold out on long term?
Definitely.
The best cards to hold are the vintage cards.
You want to buy stuff that's going to go up in value based on the story of the player.
Let me give you an example.
Babe Ruth.
He's probably the greatest baseball player ever to play the game.
So you have a lot of people that are looking for that card.
And there's more collectors than product.
So the grading companies grade from a scale of 1 to 10.
And then they have a population report of how many cards have been slabbed in certain grade.
Like I buy cards now, let's take an example, for $10,000 that I sold for $1,000 three years ago.
So you want to buy the old cards.
And the newer cards, they have a lot of hype because a lot of young people who are flipping crypto and making money in the stock market, this is what they're seeing.
But at the same time, when you're spending $300,000, $400,000 on a card of a guy who's been in the league three years, you don't really know the outcome of his career.
Profiting From Market Fear00:10:52
So you're basically making a bet.
Like me, I don't make bets.
If it's not a guarantee, I just don't want to deal with it.
Right.
That makes sense.
You know, I get in the product cheap.
I try to buy as many as I can.
And the more I buy, the more they're worth because I'm the one that's going to drive up the price.
What other kind of businesses are you in?
Well, I dabble in anything that makes money.
You know what I mean?
Like, look, yesterday a friend of mine hit me up that he's a realtor.
He's a good friend of mine.
He's actually selling a property of mine for like $4 million.
And he hit me with this Eureka coin.
He said, Brian, look at this Eureka coin.
It was $1.90.
A little bit.
Talk a little bit closer to the middle.
It was $1.90.
You can pull it to you.
Yeah, it was $1.90.
And I think the last I, he hit me up at about 2 p.m. yesterday.
And the last I checked about an hour ago was at $5.50.
Really?
Yeah.
I've never even heard of Eureka coin.
Neither did I.
Well, 99% of the things today, I've never heard of.
See, that's why, you know, I jump in and out, you know, and then I'll play the wave.
And, you know, I'll day trade and I'll make 70, 80 transactions in an hour due to the fact that you never go broke on a profit.
So if you can make your little in and out money, just do it.
Right.
Because I don't feel comfortable with any stock unless when you look at the balance sheet, their assets are greater than their debt.
Like Macy's stock last year, I think it dropped to like five bucks.
When you looked at their balance sheet, their building in Manhattan alone was worth more than their stock plus their debt.
So I bought a lot of that.
How do you find their balance sheet?
Well, you know, any stockbroker, anybody knows about stocks will show you how to work that.
It's really not that interesting, but it's common sense.
You can like go online or something and like download.
Yeah, just talk to a stock guy, hey look, what do you think about this, what do you think about that?
Okay but like, the stock game is really not my hustle.
I just don't find any pleasure in doing buying something that's intangible.
I like to actually feel and look and smell the product.
Yeah, that's what a lot of real estate guys do.
They're like, oh, I want to drive you around and show you my buildings.
You know what I mean they get.
They get like a high off of off of like driving around and seeing like look, I own this piece of land, I own this giant building.
There's like something to that.
Well, the reason being is because you already know the worth, you already see it.
When you're dealing with stocks, you got millions of dollars riding on somebody else's knowledge or somebody else's fear, because stocks are mostly news and emotions.
Yeah, it's just an emotional play, you know.
I mean it's just hard to.
It's hard to control that when you, when you're a guy that's been doing business and you've come from nothing, you have a lot of insecurities, and the biggest insecurity that i've noticed with the thousands of people that i've dealt with is not knowing the future, and when you're dealing with something that's intangible, you don't know the future.
But when you look at other people who've come from money and they make it easily.
They don't really have fear because they don't know what bad is.
You know what I mean?
It's like, let me give you an example.
Let's pretend that your father was worth $100 million and you lived in a sky rise and he had Bentley coupes and phantoms.
And, you know, that's all you know.
You're sheltered in your life and then he throws you out in the middle of the road, gives you a million dollars here, and then you're driving an E-class bent.
You think you're doing horrible.
But those people have never starved.
They've never ate tomato sandwiches on five-day-old bread.
Right.
So it's hard to respect that hustle.
You know what I mean?
So when you come from nothing, you see the value of anything.
You see the value of one night stay in a motel.
You see the value of getting to the hotel at 6.01 a.m. so you can stay an extra day.
You see value in different things.
You see a value in getting a used car license and buying a car and using it for free and reselling it at the auction next week after you detailed it, made 500 bucks basically on a floor plan.
So you see different aspects of life.
When you go to other countries and you see how people live, then you come back and you see, wow, you know what?
Nobody in the United States should ever complain because you were born in greatness because you already have a major head start.
Why do you think people from other countries come here within three, four years?
They own businesses, houses.
Meanwhile, you have a lot of people in this country.
All they want to do is cry and their net worth is negative because they don't understand what bad is.
So if you once you understand what bad is you'll realize that no matter what you're gonna make it as long as you're steady You know what I mean?
Yeah Is there any point where you can just kind of like sit back and relax and kind of stop the hustle?
Do you think that one day you'll be able to stop hustling and just relax and enjoy it?
Or you think that's gonna something that's I think it's something that's embedded in my mind and my heart and in my blood because this is all I've ever known and this is all I've ever did.
Yeah, I honestly I'm never happy when I take a day off because to me taking a day off is just a waste of your mind You know, obviously you have kids and you have your wife and you want to maintain that level of respect and have fun, but your mind never stops.
So, you know, like I go to the gym in the morning just to take a long drive, just to think about my next move.
So when I get to push the weights or punch the bag, it's just basically a routine to figure out what's next.
Yeah.
And, you know, like I honestly love downturn markets because you actually make more money.
Because when you see people's ribs showing, then they get nervous and they start dumping their assets.
When you're like, when you're in a market as we're seeing right now, you know, COVID has affected a lot of things and it's made a lot of people filthy rich that never had any money.
Who has it made filthy rich?
Well, when you look at the world today, you look at these big companies who've profited off of this.
And you've seen little companies like Amazon and internet companies.
Yeah, you know, just basic companies that you already know, the Walmarts, the Amazons.
They're making money out of people's fear.
Why do you think there was no toilet paper?
Because people, the media embedded in your mind fear because that's what makes money for them.
So as people fear, you see their moves and you understand a person by the moves they make when they're in fear.
See, a guy like me, and I don't mean to act like I'm anybody special, but I don't fear anything except time.
Because it's the only thing that moves.
So you have to follow the something that you can't buy.
Exactly.
We spoke on that the other day.
You can't buy time, so that's got to be your most precious asset.
Everything else in life is replaceable.
Obviously, human beings are not replaceable, but every other thing in life that you could purchase is replaceable.
Getting back to the baseball cards, that's why they have such a high value.
If they're extremely rare, they're unreplaceable, so people want to buy them.
Because it brings back a point of their childhood.
It brings the ego out of them.
I mean, same thing with paint with anything.
Anything that's rare has a lot of value.
Yeah.
Like real estate.
I like real estate because they don't create new dirt.
In reality, the only thing you're buying is the dirt.
The actual building is just a liability because it's depreciating every single day.
It's the dirt that's going up, not the building.
How much do you fuck with cryptocurrency?
You know, I've dabbled in it here and there, and I got lucky and I bought some.
I don't really like talking about it.
because it bothers me that I own it because I feel like I made free money and I don't really care for it.
And when I talk about it, people get excited and that bothers me because it takes credit away from me.
So I'd rather just not even talk about that.
Yeah, because a lot of people that listen to it love it.
And it's like a yeah, no, most definitely.
But it's like stumbling on a diamond ring in the middle of the floor.
I mean, I own some and I've made a few dollars, but that doesn't determine who I am.
It's just like buying a car and finding, like I said, a Rolex in the middle.
I don't respect anything that that um that I didn't earn yeah That was just luck What do you think about uh, but what do you think about the future of it?
Do you think there's do you think potentially in the like the next 10 maybe 20 years?
It could be something that's legitimate that replaces the financial Well, you know me I'll give you my my point of view on crypto like Bitcoin.
I think there's 21 million Bitcoins.
Yeah, and I don't think there's gonna be any more generated and I think the people have value in Bitcoin a because it's manipulated very heavily and be it's the fear of the US currency If you look at this pandemic, we've already created $8 trillion of nothing.
Yeah, it's insane.
So I think our debt was $23 trillion previous.
Now they would create another $8.
So a third of our world, of our overall debt has been in a year.
Yeah, so people look at crypto as a hedge against whatever else they're doing.
Yeah.
It's just the way I look at it.
Like I hedge a lot of things, but I think crypto is cool.
But if they outlaw crypto, Where you can't use it, it'll probably take a big dip.
And now the IRS is getting heavily involved.
If you spend it, you got to pay taxes on it.
So I don't think it's going to be, I don't think it's going to go up as fast as people are predicting.
I mean, it's hedging, it's hovering around 55,000 to 60,000 at its peak.
Even though last year around this time it was about 4,000, it might generate, you know, higher and higher and higher yields.
But I mean, it's just, I own it, but I don't really care to talk about it because it doesn't make me who I am.
And it bothers me even owning it.
Well, it's just interesting.
I mean, it's interesting because a lot of people, some people like will buy it and just hold it forever.
Like me, I don't know what the fuck I'm doing with it.
I have a little bit of money in it and I just kind of like sit there and watch it.
When it dips, it dips.
But I don't like, I don't take money out when it gets up or buy more when it goes down.
Or I do, when it goes down, I do buy more.
But when it goes up, I don't, I don't sell it because I'm like, well, maybe it'll keep going up.
Yeah.
Or maybe it's, maybe it's smarter when it goes up a little bit to pull it out, all of it out.
And then when it goes down, put it all back in.
I don't know.
Yeah.
So how I play it is once it hits a certain number, I target, I sell it all.
And then when it dips, I buy it back.
Okay.
Because I've already made a lot of money just moving whatever I have.
But once again, it's like a hobby for me.
It's like I'm driving out of Reddit.
It's like playing fantasy football.
Yeah, kind of, sort of.
But, you know, and it's a lot easier than real estate or baseball cards or vintage cards or diamonds or watches because you're buying and selling in seconds.
Yeah.
You know.
For sure.
What about NFTs?
We talked a little bit about that.
You know, it's funny when we mentioned that, and I'm like, wow, this is pretty amazing how people are just buying pictures of nothing.
I personally don't understand it.
Me neither.
I don't think anybody does.
I do see the value in it.
Making Money Without Ownership00:09:10
because you have a lot of people today who don't know how to interact with people and they live in a box.
Yeah.
So they'll have a thousand Facebook friends and have like two or three real friends.
And if they walk somewhere, their head is down on the floor and they don't know anyone.
And the unfortunate reality is I think that's what the world's becoming.
See, like I interact with thousands of people because that's what I like to do.
You're a real estate guy.
That's what real estate guys do, though.
That's true.
But I don't really consider that a real estate person because I only deal with the same people every single day.
And when I meet new people, I just try to throw them on one of them other guys.
because unless they want to sell me something because real estate is basically you don't really need money to make money in real estate what you need in real estate is either a a buyer or b a product so like what i mean let me tell you what i mean by that let's pretend your mother has a house that she wants to sell right and it's worth 500 000 and it needs work and i say hey um how much you want for this house give me 300.
so i'll say look i'm willing to pay 320 so anything under that 320 that's money you made so if you get it for 200 you just made 120 000 whatever i sell it for is irrelevant Second, if I have a property and say, hey, look, I want to sell this for $250, anything over that $250 is the money that you make.
So that's why it's easy to make money without money in the real estate business.
You just need to have somebody in your camp that can close.
You mean come up with hard money?
Come up with the cash to buy because it's hard to make money with hard money.
It's really not an option for me.
What do you mean it's hard to make money with hard money?
Well, hard money.
Oh, you mean it's like doing like hard money loans?
Yeah, hard money lending.
But yeah, no, but getting back to that point.
What if I don't have money and I want to do that?
What if I don't have the cash, the capital to do it?
Then you got to do a hard money loan.
And I was explaining previously in the conversation, I would try to get a loan from the seller.
Right, right, right, right.
Okay.
Because if you get a loan with the seller, then you don't have to pay for appraisals.
You don't have to pay points on the loan.
You don't have to, you know, beg daddy, who basically is the bank, to help you.
I mean, you're going to be in a positive position instead of playing behind the eight ball.
Right.
But what if this, I mean, a lot of sellers, a lot of people who own single family homes, they don't have that kind of money.
Well, you want to target properties that are owned by the property owner that doesn't have any debt.
Because remember, you make money on real estate by controlling the asset.
Owning it is just a piece of paper, a deed.
You get a HUD, you go to a title company, now you own the property.
Right.
But you're not going to own it that long.
So if you could get a lease option even, if you could buy a house for $300,000, here's $5,000 down, I have a a recorded option that I could assign to another buyer.
So you could make money controlling that asset without physically owning that asset.
Like I said, real estate is now you're getting into options, which is more can you explain, like, basic for dummies what an option is?
Well, basically, on a lease option is this.
You own the house, right?
And I make a lease to rent with the option to purchase it with the agreed time and the agreed price.
Okay.
So and then what you put in the lease is in the purchase contract, you have an assignable option to sell.
So let's say you sell me your house for $200,000 and then my buddy wants to buy it for $225.
So he just pays me the $25,000 and he takes over the purchase.
This way I made money with very little money out of my pocket.
Because when you're first starting in the real estate game with limited capital, you need to acquire capital by any means necessary, bringing other people to the table, you know, selling their properties for them, you know, stuff like that.
Is it hard to find new deals to make money on or are people just blowing up your phone all day every day?
I mean, are you on the computer like scouring websites for shit for sale?
No, I never use the computer.
Really?
Never use a computer.
No, never.
My only device I use is my telephone.
And the reason being is because I have a lot of people in my camp that do certain things and I call them and I say, this is what I'm looking for.
This is what I'm selling.
This is what I got.
So new construction is the flavor of the year.
So it's like I hired engineers and I hired people to do the work.
Well, I own the asset.
Then you hire a builder.
Then you hire a property manager to manage the, you know, project manager.
So then you're just paying the draws or you're paying the city for permitting or whatever it is.
I try not to get too deep inside the game because then people are going to want something from you.
They're going to want to take your time.
They're going to want to take your money.
They're going to want to pick your brain.
And at the same time, that's value.
So I prefer to just have somebody on deck that they could just work through me and pay them.
But at this current time, to buy property is very difficult.
because the market is extremely hot and the assets are very rare.
Yeah, it's insane.
It's been getting hotter and hotter over the past year.
Yeah, well, you're dealing in the number one state.
You know, I think we're the third largest populated state in the country.
Yeah, it's fucking bonkers.
Yeah, you were telling me we got more heads here than New York.
Yeah, definitely.
We have like 23 million.
I think they have 21.
But New York is on the decline.
People are going to start moving here left and right in groves.
Oh, they're coming here in droves already.
Exactly.
I think they're just tired of the politics.
Yeah.
Politics controls a lot of people's thinking.
Yeah, it does, unfortunately.
Can you walk me through one of these deals that you're talking about, these new construction deals?
Like, what do you look for?
Like, obviously, it starts with buying land, and you've got to buy some more.
Yeah, so basically, let me take a sip of this.
Take some cigarettes.
I like this.
Yeah.
Murder your thirst.
Got it.
All right.
So you look at the area, and you see what the new houses are bringing.
So let's say we're building at 110 a foot.
Due to the fact that the wood has gone up and the trusses are hard to find.
So, whatever.
So, if you're selling at $110 a foot and you build a 2,500 square foot house, right?
So the cost to build a new house is about 110 a foot.
Right.
Plus your impact fees, the price of the dirt.
So you got to work backwards.
So let's say that, let's just use round numbers again.
Let's say the house is selling for 300 a foot and you build 2,000 square feet.
Okay.
So you already know your retail number is $600,000.
So you're probably going to have to back out about 8% because you got to pay when you sell it real estate commissions and closing costs.
Got it.
All right.
So you're going to net.
92% of your sale price.
Okay.
Okay.
So let's say 92% of 600.
Let me see.
It's 540 plus that's like 550 to 2,000.
So you're going to net 550 on that sale, right?
And if it's 2,000 square feet and it costs you two and a quarter to build it.
So now you got 325 in between profit and dirt and all fees.
Okay.
So if you could buy that dirt for $150,000 at the end of the day, you're going to make about $150,000 on that deal.
And but that's including if you're paying cash for everything.
You're not using anybody else's money.
No financing or anything.
Right, no financing.
Wow, but that's a lot of, that takes a long time though.
That's like a long time.
Well, now you're looking at about six months, but remember, if you got six months to build a house?
Probably like three to four months, but let's say you got 20 or 30 of those going at one shot.
Holy fuck.
Every week you're cashing a check and then you buy dirt.
Like we make money by buying large parcels of dirt and knowing the future land use and doing a PD, which is a plan development and getting the plans ready.
So we take that and we sell it to the builders.
So like I have a property I bought for $250,000 and it's costing me like $50,000 to get it to where it needs to be, Pete, plan development for 60 units.
So I'm going to be in that property for like $300,000 and I'm going to list it for $1.8 million.
So once I sell it, let's say I take $1.5 after fees, I net $1.3, I'll make a million on that asset with $300,000 out of pocket.
Because I happen to get the dirt cheap enough and I know the zoning and I know what I can do with it.
So obviously knowledge is always supreme.
So you have to know what you're doing before you do it.
And when you're selling that piece of property, you're selling the dirt and you're selling, there's already permits in place to build.
There's already.
You're selling what it's going to be.
And you're going to sell that to a guy who does build and sells because he's going to take a 1031 exchange, which is basically he's going to use the proceeds from his last sale to do the same thing over and over again.
This way he doesn't have to pay the government high taxes.
So basically they're, they're buying a piece of property, turnkey ready to be built on.
You have the permits, you got the plans, you got the builder everything, and because a lot of builders they don't really have much money, they use the bank's money.
So the time once going back to our original statement, time is very precious.
Yeah, so they're using our asset that we purchased, develop it for them to get ready.
So that's how we make a large, substantial hit.
Okay, wow.
The Builder Funding Strategy00:05:48
So do you do any?
Uh 1031 exchanges?
Nah, not really, because I move pretty fast and I don't mind paying the government, because it's easier for me And it's just less headaches.
Yeah.
It's a lot of stress to chase that window.
And I'm the kind of guy that I just like a simple life.
You know, sometimes I go crazy, do me, but I just like to have fun and make money.
What's your day?
Walk me through what your day, what's a typical day in the life of Brian Aponte?
It depends on the season of the environment we're in.
You know, every day's different.
You know, with COVID, it's changed a lot than normal times.
But let's just say like a day like today.
Lately.
Yeah, lately.
Yeah, so I'll get up at 5.30 in the morning.
I'll put the TV on.
I'll watch Squawk Box at 6.
I'll leave by 6.20.
to go to the gym.
I hit the gym, talk to my trainer, work out for 45 minutes.
Then I go to a little restaurant, have a cup of coffee, go home, take a shower.
It depends if it's because Monday, Wednesday, and Friday I do boxing.
But then I take my daughter to school.
I have four kids.
I have one in middle school.
And then I just start hitting the phones nonstop.
I call the same people 10 to 15 times a day, force them to act.
Because if you let somebody slip, then they're not going to make money for you.
You see what I'm saying?
A lot of people are content in their lives.
Yeah.
So whenever you're content is when you're really going to lose.
So I try to push the people on my team to do different things.
It's like this.
What do we got going on?
What do we got new?
What's closing?
What's happening?
Okay, search this.
What deals do you have?
What new construction projects?
What owner finance can we get?
What hotel?
What motel?
What land?
What can we buy that makes sense?
Then meanwhile, I have another partner that does the baseball cards with me.
So I'm on eBay doing the cards.
Okay, cool.
Let's buy this.
Let's try to buy a bunch of these.
Let's get these graded.
And then, you know, I just look for any opportunity that makes mathematical sense.
So you're got your partner in the cards.
Would you say he's more knowledgeable about what's going on in the card market, like at this specific moment?
Well, basically he's like a retired attorney and he does like teaches kids this.
So yeah, we're kind of like we've been in the business maybe for like 35 years.
Go ahead.
I was going to say, like, he's more of the expert.
You're just the guy that's pushing him to, like, do more deals, make more money.
And you're just like, well, I think we're both experts because we've both been in the game and I've traveled the nation.
I did 35 big shows a year for like 10 years.
And I've had a lot of athletes, hung out with celebrities, bought and sold big collections.
You know, I have a lot of crazy stories, too.
So the point of the matter is the card game to me is more fun than the real estate game because you're picking and choosing.
And even though it's rare, it's readily available.
When you deal with real estate, It's like you're finding a needle in a haystack because it's very limited.
What do you mean when you say even though it's rare, it's readily available?
Because eBay is a dumping ground.
A lot of people want to realize profits on stuff that they inherited, purchases of stuff that they had years ago.
So they're the black sheep of the business because they're the dumpers.
So let's say a Michael Jordan rookie in a certain grade is worth whatever dollars.
As soon as it goes up in value, you'll see a lot of people just start.
Dump them on ebay because they want to realize the profits.
So a guy like me will come and hope they drop and then i'll start picking, chipping them off boom boom boom, and then, when the dumpers are not dumping, then i'll start buying the buy it now.
So make the values keep going up, because if I have a hundred of one item and it's five thousand dollars, then I could create it to jump to ten thousand.
Now every single one of my cards is now worth ten thousand each.
That's how you make money, holy.
So you don't make money in selling, you make money in buying.
Bro, have you ever seen that movie with Adam Sandler?
It's, it's uh.
Came out a couple years ago.
Where he's uh?
I think he's in New York or somewhere.
The jewelry guy?
The jewelry guy.
So he deals with Kevin Garnett and he has an old yes.
I mean, that movie made no sense to me because I used to own jewelry stores and he needed money to pay debt.
He had about 50,000 grams of gold and gold scraps out.
At the time, gold was 2,000 an ounce and 10 carats is 41% gold, 14 carats, 58%, and 18 is 75%.
So he could have took the gold and scrapped it.
But I get the yeah, he was on 47th Street in the Diamond District.
Bro, that motherfucker was like a roach, a cock a roach, running around, fucking robbing Peter to pay Paul, fucking like.
Well, yeah, the jewelry game is a strong hustle because the diamonds are the most manipulated item on earth.
There's more diamonds than people.
Right.
But, you know, that's not my expertise, even though I own a lot of diamonds and I own a lot of jewelry.
Yeah, it's just the card game is different because.
It seems like it's a similar kind of lifestyle, though.
It seems like it's a similar mindset.
That dude's mindset is fucking just eat, sleep, and breathe, fucking making money and paying people back and.
Fucking trying to rob this guy to pay this guy.
And eventually he thinks he's going to come out even, but he's fucking, he's just digging his own grave the whole time.
The problem is he's a compulsive gambler.
And at the same time, you know, it's this in life.
Like a lot of people like to spend the money before they have it.
So at the same time, they're not really moving forward.
They're moving backward.
It's just like in the real estate business, any business.
People are purchasing on what their payment's going to be, not what the price is.
How do you think these furniture store gives 60 months zero credit, zero interest, no credit, because they're banking on the fact that they need this necessity.
and they're willing to pay that payment.
They're just cheap.
So it's like when you're a shark and you swim with guppies, you're always going to make money due to the fact that you see the hidden value in people's necessities.
How can you control that?
And when you're dealing with sports cards and stuff like that, you're banking on other people's egos.
So you look at the guy, you see the ego, and you already know how to play him.
Banking On Other People's Egos00:02:36
See, you see what my point?
Everybody has a certain need.
So the way to make money is just to have a level head and don't worry about anything.
and just try to figure out your opponent because everybody's your opponent.
They're either with you or against you.
There's really no medium.
That's why I only deal with the same amount of people all the time.
Because a lot of people I deal with, they think they could take advantage of me.
And those are my favorite people.
Because the only way they think they're going to get me is to do a deal with me.
And when they do a deal with me, the odds of me losing are very low.
So those are the people I like to work with, obviously.
Wow.
Because people are edgy, pushy, fearful, spiteful, hateful.
Those are the best people to do deals with really of course if they hate you that means you love them If somebody hated you you should love them because they're jealous or they have something against you right and if they're gonna take time out of their life their most precious asset to have a negative thought of you You must be in the back of their mind somewhere, right?
So in their storage in their mental capacity.
You're sitting there See me.
I don't really hate anybody even if you screwed me.
I still love you, because it doesn't make sense, because the little thing you got from me, i'm going to get it back.
Then, at the same time, I got that hidden story on you for life.
You know I like to collect stories more than I like to collect anything else.
Yeah well the, the businesses that you're in, they must be, you must have a fucking plethora of stories.
Yeah definitely, we're going to get into that another day.
You know?
Um, I just wanted to come and check y'all see what you know what we're about.
Talk about the game.
Yeah, keeping it.
Real estate is a good game.
You know, real estate is the key to everything.
Yeah because, go ahead, what was that cut?
Can you tell me about that story your cousin was telling me?
What was your cousin?
Tell me, you guys were somewhere in Jersey.
Yeah, so basically, like I told you, we used to do the card hustle.
You know what I mean?
He was a bail bondsman.
So one day we were at the national convention in Atlantic City, and, you know, we were a little tipsy, and I hadn't seen him in about a year.
So I seen him, and, you know, I'm playing craps, roulette, whatever.
Just having a good time.
Right.
And I hear his voice, and, you know, we're screaming, blah, having fun.
And he's like, oh, Brian, what's up?
It was my cousin Toby.
I hadn't seen him in a while, Toby.
So I think we had like four G's left combined.
We took that house down to about $300,000.
You know, the pumpkins or the 2,500 chips, and we had all the chips.
And then Tito Ortiz, the MMA guy, remember back in the day?
Yeah, of course.
He was there, and I'm like, Tito, black or red, every time he'd give me a color, I'd lose.
And we were buying, yeah, it was funny.
We were buying shots for everybody.
The Card Hustle in Atlantic City00:10:07
You know what I mean?
It was a lot more wild, a lot more vulgar, worse language.
But at the end of the day, I think we hit him for about $60,000.
But, you know, it was just fun.
But there's thousands of those stories.
You have thousands of those stories.
That's fucking wild.
But you know, that's the byproduct of dealing with liquor, money, and people with a lot of adrenaline.
Yeah.
And a lot of craziness.
Egos flying everywhere.
Yeah, that's clashing.
Yeah, it's cool.
It's fucking crazy.
Anybody out there who doesn't know anything about what I'm talking about, just study the game.
Because the game of the real estate, because you look at a realtor, okay, cool, Zillow, blah, blah, blah.
That's the afterthought of all the dedication and work that goes to that little sale.
I bought properties that I went in there that had so many code enforcement violations.
Like, well, how could I even deal with this?
But the more problems, the more money.
The worse the problem, the more money you make.
Right.
Yeah, absolutely.
What do you say?
What do you say to somebody who is like small time, wants to get in the real estate game right now?
Maybe they have enough credit and capital to maybe get a down payment on like one single family home.
Right.
And they want to get started in all this.
What do they do?
So basically, you know, I hear a lot of like credit has more value than money and blah, blah, blah.
I mean, that's true to a certain extent, but in reality, it doesn't.
Because once again, if you're not going to dwell 51% of the of your asset that you're going to purchase.
The bank is going to have a difficult time selling you the asset, or excuse me wait, explain that again.
If you're not going to do what so?
Basically, banks lend money to people who are going to live in the asset.
If it's commercial property, you're going to use at least 51 okay, so that's you know, with limited down payment, three percent five ten, like a fa loan yeah, fa conventional, with small down payments.
But what I would tell anybody that that, just that type of person.
Look, just try to find an area, do the comparables, you know.
I mean, look at sales, try to find something that is not that big that you can add square footage later on, because it's cheaper to add square footage than to buy a big house.
Because let me give you an example.
Let's say you buy a two-bedroom, one-bedroom, two-bedroom, one-bath house, 1,000 square feet in an area that's bringing 350 a foot, right?
Okay.
And you buy the house.
You could always build an addition for $100, $120 a foot.
Right.
So now you tripled, doubled to tripled your money on the added square footage you're doing.
So then you could resell that house and make more money.
Or you could get a second line of credit, HELOC, or then you could use that money to go make money.
So that's what I would do.
If I had limited capital, I would try to get a house that's very small in a good neighborhood.
Then what I would do is I'd get a GC to get plans to build square footage, added square footage, then build the added square footage.
Now my house is worth more money and I'd immediately sell it.
I wouldn't get a HELOC anything.
I would take the money, then I'd stay in the same neighborhood by renting a house, take the money.
and go buying some jalopies in worst neighborhoods and just keep reflipping them.
So you would keep doing that same thing, just adding, buying them, buying decent houses or decent or bad houses in good neighborhoods, adding square footage?
I've done that many times.
You know what?
I heard, I was just watching this video.
This dude bought a fucking, like a mansion in California.
And he said what the realtors are doing now in California, like specifically Beverly Hills area, is they're building these fucking like pool cabanas out of block and they're counting them and they're literally counting them as square footage.
Like, so even if it's like a couple hundred square feet, like a pool house out back.
Yeah, well, think about it.
If you have a carport that's 250 square feet.
Yeah.
And it costs you $30,000 to encapsulate that with heated square footage.
And it's 250 square feet and it goes for 300 a foot.
That 25 turned into 75.
So your cash on cash investment tripled.
Right.
But can you just do it yourself?
Do you have to fucking go get out and get permits and do all that stuff?
Yeah, well, you have to have everything permitted.
Otherwise, it's not going to be on the tax record as legal square foot.
And then when you go to sell it, you don't want any problems.
See, like taking shortcuts is the worst thing you can do.
Really?
Of course.
Anytime you try to do something that's not 100% legit, you're going to get busted.
And then that's just going to cost you time, energy, and money.
Do it right the first time and you'll never look back.
Never screw anybody over.
You never have to sleep bad.
You never have to look over your back.
Always be a man of your word because in reality, what else do you really have?
Yeah.
You know what I'm saying?
Business is a way of life.
You know, a lot of people talk to me, hey, Brian, how do I get in this part-time?
I said, look, to be honest with you, real estate is not a job.
It's not a profession.
It's basically a lifestyle.
Yeah.
You constantly have to be thinking.
When I go on vacation, I try to buy places where I go.
Oh, maybe I could buy this here, an Airbnb or something.
Yeah.
You know, you always constantly have to be on a mental grind.
I love what you said to me, your way of looking at bullies.
Yeah, you got to pimp the bullies, brother.
You know why?
Because you pimp the bullies.
Yeah, let me tell you what I mean.
That's fucking dope.
Let me tell you what I mean by that.
Let's say you buy a car lot and you got this guy's a salesman and he's pushing 50 cars a month at Honda.
I'm like, how much you making?
A buck 50 car?
You make it $7,500?
How about I pay you $20,000?
Because you want somebody who's going to work for you.
Even if they steal from you, even if you make a profit, it's irrelevant.
Because you have to have the best people to do the job for you.
Why do you need three people when you could have one?
So you bring the best that you can do and just overpay them.
Because when you overpay them, because everybody has a worth.
And if you underpaying them, they're going to rob you.
If you're paying them more than what they're worth, they're going to work harder for you.
And when you talk to them and pick up their phone call every time, you never miss a meeting.
You're there.
Then they're your family.
Yeah.
So basically, all you did was capture the best team.
And everybody, when you have a good team, you never lose.
Because you're only as weak as your weakest link.
My goal is always to be the weakest link.
And everything I do, I always want to be the weakest link.
You mean, when you say that, you mean you're surrounded by people who are stronger, smarter, richer.
Right.
Because think about it logically.
If you're the smartest, best guy in that room, you're definitely in the wrong room.
Yeah, yeah, for sure.
But what about when you're doing business?
When you're like getting ready to do business with a dude or like trying to, he's trying to buy something from you or you're trying to buy something from him.
It depends.
It's a one-time deal.
It's irrelevant.
If it's a multiple-time deal, it's different.
But at the same time, I try to treat people the same way.
See, a lot of people try to disrespect me.
So I just reciprocate the same thing.
Because the way I look at it, if you're going to challenge or hate me, like I told you before, I'm going to make more money on you.
Right.
Because if you hate me, you're definitely going to want to do a deal with me.
Yeah.
And that's what you mean by pimp the bullies.
No, what I mean by pimping the bullies is this.
Like I just said, have this guy on your team.
When they're working for you.
But I'm saying, what about nobody works for me.
I always have partners.
I don't have any employees.
I don't believe in employees are the biggest liability on earth.
You have to have partners.
It's better to have a partner than an employee.
Right.
I see what you're saying there.
But my question to you is, when you're dealing with a bully that's trying to do a deal with them and they're trying to fucking, you know, hassle you.
They're trying to hardball you, you know, lowball you, so you have to switch it up on them.
You know what I mean.
It's like this like, let me give you an example.
Give give me an example what you're talking about.
I'll tell you how i'll switch it up.
You're trying to sell a house, for hey look, I got this house.
I need 300 000 300 000, and the house ain't that great.
I'll give you uh, i'll give you, i'll give you 200 cash and i'll close.
I'll close tomorrow.
No problem, it's only cash and it's going to close immediately.
Otherwise you're not even talking to me.
But here's the thing, you only want to pay 200.
I got a better idea.
Do you have any similar ones?
I'll pay you 250 and i'll close today.
Wait, what?
Okay.
So if you're willing to pay me $200, I'm trying to buy your house.
I know, exactly.
That's my point.
If you want to pay 200 and close tomorrow, how about I buy yours for 250 and close today?
So if I'm buying at 250, how am I selling at 200?
So you switch it up on them.
Yeah.
You feeling me now?
Yeah.
So you want to pay me 200, I'll pay you 250.
So right then and there, they already know they can't dig in my head because I already know what I got.
Got it.
You see my point?
Yeah, I see what you're saying.
It's like a psychological game you're playing with them.
Yeah, your mind games are easy to play because that's the only thing I play.
But at the same time, it's like this.
It's either you're going to chill with me or you're going to be real with me or you're not going to deal with me.
So it's like, look, this is 300.
It's either you buy it or you don't.
I mean, if you come in at 290 and I can't redump it, maybe I'll sell it to you.
Because I'm not really stressing it.
Because I'm already going to give you the best number.
I'm not going to tell you 300 and I already know I want 250.
I'm going to hit you with the bottom line immediately.
Otherwise, I'm not doing it.
Because I'm not trying to get extra bread.
Because I prefer for my person that buys from me to make more money than me.
Because this time they want to keep coming back.
Right, right, right, right.
I've heard that.
I've heard that before.
You're busy, man.
Your phone's blowing up.
Yeah, I got about 40 missed calls.
But the point is in any business, in any walk of life, you always want to treat the person you're working with better than you.
You always want to be on top of the game.
And you always want to have the best team around you.
And you only want to do things that you can handle.
Because once you start trying to jump rope that you can't jump, then you're going to make promises that you can't keep.
And then your word is shit.
And then nobody wants to deal with you anymore.
So you have to be able to produce.
You have to be able to figure things out.
And at the bottom, bottom line is you have to keep what you say.