Introducer [00:00:02]:
Welcome to The Untold Stories of Real Estate Investing, hosted by Wayne Courageous II, a place where active and passive investors come to hear the good, bad, and ugly of real estate investing. Our guests consist of experienced operators and investors who want others to succeed by sharing their stories. If you're looking to syndicate deals or grow your your wealth passively in real estate, you've come to the right show. It's now time to sit back, take mental notes, and enjoy our next episode of The Untold Stories of Real Estate Investing.
Wayne Courreges [00:00:39]:
All right. Welcome back to the untold stories of real estate investing. This is your host, Wayne Courageous. So today we're going to be talking with Igor Shetnold, founder and managing partner of Avista Fund, is a former professional athlete who transitioned into successful entrepreneurship and real estate investment. Guided by discipline and a relentless drive for excellence, igor has founded and managed thriving companies and businesses in Southern California. 2015, Igor ventured into real estate and established a Vista Fund in 2020. This privately held firm focuses on raising capital from investors and investing in income generating, value add multifamily properties. Their mission is to provide local as well as international investors with access to US.
Wayne Courreges [00:01:21]:
Real estate safeguarding and growing their wealth amidst high inflation rates in their local countries and currencies. They are currently serving as a limited partner to 17 different real estate deals 3050 plus multifamily units with a cumulative value of over 483,000,000.
Igor Shaltanov [00:01:38]:
Hey.
Wayne Courreges [00:01:39]:
Thank you, Eagle, for being on our show. Welcome.
Igor Shaltanov [00:01:41]:
Thank you, Wayne. Thank you for having me. It's always pleasure, right, to be on the show and share the ideas.
Wayne Courreges [00:01:47]:
Yeah. I always tell you my fun part is getting to know you before the show. And we're like, 15 minutes in, we're like, oh, we probably should start recording because already so much content and you already easily talked to you. So this should be a really great show. So thank you again for your time. Tell us more about where you are. I mentioned professional athletes. So what's ford, et cetera, love for the listeners to get to know you a little bit better?
Igor Shaltanov [00:02:13]:
Yeah, thank you for your question. It's actually really a good story, right? And then when people asking me, I was like, how far back should I go? Is that all the way back to my childhood? Right? Is it just a little bit back to professional career and stuff like that? But it was a lot of fun stories, for sure. Not to say my wife is professional athlete, her dad is professional, her brother is professional athlete. So me, myself, I was playing water polo back in the days. I was swimming for a long time. And then maybe at the age of 13, from seven to 13, and then my parents started to catch me up, right? I was playing video games, keeping practices. I was so bored by swimming. And then my dad, he was like, you know what? I have a guy who has a water polo connections.
Igor Shaltanov [00:02:59]:
Do you want to try that one? Because they want to put me in something similar. And I was, yeah, let's try it, right? Because I always need people and challenge and bowl. I don't know. I was always challenged by playing with a ball, right, and playing with the minds and people, right? Against me. I was never, like, probably at the age of maybe 40 plus, I started to challenge myself mentally, right? You're playing golf, you're just really playing with yourself, right? But then back then, it was just people, right? I want to connect to people, talk to people, play with people and stuff like that. Swimming was just so boring, like, one stroke after another, and then you turn, you come back. I was like, Man, I can't do it anymore. So anyways, and then short story, right? I went to Professional, went to army, right? Served there.
Igor Shaltanov [00:03:45]:
And then I was Dino Moscow team. I was in Russia, Moscow, and then I became a national player, and then I was traveling all over the world. I just did everything I can, right, just to travel different countries and then digest that culture, the food, right? And then it was just absolutely amazing experience. So my wife played basketball, and then how we met, we actually went to Turkey in 2005, and all of a sudden we're like, okay, she was a basketball national team. I was a waterfall national team. And we just met a delegation meeting, and we started to talk to each other like, oh, you know what? We should probably meet back in Moscow, right? And we just start to date. And we had the first son in 2009. So throughout the career, with so many ups and downs, meaning so the mental challenges, and it really set the pattern of discipline, right, perseverance and staying on the one and focused on one thing, right? Because the sport is just absolutely a roller coaster, right? One day you're on the top, and then you got a bad game, and you're just all the way on the bottom, right? And then you got to put yourself together and be your best the next day, and then you're at the top again, and you got the strike of, let's say, a couple of weeks, you're one of the best ones in the world, and then you just go all the way down.
Igor Shaltanov [00:05:03]:
So it was just absolute roller coaster, right, as every game in the world. But what happened is I just want to give me a little bit of the story of the finance as well. The professional career was something artificial filling, right? Because you play sports, which is kind of a game, and then at the end of the month, you get a bunch of money, and then you play sports and you get a bunch of money. So all the expenses covered for so the travel covered for the foot is traveled for. So when you stop playing, that's like you hitting the wall, like you're going 100, then all of a sudden you just hit the wall and you just crashed. Right. That's why I can just really relate to every professional who is playing sports right now. Because back then, in 2007, for me, I think when I stopped playing and you're trying to go to work because I had a JD.
Igor Shaltanov [00:06:02]:
My first degree was a physical education, right? And coach, my second degree was a JD. And I was trying to go and find myself at work as a lawyer, right. And nobody wants to accept me. Like, no one. They said, what is your experience working? I was like nothing. We're not taking you. Thank you. Right.
Igor Shaltanov [00:06:20]:
And then I start to realize how different is the playing sports and then entering just, I would say regular life for each person going to work, finding that job, getting that income. Because all of a sudden, from the income bracket on the top, you just get to the zero, right? And you got to climb that ladder again. It was just very challenging.
Wayne Courreges [00:06:45]:
Yeah. With your military background too, you can also respect that. I see a lot of people, a lot of my friends that I was in the Marine Corps with back in was it 2003 or so, some of them were retiring, and they're having that. They're making good money on the military side, and they have this experience. But translating that into the civilian world, like, for example, like your sports background, the ups and downs that you experience is huge on developing the mindset of not giving up and working hard and all those things that are tangible, especially in real estate investing. So how did you transition into real estate investing? I guess if I read it correctly, 2015, you took the dive in real estate investing. Did you do some legal work before real estate investing? So what was that period of the story?
Igor Shaltanov [00:07:40]:
Thank you for that question. It's amazing story as well. And the same idea. Should I go back and first time ever, I just reflect on that question multiple times by myself in a garage, like sitting on a chair, right? First time ever, I was maybe about like ten or eleven years old, and my neighbor tells me, you know what, I have go and pick up with my mom, check for the rental. And I was like, Hold on, check for the rental? What do you mean by that? Right? And he said, oh, we got a bunch of apartments, and then one of them is renting to somebody, blah, blah, blah. I was like, wow, what does that mean? I was like, shocked because I didn't know nothing about I know people go to work. That's how you make money. You come back home, right, and all that regular stuff.
Igor Shaltanov [00:08:30]:
And then that's the first time ever. The second time when I was a little bit more conscious still, like absolutely newbie, right? Had nothing to do with IRR, right? ROI I had no idea what that means. And then my mom was social worker, right? She was working in government hospital, right? And then she managed to get one apartment because it was just her benefit. After 20 years working, or maybe like ten years, let's say they gave her one, and then the second one came. It was like a special thing. You need to divorce your husband, right? And you split the families. Now you got one apartment, which is gives to one family, and then another apartment kind of goes to another family. So my mom and my sister, because I have sister as well, they get one place and we got the second place, and then they just being regular people saying, oh, we're going to keep them.
Igor Shaltanov [00:09:22]:
We're going to live in that one, maybe sometimes, and maybe we can give somebody to live in that one, one of our relatives. And I was like, oh, I heard that idea from the guy. You can rent it to the people, right? Then it was back then. It's like a long time ago, maybe 20 years ago. And it was first my entrepreneurial idea. So, listen, if we remodel and I have money coming in from sports, right? It's enough income. I was never able to spend all of my salary, right? And then we just doing a full blown remodeling on one brand new apartment, like a plus new building. And then I telling my mom, and they live in that old one, and I tell my mom, Listen, what if we're going to leave from this place and you go to brand new, just a new kitchen, new floors, we just put all the nice furniture in there.
Igor Shaltanov [00:10:10]:
I said, no, I don't want to do that. I was like, Why? So I don't want to do that. I got used to that place. There's let's say Forest here, right? We got bus station, blah, blah, blah. I was like, what do you mean, there's a brand new place? You can go there. And we do a little bit of touch ups and we rent this place. She's like, what does that mean, rent? Anyways, it took me about maybe six months to convince them as that remodeling goes in progress, right? That was like, six months talking to them, listen, you're going to be in a beautiful place. It's a brand new, so you guys deserve it.
Igor Shaltanov [00:10:41]:
You've been working so hard. Anyways, I convinced them, so I asked my neighbors, and then we just did a little bit of touch up. We put some wallpapers, and we rented to two students not students, rented to two students who just got the work, and they were kind of combining income to pay for rent. And then the first month I got the money, I was absolutely mind blowing for me, I was like, Man, I just did nothing. I did a little bit of prep work, right? Of course. But I just got the money. I was like, man, this is impossible. What if I get ten of those? I was like, man, what if I get 20, like, 30 of those things, right? And they're just going to be paying me.
Igor Shaltanov [00:11:19]:
And I got ignited by that idea first time ever. And then now moving into a couple of things. Idea number one was my wife brother was drafted by Clippers, so his first contract was $1.7 million. So it's like going on the stock markets, a huge spike in financial, you name it, right? Financial resources, right? So we didn't have a financial background. No one was investor from the family. So you know what happens then, right? So after two years, we got into the huge debt from 1.7, so went down to probably, like, minus $300,000 in debt. The idea of that was 70% of the professional players, MLB, NFL, NBA, you name it, right? 70% of them. It's staggering.
Igor Shaltanov [00:12:21]:
Number. Just think about that number. So they go bankrupt within two years as they stop playing. So they just go chase that high level, like, lifestyle. They just buy all those liabilities, not the assets, and it just explodes and it's gone. It's the same thing. It was a powerball. If we want a powerball, it's same thing, right? Because there's one thing, education.
Igor Shaltanov [00:12:47]:
And I was missing completely that thing, right? I was missing that education. And then I started to tip into the real estate world, and basically what happened. So my wife brother, he went back to Russia. He started to play professional, right? He kind of moved out from United States, and we stayed here. And then I remember one of the mornings I wake up and I have 120,000, I think, in the credit card debt. It was 2010. I was barely speaking English, like, almost not, right? And then there's ID caller on the phone, and there's a Citia bank calling, and then US bank calling. And then all the family, they were so scared to pick the phone, and they were handing the phone to me, and I was the one who needs to pick up the phone, learn what to say, build a strategy, how to close all those things.
Igor Shaltanov [00:13:47]:
And again, I couldn't sleep for maybe a couple of weeks first, right? Because I was like, man, this is a lot of responsibilities. There's this, this and that. There's a mortgage on the house. Anyways, it's a basic story of the professional athlete going up, acquiring a lot of liabilities, no assets exploded, right? And then I learned that story. I said, Listen, from yes, it happened, but it was a great lesson for myself. What can I do better? This is what the transformation really happened. I said okay. And again, it didn't happen immediately.
Igor Shaltanov [00:14:25]:
Why? Because when I sold my first apartment in Russia, right, and I converted money into US. Dollars. It was $271,000, I remember that. And I got a bunch of, like, let's say $20,000 sitting on account, and I'm going to fitness club. And it was just a name guy, David, right? He's maybe like 71 years old, new York teacher who just moved to California every day, relaxed, working out in the morning, right? Very slow, right? Always smiling. And we talking all the time in sound. After workout, I said, David, you feel like you look like a smart guy, right? You must be doing something with your money, right? Can you tell me where you put your money? I say, oh, I'm in the stock market. You know what, I have a really good and he was very kind of not pushed, I would say.
Igor Shaltanov [00:15:17]:
He was very gentle, not to give me advice as much, but saying, listen, I got one guy I can really trust and I can give it to you, right? So basically, you give him your money and then he gave me the guy and it was I marry Price Company, right? His name was Kyle, I remember still, and I gave him that $300,000. And then after one year, I just looking up at the statement and I was like, okay, market is down a little bit. It's about to be the same amount of money, but then the percentage for the broker is there, right? They still made the money on the percentage. They don't care. Like, it's going to be up or down. It's going to be something like it's flat. They don't care. They're going to make that 1.52 whatever point percent rate and stuff like that.
Igor Shaltanov [00:16:05]:
And I was like, It's not going to work like that. I need like three to four lives to build to what I want it to be. There's got to be a different way. And at that same time, I bought a couple of apartments back in Russia as well. So I was living here, and the problem was the currency exchange rate spikes up and down, so I was able to use that spike and I just convert the amount of money. And I bought multiple apartments. I sold one, but I bought multiple back then, right? And I start unconsciously putting the money into the real estate, so I put it in the stock market and real estate. So after one year, I just look up on my performance and I said, which one is doing better? Right? Let's talk through the numbers.
Igor Shaltanov [00:16:55]:
Let's not be emotional, right? And then I said, okay, so the apartments are rented, people are paying the rent. It was cash purchase, right? There is no mortgage. But anyway, so it wasn't a huge amount, but it's always a plus, right? And then the equity inside, meaning the price of apartment, like growing. I was like, man, okay. And it makes me think, first it was one year only, right? And then a couple of years in, I was like, okay, what's going on now? And then, okay, stock market this, and then you file the taxes, whatever you make on stock market, right? So it's going to be taxed. I was like, Why? Because it's a short term, right? You guys? This and that, and then just, oh, my goodness. I was like man. Meaning? So if you want to make 10%, you got to make a 20, right, on stock market.
Igor Shaltanov [00:17:45]:
And then I started to look at statistics. Is it possible to make 20% unless you're trading or doing something like, exceptional? You got inside, so you can't right? You can't really do that because it's going to go up and down and 7%, maybe if you're lucky enough, right, in your time span, right, of like five years. Three years. Anyways, what happened is I'm talking about the transition. So I start to compare two different vehicles. I say, Listen, it's not working. It's just not. So they're going to take 1.5% for the fee.
Igor Shaltanov [00:18:16]:
You're going to put 50% of taxes as an income, and then at the end of the day, what are you going to get? There's no way. And then I just call my broker. I said, Listen, Kyle, I found better way to make money, right? I'm going to go all in in real estate. And he said that if you feel like that, let's do it, right? And he just closed my account, and that's it. I was all done. It was a stock market. I said, I don't want to do that, right? If I'm not professional, if I'm not trading, I have no time to do that. I'm going to go into real estate.
Igor Shaltanov [00:18:50]:
So in 2015, it was the first transition. Then after from, I said, okay, let me buy a single family house, right? If I own apartment rates, I want to own the house, right? And then I got into the houses. What did you say?
Wayne Courreges [00:19:08]:
Was that in Russia or in the United States?
Igor Shaltanov [00:19:10]:
California. It was California. Received California, right? And then I bought that house. It was like 450, let's say, purchase. And then it's got to get, like, Remodeling kitchen. Remodeling was like, absolutely trashed backyard. So I did the backyard. Remodeling put some beautiful place.
Igor Shaltanov [00:19:28]:
I mean, listen, I made a nice place. It was just probably like a C plus, B minus neighborhood. So the perfect neighborhood, which is not too much of the luxury stuff, right? When it's not too bad, where you can't get people into the house. So anyways, and then I remodeled that I rented to the people. So that one was leverage. I started to listen, actually, for BiggerPockets.com so the bigger pockets was huge. It was Josh Torkin back then. So Brandon Turner just started to pop up a little bit, right? He just hired him, I think.
Igor Shaltanov [00:20:07]:
And then through the bigger pockets, I started to learn the things like, why would you use your cash? Because remember I was buying cash, right? You say, Why would you use the money? Because the biggest advantage of real estate is it's a leverage. I was like, man, that's true. Why would I use all my cash money? How much return is on my cash money? It's like, it's minimal. And I start to really process the information as a businessman, right? Because before it was just a set aside, money unconsciously. And then starting 2015, I was starting really putting the spreadsheets and saying, okay, what's the return on my investment? What's the time frame? Right? So what's the leverage? How much it cost? How much the property management, how much time I personally spend, because I own the business as well, right? Back then. So that same time. And then if I kind of shift my mind from one thing to another, right? Because I'm losing here, right? And again, this is nature of the world, right? If you shift and you focus, right, you lose something, right? Anyways, and then basically the lesson was probably I was lucky enough. Again.
Igor Shaltanov [00:21:19]:
California. It's appreciation play. It's not about rental as much. If you can find a good deal, it's going to be know, you're going to be know, the god of the, right? So anyways, and then I finished that remodeling I rented to the people, it took about like two to three months to actually rent it. It was not the best market for the renters. It was kind of buyers, I would say market, right? People, I don't know why, actually, it was not expensive to rent it, but it was just a market like that. It took me like three months. I remember that very clear.
Igor Shaltanov [00:21:55]:
Why? Because I was the one who was paying mortgage that time, right? And I was like, counting every month, and I was like, how much time is going to take me to recapture all of this money if you got a cash flow of month, right? Basically. So I learned a lesson very quick. One thing was, okay, they call you all the time, right? They just pick up the phone and say, oh, you know what? My curtain just dropped a little bit, like a couple of inches. Can you fix it? I was like, really? Oh, my window is open. Yeah, you can close it, right? And again, it was just Nicholas requests. And then that was another transition, because in my other investment experience back, right, people were not calling me on minor things, right? Or yeah, if you got flooded, they might call you, right? But if something needs to be fixed, like it's a minor problem, they will never call you, right? And it's probably cultural differences as well. So anyways, in America I said, okay, let's look again. Apple to apples, right? Let's say if I got multiplied by ten on those houses, so how many calls I'm going to get? Tenfold.
Igor Shaltanov [00:23:05]:
So if I multiply by ten and people left and I need to pay mortgage. How much response like liabilities I'm going to have? And I start to kind of basically ten X that thing, right? I was like, man, this is not going to work. It's just not right? Because you're going to become a property management person. You're going to be running around. So basically you bought yourself a lot of business. And I asked myself, do you want to be in that business, owning like a single family pieces? Absolutely not. And again, it worked really well for me, but then I start to think through the scaling, right, as a business model. And then that time, probably 2017 ish maybe.
Igor Shaltanov [00:23:47]:
And then I was like, walking around. And then I have a mentor for my other business. I have a mentor, his name is Michael, right? And I'm talking to him every month about the KPIs of my company performance and all of that stuff, and real estate as well. And then at the end of the meeting, it's always maybe let's say it's about an hour meeting, right? And maybe about 1015 minutes. We're talking about real estate because he's a real estate investor and I'm a real estate investor. And then I said, Michael, listen, I'm in this single family right now. It doesn't work. He said, yeah, sure enough it doesn't, right? I said, what do you do? So tell me what you do.
Igor Shaltanov [00:24:20]:
He said, you know what? There's a model where you can buy apartments. I say really? How you can buy apartments? And then again, listening to bigger pockets. It was the first time ever I heard about syndication idea. It was Katie Fettique. Right. She lives in Malibu right now. And then she was like talking about Utah development, and they do like 100 units, 200 units. I was like, oh my goodness, I should find $20 million to buy like, apartment comps by myself.
Igor Shaltanov [00:24:49]:
It was my first idea. I was kind of hesitant, like, where I'm going to find $20 million, right? And it's got to be some big operations, big company. And I was under impression it's impossible for a while. But then walking on the streets, driving pass by, I was like, oh, I want to buy this building. Oh, I want to buy that building. So I won't do this, I wouldn't do that. I start to put that idea into my mind, listen, I want to be apartment owner. The single family died for me at that point.
Igor Shaltanov [00:25:20]:
It's gone, right? Because before I was walking around and then driving around say, oh, probably this house is pretty good, right? Oh, this house is really nice. I can remodel, I can put new this this roof and then either rent it or sell it. Anyways, this is the transition in my mind. I was like, okay, from one door, one request, to 100 doors, one request, one person maintaining one mortgage and all that blah, blah, people paying and stuff. So I start to really educate myself through the different resources. And then all the friends around myself who was the, I would say involved in syndication, I start to ask them, what would you guys recommend? What are the companies, right? Where we can go, so what should we do? And then I start to evolve myself into apartment. And, you know, this is a long story about the transition to apartments.
Wayne Courreges [00:26:17]:
It's a fantastic transition because there's a lot of people I was in your shoes, too, and I had a single family home in California, and it took several months, probably three or four months for it to lease. It was some renovations we had to do. But during that time, you are paying the mortgage, right? And then you are thinking, and it's stressing out too, and you're like, why isn't it leasing? What's wrong with this property? Checking the MLS, et cetera. So there's a lot and I love the multifamily space because especially if you're buying right on your cash flow and you have good financing terms, et cetera, you could have out of 100 units, say 30 units vacant. I mean, obviously nobody wants that. But you look at your break even point and you're still able to pay the service. So it helps reduce the stress load, for sure. I love how you've had these experiences, and you have quickly pivoted, and you've always been reflective that's one of the things I'm getting out of you on this podcast is no matter where we are on our financial journey, it's good to pause, reflect, don't get emotions involved.
Wayne Courreges [00:27:26]:
You've mentioned that. Look at the numbers and then make decisions and pivot. I always preach diversification. I like the stock market. I love real estate, but the pie on my side, the real estate is a larger pie, but the diversification is important, in my view. I see that too. With recently had a call with someone who has had a lot of syndication or a lot of investments into multifamily. We're talking multifamily here.
Wayne Courreges [00:28:02]:
And he retired. So a lot of that passive income for those deals that he was in stopped paying distributions. And so he's expecting on his retirement side to have this income. Right? And it just made me think afterwards, I was like, it's a good lesson learned. That for me, because I'm always reflective similar to you. It's like having all your eggs in one basket. When that basket is not doing well, it's good to have other sources of income. So shifting gears.
Wayne Courreges [00:28:32]:
So one of the things I mean, this is just a random question, and probably it's always been something in my mind, but when I'm working with investors, passive investors in particular, I tend to get more passive investors from the Middle East, Asia, and in talking with people from Russia and Ukraine in those areas, they're not as real estate investment minded. It's almost and I spoke to one person at a conference and. They we're afraid to lose what we've earned or what we mean. I don't know if you've been asked that before, but I'm always just curious, especially from an international investor standpoint, do you see a lot of investors like yourself that are buying these apartments in Russia, Ukraine, et cetera, or passive investing in the United States? And I'll stop mean because this is something I've just noticed culturally. Maybe it's culturally or what have you on history, but I'm not seeing as many real estate investors from that part of the world. And I may just be in a small little world that I'm in. Just curious. Your thoughts?
Igor Shaltanov [00:29:45]:
No, it's a good question. Yeah. And it's a legit question as well. So the one thing is for sure, I'm trying to soften that idea because the social media and the world in general makes us put against each other all the time, right? So the people hesitant if they are living in, I would say, an average bubble, right? They watch TV, and it's very hard to get out of this space, of the mental space I'm talking about, right, because a lot of it and again, same applied to the world. So you look at the South Africa like, I went there a couple of years ago, and then, oh, there's Mallory going to get bite, you're going to get killed, there's people. And then you go there, and there's nothing in existence of what you heard from what you heard, right, from hurt people. And the same in Russia. The one thing, and I was going on the tour, meaning on the call, it was maybe about 20 people, and one thing they told me constantly, oh, you know what? It's too far.
Igor Shaltanov [00:30:58]:
It's like way too far. We have no control over that. We don't trust. And the reason why, because the mental space and what they think of based on where they at, that's how the business conducted in that place, all right. What I found useful, educate them, tell them. Listen. So example will be and a good example it was my experience, for sure. So if I bought something right, no, let's start from this.
Igor Shaltanov [00:31:33]:
So you want to hold the value in something stable, and then you start to educate them. What could be very stable? And again, I'll take the Russia example because it's close for me. So let's say if you hold a value in rubles, and they say, oh, I got 20 million rubles, tomorrow is going to be 30 million rubles. I said, yes, but it's a little bit of fake. You know why? Because the value should be hold in something like predictable. You can predict five years from now it's going to be this much of the value, right? And then they telling you, oh, I can give you 50% return. I said, in what? In the dirt, in mud, in gold and bitcoin and real estate. In what can I predict the price of this thing in the future, can I go back and say it was the same hundred years ago? And then you start to ask those questions to people and then you tell them, there's one thing for sure in the United States, it's a law enforcement and the court system, like you can't pay the money to the right to make a favorable decision.
Igor Shaltanov [00:32:47]:
If you own something, the Ownership and constitution of the United States, right? If you own something and you got a deed of trust, you name it. The paperwork, it belongs to you, period, right? It cannot be flagship, it cannot be changed, it cannot be interpreted different way. And this is the experience they have back there. So this is the barrier. That's why it's very hard for them to believe on that other side. And again, they've never been here, right? Maybe some of them was one time in vacation and it's a different story, right? And again, it's hard, but as you start to ask those questions so if you go to the court system, right, and you got ownership of something, right, so would they take it from you? Is it going to be big of the risk for yourself? Right? So you tell all of those stories and then you combine that with value proposition, saying if you convert your something, blah, blah, blah yuan into American dollar, right? And then it's going to be five years from now, more than UN I supply. Because look at the graph, last ten years, it's just going this way, right? It's not going down. Yuan is not getting stronger, or let's say ruble is not getting stronger, right? It's just diminishing against the strong currency, right? So by you doing this one move, an example will be the June of the last year, right? One dollars will cost 56 rubles.
Igor Shaltanov [00:34:25]:
Now it's 96. So by you doing just a conversion, not investment, forget about the investment, you double the value of your value. I'm not even talking about currency, because I'm talking about the value proposition, right? So if you start to educate them, but then imagine one thing, so you convert that, you got double already, and then you invest it in real estate and you got double in five years there. And then you convert back to whatever currency you want, you name it, right? It could be rupee, whatever, yuan, ruble. Now you get so much more value, right? And then once you start to put this idea into the mind, they're like, oh, you know what, it might be makes sense. And again, they don't change the mind yet, but they start to. And again, this is the same idea with me. I was infected by a real estate idea back then.
Igor Shaltanov [00:35:20]:
So it took me to digest this, to prove the concept for myself, to go deeper, to understand, to experience that on yourself first, to then preach it to the people. And the same with them, if they got that idea of value because they stuck in the idea of, oh, I got UN, or I got rubble. Right. And they just kind of leaving that bubble value proposition. Did I answer your question?
Wayne Courreges [00:35:46]:
Absolutely, you answer that question because there's different laws and respect towards real estate ownership in the United States, right. And these other countries may not have that. So they're worried about losing the idea of investing into property is even a bigger risk for people outside of the country who don't really understand what we're doing. Now, you also mentioned education. That was another huge aspect of it. And we do that through podcasts and there's blogs and there's other things, but people need to experience. And what's nice is you've trailed the path or blazed the path before, and so you can relate to a lot of these international investors. I want to shift the conversation a little bit to how do international investors invest in the United States? And we talk about your fund as well.
Wayne Courreges [00:36:42]:
I assume you bring in internationals into the fund, international investors in the fund. If not, let us know that too. But just curious, for those that are trying or wanting to invest, they listen to this podcast and they're outside the country and they want to invest in multiple. How does that work? I actually was excited to ask you that question before the podcast because it's something that I'm interested too, from a syndication standpoint.
Igor Shaltanov [00:37:07]:
Got you. Yeah. So the idea was in the beginning, the idea was to actually help. And again, I was always coming from the help mindset, because if you can show the people the path, how they can multiply their value, it's just mind boggling for me. Right. And again, it's just a shared experience. So the one thing was I was thinking about, okay, we're going to go hard on that and we'll do like advertising, maybe even so out there. And then I just absolutely stopped that idea when the war started, when that happened, because I was on the calls with the people, they were interested and then they were asking me the questions.
Igor Shaltanov [00:37:50]:
Very funny, right? What if the wire transfer just stops? What if the swift will be just discontinued, like disconnected? I said there is no way. I said there is no way. Next century already, right? And then we just talking about the swift disconnection, and then like a week after, it just actually clicked and happened, right? And that was just absolutely mind boggling back then. Unbelievable. But then there's still a couple of people who did this. They did apply for Ein number, right? And then having that Ein number, they were investing into the deals directly.
Wayne Courreges [00:38:34]:
As an LLC.
Igor Shaltanov [00:38:36]:
No, as an individual.
Wayne Courreges [00:38:37]:
As an individual, okay, as an individual, yeah.
Igor Shaltanov [00:38:42]:
What I'm saying. ITIN because I'm missing with Ein. You're right. Ein is an LLC number. Right. So ITIN what is the indefication tax? I forgot what's the acronym stands for, but again, it's ITIN Number, which is basically the tax number when you're going to be reporting the taxes. Okay.
Wayne Courreges [00:39:00]:
I didn't realize you could invest as an individual. I thought you had to do the LLC.
Igor Shaltanov [00:39:03]:
So that's no, no, you can't, right. You still can. And that's why I'm kind of mentioning that. And I know a couple of people because I don't work with as of today. So I stopped at ideas in general. Right. And then what they did, they just acquired that ITIN number and then using that ITIN number, they just invest directly into the deal. That was one idea, right.
Wayne Courreges [00:39:28]:
Did they use the bank from the country that they were living or did they have to get a bank account in the States?
Igor Shaltanov [00:39:34]:
Actually, actually what they did they just directly send it from in our case was okay, because they found a country. There's a bunch of them. Turkey will be favorable to that, right. As just and again, the people who is able or available or capable of investing, they pretty sophisticated, right? If the newspaper telling you there's no transfers in this and then you call them and you know, we can do anything. Like we can transfer money and we can do this and that. So that means what I'm saying is that means they do have an accounts in Kazakhstan, they have an accounts in Turkey. They sophisticated business man world, right people. And there's nothing stops them saying, oh, no, right.
Igor Shaltanov [00:40:20]:
And then you just stop if no, they saying, okay, there's got to be different way to do that. And I'll find that way. So meaning again, so they acquire ITIN number and they go like this. So the other idea was they acquire ITIN number and they open LLC, all right? And it could be through the partner, which is in the United States because there's a lot of them have a friend or somebody, right. Or it could be like individual, which is a little bit harder but still possible. And you open that LLC and through that LLC you're already kind of doing your investments as well.
Wayne Courreges [00:40:55]:
Okay, well, I don't want to simplify it, but it sounds much easier than what I had thought in my mind because I had thought it more of an LLC setting that up. And there's always that process, especially if you're from international.
Igor Shaltanov [00:41:12]:
Let me deep into that because on LLC level, right, they'll still ask you the Social Security number. And that's why I'm saying they will find the partner who's listen, I don't know, let's maybe go together, let's do this. Or maybe you're going to be minor ownership, but I'm going to be the majority stakeholder and stuff like that. And that's what I heard and seen multiple times. But then if you just go LLC with international person, it's going to be a little bit challenging because I don't know how you're going to be open that one under what number or name? Right, right.
Wayne Courreges [00:41:48]:
No, it's really great info. I haven't taken any international investors into any of our deals, but only because I haven't had any international investors come and reach out.
Igor Shaltanov [00:42:04]:
One other thing I heard, and again, I've never done that as well myself. Right. There is a feeder funds, for example, we invested market space capital out of A, and it's a South America and they have a group, which is, how do you call that, the financial advisors group. So what they did, they opened the feeder fund in South, I think it was Argentina, if I'm not mistaken, in Argentina, and I connected to them on Zoom as well, to just dig deeper into international space. Right. And they said what we did, we opened the feeder fund first. So we opened the feeder fund, we put all the money into Argentina fund first and then we open LLC in the US. So that feeder fund will transfer the money to LLC.
Igor Shaltanov [00:42:59]:
So the LLC will become right, accredited investor. Why? Because it's five plus million dollars. Right. And then through that lens they're going to be invested into the deal or different deals because they already have accredited entity.
Wayne Courreges [00:43:16]:
So in the home country, they raise the capital into feeder fund, hit that 5 million threshold. So they can invest in any really any investment because they're at an accredited status. Yeah, interesting, that wasn't something I had thought about either. But you make a good point. Like these sophisticated people around the world, they don't just hit a wall, they find a way around the wall. So you said it really well there. So talk to us, we got a few minutes left. And so shift into your fund and what differentiates it, why did you start it? Tell the listeners more about what you're doing on the real estate investments currently.
Igor Shaltanov [00:44:03]:
That's a good question, and again, I'm going through the lens of myself first, so the people can relate. There's three things I want to tackle always, right? The one is location. Number two is going to be the people who is actually executing number three, the asset class. So my only concern was because again, the idea was simple, right? You can go with one person, let's say you can go with one group and say we put all our money in one group and let's test the water, let's see if a deal works, it works, if it doesn't, what, you fail or what? So that was my question. And then the idea of the fund was, okay, we need to diversify. And again, it's coming from my business background, right? Because if you invest in money and that person get hit by the bus, what happens? So that was my question number one, as an investor. So what happened? Do they have partners? Is it company? Is it going to run without that person? And again, this was my question. Number one.
Igor Shaltanov [00:45:11]:
The second question was, like you said, if multifamily is not paying dividends anymore, what happens then? So do we go with different avenues? Do we go storage? Right, and stuff like that? And then number three was location wise, if California has the bill passed and saying everybody will become rent control like every single region or whatever the city. So that's another trouble, right? Because that's going to put the pressure on our business in California. So our actually first two adults was in California. They were, and then it was Auckland, California. And then we moved on since then. Why? Again, because number one, we don't want to stuck with one group. And again, the idea of that they might be doing really good job, but they tied up to one asset class. In general, let's say that group in Auckland, California, they just absolutely amazing of doing one thing.
Igor Shaltanov [00:46:16]:
They convert old buildings into workforce housing, small studio. Have they ever done the land development? Brand new construction? But no, right. They have one niche and they're really good. They tied up to local government. They have all the necessary tools to kind of force whatever they needed, whatever they need for the project. They can pull the strengths and then find it all the time. And I really love it. Do I want to be all in with my money on that one thing? I don't know.
Igor Shaltanov [00:46:50]:
It's really good. It works, right. But I do want to be exposed to, let's say Houston, right, as well. So Houston, in what sense do you want to be in multifamily Houston? Do you want to be storage facility, Houston? And again, in the fund, you can get to choose those things, right? And then multifamily will give you a little bit, probably less risk, a less return shifting over to storage, mobile home parks, right? It's going to be a little bit more opportunistic. And again, this is the talk about the risk level and tolerance. The first idea was we went to nine one nine to one. So we'll do nine multifamily dulls and we'll cut one with a storage. Right? And the reason why, because we want to get the exposure.
Igor Shaltanov [00:47:36]:
I'm not even sure we do some private equity investing as well. I'm not even sure that piece because it's over the head, right? And again, the whole idea to build a portfolio which could be balanced between the location execution team and the asset class and those three things was like three pillars of the fund, right? Because again, if you can find a good team, right, and you say, listen, this is a really good team and we want to be in Texas, and they are in Texas. And what are they doing? Oh, you know what they're doing. Just the storage facilities. Absolutely amazing. So let's go there, right? Why? Because we want to get our investors exposed to the storage as well. Why? Because it's not as institutional it's not consolidated, right. As a multifamily, what is the big guys playing the game, right? And it's very stable, right? Very boring, less risk.
Igor Shaltanov [00:48:30]:
But we want to get exposure to the more return, and those are the things we kind of focus on.
Wayne Courreges [00:48:36]:
That's great. Well, is there anything you want to cover before I ask you? I always ask the last question. We don't have to go to the last question yet. If there's other topics you want to cover, I always ask, what's your proudest moment in real estate investing? And then close it up with how people can reach out to you if they have questions or want to build the relationship. Yeah, we don't have to go there yet. If there's anything else you want to cover, we have some time, but just.
Igor Shaltanov [00:49:01]:
Wanted to no, I'm good. So I don't want to cover anything. But then I think the proudest moment I heard it from the podcast was Jeff, right? And I was like, man, what is my proudest moment, right? And then Jeff gave us a great example when it was proud of supporting the people. I think my proudest moment was and again, I'll be a little bit more selfish just to this AHA moment, right? Finding that real estate idea, all right? Because at certain point of my life, I was so disappointed because there is no high return, low risk investments. And I was like, man, either you should go all in and be like a gambler casino game, right, and stock market and stuff like that, or you should just suck it up and wait, here's 2%, and you wait 25 lives right, before you get rich and stuff like that. And then once I found it, and then the money started to come in and I proved that concept, so I was like, wow, I'm so proud. Why? Because I can share that with people. It's like a hidden jam of things which is actually working.
Igor Shaltanov [00:50:14]:
And then the other thing, there's a barrier of people saying, oh, I heard it, but it's like everything on YouTube, right? It's advertising, it doesn't work. But then you went, like, a couple years ahead of them, like five years ahead of them, and you're saying, Listen, this thing works. Do you want to see that? Yes. Here's the bank statements, right? The dividends are coming, right? And then the appreciation is, here's the sale of the property, right? Here's the money, and stuff like that. So the idea of the real estate, I think the AHA moment of saying, okay, this stuff works, and it works in a sense of I like that word. It's not my words, right? A real estate idea, it's a get reach, for sure. It takes time, right? It does perseverance time discipline. But it's for sure.
Igor Shaltanov [00:51:02]:
It's not like, oh, maybe in 20 years, right? I've never seen people in 20 years from now back then, right? So saying, oh, I lost everything. Because I was a real estate investor.
Wayne Courreges [00:51:15]:
That's huge. Yeah, and what you're doing too, as you mentioned earlier, is diversification as there's as a real estate investor. Just like in stocks, there's growth stocks, value stocks, same thing even on multifamily as well. So how can people reach out to you?
Igor Shaltanov [00:51:31]:
Gore so, yeah, they can go to win W-I-N Realstategame.com and they're going to download the ultimate gut and syndication how to win the syndication deals.
Wayne Courreges [00:51:44]:
Love it. Well, thank you for being on, it was a great I really enjoyed getting to know you and learning your story and looking forward to keep building the relationship. So thanks for being on.
Igor Shaltanov [00:51:56]:
Yes, thank you, Wayne, thank you for having me. It's always a pleasure to you can if I can help any somehow you guys reach out,
[email protected] and I'll be glad to respond to you guys.
Wayne Courreges [00:52:09]:
Sounds good. And we'll put that in the show comments as well. But you have a great rest of the day and thank you all for listening in.
Introducer [00:52:16]:
That's all for this episode. We hope you subscribe, share and leave a review of the show. For more information about passively investing in multifamily apartments, check out Wayne's free ebook by going to also follow us on Facebook by searching CREI Partners. This was the untold stories of real estate investing.
