Elite Strategies for Multifamily Sales and Investments with Ben Carbone

Transcript:

Ben Carbone: Go to a coffee shop. When you’re ordering a coffee, ask for a discount. How awkward is that? Like, “Yes, I don’t know if you have any offers or anything special that you could give me.” It just puts you in that weird position where you have to create some kind of story and back yourself up. There’s always awkward situations in life. The big thing is to continue to put yourself in those awkward situations intentionally so that they become less awkward and less embarrassing to you.

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Lindsay Favazza: Welcome back to the Agents Who Crush It In Real Estate Podcast. I’m your host, Lindsay Favazza. Today we’re diving into the story and strategies of someone who truly epitomizes crushing it in real estate, Ben Carbone. Ben is a top 1% producing agent licensed in Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island, with over 40 million in real estate sales under his belt in just under three years. He seamlessly balances success in both real estate, residential, and commercial, consistently delivering for his clients with unmatched enthusiasm, attention to detail, and impressive negotiation skills.

Here’s what really sets Ben apart, his people-first approach. He believes that communication is at the heart of every successful relationship, and it’s a principle that guides him in real estate and in his personal life. Ben’s expertise isn’t just in sales. He’s also an experienced multi-family investor owning an impressive portfolio of 36 units across Massachusetts and Connecticut. This gives him a unique edge when advising investors on how to maximize their portfolios or take their first steps in multi-family investing. Get ready to learn from one of the best in the business as Ben shares his journey, insights, and the strategies that propelled him to the top. Welcome to the podcast today, Ben.

Ben: Hey, Lindsay. I’m excited to be here.

Lindsay: It’s so fun to have you here. I know we’ve been talking for a couple of weeks now about getting this on the schedule. I’m so pumped to have it here. I’m so pumped to have you. I am really excited to hear your story. I, truthfully, other than what I just read, don’t know a ton. I’m a student today myself.

Ben: Very good. I’m excited to share.

Lindsay: Take us back in the way back machine. What got you into real estate in the first place? What was your background? What were you doing before that? All the good stuff.

Ben: I am 26 years young and I graduated college in 2020. It was the middle of COVID. At the time I was doing another profession. I was running e-commerce businesses. Online stores, selling products with business partners out of Boston. I was handling the marketing and digital marketing and all the advertising on Facebook and Instagram. At the time I was making some pretty good money.

My family, we didn’t really come from a background of extreme wealth or anything like that. We didn’t own any property. I had some family members that were real estate agents, but, just here and there, nothing completely serious, but then I fell in love with the idea of assets over liabilities. I read a book called Rich Dad, Poor Dad, who many people know. It seems to be a foundational piece of just financial literacy and real estate in general. I fell in love with the idea of multifamily investing.

Now, I didn’t know that it was going to propel me into where I am today, but I found my first property back in 2019, went under contract and purchased in my senior year at Nichols College, my first four family. It was a house hack, 3.5% down. I just fell in love with the idea of being able to stabilize a property and have some extra income coming in in the future through cashflow. It’s a big term that everyone uses is cashflow.

I bought my first property in 2020. From there, I was still doing e-commerce and I really got infatuated with the idea of investing and building a portfolio and making a name for myself in that space. Never did I think I was going to be a real estate agent ever. I actually used to tell people, “I don’t think I’m ever going to be a real estate agent,” when they asked me. There just wasn’t, in my repertoire at the time.

Lindsay: Why did you think that was? What was it that was stopping you at that point?

Ben: I think it was, what people have as an idea as a real estate agent. Everyone knows a real estate agent. There’s a million of them. I come from a small town in Northeastern Connecticut, small community, and there was probably three agents to every 10 people. That’s what it felt like at least growing up. I thought it was very, very saturated and I wanted to make my own namesake for myself somewhere else and then come into investing. As life has it, I continued down the investing pathway, built a pretty big network, started going to networking events, investor meetups, just contacting people online and trying to learn as much as I could, absorb as much information through podcasts and reading, just talking to other investors and trying to get my experience tool belt really sharpened.

Then I continued down the path of e-commerce. I invested a little more. In 2021, my father actually got incredibly sick. He went quadriplegic basically overnight. I was living in Boston at the time, working e-commerce with my business partners. On a drop of a dime, I just said, “Guys, I’m out of here. I got to go take care of my father.” I moved back to Northeastern Connecticut from the big city of Boston. Totally not where I thought my life was going to go. I had all these plans and trajectories and what I was looking to do and move to Miami, California, and then all of a sudden I found myself back in a small town in Connecticut.

Jolted me. I wasn’t really sure what was going on, but I was there for my family. Family at the core is everything to me, as many people, the same for them. My father was my best friend. My family, too, I wanted to take care of them in any way that I could. I moved back, took care of him along with my brother, my mom, and then I found myself back in this small town, community oriented area where I was looking at the next progression of my life and what that looked like in a career.

E-commerce started to change. I got out of it a little bit. I started looking around as to what I could do to build my personal name and personal brand and what was available out there. E-commerce, it wasn’t so forefront and forefacing of me being the brand. It was just like, “Here’s this product, here’s this store.”

Lindsay: Here in the background.

Ben: I wanted something that I could present myself and make an impact in the community and an impact in people’s lives. Then I started to really network further in my community. Funny enough, I went to a wedding and my former broker, two brokers ago at the time, was at the wedding. She knew I was investing in real estate. She came up to me and she’s like, “Ben, I’ve heard so much about you. I know we don’t know each other, but I have some properties you might be interested in. Do you want to talk real estate?” This was on a Saturday. I was like, “Yes, what are you doing Monday?”

I went into the office on Monday and then I walked in, my first time in a real estate office, really. I’m going, “This is interesting.” We started to talk a little shop about properties and my investment strategies and my thesis. Then I just flipped it and I go, “What would it take for me to get licensed?” just out of the blue. I saw that she had a very big personal presence in the community. She was making an impact. She had her own name for herself. I was very impressed with what you could do as a single person in real estate in that way of building a personal brand. She’s like, “You get licensed pretty quickly. Probably three months it’ll take you.” I go, “I’m in. Will you take me?” She goes, “Absolutely.”

Lindsay: I’m sure that was part of what she was calling you in for in the first place, no? [chuckles]

Ben: It might have been. Yes, it could have been. I don’t think I ever had that conversation, but potentially. Then from there, I just started to really realize how much of an impact you could have as a real estate agent in people’s lives, your clients, your coworkers, other real estate agents, but also the community as a whole, being able to give back, be a part of something bigger than yourself.

Lindsay: Plus you were already doing it. You would know what it would take to be the person that you would want on the other side of the sale helping you. You had that first view of, this is what that person should do. No one’s going to be better at it than you at that point.

Ben: Right. Very true. That was in November of 2021. No, sorry. Was it? November of 2021.

Lindsay: Years are all mixed together.

Ben: I know, it’s crazy. March of 2022 is when I got officially licensed.

Lindsay: Got it.

Ben: From the time of November until March of 2022, I really absorbed everything I could about the industry, understanding contracts, sitting in on negotiations, going to appraisals, going to inspections, really trying to just front load all of this stuff that I knew that I would need to know going into being an agent, a licensed agent, serving clients, serving investors, and then having a top edge on anyone else in the marketplace where I know that I don’t need to go back and ask a million questions to figure out how to write a contract. I already know how to write a contract. I can save that much time, that much effort, that much energy up front by learning all of it.

Then from there, I just hit the ground running. March of 2022 is when I was officially licensed in Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island. I did about 1.1 million that first calendar year.

Lindsay: Wow. Who were those people? Who were the people that worked with you? I think a lot of agents starting out, especially, number one, if they’re not from that area or if they were in a totally different business, if it’s not related, it’s hard for them to get their sphere to show up for them. Was it your sphere? Were you calling on expireds? What was your strategy back then to get that one million?

Ben: It was really my sphere. I’m someone who’s very vocal about what I do and the things that I want. I started to just try to understand and listen to larger real estate agents on YouTube or on podcasts, and they were giving suggestions of, “Tell everyone and anyone that you’re in real estate. Go out there when you’re shaking hands, when you’re at a family function, when you’re at a community function, start talking about you doing real estate.” “Hey, I just got licensed, I’m licensed in this area, this is what I’m doing, da-da-da-da-da.”

Then it started to snowball. I started to create more connections with people that were looking to buy and a perfect timeframe, too. I was 24 at the time, just turning almost 25, and that seems to be a perfect age where friends of mine are starting to think about the next progression of their life, buy their first property, buy their first three-family to live in, owner-occupied, or their parents are looking to sell off to downsize because now they’re out of the house. It was just this perfect storm, but I capitalized on making sure that everyone on social media that I had, that I came in contact with, they all knew I was in real estate.

I remember the, probably, first week or two that I got licensed, I drafted this text message. It was basically just like, “hey guys, da-da-da-da-da-da, I just became licensed in Connecticut, Mass, Rhode Island. I work for a local brokerage here in Killingly, Connecticut. If you ever have anything that you need in the real estate sphere, I’d be happy to serve you, serve your family, whoever it is. I sent that out to probably 50, 60 people that I knew on my contact list. It just started to create that snowball.

Lindsay: Question for you.

Ben: Yes.

Lindsay: This question might be hard for you to answer because it sounds like you have a super go-getter, don’t-take-no-for-an-answer type of mentality, You’re just going to do what it takes. There’s a lot of agents that are probably listening that are saying, “I’m scared to send that text. I’m scared to reach out to people and ask for business,” or not even necessarily ask, but put themselves out there in that way.

I guess what advice do you have for them to like get over that? Because it’s necessary. Do you ever take pause on anything like that and think like, “Oh, should I do this?” Do you just say, “No, it’s going to help me in my business or it’s going to help someone else to buy, so I’m going to send the fricking text”? [chuckles]

Ben: A twofold answer to that. The first part is to the agents that may feel uncomfortable about something, is there’s always awkward situations in life. The big thing is to continue to put yourself in those awkward situations intentionally so that they become less awkward and less embarrassing to you.

I remember I read a book. I’m trying to remember the name of it. It was Rich20Something by Daniel DiPiazza. This was back maybe when I was 19 years old. I can remember he was saying, “Put yourself in these awkward situations, wherever it may be.” The big thing he said was, “Go to a coffee shop. When you’re ordering coffee, ask for a discount.” How awkward is that?

You’re ordering coffee. “Hey, can I get, whatever, a three shot cappuccino? By the way, can I get a discount? Do you have a 10% or 20% discount.” They look at you, the clerk or whoever’s serving you and going, “A discount?” You’re like, “Yes, I don’t know if you have any offers or anything special that you could give me.”

Lindsay: Why not?

Ben: It just puts you in that weird position where you have to create some kind of story and back yourself up. Then he was like, “Continue to ask for discounts wherever you go.”

At 19, I can remember, I wanted to get into sales. I wanted to start learning all this stuff. I just started creating these awkward opportunities that then gave me this hard shell on the outside to go, “Oh, doesn’t matter. Maybe I get it. Maybe I don’t. I’m still going to get my coffee either way.” Then, going into the next step is, at this point in my life, it’s how many opportunities I create that are going to benefit myself, benefit my business, benefit my clients.

I’m a big proponent of cold calling, cold DMing, cold emailing, I’ll door-knock. I’ll do anything to move that needle. I think it’s just creating that mindset of resilience and moving forward because we are in sales and everyone’s like, “You’re going to sound salesy. You’re going to sound salesy.” We are in sales. If you’re going to tell people that you’re in sales, tell them what you do. Talk about your experience. Talk about being in real estate. You sell property. Your profession is sales. Even though it might sound salesy, you are a salesperson.

Lindsay: At the end of the day, it is what it is. You don’t have to be a smarmy salesperson. We’re not asking you to do anything. You asking for a discount, that’s– and the way that you said it, you asked for the discount, but then you’re like, “Do you have anything? I just thought I’d ask.” Then that doesn’t come off as aggressive. That just comes off like, “Hey, might as well ask.” There’s always a way to do it where it doesn’t come off salesy but you’re still trying to get a sale, period, end of story, end of the day.

Ben: It’s the same thing with asking for referrals nowadays. It’s like, “Hey, I understand that I served you great on this property or on this deal. Do you have anyone that you could refer me to or anyone that could use my services?” It’s just a very standard blanket term and maybe you get something from it, maybe you don’t, and then maybe six, seven weeks later, they remember that you said something and they go, “Oh, I have the perfect guy for you. Oh my gosh, he did this for me. He’s always looking for new people.” It’s planting those little seeds.

Lindsay: It’s some kind of call to action. There should always be some kind of call to action because then no action will get taken. If you don’t tell them what you want them to do, then they’re not going to do it. You got to at least explain what it is that you need from them, and at that point, they’re indebted to you. They want to help in any way that they can because you’ve done such a good job for them. I love this.

Not to put you in third person, but, what is hard for Ben right now? What is the thing that you’re wanting to improve upon at this moment? Because it seems like, like you said, you’re a go-getter, you’re going to get after it, but what’s the thing that you’re like, “I need to improve on this?”

Ben: I guess the big thing that I realized in the progression of my career is I move very quickly. I’ll be licensed three years this coming March. My first year, I did 1.1 million. My second year, which was last year, 2023, that whole calendar year, I did just under nine million, and then in 2024, I did 26 million. So, very big, multiplier effect. I am someone that wants to continue that progression, but also at this point in my career, and yes, I’m three years in, but I move so quickly that I’m looking at how can I become more efficient, and how can I become a better manager and serve my clients in a more complete way? That would be becoming efficient in the decisions that I make and also the tasks that I have.

Hiring some kind of licensed assistant that can then take over inspections and appraisals and some showings for me where I’m not spread so thin and I can’t service all my clients, even an ISA, an inside sales agent, where I do a lot of cold-calling. I know things are changing with laws and things like that, but I do a lot of cold-calling myself. How can I move that and shift that away from me using all of my time to cold-call where I could then focus on higher and bigger tasks for my clients, for myself, for my personal brand, and continue to expand that?

Become more efficient. That’s something that I’m working with now, and I guess it’s hiring the right people. What’s the right fit for me? What does that look like moving forward?

Lindsay: It’s scalability. How do you keep scaling at the rate you’ve been scaling at? That might take spending some money on some kind of person to help you or something like that, which can be scary. Honestly, you may knock down a peg for a little bit. There’s that growth phase that you have to take a little bit of a hit sometimes, and then it’ll grow even faster and more exponentially for you later. That’s amazing. I love that.

Ben: I’m excited I get to lean on Jason Posnick now, We’ve been in discussions, and, I told him the next evolution of my business and what I’m looking to do. We’re going back and forth and batting that around, and what’s the best process for me to continue to scale and continue to grow and continue to do the sales that I do while serving as many clients as I can, but becoming more efficient and having some kind of team to take a lot of the, I guess, mundane task off of my shoulders?

Lindsay: Is that what’s next for you? Is it more of a team model for you, do you think? Is it, just trying to scale your business with administrative help? What do you think is the next steps?

Ben: I think currently the next step is continue as a single agent and bring in those admin or those resources to help me scale as a single agent. Then, eventually, I could see myself building a team once I create this model and these resources around me that then my team can use where they can come in and just plug into the system. That’s the next, really, evolution of where I’m going. I don’t know when the team could happen. maybe it happens sooner than later, but I’m open to anything.

Lindsay: You move fast. My guess is six months. [chuckles]

Ben: I’ll mark that down on the calendar.

Lindsay: Lindsay’s guess of your goal. Tell me a little bit about your investor experience and how that’s, number one, helped you and what kind of advice you have for agents that are listening that want to learn more about the investment side of things either for themselves or to get more investor clients. What is the ins and outs of investing that people should know?

Ben: The real reason I remember when I was licensed in my first year, I was looking at the model of sales and what typically on average a residential agent does and what a multifamily or commercial agent would do. They say, and Brian Buffini is famous for saying this and other people statistically is, residentially, one of your clients is going to buy or sell a home every five to seven years. That’s one sale from one client every five to seven years.

If you get an investor that’s very active, they might buy five to seven deals in one year. If I have one investor that’s doing five to seven deals in one year, that’s 5X, 7X, what one person in residential is going to do. My mind shifted directly to, “Okay, I can manage essentially less people build a better sphere with investors because I do it myself and then have more sales come from less people, so I’m running around less crazy than I would on the residential side.”

Lindsay: It’s an 80-20 in a way. Your 20% of that business is going to come from the people that are giving you more of the business. Makes sense.

Ben: In a way like this last year, I’ve definitely perfected that where the 26 million, a good majority of that was repeat clients, people that were looking to reinvest, people that are looking at larger deals. I sold a 35-unit multifamily portfolio in Norwich, which is a $4.1 million deal to one client. That one client wants to continue to scale and build more. I look at him over the next 10 years, that could be, a hundred-million-dollar client.

It’s just that becoming more efficient in the way that I think about how to procure sales, but then the other side is I am passionate and absolutely love investing in real estate and multifamily. If you look at my computer on a day to day, I probably have four or five spreadsheets with underwriting for multifamily properties, whether it’s my own, whether it’s for my clients, whether it’s something I’m looking at on MLS that I just want to understand the metrics of.

It works perfectly where, because I’m an investor myself, I can relate to these other investors and talk the language, understand what they’re looking to do, how they can scale, how they can move forward, maybe how they can position themselves to win, where they could sell off a property with a bunch of equity to buy a bigger property. There’s trading up phases.

My advice, if an agent wants to get into working with investors is put yourself in that sphere. There’s investor meetups everywhere. Start to talk to people that are investing in multifamily real estate, talk to other agents like myself that are involved in multifamily real estate, and then really just start to dive deep on what are the crucial components of that? The big thing that I think about and that my clients think about is what is the return? What is the return they’re going to receive if they buy this property?

If they’re buying a four-family property and they’re putting $100,000 down, what is their percent return that they’re going to make on that $100,000 that they invest in that property? That’s the one overarching thing is in multifamily and investment, what is the return? What is the ROI? That’s the one concept that I think if any agent wants to get into, start to understand that.

Lindsay: For sure. You had mentioned podcasts and things like that you listen to or that you’ve read books and things. What are your top recommended podcasts, books, or any resources for an agent, whether it be for investing or if it’s just for mindset learning, anything like that. What are your go-tos?

Ben: Sure. A huge resource platform for investors is BiggerPockets. They have a ton of resources. You can listen to the podcast, you can order the books, you can go on the forums. Everyone starts there. They also will give you underwriting sheets on how to underwrite a property precisely and correctly. That’s one huge resource to start. For myself, I’m pretty deep into where I’m at now. I am big on mindset. Mindset would be strategies become more efficient.

I love Alex Hormozi. He’s a great author, great podcaster, huge presence in the business space. He just gives you tactical advice on how to move the needle forward in your business, in your personal life. Then Andy Frisella, he’s great. He owns1st Phorm Nutrition. He has a podcast called Real AF. That’s a huge resource for me, all about business mindset, what’s happening in the world, how to shape yourself in order to move forward in that capacity.

Then book-wise, I’m big in spirituality. I learned how to meditate when I was 17 years old from my father, Transcendental Meditation. I believe that this life that we have and investing in real estate and being a real estate agent, it really does take some spiritual knowledge and resilience as well. If you’re not tapped into yourself spiritually, what’s going to carry you along? Whether that’s a religion or whether you believe in something more, or you just have this insight that you can continue to move forward on a positive perceptive stance. Transcendental Meditation is big for me.

Some people that fall in line with that, Jim Rohn, he’s great. Any of his books, any of his lectures, he’s passed away now, but he was one of Tony Robbins’ mentors. People like that. That’s really what I take in and absorb on a daily basis.

Lindsay: I love it. We’ve heard all about the investing side. We’ve heard all about the real estate side. Tell us what you like to do in your free time. What’s your getaway from the hustle and bustle and relax? Although it doesn’t sound like you have much time for that. [laughs]

Ben: [chuckles] No. My big thing, obviously, is family. That’s my core. I have a huge family on both sides. My dad’s side, he was one of five. I’m 1 of 10 cousins. Then we have a million second cousins and great-grandchildren. Then my mom is one of six. I’m 1 of 16 grandchildren. Now the great-grandchildren are popping out. On both sides of the coin, I have huge families. I’ve grown up around such a loving atmosphere, family trips, family functions. That’s really what, a lot of my time, in my free time, I try to invest, is spend time with my cousins, spend time with my brother, spend time with whoever it may be in my family.

Lindsay: I love that.

Ben: The other side of it is I am obsessed with fitness. I’m in the gym every single day. I think that is a huge proponent to my success. Also, I know a lot of people talk about fitness is in line with business. It goes along with discipline. You have to be very disciplined to sculpt the body, to build muscle, to eat a particular way. The same thing with business, you have to be very disciplined to call your leads, to market yourself, to put yourself out there, to continue to work on a day-to-day basis when you don’t want to.

I wake up some mornings I’m like, “I do not want to go to the gym today,” but then it kicks back in my head, “Well, the discipline’s there. You’ve been going for six years every single day. You got to go. You got to go. You got to stay on it. You got to stay consistent.” Then I force myself to go even if I don’t want to go. Once I’m in there, it’s, boom, right to business.

It’s the same thing. You wake up, “Oh, I don’t want to make these calls today. Oh, I don’t want to go on these appointments.” You have the discipline and the mindset, you know that you need to. If you do, you just create that rhythm and that routine, and it’ll continue.

Lindsay: I love that. Your mindset’s there. The business is rolling in. I think that if anyone’s listening today and hearing what you’re saying and thinking, “Well, yes, it was easy for him.” It was not easy for you. It doesn’t sound like at all. It’s just you put the fricking work in, [chuckles] and you continue to. Did you do it quickly? Yes, because most people don’t do what you’re doing.

You guys that are listening right now, this is an absolute gift to hear what he has to say when he’s done because you guys can learn so much from him. I’ve learned so much from you today.

Ben: Well, thank you.

Lindsay: Ben, anything that you want to close out on, any advice that you want to give to the audience other than all the stuff that you already gave, but any closing thoughts for everybody?

Ben: Yes, definitely. Your network is really your net worth. When I say that, it sounds cliche because everyone says it. What I really mean is, relationships are the foundation to your success in anything in life. Business, personal life, the quality of your family, your relationships matter. It’s building relationships with people that are going to work with you in a partnership standpoint that you’re going to be able to help, that you’re going to be able to cater to, relationship with your community, relationship with your family. I think relationships are the crux of everything in life and it’ll propel you into that next level of business.

I always tell any agent or anyone that’s in business, go and meet, go and shake hands, go and rub elbows, put yourself out there, create meaningful relationships with people that can benefit you, that you can benefit them because it is really a symbiotic thing in real estate. If you’re working with a lender and you create a great relationship with them, they’re going to feed you, you’re going to feed them, it works back and forth. I think that at the core of it, your network is truly your net worth.

Lindsay: Love it. Awesome. I always try to make sure I’m pointing in the right direction and it seems opposite. Right here you have Ben’s Facebook and Instagram. Feel free to reach out to him. He’s a wealth of knowledge and super open and willing to talk to you guys. I really appreciate your time today. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast today, my friend.

Ben: Of course. Thank you, Lindsay. Appreciate it.

Lindsay: Thanks everybody for listening and for watching. If you’re watching on YouTube, we appreciate you guys as well. Make sure to like, comment, subscribe to the podcast and make sure to give a review. I never ask for reviews and you’ve motivated me. I’m asking. Go on right now. If you learn something from Ben and write a quick review for the podcast. We would really appreciate it and it’ll help to spread it to more people. Again, thanks everybody for watching and listening today and we’ll see you guys on the next episode of the Agents Who Crush It In Real Estate. Bye-bye.

Ben: Thank you, guys. Bye-bye.

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