Episode Transcript
[00:00:02] Speaker A: Hello and welcome to Unscripted SEO. I am Zanetta Chiniquen Power, and today I'm with Tatiana Zagrowski, also known as Ms. Z.
Ms. Tatiana. And we are going to learn a lot about real estate today and a little bit more about her personal journey and to get us started. Hello, welcome.
[00:00:21] Speaker B: Hi, Zanetta. Thank you very much for having me. I'm humbled and honored to be here and I will be happy to answer any questions you might have about business or real estate or anything.
[00:00:34] Speaker A: I got you. No problem. Well, my daughter actually wants to get into real estate, and so I have been a partner in helping her learn more about that journey. So for you, how did you get started in this industry?
[00:00:48] Speaker B: Well, it's been a dream of mine for, well, 25 years, since I left my home country.
Even found I have Midwest accent. You probably can figure out I wasn't born in St. Louis and it took me a while to find the business that works for you. So a few years ago I came across some ad on social media and it started to pop up all the time. It was like five days real estate training for $27 and it was no brainer. So I had nothing, not much to risk. So I purchased that. And the moment I listened to this training, I realized, okay, I found what I've been looking for. Real estate has so many strategies and possibilities that anyone can find something in real estate. And from that moment on, I dived in into various trainings and eventually I left my corporate job in software development of 23 years.
[00:01:52] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:01:53] Speaker B: Now I am very passionate about what I do. I love it, and I help people at the same time. So it's amazing. I can talk about it for hours, days, probably weeks, if not months.
[00:02:06] Speaker A: Well, that's awesome. Your passion definitely shines through. When someone is able to talk about their craft for days, hours and months, they there is no denying that there is some love there for real estate. So tell me a little bit more about some of the challenges that you faced in learning this new industry. You said you made a pivot from software sales and something that a lot of people may be interested in at this time of their lives. This is making a career pivot, and you have done that successfully. So what were some of the things that you encountered when you first entered real estate?
[00:02:41] Speaker B: Sure. Well, full disclosure, it didn't start pretty easy.
[00:02:45] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:02:46] Speaker B: I did hit some bumps on the road and I will be more than happy to share them so other people can have a better, smooth journey.
So there are literally hundreds of coaches and Training programs related to real estate and everyone has a great pitch.
So my, my advice, be very careful while picking the mentorship or program and it is important to have right training, right mentorship. But again, need to be very careful because I spend tens of thousands of dollars on mentorship. It didn't work until, until I find the groups that deliver, you know, quality training and worth every cent I'm paying to them.
So my recommendation, start from local networking events.
Every metro area has a bunch of real estate networking meetings. In St. Louis, we have a few every single week.
So start going there, find your crowd, find people you have connection with, interview them.
When you start hearing about certain program from more than one person and good feedback, that's probably the right program to join. And of course if someone wants to ask me, I will be more than happy to share my experience because I also went through multiple trainings and mentorship nationwide and I know good groups here in St. Louis.
[00:04:19] Speaker A: Wonderful.
[00:04:20] Speaker B: First thing next, don't chase after everything because there are multiple, multiple ways to make money in real estate.
And typically when person starting in real estate, me including, we try to chase every gold nugget we see and it's every shiny object we are going after this strategy, it sounds exciting and we end up trying to do everything and doing nothing.
So it's really important to try to find what attractive to you.
But at the same time, don't wait too long because some people are trying to learn everything and they end up not doing anything. That's another extreme.
So once you find strategy that you think is appealing, just jump in, test it out.
If you don't like it, switch to another one. If you like it, go in and then add another tool into your toolbox.
[00:05:25] Speaker A: Wonderful.
[00:05:26] Speaker B: Everything at once.
[00:05:27] Speaker A: You mentioned you know, being focused and narrowing down your scope. So something that you do at Trio Realty Partners is buy houses. So tell us a little bit more about you being in the side of the industry that purchases homes for cash.
[00:05:48] Speaker B: Yes. So I currently focus on three things in real estate. I buy houses, I keep some of them and do fix and flips and some of them I sell on seller finance. And that's the most rewarding strategy because I help tons of people who otherwise cannot own home. As far as the buying houses, I do various taxes, types of marketing, and my goal is to help the seller first of all.
So once I get a seller reaching out, I do detailed analysis of a seller situation, trying to understand what exactly seller needs, what he or she is looking for.
And then typically we offer a Few ways because there is no one solution to fit it all. And in some cases I might tell I'm not able to help or you will be better with an experienced retail agent. I'm also licensed agent, but I specialize in investing.
[00:06:52] Speaker A: Okay, that's wonderful. So what does a typical day look like for you at Trio Realty Partners?
[00:06:59] Speaker B: There is no such thing as typical day. Because real estate business, you need to be very flexible.
You need to be ready to literally jump into your car and go check a house if a right deal come along. Sometimes I bought several houses without even looking at them because I needed to act fast, make decision fast.
I do have several joint venture partners working with me and virtual assistant.
So obviously every day we go through potential leads like people who are reaching out and potentially interesting to sell the house. I specialize on analyzing deals and putting creative offers together.
Also, I'm one who checks most of the houses and talks to the sellers in person. My business partner, she's one who has first conversation over phone and after we have all the information, then we start helping the seller. But again, sometimes need to be ready to drive in any second because when the right deals come along, you don't want to sit and wait.
[00:08:13] Speaker A: Yes. So you must be someone that's moving around, that knows the city very well because you have to jolt between neighborhoods and things like that. So with that being said, how is it that you find personal balance while juggling what you do at Trio Realty?
[00:08:33] Speaker B: Very good question.
It's not an easy one. Well, the way I do it, especially recently, I try ideally an ideal week, I try to have, let's say two days for driving around and the rest of the days working from my home office.
Again, it doesn't always work as well, but this is the goal.
[00:08:58] Speaker A: You mentioned having mentors and individuals in the industry that you can either work with or learn from.
What are some ways in which you have been able to give back to others with your expertise in the industry?
[00:09:15] Speaker B: Well, interesting with people started to reach out to me. So I'm always helping someone who's just starting answering questions, channeling them into right direction.
And I doing joint ventures with a few investors who probably don't have enough experience or cannot find the funding because to make a deal happen in real estate, it's not enough to make a good offer, but it's important to be able to pay the seller.
So I have pretty good skills in finding funding for the deals and works together.
[00:09:59] Speaker A: And would you say that your ability to find these like the right property Is innate? Is it a gift or is there a process?
How does that work? And how can others be able to learn to identify better properties that make sense for their business?
[00:10:19] Speaker B: Finding properties is a process.
Everybody can do that and there are multiple ways to do that. For those who have more time and less money, for those who have more money and less time, like any marketing strategy works, you just need to be consistent.
And the gift I have, I'm very creative. I have master's degree. I used to be competitive chess player.
So numbers and structuring deals comes naturally to me.
There are a lot of unexpected surprises almost in every real estate transaction. But again, my previous background working in production support teams taught me well to act, you know, well in crisis actually.
I love to be challenged. I love the pressure and I'm not afraid of that. But finding deals is a process. It's an easy piece. But then it's important to learn how to analyze deals and how to talk to the sellers and also important to learn something about construction. I'm doing fix and flow lives, so I already understand a lot about the house. But still like for, for every important deal, I hire more professional person who can provide a detailed estimate about issues we can discover in this house.
[00:11:45] Speaker A: I see.
[00:11:45] Speaker B: So it's a mix. Like you definitely need to learn some things and you need to build a team. Real estate, it's a people business relationship. It's of kind connections and it's reliant to other on your team.
[00:12:00] Speaker A: I believe that there's a lot of sales, a lot of communication as you mentioned, relationship building when it comes to real estate. And again, I, I enjoy the beauty of, you know, reassessing career with my daughter who is asking herself those same questions. For me, I have chose something a little bit more insulated that doesn't require so much, so much that real estate requires. So with that being said, I would love to know a little bit more about your typical clients and how do you meet them, where they are and what are some misconceptions around the cash sale buying process.
[00:12:39] Speaker B: Excellent, excellent questions. Thank you, Janetta. Well, first of all, I'm excited for your daughter.
I really hope that my two sons eventually will come along.
For now we're not ready yet.
But I am really excited for every young person who is starting. I wish to start a little bit earlier.
Okay, next question. What kind of clients and where I meet them?
Well, we have usually two types of clients.
One type is regular people who find themselves in different situation where they need to sell warehouses either fast or we Want to get, you know, quick cash offer and don't deal with multiple showings, traditional agents, et cetera, et cetera.
Another type are investors who either restructuring their portfolios and let's say they're selling single family homes in order to move into multifamily or what we call tired landlords or retiring landlords, basically people who want to sell their rental properties and switch to something else or simply retire and enjoy their life.
And both of those types of clients can be either in town or out of town.
So there are two different ways. If the owner of a property is in town, then after initial first phone conversation, we schedule an in person meeting in the at the property.
That's where I typically meet with the clients. So I meet with them at their properties, I walk the property, I take bunch of pictures and videos, obviously I have a conversation. I always try to understand, understand the situation and how we can help because sometimes it's not only, you know, buying the house, but there are some things around. Just recently I had one of the best deals and at the same time we literally mean my JV partner, we helped the seller to buy tickets to Thailand to payment for facility in Thailand because after she got the money she went for three months to Thailand to work on her mental health. She was in bad health and she didn't have a large mortgage. But she was in prayer for a closure because she stopped making payments. And we literally went above and beyond to make sure she can start her life again. Fresh start, new page in the Thailand and everywhere. And we were driving her to title company to bank to notary.
So it's not just straightforward transaction.
Do you answer what is cash sale? Yeah, I think unfortunately there is a misconception among a lot of people that cash buyers always make low ball offers.
And I can assure you honest people don't do that.
[00:15:53] Speaker A: Mm.
[00:15:54] Speaker B: Obviously we make offer the way to make money for us. But we provide full disclosure why we are making this offer. We compare the market prices, we incorporate the cost of repairs, we incorporate the holding cost and of course we factor our profit because we are not charity. We also need to pay our bills.
But interesting or not, in many situations the money the seller gets from, you know, an honest cash buyer, they sometimes can be even higher.
When a person chooses to work with traditional real estate agent, and mainly because during traditional real estate transaction the seller is paying commissions.
And even though it is allowed not to pay commissions still to make a sale, it's highly recommended to offer commissions for both agents when the seller typically pays his Own closing cost while in cash sale, we cover everything like we cover closing costs. We work with title.
And when in many, many cases, traditional agents highly recommend to put some money into house before listing it because to get top value you need to have nice house. Especially now the real estate market condition changed like a couple of years ago, any house would sell regardless if it's updated, clean up or not. Houses were flying off the shelves with multiple offers over asking. Now the situation changed. Houses are sitting on market a little bit longer.
Nicely updated houses in desirable areas still flying off the shelves with multiple offers, but not with 30 multiple offers, but probably with, you know, five, five offers. But again to bring it to that level, it's the whole process. You need to do a renovation.
And usually people don't have, you know, contractors at their short dial and anyone they find in many cases very pricey.
So by the time they go this, you know, rehab work, they spend more time than investor can spend. So it adds up on holding cost. The prices are very high and they don't get, it's not, it doesn't work the way you put you know, 20,000 in rehab and you guarantee get 30 in return. No, sometimes you put 20,000 in rehab only to get extra $10 on sale price. And if you're not an expert, you have no idea about that. And agents also don't know that. They just recommend you to do everything. And in the end you can't up pockets in net less if you went with, you know, cash buyer. But, but of course you need to make sure you, you have the honest cash buyer because full disclosure, there are people who do lowball offers. There are people, unfortunately, and I'm very upset about it, who take advantage of sellers in distressed situations. And it breaks my heart when I hear their stories.
[00:19:18] Speaker A: What are some questions that a seller can ask to, to better vet any cash offers?
[00:19:26] Speaker B: I guess we need to make sure that as I said, the buyer provides explanation about the price, not, you know, pulls it out of somewhere without explanation.
I would say have at least another cash buyer make an offer. Okay, because, because believe me, people who are in the business of taking advantage of others, they are very well prepared. They will answer all the questions and it's very hard to understand.
So the best way is to get at least two cash offers and compare, see what's the best. If you have some real estate agent or investor in your circle, just ask their opinion to run some numbers.
I am speaking about con artists because I know it firsthand.
Someone scammed me for six figures And I started. It didn't stop me, but I learned my lesson. And the person was presented all kind of credentials.
She and her husband run a church.
Oh. And she was a part of my pretty expensive, you know, mentorship group. So I would never, ever assume that.
[00:20:53] Speaker A: Unfortunately, our best lessons are also the most expensive.
So I totally understand that. And it sounds like you have earned your way through learning and experience to be an expert in this space. So as you come, think about the future goals for your business.
What's on the horizon?
[00:21:13] Speaker B: Well, on the horizon, I'm building my empire. Yes, I want to leave legacy for my kids. And at the same time, I do want to help as many people to become homeowners.
Because, yes, I buy and sell houses and I do fix and flips, but the strategy I'm most passionate about is providing homes on seller financing. So people who cannot qualify for traditional mortgages and sometimes they're not even qualified for good places to rent because of some, you know, background credit scores. But, you know, life can happen to anyone. Yep.
You're not guarantee. I also went from some, you know, hardships. So helping as many people as I can through real estate and building legacy for my kids, that's my goal within next five years, I think.
[00:22:08] Speaker A: I love that. And before we go, tell me and tell us, what is your favorite thing about St. Louis?
[00:22:18] Speaker B: Oh, well, I love suburbs.
[00:22:20] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:22:21] Speaker B: I love space backyards. I love my bonfire.
And I really enjoyed. Out of three countries, I lived prominently.
United States is my favorite one. And I arrived to St. Louis right away. So I traveled, obviously. But I think the way of living in St. Louis is super nice. There is nice balance between even prices for real estate, you know, level of life you can provide for you and your children.
There are a lot of attractions. I need to use them more.
And you can always travel outside. But no, it's perfect for families. And I have two teenage boys.
So St. Louis is a great place.
[00:23:10] Speaker A: Obviously, there's the arch. I've been inside the arch. And I actually told a friend before that you can go inside. And I don't think some people know that.
And I have been in there one time as a smaller person, as a child. I do not want to go inside the arch again because.
[00:23:28] Speaker B: Oh, you do? What's funny?
Well, it's not something I would recommend, but just to put a V. But actually, yes, I've been in that area just this weekend on the real estate conference. And yes, St. Louis now has a new aquarium and Union Station and they built like really nice place For. For family fun.
[00:23:52] Speaker A: Yes. And the zoo. The St. Louis Zoo is.
[00:23:55] Speaker B: Oh, that's the best. Yeah.
[00:23:56] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:23:58] Speaker B: Botanical garden. Yeah. There are a lot of, you know, green parks in St. Louis, in addition to. To zoo and botanical garden. Yeah.
[00:24:06] Speaker A: Yes. Yes.
[00:24:08] Speaker B: So my favorite memories, baseball stadium and soccer stadium, which was built recently. So I'm not a fan of sports, but a lot of people come to games. Oh, and the hockey stadium. Yeah, we have it all.
[00:24:21] Speaker A: See? Yeah.
Big Cardinals fans in my family. So I'm in Atlanta. I'm a Braves fan. I grew up as a Tigers fan, so I'm split between a couple of teams there. But the Cardinals has a special place with my family, so St. Louis is just always going to be a cool place.
[00:24:39] Speaker B: Yeah. Oh, and we have best chess club in the country.
[00:24:43] Speaker A: Wow. I didn't know that.
[00:24:45] Speaker B: That's cool. And it took me a few years to discover it.
Someone actually from Russia told me, you're in St. Louis. We have a best chess club, and. Yeah.
[00:24:55] Speaker A: Wonderful.
[00:24:56] Speaker B: We do.
[00:24:57] Speaker A: Well, before we go, is there anything else you want to leave us with today? Any last words of advice about what you do and what you aspire to do in the future?
[00:25:09] Speaker B: Well, I think I want to provide some general advice. I truly believe that, especially in the United States, a person can achieve any material dream they set their mind on, like, don't be afraid. Just learn and take action. And everything is possible.
And the earlier you start, the better.
So I'm excited for your daughter again. I'm so happy to hear that.
[00:25:35] Speaker A: Awesome. Well, thank you. I'm excited for you. I'm excited for her. I'm excited for us because, as you said, anything that you put your mind to in this space and any space can make your dreams a reality. So it is always refreshing to share that energy with someone else who really believes that and makes that a part of their work. And it looks like you do that and have done that at Trio Realty. So congratulations to you for everything that you've done, and congrats in the future for what you will do.
[00:26:04] Speaker B: Thank you, Zaneta. I appreciate that. It was fun.
[00:26:08] Speaker A: This was wonderful. Thank you so much. This has been another episode of Unscripted SEO. I'm with Tatiana Zagarovsky, and we are talking real estate. Thank you so much.
