Guest Speaker: Gene Guarino
Gene Guarino is President of Residential Assisted Living Academy™ in Phoenix, AZ and has over 30 years of experience in real estate investing and business. Today, he is focused on just one thing – investing in the mega trend of senior assisted housing. Having trained tens of thousands of investor/entrepreneurs over the past 25 years, he now specializes in helping others take advantage of this huge opportunity. Gene is also a Certified Financial Planner (CFP) in the U.S. and Australia. Since 1976, he has owned and operated 16 businesses and been an angel investor in numerous others. He has written four books, hosted two radio shows and has spoken to more than 250,000 people in four countries since 1990. His goal is to help people by training investor/entrepreneurs how to, in his words, “do good and do well.”
What you’ll learn in this episode:
*About Gene’s early days as a musician and how his real estate career grew out of his time at a music school/recording studio/small record label that was housed in a terrible property
*How he started his career doing “fix and flip and hold” with small single family apartments.
*The definition of residential assisted living: single family home residential neighborhood assisted living, where there are caregivers 24/7.
*How he got into the assisted living niche six years ago. Contributing factors were the market crashing in his home state of Arizona and his mother getting to the age where she needed excellent care in a residential setting
*Breaking investments down into real estate and business operations, and why he engages in both (but you don’t have to)
*How having the right home in the right area with the right renovations can result in premium rents
*How to find qualified people to operate the homes, and why the business end of things is where you make the real money
*24 hour care means people: the residents, their families, the caregivers, the manager. The manager hires the caregivers who take care of the residents and interfaces with the families
*How the numbers break down: the average private room in is assisted living is $4000 a month, and you’ll typically have 10-16 or more people in that single family home. Ten people, five bedrooms, two people in a room…ten people times $4000 is $40,000 potential gross income
*Further crunching numbers: By the time you’re done with expenses, you are looking at netting somewhere between 20 and 30 percent of the gross income each month – i.e. $10-12,000 in profit
*Why he (and his students) don’t focus on state or federal funds (poor profit margins) and work exclusively with clients who pay out of their own assets (Social Security, pension plan, liquidation, of home, IRA and money from children).
*Why most people choose the “hands off” approach and let others run the homes – and why it makes sense for those who choose that to have their homes anywhere but their own backyard
*Various local restrictions that may pop up, and how the Fair Housing Act works in an investor’s favor
*How its possible for small apartment owners to convert some apartments to assisting living spaces, but why he prefers to focus on single family home residences.
*The bottom line: this is a great time to invest in senior housing and “taking advantage of the silver tsunami that’s coming our way”
*Why he is personally “hands off” and teaches investments this way, but says any investor can be as “hands on” as they want
*The hierarchy: he has an entity that owns the real estate and one that owns the business. He has a manager who pretty much takes care of everything down from there. His job is to “manage the manager.”
*Most states have state minimums: an 1800 square foot house can have 10 residents in it for assisted living on a minimum required space basis. Yet he chooses to invest in nicer homes that are in upscale areas of 5-6,000 square feet
*His rule of thumb: 300 square feet per resident of living space is very comfortable
*The varying visions of students, from owning a “three pack” of homes within a 20-30 minute radius to owning hundreds – and exiting whenever they like. That can involve selling just the business and leasing the real estate back to them or selling just the real estate and continuing to operate the business
*About students who buy existing homes to convert into assisted living facilities, and others who buy land (up to 20 acres) and build them from scratch
*Details about his RAL (Residential Assisted Living) Academy, the “matchmaking” that goes on, and the basic population math behind the opportunity to invest.
*The extraordinary income streams that can result from owning such a piece of real estate
*Good news: To invest in these, you don’t need any medical background! Students range from hedge fund managers and those who own thousands of units to kids just out of high school eager to launch their careers as investors.
*Why it’s a great fit for those with some real estate investing background and those who have an inclination to help people, and why this will be a solid investment opportunity for the next 20 years.
*His motto: “To do good and do well. Do well means to make a lot of money. To do good means doing it for your family, for your community, something you are going to leave behind. I want everyone to find their passion.”
Resources:
Residential Assisted Living Academy Homepage
Grab a FREE Copy of Lance’s Best Selling Book “How to Make Big Money in Small Apartments” Here.