Pre-Construction Success Story

Jason Boccinfuso
 
Alfonso: Jason's going to get into his story, but a couple of quick facts with Jason. He was the youngest police officer at 19 years old in the Durham region. By 23, he had reached substantial success. You heard a little bit of him from before and some of the knowledge that he's got. The inside info. I think that was the hot tip tonight, the founder club. That's pretty cool.

We heard a little bit about where you are today, but we want to know a little bit of where you were a few years ago and how you got to where you are today. Jason, thank you so much for being an honored member of the REITE club. You've helped so many of our community. I'll pass the stage to you for your success story Jason.

Jason: Thanks very much. I never really thought of myself as an investor and sometimes still don't. But I guess I am biting. I grew up without very many resources, financial resources that people in my family never owned any houses. We rented our properties. Didn't have any homeownership in the family and a great family, but we're not blessed with any economic means and had enough food on the table, but not much. And a great upbringing, but just didn't live the life that I've achieved now.

And just never really thought of myself as a professional investor and really have a simple story. I got hired at 19 years old as a police officer, which was pretty cool. I remember running around the streets. Police in the streets had a guy and I had all this responsibility. Getting called to handle some pretty serious situations. And then on my days off, we work four on four. My platoon would get on a plane and go to Vegas for four days that I couldn't go because I was only 19 and you gotta be 21 to go and hang out at all those cool spots in Vegas. I couldn't have a beer in the US with my platoon mates when they traveled down to the US. It was okay to police the streets.

19 years old started policing. And my third week on the job, I remember I got called into my sergeant's office. And I don't know for people that are familiar with policing or the military. It's a pretty big rank and file system. You don't typically get called into a superior officer's office for a good reason.

I'm thinking I'm great. I'm being fired. I don't know what I did, but here I am getting called into the sergeant's office. My third week here, I'm going to have to look for a job or go to university where I should be where all my buddies are right now. And he says, hey kid, what are you doing with all your money?

Spending it at the bar with my buddies on my days off while everyone else flies to the states now. And it's true. And he says you should invest in real estate. And I'm like what does that mean? He says you should invest in buying a property and rent it out to people. And then you can make money. Oh, why would I buy a property for somebody else to live in? When I live in my parents' basement of my own rental, like, why wouldn't I buy a house for myself? He said that's called investing. I'm like, okay. Here's how simple it is for me. I'm 19, I'm a police officer.

When a superior officer says something to you, when they suggest something. It's not really a suggestion, like it easily in the military and police. And you just say, yes, sir. I'm like, all right, sounds good to me. What the heck do I know about investing, but the superior officer's telling me and he's been doing it for awhile.

I don't have any money. I already know much, I was making like 38 grand a year. You don't kid rich at 19, so he takes me out on the days off and we go shopping for houses and and I'm looking around and at the time you guys remember banks were doing no money down mortgages, which is great, cause I didn't have any money.

It was perfect. He shows me around and says, what house do you want to buy? And I'm like how the heck do I know. I said you're the real estate guy. You tell me what house I should buy. He did and I bought one and put tenants in there and I was like this is interesting. I took the first and last month rent from my tenant and was able to utilize that to close on the property because all I needed was not much. It wasn't much to close on. We kind of land transfer tax, fees, so anyways, I'm like that's fine. Let's do it again.

I went and bought another one and I dunno. And then another one anyways, to speed the story up, I ended up with 150 houses in my first three years. Okay. I'm going to think back now and go, that's crazy. Like what to put all the risks, like what could happen if this or that? And I'm like, okay, first of all, let's put it into my perspective. I got no money to begin with. I grew up poor. I have a government back job. That's recession proof. What could go wrong here? Who cares? If anything goes wrong, I'm just back in the same place I was before. This is really easy.

I'm like, okay I don't really know what to do here. I've got all these properties. I get a property management company that's managing them all and just speaking the story up. And then I'm like, okay I took a text of advice from my police Sergeant, but it's I've outgrown him now, right? Like I have more real estate than he has. I'm like, Where else can I take advice from, I'm like I got it the monopoly guy, I love monopoly. Everyone loves monopoly. I'm going to take a tip from the monopoly guy. 

What do you do? Monopoly to win the game? You trade in four houses and you buy a building. All right. Seemed logical enough to me and monopoly. I started selling four houses and buying a building, selling four houses by building. And I'm like, wow, this is cool. Got all kinds of buildings all over the place. How do these still buildings get all this money coming in? I'm like 23 at the time, and I'm looking there, I'm going, this is crazy.

I'm making as much money in a month as I do in a whole year policing. And I don't have to worry about getting shot at as much. That's when I'm like, okay this makes sense. I started thinking about how to transition and how I transitioned out as I go. Okay here's how much money do I make an hour right now?

Figured it all out. How much money does the chief of police make per hour started figuring all that out. I'm like, how do I create a real estate portfolio that pays me the same amount of money? The chief of police makes per hour, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year, and came up with the number that hit that target.

I love policing. I still do it. If I could do it one day a month as a volunteer, I would do it for free. But the reality is I didn't have time to go to work anymore. I packed it up now, before I pack it and I get my real estate license. Why not go and sell and buy real estate, but I get my real estate license so I can go and do my own deals because I'm sick and tired of waiting for agents to show me properties. I got my license, started doing my deals. Then what happens to everybody in the police department? They don't trust many people outside the circle, outside the thin blue line. Hey, can you show me how to do that? And I'm like yeah, sure, no problem.

I started showing other people that creates a big following right now. Now you see how the wheels are turning here. What happens is, I get bored easily and I follow a simple rule. I just follow the experts. I don't get in my own way. If there's something that I'm going to try and accomplish, I don't try and think my way through it.

I just found somebody who's done what I want to do. I copy the living hell out of them. Just copy them like crazy. I'm like, okay, this is boring and all just owning houses and apartment buildings. I want to do more. I'm like, I don't know, start buying like, where do you buy land? I looked around and I'm like where's the government investing in land while they're building train stations, they're building highways. I'm just going to buy land on the way.

And then what's going to happen is they're going to have to knock on my door and expropriate it. Or they're got the builders and developers building and developing all along those ways. We've heard that from other panelists tonight, where do you invest? You invest in the way of real estate. Here's how it works, Durham region, right? Pickering Ajax would be Oshawa Curtis Bowmanville, New Castle, 407 is coming across.

That's a big deal. It means I got to buy stuff in the way of the 407. I want to be a nuisance. I bought a 407. I buy all along the 407 and what happens? I'm getting knocked on the door. My piece of land for a million dollars door knocks. Mr. Developer guy. Hey, a piece of land. You got your students on it. Yeah, sure. It's 10 million. Okay, great. Awesome 10x return on your money. So, I did a bunch of land deals like that, buying in the way of development by simply just looking at where the government's making investment in infrastructure and racing to put my money there before anyone else does.

That's it, a simple strategy. It's not, I'm an out of genius. I just follow what the government's doing. Okay. It's one of the only times that it's actually beneficial where your relationship with the government is actually prosperous because normally they're trying to take money from me all the time. This is actually one where you can get some back, just follow where they're headed with infrastructure. And then race to get there first to race.

I turned around and instead of selling land to developers, because I'm like, if they're willing to pay me 10 times more for land than what I paid for it, something's up here. Gotta be something in it for them. They're not in the business of losing money. Instead of selling to developers, I started partnering with them. Big company comes on, Hey man, you got some land here. Want to do it? I'm like, yeah, it's not for sale. I think it is not really, but here's what we'll do. Let's partner together. Let's joint venture the deal together.

Here's what happens. You come in to buy. Most of the deal, I'll be a minority shareholder in the company, or joint venture agreement. Lawyers are a lot smarter than me to do all that stuff. Here's what happens with that, is that I go to school on this. Imagine going to law school to become a lawyer, imagine going to accounting school to get your CPA or CGA, whatever the designation is. Okay, here's what I did. I got the best free education in the world. I partnered with the biggest builders and developers in the Greater Toronto Area, the country for that matter.

Instead of selling the land out to them, I've stayed for a small position on one rule only. My rule is, I get to go to and participate actively in every single aspect of this deal. Every single aspect of the deal. Meaning if you have an internal planning session to talk about what you want to do with the land, I'm at the table.

If you go meet with your lawyer on how to structure a pre-construction agreement, I'm at the table. And it's amazing. They're like, yeah. Okay, sure. That's fine, no problem. Just come along. I don't get in the way, right? Like I'm not the guy at the table going, hey, I think you should do it this way because I'm smart enough to know.

I know the least amount in the room, which means I need to be quiet. When I can watch and learn, so if I'm doing that, here's how it goes. I'm watching and getting the best education from the best developers on this planet, front row seat. I'm in the room with them behind the scenes access. We talked about how do we get access to pre-construction opportunities?

They're all my buddies. That's how I got pretty good access to pre-construction. They're all my buddies. I pick up the phone and I text them, Hey, Jack, when do you want you to another site? Jack Eisenberger from Field Gate. Great guy. Hey Jack, what are you going on? Oh, you're on the property, aren't here? Yeah. Hey, can I take a bunch of them? Yeah, sure, man. Whatever, come on by, you do all this stuff with all the top guys in the deal at some point. So, anyways, this is all just coming from real life experiences. Like not theory, like hazy, here's a theory what you should do. No, it's just very practical stuff.

I'm like, I don't know anywhere near the amount of stuff those guys do. I'm just going to listen to them. And I'm going to come along for the ride. That's how I ended up doing that now. Look, I'm not 40 yet. But I've been retired for quite some time from the police department and not because I'm a genius, it's actually, because it's actually the opposite.

Actually, I didn't get in my own way. See, I didn't try and think of solutions on how to build wealth in real estate. I just follow people that know how to build wealth in real estate and copy the hell out of what they do. That's where I find a lot of people get in their own way. They're like before I do that, I need to learn everything about it. Imagine if I said to Shawn, by the way, Shawn, great presentation today, man, I'm going to follow up with you after. Imagine I said this deal here, if I get a contract for a pre-construction and I go before I decide if I'm going to move forward on this deal.

I'm going to go to law school for four years and become an expert in pre-construction. And then only after that, will I start to read through this contract? No, I'm just going to be like, Hey Shawn, you're the expert. Hey dude, I'm just flipping over a contract and you deal with this. As we go through that currently right now I have over 2 million square feet under construction. I hope I have over $1 billion with a B in the pipeline of projects that I either own personally or in partnership with somebody. Okay. And I did that just simply by copying the people that are successful.

The question is, wherever I am in the stage, if I want to build $50,000, $100,000, $200,000, $500,000 or I want to develop half of the GTA. Here's what I need to do, whatever it is I want to do whatever my goal is. I need to seek out the experts around me, like part of this club here. Okay. And just follow them in whatever direction it is you want to go. There's some experts here. I take advice from people in this club on a regular basis. It's great and it's amazing.

That's my story. It's just straightforward. I'm a regular. And I don't consider myself this grandiose investor. It just happened to me because I followed the principles of following those who are doing things that I wanted to do. And just by learning from the best of not getting in my own way, not creating stories and excuses in my own head as to why I can't do things.

Francois: That's amazing. Thank you so much for sharing your story. I was just reading the comments and wow. Everybody's telling amazing stories, so inspirational, just superb. And it's so great to hear about a success story. That's why we want it to feed.