[00:00:01] Speaker A: You're listening to PTC point of view, brought to you by preferred trust Company, the preferred custodian for all alternative investments. We're here to provide retirement savers like you with the tools you need to succeed. Need a confidence boost when it comes to investing outside of the stock market? Do you want the power to build a tax sheltered nest egg that will last through your golden years? You've come to the right place. Turn up your speakers and turn off cruise control because we're taking you on the alternate route to investing with your IRA.
[00:00:38] Speaker B: Welcome back to another episode of PTC Point of View. We are so excited to be here today. In the studio today, joining us is Carrie Cook, CEO of Preferred trust Company and Victor Bell. Victor is the founder and CEO of Bell Capital. Bell Capital acquires and manages real estate properties with a focus on both near term income generation and long term value creation. Victor created Bell Capital to provide everyday investors access to institutional level real estate deals in great markets that are normally reserved for only larger investors. So a little bit about Victor Bell. He has transacted over $59 million in real estate transactions in seven different states. He's also known as one of Amazon's number one best selling authors. He's a real estate trainer, a top speaker on leadership, real estate, entrepreneurship, marketing and finance. Victor has been investing in multifamily real estate since the mid 1990s. So we are so excited to have him on the show today. Everyone, please, please welcome Kerry and Victor. Thank you for being here today.
[00:01:57] Speaker C: Thank you so much for having me.
[00:01:58] Speaker D: So tell me a little bit about, let's start with the company.
[00:02:01] Speaker C: Sure.
[00:02:02] Speaker D: We're going to start with the company and then we're going to go dive into the person. How about that?
[00:02:06] Speaker C: That's perfect for me.
[00:02:07] Speaker D: All right, so tell me about Bell Capital. When did it start?
What are you doing with the company? Where's the company going? Kind of give me an idea.
[00:02:15] Speaker C: Sure. So I set up Bell Capital a couple of years ago after we left Hawaii. And I started looking at opportunities and stuff like that in San Diego county because again, we sold our last apartment buildings and we packed everything. We moved there, moved my family there.
And after I started looking at a few deals, I started realizing the size of deals that were normal for me to look at in Hawaii. You know, they were everywhere in California. But I was like, I need to go a little bit bigger. It makes no sense to do what I had already done. You know, I like to, I'm a growth person. Like, I like stretching myself, my abilities. So after talking to a few of my investors about some deals that I was like, hey, these are great deals. These are opportunities. I started realizing, like, they were like, yeah, you know, we need to get, you know, a little bit better returns. We need to go a little bit less. We need to get better pricing. I was like, you know, I don't think the pricing and the problems, the pricing or the properties of the problem anymore. I think I've just kind of timed out my investors. I think, you know, there's. There's a time for re education. There's an expansion in the market. I want to go bigger. And I just saw the need for it. So I kind of was like, all right, well, first I need to learn how to build an organization. And then after I went on that kind of journey, I was like, next, I need to learn how, you know, really understand the capital side of raising money. Not just, you know, one off investors or a couple of investors, but really understand what was happening, because I'm typically a consumer of capital in real estate, and that was the shift. That's what really did it for me. And unlike other people, I.
I eat my own dog food. I kind of a hands on guy. So I was like, okay, how much does that cost? It was literally turned into, how much does that cost? And people were trying to, you know, hey, you can do it this way. You can set up the company like this. I was like, okay, you know what? Here's what I want. I found someone to model, and I was like, I want what they have, and I want to work my way up to that, even if it takes 2030 years, because I think long term, and that's how I started Bell Capital.
[00:04:04] Speaker D: Okay, what is Bell Capital investing in? You set up a fund? Yes, I did. And so you are looking for the capital fundraising from investors. What is the structure of the fund? What are you investing in? How long are you investing in it?
What's the timeframe associated with.
[00:04:24] Speaker C: Great question. Great question. So right now, we're focused on multifamily properties, only 80 to 120 units. But that's kind of changed. It's kind of looking at a lot bigger properties now. The time frame for the fund is it's a reg a fund. I'm sorry? It's a reg D fund.
Fix my head to go reg a next right. That's a regular growth. Yeah, it's already there. So it's a reg d fund. So it's accredited only. It's a $50 million fund. So that's the target. We've circled about seven or so, and we're going to continue on with that path.
[00:04:54] Speaker D: Okay.
[00:04:54] Speaker C: So with this fund, we intend to get two properties with the size that we're looking at, because we think 50 million, roughly, we're going to get about $150 million worth of asset in that fund, and then we're going to be setting up to fund two, which we've discussed it. I want to move my way into a reg a fund so I can actually have the non accredited and accredited associated with that.
[00:05:13] Speaker D: So let's talk about these investments.
[00:05:15] Speaker C: Sure.
[00:05:16] Speaker D: You're talking about multifamily. Are these existing structures or are you ground up?
[00:05:21] Speaker C: Yes. No, I'm definitely not a builder guy.
[00:05:25] Speaker D: There's a lot of headache in that.
[00:05:27] Speaker C: Yeah. You know, I have some friends that are in the kind of small development stuff. When I say small, they're building like 5100 homes, things like that. And I. If I can just be. I just don't like to wait that long for my money. Yeah, I like cash flow. I don't want the headaches, you know, my investors don't like headaches. You know, anybody I've worked with in the past? I actually like nice deals.
I'm not a heavy value add player. I'm more of a location guy. So I guess in the fund space, it's more core plus type stuff where it's really nice, very light value add. We can raise rents and refinance our capital out, pay my investors back, and then we stay in the. We stay in that asset for seven to ten years with the investor. We don't, we don't kick them out after. That's how I've always done all my deals.
[00:06:11] Speaker D: How do you find these deals?
[00:06:12] Speaker C: Brokers.
[00:06:13] Speaker D: Brokers.
[00:06:14] Speaker C: Brokers. Yeah. The type of deals that we're looking for. Their brokers. I do a lot of snooping, so, I mean, naturally, especially in San Diego county, there's not a lot of transactions that are, you know, 100, you know, to 300 units.
[00:06:27] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:06:27] Speaker C: So because of it, it's easy to kind of track the market. You know, when I have brokers who have like a, you know, costar list, things like that, you know, on the timelines, especially that. I understand how funds work now. You know, they have a timeline. It's like three years, five years, ten years, whatever, you know, we just start looking. Who bought what, what are the assets, who controls. There's only five players in the market. So to be able to reach out to their acquisition disposition, you know, their CFO, like, talk to them. Hey, what do you have coming up, as you know, if you got an offer, would you be interested? Do you have a broker you work with? We work with this broker. We can definitely be interested in sending over something, if that makes sense, or give us a time. We'll follow up. So it isn't that, you know, I do get brokers to send us deals. So I underwrite a lot of deals. You know, between me and my team, we even, since we've been here visiting, you know, we've taken a look at three, three properties, you know, probably total in about a thousand units. Just doing that and making broker connections here. Even though we're not going to invest in this market currently. Yeah, I want to get to know.
[00:07:22] Speaker D: Anybody who controls those when opportunity strikes. Yeah, you've got to be ready for sure. You've got to be ready for that. Now, as you're acquiring these multifamily properties, are the tenants already in place? Are you finding that the occupancy rates are low? High.
How are you purchasing?
[00:07:39] Speaker C: No, they're already occupied. But the market occupancy for California is 97%, so it's typically there. And all these properties are nicer. They're newer, they're in better locations because again, a lot of the stuff I'm looking at, their cash flow place, not huge cash flow because the type of markets, you know, low cap rate markets, but I understand low cap rate markets because, you know, I was kind of born and bred in Hawaii, which is a very similar market. Like, it's tight, tight barriers to entries, low cap rates, and very tight rental markets. And that's the game. So, yeah, so everything is already existing, fully occupied, typically with a waiting list. But we know that going into the door, that's, that's, that's the purpose of it.
[00:08:23] Speaker D: When you acquire these properties, do you guys also own or manage on the property management side or is that outsourced?
[00:08:29] Speaker C: It's outsourced. Right. Right now we've kind of connected with Graystar and companies like that for the size of deals that we're looking at, and then also some other local management companies as a part of our team. So we're not going to be property managers. We're true investors.
[00:08:44] Speaker D: And then holding the property for a period of time and then refinancing it out.
[00:08:48] Speaker C: Yeah, our fund is set up for seven to ten years, but typically the goal is to be able to refinance after three to five years if we can stabilize, if the property is matured by that time.
[00:08:56] Speaker D: Yeah, yeah, of course. Now how do investors make money so they invest in this fund. What does it look like for an investor?
[00:09:04] Speaker C: The way that I did my fund was a little different. So we do an 80 20 split to investors. So 80% to them, 20% to us. And initially, when I set up the fund, I was doing what everyone else did, because, again, just seemed like the way to do it. And I watched a lot of people put a news from the net, because I'm an investor first, I'm a real estate guy first, I'm a deal guy. And I watched a lot of my buddies that had partners that were underwater with some investors because they had this preferred, they had a preferred turn. We get over the top. So I went back and amended our fund, and I took away our preferred turn because we're like, hey, the security that the, you know, the GP, the general partner is promising, they're going to be kind of caught in the snare here. And that's why a lot of deals went under. You know, we were talking about, you know, being a part of different market cycles. And I was young, so I didn't understand what the market cycles were first and then second. I didn't understand why they existed. So when I understood the second piece, why they existed, I was like, it wasn't that they were bad properties. It was that people over promised the banks, they over promised their investors there was no money left. So they started flipping keys back. So I was like, you know, I. If this is a long play for me, which it is, you know, I'm a long thinker. So I think 20, 30, 50 years down the line, whether I'm still here or not, I felt like our structure is equally yoked now because now I'm on the same side as my investors. Look, you're getting 80% of the first dollar made. We're taking 20. We're not doing this for the acquisition fee and the management fee anymore. Like, we're now equally yoked. You know, the banks aren't promising, you know, 710, 20. Well, they are now, but times have changed. Times have changed, but that's not going to last long. And why would you want a partner who can't eat at some point? That was the big discrepancy. I talked to a lot of bigger investors who were investing. I was like, hey, what do you feel I can go wrong? And they were like, well, we worried about the general partner stealing. You know, they didn't necessarily mean stealing money. They thought they. They were talking about stealing time. Like they had to go on to other projects with other investors because they had backed themselves up into a corner.
[00:11:08] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:11:08] Speaker C: And I was like, I don't want to be in that situation, so I would rather give away more and be equal to my investors. So, you know, some people, they have a problem with that. They're like, oh, we got to get, and I was like, well, we're not getting deals that are high risk. So, yeah, I'm sure if you're, you know, in the middle of nowhere, you need some type of thing to, whereas if you get trapped in a down cycle, you got to get some high return on your money. But we're talking about a city that is never going away. That city has been around for hundreds of years. It's going to be around another one in a place where you. Oceans on one side, mountains on the other, and the government's stopping you from doing anything about it.
[00:11:45] Speaker D: Yeah, exactly.
[00:11:46] Speaker C: You know what, what better place to be?
[00:11:48] Speaker D: Exactly. So let's talk about the fear out there. We have, you know, everybody's hearing about the recession and it's going to happen. When's it going to happen? Are we already in the cycle? We all have our opinions on that. For sure.
[00:12:00] Speaker C: For sure.
[00:12:00] Speaker D: So I won't force my opinion on you, but where do you think your asset class is going to fall when it comes to, you know, a recession proof, you know, investment, if you will? Now, we're not miracle workers. I'm claiming that you are. But this particular segment is interesting to me because with recession, you know, if people have to pull back and move out of their homes, what are they going to naturally do?
[00:12:26] Speaker C: Yeah, they're going to rent.
[00:12:27] Speaker D: They're going to rent. And so is that why you've moved towards or into multifamily from single family?
[00:12:34] Speaker C: I think like everyone else who started off in the residential space buying properties and selling them or holding them or renting them, it was a natural progression for me. I always, you know, just wanted those type of you drive by, you're like, oh, man, who owns that? You know, I would love to own that one day. So I think that was more, was more of a goal. You know, I want to get to this place. So as it relates to the recession is concerned or people pulling back or cost, I think that is natural. And I'll just say this as a personal, I'm a renter, so I've never bought my own home. I've owned a lot of real estate. And so again, it's kind of one of those deals where it's like, yeah, you know, I like being able to pick up the phone and call and say, hey, this is broken. Could you fix it? You know, and I'm a good tenant. We pay on time, we do this, we respect the people where we are. So as it relates to people just naturally moving to there, I think that's prominent. I think it makes sense for people to rent a really nice place for the product that people are putting out now.
[00:13:28] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:13:28] Speaker C: As opposed to in the past, you know, now there's swimming pools, gyms, business community centers, zoom rooms.
[00:13:33] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:13:34] Speaker C: All these different amenities that go along.
[00:13:36] Speaker D: Life centers.
[00:13:36] Speaker C: Yeah, for sure. That's a resort. Yeah, I think that alone, that, and I never thought rents would be where they were to, you know, like.
[00:13:44] Speaker D: Yeah, ever.
[00:13:46] Speaker C: So that said, I don't think that's gonna go away. I mean, hell, I mean, I caught an Uber here. So that was rent. You know, we rented a car, we rented a home, like, for an Airbnb. Like, I think that's just a prominent place. And, you know, rather than see them as apartment buildings, I see them as me being in the housing and the rental market.
[00:14:03] Speaker D: Absolutely.
[00:14:04] Speaker C: And as it relates to just sheer supply and demand, you know, with everything, I'm sure that you saw too, Blackstone, all these bigger groups, you know, JPMorgan, they came through and they bought a lot of rentals. So I think that alone is taking away people's ability to just go in and they're gonna sell off all that stuff soon. But it does matter. So that, I think that's big for me as it relates to why that one, you know, and the other side to it too, is if you buy an apartment complex and you rent for twelve months, I can make adjust, I can make adjustments to the upcoming rent, you know, as it adjusts, I can raise the rents as needed. I can hold fast and say, I want to lose these tenants. We can lower the rent if we need to.
[00:14:38] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:14:39] Speaker C: I don't think people in the office, retail warehouse, I've been in all those, all of those different assets too. You don't have that luxury. Three years, five years, ten years, you know, some of red bumps and things like that. If something goes bad for a business that's there and they vacate, here you are sitting on vacancies.
You can't adjust to the inflation and those recession.
[00:14:58] Speaker D: Totally agree things. So we're talking about a reg D, right? So we have a fund here. So as an investor, let's pretend like I'm an investor for just a second and I'm really kind of investing in you.
[00:15:10] Speaker C: Absolutely.
[00:15:11] Speaker D: You are so I understand it's, you know, it's backed by collateral. I get that. But my investment isn't. My investment is in you.
[00:15:18] Speaker C: Absolutely.
[00:15:19] Speaker D: And so tell me a little bit more about you. Why should I trust what you're going to pick is the right investment, that you're going to be able to get in and out of that investment in a timely fashion and be able to pay me what you're hoping to be able to pay me. Tell me a little bit about you.
[00:15:35] Speaker C: Ooh. That's first for the listeners. I will say this, and it turns some people off, but I hate to lose, so I don't like to lose money. I'm not a gambler. I'm very safe. I'm not a massive risk taker. So I literally look at something, and the first thing I'd be like, man, this thing, will this thing lose money? Like, I don't want to be in a situation where I've lost money. And I see every one of my investors is like, if you trust me, that's, that's. I take it as my money as well. And that's the truth. Right. Because if I lose it, I got to pay you back. You know, no matter what my paperwork says, at some point I'm going to do the right thing. So that that's huge for me. That's who I am. So I'm not going to take a risk with your money because I'm the first investor in the fund. I have money in the fund. So that's, you know, that that's huge for me and a lot of people, you know, me saying I don't like to lose, I think it gets mistaken because I am a competitive as well. I like deals and I'm a deal guy. But as an investor, I always want to tell people, like, look, you know what? You have to trust in the person that you're investing in, because there's decisions that need to be made, and first, you want to know whether that person could make them. And the very first decision is what you said. Will he pick the right deal? Will he lose my money? What's his plan? Like, let's say my money gets burnt up in this deal and it goes sideways. Is he even going to mention, is he going to try to pay us back? At any point in time in my life, that's important. I said it earlier, all business is personal. I take everything very personal. This is important to me and my family. And you have a family, so I take your family important as well. So that's huge for me. Sometimes that's not enough. Some people want to see something else, like, yeah, for sure. I have a 20 running track, 20 year run track record to show that I don't have a lot of losses. This will be no different for me. I won't put us in harm's way ever. Okay. Yeah, fair enough.
[00:17:19] Speaker D: It's good to get to know the person behind it. Now, do you have a team behind you?
[00:17:22] Speaker C: I do. I do. You know, I have people. Like Jamie said, we've reached out. You know, like I said, grace Star, that'll be one of our team. We have my advisors on Con Resnick. You know, Mayor Gabe is some of the people that I kind of converse with about the real estate stuff and the taxes and my legal MGO, they're people that. They're a company that we're working with for our auditing and accounting and stuff like that, too. And really more people, too, because noble, Noble street, they're. They're one of the ones we're gonna be looking at for our fund administration stuff and things like that. So I have a lot of people behind me, and again, I'm always hiring investor relations people and our acquisitions people. There's a lot of training involved with them. Right. So, you know, I've done the other way, too, where I've tried to get people who are extremely, you know, they've come from other companies, and here's what we've done. But some of the things that they talk about and they point out, and we've talked about, there's a black and white, then there's the gray. So there is the, you know, the spreadsheet jockeys, or that's all they've ever done. But then we go and we look at a deal, and, oh, we can do this deal. This is great. And I'm like, would you move here? You know, like you're saying we can get, you know, dollar 500 rent bump. I could have all the money in the world, man. And I can't see this happening. So, as it relates to building the team, I do have people on the team, and we're always, if you follow me at all online, we'll always have this promote, hey, investor relations acquisitions team. And I think so we have three people on the team now, so that they're my main people. They're my go tos. Yeah, perfect. So Jamie probably is.
[00:18:49] Speaker D: Shout out to Jamie.
[00:18:51] Speaker C: Jamie, for sure. Jamie, Kayla. Jamie, actually is the one that probably tells me that what I need to hear more so than what I want.
[00:18:59] Speaker D: To hear, gotta have one of those around you.
[00:19:00] Speaker C: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:19:01] Speaker D: They settle you.
[00:19:02] Speaker C: Yeah. You know, Jamie actually expands me.
[00:19:05] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:19:05] Speaker C: Yeah. Because I care so much about. I don't want to make a decision. I won't make a bad decision with people who trust me. Jamie reminds me of what I'm capable of and that I won't. That.
[00:19:15] Speaker D: That you won't put people in harm's way.
[00:19:18] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:19:18] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:19:19] Speaker C: She's the one to be like, victor, why do you still do that? You need to get over that, and you need to do this. And I'm like, okay. So I'm grateful. I'm grateful for her, you know, and also, you know, my wife, Sharon, she's. She's actually. I spend more time with her than anyone else on the planet. So I think as an advisor, because, uh, you know, she's also been a property manager with Lincoln and then Douglas Emmett. She's been on there, and she's been some. On their executive team, stuff like that. So far as some of the properties that they've managed, 1400 units, 350 units, so stuff like that. She's been on their teams. So she's. She's more of the organizational person. I'm the gunslinger, and, you know, she's like, you know, shoot this target.
[00:19:57] Speaker D: Yeah. So that we have to have them.
[00:20:00] Speaker C: Yeah. For sure.
[00:20:00] Speaker D: We have to have those people around us. And now as an investor, how. How do I find out about this investment? Am I going online? Yes. You know, somebody calling me. How do I find out more information about this for sure?
[00:20:11] Speaker C: So it's bell dash capital.com dot, like I said. Actually, when you go there, you know, there's a get started, and then you could go to the investor portal. You know, you don't have to buy anything. You could just see what we're doing that and the other way is, you know, schedule a call, which some, me or somebody from my team will call people. I believe in talking to people. I want to have thousands of investors. But I think a lot of times, you know, I think we're in, we're in an age of investor portals, crowdfunding portals, where people can go there, click a button, and they don't realize that there's somebody else on the other side of that. And I think that's a lot of being missed. So we do call people.
[00:20:43] Speaker D: Yeah, that's being missed a lot.
[00:20:45] Speaker C: Yeah, we do call people. And, you know, to your point, we want to be able to get on the phone, talk to people, and find out. We have a. We have a saying, it takes one bad investor to ruin an investment.
[00:20:55] Speaker D: Agree.
[00:20:56] Speaker C: That doesn't mean they're bad people. But you know, just someone who doesn't understand. If you don't understand, I don't want you investing with us. That means we've done something wrong from explaining it to you or this isn't the right time, you know, and that's just a timing. Yeah, for sure.
[00:21:10] Speaker D: And these reg, to you, like we said before. So it's accredited investors. Do you want to give the description of what a credit investor is?
[00:21:17] Speaker C: Sure.
[00:21:17] Speaker D: What the suitability requirements?
[00:21:18] Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely. So for us, you know, it's, they make 200,000 a year or a combined household income of 300,000 a year or they have a million dollar net worth excluding their primary home.
And now SEC has some other regulations where if you're licensed to take the series six and 63 and a bunch of other stuff that makes you professional. Yeah, for sure. For all you other, you know, smart guys out there, if you have your own fund, yes, you are accredited, but you can only invest in your own fund if you're not accredited outside of your, you know, you just being an owner or operator of that fund.
[00:21:51] Speaker D: Yeah, but you'll talk through that with them on the phone I'm sure.
[00:21:54] Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely.
[00:21:54] Speaker D: Make sure those qualifications are met.
[00:21:56] Speaker C: Yeah, and that's the other reason why we want to do the reg a fund because we do have some people who, you know, I mean no one was accredited in the beginning. You can be 199, we had to start somewhere. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, yeah for sure. The SEC just says, hey look, you know, you understand the risk so you know, but I don't always want to have to say, hey guys, sorry, we don't have anything for you. Keep it, you know, like keep us in mind. So I have a very targeted idea in my mind that I want to.
[00:22:23] Speaker D: Provide that for people in the future. Open it up to middle America for sure. Anybody to know that you can invest in real estate without giving your right and left arm. For sure you could get in a lower barrier to entry and participate in this. That's how people get started and giving them that opportunity to be.
[00:22:41] Speaker C: How are you ever going to get accredited if you can't invest?
[00:22:43] Speaker D: That's right. How am I going to grow my nest egg? So at that point how can I invest? Do you have, is it cash? Is it qualified funds? Is it.
[00:22:52] Speaker C: Yeah, for sure.
[00:22:53] Speaker D: How do you invest with, and you.
[00:22:54] Speaker C: Guys are helping us a lot about this too. Like this is not my area of expertise. So we tell people like, hey, you can invest through your IRA, which is where you all come in to be able to help those people. Primarily now it's more about educating people. Like, you can do your wire, you can come in that way, you can do that. But primarily with us, I'm actually now looking for people who have capital that are sitting in the IRA. It's not doing anything for them. They don't know what it's being invested in anyways. And if they want to move that over to something that we're doing, yeah, I. That's going to be a very hard push for me for the next ten years, you know, because I've talked to too many people that go, oh, yeah, I got money in my IRa and I don't really know what to do with it. I wanted to invest, but I don't know how to get started. What they're thinking is that they have to figure it out on their own. And they're like, we want to invest with someone like you, you know, and I'm like, okay, well, I need to have somebody because that's not an area of expertise of mine. And you don't want me to be, but you want to have someone like you all to really be able to direct that the right way. So that's what we're moving towards. Big.
[00:23:52] Speaker D: Perfect. Yeah, we do have a lot of investors that invest in real estate. It's probably, I think if you asked any self directed custodian out there, real estate is the biggest asset held in a self directed IRA.
[00:24:03] Speaker C: So that said, what do you think? One of the bigger questions that when people are coming and they are ready to do, ready to invest and they do have their IRA, what do you think? One of the biggest questions that you guys get faced with a lot when you're dealing with people like that.
[00:24:15] Speaker D: So probably one of the biggest myths that we have to overcome with clients is they currently have an IRA at TD Ameritrade, at Schwab big box financial institution. And those big boxes, they make money off iras by investing that in their suite of products.
Many times we as investors are not picking and choosing to invest our iras. We just let it sit there because, you know, we got this tax benefit from contributing to this IRA.
[00:24:42] Speaker C: Right.
[00:24:42] Speaker D: Okay, so I didn't have to pay Uncle Sam. I paid myself. And it just sits and it just accumulates and accumulates and accumulates, and they never really think about moving that into something else. Diversifying. Right. They probably have a 401K plan. They have their IRA, and their IRA is just sitting, doing nothing and paying, you know, one 10th of 1%, just whopping penny a year or something, you know, congratulations. And then companies like yours walk along and they just put that little glimmer in their mind that says, hey, you know what? You can use qualified funds to invest in this fund. Have you considered that? As soon as you open their mind to something like that, pass them over to the preferred trust side, and then we'll educate them on how to actually move those funds into a self direct IRA? Because you can't invest in alternative assets with these big box shops. They just don't do that. Right? So you have to utilize a self directed custodian that specializes in alternative assets, that understands alternative assets. When I say understands alternative assets, I mean that in a couple different ways, right? First and foremost, you can move a portion or all of your IRA into a self directed IRA, right? No tax penalty in doing that whatsoever. It moves from like minded to like minded. And then once we have it here, then it's pandora's box opens up, right. There's only a couple of things the IR's says that you can't invest your IRA in, and that's collectibles, which I'm pretty sure you're not selling those, right? We don't have any antiques here in San Diego and life insurance policies, right? So as long as we stay away from those two things, everything else, sky's the limit. And real estate is something that most people understand. They're either renting, they own, they have a rental property somewhere along the lines. We have engaged as human beings in the real estate arena where we know somebody that has, like all of us, have touched that or have been fortunate enough to touch that. But how do we remove. You just said it a little while ago, you know, I've been a renter. Why? Because it's easy. I pick up the phone, I can call somebody, right? You keep it simple. But you spent your entire life investing in real estate, right? Now imagine if you had invested in real estate, either in a Roth and all your income and your capital gains is tax free, right? Can you imagine not paying taxes? You live in California now.
[00:26:54] Speaker C: I do.
[00:26:54] Speaker D: Okay. Yeah. Can you imagine not paying taxes on the income of your real estate investments?
[00:26:58] Speaker C: Oh, yeah, it'd be amazing. It'd be amazing. It would cheat. Life changing, for sure.
[00:27:02] Speaker D: Life changing. Or let's just say you're deferring those taxes right now. You're making a ton of money. But there's going to come a time, Victor, where you're tired, right? You want to just sit back and make money off the money that you've already made.
[00:27:17] Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely.
[00:27:17] Speaker D: And you want to take distributions on that. Imagine not paying any taxes on that on the way in, and you pay it later on in life, on the way out, where you're not paying 40%.
[00:27:25] Speaker C: Right. We're not working hard.
[00:27:27] Speaker D: So that is why, you know, self directed custodians are so powerful in delivering a message to people, getting through to them, to say, hey, this is out here. This is an opportunity. Consider it.
It really can be life changing for some individuals.
[00:27:44] Speaker C: Yeah, I truly believe that.
I'm always on some investor call, whether mines or somebody else is just listening, because I like to listen to people's questions when they're asking questions and stuff, and they're all legitimate questions, and they all circle back to the lack of really understanding what they actually have. Like you said, there's an IRA. It's been sitting someplace, can I invest through this? And, you know, probably to you and to myself, like, it's. It's, you know, I've sat through numerous lectures on this, you know, and it's always amazing to me who people that I think know don't.
[00:28:15] Speaker D: Yeah. Vast majority don't.
[00:28:17] Speaker C: Yeah. And I'm like, wow. Like, it's such a valuable tool, whether people invest with me or not. I'm like, look, whether you invest with me or not, go invest. And if you gonna invest, learn everything that you can about the vehicles that you have to invest. It isn't just, like you said, real estate. It's like, hey, look, you're investing through real estate, through something that's going to give you tax benefits, whether they're tax.
[00:28:36] Speaker D: You know, tax deferred.
[00:28:37] Speaker C: Tax deferred, whatever. But you have to get somewhat educated because, you know, it's kind of like we say in MMA, what you don't know, you'll be. Be by it.
[00:28:47] Speaker D: That's right.
[00:28:48] Speaker C: You can't always say, well, I didn't understand the rules, you know, because the rules are given to you freely, and once you know the rules, can't also complain about them.
[00:28:55] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:28:55] Speaker C: So it's like, now it's like, hey, look, you can invest through your Iraq, you know, and this is available to you. This is a rule that's been set up, and it's a benefit to you. Play by it, use it. There's people out there like yourself, and you guys have a great company. I love your team. To be able to help with those things, to be able to be openly available to ask questions and get those things done, which is why we want to work with you. Because for one, just being honest. You guys responded so fast.
I literally didn't bother to reach out to anyone else. I was like, they responded quickly. That's what I wanted.
[00:29:27] Speaker D: That's what we're known for. We pick up the phone, we talk to people. You don't sit on hold for 2 hours. We're about relationships. That's why this partnership works.
[00:29:37] Speaker C: Absolutely. I was sold on that.
[00:29:38] Speaker D: You want to talk to your clients, and so do we.
[00:29:41] Speaker C: Thank God.
[00:29:43] Speaker D: I mean, that's just the reality. We're not.
Yeah, we have online presence, just like you said. But the reality is we're going to do an intake with you. We're going to make sure you understand exactly what you're doing. When you move funds from one custodian to another. We're going to make sure you understand if there are any tax consequences. We're going to make sure you understand exactly what you're doing before you agree to do anything.
And then they'll be there with you as well. So during that period of time that they're investing with you, I'm sure you probably have some communication with your investors throughout the duration of the fund.
[00:30:16] Speaker C: Absolutely.
[00:30:17] Speaker D: And we're here as well. So if they have any questions in relation to their self directed IRa and how the funds are coming into their self recorded IRa, how they're being posted to their account contributions, that they're making distributions, that they're taking whatever it happens to be in their situation, that they're in their life, you know, we're here for them. We're definitely here for them. And we'll take very good care of them through.
[00:30:38] Speaker C: I appreciate that.
[00:30:39] Speaker D: No worries there. So they can invest with cash? Can they invest with their business?
[00:30:43] Speaker C: Yes, they can invest through their business trusts? Yes, we do.
[00:30:47] Speaker D: Wonderful. And then qualified funds. So really a diverse way of being able to invest at Bell Capital. That's amazing.
[00:30:55] Speaker C: I wanted to make sure that if somebody has a vehicle or themselves, however they wanted to invest, that it was taken care of, whether we did it, because we paid all the money for everybody to be able to. Whatever way you want to invest is done. We got all that stuff set up. You don't have to set up an LLC. All this stuff, I mean, but primarily what I wanted to do was make it easy, because I'll be honest, I do not like complications at all. Soon as things start to get super complicated, I start questioning everything and I start pulling away. I'm like, you know what? I just want it simple. That was one of the things that I wanted to make sure that if somebody talked to me, they were talking to a real person. You know, you're not going to talk to Steve Schwarzman, but you can talk to me. But the same way you and I are talking, we're sitting across from each other, like, that's huge. I always tell people, like, look, I'm easy to be found. Our office is there, you know, people I need to talk to are there people that are on my team, people that are partners, like yourself, like, we're available for you. That's huge. And again, that's. Availability is, you know, vital to being simple.
[00:31:53] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:31:53] Speaker C: Right.
[00:31:54] Speaker A: You're listening to PTC point of view brought to you by preferred trust company.
[00:32:04] Speaker D: What is, what's. What's on the horizon for 2023 with Bell Capital?
[00:32:09] Speaker C: Close up fund one and move on to fund two, which, I'm gonna say it here, it is gonna be a reggae fund for me. Okay.
I talked to a lot of investors, and I. And I want to go that route.
[00:32:21] Speaker D: Good.
[00:32:22] Speaker C: So I can have non accredited and accredited investors in play and put the team in play so we can actually facilitate that type of raise and move on to the type of properties that we want to be in our holdings, especially over this next in 20, 23, 24. Yeah, I'm looking forward to what's coming, you know, for what, I assume that's coming. So that's what's looking forward to us. Like I said.
[00:32:46] Speaker D: Can I ask you to dip into the crystal ball and tell me, what are you expecting to raise in 2023 in capital?
[00:32:54] Speaker C: We will have this $50 million fund. We'll probably be at 40. We'll probably be at 40. So I think we're going to be there capital raise wise, and that'll be deployed shortly after. But through specific properties that I'm looking at right now, that I think that'll.
[00:33:10] Speaker D: Be a good year.
[00:33:11] Speaker C: Yeah, for sure.
[00:33:12] Speaker D: And the investors.
[00:33:13] Speaker C: For investors, primarily, like, I'll be honest, on fund one, I'm a realist about how this is a company is going. I don't expect to make any money on fund one and two. You know, like, adds a relationship.
[00:33:23] Speaker D: We usually don't. We're cutting our teeth, making our mistakes.
[00:33:25] Speaker C: Right.
[00:33:25] Speaker D: Yeah. Figuring it all out. Right.
[00:33:27] Speaker C: Yeah. I always say, like, your first stuff like this, that's your relationship. Building funds.
[00:33:32] Speaker D: I agree.
[00:33:33] Speaker C: So at some point, the fund two will also be another relationship building fund, which would be the reggae. So getting comfortable with what the systems need to be put in place to be able to make sure that, you know, capital and distributions and things like that go to our investors correctly and reporting and all that stuff is done the right way to, whereas we can make sure we have the right people. But that's really huge for us. It's really building out the infrastructure. For me right now. At some point in my career, my goal is to go from buying the apartment buildings to later acquiring property management companies.
So we, you know, have that as a strength and then hopefully work with some of the owners that we're managing their companies. If they want to partner with us and stuff like that, and have us take over as operators and take some equity and things like that. That's the goal.
[00:34:18] Speaker D: Long term play.
[00:34:19] Speaker C: I don't even know how else to do.
[00:34:22] Speaker D: So let's end with. Let's end with this.
[00:34:24] Speaker C: Sure.
[00:34:24] Speaker D: You know, we have listeners on from preferred trust. We've got listeners that, you know, follow you, you know, what bit of advice would you give them when you're looking at investing in real estate? Just what was. Yeah, I'm brand new to investing in real estate. Give me your 2023 advice from Victor Bell.
[00:34:41] Speaker C: Oh, wow. I just put this out to my list. Don't try to do stuff by yourself. This isn't the time for you to go learn. This is the time for you to latch on to somebody who has the time and the education, who's willing to make the investment and latch onto them. So too many times, investors want to own 100% of something, but they also own 100% of the problems, 100% of the headaches, and tend to when it's. When, when things aren't looking good, they don't realize, and then they can walk away from this business, you know, from real estate as an investment or whatever, whatever. How they're gonna do it, as all that didn't work and it was bad. Yeah, but I tell everybody, like, look, do not go this one alone. This, this, you know, the whole thing that this is a team sport. Took me years to figure that out. I would have probably already been a billion dollars worth of assets had I just took my own advice 1015 years ago. Yeah, but here we are today. So, yeah, that's what I would tell anybody right now. Don't go it alone, you know, find somebody who knows what they're doing. If you're not going to invest, listen to that person. Learn. Learn from somebody like me or somebody else who never shuts up, and just stay there and learn what you can and there. But if you're going to get in it. Don't do it by yourself, right? This isn't the blind lead the blind market.
[00:35:55] Speaker D: I think that is some great advice. Some great advice. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you so much for, appreciate it.
[00:36:01] Speaker C: For sure.
[00:36:02] Speaker D: I really appreciate you again. You're welcome anytime.
[00:36:05] Speaker C: Thank you.
[00:36:06] Speaker D: Come back. We'll talk some more.
Well, I definitely need to have you come back as soon as that reggae is going because that's going to change the dynamic of opening this up to more investors and more of our listeners. So we definitely want to have you back.
[00:36:21] Speaker C: So everybody knows I'm pretty forward, I'll say it. So I'm very transparent. So I like to share what I'm learning along the way. I'm never going to be a guy who's not on the uptick of doing something different and expanding and growing. So I welcome the opportunity to share my lessons along the way for what I'm doing. So thank you for having me. I really appreciate it.
[00:36:43] Speaker D: Not a problem.
[00:36:44] Speaker B: Thank you both so much for coming on today. I really appreciate you taking time out of your day to educate myself and all of our listeners about investing in real estate with their self directed Ira. And to our listeners, thank you again for listening to another episode of PTC Point of View.
[00:37:02] Speaker A: Thanks for joining us for another episode of PTC Point of view where retirement savers meet alternative investments. Know someone who's struggling with a retirement strategy? Tell them about our show. Can't wait for the next episode. To learn more, visit our
[email protected], or give us a call at 888992.
