Real Estate Investor Spotlight: Grant Cardone

Forbes, on November 9, 2016, released a list of 25 Marketing Influencers to watch in 2017. The person who was listed at #1 was Grant Cardone. An international sales expert and trainer, a best-selling author at the New York Times, a motivational speaker, a host is a radio show as well as a television show, etc. Grant Cardone has donned many hats over the course of a career that has spanned over 30 long years. He is also an investor in real estate, and has managed to build an empire worth over 350 million dollars almost from scratch.

Today, he is the founding member and owner of three companies – The Cardone Group, Cardone Enterprises and Cardone Real Estate Holdings. The latter is a company based in the United States of America, and deal in real estate acquisitions. The net worth of the company is over 350 million US Dollars, an empire that he literally built from scratch. His empire is self-made without much external financing, and includes small contributions from his close family members and friends. In an interview that he gave in March, 2015, Mr. Cardone revealed that much of his initial business funding came from his personal cash savings along with traditional financing from banks.

In fact, less than 2 percent of his portfolio of Cardone Real Estate Holdings or Cardone Acquisitions is held by external partners that comprise of his close family members and friends.

Grant Cardone – The Motivational Speaker

Mr. Cardone has attended numerous seminars and given plenty of motivational speeches on a number of varying subjects. He also offers training courses for based on sales and even real estate. His motivational speeches and seminars are sources of extensive knowledge and experience that has helped thousands of people with their professional as well as personal lives. His inspirational quotes are read by thousands all over the world every day for making improvements in the various sectors of their lives.

Grant Cardone as a Writer

Mr. Cardone is the author of a number of books, booklets, and other such literary pieces, including The New York Times best-seller, “If You’re Not First, You’re Last”. Apart from these books, he has also written numerous articles and blogs that are motivational in nature, and has had immeasurable positive impact on the professional lives of people across industries. He has also written a number of other popular motivational books that include Sell to Survive, the 10X Rule, The Closers Survival Guide, Sell or Be Sold, etc.

Apart from several literary works, Mr. Cardone has also hosted a radio show, The Cardone zone, as well as served as an expert on a number of television shows including Fox News, Huffington Post and Entrepreneur, MSNBC and CNBC. He has also done a reality TV series on the National Geographic Channel by the name of Turnaround King.

Grant Cardone as a Real Estate Investor

Mr. Cardone has made most of his money from the real estate industry by investing in real estate properties in the United States of America. His company, Cardone Real Estate Holdings or Cardone Acquisitions, has been in play for over two decades now, and has made real estate transactions amounting to more than 425 million US Dollars. The company is currently the owner of 350 million US Dollars worth of multifamily properties spread across several locations within USA. Mr. Cardone has been a firm believer of making real estate investments in multifamily properties rather than single-family properties.

The First Investment or Deal

Grant Cardone began studying the various aspects of the real estate industry and market within the United States of America from a very young age. By the time he made his first investment at the age of 29, he had already accumulated over a decade of study about the industry and the real estate market within USA. By this time, he was also involved in a completely different industry, and considered real estate investments as a secondary business to grow the money that he made through his primary business. His first company or business was Cardone Training Technologies, a company that offered interactive sales training to small businesses, entrepreneurs and Fortune 500 companies.

With all his personal cash that he was able to make at that point, he made his first real estate investment at the age of 29. The property was a single-family unit in the neighborhood of Houston in Texas. For a few months, the property did great, and supplied to him a steady flow of income in the form of rents. His investment seemed to be a grand success. However, this success was not to last for a great while. After a few months of occupancy, the tenants left the property, and Mr. Cardone was left without a tenant for a long time. This caused his real estate income to dry completely.

Mr. Cardone has often joked subsequently about the matter, stating that his occupancy rate reduced directly from a 100 percent to 0 percent due to the removal of a single tenant. Due to this, Mr. Cardone had to spend a lot of time and focus in the search of new tenants for the property in order to resume his real estate income. This caused his other business ventures to suffer as he was unable to attribute his focus and time there as before. After a while, he proceeded to sell of the property as it posed the risk of similar events in the future. Afraid that single-family properties may pose similar risks in the future, he has never again invested in such real estate properties, and has only been interested in making investments in multifamily real estate properties.

Mr. Cardone has always considered himself to be an entrepreneur although he made most of his money through real estate investments. He has often claimed that though his other business ventures have created a substantial capital creation platform for him, none have proved to be as beneficial with regards to wealth preservation and capital creation as much as the real estate platform. However, the same has also caused him a great many issues with his other ventures as he would always pump all the money he made through those ventures into his real estate investments.

He has often claimed that this practice left him with little to no money to pump into his other businesses, and caused him to go broke on more than one occasion. Although he has always managed to make the money he needed for his other businesses, his enthusiasm and interest in real estate investments have, in several occasions, caused his to face much trouble.

Subsequent Real Estate Investments and Acquisitions

Following the debacle of his very first real estate investment (and the important lesson learnt in the process), Grant Cardone kept himself away from making a second real estate investment for the next five years. He spent this time in acquiring as much knowledge of the real estate industry and market in the United States of America as he possibly could. He also spent this time in accumulating the money to finance his next real estate investment. Once he managed to acquire as much knowledge as he needed along with the money required for his next investment, he proceeded to make his only second real estate investment, a multifamily property in San Diego, California.

This unit consisted of a total of 38 units, and was priced at 1.9 million US Dollars. However, he paid only 350,000 US Dollars as down payment during acquisition, with the remaining sum to be paid subsequently. Within the next two months, he made his third real estate investment by purchasing another such multifamily property. Over the course of the next two decades, Mr. Cardone continued to make similar real estate investments on multifamily properties, one at a time. In this fashion, he built a great real estate business that stands at a net value of 350 million US dollars today.

The properties acquired by his Cardone Real Estate Holdings are spread across a number of different cities in the United States of America that includes Arizona, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, California, Texas, Tennessee and North Carolina. The largest acquisition of private party multifamily real estate properties made by Cardone Acquisitions happened in the year 2012, when the company invested in a total of five apartment communities in Florida. These acquisitions cost the company a total of 59 million US Dollars, and housed a total of 1016 apartment units. A large portion of the finance for the purchase was made through loans acquired from the Federal National Mortgage Association.

Grant Cardone – The Real Estate Mogul

Although initially starting off as a professional sales trainer, Mr. Cardone was soon emerged as one of the most successful real estate mogul in the United States of America. Starting from almost nothing and suffering a substantial loss early on in his venture, he soon built a real estate portfolio that comprises of multifamily properties with a net worth of more than 350 million US Dollars. One of the key aspects that have caused him to obtain great success is his determination of not investing in single-family real estate properties.

After his initial experience with the first real estate investment that he made, he has sworn to never make another such investment in the future. In the two decade that followed that initial debacle, Mr. Cardone has never made a second investment on such properties, and all his subsequent real estate investments have been on multifamily apartment units. This has helped him to make a steady real estate income and caused much less trouble. His views on the profitability of such multi-family apartment units has also helped him to expand his venture, and propelled him to become one of the most successful real estate investors in the country.