KGCI: Real Estate on Air - The Real Estate Game Changer Brian Baniqued’s Proven Strategies for Lasting Success

Episode Date: July 24, 2025

Summary:Discover the proven strategies of real estate veteran Brian Baniqued, a true game-changer with over 34 years of experience, who started his journey at just 18. This episode unveils his insights into navigating market shifts, building a robust real estate brand, and implementing investment strategies for lasting success. Learn how Brian, a second-generation broker and expert in multifamily properties and tax-deferred exchanges, guides clients to achieve financial independence and build multi-million dollar portfolios.Bullet Point TakeawaysFrom Early Start to Industry Veteran: Learn how Brian Baniqued's journey began at 18, specializing in multifamily properties and 1031 exchanges, setting the foundation for over three decades of market leadership and adaptation.Mastering Market Shifts: Gain invaluable insights into how Brian navigates and thrives through various market cycles, including lessons learned from the 2007 financial crisis, demonstrating resilience and strategic foresight.Building a Powerful Real Estate Brand: Discover the importance of establishing a strong brand through extensive industry expertise, a client-first approach, and consistent results in asset planning, development, and investment strategies.Proven Investment & Portfolio Growth Strategies: Explore actionable strategies for long-term wealth creation, including cash flow optimization, syndications, house hacking, and tax-advantaged investments like 1031 exchanges.Beyond Real Estate: Holistic Success: Hear how Brian's commitment to excellence extends to being an American Ninja Warrior competitor and a successful movie producer, emphasizing humility, continuous personal growth, and a balanced life as keys to overall success.Topics:Brian Baniqued Real EstateReal Estate Game ChangerReal Estate Investment StrategiesLasting Success Real EstateMultifamily InvestingCall-to-Action:Ready to transform your real estate journey with game-changing strategies? Listen to the full episode on your favorite podcast platform and learn from Brian Baniqued's unparalleled experience!

Welcome to Real Estate Riches, where Kathy Burns empowers realtors to achieve the success they've always dreamed of. Starting her career at 55, Kathy built a thriving business that offers the freedom of time and financial independence. And now she's sharing her journey to help others do the same. Whether new to the industry or looking to level up, this channel is your hub for proven strategies, inspiring stories, and the tools you need to grow your real estate business. join Kathy each week to explore global opportunities, successful systems, and expert insights to take your career to the next level. Get comfortable. Pick a video and start learning. Your journey to success starts now. Hey, everybody, it's Kathy Burns with Real Estate Riches. And today, I'm with Brian Beniquid. And I'm really excited to have Mon here. And he's unique. And you're going to find out soon.

Hey, Brian. How are you? I'm great, Kathy. How are you doing? Doing wonderful. So, Brian, you have a very. very diverse portfolio of what you do in the real estate industry. And I love a little background, especially the fact that you started at 18. I like that. Well, yeah, thanks for bringing that out. Yeah. So it's 2025, and this is literally my 34th year in the business now. And as you put it out, I started back in 1991. And I actually got my real estate license past the exam in California in January of 1991. I was a senior in a high school. school and I turned 18 in March and I started and my license became active. So before I graduated from

high school in June of 2025, I started putting deals into escrow and started closing single family homes. And I did it with the primary intention of just having a job to save up for college, right? And so I used it as a way to pay for a biology degree, which took me about five years to do because I was working full time as a real estate agent the entire time from 90 to like about 95. And by that point, after I graduated from high school, I had started become relatively successful in the business. And most of my business hadn't taken more of a turn from selling single family homes to selling apartment units. How did that happen? So remember, I'm a starving college student at age 18.

I look young. So I had to kind of elevate my game from just a young looking 18 year old selling houses. And then I also needed to make sure that I was not living from paycheck to paycheck. So I started saving up my commissions and I bought a four unit building with three and a half percent down using FHA for my house. And I lived in one unit, rented out the other three. And that was the big aha moment. at that point of the chapter of my career where I started when a client would come to me and go, hey, I want to buy a house. I would qualify them. So I started learning a lot about finances from FHA to VA and then that evolved to commercial financing and private money lending and that kind of good stuff.

But at that time of the career, I focused a lot on FHA. And so when someone would come to me saying I want to buy a house, I'd go, oh, I see how much cash you have. why don't you buy a fourplex first? You can live in one unit and rent out the other three. And then with it, you'll save up your cash in three to six months. I can sell you a house with 5% down because lenders will let you upgrade from a four unit and still have your owner-occupied privileges and buy a house with 5% down. So I take someone's $5% down payment and turn it into two transactions.

as opposed to one transaction. And that was in, and so those clients, you know, liked it because they'd get them into a single family house in like, you know, six months from the time they met me, but they had had a fourplex that they had just moved out of paying for the half for all of the mortgage on their primary residence, which was the same situation I put myself into. I bought a fourplex.

I'm a college student. I'm closing transactions. but I'm living from commission to commission because it's a feaster famine business at that time. And now I would save up, have my residency covered. And then I buy a house. And now the fourplex is paying for the house. And that was the model I would use to sell. And building equity.

And it would be, yes. So at that time, it would be building equity. I'd be building cash flow. As a real estate agent, you know, you know how we're tax, we're 1099. it gave me all kinds of tax exclusions. They're a wonderful world of depreciation. And as I started exchanging and learning the IRS tax rules for 1031 exchange, I would find that I would be able to accelerate the depreciation.

And so now I found myself in this position where I got cash flow, I've got equity. I've got this huge right off against my ordinary income from real estate. And so that was around 96, 97. And then, you know, by 1998, I decided I was going to start my own real estate office. As I discovered, when you go work in a laboratory, you know, with a biology group, really boring. And that was kind of how I had evolved into that. Wow, that's pretty awesome. So you were really thinking outside of the box initially just out of survival.

And then you really realized, hey, there's an opportunity here, utilized it for your clients, showed them how to leverage it up, which probably build a reputation for you as well, right? No, it absolutely did because keep in mind I'm balancing this whole thing of looking, being young and looking, right? So when I was 18 in high school and people that asked me how old I was, you know, and I told them that I noticed it was like, oh, it would create the skepticism. So, you know, I wore a fake ring, grew a mustache, and then when they'd asked me, I'd just say, well, how old do you think I am? You look like you're 19.

And this was back then. And I'd be like, oh, that's so great. I'll flattering and then move on, right? Yeah. And so it was always this caught. And it was at a time in an early 90s where interest rates were 10 and a half. Yeah. Unemployment was really high.

People kept falling out of escrow. And so I, you know, I just needed to, I decided I'm, I needed to up the game for understanding finances, different ways to leverage. And because of that, all of a sudden, you know, people didn't care. how old I was, right? Right, because you were educated and you had done the research. And that's an important point. I want everybody to hear, you know, this is a business where you need to be educating

yourself and understand different things like this because that's exactly where you build trust with clients. If you show them a solution and it makes sense, you're the go-to guy. You become the go-to guy or gal. You know, that's precisely what happened, what is these individuals that would become my client, I would do two to three transactions a year with them. I'd tell them a fourplex, sell them a house, they'd save up cash, we'd buy another fourplex. I always told me, get attached to your fourplexes because there's a thing called 1030m exchange in two years. I'm going to list those fourplexes.

I'm going to sell them and exchange you into a bigger apartment unit. By the way, I'm doing the same thing, and I'm just building my cash flow. And so they really liked that. And so instead of me having to send birthday cards and Christmas cards to remind them that I, exist so that in five years when they go to sell that house, they might list with me. They're constantly calling me, you know, and then doing another transaction here. And so that built up a momentum of being able to like do a high volumes of sales from the idea to 2004, like, you know, 103, 104 transactions. Most of them were double ended.

And then by the time like 2000 rolled around, I'm also doing the financing piece behind him. So I'm doing the sale, most of the time double lending. doing the financing, giving them an entry strategy to acquire a 4plex, and then already planting the seed that I'm going to list this and then sell it in two years and sell you something bigger. Wow. And of course, I could just track the 4 unit or 8 unit or 16 units income and I can determine how here's what it's going to be worth.

Here's what the next guy is going to need is a down and a closing to buy it. and you know again i would see that okay instead of them making a thousand now the next guy is going to be netting 800 and i just kept it to a point where i was like okay well it was still worthwhile from a cash on cash return from a cap rate and so i was able to like sell the same building three to four times over you know six year period to different clients and just kind of leapfrog them up and then of course as those clients who were with me in the early in mid-90s, late 90s, started growing their portfolios in so much larger and larger apartment complexes, like 20 units, 60 unit, 100-unit buildings. We couldn't just stay in California. So I started

10-thirty and exchanging their assets into Texas, Arkansas, Tennessee, Florida, Maine, New York. And so I got my brokers license in those different states throughout the different times. I bought properties during those times. And so that created this great vertical integration between having a separate real estate company. At the time, when I was creating and building my own portfolio of apartment units, it didn't occur to me. That would be like what some people have as careers these days, right? Like, what do you do? Oh, I just, I syndicate. I get a bunch of people's money and we go out and buy these large apartment units and then we have them managed. And I was just like, oh, that was my side hustle. But it was kind of like at a time like where, you know, when people would do fix

flips and people get her that a job and now like there's an entire science behind fixing flip properties. So that was that trajectory. And so, you know, from 2000, so in 1998, I started my own real estate company. By 2000, I had a my own mortgage company, separate entity, separate employees. And then, of course, I have these clients that are buying apartment units, right with tenants at least four units so four tenants eight units or more and so a lot of them are looking for property management and so you know we created a separate energy and you know we would sell them the asset manage the asset and then of course plant the seed of like three to five years you could sell this in exchange for better but only do it if it's to your benefit and so we had this great

situation where we have these captured customers because we're giving them and again I didn't even realize at the time I could charge for the advice on like, oh, okay, here's an entry and exit strategy, here's tax solutions to shelter the income and whatnot. But as I built my own portfolio of investments, then my requirements for having these really upgraded CPAs and accountants, you know, came up and then more complicated ways for sheltering income. And so I would just pass this knowledge on to my clients saying, here, let me recommend you my CPA. Let me recommend you my attorney because now suddenly they're having these issues that I'm dealing with where you've got lots of income and then you've got different benefits that you want to be aware of from an educating

from a tax standpoint. So I'm passing this education all along to my clients and I'm just creating this huge value where they're sticking with me. So a lot of those clients from 1997, 1998, they're still my clients today. Some of them I've become partners with on much larger buildings together. Their kids have grown up and I've seen them born and then now they've gotten their real estate license and they're working in the office with me. So, you know, it's been an interesting life that you never saw it evolved, right? Yes. Yeah, exactly. What would you say to agents, do you think that potential is still there in today's market for people to do this? The potential is still there. There's definitely difficulties now versus,

is what I had. But at the time that I was doing this, I also had my own fair share of difficulties. The interest rates were super high. People didn't want to buy income property. You couldn't give it away, right? It was difficult to sell it unless you could, one, explain, well, what's a cap rate? What's an ROI? You know, what is a, what's a rent multiplier? You know, what's a debt service coverage? All these different things. You know, what's depreciation, right? These were all not interesting dinner conversations that you'd have. And so, you know, now those things, a lot of people will, the audience is a lot more educated, right? Yeah. Well, especially with AI. Exactly. And so, you know, there's, the opportunities does still exist. I'm seeing people kind of flip the opportunities

differently from what I, how I used them in the past. And so they, one door closes, another door opens. So what would be like a resilient, I don't want to do it only because I don't want all that on my plane. But what would an agent do who says, you know, I don't even know where there's four plexes around my area. There aren't a lot, there aren't a lot of that type of product even available. I'm in the Charlotte area. Now in Charlotte there is, but they're also high demand. So they're hard to get. So what would you say? Because you want a certain price point area, so you're not dealing with kicking out your tenants and dealing with all that, right? Oh, no, absolutely.

You bring up a good point. So not all areas have four-unit buildings. Right. All areas, though, and again, the opportunity for really getting four-unit buildings, even in California, has gone away because the prices have gone up so much, and a lot of them won't qualify for FHA anymore, just because they're much higher. Now, on the flip side, what has now come into place is because regardless of you, because regardless if an area in an area with four unit buildings or not, all areas will have at least five

unit or more apartment units. And one of the distinct advantages that have now occurred that I'm seeing a lot of operators do is what's called syndication, where you have different regulations for being able to raise capital from different individuals. When I first started doing that in 2004, right, you were only... allowed to approach friends and family with your offering memorandum. You could not advertise. You were limited to the number of non-accredited investors. Whereas now that same private placement memorandum has evolved into reg C, reg D, and even things like reg A. Now, now you're talking Greek to us, residential agents. I have no idea what you're saying. And so I was going to break that down

for you. Because I knew I knew I was getting that. I didn't want to get too much into the nerdy weeds of this legality. But in a long, in a much more lame in way, these are different rules of operation by which you can go out and talk to investors and bring money in to acquire these types of deals. Okay. Now, so let's, because I know your audience is real estate agent. So like if you're a real estate agent, well, how do you use that to your advantage? Well, one, as a real estate agent, you're looking to make a sale. So if you're looking to make a sale on a multifamily dwelling, whether it's an eight unit, a 10 unit or 20 unit, you want to go out there and look for syndicators, individuals who may have the smarts per se and then hook up with an attorney to put together operating documents by which they can go out and talk to other investors. who, you know, then they will call them as limited partners. They'll put in a certain dollar amount, you know, whether the minimum is like 20,000 or 50,000 or 100,000,

or as little as 5,000 in some instances, under what they call reg A, right? This is Reg A. And again, I promise I won't get too much into the weeds. And so how you use that as a real estate agent is when you're connecting with those types of individuals, you're able to then find a viable buyer with a substantial down payment and the smarts to acquire multifamily, that then you're then

selling. Now, what you could also do, and this is what I did in 2004, is remember, I had multiple entities. So on one entity, I had a real estate corporation, you know, it had its own, you know, it had its own employees, its own agents, mortgage. Well, every time I would do, when I started buying buildings and I'd own them myself, I'd create LLCs. and put them into that. Well, that same LLC that you might put a building into a for title, you can use to then raise cash to go bring partners in and use that cash for that entity to create your own buyer and go out and buy your own buildings while still being the individual with the smarts as the general partner or the sponsor to be able to kind of control and direct the

money to buy a good, viable investment, right? So, well, let's slow down because it's really cloudy in my brain. I'm seeing that AI for an agent today who got just clouded her brain with all of this, I wrote down keywords. And I could go into chat GPT or grok and I could say, here's what I'm thinking I want to do, break it all down for me and the different players that would be. what's the type of buildings that I want to go after? I'm in the Charlotte area.

Where are they even at? And who would be the likely partners like it? Is it doctors that just have extra money, things like that, that are investors, just looking for a partnership kind of thing? And I would have it educate me. I don't need to know it all initially, but if I'm proactive enough to utilize AI to help me define it, and then maybe I find somebody like a you who would say,

yeah, this looks good, or an attorney, that this is something that they work with all the time. Who would kind of be my partner to help me besides AI to make sure that I'm on the right direction? Well, you kind of answered your own question there. And yes, you touched on a very new tool that I didn't have back then. And that opens up another, you know, whole new world of AI, right? On a separate company, on the management side, my partner uses AI, you know, in crazy ways, which I'll get into later. But speaking to your point, yes, what's good now is if you know how to ask the right questions, AI will answer that and kind of put down an outline. And as you stated,

you want to be able to then probably find and align yourself with an individual who knows what they're doing. For example, let me bring it back to when I first started developing real estate, right it was 2004 now 2004 i didn't know anything about developing real estate i have a real estate company i own all these apartment buildings i own office and retail that's what i mainly sell them my clients we manage it and so that i was approached by a developer now the developer had the smarts didn't really have the money and i did at the time i didn't realize okay you know you have this thing called net worth because you have assets you have equity you have businesses. And so he aligned with me and I got my education in, and all the, you know,

not only in what you're looking at from acquiring something and its future value and why you'd want to acquire and take the risk. And so there's that alignment piece that you touched on once you kind of get the education from, say, from an AI, right? Now, you want to be careful about AI because you also want to back up all of that information now. Source. You know, with an actual attorney. And you also want to make sure that those same laws apply to your municipality, to your area.

Right. You're zoning. Something as like, hey, there's no fourplexes in that area. And you're right. And again, I'm not even promoting fourplexes these days. But that was just what kind of launched me in 1998 into like 60 unit, 80 units. 100 unit buildings and then later into developing and other things like that.

And so to your point, you know, you can use AI to ask those different questions and then kind of find other players. A key piece that that we now have is we have, I mean, we have the internet on steroids, right? We have Zoom. We have the ability to network remotely. And we are now on an international playing field. Yeah. Like, you know, when I was in the early 2000s, when I was, you know, going into different states and transacting business there or owning property there, you know, the Internet still hadn't even evolved.

And you probably recall, you know, our smartphones were all, you know, they didn't have a PDA. They were all separate devices. Well, now, you know, we connected over LinkedIn. I have clients that, you know, I've connected with from China, from Hong Kong, from buy. And, you know, it's a much, and business is transacted very differently now, especially on apartment units. Like apartment built, like on single family homes, you might get a call saying, hey, I want to show your house, your listing on a Saturday at 10 a.m. Right. On apartment buildings, you don't get that.

You do a lot of the legwork before, without even having to look at the property because you're just going to underwrite the income, the expenses. From that, it's going to drive what the value is. so you can go, hey, they're asking price is correct or it's overpriced. And you just adjust your negotiations accordingly. Well, now it's even crazier because you could do a lot of that just from without ever leaving your office or your home. I had the privilege of like buying the office complex that was like one exit away from my house in 2000.

So I, even though I can work from my home, I still like to come to the office. And, you know, so I can get into that mindset of working. right, but you don't even need to have an office these days. You could just be from an iPad, right? Yeah. So those are different things you can do to connect. And then the other great thing, too, is that you could do so much research on an individual if all you have is their mobile number.

Right. That, you know, one of the things I'll teach my real estate agents, for example, is that, you know, especially the female agents, hey, make sure you do your due diligence on who's calling you. Because you might just somebody calling you up. who has no intention or isn't even qualified to buy a house. Yeah. They have nefarious means and they're just telling you, hey, I'd like to see the place at, you know, 9 p.m. tonight.

Is that possible, right? But, you know, you could run a entire background on a mobile number or an email if it's something that's been seasoned for some time. Now, if it's something that just somebody like got on a burner phone or an email. I'm not showing you. And that's one of those like red flags. going, hey, this email or this number doesn't even have any history, and it's very suspicious. So these are different things you could use your advantage.

But those same things that you would use just for some simple thing like selling a house and vetting out your buyer or your client are the same due diligence you can use to figure out some of these larger and larger transactions. So like to the real estate audience, you know, getting yourself educated to local tax laws, federal tax laws, city tax laws, and the interest rates, the financing options. I think today's market, though, I don't need to know that in depth. I don't want them to get lost on that because I can go right to chat GPT and say, you're absolutely right.

Here's the zoning. Here's the territory. You know, here's my situation. What are my zoning restrictions that I need to pay for? What are all my things that's going to be important for this piece? I don't have to be as educated. I'll get educated because I can have it do it. And the important thing, just like you said a minute ago, is I got to know my source.

Or I can feed it the website that is the source. Yes. And well, back in back before we had chat GPT, and yes, you could, you should absolutely do those things now. You know, it wasn't so much, if you recall the old saying, it's not what you know. It's who you know. Yes. You know, just finding, you know, good people to align with. whether the CPA or an attorney or property management company or all different things that,

you know, just as a simple real estate agent needing to do a transaction wants to do. And as they get to know those things, whether they ask chat GPT, as they go through the practice of implementing what they learned from an individual or from chat GPT, they're going to learn nuances. Like, okay, this is what was the outline, but here's where I can deviate slightly. to get around a problem. And then suddenly just finding those little niches. So to your point, when you're asking chat GPTU, these questions, look for those niches,

and then be quick to educate, but also try to implement and then still always ask lots of questions, right? Because there's going to be nuances to how something is supposed to be done and different ways you can do it more efficiently. And if that little niche is what could set you apart as an agent to do more transactions, going to do more sales or to be a bigger value to your client? Well, the bottom line for me having you on here today, because my mantra is think bigger.

And you did it without even knowing you were thinking bigger. It was kind of a survival thing, which led to you thinking bigger, but you kept expanding and expanding. Whereas many real estate agents stay stuck in that little circle. They stay on that hamster wheel. They're not creating an end game for them. themselves and they're not seeing a bigger picture. Whereas in today's world, with our technology,

our world gets smaller and smaller. I do business globally all over the world. Yes. And I barely sell anymore. And yet I can do outgoing referrals because of the connections that I'm making. I'm becoming a connector. I'm doing a lot in Portugal. I'm evolving over into Spain. I've got people in Poland. So that's my point. I want agents. And I was glad that you came on because I want them to see there's more to it than just your own little territory and doing this grind all the time. You don't have to. Oh, totally. In fact, what's fun is when you start expanding and you start seeing things begin to connect and to click is it doesn't become a grind.

And one of the things that I had to kind of was a victim of was I get so into the. the things I'd easily work back again back in the day 14 hours and not even think about it right it was like oh my gosh it's night but I mean I was having so much fun that I didn't even think about it right and so there's it's one of the things I've had to like kind of contend with is just not being so much of a workaholic because you're not thinking about it as work some of the times because as you pick up on certain things and you come up with certain theories and then you actually implement them from what you learn either from an individual or from hearsay and you follow up or chat GPT and then it starts to connect then it starts to make it interesting right and like you pointed out it's a global

market now and that's a huge advantage and our individual reach is just beyond our own backyard like my big another reason too like why my office is now like for regular staff and you know it's one of my agents are always on Zoom. They're just working from their home. They're coming in just to meet a client, even that. But a lot of our staff is also remote as well now, too. And then a more recent thing is like, my partner is actually sort of creating AI agents that actually go out

and just basically artificial intelligence and we'll do some of the work for us. It's crazy because on another company, the property managing company, we manage like over 1,100 units. and then office and retail. And my partner created AI agents so that for our residential tenants, they'll be talking to a bot. They won't even know they're talking to a bot.

And we've had emails apologizing how mean they were to the person who was looking to collect the rent, and it wasn't even a real person. Wow. These are different things that, you know, that as agents you could take advantage of. One of the things I'm trying to do right now is trying to take some of all the stuff that I normally do on a routine basis and turn that into an AI bot. Right.

Yeah. There's some great programs with that already built in, especially for realtors. Hoosie.com. AI is wonderful for that. Well, this has been great, Brian. I am so glad I had you on here. And I think there's a lot of value for agents to start seeing bigger and figure out what it is in their area that could be that path. Do a little, you know, connect with you on.

on LinkedIn, see what, you know, different things that you're doing. I'm a big fan of LinkedIn. And just go forward. Well, thanks everybody. I appreciate you, Brian. And we're going to have all his contact information so that you can reach out to him. If you've got more questions, you want to work with Brian. Maybe he's got a syndication going on in your area. You never know. And I'm just so grateful you're all listening in. Please subscribe below and check us on the other ones out. And thank you again, Brian. Thank you, Kathy, for having me on your show. I appreciate it very much.

So thanks for joining me on this episode of Real Estate Riches. Wasn't that great? I'm sure you've got a nugget or two. I know I did. So if you liked it, please subscribe below, share it with everybody, make some comments. We really find that invaluable.

And if you're thinking that you would love to talk about this a little bit more, let's schedule a business strategy call. I'll have the link below. Let's see if we can't mastermind together and see if we can empower each other. That would be great. So until next time, signing off. Hope to see you on the next one.