RG 109 – Listen To The Market, It Can Help You Start A Successful Business with Tom Cafarelle
About Tom
- Tom is based in Boston
- Tom was originally going to be a doctor
- Tom trained as an accountant
Nuts and Bolts
Tom is the co-founder of Ocean City Development a real estate investment company based in Boston. He’s also the co-owner of Cameron Real Estate Group which is a brokerage with 200 agents. Tom used to work a 9-5 job but took control of his life and set up these two development companies. His Ocean City Development group acquired 500 properties in 5 years.
Tom made his first dollar at a automobile repair shop when he was a child. As he was growing up his grandfather was in real estate investment and he was the only person Tom knew who had control over his time and money. However the rest of his family said he had to go to college so he double majored in biology and business. While he was studying pre-med he was delivering pizza’s and listening to audio books when he heard Rich Dad Poor Dad. He stopped his pre-med studies and concentrated on business. After he left college he worked at an accounting firm but found his personality wasn’t the right fit and he was trying to force something that was never going to happen. He should have quit but instead he was fired for reading real estate books during work hours.
Form the second he finished listening to Rich Dad Poor Dad he wanted to do multifamily real estate investment, but at the time in Boston (’05-’06) the market was at the peak and there was nothing available. Tom never bought anything during this time, which was lucky as he was fired in 2007 when the financial markets collapsed. He got into real estate just after 2007, which was the best time for his as prices had dropped everywhere. His first deal was s wholesale under contract which he sold to another investor.
Tom’s business now is all about lead generation, looking for people who want to sell their properties and trying to get in front of as many homeowners as possible before they sell elsewhere. He spends a lot of time trying to find the way to sell the property that’s best for the seller. Most of the time this means selling in the normal fashion, but 10% of the time it’s better for the home owner to sell to an investor. Tom figures out what is best and creates multiple options for the client to choose. If they go down the investor route then he will often act as the investor and then decide how to sell the property onwards – either a fix/flip, wholesale or cash flow.
Tom has his own brokerage firm which grew up organically. Originally Tom didn’t want to start a brokerage but when he first started he had a lot of seller appointments to go to and couldn’t manage them all, so he hired someone to go to the appointments. He had lots of properties that didn’t want to sell to investors so he started listing them and it grew into a brokerage. Tom recommends that as a business you always should give away your best stuff for free, whether you want to or not. By giving away free stuff you can funnel people into lead generation.
Top tips
- Most important habit – Doing the hardest thing first
- Most influential person – Robert Kiyosaki
- Most important tool – Coaching
- Website – buildateamthatbringsyoudeals.com