YFP REI 125: Giving Back with Real Estate Investing with Greg Zinis, PharmD

Greg Zinis, PharmD, shares his journey into real estate investing in the Virginia Beach area.

Episode Summary

In this episode, Greg Zinis, PharmD shares his journey into investing in real estate in and around his town of Norfolk, Virginia. From buying his first property in 2010, a rental in Virginia Beach, to earning his Realtor’s license in 2024, Greg has expanded further into real estate investing. 

About Today’s Guest

Gregory Zinis was born and raised in the vibrant landscapes of Michigan, where his youth was filled with soccer games, hunting excursions, fishing trips, snowboarding adventures, and garage-building projects. Immersed in the state’s rich outdoor culture, he developed a profound appreciation for adventure and craftsmanship. He pursued preliminary courses at Northern Michigan University before earning his Doctor of Pharmacy degree from Ferris State University. With a vision of escaping to a larger, sunlit city with surfing opportunities, he found his new home in Virginia.

Since 2009, Gregory has made a significant impact as a community pharmacist in Hampton Roads, where he has diligently supported patients with prescriptions, vaccines, health tests, and comprehensive medication therapy management. In 2010, he embarked on a new journey by purchasing his first home, which has been a versatile asset, serving as his primary residence as well as both short-term and long-term rental.

In his personal life, Gregory met and married his wife, Ashley, and together they have a bustling household of four children, two dogs, and two cats. During the pandemic, Gregory took a strategic year off amidst a company downsizing, which provided him with the opportunity to delve deeply into real estate and undertake a renovation of his primary residence in Ocean View, Norfolk. This transformative experience ignited a passion for real estate, leading him to earn his Realtor license in 2024. Now, Gregory is dedicated to helping others navigate the exciting journey of home ownership with the same enthusiasm and expertise that have defined his career.

Key Points from the Episode

• Introduction and Personal Updates [0:00]
• Real Estate Market Dynamics [2:10]
• Greg Zinnis’ Background and Early Career [4:12]
• Real Estate Investing Journey [17:19]
• Transition to Full-Time Real Estate Investing [21:02]
• Philanthropic Goals and Community Involvement [28:35]
• Final Insights and Advice [40:34]
• Conclusion and Contact Information [44:12]

Episode Highlights

“It’s not just short term rentals for vacationers, but you can also buy a house and you can rent out rooms to people, whether it’s for domestic violence survivors that need short term housing, or a recovery house for people that have alcohol or narcotic addictions.” – Greg Zinis [32:12]

“This area of the country, there’s a lot of military bases. It’s a military town. I thought, you know what, why don’t I just donate one week to a military family? There’s 52 weeks out of the year. Why don’t I just give one week a year to military families where they could come down and stay for free in a rental property, because they’re, you know, they sacrifice for our country.” – Greg Zinis [34:17]

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode

• Greg Zinis on LinkedIn
• Subscribe to the YFP Newsletter
• YFP Disclaimer
• YFP Real Estate Investing Facebook Group
• Nate Hedrick on Instagram
• David Bright on Instagram
• YFP Real Estate Investing Website
• David Bright on LinkedIn
• Nate Hedrick on LinkedIn

Episode Transcript

Nate Hedrick  00:00

Nate, welcome to the YFP Real Estate Investing Podcast. I’m Nate Hedrick.

David Bright  00:09

And I’m David Bright. We’re both pharmacists and real estate investors that believe that real estate investing does not have to distract from a meaningful career in pharmacy.

Nate Hedrick  00:18

Each episode, we share stories that educate and inspire pharmacists to leverage real estate investing as a part of your financial plan. Hey, David, how’s it going?

David Bright  00:29

Hey, good. Thanks. How you doing, man?

Nate Hedrick  00:31

Good, good. Getting toward a it’s been a busy summer. Getting toward the end of it, we actually just got back from a pretty cool trip. We were in Iceland for about a week, and just had an awesome time. But now I’m trying to get my feet back under me and pretend like I’m in the real world again.

David Bright  00:46

That’s awesome. That’s awesome. I need to see pictures at some point, because I keep hearing that Iceland is beautiful. 

Nate Hedrick  00:52

It was super unique. And, yeah, the pictures don’t like, like anywhere, right, pictures don’t do it justice. But it’s definitely a place to visit, for sure.

David Bright  00:59

That’s cool. That’s cool. We did not go to Iceland, but we did get out a little bit. That’s one of the nice things about Michigan, is you don’t have to go far to be on vacation, be out of here. So that was great. But it has been a wild stretch of the real estate market lately, at least on our end, we we sold a house, bought a house, put another one on the MLS that’s just went up for sale this past weekend. I have a rental property going through the inspection process. It’s been, it’s been kind of chaotic here with just a lot going on. I know this is traditionally the part of the summer where things start to level off and wind down in the real estate agent side. But how’s your your business in Cleveland looking right now?

Nate Hedrick  01:37

Yeah, it’s getting that way. It’s been a busy year. It’s actually been my my busiest year ever. And I’m not sure if that’s the market or if that’s just like my season of my real estate career, because it’s, it’s sort of weird, right? Certain areas are selling fast still, or they’re still very hot. Other areas are are slowing down a little bit. Other areas that were hot, I have have had more houses sitting longer than usual. And by longer, I mean three weeks instead of three days. So it’s, you know, it’s not that drastic, but there are some changes. And it reminds me again that real estate is so local. Because if I read any national news about real estate, it’s like, that’s not happening here, because it’s always different wherever you are. It’s just it’s very specific to your locale.

David Bright  02:18

Yeah, and a lot of those national news stories, there’s a pretty decent lag on the data too. So it’s really hard to take National Information from three months ago and apply that to today’s local real estate market, right? So, so yeah, the big, big perk of having a real estate agent that has their ear to the ground and knows what’s going on.

Nate Hedrick  02:37

Good point, yeah, for sure.

David Bright  02:38

Yeah. This is, I feel like this is a common theme among pharmacists, like, we’re busy people anyway. We have a busy career anyway. We try to stack real estate on top of that, and it only gets busier. And so it can be hard sometimes to get your head above water and look around and have some of those big picture moments of planning. And that’s one of the things I really like that today’s guest was able to do, and just think about where he wants to take his real estate investing and have some strategy and vision in there. 

Nate Hedrick  03:06

We were lucky enough to be joined by Greg Zinis. Greg is a pharmacist out of Virginia Beach right now, and manager at Walgreens. He’s been a pharmacist for years, and a real estate investor in the area as well. And it’s just great to get his full story about how he got started in real estate and what he’s sort of done with it that I think is unique or different than some of the others. 

David Bright  03:29

I really love how he chose to merge philanthropy with his investing and and that part comes towards the end of the episode. So particularly if you’re fascinated by this ability of real estate investing to accomplish other goals, like helping people in your community, make sure to stay tuned. It’s just a really cool story of how he merges those values in his investing.

Nate Hedrick  03:48

Yeah, I completely agree. So again, a good inspirational story about how to get started and ways you can do it, in ways that, again, help not just yourself, but others, which I really enjoy. So hope you guys enjoy the episode, and we’ll take you to it. Hey Greg, welcome to the show.

Greg Zinis  04:06

Good morning. How’s it going, guys?

Nate Hedrick  04:07

Yeah, man, we’re excited to have you. This is a really appreciate you joining us and sharing your story. Why don’t we just dive right in? Maybe give us a little bit of background on your pharmacy journey, and we’ll take it from there. 

Greg Zinis  04:16

Yeah, you know, I’m from Michigan, originally. I  was born and raised in Michigan, I went to undergrad at Northern Michigan University, went to pharmacy school at Ferris State University there, and I graduated in 2009 you know, I’d been in Michigan my whole life, and so I was really thinking about moving somewhere warmer, you know, I wanted to be by the coast, Because I grew up on Lake Superior there, Marquette, and just a bigger city too. And you know, it was right after the crash in 2009 and so the shortages were, you know, in Arizona, parts of Florida, Nevada and Virginia at the time. You know, those places stick out. And I thought I try maybe a year in each little location or one or two years and see what it was like. And, you know, explore a new city. But, um, yeah, I got to Virginia. I met my wife here, and I’ve been here ever since so but, you know, it takes a lot to pack up, move and go to a new city. It took forever to learn the city, too. So it was a fun adventure. And I, you know, at the time, I figured it was halfway between, you know, Washington, DC, New York City and Florida, too. So I’m not exactly, but on that side of the geography, the US. So that’s what brought me to Virginia. And then, you know, when I first got out in pharmacy, I did the night shift because I like the week on, week off schedule. That gave me the freedom to at the time, I’d go down to Puerto Rico and stay in the hostels there, because it was, you know, $10, $10, $11 a night there at the hostel. So I’d be able to travel on that week off and have some fun. And I did that for a couple years, and then I went back to the day shift after that as a pharmacy manager for maybe half a dozen years and and here we are. I was, you know, I was in Norfolk, in Portsmouth, Virginia Beach, all over the Hampton Roads area here in Virginia.

David Bright  06:13

Very cool. I can think of that time in 2009 when real estate was a scary thing, and a lot of real estate was really on sale, and then moving to a vacation market, I could see a lot of potential opportunity there. I’m curious, then, if you could tell us a little bit about your your real estate investing story, kind of when that began and and what got you in in that groove? 

Greg Zinis  06:33

When I, when I moved down to Virginia Beach here, I lived on 18th Street that was an area called the Oceanfront. That’s where all the, you know, all the hotels and resorts are, and I was a couple blocks away from that. But, you know, one unique thing in Virginia Beach is that there’s a boardwalk, and if you guys are aware of this or not, but it’s a, you know, it’s probably 30 feet wide. It’s cement, and it runs about 40 blocks right along the ocean right there. And the house that I was renting a room out of at the time, you know, is three blocks from that. But we really just need a couple guys. We had a great time, because you could just hop on your beach cruiser or go down to the boardwalk, and there’s all those restaurants and bars down there. You could head up and get, you know, a meal or two, and you go swimming too, if you wanted to. So I really love that area. I lived there for a couple years, and I I wanted to buy a property in that area, because I loved it and I thought had a lot of potential. You know, I’m just from living there in Virginia Beach, you learn that, you know, June, July and August, that’s the tourist season, and people rent their properties for a week at a time. So I bought a property right around 26th Street over there. And I just thought, you know, I’d lived in it for a while and have roommates. I found out that was, what does that house hacking? You know, at the time, I didn’t know it was called that. I guess a lot of people do that. Though I was just thinking long term though, that if I bought a house there, it’d be easy to sell, it’d be easy to rent, and I’d have options. And that was right after the real estate crash, too. So it’s kind of, you know, that was a scary time. And I, I got a pretty good deal on the house at the time, and so, you know, I moved in there. And that was in two actually, that was in 2010 when I bought that house towards the end of it. And so I’ve had it since then, you know. And actually, I did the weekly rentals for one summer, you know, the formula there at the time, because that was a while ago, that’s probably like 2012, 2013. You know, one one week is basically what you’d get in one month of doing a long term rental. And there’s, you know, 12 weeks in the summertime, and that’s a pretty good formula to have. And then if you rent it in the off season at all, that’s just extra money to help, you know, cover expenses or profit. And so I did that. I did it for one summer, but there’s a lot of work, though, and the long term rentals were more of autopilot. And actually, I got a I had a property manager do the long term rentals. I did not do that myself. It was a lot easier to pay the fee and have somebody professionally do it than having to go through that headache. I’m gonna just make you know, and it’s been on autopilot. Since then, I’ve had hardly any issues at all, but at the time, it was just easier to have it on long term rentals. And so I’ve done that since then, but I’m actually going to go back and convert it back to short term rentals, because I want to get that. I think it’s going to be a lot more profitable to do the short term rentals at this point too, you know. Another thing too, I forgot to mention is, when I bought that house, the attic wasn’t finished, but had a very large attic with dormers on it, and so there’s a lot of headspace too, you know. And at that time, I added the that was the attic as the fourth floor. I added a bathroom and a room to that, and so that brought it up to a now, it’s a three and a half bath and four bedroom house, but it’s, you know, it’s built vertically too. So it’s, you know, if you if you live in there and your bedrooms on the fourth floor, your legs get a workout running up and down every day, a noticeable difference after a while. But yeah, so we did that. I did that, and then I met my wife, and we, we moved into apartments because that that rental property really it was only, it only made sense on paper for money, as a rental property it’s pretty expensive to live in. 

Nate Hedrick  10:39

So Greg, you mentioned something awesome I want to go back to just for a second, and that is that you bought, you got a pretty good deal in 2009 and I think this was a very different time to buy. So can you tell us a little bit about that? Because I think many people struggle when they’re buying their first place to even find an option. So you know, how did you find the deal? What did that look like for you? Because I think, again, different, different buying time, but still, I think relevant to a lot of people that are struggling to find that first property.

Greg Zinis  11:03

Oh, yeah. So, you know, in 2009 I graduated in 2009 I got there in 2010 and at the time that, I think that was a little bit right after the crash. So the housing prices, they had come down a lot. I think they still actually went down after that even more part of 2010 so I don’t think I bought at the exact bottom at that time. And so I had a real estate agent at that time, and I think she kind of actually oversold me a little bit, but she knew it was going to be rental property, but it was definitely something that wasn’t really a mortgage. I wasn’t really comfortable holding on my own at the time, either. So it’s like, I kind of committed to having roommates. And so having the roommates at the time I was single, you know, made a lot easier, because that I chart, I I charge the roommates really good rent. It was really inexpensive rent, so I wasn’t price gouging, but that rental income really help offset it. And I was planning on doing those weekly rentals in the summertime, so that made that purchase decision easier. But also, at the time, you know, I was 24 and I just gotten out of pharmacy school, and I was working really hard through grad school, like, you know, grad school is no joke. We all know that. And I didn’t want to get out and work really hard and get all this money and pay off my school loans. And so, you know, my dad had kind of raised me with a little bit of an investment mindset when I was younger. And so I thought I could be gutsy. I’m like, you know, I could either save up all this money and pay off my school loans, or I could save up this money and buy a rental property. And I’m going to bet that over time, that real estate is going to increase in value and pay off those school loans. At some point down the road, I could sell that property and I’ll pay for my school loans. And that’s kind of, you know, I was a risk because I I had, you know, I’m pretty comfortable saying I had, you know, $90,000 in school loans. I feel like that’s pretty standard for a lot of people. But also, after working so hard, I didn’t want to get out and then work hard to pay off loans. I wanted to work hard and have fun, because I’ve been I want to enjoy the fruits of my labor, if you will. So that was the risk I took. And I was just, you know, as a downtime at the market, I thought I had time on my side too, and you have time on your side, eventually it’s going to be a good decision. I’d say, you know, may take a, you know, a while for that to come to fruition. But that was another aspect of it as well. 

David Bright  13:34

When I look at what a lot of people were paying in 2009 versus today, I have a feeling, if we fast forward to today, I’m curious, do you still have that property? Were you able to sell it and make like, a killing on it at this point, compared to 2009?

Greg Zinis  13:48

It’s, it’s gone up way more than I expected. You know, it’s almost doubled in price pretty much. It’s come it’s gotten pretty close to that. I actually tried selling it about five or six years after I bought it, which I’m really glad nobody bought it, because it’s increased a lot in value. And, you know, the other, the other crazy thing too, though, is, um, you know, I put a lot of money in my 401K, and I put, I put some money into that real estate. But the, you know that real estate’s become a large portion of my, of my portfolio too. It’s really the return on the money I put in the real estate has way outpaced the return on the 401, k which, you know, nobody has 2020, hindsight, but um, and of course, there’s a lot of factors that went into the economy since then, you know, the pandemic and whatnot. But that was a huge benefit, you know, glad I took the, I feel like I I took the punk route and didn’t pay off my school loans. I took the gutsy route, and it, you know, worked out. 

Nate Hedrick  14:53

I love, I love that, and I think that, you know, it’s a difficult move to make at the moment, right? Because you look at the debt and that’s a known quantity and what the future holds, obviously, nobody knows, right? So you’re kind of taking a jump that a lot of people are nervous to make. So I guess, tell me, so you bought this primary residence, right? You lived in it for a while, turned it into a rental. Been going back and forth with that. What kind of came next? I mean, were there, were there more properties? Were you running flips all of a sudden, like, what was the next phase for you? 

Greg Zinis  15:20

So I moved out of there, and I was living in an apartment with my, you know, my wife and I rented an apartment. We were saving up money for, you know, to buy a house, basically, you know, but then, you know, we had our first baby, and so we were in an apartment, but we really wanted to get into a house, because having a baby is a big life adjustment, as a lot of people know, find out about. So I guess a couple years after that, we had fun living in apartments in different areas of the city, you know. And then we had we saved up money for a house the baby, our baby, arrived a little sooner than you know, expected. And so we decided to move into a house, and this is, I would consider this part of the country kind of a high cost area of living. And so we want to get a fixer upper house, because they’re less expensive. We wanted to fix it up over time because it was an older house. We thought it’d be fun to get an older house and fix it up, but, like, that’s just kind of what we wanted to do. So we’re looking at properties. And one other thing too is I like to run, but I played soccer for a while, and we like to be by the beach, and so I don’t really run on cement or pavement. I like to run on the beach. So we had to be, there’s a lot of beach in this area, and so we had to be a couple blocks in the beach in order to be able to run. So part of it was exercise, and but there’s very there’s very expensive, rich parts of the beach, and there’s less expensive areas of the beach. And we actually moved into the less expensive area of the beach. And so we kind of, we just kind of got lucky at the time too. We really scored being on the Chesapeake Bay here where we got in. Because now, you know, the prices have increased dramatically, too, for this new house that we bought too, but we’ve, we had no idea that was coming, you know, at the time, we just were looking at houses, and this one had a low price. And actually, we didn’t really realize that the time was a short sale from the bank, because that wasn’t in there. We’re just looking at houses in that price range. Then it just so happened to be a short sale, and so we didn’t even know what that was. We had a vague idea at the time it was a foreclosure, and a real estate agent was telling us about that, and they’re like, you may or may not get it takes longer. And actually took six months to get this house. We had some time. We weren’t really in a rush. It was just something we wanted to do. And so we put in, put in an offer on that, and it was a short sale, and the bank countered, now, like $20-30, grand over asking price. Now, this is eight, nine years ago, and it’s a game they played foreclosures, I think because it was kind of almost felt like a bait and switch, because they had this price, we didn’t know they’re gonna counter, but then they came back and countered. We’re like, No, we’re not gonna do that. Well, we’ll go up like a grand and if they don’t want that, we’re gonna walk, you know, which I’m really glad we didn’t accept what they countered at because it is a foreclosure. And so we just, we countered that, and they accepted it, and then we took it and we moved in here. And so we’ve been, I know we’ve had it since then. We’ve been doing improvements over time.

David Bright  18:40

Yeah, so right about the same time that you went through this, my wife and I also bought a short sale that we did as a live and flip so I resonate with this story, right? We bought something that was a major fixer upper. The advice we were given at the time is that there is nothing short about a short sale. It takes forever. But the crux of it is that you’re shorting the mortgage payoff, so you need to get permission from the bank to do that as a way of avoiding a foreclosure for the seller. Is that kind of what you experienced?

Greg Zinis  19:06

Yeah, yeah, that’s what it was. You know, if you have the flexibility of time, short sales are kind of good to look into, because you might score a really good opportunity, you know, or it could be a disaster. There is some risk. It’s not risk free, but you can definitely have a good opportunity if you have time on your side.

David Bright  19:25

So then it sounds like you fixed this property up while you live there. Which my wife and I have done that a couple times. I feel like there’s definitely good in that. There’s definitely headaches of living in a construction zone, right? So tell me how that went for you?

Greg Zinis  19:38

Yeah, you know, the first thing we did was we redid our floors. You know, this is an older house. I think it’s built in 1949 and so I had original hardwood floors. So we did that first. We tore up all the carpeting and had the floors professionally done. And those look beautiful and amazing. We did that probably within the first year, and then after a couple years, we wanted to really fix up the inside of the kitchen and both bathrooms, repaint the entire interior, and redo the flooring on the second floor. And so we dove into that. And the reason why I wanted to do that was because I had been developing an interest in real estate, and I’d even say Tariq al Musa, causeFix and Flip on, you know, we saw those TV shows. So we, I wanted to learn the process on it. My wife was kind of on board with it. She really wanted to pick out her own kitchen and all the features, and then really, kind of design the bathrooms too. And so we, we dove into that. And live in flips are a lot more difficult. You know, I wouldn’t, you know, we did that once. I don’t think we’ll ever do it again, because there’s a lot more involved with that. You are kind of living in a construction zone. And of course, when you’re doing live in flips, you should try to do it as quick as you can, but plan for delays. You know, try to do it one or two months, but plan for it to take as long as six months. But I was able to learn that whole process, the permitting, pulling all the permits, doing the inspections. I wanted to do it, you know, the city involved, so they knew what we were doing, too, because that’s important. You know, you gotta, you gotta pull the permits and have this make the city aware. If you don’t make the city aware, you know, they could get really upset and make your life really miserable. So I wanted to avoid that and do it the right way.

Nate Hedrick  21:30

And from a realtor perspective, right? If you’re adding value in the kitchen, in the bathroom, like that, that’s where, again, investor mindset for just a second. Like, it’s fun, because you guys get to pick that out and enjoy it. But it’s also great for the resale value of that property down the road, like those are the things that are going to sell a property first is the kitchens, the bathrooms, putting the time and money into that. That makes the most sense. I love that.

Greg Zinis  21:51

Yeah, we really got to customize it, too. You know, my wife loves the backsplash she got to pick out. We did a bigger window in the kitchen. Got more light lighting in there. You know, we put in a farm house style sink that she loves. We splurged and did a tile shower, you know, on both bathrooms, because that’s fun. You get to pick that out, design it. The other, you know, one other thing though, too, I’ll say, is that when I was a teenager, when I was going to college, in the summers, I would help build garages inside the background there with, you know, it’s framing. I know how to do framing, siding, roofing, you know, doors and windows. I have a little bit of a idea of what we’re getting into. So that definitely helped.

Nate Hedrick  22:32

Did you do a lot of that work then yourself, or did you hire it all out and just it was, you’re able to manage it better because you had that background?

Greg Zinis  22:37

Actually, well, what I did, and if it’s your primary residence, you’re allowed to manage your own construction, which is a huge thing. You gotta check your local laws. But I, I had done some real estate investing, you know, learning, and they’re saying you gotta put the system in place so you can scale it. If you don’t have the system, you can’t scale it. And so I actually didn’t do it. I hardly did any of the work myself. I hired people so I could find the people that knew how to do it and would be reliable and do quality and good pricing. And so I, I even paid somebody to come in and paint it. I was really tempted to paint but, you know, I paid a painter. I’m glad I did that.

Nate Hedrick  23:14

It’s an easy trap to fall into because it’s right there, right? You’re just like, I can put, pick up a paintbrush, like, this is easy but, but I think it makes it’s really valuable to have those people and find those relationships, find good quality people, but still oversee it so that you understand the ins and outs of it. I think that’s a great, a great setup. And you know that, like, if it was an emergency, and we’re, you know, we had to get to the point of, like, I have to paint this, or this doesn’t make money, you do that, but you building this system from the beginning. It makes a lot more sense. I like that a lot.

Greg Zinis  23:46

And so you really got to try to, it’s almost like playing chess too, because you got to think 3040, steps ahead of time and try to budget for everything, and try to manage all that, you know, and make sure the math works out too. 

David Bright  24:02

Yeah. So what came next? Then it sounds like you you’ve done the live and flip, you’ve had this rental, you’ve done some vacation rentals, some long term rental, but you’re learning and you’re growing at this stage. So what did that springboard you into next? 

Greg Zinis  24:14

So there’s one thing I forgot to mention, is that, you know, after being a pharmacist, since 2010 and then pandemic came, and initially there was too many pharmacists. And so they because there’s a decrease in business. And I think the, you know, the heads of the company thought there would be too many, and so they had to cut staff to free up people, because they expected a dramatic downturn in business. And so at that time, my wife and I had had our our third child, our third baby had just been born, and they were offering, you know, either stay at the company, or you could take a severance and leave the company. And then, if you took the severance, if you came back before a year, you’d have to pay it back. Or if you took the severance, you may not have a job after that. And so. So and then there are some grads.. I’ve been working really hard for a long time as a pharmacy manager, I thought it’d be a good time to take some time off. And there are some grads that just graduated and they needed jobs. I’m like, You know what? We could just take this risk, take the severance, take some time off, and then if we needed to, I mean, if it came to we could always move from the area to find a job somewhere. And so I, I took that year off, which was scary, but it was beginning of the pandemic, and then it changed the economy and everyone’s life at the time, you know, as we all know, but during that year off, I wanted to learn more about real estate, because I was getting really I just wanted to learn about it, and I haven’t really found any good resources, and so I paid for one of those real estate investing courses, and it was the Elite Legacy program that that was originally done through Robert Kiyosaki. So I paid for that, and it was basically the whole idea of that company. I think he eventually sold it to them. I don’t know if he’s still part of it or not? Yeah, he might still own it, I’m not sure, but it was through him. The whole idea is you get four years of knowledge, and you learn really quick, and you have it in a couple months. And so it speeds up your timeline. Because, you know, with investing, in any kind of investing, speeding up your timeline is helpful. And so I just paid it, and I there’s 1000s of pages of information about a wide swath of real estate, like everything from buying land to buying mobile home parks to doing group homes, residential. They even had stuff on commercial, stuff on writing notes for making mortgages, just anything real estate involved. I read 1000s of pages on that and learned about all that stuff, you know. And so I told my wife, you know, I’m like, we could just throw it on the credit card, and then we could flip the house. This is before we flipped the house, and the lessons I learned from that allowed me to flip the house and and flipping the house is profitable enough to where it covered the cost of flipping the house, and then also it covered the cost of that program, and then we had a profit as well. And so, you know, I was fairly confident. My wife trusts me a lot I guess. I was pretty confident that I could pull it off. And it really got scary at times, because I was like, I don’t know, because when you’re doing it, when you’re in the middle of a renovation, a major renovation, there’s just a lot of factors involved in it. But one thing I learned from that, course, was that if you could add a bedroom, you could greatly increase the value. Because our host was originally three bedrooms here, I added a wall, and that wall was a beautiful thing, because that wall probably cost three or $400 but that hugely increased the value of the house, and so that, that made that flip profitable from that course. So I took the course into that too. 

Nate Hedrick  27:50

It seems like, and again, like any good pharmacist, right? You really like the education piece and making sure you’ve got your ducks in a row before, kind of moving forward and learning more things than than just kind of sitting back, right? And so you also, we mentioned, we talked before we hit record. And you also recently became a licensed real estate agent. So, you know, again, I think furthering that education piece, can you tell us a little bit about what inspired you to do that and what you plan on doing with that license?

Greg Zinis  28:14

Yeah. And so part of that, you know, when I took that class, they’re talking about joining a local real estate investing Association, which I joined that. And I learned about wholesaling a lot of a lot with real estate. A lot of real estate investing is trying to find deals or off market deals on your own. And so I got into wholesaling. And I said, you know, I’m just gonna dive in and try this. And I went door knocking. I drove around in neighborhoods looking for distressed properties. The whole, the whole idea of real estate investing is should be a win win win situation, where you’re helping the owner, you’re helping yourself, and then you can help a third party, whether that’s a renter or reselling it, or the community. Really, it’s, it’s, you know, it’s altruism all around helping people. And so I went out one day, I went and knocked on 30 doors on in this neighborhood that I thought people might want to sell their houses. That’d be a good place to renovate their distressed properties. And I talked to a lot of people, and there’s, I had three really strong leads, and they all asked me if I had my real estate license or not, and I didn’t have it. And I, you know, and I’m like, You know what? I could have gotten those had I only had my license in it. So I went, I wanted to go get my license, because it’s, it is really fun. It’s a fun like the investing aspect, and then also helping people and just buying houses, you know, and showing people houses. I thought it’d be fun, because it’s people get excited about going to buy house. They sure get excited about a new place to live, you know. Or if they if they’re in a really scary, terrible situation, it feels really good to help them with their exit strategies, to find out how it’s most beneficial. So there’s that as well. 

Nate Hedrick  30:01

I really resonate with that. Again. I I’ve been licensed for seven years now, and I agree. It’s just like an extension of the the care and the help that you find in pharmacy, you can translate that right to real estate, right? There’s different problems to be solved. Then it’s not medication all of a sudden. It’s, you know, where you’re going to live and and it’s, it’s fun to to kind of address those problems and see somebody come out on the other end in a better state than when you left them. I just, I so I really like that. I also think it’s, it’s crazy impressive that you went out and knocked on 30 doors. I don’t know a lot of people that are like, I’m confident, I’m gonna go out and just like, knock on these doors and see people are ready to sell a house like that. The vast majority of people would not be willing to do that. So that’s, that’s pretty cool.

Greg Zinis  30:39

Yeah. I think, you know, I think part of that is because I’ve, I was born, raised in a small town, you know, Marquette, Michigan’s like 30,000 people. Everybody knows everyone, pretty much. And now I’m in a big city that’s, you know, million or 1.2 million people, or 1.4 million in this area. So it is kind of funny going the city and doing that, but everyone was really friendly and nice. You know, I just as long as you approach them, you know, nice and happy and I don’t know, they kind of match your energy. Now, also being a pharmacist too, we interact with every aspect of society, whether they’re, you know, people that are going through major struggles, or, you know, the upper society too, everyone in between comes in, whether they’re healthy or sick. So I think that was a edge too, because you’re kind of get used to it, you know, anybody, anyone can walk up to that consult window at any time with any question. 

David Bright  31:36

l love your attitude in this, because I think real estate investing can oftentimes get this wrapped for being really predatory and trying to find people and squeak deals through and things like that. But I love how you’re approaching this, with this win win win mentality, and I know you also shared with us, before we started recording, that you’ve got some philanthropic goals in there as well. So I’d love to hear more about that. How you how you also intended helping the community. 

Greg Zinis  32:00

Yeah, the you know, one thing in the real estate investing course is they talk about social housing or group housing for different aspects. So this kind of opened up the idea to this, where it’s, it’s not just short term rentals for vacationers, but you can also, you can buy a house a property, and you can rent out rooms to people, whether it’s for you know, domestic violence survivors that need short term housing, or a recovery house for people that have, you know, alcohol problems or narcotic problems. And I think even now, there’s group homes for for the elderly too, where they can have kind of a group living atmosphere and but you know, one, one thing. So I was aware of that of those shorter term rentals, whether those are weeks to months, but with that condo that the condo that I bought in Virginia Beach, really took off. And I’ve been very fortunate. There’s a lot of fortunate people. There’s a lot of fortunate short term rentals owners in that area. Because I’m not sure the year Airbnb came out, but I don’t think it really got huge until the pandemic. And luckily, I bought people that had bought before the pandemic was kind of this windfall of appreciation in your property value, you know, the increase in your property value, and then rents increased. And so the properties generally, they pay for themselves. And then there’s profit too. And so I was thinking about ways to give back to people. Because, actually, the reason that came along was because my dad, one of my parents, you know, my father, was like, son, you need to consider charity or donating, you know, donating your time. And I’m like, Dad, I don’t have any time to be volunteering anywhere with work and kids and the wife, you know. But then I kind of looked at my situation like, well, how can I help people? And the unique thing is, if you have a short term rental property, you know, it’s never 100% vacancy, or it could be, I don’t know it rarely is, but there inevitably comes up a time in the year where there’s not, where it’s not rented, and so then you have this empty house. So what are you going to do with it? Are you going to just let it sit there? Or can you maybe try to find a use for that? And there’s a lot of people that are in that situation with short term rentals. And so I thought, also, I’m in a military town here in Virginia Beach. It’s huge. This area in the country, there’s a lot of military bases. And I think one of the, I think the one of the largest naval bases in the, probably the world, that’s here too, on Little Creek Naval Base. But it’s a military town. And so I was like, You know what, why don’t I just donate one week? There’s 50, you know, 52 weeks out of the year. Why don’t I just give one week a year to military family where they could come down and stay for free in a rental property, because they’re, you know, they they sacrifice a lot, a lot. And I was thinking, honestly I was think of military in boot camp that maybe have families. Probably have a higher stress situation, they sacrifice a lot for our country. 

Up and running, and then my wife and I are hoping to buy a new house next summer, in 2025 new primary because we need more space. We just this isn’t a very child friendly house that we’re in right now. We need to buy a bigger house. We’re kind of outgrowing this house, but we do love it. It’s a 1940s Cape Cod, and it’s, you know, I think we’re emotionally attached to it, but we want to make it a short term rental too, but we’re gonna be done after that, probably with buying rental properties, at least for a little bit. I think we focusing on a primary resonance here soon. 

Nate Hedrick  40:33

A lot of irons in the fire, which is, which is great. I think we’re all kind of dealing with that. I like all the ideas that you have, and again, your insight has just been super helpful. So I guess I want to jump then to our final infusion questions, three questions we ask every guest on the show. Try to get your quick take on these. So the first, and you’ve alluded to this a little bit, but I kind of want to expand, is what’s one tangible strategy that you use to make sure that your investing works hand in hand with your career as a pharmacist. 

Greg Zinis  41:02

One of, one of the biggest things is, um, you know, I learned this from Jim Cramer too. I’ll say this, I know, I know he’s a hot button for some people, but he would just say diversifying. I think he said diversification. He’d always, he’d always hammer, diversify, diversify, diversify. And so, you know, I, at least for my stress, my wife and I strategy. Part of it is, you know, the 401, K, we do buy some stock options through work, and then real estate should be a portion of that, also even a private stock investment account. So part of it is diversification. That’s important. And considering that, I don’t think a lot of people think of real estate at all, but rental properties should be I think it should be part of everyone’s portfolio, because it’s stocks and rental properties come sometimes they counterbalance each other also. And you don’t want to be too much in real estate. You don’t want to be too much in the stock market. 

David Bright  41:59

Yeah, absolutely. What’s one resource that’s been most helpful to you in your real estate journey, whether that’s book, podcast, person, author, website, whatever that would be.

Greg Zinis  42:10

The there’s, I guess, getting as much information as you can. You know, the Bigger Pockets podcast is huge for everybody. Listen to those and learn a lot of lessons, and then also good old fashioned books too. That the first book I bought was Landlording on Autopilot, and that was the whole reason why I bought a rental property, and the whole reason why I hired a property manager, because he’s like, you don’t want to do that. Just hire a professional, let them take care of it. So I’d say podcasts. And go to your library and see what books they have on real estate investing, too, and just read, read a lot, listen to a lot.

Nate Hedrick  42:52

I love it. And then what’s one piece of advice that you’d give to a pharmacist that’s contemplating a start in real estate investing?

Greg Zinis  42:59

I definitely recommend it. You know, you don’t wait to buy real estate. You buy real estate and wait is the one of the famous maxims in there, and that when I bought that property on 26 Street, around 26th street is basically beach house, I’m like, I wait 30 years to buy a beach house, and they’ll probably be $5 million or I could buy a beach house now, and it’s a lot less expensive. I’m not going to live in it, but the mortgage is getting paid down, and it’s just I was even, I was even losing money there for, I mean, not a lot, but for a while it was kind of like 50 bucks a month to own the property. I had to pay extra, or $100 to pay extra. But the way I saw it was, I was getting the beach house way ahead of time, yeah, and so yeah, I definitely want to buy it ahead of time, if you can.

David Bright  43:50

With the value increase you’ve seen since then, it sure, sure seems like a smart decision in hindsight, that’s for sure.

Greg Zinis  43:56

I was gonna say, yeah. I think I just kind of got lucky. You know, I had a lot of fun at the oceanfront, and I loved it. I bought something I loved. And I think that goes into a lot of good decisions for people, is find something you love and pursue it. 

David Bright  44:10

If people want to follow you, find more about you. Where can they find you?

 

Greg Zinis 44:15

Right now, it’s kind of the infancy. I have a, you know, I’ve got a unique name, just Greg’s. My last name is Lithuania Zinis. You know z and zebra. I N as in Nancy. I S as in Sam. So you can find me on my Facebook. Greg Zinis just friend me and then, um, I’m going to try to launch a website here. I’ll probably have beach pledge.com I bought that domain for $11.99 sorry, it’s beach it’s Beach City. Pledge com, that’ll be coming down the line eventually, but it’s not quite there yet, but that’ll be in the future, but just on Facebook for right now, and Instagram and TikTok.

Nate Hedrick  44:52

We’ll make sure to put your links to your your socials in the in the show notes, so people can reach you directly and and, yeah, thank you so much for joining us and just talking through all the things that you’ve been up to and looking forward to seeing what’s next from you guys. 

Greg Zinis  45:05

No problem. I really appreciate it. Thank you.

David Bright  45:08

Thanks so much. Thanks for listening to the YFP Real Estate Investing podcast. If you like what you heard in today’s show, please leave us a review and subscribe to the show so you never miss an episode. If you have a question, know someone that would make a good guest or want to connect with us head on over to YFPrealestate.com and join the growing YFP Real Estate Investing Facebook group. 

Nate Hedrick  45:27

As we conclude this week’s episode of the YFP Real Estate Investing podcast, an important reminder that the content of this podcast is provided to you for informational purposes only and is not intended to provide and should not be relied on for investment or any other advice. Information in this podcast and corresponding materials should not be construed as a solicitation or offer to buy or sell any investment or related financial products. We urge listeners to consult with their financial advisor with respect to any investment. Furthermore, the information contained in our archive, newsletters, blog posts and podcasts is not updated and therefore may not be accurate at the time you listen to it. Opinions and analyzes expressed herein are solely those of Your Financial Pharmacist, unless otherwise noted, and constitute judgments as of the dates published. Such information may contain forward looking statements which are not intended to be guarantees of future events. Actual results could differ materially from those anticipated in the forward looking statements. For more information, please visit yourfinancialpharmacist.com/disclaimer.

David Bright  46:22

Thank you for your support of the YFP Real Estate Investing Podcast. Have a great rest of your week. 

[END]

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