At EquityMultiple, we’re always eager to chat with investors and share their insights with the community. Today, we’re pleased to bring you a captivating interview with Dr. Stan Zaslau, a seasoned urologist and savvy real estate investor who has made over 9 investments with EquityMultiple.
Dr. Zaslau’s journey as a busy medical professional with strategic real estate investing on the side is both inspiring and educational. In this video interview, he shares his unique perspective on what building a diversified portfolio means, the importance of passive income streams, and how he leverages EquityMultiple’s offerings to create a robust portfolio.
Some highlights you can look forward to in the full interview:
- How Dr. Zaslau balances his medical career with smart investing
- His “two-thirds, one-third” portfolio strategy for balancing safety and growth
- Insights on using EquityMultiple’s Alpine Notes and Ascent Income Fund to create investment “ladders”
- The value of human connection in the investment process
Whether you’re a seasoned investor or just starting your real estate investment journey, Dr. Zaslau’s practical advice and enthusiasm for smart investing are sure to resonate. Don’t miss this opportunity to learn from a fellow investor who’s successfully navigating the balance of real estate investing while maintaining a demanding medical career.
Watch the full interview below to gain valuable insights:
Disclosure: This customer testimonial was unpaid and of an actual EquityMultiple investor. This testimonial may not be representative of the experience of other customers. No testimonial is indicative of future performance or success. This testimonial may not represent all interactions or relationships with EquityMultiple. Neither this video nor the information contained herein constitutes an offer to sell, or a solicitation of an offer to buy. The views from this video may not be similar to views held at EquityMultiple and are entirely of the speaker.
Transcript
EquityMultiple: Tell us about your career path…
Dr. Zaslau: So I’m going to take a moment and tell you about my career path. I decided very young that I was interested in medicine. And so through college I studied biology and psychology. I went on to medical school and learned that my calling was to be a urologist.
We are surgeons of the urinary tract. The kidneys, the ureters, the bladder, and the genital organs in males and females. So I’m a surgeon, but we also take care of patients in the office with medical conditions in those areas. And that’s taken me on a very long journey. I’m now 25 years into this career in medicine.
EquityMultiple: How has your mindset as an investor changed throughout your career?
Dr. Zaslau: So when I think about my mindset as an investor, I mean, early in my career it was really about making money, and getting through the workweek, and paying obligations and responsibilities—car loan, house, mortgage, student loan debt. You graduate early on and you’re just trying to get through the workweek and just pay your bills, so really what you’re making is what you’re paying out towards these debts.
So you really don’t have the opportunity to focus on saving—but yet saving is so important. And I learned through my career that saving is very, very important, but you don’t have time to save. You’re busy as a physician, working hard, and so how do you do that? And then I learned that if I can save in a way where I don’t have to think about it, where maybe I can find an investment that I don’t have to think about that will pay me passively, then I’m making a return on my investment—and if it’s a good return, then that’s certainly something that’s going to be helpful.
Now that I’m further along in my career, approaching age 60, now I really want to preserve the principal, and find deals and find situations that will allow me to have a low risk in terms of my investment, get my principal back, if I can do that, and create cash flows, because those cash flows can be used to pay other obligations—and have this done in an automatic manner, is what I’ve learned. But it took many years to get to that point.
EquityMultiple: At this point in your career, which types of investments are you primarily interested in?
Dr. Zaslau: Certainly real estate and certainly through EquityMultiple, I’ve had a lot of opportunities to be involved in a variety of different investments. I personally like investments that don’t have a lot of risk to them. For me, when I look at a deal structure, I’m going to look and say: is it a senior position, is it a mezzanine position, or is it a preferred equity position? And for me, at my age, I’m going to prefer the senior position. And the reason is that I know I’m going to be the first that’s paid back.
And then when I look at return, I have to have a benchmark. So I’ve created the benchmark—in my opinion, the S&P average return is about 9.25% over 20 years. And so the question is, where did I come up with that number? So I went to the web and I searched “20 year return on the S&P 500.” And I said, “I’m going to come up with as many numbers as I can, and write them all down and average them up and see what number I get.” And throw out the two highest, the highest and the lowest, and it came up with 9.25%. So in my mind, that’s about the average that the S&P will give, and that’s a good benchmark to compare investments to. So when I look at an EquityMultiple investment, I’m going to look and say, “Can I beat the market?” Because if I can beat the market, then I’m in good shape. The senior debt opportunities with EquityMultiple are at least 10%, more likely in that 11%, 12%, or sometimes even 13% range.
So for me, I’m going to look at something that has low risk—senior debt, for me, has low risk. I’m going to look for something that can get my principal back quickly. If I can get my principal back in, say, one to three years, that’s good because the money is going back to me. And I’m going to look to create cash flow immediately.
So if I can create a return monthly, that’s outstanding. If I can create it quarterly, that’s also good. And then if I can “plus the deal”—can I reinvest that real estate opportunity?—that would be a great thing.
So a good senior debt. And then the group turns around and says, “Hey, we have another project in another location.” And I would be like, “Hey, this worked out well with this group already, I’d like to do this again.” And I’ll give you an example—one of the EquityMultiple offerings was the Brooklyn Senior Condo Loan. And that turned around very quickly, was favorable for investors. And then it turned out there was a second, smaller offering. And I looked at that and said, “Hey, I’d like to get involved in that because I knew the success of the first one.” So to me, that was “plussing the deal” for me.
And then the last opportunity that I look for is leverage. And when we think of leverage, we think of assuming more risk. And I’m looking at leverage as saying, “Well, if I can find a second senior loan opportunity that’s similar to the first one, and if I put $10,000 for the first, and I put another $10,000, then I have $20,000 at maybe 10 to 12%.” So my leverage is by putting more in and getting more out.
So that’s what I look for in deals and opportunities, and especially those with EquityMultiple.
EquityMultiple: How do EquityMultiple investments fit into your portfolio as a whole?
Dr. Zaslau: Sure. So when you think about portfolio allocation, this means different things to different people. So for me, at my age, if we did my age of almost 60, you know, “60/40″—maybe only 40% of money should be in stocks and 60% should be in much safer assets. You know, I think with people living longer, we really have to make sure that our money will get us where we need to be.
And I think the stability of these real estate investments, especially the safer ones with senior debt, will outpace the market. So for me as I’m growing, I could see 30% of my money, maybe even more, in senior debt type opportunities that turn themselves over.
Or even something—as we spoke about before—like an Ascent Income Fund, which to me operates like senior debt as well with a very nice attractive rate of return and opportunity for quarterly payments, quarterly cash flows, which I think is an excellent opportunity.
Certainly, again, as people age, we have to consider having money in the market, because that will do better than traditional CDs and such. As far as looking at interest rates, interest rates are not just going to go down. We’re right now in this kind of steady zone where they’re not going up, they’re not going down.
And what will be? We don’t really know, but I would expect it to be—there will be some rate cuts, maybe on the 25 basis point numbers, and how many there’ll be each year, we have to see how the economy is doing. So I can’t necessarily worry about that as an investor. I have to look forward and say, “Hey, in the real estate world”—and we’ve discussed this many times on EquityMultiple whitepapers—”is that there are many families and people in our country that are finding the need to rent.” And so rental opportunities in the single-family, multifamily opportunities will always be present.
And so there will always be opportunities as investors in these areas, regardless of what rates are, because it’s just more expensive to live and to do. And there are very, very attractive opportunities on the EquityMultiple pathway. In fact, I want to take a minute and tell you about one, and, and advise people that as you’re looking at opportunities, you kind of look at your own life and see, you know, “How is this relevant?” So one of them that I was certainly really excited about was in Chicago. I think that’s the Linkt Mixed-Use.
When you think about investing, think about your own life. So, my son went to school at Northwestern and he lived right nearby where that Linkt facility is in Chicago. And that has some rental properties, it also has storage space, and it had a restaurant. And the thing that was most attractive to me is that it was right near the transit system, right near a subway stop. And that’s very much how my son lived his life while he was in school. And I just thought that a property like that would be successful on multiple levels. The restaurant portion, the storage portion, the housing portion, and the proximity to transportation.
So when I saw that, I jumped on that, because it meant something to me. So my advice to investors is see how the opportunities on EquityMultiple relate to your own life, because it’ll allow you to be a better investor since it will mean something to you.
EquityMultiple: As an experienced EquityMultiple investor, how would you construct a commercial real estate portfolio if you were starting from scratch today?
Dr. Zaslau: Given my age and wanting to be safer about my options and knowing that I can create these cash flows, I would create a two thirds/one third, where two thirds is going to be in the safer senior debt area, and maybe one third is more in these “looking to have higher gains, higher return, but of course more risk.”
So, the things that I like within EquityMultiple—the Brooklyn Condo Senior Loan is very attractive to me. The Flint and Rosemont Campgrounds, because that too is a senior position with a short term, about 2 years and 11%. You know, I always have my go-to as the Ascent Income Fund, because it’s always available and I can put money in every month.
And then when I look and think “What’s out there for the future?”, what’s exciting for me is the Foundations Multifamily Portfolio. And the reason why I think that’s exciting is because a portion of that is senior debt. About 10% or thereabouts is senior debt. And the remaining 90% is more preferred equity—but some very, very interesting properties in a variety of locations. And I like that because the yield on that is going to be higher.
And it’s exciting because some of the areas that are involved are up-and-coming areas like Kansas City, Philadelphia, and even the Brooklyn Condo. So I really like that. Another thing that I like too in that kind of higher yield, higher projection, but still preferred equity was the Lee’s Summit Development—I believe that was in the Kansas City area. Kansas City is in the center of the country, so all roads go through Kansas City to go to the west. So with that, I think that’s important.
So, another question that people ask, Soren, is “How do you look at an EquityMultiple opportunity as an investor?” And so I kind of put myself into that location and kind of say, “Well, if I were looking for a rental property, would I want to live in this establishment?”
So, when I looked at Lee’s Summit, I said, “You know, it’s about a half hour from downtown Kansas City. There’s a lot of industry and a lot of other companies that are in development out there.” I think one of the medical record companies—I think it might be Cerner—actually has their base in Kansas City, so if there’s a lot of people who are coming to work in that in that area, they’re going to want to live around where they work. I thought that was attractive, and then, of course, what kind of opportunities are available for for eating and leisure? Restaurants and high-end shopping?
So that’s kind of the way I will look at a property on the EquityMultiple site. I kind of put myself in it, because it makes it more fun. It makes it more involving me in the process rather than just involving an investment of money.
EquityMultiple: What are you hoping to achieve with your portfolio by the time you retire?
Dr. Zaslau: So, when I think about retirement, I think about: “Will my monies be able to pay for my expenses to live?” I’ve carefully budgeted out for where we live: “How much would it cost me to live on an annual basis?” So by having those numbers, I can create passive income streams. And I’ve been able to do that with my EquityMultiple investments such that if I did not work starting tomorrow, the passive income streams created through some of the investments I highlighted earlier would pay for all of my expenses to live.
Now—would it allow me to go out to eat every night? Would it allow me to travel and take vacations? No. But the first step that I learned from Justin Donald’s book is that you have to replace your expenses just for day-to-day living. Then, you can add to that and try and include things like vacations, a purchase of a new car, a mortgage payment, maybe a payment on a vacation home.
So the first thing to me is the basal type of living expenses and, and “Can I pay for those with passive income streams?” And that’s what EquityMultiple allows you to do, should you choose to invest in that way. You can use those income streams to pay for debts that you have on a monthly basis, and they could be paid in full.
EquityMultiple: How do EquityMultiple’s Alpine Notes figure into your portfolio construction?
Dr. Zaslau: So when I think of the Alpine Note series, I think of something like a CD—like a certificate of deposit—meaning that I’m investing in a product that is senior loan driven, which will produce a return for me on a monthly or at the end of the term.
And there are a variety of different terms that are available—a three month, a six month, and a nine month. The higher interest, higher payment are at the higher terms. So this is an opportunity as as a new investor to get involved with EquityMultiple at a lower cost.
So lower minimums, and one could create an Alpine Note “ladder,” having a three month, a six month, a nine month, and maybe another three month. And so every three months, monies could be returned to the investor, or they can be placed into another EquityMultiple product. So that, I think, is excellent.
The Ascent Income Fund, I think, is also a very important vehicle. It’s based basically on senior debt, and these monies are used to assist in other projects that are going on in EquityMultiple to help finance other deals. The interest rate on this is significantly higher than the highest of the Alpine Notes, and the investment minimum is not a very significant number.
One could create, just like a CD, an Ascent Income “ladder,” where maybe you have a three month—you start an investment on September 1st, you start another one on December 1st, and another one on February 1st. And those would all roll over.
And the best opportunity with this product is to hold it for two years. Because if you’re holding it for one year, yes, you’re getting a return, but there is a penalty. And so you really—if you’re going to have an investment, you want to avoid a penalty. So if you can hold it for at least two years, you’ll avoid the penalty.
But think about it: by staggering and creating an Ascent Income “ladder,” you can have every three months or every six months an investment, and then two years down the road, you’ll have those investments coming due that you can take without a penalty. So it’s a really, really good opportunity that has better rates than a CD, and allows you to have good control of your money.
EquityMultiple: How would you describe your experience as an EquityMultiple investor?
Dr. Zaslau: Well, when I think of EquityMultiple, I’m optimistic about the future. I’m optimistic because every few weeks I’m going to see a new deal. Or maybe I’ll see the same deal that I’m in and an opportunity to re-enter that. An example would be the Linkt Mixed-Use. I was happy to get into that, and then I was also happy to see that it came around again. So I was able to add to a prior investment.
So that’s optimistic— I don’t know what the future is going to be, but it’s certainly exciting if there are good products to invest in.
The other thing that I like about EquityMultiple is that we are updated as investors as to the progress of each of our holdings. So in other words, in the Lee’s Summit Development, I recently got an update about how they were doing with the land and permits and other such things. I do think the EquityMultiple group does a very good job of letting investors know what is going on with their individual investment on the ground floor.
Because you put money into an investment, you’d like to know how it’s doing even if you’re not seeing a return. And that’s something very important for investors to know—for some of these investments, you may not see a return for six months or more until the project gets going. So that’s something to certainly consider as you’re considering investment opportunities.
EquityMultiple: Tell us about your experience with the EquityMultiple Investor Relations team…
Dr. Zaslau: So one of the things that makes me very, very happy to be working with EquityMultiple is the ease of which I can speak to a staff member. Certainly very easy by email, but I’ve been able to reach out and speak in-person to several staff members—and it’s very important to be able to put a voice to another voice when we’re talking about investing money because money is something that we all work hard for and when we’re investing it, we want to know where it’s going and how it’s doing and what’s going on with it.
So I think that that relationship is very, very important. And in a crazy way, it almost feels like going to the bank when I was younger with my dad. He knew the name of the teller, and they knew his name. And so I feel with EquityMultiple that I know quite a few staff members and feel comfortable in reaching out when I have questions about investments or about next steps in the process—that I have a team that’s willing to work with me.
EquityMultiple: How has investing through EquityMultiple changed your life?
Dr. Zaslau: What makes it easy to work with EquityMultiple is the same tenets that I learned from Justin Donald about creating passive income streams—so that when I’m busy working all day in in the hospital and doing surgery and caring for patients, I’m going to wake up and know that there’s an income stream coming.
I’ll give you a perfect example. So the dates that I look forward in the month is usually about the 15th of the month, because in general, that’s when a lot of the EquityMultiple cash flows will pay out—so to get a message on the morning of the 14th that says, “Oh, just an update on your Flint Creek and Rosemont campgrounds, is that your payment of $189.25 will be coming due today.”
And so it’s nice to wake up and know that that’s coming. It’s predictable and it’s a good feeling to know that that income stream is working and is predictable and producing.
EquityMultiple: What investing advice would you give to a physician early in their career?
Dr. Zaslau: For young physicians coming out and young professionals no matter where they are in life, it’s never too early to start investing. We’re told to “Invest in your 401k!” and “Invest early!” and “Focus on a company match!”
Well, you can do the same thing with EquityMultiple. You can start with something like an Alpine Note or an Ascent Income Fund. Or an investment that has a minimum that you’re comfortable investing with. But if you don’t start, then you can’t see the cash flows coming. And it could be one thing.
If I were telling someone new who’s starting out—start with a three month Ascent Income Fund. Or, I’m sorry—I’ll start with a three month Alpine Note. Very simple, very straightforward. And in three months, you’ll see your return on that investment. And then you can either roll it over, or maybe add a new one. And just start that way and create these ladders that keep giving because every investment is going to give you a return.
And the more returns that you have, the more comfortable you’re going to be seeing this work. It’s like a cycle, like a wheel that will keep spinning. And once it starts, it’ll never stop.
Real Estate Investing FAQs
Q: Is real estate investing a good way to build wealth?
A: Yes, real estate investing can be a powerful way to build wealth, as it offers potential for passive income, appreciation, portfolio diversification, and tax benefits. Like any other asset class, real estate investing entails risk, which should be carefully considered.
Q: How much money do I need to start investing in real estate?
A: The amount required can vary widely depending on the investment strategy. REITs can be a low-cost entry point, while direct property investment typically requires more capital.
Q: Can I invest in real estate if I don’t want to be a landlord?
A: Absolutely. Options like REITs and online real estate crowdfunding platforms like EquityMultiple allow you to invest without the responsibilities of property management. EquityMultiple takes on the role of actively managing the assets its users invest in, and this is known as “passive real estate investing.”
Q: Is flipping houses still profitable?
A: Flipping houses in up-and-coming real estate markets can be profitable, but it requires a thorough understanding of renovation costs and market trends. It’s also riskier and more capital-intensive than other strategies.
Q: How can I learn more about real estate investing?
A: Consider taking courses, reading books on real estate investing, and networking with experienced investors to gain knowledge and find a real estate investment mentor. Many alternative investment platforms also offer free educational materials on the subject of real estate investing.
Q: I want to get started—which real estate investment is right for me?
A: While EquityMultiple can’t make specific recommendations, we do encourage investors to diversify as much as possible with their real estate allocation. Within the EquityMultiple platform, for example, this may entail investing the minimum in several opportunities across our three pillars.
Q: I’m an experienced EquityMultiple investor. How do I contribute an Investor Story?
A: Please do not hesitate to reach out to ir@equitymultiple.com if you have any feedback or are interested in providing your own testimonial.
