Ellis Hammond’s got an interesting story. He was a full-time college pastor, of all things, before getting into real estate.
His first investment was a duplex in San Diego. Since he was dead broke, he convinced a family friend to put down the money for it. Him and his wife actually moved into the back unit while renting out the front unit.
They fixed it up, created about $150,000 in equity in less than a year, and it was game on from there.
Read on for my review.
“This was the path that we were really gonna get on to begin to create wealth,” Ellis said.
“But also something really important that happened when we bought this duplex, we realized that buying the duplex at the time was gonna be really difficult to achieve the goals that we had in our wealth building journey; and who we wanted to impact and how we wanted to impact people,” he continued.
“We didn’t wanna spend all of our time landscaping and going two units at a time. It cost us almost $300k a unit to buy.”
“And so we realized pretty early on that we needed a better model, a better way to really scale what we were doing.”
“So that’s when we learned about this idea of multifamily apartment syndication. Where we could actually pool investors together and go and purchase large apartment buildings.”
“But again, we had no track record, didn’t have the experience, but what we did have was a network. We had something to leverage to get us to that next stage of where we wanted to be.”
Ellis started connecting with experienced operators, who’ve been around for awhile; and since he had spent the last six years doing missionary work, he knew all about raising money.
He just had to pitch the vision to these people, get them to bet on him, and next thing ya know he was closing on a $9.5 million dollar deal in Memphis, Tennessee.
Meaning, literally, from the time he first learned about investing in real estate, like 13 months later his portfolio was worth about $10 million.
“So we began to see that this idea of OPM (other people’s money) – it’s how we bought our duplex, then it was how we bought our first apartment syndication, and it’s how we’re gonna grow to 1,000 units and beyond,” Ellis said.
“This was the way to go. We wanna partner with investors, be outside of Wall Street, invest in alternative asset classes like real estate.”
“We wanna work with people that trust us and see our vision, that see why we love this asset class – not only the returns and the opportunities it provides us but the spiritual impact we can have on our residents as well.”
“Listen, if I can do it, anybody can do it,” Ellis said.
“If you’re looking to get to a place in your entrepreneurial journey, and you think real estate is the key to do that, you can do it.”
“Resourcefulness is the greatest tool that I think all of us can begin to develop. So figure out what you’re good at, figure out what your superpower is, and then leverage that. Go find other people that can leverage their superpower and come together and do something powerful,” he ended with.
Want Ellis’ help?
He sells a 2-Day Real Estate Summit. You can attend live, in Del Mar, California, or watch it virtually.
Ellis will share his money multiplying secrets using commercial real estate as the vehicle.
When you buy a ticket you’ll also get access to his Multiply Wealth Through Apartment Investing course.
A Basic ticket costs $497. The VIP ticket, which includes priority seating and a private lunch with Ellis and some special guests, costs $1,197.
All sales are final. No refunds will be given.
Something about this guy I don’t trust.