Brick x Brick Podcast

Join Host Ben Shelley as we "meet the partners" - John Errico and Ryan Goldfarb.

We'll dive into the origins of how John and Ryan wound up in the field of real estate and into the genesis of their partnership.

(Transcript below.)

Ep1.MeetThePartners - Transcript

Ben Shelley: [00:00:07] Welcome to the Brick by Brick Podcast where we take you from the ground up on all things real estate. I'm your host Ben Shelley. Today, I'm lucky enough to be sitting with the two principals of Liberty Hudson who teamed up to create a thriving business as they invest and build homes throughout the wider New Jersey area. Liberty Hudson primarily invests in one to four family residential homes. To date, they also manage properties and build homes as general contractors themselves under Liberty Hudson Construction we now are fortunate to get to meet the principals of Liberty Hudson, Mr. Ryan Goldfarb and Mr. John Errico. Gentlemen it's a pleasure to have you both in studio today. Off the bat, it would be great to hear about some of your accumulated experiences as well as some of the reasons why you got into real estate and how you got to where you are today. So let's jump right into it. Ryan, how about we start with you.

Ryan Goldfarb: [00:00:59] Sure. So I am Ryan Goldfarb. I began my real estate investing journey several years ago I was actually as I was finishing up my undergrad career at the University of Maryland, go Terps! I started actually looking at turnkey investing opportunities out in Memphis Tennessee way back when. This was in late 2012 going into 2013. Long story short, I ended up securing my first investment out there with my brother. We went in on something together as 50/50 partners. Closed on a turnkey rental right around the time when I graduated which was April or May of 2013. Got you and I knew that was the kind of thing that was never going to make me rich never gonna leave me broke but I figured to be a good opportunity to get one under my belt. So we went through went through that experience did what I wanted to do that went under my belt. And since then I've dove into it a little bit further.

Ben Shelley: [00:01:57] So I know you said Long story short although we're here today to get the long story as best we can. Before I go to John I'm just curious. I know you talked about what the first project was but what is it about real estate in general that story. Was it since you were younger that you knew that you wanted to get into it or was it some experience maybe later as you had gotten to college.

Ryan Goldfarb: [00:02:16] It's actually something I've wanted to do since I was maybe ten, eleven years old. I was like to say it's from moment I realized I wasn't to be a professional baseball player.

Ben Shelley: [00:02:25] A true story for every Jewish male out there in the world today.

Ryan Goldfarb: [00:02:28] Exactly. I know I'm not alone in that here. So, Ryan, please continue.

Ryan Goldfarb: [00:02:34] Yeah, I actually I have a vivid memory when I was a kid going to Pier Village. I want to say that development in Long Branch, New Jersey. Ocean front, kind of luxury development. I was maybe 12 years old at the time something like that. I think was right around and it had just opened up. And I remember going there for the first time and just being in awe of this brand new development, right on the ocean in the middle of New Jersey on a place that was previously, you know, downtrodden remnant of decades and decades of neglect.

Ryan Goldfarb: [00:03:09] And I remember being fascinated by the fact that you could take something like that from a state of nothing or a state of despair and with a little planning with some resources and a little bit of time you could turn it into something that's a bustling vibrant oceanfront community. I think it's still standing today and every time I go back there I think about that same like that same feeling of awe I had when I was probably pre-teen, seeing it for the first time.

Ben Shelley: [00:03:34] This is for listeners out there.

Ben Shelley: [00:03:36] I think it's important I mean because there's a reason that everyone obviously money is a reason for a lot of people. But fundamentally I think the back end of what drives us to do what we do is a love of real estate a lot of shaping communities and opportunity you get your hands dirty with real substantive and productive work. And I appreciate you sharing this Ryan. We're going to continue that way but John I want to I want to bring you in here now. John is a real mystery to most of us. He's a brilliant individual. He's like a multilayered milkshake. He's a fifty thousand piece puzzle. He's in a Rubik's cube. We want to know who is John Errico and what makes him tick.

John Errico: [00:04:10] So I got into real estate in maybe an unusual way so I'm actually a lawyer by education and experience. I went to law school and I had no real particular interest in in real estate in college or law school. I actually worked in law for a little bit and then I left that to do technology startups. I ran a couple of startups in the real estate space, or at least a startup in the real estate space. Then a few others in related spaces and I was living in Manhattan. This is maybe four or five years ago with my then girlfriend now wife. We really wanted to we didn't want to rent anymore, and we wanted to buy our own place and started looking in areas within commuting distance of midtown Manhattan. We settled on northern New Jersey just because of the cost and the relative distance to where my wife was working at the time and bought a 2-family. It was a foreclosure so we had no no real conception of what it would be to live in a property that had been foreclosed on and had been abandoned. This is early 2014. So we we immediately moved because we were so excited but we realized that the property basically didn't have a roof. Didn't have electricity in one of the floors and didn't have a working bathroom and so very quickly we sort of were forced to learn a lot about home ownership. We learned about renovating our place and kind of all that the details that go into moving into somewhere that hasn't been lived in for a long time. We eventually started renting out the second floor which was a two family house. We started running at the second floor to tenants that went really well. We eventually moved from the first floor to the basement and started renting out the whole property to tenants and we had originally been living in Manhattan paying $3,000 a month in rent. And by living in this house living in the basement renting out the two units that were renting out we were essentially making, I think at least a grand a month above our carrying costs the property so above the mortgage and taxes and insurance.

John Errico: [00:06:14] So we had within a six month period of time like a $4,000 dollar per month income shift which was transformative. So we all of a sudden were able to start saving money start investing in other real estate we bought a second place and we've kind of been growing since then. But so the genesis was maybe four years ago that I've been doing real estate. I'd been doing real estate full time for about two years.

Ben Shelley: [00:06:37] Well what I love about that is it's it's a background of yourself but you also worked in there some of that genius that that allowed you to be successful early on in the business and there was cultural reasons why you moved out there, too, right? I know you and your wife are both bilingual. Obviously we know that northern New Jersey has a big Hispanic population there's a lot of Spanish spoken among other languages. So can you talk a little bit about that as well?

John Errico: [00:06:58] Yeah. So we where we moved from Manhattan is a city called Union City which is actually the most densely populated city in the country I believe. If you assume that New York is one city and not just Manhattan but so it's a city of I think it's about 50,000 people right on the other side of the Hudson River and it's predominantly Hispanic, Latino population so probably 95 percent of the population speaks Spanish or grew up in a Spanish speaking household. And my wife speaks Spanish basically fluently. Had lived in Spain for a year. So we were drawn to that culturally. We looked at other places in New Jersey like Jersey City and some places in Queens and the Bronx. But we liked culturally Union City a lot. The food the language the culture. So that was a humungous draw for us. And it's funny when we move to Union City, the story that I always tell is that maybe the first week that we're living in Union City we were the first people on our block that I think was not or is not of Latino descent or heritage. So we were walking outside of our house and one of our neighbors stopped us and said oh you're going the wrong way Hoboken is that way, the opposite direction.

Ben Shelley: [00:08:12] You can't live here.

John Errico: [00:08:14] Yeah no it's funny that that same neighbor I think told me like you know we all get along here we have, you know, Colombians, Hondurans, Mexicans, Ecuadorians, then Americans putting to us that is you.

Ben Shelley: [00:08:26] Well it's kind of a beautiful thing. I mean people don't realize sometimes like Union City for example, it's a hop skip and a jump from Manhattan. It's right across the river. And the dichotomy between what you find right in Manhattan and the diversity not just ethnic diversity but lingual diversity that you find right across the water Union City et cetera is quite profound. And so I guess Ryan I'm curious what got the wheels turning about working together in this field