In their 20s, investing in real estate

By Zander Frost, Chronicle Staff Writer

Real estate investing is “in” for these two local 20-somethings.

Joey Lufkin, Argyle class of 2013, was 23 when he bought his first apartment property in Utica. “When I was a senior in college [at Hartwick] I lived off campus in Oneonta in a guy’s house and there were six of us and we each paid $3,000 a semester. I started adding up the numbers like, wow, if you buy a house you can have it paid off in five years or whatever,” Joey Lufkin said.

“I said I’m going to do this when I graduate, and then I did. I bought one in Utica; my brother lived there and went to school out there.

“He got me renters the first few years. He plays on the basketball team so he got a couple of his buddies, and I just started buying more property since.”

Joey since has bought a three-unit building on South Street in Glens Falls.

He lives in one of the units with his fiancée Miranda Wilson, also from Argyle. He’s the Sales Manager at Adirondack Technical Solutions and she’s a physical therapist.

Jake Zanoni, Glens Falls Class of 2013, bought a duplex on Dix Avenue in 2020, at age 26.

“It’s owned in a ‘house hacking’ manner,” he said. “So I live in the upper unit, and the downstairs is rented.”

He calls it “a soft intro to real estate…because you’re acquiring the unit, you’re managing it, but you’re also living there on-site…you get to do a little bit of everything.”

Jake, who works at Becton-Dickinson, said he put plenty of research and planning into his decision.

“At the end of college, I knew that I wanted to be wealthy, for lack of a better term. I wanted to be able to live a life where I could travel and buy nice cars and nice things like that,” Jake said.

“And so I started research, figuring out what was a good way to do this. And real estate was immediately the one that stuck out to me.

“I was planning to buy the unit for about two years prior. I moved home, got be in a position to be able to do that.”

Jake said he put a lot of work into the duplex, completely gutting several rooms.

“Luckily, I have a very dedicated family — my mom, dad and sister that were willing to help,” Jake said. “The month prior to actually signing on to the mortgage, I had been just YouTubing the demolition and drywall and all that stuff.”

“I still owe them a dinner for that,” Jake joked.

“Drywalling is the part that I’ve gotten better at over time. There are some spots in my living room that are not super good looking,” Jake laughed. “You can tell that it’s like somebody who is figuring it out as they’re going through.”

He said there’s a large internet community of forums, books, and podcasts dedicated to buying real estate.

“Everybody is there with the idea that we all kind of help each other, which is really nice.”

Jake and Joey separately said they listen to a podcast called BiggerPockets.

“It gets your juices flowing,” Joey said. “People that were, and are, successful in it — it’s fun to listen to.”

“My fiancée listens to it when she works out, and I can’t do that,” Joey laughed. “She comes out like ‘I got a good idea! I got a good idea!’”

Is this a growing movement among young people? Jake and Joey think so, but said it could just be the people they’re surrounded by, and their social media algorithms.

Jake said it’s “hard to tell because so much of my social media experiences is biased, like those are the accounts I follow. So to me, it definitely appears that way…but I would speculate, on the whole, that I think more younger people are investing earlier.”

Joey said his Instagram is filled with the topic as well, “but that might be just biased of people I talk with.

“But I do know, some of my friends that are about my age, they’re looking to get into it as well. Just for passive income cash flow purposes,” he said.

Joey said Miranda is planning on joining in on the investing, and they plan to turn it into a “little side business.” He’s working on getting his real estate license.

He’d like his next property to be “the three to six unit range. If you don’t live in a two unit, you make a couple hundred bucks a month. But if you can get three units, you’re starting to make — obviously, the bigger, the more money.”

Joey said pandemic price increases has slowed down the purchasing process. “Honestly, about a year ago I was ready to buy another one. Actually, I’ve been knocking on doors…I’ll just see a nice property and I’ll go knock on that door and say, ‘Hey, who’s the landlord?’”

Joey said one owner wanted to sell his property, but had too much invested in fixing it up. “He said ‘I just spent a whole year putting thousands of dollars into this. I want to get a little return on it first’.”

Joey still took the man’s number. “I said, Hey, if you’re ready to sell, I’ll call you back in a year.”

Joey said he has a handyman in Utica he calls when the unit has issues.

As Jake plans to buy another property, he’s thinking about the added work, like mowing and plowing.

“Right now it’s easy. I think with two [properties], it’s going to still be not that difficult. Once we start to get in the neighborhood of probably four or five properties…I’m going to have to hire some help to make that happen,” Jake said.

Jake’s end goal? “I would like to accumulate as many rentals as I can” starting with a second property in the next year and a half.

“And then pending my crypto holdings, I’d like to start accumulating them at a regular relative basis. The ideal would be starting at maybe a rate of something like one per year, which I hope to accelerate over time as I acquire more.”

Jake said he’d like to get to the point where “if I were to purchase my own health care, and have a car payment, and have a house on my own that I’m living in, and have still maybe like a six figure income, and at that point be able to say, Do I want to work for the rest of my life?”

But he made sure to reiterate, “I love my job, I have no problem doing that.”

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