How I Went From Arts To Starting A $200M Real Estate Investment Fund

Jason Yarusi

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Published: November 28th, 2022

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Jason Yarusi

Founder, Yarusi Holdings

Founders

Employees

Yarusi Holdings

yarusiholdings.com

from Murfreesboro, TN, USA

started June 2016

Founders

Employees

Discover what tools recommends to grow your business!

Discover what books Jason recommends to grow your business!

Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win Jocko Willink

Relentless: From Good to Great to Unstoppable Tim S. Grover

Can't Hurt Me: Master Your Mind and Defy the Odds David Goggins

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Want more updates on Yarusi Holdings? Check out these stories:

Hello, my name is Jason Yarusi. I founded Yarusi Holdings LLC, a multifamily investment firm that repositions underperforming properties through operational efficiencies, rebranding, and value-add renovations.

We acquired our first multifamily property in May 2017. It is a 94 units apartment community located in Louisville, KY. Since then we have acquired over 20 more assets totaling over $200 million in real estate.

We are currently working on a few opportunities that we are excited to share with our investors.

What's your backstory and how did you come up with the idea?

After college, I worked in the arts, ran and owned restaurants, started and sold a Brewery… In 2013 I moved to New Jersey to take over the strategic operations of the family construction business. In 2014 I bought my first investment property in a beach town affected by Hurricane Sandy and targeted the team's focus efforts in the direction of growing a real estate portfolio. We still have the construction company that my father and brother now run. My wife and I moved down to middle Tennessee to grow our Nashville MSA portfolio.

Now I have acquired over 2,000 units valued at $200 million since 2017. To date, the firm repositions properties through operational efficiencies, moderate to extensive renovations, and complete rebranding. We found all these properties through connections and doing daily research. Earlier this year we added a Director of Acquisition who does out in the city to make connections and create new deals.

I am also one of the hosts with my wife Pili of The Multifamily Live Podcast a podcast that provides actionable content and tools to build and strengthen your multifamily business.

Additionally, I founded the Multifamily Live Club with over 3,100 members that focus on Real Estate Syndication and Multifamily Investing and train others on the success formula for buying apartment buildings.

Since launch, what has worked to attract and retain customers?

Our biggest takeaway to attracting investors is being open and communicative with them. Our current investors can call, email, and message us any time if they have any questions about where their money is going or even just general questions.

We also offer so many educational pieces to our investors to empower them to understand what exactly they are investing in and where their hard-earned money is being spent. For example, every Wednesday we send out a new education piece for our current and potential passive investors. We want to educate everyone so that way they can feel confident in their decision to invest with us.

To attract new investors we focus our marketing efforts on education. To get that audience we post educational, informative, and creative content on social media platforms. We host webinars every Thursday on LinkedIn and create educational Reels and TikToks for our following to see and learn from.

We believe that a majority of our potential investors can be found on Facebook and LinkedIn. With that knowledge when we post ads we gear them towards available opportunities and the audience being on LinkedIn or Facebook. We have put time and effort into SEO on all of our social media pages as well as our webpage to bring our website to the top of the google search.

When it comes to webinars, we host them live on LinkedIn every week. We send out an email at the beginning of the week with the topic and the time that it will be streaming. No one has to register since it is live. All of Jason’s followers get a notification when he goes live so they can tune in.

How are you doing today and what does the future look like?

We have been doing very well. We are expanding and have added new employees. We have brought on a Marketing Manager, Project Coordinator, and Acquisitions Director.

We are currently acquiring 4-6 assets a year and are on track to acquire over 5,000 Multifamily units by 2025.

We are getting out there every day bringing in new investors and properties into our portfolio.

The trial of doing and learning is where success lies. Those that wait get left behind. Those that start the journey today learn the steps needed by leaping.

Through starting the business, have you learned anything particularly helpful or advantageous?

One of the biggest challenges we had when starting out was it was just me and my wife working. We would handle finding properties, investor relations, underwriting, and asset management without the help of a team. At one point we almost could not keep up with how fast we were growing.

My biggest advice is that finding the right team is everything in business and when you stop being your bottleneck you find that your business begins to grow exponentially. Once we found the right team we were able to keep up with the scaling of our business.

What platform/tools do you use for your business?

We are currently using HubSpot, Investnext, Social Media Marketing, and Google.

Most of our investors tend to come from LinkedIn or Facebook because we can make the best connections on those platforms.

Lately, we have been using HubSpot for our all-in-one inbound marketing platform to help streamline processes for our team at Yarusi Holdings.

Productivity wise we use Google Calendars and Asana to keep us on track and not miss calls or appointments throughout the day. Google Calendar is probably one of our favorite tools to use because it allows us to time block. We schedule our meetings, calls, tasks, you name it. Time blocking allows us to make sure that we get everything done that we need to and to make sure we do not miss anything.

What have been the most influential books, podcasts, or other resources?

Some of the most influential books I have read are:

Advice for other entrepreneurs who want to get started or are just starting out?

Action trumps inaction at every stage. No one ever wished their way to success. The trial of doing and learning is where success lies. Those that wait get left behind. Those that start the journey today learn the steps needed by taking a leap.