Meet the $250,000,000 man

As many of you know, I'm an avid YouTube connoisseur. Now, even though I've only been making videos here on YouTube for about 24 months, I have been on here as a loyal viewer since about 2010. Every now and then, someone comes across your screen that gets your attention; someone who really stands out, someone who is extremely entertaining. When it comes to captivating an audience, no one quite does it like the loudmouth real estate mogul Ben Malla.

As it said, "Somebody over there cut your dishes off." If you have the hutzpah to put up frigging demanding for ninety-two thousand dollars, you should be ashamed. So today, we sold thirty million dollars' worth of real estate, and the clock is ticking. I'll go into motherhood; violence took place, mixed a mother, robbed, rented out to families, make some money. He's a high school dropout who grew up in the projects of Queens, New York, not the typical profile you would think of someone who now owns over 250 million dollars' worth of real estate.

He's bought shopping centers, apartment buildings, and most recently, a 16.5 million dollar, 11 thousand square foot mansion for himself and his wife, which is the most expensive home in Tampa, Florida. So without knowing any information on how to contact him and without any direct connection to him, I resorted to asking the Almighty Instagram for some help, and it worked. Within one hour, I was connected to Danny Jones, who runs the YouTube channel Concrete, which films and produces the content for Ben Malla. Not too much longer after that, I booked a plane ticket to go from Los Angeles, California, all the way to Clearwater, Florida, so we can meet this larger-than-life personality firsthand and also learn from someone who built up a real estate empire without so much as a high school diploma.

This is what happened. Enjoy.

"I don't think, I don't think," said the doorbell. "Hey, here for Ben?"

"Okay, okay, what the hell are you doing here?"

"So then, hey, I'm Grandma."

"You want to learn from me?"

"Got to learn from you. What survived? Everyone watch it. My advice is get out, get motivated by him and do it."

"My life was horrible. I mean, my childhood was the worst you could ever imagine, a child growing up with a horrible crazy lunatic mother in the worst neighborhoods of Far Rockaway, New York, and the slums surrounded by criminals and the worst element of society that you could imagine, and a shitbox bungalow that was only made to live in a summertime. My father had us live there all year round because he was a cheapskate. That's why I live here; everything my parents did, I'm the opposite. My mother used to beat the hell out of me as a kid for no reason. I never raised a hand to my kids. My father always wanted to be a cheapskate and live in dumps to save every little penny he could and sacrifice decent living. I'm the opposite."

"You're standing in the formal part of the living room; over here we have a family room, over there is the formal dining room that we don't use too often because there's only four of us. So we have the dining room here. As you walk in over here, you will find the butler's. Some people have a butler's pantry, right? This house has a butler's kitchen."

"I mean, you know, when I was a kid, I always wanted to make a lot of money. You know, when I moved to Manhattan, I'd go and walk past the Plaza Hotel and see all the dignitaries and big shots, and I'd say one day I'm gonna stay there, the old one, you know, right by Central Park. Eventually, I made enough money to stay here. I said this place is a dump. I don't know what's in here. I've been in here before."

"Oh man, we got a whole big closet here. We are in the wine room, and I'm going to be calling it the cry room because where my wife goes out and fills all these spaces with bottles of wine, I'm going to cry when I see the bill. She likes good wine, so but this is the wine room here."

"I really knew real estate when I got out of the army and went to work for a guy that was already in real estate and started working for him. That's how I really knew this is it, you know? This is what I like to do; this is where there's a lot of opportunity. You don't need a lot of education; if you want to work hard, you really don't need a lot of money. If you think smart, see, once I got the nicest house and I feel like I got the nicest car, then I'm pretty much done. I can retire now. I made it to the top level that I feel I wanted to be on, okay? And I'm done now. My kids can try to, you know, climb the ladder."

"Yeah, when you do have money, yeah, the money gives you power because I don't answer to anybody. So that's why I'm able to compete with all the big shots in Chicago. Y'all got all the reefs because they need all these approvals; therefore, they're probably traded their boards. I don't answer to anybody, so I can put my money where my mouth this. I can go, 'You say, you know what, I'm gonna buy your house. I'm not gonna pay you when the other guys gonna pay. Yeah, but he may not close the deal. I'm gonna give you money today, hard non-refundable. So, you know, if I don't do that deal, you keep my deposit.'"

"You know, typical kitchen, you know, it's got a couple of sinks, a microwave. This microwave is really cool. Check it out and push the button. I mean, couple of dishwashers and pretty much the fireplace here in the kitchen area, that's my lovely wife right there."

"Number one to find it. Lots this size will never happen. Yeah, the guy that built his house knocked down like three houses, right? You know, so you had to go out, buy three lots that had all to be next door to each other, which is impossible to do. He used top-of-the-line construction here. It would take five years to build this house now I was told, and it would probably take all in ten million dollars more than when I paid. So it actually was a really good deal."

"Okay, I had offices in excess of 5 million. Want a paper? That’s worse. Well, it’s a very unique place; that's why, you know, but you gotta be careful winding stuff. You don't want to buy a white elephant because sometimes nobody wants it. But this house was very unique; the guy who built it, he went over the top on the construction, the design, the location. It has everything, and it's probably in it for this area. It's over the top. Yeah, there's nothing to compare to it. You only live once, and if you're gonna work hard in life, you should enjoy your money. I mean, you know, if you have enough to, you always live within your means. But yeah, you know, what's the point? I'm making a bunch of money; I gotta spend it and give a family the best life possible."

"I agree. You see the house I grew up in? Yeah, 540 Beach 43rd Street for our boy in New York. Yeah, you wouldn't go—you would step foot within a five-mile radius of that place. I said, 'Bed.' So, you know, over-the-top climbing is very important in terms of if you give somebody good terms and good timing, you'll get that deal better than the other guy that's gonna pay more money and drag it out for three or four months and subjects it—is subject appraisals and all that. I came in and said, 'I'm buying this house. Here's my money, and let's do the deal at this price and I'll close it like that.' That's how you get deals done."

"So here you have the bar entertainment room. Okay, and you'll find we have a company that makes these pool tables. We have a license from GM; we have a license from Ford. You own the Camaros; you doing Mustangs, and we do them with Corvettes. I love—we ship them all over the world. We should allow them to do by the Arabs; love them, you know, they owe money to burn."

"You know, to really be in real estate, you got to live it; you got to breathe it; you got to eat it; you got to—it’s got to be your life. I mean, you can do it on the side, but you're not gonna do it on a big level on the side. But, you know, you got to totally throw yourself into the business, and you got to be willing, you know? I used to stay up sometimes all night because I didn't have money to hire nobody. I physically would paint apartments and stay up all night getting a place ready because I had an inspection the next day."

"You got to cross the line in life if you really want to make it, and you ain't got a bunch of money; you're not born rich. You gotta cross the line; you got to go where nobody else wants to go. You got to work the hours nobody else wants to hours. You know, I neglected my kids when I was young, but I did it knowing that I was trying to benefit them to their future. So yeah, my kids may have missed out on, you know, Boy Scouts or, you know, some of the sports activities or whatever, and I feel bad about that. But in the long run, it paid off because now, you know, they're set."

"I mean, you know, I can do the Gulf of Mexico. Yeah, you've got, you know, a hot tub, has the lazy river that goes under the house. I'll show you, and it's a comfortable place. The whoever designed it knew what they were doing. Look at the ceilings; look at the balconies. I mean, it's pretty over the—yeah, big burns, the house I ever bought. And the age might be a loan, and it was like a no-money-down deal because the VA had a program. But I remember, you know, saving money too, you know? Back then, I was buying my boy like basically crack houses that nobody wanted, you know, for like 20, 30 grand. So, basically, to put 20% down and something like that, it was only, you know, four or five, six grand."

"So, I didn't need it; I saved up somebody, you know, and, you know, I bought the worst crap that nobody else wanted and fixed it up and made money and then took the profits from that to refinance and bought other stuff. So here’s the bar; it used to be a trophy room. Okay, unfortunately, I have no trophies; hang on a couple, but nothing to brag about. We'll get a lot of trophies in real estate, and we're gonna turn it into a game; we're gonna put a Corvette table in here, and this is gonna be the trophy room."

"You want to buy a place that needs too much work? You know, I tried to stay away from major structural type work; you know, the Foundation’s gotta be good groups. Okay, depends on the deal, but you know, basically, I always just went in, put carpets in, painted the place, maybe working on windows, doors, you know, things like that. I didn't get—I wasn't big in construction. I've never built anything in my life. Instead of being a builder, I call myself a rebuilder. I would think something that was already built, beat down, bring them back to its original condition and make it living yet represent me and my wife, and the friend of mine has a sale."

"Then, I don't know, my kids thought I started collecting lies. Next thing I know, this one shows up; it was a gift from my son. There's another one; I had a nice told the birds deal. I ever did, I think I paid somewhere around 20, 75. It was actually a duplex. Really, there we go, a duplex. This guy's one unit down and one unit up. Okay, both units, like, three-bedroom units. Those units rented, and once you clean them up, and you know, I fixed everything up, and I passed inspection, those units are rented. Even back then, we're talking around 19 late 80s, maybe early 90s. Those units were rented like 800 bucks apiece live."

"So, I took a piece of crap, and you know, I used to buy a whatever it took; I'd buy used carpet, clean it up. I'd buy used materials from second-hand places, you know, buy the cheapest stuff I could to make it work right and, you know, didn't spend that much fixing him up. But, you know, made him decent and safe. And so I took a piece of garbage that paid 27, five, four, probably threw another maybe five, or six, seven grand into the place, and hi, guys love the street to help me in painting and all that crap. And then, you know, so I'm into the place a for 35 grand, you know, based on the sixteen hundred dollars a month income, it's now worked a hundred and fifty thousand dollars because now it was a decent-looking place. I had two contracts in the house, and it's already proven that I had to rent coming in. The tenants only had to pay nothing or twenty, thirty bucks a month because they were low income, and I went to the bank, and I refinanced it, got a loan on it for probably 100 grand back then."

"Offices here, let's see, we're trying to get some work done, and the offices—a library upstairs Oh rats, just for show. So, you know, and then down that cross that bridge is a whole entire guesthouse. Okay, no, no way! No way, how do you have a house without a movie theater? What did you go out to the movies?"

"Find a deal that has some kind of potential where you can make it better. You can create value. You can get some sweat equity in it; it's called value add, you know, and typically there's always gonna be a place like that. You know, people die; people retire; there's always a house you can fix up. Let me tell you another good thing that I did very well on. I did very well on student housing. You can go out, and you can buy. Let's say you just buy a house; you buy a house, and let’s say that house is a big house with four bedrooms in it with students. You don’t rent the whole place out; you rent it by the bed, right? That we did very well in because we went out and bought a property; you had a lot of four-bedroom apartments in it, and you can rent each bedroom out for about five hundred bucks a month or more, six hundred even."

"Now, you took a place that you normally would rent out for a thousand bucks a month as a four-bedroom, but you rented out individually as the bed, and they shared a kitchen; they shared the living room, and you get two thousand dollars a month. So, if you're anywhere near a university, look for student housing. You can do it on a small level too, and a lot of times kids will get together and rent each bedroom, right? But always make the parents guarantee the lease, so if they don't pay, you go back to the parent, 'Hey, you didn’t pay the rent.' You know, but student housing is good. Senior housing is great because seniors, they never move, and they don't break anything, and they don't really use anything; it's pretty easy to run a senior building."

"There's a lot of different areas of real estate, and you can do—ready, we're live downstairs; you know, you go—that's all the guest house one City Gym D&C, where I spend most of my time getting ready to put some furniture out, decorate here. So we're still in the gasoline to get cows, still in the guest house. So it's three stories; three stories, this is a kitchen balcony, fireplace in the balcony out there. Okay, this is what happens when you take real estate serious."

"Did you ever think you would have a house like this one day? I work for a guy that had one, really, and I knew that I worked harder than him, yeah? And I knew I could have everything he had and even more, and he built houses like this in a place called Lafayette, California, which is near Orinda, a very high-end area, near San Francisco. He built like castles; he was a very big builder. Yeah, I knew that if I kept doing what he was doing and kept working at it and putting my time in and flipping properties, I knew eventually I’d get to a level where I could afford to have pretty much almost any house I want."

"Okay? You'd know it because you feel your life accumulating; you feel your life growing; you feel your bank account growing; you feel your essence growing. But you got to get out there and earn it; it ain't gonna happen by sitting around, you know, doing nothing. Yeah, you gotta get at the end, find those places and fix those places and rent those places and sell those places."

"Yeah, you know, get out of the way, Danny; how to close the door? Your son, above it, was a lot of opportunity where I was at the time in the bed, rough neighborhoods. So I had stuff all over town. I had single families. I buy duplexes; the duplexes, you start becoming triplexes, and I bought four flexes. Then the guy that I was working for doing management, I also had him, and then me and him, with his money and his credit. Then I started doing bigger deals; his elevator, yeah, he’s kind of roof in this bedroom on the master. Here’s the way to the master bedroom, just, you know, what a total toilet is. Total toilet attaches; it’s not on a date, but acts like a bidet. It attaches to your toilet seats in that it shoots water all kinds of ways and actual temperature control of the pulse."

"Oh, let me tact. Once you have one, you can't live without one. We started growing very, very large in the apartment business, and that's pretty much all I ever did was apartments, and it was affordable housing, to mostly. Then when I decided to move out of California, you know, for because the market was really high over floor. In California, you got to know when it's time to sell; you don't want to miss the boat. You know, it’s a market just like anything else—real estate's up. Real estate's down. You got to buy when it's down; you gotta sell when it's up."

"So, I came to Florida. I found this area; it had a lot of growth in it in the middle of the state. Miami was too expensive; North Florida was too cheap, and this was just right, right in the middle. So we grew into the hotel business; we found that to be very lucrative fixing up beat-up hotels, making them nice and rundown. And then a few—about five years ago, I wasn’t only—I decided that I wanted to limit to management because hotels and management intense apartments could be management intense, but retail is not. You don't have the potential to make a lot of money at retail, listed a developer; or if you can find one beat up and fix it up, and right now you can, but typically, I wanted to slow down a management. Retail is no management; you buy a retail shopping center, you know, the tenants are there running their business. Everything that goes on inside that business is their problem; I'm just responsible, maybe even a roof and the exterior. You basically collect the rent from a business owner, and that's the end of it. You don't worry about nothing else, and you know typically they don't move a lot if they make money because that's their, you know, their livelihood."

"The master bedroom, balconies, fireplace. You got to take care of your housekeepers. I think I carry one's you everywhere; all that washes by the rooms when things are far away, it's very hard to deal with. You don't want to hire management companies because then you're not in control of your own investment, and they can do things you don't want them to do. It's not their investment; they're not gonna protect the investment like you are."

"So, the biggest thing was, you know, not be so spread out because I don't want to be no big giant company. I was happy just being a good strong family business, you know, with kids coming in and helping me, and just all of us working together. So, the tech room is, was like, oh, it turns on, get in your hole; that's what we keep the brain. This is it; we should keep getting that Robo gets what is AC to keep all of this cool. Sixteen—sixteen AC unit controls here. The worst thing in the world is you don't want to work for free. It's like I went out this week; the market is ridiculous; the price is make no sense right now in apartments. Basically, we sit down; we look at the numbers, and we say, wait a minute, we're gonna invest millions of dollars in this deal, and we're not gonna get no return or very little return; we're working for free. You don't want to do that; you want to have—you want to make sure that there's some upside in that deal, whether it's on the sale, whether it's on the monthly income. You don't want to work for free; then you're not—didn't you just—you're not going to where you're—like that, you like that hamster in the wheel, and you know, you're just constantly penalty when you're not going to where. You got to make sure there's a plan; you gotta have a plan; you got up goals."

"All right, now we're gonna show you if you like doing a little bowling. Let's do it; you almost look like the size, but then he could be one of my pins if I ever lose one. But, everybody can change; I go to the worst place in the world. I always knew, growing up in the hardest horrible places—I mean, it was dangerous; I wanted a better life, right? I'd get out; he’s living in the same neighborhood he grew up in his whole life. There's the lazy river; I could turn the water on; it'll push you all throughout a raft."

"You got to make decisions in life if you really, really want to be wealthy. You've got to go further than ever the average guy next to you; you got to put in 18-hour days. Sometimes I'll be honest with you; the army taught me that you can do anything, especially be on an army behind you. But they taught me that you can get it done. Just get—you get it done; you figure out a way; you get it done, and you push yourself to those limits; you got to push yourself."

"Here's the bowling alley."

[Music]

"Get out, go online, find a real estate agent; there are plenty of them out there. A real estate agent will work for free for you; they get paid by the seller. Get a real estate agent that's going to find you exactly what you need, what you want. Go online; look on the MLS; you know, go on all the websites there are; find something in your area that you could afford. The most of one thing is get your credit right. Make sure you got good credit; save up as much money as you can for down payment if it picks up. But your credit is more important than anything. I mean, you have a bad credit report; fix it. You get on the phone to go see it yourself; you can do credit repair yourself. You'd be surprised; you know, medical school blown, student loans, things like that. You couldn't get on a boat, and get a plan with that person to get it off your credit report."

"Yeah, and then, you know, even people that were bankrupt, bankruptcies only last seven years. After seven years, they pretty much forgive you, all those short sales you were doing back then? Yep, all those people are forgiven, of course, and now they get two more of them; you get a second chance; believe me, the banking world is very forgiving. Banks will loan you money to fix it up; they'll loan you the money to buy it and fix it up, you know, and they're taking the biggest risk. Typical deal; if you go out and buy an FHA deal today, you only put three percent down. That's three grand on every hundred grand. If you find a house for 200 grand, you only need six grand. Or, you know, you find a fixer-upper, you know, and tell the bank, 'Okay, I want to buy it, and I want you to loan me money on this value today, but then as you fix it up, they'll give you more money.' You know, there's different types of loan programs."

"Most of one thing is be friends with the bank; the bank is your friend. They're the ones with all the money; they make money on loaning your money, and that's how old home machines work. But anyway, that's the story when it comes to someone you could learn from and look up to, Ben Malla is it. He speaks from a place of authenticity, without a filter and without any hidden agenda. He is truly a selfless person at heart who enjoys teaching and spreading the gospel of real estate. He should serve as an incredible firsthand example that anyone can make it in his business, that anyone can achieve what he has as long as they have the determination to succeed and the willpower to always be learning."

"I've also been told that Ben will be reading the comments you write on this video, so if there's anything you want to say to Ben and have read it, now is your time to do so. If you just comment anything down below and let us know what you think of the video. Most importantly, I would like to take the time to thank Danny Jones for making all of this possible. He runs the YouTube channel Concrete, which films and produces all the Ben Malla videos we enjoy watching. We also did a podcast with Ben, which has just been posted on that channel as well, so it's a huge favor if you enjoy my videos; go ahead and subscribe to Concrete. He produces some really amazing content, some really cool videos, and trust me when I say this, it'll be totally worth it to go and check that out. So, the links to that will be in the description. Oh, oh, and also make sure to hit that like button if you haven't done that already. Thank you again for watching, and until next time."