From Broke To $500,000,000 (The Empire of Ben Mallah)

So I'd like to introduce you to the most loud-mouthed, over-the-top offensive real estate mogul you're ever going to meet: Ben Mala.

"I bought it because I'm a big fat [__] business, that's what you worry about." He is your true rags-to-riches story, having grown up in an abusive household in the projects of Queens, New York, without any formal education. Yet despite that, he's been able to build a real estate empire now worth 500 million dollars.

"And today we'll be able to see a day in the life as we follow him around and watch exactly how he builds his wealth year after year." Viewer discretion is advised.

"We're going to work, baby! We're gonna go out and do some. It's gonna constantly think about: these are your assets. What's going on with them? What do they need? What can you do to improve them to make more money? What can you do to save money and address any other issues that are going on? Whatever I can do to move forward, keep the portfolio moving forward to make money."

"When I was a kid, I just knew I wanted to get the hell out of New York City and get away from all the violence, crime, and misery that I had to endure every single day. I just—I feel like I was living in a prison and I was surrounded by nothing but the worst of the worst people, and I hated it."

"I knew I wanted to do something in life, but I just knew that New York and growing up around all that [__] was just not the life I wanted to live. I needed an escape, and I did."

"You're out here in a field today, baby! Okay? You're in real real estate and here we are at the heartbeat of John's Pass voted on this phone, really in my car driving down the street: 16, 18 million or something like that. Okay, it worked double."

"I always found real estate to be just, you know, a simple business. You provide somebody some sort of real estate, they pay you rent, you know? You had certain obligations and responsibilities, but it was clear-cut and simple. You could have a lot of real estate paying you a lot of money in all these different locations without it taking up a lot of your time."

"And I've seen a lot of people doing it, and I felt like I was smarter than them or I was willing to work harder than them, so I felt like that was a place for me, you know? And I started at the bottom. You know, but people don't realize you gotta put the time in. It's like going to college, you know."

"And I put the time in, and I felt that, well, if I can run all this [__] for somebody else and make them a bunch of money, then my plan should be able to own it myself. So, you know, that's the road I went down."

"Go get a white magic marker and make somebody, you know, you got artistic talent, and make these white, please! So, like I said before, you know, this whole thing was empty since the place was built. It never was rented, so, you know, he just made him into a nice room now, you know? And it worked out great."

"The thing is, you know, not everybody wants to spend four, three, four, five hundred dollars a night across the street on the stand. You know, I'm not anybody can afford it, you know, but you can come here for half that price or less and be right across the street from the beach."

"I bought that building too. Once some zoning gets changed, I'm going to take this shell dirt lot, which this property owns, and then I'm going to add on to that building and build as many more hotel rooms there, retail on the bottom, that the city will permit me to do."

"And when something works in life, keep doing it, you know? You already have a proven track record, keep doing it. Yeah, why try to reinvent the wheel?"

"I like to be involved, you know? If you're going to be in a game, play the game. I like to get out here, touch the real estate, look at it. I got a lot of experience that they don't have, you know? I have ideas—uh, you know, so whenever I go to a property, you know, I like to also make sure that I know I've thought of everything I could possibly do to improve the property and add value to it."

"He's going to give me seven rooms here, two next doors, nine, and the bathroom returned. We're going to invest at least 300 grand minimum, and then we'll have 10 more rooms. But in this area, with these things up and running, you know, they probably worked two to two and a half million dollars when it's done."

"I think converting retail into residential is what's needed right now. Not enough housing, and if you're able to take something like this that wouldn't already be rented, It's gonna make sense for everybody involved."

"These aluminum, we're gonna scrap all that for you. This is Monday. My father used to tell me when he was alive, he said, 'Listen,' and I always listen to him on this one thing. It's the only thing I ever listened to. He said, 'Listen, when you have a problem, think about what I would do and then do the opposite.' Because he grew up in a depression, play everything safe, don't take no chances, don't risk nothing. No risk, no reward."

"Is the parking okay? Parking is big money, especially in a major tourist location. So, you know, that brings in most of our profit right there, because the parking garage is very low maintenance. Yeah, who does the tenant? Yeah, the boat's attended. We got fishing boats, wow! You're parked here and taking people out on fishing tours. We got dolphin tours, we've got, uh, you know all kinds of stuff going on the boardwalk itself. Look at Giant Dolphins just popped up over there. You see him?"

"My first property was, um, 20 down on a really rough place. I mean, it was like I boarded up crack house to have one unit below, one unit above. The place was boarded up; nobody wanted nothing to do with it. I went to a hard money guy, I put 20 down, he floated me the rest of the money, I closed the deal, did everything I could to get resources together to fix the place up which spending as little as much as many as much as possible."

"Once I had a track record, the hard money guy would start loaning me more money to fix them up too. He would give me like three loans on the same property from start to finish, so he made money, I made money, and it all worked out. And I just kept buying up all this [__], nobody else wanted. All the places that just sat dormant on the courthouse steps, nobody would bid on. I mean, I would buy them, I'd fix them, I'd rent them, I'd refinance them, I'd keep them for a while, and eventually sell them."

"When I bought it, it had a considerable amount of tenants in it, an unconsiderable amount of vacancy in it. It was kind of shabby and mismanaged; it was taking, you know, in a stress sale. So we came in and we just got our hands dirty, getting here, start tweaking stuff, managing it better, looking at the expenses, rewriting the units, converting space to hotel rooms, doing everything we can to add value to it to increase the NOI."

"How are you? How are you? Yogurt City, baby! Yogurt City, home of the crazy chickens! Chicken looked like it's been around the world. [Music] You know, I like to know my tenants, you know, and let them know I want to work with them. So these people came here; they already were here when I bought the place; they're kind of struggling a little."

"Yeah, I told them I'd even pay for it. It looks like they had it done, put in a window on the sidewalk. You can surf in the street, okay? Would it cost me a few hundred bucks? Big deal! Yeah, anyway, the people doing this business not picking up, I was encouraging them to do certain things to get for some furniture outside. Everything was going good, so, you know, we're doing pretty good now."

"You think about what up another location? Great! I got a spot for you in my own shopping center." What they do? They took whatever money they had put together, they went over my shopping center, they leased the space, they built it out, they're growing, I'm growing, you know? It's good when you can work with people, okay? For the same purpose for everybody."

"The benefits around here managing our assets—we never can build on the beach and build on the beach. The cost of the value of the property versus the cost of construction is just, you know, you make a fortune primarily. All the money I made was always came through a refinance. I would never touch the money from a sale. Every time I did a transaction, I would 1031 into another transaction, defer the gains, buy the property, then stabilize the property and then refinance the property and then take that money, put it in my pocket."

"I bought hotels, you know, for 18, 20 million bucks but I got loans on them for 25 to 30. So I've already, you know, done refinances where I've made money on properties, you know, without selling them. And borrowing money from the bank is a non-taxable event."

"Welcome to Treasure Bay Resort Marina! You bought this property about a couple of months ago and we're here making improvements every day. What you think about this property is that you got the beach across the street; that's actually a public beach, so it's easy access to everybody. In the back, we have a boat club where you can come and rent a boat and cruise around in, you know, the golf and the intra-coastal."

"So it's got front and it's got back. Waterfront, water back, the guy that does the boat rentals was actually utilizing a room, a room's worth a quarter million dollars, so we came up with a solution; it's his office! Ah, wow! We've been pumping AC in there for him, so we got a quarter million dollar room now back in our possession and we probably spent about 10 grand doing this."

"I mean, I'm always looking for a deal. Every morning I wake up, I got a few hundred emails of stuff that's for sale in the market, all over the country, and I delete 90% of it, and then I gotta get on the phone and I can start making offers and I can start doing due diligence. Right now there's three different buildings in a package I want to go look at, all over, you know, throughout the state."

"You know, you got to be constantly looking because those deals, if it's a good deal, it'll be snatched up. When I first bought this place, right? Yeah, they had a free breakfast. Let's face it, you know, we're on the beach. Yeah, all right, the free breakfast probably costing us anywhere from 10 to 15,000 a month with food and personnel. You don't need it; all right, I'm sorry. You're on vacation, you know, go out and have breakfast."

"So, basically, that saves us a lot of money right off the bat. I expect the hotel to probably wants to stabilize. I would think it's gonna be a couple of million a year. Who does the operations, how do you find this? I got a guy. I got a hotel. He pretty much got the finger on the butt of all my hotels, okay, and then he's got managers under him that he delegates to."

"Sure, you know, but, um, he has a very, very impressive track record. So he was the professor at her school; we sold him for even school, and then we started buying one; then we bought another and we bought another, and we sold some, and we done very well. Yeah, so I don't rock the boat and I don't know anything about the hotel business."

"I mean, I know the basics under the expenses; I don't know. You know, I can look at income and expenses, but operational wise it's a business. I'm not a business person; I'm a property owner. He runs on my property so well that the properties generate enough income to pay for the improvements. I don't get a cash flow, but I gotta come out the pocket to pick some up. Sure, fine with me!"

"Got it. Then when you're done being fixed up by the property's income, then we're in the gravy zone. Got it? I mean, you know, every property is different; you gotta look at that property and say, 'What can I do to make this a better place and make more money?' That's what you gotta do, no matter what type of property it is."

"So every unit's identical here; there's no difference in anything except some have a king bed, some have double beds, and they all have this little mini-kitchen with a fridge, a microwave, a sink, coffee maker, just like you like it. Yeah, tell it, a closet door needs repair, it's going to fall on somebody. Mentally, I don't think I could do it."

"So much—so many moving parts and stuff like this. And if you're real, like people business, you own a business that comes with the real estate. So, I think it's way more challenging. I mean, I didn't make it totally on my own; I had to work for other people and learn the business and how to manage their assets so one day I could own assets."

"Well, people don't realize that when you work for somebody else, you gotta make that person feel like they can't live without you. You gotta get it right in the palm of your hand because once you do that, you gotta make that transition from worker to partner. That's what I did, and then you're set because now you're in the driver's seat right there with them, except you have all that financial backing to go with it, so you can help them grow."

"The guy that I worked for, he never would have grown to the level that we grew together. He grew to this huge level of owning, you know, whatever it was, thousands of apartments at the time, because I was the one out there and I was motivated and I was finding deals and I was buying deals with them and fixing them up and, and you know, he was included, but I was the driving force, you know? He was a car, but I was a driver."

"Now we're over here at the retail part of the portfolio. This is one of our retail centers; we've got great triplet tenants here. Discount stores are doing very well; the big department stores are getting hit; malls are getting hit, but typically the people that shop in these type of stores don't shop online; they're looking for a discount, they're looking for a bargain, and these stores happen to be doing really well."

"I was doing a lot better when my rates were lower, you know? My cash flow has gone down because my rates went up; I didn't fix my rate, but you know, it's still definitely a strong, solid asset. You know, it's one of maybe seven or eight that we own, you know? Pretty much these sentences are great as long as you maintain them, keep them looking good, keep them clean."

"I mean, you know, my income has gone way, way down probably by about, you know, six million a year because of the interest rates. I didn't fix my rate; now I'm subject to the raise, and the fed; the feds keep raising the rates, and what am I going to do? So every day I'm trying to figure out ways to deal with the situation, how to improve cash flow."

"Now I'm going to start looking seriously at a lot of assets that don't make a lot of sense in today's interest rate and think about selling them. But then I have to look at my tax ramifications on that if I don't 1031 or other deals out there 2 10 31 in. It's a juggling act. So right now, I'm juggling, it's like a circus, and I'm the juggler."

"There she is! There she is, read legal, ready to rock and roll! This is what Graham Stefan should be drawing! Oh my gosh! And this thing runs like a top! Its engine, trainee, breaks—the guy who built it and shoots the fire, the machine guns come up and shoot! I mean, it's loaded! It's perfect!"

"I mean, I don't like to waste money; no, it's stupid to waste money. I mean, if you enjoy something, it gives you pleasure in life, and you want to spend the money, you do it! But you have to live within your means, you know? Everybody needs a budget; even I need a budget."

"I fired my landscaper and ripped out all the goddamn grass, but fake grass said I saved a couple of grand a month! That guy was billing before! It could be yours right now for only asking 299,000! There's one on Hemmings right now for 750,000. Look it up for you—250, 250!"

"I like toys, I like stuff, but right now, I'm just, I'm too old! You know? I just sold my rolls for close to 400 grand. I mean, the Batmobile's worth I'd sell that for quarter million. The Bob Hope car itself, a quarter million! Um, you know, I've had it up into millions at one time! I just sold the water car for about a buck 50."

"Listen, I'm 57 years old now. These things are nice! I bought and sold cars, I couldn't count the number of cars at once, so it's fun! I did charity work with them, but right now my mind is focused on financial stability because when you got money, typically money can solve all your problems, so I don't need all this stuff anymore!"

"I don't want the responsibility. After so many years, you get tired of worrying about stuff, you know? I'm not a real big hobbyist, and, uh, you know, I'd rather just liquidate what I don't need, start simplifying my life. I need to get my life in order, get rid of all the stuff I don't need, you know, and start thinking about a retirement!"

"All right, we're here! Why? Because we're showing Mr. Stefan his new home at the hydro market! This house is worth every bit of a thousand bucks a square foot, which is making price of 12 million dollars! Yeah, today you can buy it for 30 percent less."

"Now to raise a double, a triple, it doesn't make a lot of sense. It's a very tough market right now; you got to work very hard to find a deal. People haven't swallowed the fact that their property is not worth what it was a year ago, simple as that."

"The sellers got to realize that. Me as a seller, I have to realize it, you know? It's a hard thing to swallow, but you know right now we're in this weird zone right now, you know, where the numbers don't work. The numbers don't make sense, but if you're in a 1031 and you can have millions of dollars worth of taxable deferment, it makes sense to you."

"The lot is probably one of the biggest lots you're going to find on this waterfront. Oh my gosh, look at this! Ready to go fireplace, hurricane shutters on every window that could be affected by a hurricane! Whoa! Here's your office, comes with a fireplace, built-in library shelves, your own private bathroom here, your kitchen, your family room, your dining—you got another dining area space over there."

"Look at this state! Fireplaces, they match the paint with this. Let's try to hide it, it's smart. Why'd you buy the house? No, I was honestly, at the time, I bought it, the market was super hot. There were a lot of people moving down in this area. It's a very unique property; there's no other property around like this, and I really like the house."

"I thought there was some value if I came in and made it more livable, and basically what happened is the interest rates went up and it killed the more simple story. You know, we're not going to make dissipated on it, but that's life."

"Every asset is different. I gotta look at each asset: what's it worth? What can I sell it for? How much cash flow am I getting? If I sell it, I'm gonna have to go out and replace it, or what's the tax ramification going to be? So there's a lot of moving parts to it, you know?"

"The biggest thing with me is I should have realized, listen: I'll pay an extra point now for the interest rate and put hundreds of millions of dollars that I owe, but paying an extra point now has been in and pay an extra three points later. You know, the party was going on and I didn't know when the party was going to be over."

"And here we are, for the first time in my life, I'm actually thinking about buying down debt, which I've never done in my life. I've always been a big advocate for taking on debt because the rate was low and it made a lot of sense to get a return, making money on the bank's money."

"Well, we're not making money in the bank's money anymore. The returns are equal to the payments you made it to the bank, so basically you're getting a modest return on the money you have invested. This is like living in heaven."

"When you worked here and lived here, it's like being on vacation all the time. You want to take the elevator? Come on in!"

"All right, do you think money could buy happiness? Yes, I mean, you know, it makes your life easier! You're not on this earth for that long; you want to live as happy and as easy as you can, and if you like nicer things in life, money's going to get them for you. I mean, so yeah, I believe money can provide happiness."

"Look at this! You want to reach your clothes? Oh wow! Have the clothes come to you? Oh my gosh, it's very 90s! There's only so much you could do before just—you have to gut it and start over, but then you're spending probably three million dollars redoing it."

"I mean, you know, this is the truestation. Ah, the tennis court's brand new, the pool's brand new, the decks brand new! We even put a new fountain in—button green over there. We'll walk around, I'll show you. Yeah, you can take—you could drive a golf cart all the way down to the waterfront."

"And next door, we all these houses here share a private marina. We have two boat slips and a brand new dock. I mean, you know, we all use the word luck. You gotta be at the right place at the right time with the ability to do a deal, that's all you need in real estate."

"Real estate is all about finding a deal. You're not going to sit on your ass and say, 'Oh, I'm going to get lucky and find me a deal!' [__] ain't gonna happen! You got to find a deal! You got to call people! You got to look online! You got to do, you know, homework! You got to be like a dog sniffing out a deal."

"You got to be at the right place at the right time, but you got to put yourself at the right place at the right time. Be sitting in that hot tub right now, uh, is not going to get me a deal. Sitting in that office on my computer, that's going to get me a deal! So you create your own luck in life."

"Hit the like button, subscribe, and go to Ben Mala! Check my channel out! Listen, you want to buy a Mustang pool table? I'll give you a discount! Your mother sucks in hell!"