My background is comprised of 30 plus years of experience obtained from my parents with on the job training and schooling. I’m a jack of all trades (One stop shop), so to speak, with extensive experience in construction, construction services, real estate (buying, selling, inspections), along with establishing and maintaining a profitable property management company. I’ve gained construction experience as a General Contractor and Master Carpenter with knowledge of all facets of construction. For 15 years, I’ve been a certified home inspector of residential and commercial properties. The past 25 years I’ve been a licensed real estate Salesperson and Broker but have over 30 plus years of experience in the real estate market. I’ve concentrated mainly on investment properties as a general contractor and acting as the buyer and sellers agent, closing many transactions in excess of multi-millions of dollars throughout the years assisting all our clients needs while managing the properties maintaining portfolios at a steady 10%-20% return rate. We are always equipped to handle double the property volume in preparation for larger clients and most of our business are new investors with just 3-4 units we help grow.
Our current economy in NEPA, there isn’t any evidence of a downtrend in investment properties. Our average property sales transactions exceeded 4 million dollars are all in house with our clients buying each other’s portfolios and I see this number increasing significantly as we bring in new real estate agents to handle the huge influx of new clients and sales leads from our online marketing. During the recession and tightening of loans in 07-09 our home sales slowed down but, the rental market remained strong with plentiful of local recession proof job industries.
I started off in the family business at 8 years old in Brooklyn, NY, where my father was a successful construction contractor / investor owning two 5-story, 32-unit residential apartment complexes. My mother worked as a banker while managing the books and all the apartments. From 1986-1994 all my free time from school was spent learning all trades doing maintenance with my father, Ron Sr. who’s a Vietnam Marine Veteran (who would wake me up daily at sunrise with a loud “Revelry! Revelry! Rise and shine boy and time to go to work! OOHRAH OORAH and toss me in the shower!!”). All rental collections I’ve done with my mother, Sandi who was very detail oriented and extremely organized pre-computers. All past due collections I was also taken along with her to court, learning the eviction processes as well. Every day after school, every weekend and every summer I would work on different projects alongside my father excelling at Carpentry, Plumbing, Electrical, Masonry, Landscaping and Excavating with projects at the buildings and at many contracts in Manhattan my father has ran within his Carpentry Union. The 2 buildings were sold, and we ended moving to the Poconos at age 17 in 1995. I graduated from East Stroudsburg High in 1996. We moved to a homeowner’s development and I had met Tom Wilkins who managed the association (who was the best real estate broker in the Poconos). I ended up contracting through him to handle association maintenance for 2 housing developments, Pocono Mt Lake Estates and Country Club Woods of the Poconos. I took care of all interior and exterior maintenance of all community property/buildings performing all facets of construction. Including but not limited to: excavating water lines and cutting 7 miles of roadside grass and snow plowing them during the winter from 1996 – 2001. In 96 I had incorporated my 1st business R&R Enterprises Inc. At 18, I managed 4 employees, and I completed billing through the new platform QuickBooks. Making it a priority to learn computers, all Microsoft programs on old windows 95, and keeping an eye on technology that could keep the business efficient.
After graduating high school while still operating business, I attended East Stroudsburg University majoring in business. I learned in at a advanced setting what was needed in business, economics and mathematics to build a foundation for my future goals of running a business. Subsequently my father Ron Sr. was ready to retire and I wanted to take my business full time. I had the opportunity to manage all the carpentry contracts on various jobs he ran in NYC, managing between 4-8 subcontractors per job. I’ve built the Olive Garden in Times Square, Victoria’s Secret on 57th and Madison among a plethora of other restaurants in times square, midtown area. During this period, I was commuting from the Poconos to the city daily.
In 1999, I wanted to move closer to the city and looked at properties in Stroudsburg (30 minutes closer commute). I went to Tom Wilkins office NEPA Management I ended up renting a rundown row home in a 4- unit building for $700/month. I rented to roommates I found in the Pocono record classifieds and rented the extra 3 bedrooms for $400 a room. I was told by my realtor the other 3 units are up for rent and each row home is for sale. Being I was working hard daily in construction and started thinking more about real estate. Seeing an opportunity knowing the rents I can get for row homes (around the university) listed for $24,0000-$30,000 a piece with a gross yearly rent of $20,000 / unit it was a no brainer that I had to purchase them so that I can rent them to ESU students. At my age, I could not obtain financing. So, I created a business plan and presented it to my parents. They gave me the cash to purchase all 4 units and I managed them collecting rents, tracking deposits, collections, evictions and handled all the maintenance myself. Seeing the whole sales process ignited my real estate passion and I then obtained my salespersons license in 2001. I decided to work with Tom Wilkins at Wilkins & Assoc. Real Estate in 2002. There, I was fortunate to be in the best office in the Poconos and learn the business better than no other office could teach.
After 3 years working daily in the city, managing the buildings, and selling real estate my father decided to retire from the carpenters union. I ended up selling all the real estate and give him all the proceeds so that he could retire in Florida. Since I’ll no longer be working in the city or have real estate to manage, I then decided in 2005 to pack up and start from scratch in a new city where I can afford to invest. Wanting my own investment portfolio, I gravitated towards Scranton where real estate was affordable. I found a 5-unit building in Scranton on Ebay and ended up buying it. I then opened my new company RJP Enterprises Inc. and would run all my jobs thru it I would find locally. For additional work, I was subcontracting exclusively for Mesko glass doing all their commercial glass wall and storefront installations. I’ve installed all the glass at the Denaples Center at Scranton U, Mohegan Sun Casino main entrance skylite, all the glass in the 12 story King’s college dorm building, the decorative exterior curtain wall Fidelity bank on Main and Luzerne in Scranton and numerous Geisenger medical centers and hospitals in Wilkes Barre and the new one in Danville. I had to put all my skill sets to use while studying my new location to make it. I went to real estate investor seminars between jobs, at night and started networking meeting local investors where I would gain my 1st property management clients. I then started to expand enough to start getting the attention of my competitors locally. A real estate brokers license is necessary to run a property management company so in 2011, I presented a business plan, to my old broker Tom Wilkins of now Better Homes and Gardens. I had closed a deal with him to hold the license for my company for 5 years. I then opened Parasole Property Management & Associates where I was the General Partner and Tom a Limited Partner. At the same time, I opened Parasole Properties LLC so I can keep all my current properties I managed pre partnership, so the income was separate and my interests protected.
At that same time end of 2011, I found a 6-unit commercial building for my portfolio at 1738 Brick Ave. I quickly renovated the vacancies and gained 100% occupancy. The commercial space I decided to use for my new company and renovated the beautiful space and got the correct licenses in place.
New business was prior gained by word-of-mouth and after setting up my company and Office I started advertising heavy online with my website and all the real estate sites and social platforms with focus based direct marketing campaigns.
I’ve worked hard for a stellar online presence so we are on the top of all Scranton property manager search results with nothing but positive reviews from my clients on Zillow, Trulia, Google and Yelp and Facebook because I am a trustworthy person who will always steer you in the right direction and give you honest opinions treating your properties as if they were my own. (only negative reviews are from tenants we evict but that just says we do our job!) Business started to get so busy I had to recruit my wife Margaret and have her leave her 15-year bank job and would be CFO of the company. We have been hiring a new office staff member every 2 years to handle the increasing yearly workload, so we have 5 full time office employees and 4 full time maintenance contractors and 30 different subcontractors in every trade. I always make sure we can handle double the amount of current business. I have made sure to utilize technology to streamline our services to cut costs. I was the 1st to utilize YouTube for rental vacancy tours to cut back on man hours showing units to uninterested applicants. We were among the 1st to use web-based management software to allow our clients online portals to view real time rent collections and workorder requests.
I have a simple outlook I use to run business day to day. Use all my experience giving truthful advice to all my clients, monitor the market and new technologies to adapt them to our ever evolving business system to bring the best service to our clients making them an income and make sure to continue to love what I do.