Jim Maffuccio – Forget Location, in Real Estate Timing Is Everything

Jim Maffuccio (Ma fuchi oh) has enjoyed a long and successful career in real estate and has some battle scars to prove it. Today, as Founder and Principal of Aspen Funds, he’s drawing on his over 30 years of real estate experience in a way that many haven't discovered. Jim has become an expert on mortgage notes and is helping investors earn high yields every month without the built-in volatility of traditional investment options.   “If you launch off on a cockeyed idea that you haven't gotten counsel from others, haven't done your homework and the timing is bad, you can persist all you want but I'm sorry, it's not going to work.” Jim Maffuccio   Worst investment ever Thrice a fool Jim was sitting at his kitchen table in Ventura, still working for a big oil company that gave him job security and a huge salary. He had just got his real estate license and started putting together deals for a couple of friends. He did some real quick math and said, “Man, I'm gonna make more money on these two real estate deals when they close than I'm making in a quarter of a year working.” Too fast too soon Without any more research or experience, Jim pulled the ripcord and bailed out the corporation. Within a week, both of those deals went south. He made nothing, and now he was jobless. Not one to give up easily Jim found another way to get a few more deals in his pipeline. He started doing transactional real estate helping buyers and sellers find and sell their homes. He hooked up with a friend who had some experience in real estate. They decided to delve into land development. The timing was just right They started subdividing some land, did their first home project, and hit the 1988/89 cycle right. The prices were going up and they ended up doing well with that first project. Full of vigor, they went out and acquired a bunch of other lands and started their next projects. Forgot to keep up with the current affairs Jim and his partner were so excited about their success that they forgot to keep up with current affairs. The S&L crisis hit them unawares. They had bought all this land, and just as the market had gone up pretty rapidly, now it was turning a corner pretty fast. Time wasn’t on their side anymore The problem with a development project is that it takes a long time to get your approvals, and you don't have any control over that timeline. Jim and his partner were raising money pulling the land together, putting all the pieces together, designing the project, hiring architects and land planners, and working hard to present their product to a market that they didn’t even know if it would exist by the time they were finished. Rethinking the plan They had to redesign the project to an affordable housing situation. They broke ground in their project in 1994 just after the recession. It was terrible timing for them. They had this beautiful, wonderful little development of homes but...