Sonya Rocvil is the Principal and Founder of Bedrock Real Estate Investors, a privately-owned real estate company, specializing in the acquisitions and asset management of multifamily apartments in the United States. With over 15 years of experience within the financial services industry, she has syndicated multifamily deals totaling 374 units and valued at $18.6m. She has also been an equity partner for multifamily investments totaling 438 units and valued at $28.7m.
Sonya began her career as an auditor and later transitioned to finance at a Fortune 500 Company. She is an Adjunct Instructor for the NYU School of Professional Studies and serves as Treasurer of the Council of Urban Real Estate. She is also a graduate of Project REAP (Real Estate Associate Program). Sonya is a Certified Public Accountant and Licensed Real Estate Agent in the State of New York.
Key Point Summary
- Sonya pursued a career in accounting as one of her mentor’s suggested that it is the language of business. She was in an audit career and knew she didn’t want to be a partner at the firm, which meant she would have to leave at some point. She then found a great role at a Fortune 500 company and switched
- After working a few years at the fortune 500 company, Sonya and her team got laid off after which Sonya joined a mentorship program with a real estate investment group. She was then asked to pick a strategy to focus on because there are so many things to do in real estate, one could do single family, fix and flips, buy and hold, wholesale. In one of the meetings held by her mentor, she came across multifamily investments
- What she thought was really interesting about multifamily was the economies of scale. She was having a hard time with the single families, especially in New York, since prices are high, and then when you invest and buying that one house, and then you know that one resident leaves, and then there’s no income because that one person left.
- She invested passively in deals before getting into active investing. Through her passive investments, she was able to also learn about that market and this also gave her more credibility with brokers as she has some deals her portfolio as a passive investor, an equity partner
- Through her real estate investment group she found her joint venture partner and syndicated a deal in Atlanta.
- She suggests another very critical step in the process of active investing – if you’re going to be investing in a property that’s not in your state or not close to where you live to be self-managing, you need to find a property manager, and you have to have a property manager that you can work with. And this is absolutely critical. Because there’s one thing in finding the deal, but you have to make sure that you’re able to keep your deal. And you have to have the right manager in place to do that.
- For active investors, she suggests starting talking to, research the property managers once you are interested in a market. So that’s even before you find the deal
- She says what keeps her motivated is really thinking about her family and thinking about what she wants to pass down to them. In her words” I can’t pass down my licenses to them or like degrees to them, but I can pass down properties, I can pass down businesses. So that’s what I think about in terms of how do I help my next generation and the generation after ” Focus on generational wealth and being able to pass down businesses.
- In her opinion Freedom and financial freedom- it’s really about managing your mindset. In her words “One of the things that I realized that I didn’t realize this until after I was no longer in my corporate job. But even when you’re in your corporate job, or wherever you are, you are still always your boss, you have people that you work with, and you report to or people that report to you. But at the end of the day, you’re making decisions that directly impact your future. There’s a lot of responsibility that comes with that mindset.”