Real Estate Love Story

Jan 29, 2021

Episode Transcript:

Welcome to the Housing Literacy Podcast with host, Matt Guarino, founder of Powerful Homes. Matt's mission is to empower dreams through home ownership. We're here to help. We're going to do this together and now Matt Guarino.

Welcome back to the Powerful Homes Podcast. So glad you're back with us, where we teach people how to empower their dreams through real estate ownership, and investing today. I'm really excited, very excited about what we're gonna talk about today, which is a love story combined with a real estate story. What's better than that?

So here it is. So we all seen movies where people fall in love instantly. It's love at first sight. Well, I know a couple that that happened to, and it was a woman named Joanie, a 20 year old in 1951 who walked into her first day at work at a life insurance company and met this handsome man named Tony Anthony Guarino. Now, as you can imagine these are my parents and they met in 1951. And the way he told the story much later was that my mother didn't realize that he also too fell in love with her at first sight.

So what every smart young man do when they want to wine and dine somebody that they want to marry, he took her on that first day, across the street to a burger joint named, White Castle, and they had greasy hamburgers and it started there, a 60 year love affair/ A fascinating, amazing story, super blessed and proud to have parents that put love at the center of their life. And you talked about empowering dreams. Their dream was to create a huge family so they can best live out their faith. And that's about as deep as it got for them. They just wanted to do that.

And so that's kind of the love story part of it. And the real estate part of that story is that in 1952, they got married and they also had a child that first year they were married and they live for the first few years in a place called Levittown, a kind of track homes on Long Island. But then decided that because they wanted to have a large family, that was the big dream, they needed to move out to the country.

On Long Island it was mostly pickle farms, believe it or not. So they moved to the North shore of Long Island and they bought a place at 172 Hoover Place in Centerport, New York, which is where I grew up along with my five sisters and my brother. And it was an amazing thing to hear over the years from my dad described that. He said his hands were trembling in 1957 when he bought the property until 2012, because he was so worried that he couldn't afford that $17,000 house and make the $30 a month mortgage payment. Does any of you feel that way? Have we ever felt that way? I was trembling when I bought my first home and worried about the commitment, that kind of thing.

It turns out that he owned it for 55 years and the value of that home went from 17,000 up to 275 when he sold it. Quickly was resold in 2012 for 350, and then now it's worth 750 to 800,000. So let that sink in. And that's my big message for this this day on our podcast. It is the power of compounding. The power of time. His house and their house doubled in value just about every 10 years. And I can't guarantee that would happen for you, but with some coaching and teaching and the mindset and tactics from Powerful Homes, we would be happy and thrilled to take the journey with you and believe that your house would appreciate.

And the amazing part is that that house, that equity was able to provide my parents the money to pay for four of my sister's weddings, three businesses launched and started by my dad. The first two didn't work. The last one did and he did very well in his life. It paid for a number of family vacations; all started when he was trembling and didn't know if he could do it.

So I would love to invite you to think about that, committing to a place, activates in you a spirit of the long game. Playing the long game to empower your dreams. So the population in the US at that time was 175 million it's doubled since then. That's the big factor that keeps the appreciation happening.

So I'd love to close by giving the PS to the White Castle story. For their 50th anniversary, I wrote letters to any vendors that they love to go to, including White Castle. And on their 50th anniversary in April of 2002, the CEO of White Castle sent my parents, his and her belt buckles, his and her jackets, his and her t-shirts to honor their life and to honor, and underscore the fact that committing to something, committing to your dream and using real estate to empower it, is something that we can all do and it can change your life.

So glad you're with us. So excited to take this journey with you. Look forward to next time, on the Powerful Homes Podcast.

Thank you for listening to another episode of the Housing Literacy Podcast. Don't forget to like, comment and hit that subscribe button and stay connected with Matt Guarino, by visiting www.powerfulhomes.org.