A Light Introductory Post – Because Even In The World Of Real Estate, You Need A Little Smile
#EntrepreneurOfTheWeek – Ronen Reshef, #Post1
Hey friends 👋
I’m Ronen Reshef, 51 years old, happily married with three kids, living in Moshav Nehalim (yes, there’s life outside Tel Aviv 😄).
By profession, I’m a CPA, but about 20 years ago I transitioned into the world of financial information systems – and wow, how time flies when you’re dealing with software and spreadsheets 📊
For the past four years, I’ve been investing in real estate in the U.S. together with my amazing partner Yulia Chavia (remember the name – you’ll be hearing more about her 😉).
💡 My Background
From a young age, I was raised to “walk the straight path”:
Study → Work → Save → Retire.
But deep down, I always had an entrepreneurial fire burning — especially when it came to real estate 🏠
My grandmother, who recently passed away at the incredible age of 105(!), always told me I reminded her of my grandfather, who was a real estate trader and broker…
Guess it runs in the family 😇
📈 I Started Small
My first deal was a tiny 2.5-room apartment.
Today we live in a private house in the moshav.
Not thanks to winning the lottery — thanks to real estate 💪
We realized early on that you need to make your property work for you, not just live in it.
And honestly? With a good real estate deal, you can make a year’s salary from just one transaction.
Sounds unrealistic? Here’s a true story 👇
🏠 A Few Key Deals
📍 2008 – We bought a one-room apartment in Tel Aviv that used to be a storage unit 😅
Price: ₪270,000 (yes, there used to be prices like that…)
A year later – sold it for almost half a million 💰
📍 2009 – We bought a 1.5-room apartment in Tel Aviv with no equity at all!
The only payment was to the lawyer.
The bank gave us a balloon loan at prime minus 1%, and for 8.5 years we paid just 0.5%–1% interest 😎
(The bank literally chased us to repay — it wasn’t profitable for them!)
📍 2018 – Sold the apartment for a 150% profit and moved to our home in the moshav.
But then I realized — deals like that? No longer realistic in Israel 😕
Prices skyrocketed, interest rates rose…
Then Came COVID 😷
That’s when I got the “click” — we must build our future, and especially our retirement 🧓💰
So, I started exploring overseas investments, where prices are still reasonable and yields are solid.
After three years of hesitation (which, in hindsight, was just wasted time 😅),
I studied under the amazing mentor Rafi Mizrahi and began my real estate journey in the U.S.
What’s Coming Next
In the upcoming posts, I plan to share, debunk some myths 💥,
and explain how you too can start investing overseas —
safely, wisely, and without a lot of money (in fact, I only put in my own cash on my eighth deal 😊).
So… what’s stopping you from diving into the U.S. real estate world?
Drop me a comment 👇 I’d love to hear!
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