Nelson Perez-Jacome

Aurora Properties, LLC

Managing Partner, Miami FL

Nelson Perez-Jacome has a lifelong passion for real estate investing and property management. Born and raised in Miami, Nelson Perez-Jacome is the son of two Cuban immigrants who came to the United States in search of a better life. His parents Rene and America were able to establish that life, free from Castro’s communist regime, in the Magic City. Although Nelson grew up in a modest middle class household, his parents always provided an unwavering sense of stability both from an emotional and financial perspective. Nelson, being naturally inquisitive from a very young age, wanted to know why his life always seemed to be a notch better than the rest – his father and mother always provided a strong sense of security and family values. He learned many things from his parents but one of the most important lessons they taught him was that a little bit of talent, coupled with a lot of hard work, was enough to guarantee a good life.

Nelson Perez-Jacome grew up helping his father and grandfather with their rental properties. Perhaps because of his Cuban-American heritage, the value of hard work was instilled in Nelson from an early age. He worked on the maintenance of the properties conducting repairs, fixing leaks, and hardening the properties for the Miami hurricane season. Knowing that one day he’d be working on his own properties, Nelson picked up everything he could from his father. Whether repairing a roof or managing a lease agreement, Nelson learned voraciously.

It was this work that introduced Nelson to his other passion – Civil Engineering. Learning from his father the importance of integrating resilient designs when improving infrastructure, Nelson knew that Civil Engineering would be the perfect compliment to his Real Estate Investments. Still, Nelson had a tough decision to make. On the one hand he could pursue a career in real estate and capital allocation or, on the other hand, he could obtain a strong foundation in science and mathematics that would serve him throughout his entire life. The way he saw it – you don’t need a degree to allocate capital, that should come naturally, but to be a Civil Engineer, where countless lives depend on your work, a degree is only the most basic requirement. Nelson Perez-Jacome would be the first in his family to obtain undergraduate and graduate degrees.

After pursuing a Bachelor and Master’s degree in Civil Engineering, Nelson Perez-Jacome began to work in the design and construction of large-scale water, wastewater, and stormwater infrastructure. Fortunate to have a job in a dismal economy – many of his peers could not find employment – Nelson toiled to garner the money needed to buy his first property. He was far from an expert but he innately understood several concepts that would prove wise in real estate investing. Many of these concepts would later coincide with those taught by Benjamin Graham and Warren Buffett in Security Analysis and the Intelligent Investor. The concepts are:

  1. Only buy when there is a sufficiently large margins of safety
  2. Buy in a market you are intimately familiar with
  3. Buy a property where you can unlock earning potential
  4. Cater to working class tenants – hard working people that do not cause problems
  5. Buy with significant upside potential – but never rely on this potential to materialize

These five concepts would form the core of his real estate investing paradigm. Nelson remembered watching as the world lost its footing with inordinately high amounts of leverage during the financial crisis. He knew that capital preservation was of paramount importance. To that end, he made a decision that he would not rely on market fluctuations to earn a decent return. This posed another question: how would he then be able to realize above average returns? It was no longer 2010 when cap rates were sky high. Making matters worse, he lived in Miami, where all-cash buyers from failing states would swoop in just to stash their nest egg – he was effectively sidelined.

Nelson knew he had to do something, so he focused his energy on what he knew best: working class Cuban neighborhoods in Miami – the same neighborhoods his father’s properties were in. Leveraging his unique knowledge of Miami, he bought his first property – a duplex in Little Havana. The property wasn’t the biggest duplex in the neighborhood, or for that matter, the most expensive, but it was everything Nelson was looking for. Indeed the property had potential which could be unlocked, it was in a familiar area, had a large margin of safety, catered to working class tenants, and had upside potential due to its proximity to the buzzing Downtown and Brickell neighborhoods.

Today Nelson Perez-Jacome has used the skills he’s acquired buying and managing rental properties to operate numerous properties for a small list of of private clients. He continues to work full-time in the field of Civil Engineering and has used much of his experience in business development to deliver content marketing and search engine optimization solutions to real estate businesses and professionals.

To contact Nelson Perez-Jacome please send and email to:auorapropertiesmiami@gmail.com