Mike Connolly spent a year in dental school and he realized it was not for him. 

“I hated it,” said the 65-year-old Connolly, the oldest of five kids who grew up in Oakland, NJ. “But my mom and grandmother wanted a doctor in the family so they convinced me to go.”

He was casting about for something to do, and joined his dad, who had bought a franchise that specialized in fire remediation and house cleanups.

“I said this is good, I like this,” he recalled. “In ‘88 I started another company to do the rebuilds, the reconstruction.” 

Connolly saw that it was an underserved sector of the market.

“We just slid right in there,” he added. 

That company, Resto, has been in business since 1988 and offers water, fire, mold, and disaster rebuild services across New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania.

His first real estate investment in the early 90s, when he bought a 6-family building in North Bergen, NJ. He only paid about $100,000 for it because it was run down, and then spent years fixing it up. Most of the multifamily buildings in North Bergen are covered by rent control and increases are limited to 2.5% a year, but Connolly has held onto it all these years because it has brought him solid returns.

He also bought a property in Chestnut Ridge, NY, where there was a warehouse to store equipment for the business and a house, where his father lived until he needed to go into assisted living.

Running a business taught him a lot of lessons he’s carried over to his real estate investments.

“It was a lot of work and a lot of hours, and it was just constant,” he said. “Running a business you have to do everything from making the big decisions to taking the garbage out.”

He also gained a lot of insight into what it took to renovate a property and how much it should cost.

“You learn a lot of stuff managing the subs and contractors,” he said. The people he built relationships with through his restoration business have been essential to the success of his real estate investments.

His eldest son Chris — he also has a daughter and another son — is largely behind the growth of his portfolio. After earning an undergraduate degree from Syracuse, Chris started working with his father and then went to New York University for a master’s degree in real estate development.

The Zillow obsession is apparently a shared family trait:  “Both my sisters are into real estate,” Connolly added.

“When my son got involved we started buying a bunch of properties, mostly commercial,” he said. “Originally my son did the property management in New Jersey and it just got to be too much.”

Over a period of 8 years, they accumulated some 50 multifamily doors and 8 commercial properties, and now have property managers run the portfolio. But Connolly says he likes to keep a close eye on things.

“We pop in. It just keeps them on their toes,” he said. “They know you are watching and you can confirm what they are telling you and you can tell if they are actually taking care of the property.”

There are other ways to find out what’s going on. “You have a super at the building and you can get feedback from him,” he said.

These days Connolly lives in Colt’s Neck, NJ, where he bought a house on four acres for $1.2 million that also has two warehouse spaces where he can store equipment for his business. The location offers him easier access to the southern part of New Jersey where he’s found a lot of work. The property also has a gate house that has an apartment he rents.

And he’s still looking for deals, and feels like he found the right partner in his son.

“He got the education that really helped,” he said. “I love the real estate portion of it. I wish I had the knowledge my son has.”

What is your special real estate superpower?

I think it’s my interest in it. I’m constantly researching and looking at real estate. I just found it interesting and any time there was a recession, I was looking to buy. My strategy is that I have to make money on the buy – I’m looking for undervalued properties.

What was the hardest lesson you learned early on in your real estate journey, and how did you overcome that and persevere?

The lack of knowledge when I started made it difficult. That 6-family was totally run down and I wanted to fix it up and there was a tenant that was always busting my balls. And then I realized he was looking for cash for keys and I didn’t know anything about it — I thought that was illegal. He delayed me for years. The hardest thing was learning while you were doing. My dad and my son both had the same real estate bug. It started off as a hobby. During the learning  process you get hit in the head and you learn to duck — it’s the pitfalls that you learn to deal with on the way 

What advice would you offer to somebody looking to get into real estate or grow a portfolio?

Start small and learn from that  because nobody can tell you all the possible pitfalls. At first, don’t take risks you can’t bounce back from.

Among the strategies a property owner could pursue — long-term rental, mid-term rental or short term, (Airbnb), co-living — what works best for you, and why?

Long term rentals — you’re involved in it but it’s not a full time job. You‘re managing your investment as opposed to having another job booking people and having all the headaches that go with that. Anybody who believes real estate is passive income, I’ll tell them it’s not.

Cotality released a list at the end of April of the top five trends in the housing market, including:

The high price of materials to build a home are partly responsible for the affordability crisis — high labor costs aren’t helping — and some Americans are shopping far and wide to save money. As in importing home fixtures from China. Gennadiy Tsygan, an engineer in Baltimore, flew to Asia in 2024 to visit two dozen factories to choose the products for his industrial-style home made of gray fiber cement, which has floor-to-ceiling windows and an open kitchen. Tsygan also found doors with magnetic locks that silently click when they close and European-style windows. “Building a home is a project of a lifetime, and I treat it as an adventure and try to have fun with it,” Tsygan told CNN. “That’s how I came to trying to import some building materials from China.” Americans’ social media feeds are full of tips. A woman who said she rejected a $50,000 cabinet quote locally to import from China got more than 165,000 likes, and others share vendor lists. Chinese manufacturers also advertise on social media, promising to deliver cabinets, tiles and other materials.

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