Millennial Real Estate Investor

A quick update about the show, where we've been and what to expect.

It all started when Ben Mizes took on a sales job with a startup selling a platform for real estate investors in the single family business. And because he had to know at least some things about real estate, he was told to learn about investing. So being the obsessive guy that he is, he consumed all things real estate for a few weeks and hasn’t looked back since. At the time, Ben was in the market for a new place to live in anyway, and he had just heard about this great idea called House Hacking, so he figured if he needs a place to live, that he might as well live for free. Shortly thereafter, he went from owning zero assets to being a landlord of a four unit property. Within a couple of years, Ben had built up a portfolio of 22 units. Up to date, Ben is the CEO of Clever, a real estate tech company and on his way to financial freedom. Along with growing his own portfolio of units, he has the goal of being the largest integrated real estate company in St. Louis in his mission to transform his community. Takeaways from our conversation with Ben: 1) Understand the agreement, use your own contract, abide by the terms. Ben studied at the school of hard knocks during his first experience working with a contractor. He hired the only guy within his budget willing to do a major HVAC job and upon discovery of unsafe working conditions, did the right thing and fired that contractor immediately. However, the drama would continue as the contractor would then file a lien on the property, falsely advertise the property for sale (might we add multiple times), and (suspectedly) even rob the HVAC unit he was hired to install! Had Ben used his own contract and had someone tell him how to better protect himself legally, he could’ve saved thousands of dollars. But with all things, it was a great lesson learned, and an equally great story at that. 2) Homebuyers are buying a product, investors are buying a problem (and this is where the opportunities are). Such problems can be physically the property itself, the tenants living at the property, and sometimes, even the owner and managers of that property. When in the business of purchasing value-add real estate, you’re adding value where others feel it is not worth to them. If you can get creative enough to find solutions to these folks, you’ll never be short of great deals. 3) Build trust. Reality check: Not all homeowners are the most knowledgeable about real estate. In a similar token, not all real estate businesspeople are the easiest to trust in the business! Seek to understand who and what kind of person you’re working with and use that so you both can mutually benefit from that relationship. When seeking his second deal, Ben found the largest fourplex in the area, but the seller would not budge due to her mistrust of Realtors and other investors looking to prey off of her ncompetence. So instead of shoving profits down her throat, they took the time to educate her on their plans and were fully transparent throughout the entire buying/selling process. In doing so, they were able to build enough trust with one another and secure a great deal! 4) “The goal [for your first deal] is to not lose money and learn.” Just jump in. You don’t have to be ultra risk-averse or some adrenaline junky to get started quickly. If you happen to have a low tolerance to risk, that’s okay! What you can do is find a way to insulate yourself financially, learn the basics, and just roll with the punches. In doing so, you’ll actually learn faster and more than you would not doing anything at all. Take Ben, for example. Even with just a month of consuming real estate knowledge, he was able to get his first property under contract because he knew that even if the deal fell apart completely, the worst that could happen was that he’d have to cover the mortgage out of pocket (which he could) or sell. And while he made mistakes, there was none that he couldn’t handle and correct along the way. If Ben could go back and talk to his 16 year old self, he’d tell him, “Smoke less weed, and focus more on reading.” An unexpected benefit of real estate investing, Ben said, is the control he has over his asset. While he hasn’t yet met his ultimate goal of financial freedom at the time of our conversation, he dividends knowing that his investments will get him rich slowly as opposed to other more insecure alleys. A piece of advice Ben would tell his friends looking to get started in real estate would be to “Start modeling properties.” Get good at looking at properties, running numbers, and calculating what the potential net could look like in the end. Oh, and ”Expect to get your teeth kicked in a bit.” Ben recommends using Google Sheets as a simple method to learning how to run numbers on deals. Honorable mentions: Asana to help you manage your team. Clever to help you get connected with top agents in your market at a fraction of the cost. Ben recommends reading The Book on Rental Property Investing by Brandon Turner to help you learn the overall basics of real estate investing and fastrack you to your first property. If you’d like to get in touch with Ben, visit: benmizes.com or email him at: ben@movewithclever.com

“It was going to be an additional hundred grand and change or whatever,” mentions Kimberly Marie as she casually explains her rationale to begin flipping houses. At the time, she had thoughts of going back to school and getting her doctorate degree. And surprise, surprise—education costs money. So in order to pay off any debt she’d carry as a result, Kimberly turned to flipping real estate to offset her expenses.    Without much more thought, Kimberly began purchasing the ugliest homes she could find in her neighborhood and turning them into fresh, liveable homes that people could enjoy. And not long thereafter, she had established herself as the investor on the block.   Eventually, Kimberly finished school once again (and paid off debt once again), and this marked the first major transition in her investing journey. She didn’t need the immediate lump-sum cash anymore, and she wanted to take her foot off the gas a little bit. As a result, she began to hold these single family properties and turned them into sustainable rentals.   Fast forward to present day, she is amidst another transition in regards to her life. Up to date, she is selling off her single family properties and setting her sights to commercial rentals and developments.     Takeaways from our conversation with Kimberly: 1) Take a look around. At the time, Kimberly explains, in her home market of Indianapolis, the city hadn’t yet seen the gentrification it is undergoing today. But being a local in the city, there was more than meets the eye. Walking around town, she saw more and more people moving in, as well as more and more businesses being put up. So where others felt fear, Kimberly saw opportunity. Gentrification was just around the corner. And to her, it didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure it out. All it took was nothing more than common sense, and a simple question, “Would I want to live here?” The answer was “yes” so she was there to stay. 2) Don’t be a stranger. When renovating her first several flip properties, Kimberly quickly became a staple in her community. As she describes, she wasn’t some out of state, corporate investor. She was in the property every day wearing her construction attire and swinging hammers. We’re not saying that you have to do your own rehabs. In fact, we encourage anyone who wants to outsource labor so they have more time to acquire more deals! The point is, us landlords don’t have the best reputation out there with non-homeowners. It is our individual and collective social responsibility to positively affect and influence our market, our community, and the people in it. Take it upon yourself to make it more than just about cash flow. 3) Audit your goals. As mentioned above, Kimberly has pivoted a few times during her career thus far in real estate. She started off flipping homes, to owning rentals, and now commercial development. And this wasn’t by accident. Kimberly has taken a hard, inside look at herself and understands that her goals and aspirations have changed. Her reasons for investing have changed. And her attitude towards work—you guessed it—has changed as well. Set your goals and get after it. No two ways about it. Just understand that in order for you to grow as an individual, sometimes your goals have to do the same as well.  4) Ignorance is bliss. We don’t mean this in a bad way, not at all! Sometimes, you just need some naivety in your life. That’s all. Take it from Kimberly. Purchasing her first rentals, it was done more or less on the fly. She knew what to look for and what data to analyze, but it wasn’t some esoteric activity for the syndicators or ultra rich. She admits that looking back, she’s surprised just how much she didn’t know. But that’s the point. That’s why beginner’s luck exists. You do something with no idea how hard or complicated something is, and you find that it’s not hard or complicated to do at all. Approach real estate investing as if it's only for the “smart” or “rich,” and you’ll never be either of those things. So when learning something for the first time or trying to master something permanently, keep it simple.    If Kimberly could go back and talk to her 16 year old self, she’d tell her, “Just pay attention and look around.” An unexpected benefit of real estate investing, Kimberly said, was the tax benefits and time. (She literally got a doctorate which, mind you, is the highest level you can study something and now she doesn’t even want to work.) She didn’t expect to earn and learn what she is now. When a friend asks Kimberly about getting started in real estate, she asks them questions. Figure out your “why,” as well as what you can and won’t do.  Kimberly recommends using CoStar and Redfin to find deals and analyze markets. Kimberly recommends reading Skip the Flip by Hayden Crabtree to help you learn aspects of real estate and personal finance that you wouldn’t necessarily learn elsewhere.   If you’d like to get in touch with Kimberly, follow her on Instagram @kimberlymarie920 or contact her at: kim@reddoorrenovation.com

Meet Jim Murray, a twisted individual crazy enough to actually enjoy property management. No, it’s true. His journey starts back in 2012 when he purchased his first House Hack, a four-unit property in Rhode Island. At the time, he was working full time for Fidelity Investments and was self-managing his property. Since then, he has jumped around to do some wholesaling, some flipping, to where he is today—a full time property manager and real estate investor. The unfulfilment with Corporate America had been building for some time since Jim made his first investment and one bad review too many, he did what most folks could only dream of and started his own company. So what makes Jim crazy enough to do the one thing most investors dread as it pertains to real estate? Simple, he says. He’s a systems-oriented guy who enjoys helping people succeed. Up to date, Jim manages over 600 rental units, owns and operates Lyon Property Management, and hosts The Cash Flow Kings Podcast. Going forward, he plans to continue to scale up his personal portfolio, transition more into the multi-family realm, and help more people grow their wealth. Our takeaways from our conversation with Jim:   1) Systems is the name of the game. Invest in technology that increases profitability. By having the right systems & processes in place, you attract and get to serve the right clients. And fortunately for us, business technology has never been easier to acquire and implement. So whether you self-manage or manage other people’s units, there’s technology out there that exists to help you out. (Find suggestion list down below.) However, understand this: Technology is meant to enhance, not replace. If you fail to develop & implement the proper processes first, investing in technology will do you or your business no good, and will probably only run you and your business dry of cash flow. 2) Fire bad clients. When starting out, you’ll be tempted to accept any and all business that comes your way. And that’s not really your fault. You won’t know what separates a good client from a bad one. But once you build your business to a respectable size, that’s when it’s time to visit our good friend, Pareto (80/20 Rule). Scale your respectable business into a sustainable one. Get rid of problem clients and double down your efforts on the good ones. Good clients (tenants, customers, etc.) are worth keeping around if you want to operate a sustainable business. But more importantly, bad clients are worth getting rid of in order to keep the good ones around. 3) Set expectations and practice accountability. This is the culture that Jim cultivates within his own company that has allowed him to make a business and career in taking over distressed properties. From the very beginning, let tenants (or clients) know what you are all about and what you will do for them. You must make your tenants know it is a privilege to rent from you, and at the same time, you must treat it as such—a privilege. That means holding yourself, your tenants, and all other parties up to the standard that you set. And when the bar is not met, someone needs to be held accountable for their actions. In doing this, you will weed out bad tenants and keep the good ones happy. 4) Image influences perception. As Jim explains in his story, when talking to contractors while wearing scrappy jeans and work boots as opposed to a suit and tie, he was quoted for a lower price for the same work being done. And it’s understandable as this is a natural human bias. So why not use this bias to your advantage? Here’s the point: It’s not always best to look like you’re made of money. While this goes without saying to look appropriate, hygienic, and professional, you don’t always need to look super polished. Rather, fit the profession you’re playing. While there are times that call for formal attire, wearing so in casual settings tends to make others perceive you as willing to pay more for something or are just flat out bougie. If Jim could go back and talk to his 16 year old self, he’d tell him, “Buy more real estate in 2009.” In other words, take advantage of the real estate cycles and buy real estate sooner! An unexpected benefit of real estate investing, Jim said, was the opportunity to live with time, location, and financial freedom. A piece of advice Jim would tell his friends looking to get started in real estate would be to “Listen to other people.” Use the free content and information available to you online, whether it be other real estate & business podcasts, websites like BiggerPockets, or the thousands of educational real estate videos on YouTube. Jim recommends using zInspector to help you create and store tenant condition statements. This comes in handy during any tenant-related litigation, as well as have as an additional layer of legal protection for your business. Honorable mentions: For high-end scaled operations: AppFolio; Buildium; Rent Manager. For low-end (DIY-level) scaled operations: Cozy; Avail; Zillow Rental Manager. For rental unit showings: Tenant Turner; Show Mojo; Rently. Jim recommends reading The Wealthy Gardener: Lessons on Prosperity Between Father and Son by John Soforic to help you grasp important financial concepts found in many of the popular financial/business books around. Honorable mentions: The Pumpkin Plan: A Simple Strategy to Grow a Remarkable Business in Any Field by Mike Michalowicz. The Richest Man in Babylon by George Samuel Clason. If you’d like to get in touch with Jim, follow him on Instagram @thecashflowkings

When asked about what he does for a living, Will Bowman answers, “Professionally, I am three things.” Will is a management consultant (full time), a real estate agent, and a real estate investor. But that wasn’t always the case.   The advice given to many aspiring real estate investors is to find good deals and find someone with money to help fund those deals. If we were to put Will in this example, he would be the one with money to help fund the deal.   Initially, Will had no intention of ever investing in real estate. It wasn’t until his childhood friend, Austin Carrol (see Episode 53), approached him and introduced him to the business. What they quickly realized was how much they complimented each other’s strengths. From there, a partnership was born and they each have not looked back since.   Shortly thereafter, along with his partnership and working full time, Will began venturing out on his own and purchased his own rentals as well. Up to date, he has acquired a total of 14 units, and is almost out of corporate America. Going forward, he plans to invest in real estate full time, grow his real estate sales team, and become an even stronger organization.   Takeaways from our conversation with Will: 1) Stay in the zone. When purchasing (and occasionally selling) a property of any kind, make sure to do your diligence on the zoning of not only the property you are purchasing, but also the zoning of the neighboring in which you’re purchasing. Markets shift constantly, and cities have to keep up with the changes. One way they do this is by changing the zoning of certain areas. That means properties that haven’t been sold in a long time have a good chance that they do not have the same zoning as they once did. To save yourself the trouble in the future, always check the zoning of the property (and neighborhood) and plan accordingly. Quick tip: When doing conversions or additions, this is another time to consider such a topic. Do not overlook code requirements and zoning limits. Making such structural changes to a property may increase your ROI, but it can also inhibit your available exit strategies. 2) Being your own general contractor. What this means is you, as the owner/landlord, take the role and responsibility of hiring subcontractors to complete jobs and tasks as a regular general contractor would. As Will notes, this line of work isn’t for everyone. It takes time, knowledge, and constant attention and communication. On the flip side, the experience can be very empowering and educational. So how can you be a successful general contractor for your properties? As per Will, figure what things cost. Develop your expertise and understanding of labor and materials. Secondly, hire out small tasks. Test your subcontractors with small jobs first and graduate them into larger and larger projects, similar to how your investments will probably go anyway (meaning, your first property probably won’t be a complete tear down). Progress your general contracting skills along with the intensity of your rehabs. And finally, manage and monitor your projects. Stay in constant contact with your subcontractors and take the time to physically visit the work site (or have someone visit the work site for you). Verify jobs are being done correctly, properly, and in a timely manner. 3) Nurturing partnerships. A big part of how Will go to where he is today is thanks to his partnership. Lucky for him, he was able to find someone who suited his strengths and compensated his weaknesses. However, partnerships are much more than that. At the end of the day, you’re dealing with another human being. That means human errors are bound to occur. Do not expect your partner to never make mistakes. That will only lead to disappointment and chaos. Rather, develop a culture of transparency and responsibility, both for yourself and one another. That is how you will mitigate issues and become successful long term. 4) Hospitality services on top of being a landlord. Will also runs an AirBNB unit in his basement. With this kind of investment, Will quickly learned that you aren’t simply managing a tenant, you are also operating a hospitality business. That means that along with the regular duties of maintaining and caring for a unit, you are also expected to deliver a satisfactory experience for your guests. However, with the right systems, most of the time, Will says, “You don’t even notice people are there.”   If Will could go back and talk to his 16 year old self, he’d tell him, “Thank you,” for the relationships that he’s nurtured and the personal responsibility that he’s developed over the years. An unexpected benefit of real estate investing, Will said, was being able to be a part of a community, not just a market. And with that community, he’s built a lot of friendships that transcend real estate. A piece of advice Will would tell his friends looking to get started in real estate would be to know your goal(s) and just get into the game. Build a surplus of capital, preserve that capital, and recuperate that capital as quickly as possible.  Will recommends establishing a Pro Account with Home Depot to not only get discounts, but have a better customer experience. This is especially helpful if you do (or are planning to do) a lot of renovations. Will recommends reading Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike by Phil Knight to help you find the strength to push through the challenges when times get tough.    If you’d like to get in touch with Will, follow him on Instagram @willbowman10 or contact him at: wbowman@kw.com   Special thanks to our guest host for this episode, Sunitha Rao Feature episode coming soon!   And thank you to everyone that has reached out to us to connect them with our trusted real estate agents in their area! And congratulations to those who have even closed deals using our referrals! For those that didn’t know, we can help connect you with real estate investor friendly agents in your area to help you get started investing in real estate. We recently made some changes to our website that we believe will better suit you in your real estate investing needs. For more information, visit www.millennial-realestate.com and head over to the “Start Investing” Tab. Best wishes and see you in the next one!

Circa the beginning of 2019, Tom & Michelle Gendron had just gotten out of debt and were ready to begin investing seriously for their future, both as husband and wife, and as mother and father. They dabbled with the idea of strategically purchasing stocks and holding off on buying rental properties until they had more capital available. Afterall, they were already living in their “forever home,” and were in no rush to become property managers.   Nonetheless, after some intense research and education about the industry, not only did Michelle learn that buying real estate with low capital was a possibility, but that they can do it much sooner than “later down the road.”   Circa the end of 2019, Tom & Michelle had purchased their first out-of-state rental property and were cash flow positive.   Up to date, Tom, Michelle, and their four children are House Hacking in a cozy 900sqft home filled with love and excitement for the financial opportunities ahead. The goal for the next five years is to surpass $10K in passive income to be able to travel the world with their children and grow together as a family.   Takeaways from our conversation with Michelle and Tom: 1) Delay gratification. This is the theme of Tom and Michelle’s entire investing journey. This is how they were able to uproot their life and have the guts to downsize. This is how they embrace the sacrifice it takes and do it as a family. And this is how they will ultimately achieve generational wealth that will enable them to have enough passive income to live the life they so choose. Stop and think about your future self the next time you feel yourself caving into instant gratification.  2) Investing out-of-state in the eyes of a “hands-on” type of person. This was a blessing in disguise particularly for Tom because he considers himself to be a very hands-on person. With their first BRRRR (Buy, rehab, rent, refinance, repeat) property being out of state, Tom was forced to learn how to trust others in taking care of their investment (such as managing the property and completing the rehab work). Furthermore, if you are a hands-on person who wants to have a hands-off business, you’ll be forced to learn to leverage systems to make your investments successful. Don’t shy away from uncomfortable situations, use it as an opportunity to grow. 3) When reading a real estate book (or other books in general), follow along with the action steps contained in the book. It does you no good to read all the how-to books in one sitting and then only remember the last thing you read. And it certainly does you no good, either, not taking action after reading a book as well. So when there are action steps included in a book, follow along and practice the action steps. So when it comes time to take action that counts, you have already gone through the motions and will be less of a novice going in. Take it from Michelle, they found their first property on a classified ad on an online newspaper because the book she was reading mentioned it. She called the number on the ad and instantly got a $5,000 discount on the purchase price no questions asked. 4) Talk to the people outside of a property showing. Whether it be a neighbor or the homeowner themself, it doesn’t hurt to strike up a conversation with anyone who is even remotely associated with the property you are thinking of purchasing. At the very least, you’ll know someone that lives in the neighborhood and have extra “behind the curtain” knowledge about the property. As for Michelle and Tom, on their second property purchase (the triplex they are currently House Hacking), while Michelle was touring the inside of the property, Tom struck up a conversation with the homeowner who was sitting in her car outside in the driveway. In the end, they beat a cash buyer in getting an offer accepted to purchase the property because they had an edge in the relationship with the seller.   If Michelle could go back and talk to her 16 year old self, she’d tell her, “Get outside of your comfort zone. Try all sorts of new things. See what’s out there.” An unexpected benefit of real estate investing, Michelle said, was getting to a financial freedom number. A piece of advice Michelle would tell her friends looking to get started in real estate would be to “Go out and meet people who are doing what you are thinking you want to do.” Michelle recommends using The Facebook Marketplace to help you sell things you don’t need anymore (so you can have more money to invest in real estate!).  Michelle recommends reading The ONE Thing by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan to help you focus on your priorities and accomplish your goals in the best way possible.   If Tom could go back and talk to his 16 year old self, he’d tell him, “Educate yourself on finances. Start early.” An unexpected benefit of real estate investing, Tom said, was the ability to not only imagine, but also achieve early retirement. A piece of advice Tom would tell his friends looking to get started in real estate would be to take initiative. “This is hard to do. But with hard work, it’ll pay off. So if you’re willing to put in the work… there’s a lot of free content out there to learn,” Tom says. Tom recommends using Things app to help you stay productive and accountable with your tasks. Tom recommends reading Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin to help you develop your leadership skills for business and life.   If you’d like to get in touch with Tom and Michelle, follow them on Instagram @lifebydesignfamily   Thank you to everyone that has reached out to us to connect them with our trusted real estate agents in their area! And congratulations to those who have even closed deals using our referrals! For those that didn’t know, we can help connect you with real estate investor friendly agents in your area to help you get started investing in real estate. We recently made some changes to our website that we believe will better suit you in your real estate investing needs. For more information, visit www.millennial-realestate.com and head over to the “Start Investing” Tab. Best wishes and see you in the next one!

Devin Moreno started with nothing but a stable job living paycheck-to-paycheck and $500 to his name. Despite coming from a family of investors (stocks and other businesses), it’s a surprise Devin didn’t actually make the jump to real estate sooner than he did. (And this was one of Devin’s motivations to succeed as much as he has so quickly.) So, coming onto the scene a little later than many Millennials investors, Devin buckled down and learned as much as he could about the real estate industry in six months. He knew he struggled with analysis paralysis so the six month deadline was crucial for him to get started. And just like that, Devin had purchased his very first House Hack using a VA Loan, meaning he was able to purchase the property for 0% down. Since then, he has used this first property as a launching point into the small multi-family space using a combination of conventional and private financing to continue leveraging his investments. Up to date, Devin is closing on his first triplex which will be a BRRRR investment purchase. Devin knows his goals have definitely evolved since he began, and thinks they will continue to change going forward. Right now, the important thing for him is to ensure he continues to invest in properties that excite him and challenge his comfort levels. Our takeaways with our conversation with Devin: 1) Run your business like a business. When Devin purchased his first privately funded deal, he confessed to us that asking people for money was not something he was accustomed to (as we’re sure with many investors starting out). That’s okay. As per Devin’s case, the people he was looking to get funding from were people who also didn’t know much about private financing. So as he learned more and more about deal structure, Devin kept an open line of communication with them and explained to his lenders exactly how the deal was going to work. Along with explanations and his competence, Devin proved he was trustworthy by displaying the business systems he had in place. Lastly, he didn’t take too much money for anyone to handle. Each person who funded his deal lent no more than $10,000. 2) Give yourself deadlines. All too much, we see many eager investors cave into fear and fall prey to analysis paralysis. By giving yourself a deadline (and an honest effort), you will be able to hold yourself accountable and examine your “readiness” from an outside perspective. The goal isn’t to learn and/or analyze everything for your first deal. If that’s the case, you’ll never be ready. The goal is to learn and/or analyze enough to do your first deal. Remember, even if your first deal goes completely wrong, you will still have learned more from those mistakes than you would have had you not taken any action in the first place. 3) Read the fine print. One of the many reasons real estate is such a great investment vehicle are the legal loopholes available to investors’ disposal. However, because many loopholes are popular (and maybe even considered common practice), just one overlook of text or just one uneducated assumption can lead you to a plethora of legal trouble. Have competent advisors and be competent yourself. Make sure your business practices are within the confines of the law and protect yourself and your assets. When it comes to asset protection, “Better safe than sorry” is the motto. 4) Learning your market. You don’t always need to invest where you live (not at all), but the real estate industry and real estate markets are very niche. If you want to be successful, it would suit you well to learn where you are putting your money into. There are many ways to learn a new market. You can assemble a team who knows the area, talk to other investors who invest in the area of interest, or spend time traveling around the area for yourself. For Devin, the third option was the way for him. He invests in Baltimore where the market tends to be “block-for-block,” meaning one street over from another can be a totally different market in and of itself. And that’s okay. Regardless of how you learn your market, with enough due diligence and practice, you will learn your market as well as many others along the way (just don’t fall into analysis paralysis!). Devin knew nothing about Baltimore starting out, but now he can distinguish one “block” from another very easily. If David could go back and talk to his 16 year old self, he’d tell him, “The biggest disappointment is starting this so late. At minimum, paycheck-to-paycheck will not do you any favors.” An unexpected benefit of real estate investing, Devin said, was the confidence boost it gives you knowing you are a homeowner, as well as a business owner. A piece of advice Devin would tell his friends looking to get started in real estate would be to “House Hack—even if that is [your] only purchase ever.” Devin recommends using YouTube to learn and consume all things real estate. Subscribe to Devin’s channel at Devin Moreno Investing! Devin recommends reading Landlording on Autopilot by Mike Butler & Real Estate Investing Gone Bad by Phil Pustejovsky to help you get started on your real estate education. If you’d like to get in touch with Devin, contact him at: devinmorenoinvesting@gmail.com

David Richter began his journey early on, like many folks, immediately after he read Rich Dad Poor Dad. He was still in college at the time, but that didn’t stop him from finding a value-add property he would live in and ultimately lease option after two years, in which he then got out of tax-free. The financial savvy displayed in this first deal would become an entire business for David just a few short years later.   Not too long after that first deal, he came across a startup real estate investing company that was just beginning to grow as he came into the team. With such a dynamic company, and one that was starting to produce large amounts of business, David found himself taking on a larger and larger role within the company. As the company grew its employee base, David jumped from seat to seat in order to make room for the folks coming in and in order to stay afloat.   Then it clicked. With all the new members in the team and all the transactions they do year-over-year, David asked himself, “Are we anymore profitable now than we were before?”   After an in depth analysis of the numbers, David found that the company, despite all the business they were conducting, wasn’t really walking away with as much net profit as they originally thought. And that’s where we meet David in this episode.   Up to date, David is the founder and CEO of Simple CFO Solutions, helping real estate investors large and small take control of their finances and improve their bottom line. He has conducted over 800 deals thus far, and has teamed up with Mike Michalowicz to write Profit First for Real Estate Investors.   Our takeaways from our conversation with David: 1) Payroll and overhead. A company (real estate or otherwise) and become really large but not turn a profit due to these two things. Without control and awareness of the financial expenses tied to payroll and overhead, any revenue produced can easily walk out the door the moment it walks in. This was the problem that David saw as he was beginning his business in helping real estate investors understand and manage their books. Surprising as it seems, business owners many times simply just didn’t know what the numbers meant, nonetheless strategize and execute accordingly. 2) Everything and everyone contributes to the bottom line. From the smallest role to the largest position, if you’re going to be a savvy business owner, you have to know when to hire out jobs and bring in new team members. As a real estate entrepreneur, you’re not selling information or running a virtual business… you need to know what you need, where you’re going, and what you want to do in order to turn a profit at the end of the year. And part of that entails knowing exactly what kind of entrepreneur you want to be and what kind of business you want to run. Do you like doing hands on work or do you prefer a more managerial position? Do you want to do one deal a quarter or 50 deals a month? Only then can you even begin to effectively plan and strategy for execution. 3) Hire for what an employee can do to make the business more profitable, not just to hire out the tasks that need to be done. Once again, everything and everyone contributes to the bottom line. Having someone else do a task that you didn’t make more money or save time from kind of defeats the purpose of having someone else do that task, doesn’t it? What David found was that business owners thought that as long as they brought in more people to do more work, that it would result in more profit. They’re not necessarily wrong in their logic, but it depends on the degree of work those hires would be doing. Did their output in results justify their wage? Remember, bottom line. 4) Steps to hiring a good bookkeeper: 1. Know your numbers, they tell your story. Have, at the very least, enough knowledge about your books and what the numbers mean so you can actually benefit from the services of a bookkeeper. 2. Ask if they’ve done real estate books before and/or if they invest themselves. 3. Ask for references and inquire about previous relationships and work. 4. Throw them softball questions and access their confidence. (According to David, anyone can get the basics of bookkeeping from the general education available, but with real estate, because it is so niche and can get complicated really quickly, it’d be wise to go with someone who really understand real estate bookkeeping, hence the need to ask for real estate bookkeeping experience.) 5. Set up your systems, timelines, and establish open and constant lines for communication    If David could go back and talk to his 16 year old self, he’d tell him, “Read all this stuff earlier… Really know what you want as a person.” An unexpected benefit of real estate investing, David said, was the ability to create generational wealth that can be passed down.  A piece of advice David would tell his friends looking to get started in real estate would be to “Read as much as you can, get educated, and start making offers.” David recommends using Scribd and Goodreads for all your reading and learning needs. David recommends reading The Millionaire Fastlane: Crack the Code to Wealth and Live Rich for a Lifetime! by M. J. DeMarco to help you discern whether real estate is really something you want to do.   If you’d like to get in touch with David, visit: www.simplecfosolutions.com or www.profitfirstrei.net   Thank you to everyone that has reached out to us to connect them with our trusted real estate agents in their area! And congratulations to those who have even closed deals using our referrals! For those that didn’t know, we can help connect you with real estate investor friendly agents in your area to help you get started investing in real estate. We recently made some changes to our website that we believe will better suit you in your real estate investing needs. For more information, visit www.millennial-realestate.com and head over to the “Start Investing” Tab. Best wishes and see you in the next one!

We welcome back special guests (and part-time hosts) Lucas Miller (episode #15) and David Pere (episode #35) for this 100th episode special!   At the time of this release, we have had the great fortune to produce episodes with Millennial real estate investors week after week for slightly over two years now. A lot has certainly taken place since it all began.   For one thing, we have put out 99 other episodes! Dan has bought two House Hack properties (refer to episodes #1-99 to learn more about House Hacking). Ben has ventured into assisted living facilities and out-of-state investing. Lucas has left his full time job enabling him to focus on investing in multi-family syndications full time. And David has completely replaced his active income with passive income from his investment properties and other businesses.   But to say it came easily and without challenges would do new and aspiring real estate investors a disservice. Each one of the four of us has lost money, made mistakes, and failed over the last two years. We are not perfect and we don’t always know what we are doing.    And that’s the real takeaway from all this: we are regular Millennial human beings just trying to carve out a better life for ourselves and the people we love… and we just so happened to choose real estate as our main vehicle to do just that. That’s our reality.   It isn’t all glitz and glamour, it takes real effort and commitment, and it won’t come as easily for some as it will for others. It’s just the way life works sometimes. Regardless, go out there, make some offers, close some deals, and have some fun!   Huge thank you to the 90+ guests that were kind enough to speak to us over the past two years. We literally couldn’t have made this show what it is without each and every single one of you.   And to you, dear listener, thank you for tuning in every week and letting us become a piece within your real estate journey. We are overjoyed with the amount of people who decided to act and take control of their financial lives. We love to see your progress and your continued growth. Reach out and tag us on Instagram @millennialinvestorpodcast so we can see and share what you are up to!

Growing up, Alex Kies had no intention of ever becoming a real estate investor. As he said it himself, he was supposed to be a doctor! Instead, he chose the next best thing, and became a musician instead. At 24 years old, he uprooted his life in Missouri and settled into sunny Southern California. Here, Alex would pursue music to eventually become a regional manager for a non-profit music studio builder called Notes for Notes. While he did enjoy his work here, he found that he was beginning to reach a financial ceiling, as well as a life plateau. He wasn’t making the doctor salary he had prepared for earlier in life. On top of that, he felt that he wasn’t fulfilling his full potential in this line of work. He needed a change. He read Rich Dad Poor Dad, found BiggerPockets, and decided real estate was what he was going to pursue next. He found a real estate agent back in his hometown in Missouri who was willing to guide him through his first investment purchase. On his birthday, he made an offer on a value-add property that was accepted in 10 minutes! And that is where we meet Alex in this episode. In the coming years, Alex will continue to help his partners grow their investment portfolio, and he looks to grow his own to 250 rental units! Our takeaways from our conversation with Alex: 1) Manage optimism AND expectations. While his investing history has been, as Alex put it, “Pretty cruise control,” that goes without saying that starting out, he did have a few bumps in the road. On his first property, he expected to earn $1,200 in rental income per month and to this day, he still does not make that much. It isn’t because it’s a bad deal, $1,200 goes a long way in Missouri. It’s because Alex’s expectations were too high. As a result, the unit stayed vacant five months! And when he finally got it rented out, he only collected $900 per month. Starting out is very exciting, but the drawback is you don’t really know how your first deal will actually turn out. Afterall, you have no experience to refer to. Expect the unexpected and don’t expect too much, too soon. Keep your optimism aligned with reality. 2) Due diligence. For residential real estate, rent prices are more about what the market says they will be, and less about what a landlord says they should be. Just because a seller says their property collects strong rents, doesn’t mean that is actually the case. You have to remember they are trying to sell their property for a reason. Run the numbers, understand your market, and be quick to correct if projections need adjustment. Understand the seller’s situations, the property’s conditions, and the market’s circumstances. 3) Problem solving. When purchasing value-add real estate, you must understand that you are buying someone else’s problem. The better you can become at solving problems, the better of an investor you will become. And similar to expectations, plan for problems that you don’t know will even occur. That entails having reserves to pay to solve these problems, as well as the team to get the job(s) done. 4) While competition is good and can be healthy, there’s no point in purposefully making things difficult for yourself and putting yourself in a competitive disadvantage. Play the hand you’re dealt with and use that to your advantage. You don’t always need the same deck of cards that other people have. And a lot of times, we don’t focus enough on our own cards that we can capitalize on. For Alex, the cards in his deck that he used was that he was from the same town that he invests in and he had an agent he worked with that saw his potential early on. For others, it might be their access to capital, previous work experience, or other hidden skills. If Alex could go back and talk to his 16 year old self, he’d tell him, “Don’t go to college, major in real estate!” An unexpected benefit of real estate investing, Alex said, was the opportunity to learn about himself, develop his confidence, and take responsibility for his actions. A piece of advice Alex would tell his friends looking to get started in real estate would be to hire him as their agent… Alex recommends using Google Calendar to stay organized and do all the things you need to do every day. Alex recommends reading Long-Distance Real Estate Investing: How to Buy, Rehab, and Manage Out-of-State Rental Properties by David Greene to learn the same steps he used to buy his first investment property. If you’d like to get in touch with Alex, follow him on Facebook or Instagram @alexkies

Michael Glaspie had his humble beginnings in Texas. Having been born and raised there, he naturally went to college in-state and eventually joined the military. What was a means to pay the bills became a sort of passion for him, as he rose to become a member of the U.S. Army Special Forces, better known as the “Green Berets.”   However, several years into his tenure, he started to question whether there was something more out there for him. Was service all that he was meant to do?   Sure enough, Mike realized that in order to be able to do more with his life, he had to be able to financially support it. In enters real estate investing. Mike purchased his first duplex with less than $2,000 and inadvertently House Hacked without fully understanding what House Hacking even was.   Along the way, Mike experimented with many different strategies and have come to accept rental income as his main vehicle for financial freedom. By having steady, passive cash flow every single month, Mike is able to supplement his once military income and build his portfolio to scale.   Up to date, Mike is a real estate agent and looks to triple (yes, triple!) his investment portfolio within the next five years. He attributes this feat to the people he surrounds himself with, as well as his continued education because that’s what got him started in the first place.   Our takeaways from our conversation with Mike: 1) “Subject-to”: Term is used when a property is acquired “subject-to” the existing financing. The mortgage remains with the same person (seller), but the title transfers over to the new owner, you (buyer). In Mike’s case, it works well with military members who have to sell a property with no equity (because military members usually move every 2-5 years). That way, they can maintain their credit score, not pay money out of pocket to sell their home, and have a pain-free solution to their relocation. 2) AirBNB Arbitrage: “A sexy way of saying a ‘sub-lease,’ which is a sexy way of saying ‘to rent out a rental.’ ” says Mike. His reasons for implementing this strategy are speed and profitably. In other words, to be able to invest quickly with less capital compared to other popular strategies with just as much, or more, return on investment (ROI). There is enough room for creativity in this strategy that other larger investments don’t necessarily allow because of the red tape involved.  While many landlords might not like this idea, there are many benefits to them as well. Some include being able to receive steady income for longer term leases, endure less wear and tear on the unit, and have the peace of mind that the unit is being kept in tip-top shape. 3) Three lessons Mike learned on his first wholesale deal: 1. Don’t be overconfident, always keep the other party’s best interest in mind. 2. Keep out of pocket costs to a minimum. 3. Start with the end in mind. During the early stages of Mike’s real estate career, like we mentioned, he tried many different things. One of which was wholesaling. While it sounded simple enough to him at the time, with hindsight, Mike admitted that he did not make the best decisions on that first deal. As a result, the deal fell apart resulting in lost capital for Mike and housing trouble for the seller. Although he learned his lesson, if he might’ve been a little more cautious, the deal could’ve actually went well. 4) Implement fail-safes. Being involved in short-terms rentals (AirBNB), Mike ensures that he and his team are prepared in case a push were to shove. But this goes for every investment strategy out there all across the board. Whether it be on lease agreements, purchase/sale contracts, or partnerships, just to name a few, have specific terms and agreements in place so that all parties are on the same page, all parties can weather out a storm if one were to arise, and all parties are not put in an uncomfortable or unfair situation during the deal or life of the investment.   If Mike could go back and talk to his 16 year old self, he’d tell him, “Be patient and think about the results of your actions.” An unexpected benefit of real estate investing, Mike said, was the freedom it grants you. With this business, you can truly work for yourself and be self sufficient. A piece of advice Mike would tell his friends looking to get started in real estate would be to “Make the first deal… get started as fast as you can!” Mike recommends using Personal Capital to assist you in all of your financial and accounting needs. Mike recommends reading The Millionaire Real Estate Agent/Investor and The One Thing by Gary Keller, Jay Papasan, and Dave Jenks, as well as The Compound Effect by Darren Hardy.   If you’d like to get in touch with Mike, visit: www.fivepillarsrealty.com or follow him on Instagram @michael.s.glaspie

If you were 19 years old in college, recently just discovered real estate investing, and wanted to get started, how would you propose to do it? Affordably.   Gerrit Van Maanen embarked on his journey to financial freedom almost accidentally. It took place early in college when he and his buddy had to do a reading assignment. Borderline jokingly, the two of them chose Rich Dad Poor Dad as their selection and like most others in this line of business, the rest is history.   As an adolescent, Gerrit was already very entrepreneurial. Growing up in Iowa, he and his brother started and ran a sweet corn business. It would be this same exact brother who Gerrit would partner up with to buy their first duplex together.   Remember how we mentioned Gerrit was in college during this time? Affordable meant that this duplex cost only a tad over $50,000! But that also meant they DIYed the property for over a year! But like any good zero-to-hero story, this was sure to be filled with lessons learned.   From there, Gerrit continued to grow his portfolio through steady rentals, and is looking to experiment with different strategies to spice up his investing a bit. Up to date, Gerrit is the acting project manager for Spartan Investing Group, who specialize in value-add commercial properties all across the United States.   Our takeaways from our conversation with Gerrit: 1) Have reserves available. This was the biggest lesson Gerrit learned from his very first investment purchase. Just because you run your calculations and the pro forma looks good, it doesn’t mean that reality will go as smoothly as the plan. Furthermore, just because you can afford the down payment, it doesn’t necessarily mean you can afford the investment! Costs will add up and budgets will be disrupted. Have reserves available! 2) Simplicity. When working on his first house flip, Gerrit was unsure of his renovation plans. He had many ideas, but that only made making decisions even harder. Having options is a good problem to have (that’s what makes real estate investing so attractive to many people). But at the end of the day, a good problem is still a problem. All too often, in our effort to be great, we lose our footing. Investing is done with the intention to stand the test of time. That is accomplished through simplicity. 3) Versatility. Investors with access to more capital may disagree, but Gerrit prefers small multi-family investments (1-4 units) due to the fact that you can do a lot with these types of properties, in terms of strategies. Generally speaking, what makes larger multi-families more attractive to investors are the paper profits. However, paper profits don't necessarily mean more profit in reality. With small multi-families, Gerrit says, you tend to have longer term tenants. And having low maintenance tenants combined with low turnover units can more than make up for the profits you would otherwise not receive. 4) High quality talent is difficult to find, provide value to the people who need it. When Gerrit discovered Spartan Investing Group (SIG), he instinctively provided value to the company by doing research on his market and presenting it as a potential investment opportunity. Although SIG has yet to take Gerrit up on his offer, that was enough for them to notice Gerrit’s qualities as an important person to have on their team. So when looking for a mentor, employer, or partner, be someone who has high quality talent. The other party is more likely to take notice, and the benefits will be reciprocal (win-win!).   If Gerrit could go back and talk to his 16 year old self, he’d tell him, “Focus on school. Learn more by doing more.” An unexpected benefit of real estate investing, Gerrit said, was the ability to have so many doors open to mentorship. A piece of advice Gerrit would tell his friends looking to get started in real estate would be to “Have $10,000 more than your down payment.” Gerrit recommends using Smartsheet to help you run your real estate business smoothly and efficiently. Gerrit recommends reading Creating and Growing Real Estate Wealth: The 4 Stages to a Lifetime of Success by William J. Poorvu to help you envision real estate investing holistically.   If you’d like to get in touch with Gerrit, visit: spartan-investors.com

It’s not often that people get started investing in real estate by being the one who helps others fund the deal. Why? Simply because people usually don’t have a lot of capital starting out. So they turn to institutional or private lenders for support.   In the case of Josh Plave, thanks to familial upbringing and financial savvy, he embarked on his real estate journey being on the other side of the table, the lending side. Having been raised by a CPA, he grew up understanding the importance and power of planning for one’s future.   So starting at just age 16, Josh opened his first individual retirement account, and began investing for his future. Somewhere along the road, having secured a good paying job, he stumbled across the awesome power of real estate investing. Up to this point, he’d only been putting money away for retirement paycheck by paycheck. (Real glamorous, we know…) He put two and two together and realized that he can jump straight into multi-family real estate with the capital he already had and grow it even further by lending it out to others.   This allowed him the opportunity to save himself some growing pains and develop a scalable system much faster.   Up to date, Josh focuses on multi-family syndications and looks to continue growing his wealth with an emphasis on having enough passive cash flow to provide for his growing family.    Takeaways from our conversation with Josh: 1) Understand how retirement accounts work. This can be a very beneficial thing to learn about because it grants you access to a whole new realm of private money. Most people already have their money tied up for retirement anyway, so they’re basically just sitting there waiting to be used. By having the knowledge to leverage this money, as well as the creativity to create winning scenarios, you can use that to your advantage to grow wealth all around. 2) Tax savings combined with compound interest. On their own, these two items are already quite powerful. Put them together, and their power becomes ten-fold. Being able to save money from paying taxes and reinvesting it into something that grows passively, you really do create two pennies with a single penny. The tax code is your friend, use it.  3) Josh’s steps to invest in syndications while working a full time job: 1. Be aggressive with your contributions. 2. Understand how much control you have over your account(s). 3. Roll over your 401(k) into a self-directed IRA.   Key Terms: 1) Unrelated debt-financed income (UDFI): This is what you use in order to finance your investment, i.e. The mortgage for the property. Your 30% down payment is being leveraged. The other 70% becomes… 2) Unrelated business income tax (UBIT): This is the part of your investment that gets taxed, even when using a Roth IRA. But because these are technically business expenses, you can depreciate the leveraged part of the investment. 3) Deprecation: A paper loss that you claim on the value of the property because of perceived wear and tear. This so-called “loss” can be taken for a certain amount of years at a fixed amount. This results in the ability to deduct against taxable income, thus reducing the amount of taxes owed. 4) Cost segregation: In essence, this is itemizing the expenses of an investment in order to accelerate the depreciation. This is done to frontload the tax write offs and have access to capital sooner rather than later. And with multi-family real estate, cost segregation is sure to have more leveraging power. It doesn’t mean less taxes are paid, it just gives you more flexibility of when to pay them. 5) Depreciation recapture: Remember those sweet tax write offs from depreciation? Those costs are then paid (or recaptured) when the investment is sold, as a way to make up for some of the taxes that were deferred or otherwise not accounted for.    If Josh could go back and talk to his 16 year old self, he’d tell him, “Trust [your] gut.” An unexpected benefit of real estate investing, Josh said, was the ability to have the flexibility to dictate his schedule and have the total control of his time. A piece of advice Josh would tell his friends looking to get started in real estate would be to “Educate, educate, educate!” Josh recommends using Expensify to help you keep track of your receipts and expenses come tax time. Josh recommends reading Multi-Family Millions: How Anyone Can Reposition Apartments for Big Profits by David Lindahl to help you learn everything you need regarding apartment syndications. If you’d like to get in touch with Josh, visit: www.walltomain.com

Sometimes we just need a guiding hand to help us get started. Thankfully for Reinhard Kurzen he had a family member introduce him to the idea of House Hacking. Working a professional job and advancing in his career, Reinhard originally had intended to settle down and live out a more traditional middle class life. But ever since discovering the wealth building power of real estate investing, his life has taken a turn for the better indefinitely.   From investing across state lines to dealing with homeless intruders, Reinhard and his wife, Samantha, have steadily grown their portfolio over the last several years and have no intention of letting up. They House Hack their main residence and utilize the BRRRR Method on their larger properties. Up to date, they own 32 units and look to grow exponentially from here.   Takeaways from our conversation with Reinhard: 1) Buy quality materials. Starting out, Reinhard and Samantha decided they were going to rehab their own investment property. Without intentionally meaning to do so originally, they ended up with a house that was all but gutted out. What was intended to be a “light paint and finishes” type-of-job, turned into a full blown home makeover. The worst part is that they then had to redo some of the work because they went with cheap materials. The lesson here? Buy quality products and materials so you don’t have to do the labor more than once! It costs less money and takes up less time to do the job correctly the first time then it does to put half effort and have to do the same job a second time. 2) Budget your time. If you do plan on going down the DIY route of real estate investing, whether it be rehabbing, managing, etc., make time for your business. Because after all, it’s a business! Growing a business takes time, and that time has to be put into the business.  3) Understand the different rent models available. Depending on your market, as well as the type of tenants you house, some models are preferable to others. While on one hand it benefits the landlord to individually meter each unit for additional housing costs/fees, on the other hand, many times tenants just want one lump sum to pay each and every single month. You as the landlord must decide which model works best for your situation, on top of establishing clear and concise guidelines and lease agreements from the get go with your tenant(s). 4) Declare it to the world! At the start of his investing journey, Reinhard decided he would follow the “Stack,” a method in which you double your number of units every year, or established time period, allowing you to geometrically grow your portfolio (i.e: 2 units, 4 units, 8 units, 16 units…). After Reinhard obtained several units, he began letting everyone in his network know he was searching for a commercial eight unit property, so he could continue his “Stack.” Lo and behold, he was introduced to a 26 unit value-add apartment complex. While quite a jump from eight, the point is to network and tell others what you are seeking. You never know what others come across that is perfect for you and vice versa. Like the Stack itself, the power of your network is, too, geometrical (Refer to Metcalfe’s Law).   If Reinhard could go back and talk to his 16 year old self, he’d tell him, “Get educated. Learn everything you can about real estate.” An unexpected benefit of real estate investing, Reinhard said, was the ability to save and invest those savings that he would otherwise be spending on housing. A piece of advice Reinhard would tell his friends looking to get started in real estate would be to “House Hack!” Reinhard recommends using Appfolio to help you stay connected with your team and keep your documents organized. Reinhard recommends reading The Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod to help you live out your goals every day.   If you’d like to get in touch with Reinhard, contact him at reinhardpkurzen@gmail.com`

If you’ve listened to our show for any time now, you know that we have a network of agents across the country that caters to the specific needs of real estate investors. Well… in this episode, we get to showcase the journey and share lessons from one of our trusted agents, Bryan Rodriguez.   Before Bryan became a real estate investor/agent, and before he knew all that he knows about the business now, he was previously an active member of the United States Army (which actually benefited him a ton starting out because he was able to utilize a VA Loan!). However, his life would change when he met his soon-to-be wife right before he got deployed to Afghanistan.   Bryan basically knew nothing about real estate, but Lana’s parents had decided to not pay for their  wedding expenses, but rather, purchase a starter home instead. Instantly, Bryan understood the power of wealth building and storing that wealth in tangible assets. So as he left for overseas, Bryan read as much as he could about personal finance and real estate investing during his time there. Upon returning back to the homeland, Bryan made an executive decision that the next property they were going to buy would be a 4-plex.    And that they did. Bryan learned a ton from that first property (as most investors do), but they, Lana and Bryan alike, only got better as time went on. Up to date, Lana and Bryan are at the top of their field respectively, both as a team and as competitors.   Main takeaways from our conversation with Bryan: 1) Ignorance is bliss. After purchasing the questionable property in a questionable neighborhood and then implementing questionable tenants, Bryan got, as he called it, “A rude awakening.” He realized that despite his experience with order during active duty, property management and dealing civilians was a whole other animal. But with every challenge comes opportunity. Not only did these problem tenants teach him valuable lessons, it also allowed him to hire a brand new property manager and teach her valuable lessons as well. And to this day, that property manager still takes care of that same unit.  2) Understand landscaping. This is one of those items that usually comes with experience. So take it from Bryan. Understand how landscaping and drainage works! Water flowing into the wrong areas can easily become the silent destroyer of your property, right out of its foundation in fact. However, that also goes to say that don’t fear the unknown. Just like all aspects of real estate, items are only scary until you learn how to address them and/or deal with them firsthand. Find competent minds and find competent hands. 3) When describing his experience with commercial multi-family real estate, Bryan described the whole process in one phrase: Due diligence. It’s all about understanding your property, what you can do, what you want to do, and what you’re ultimately allowed to do. But we believe that this advice doesn’t apply explicitly only for large real estate developments. This applies to your very first investment property and all future ones after that.   If Bryan could go back and talk to his 16 year old self, he’d tell him, “Love your significant other [and] be patient, it’s going to come.” An unexpected benefit of real estate investing, Bryan said, was the ability to preserve your capital and wealth in tangible assets. A piece of advice Bryan would tell his friends looking to get started in real estate would be to “Take action… Worst case scenario, you get educated.”  Bryan recommends using Redfin to help you with your real estate needs because of their intuitive and user friendly interface. Bryan recommends reading Sell It Like Serhant: How to Sell More, Earn More, and Become the Ultimate Sales Machine by Ryan Serhant to help you learn how to close deals like a pro.   If you’d like to get in touch with Bryan, contact him at (512)944-7900   Thank you to everyone that has reached out to us to connect them with our trusted real estate agents (like Bryan!) in their area! And congratulations to those who have even closed deals using our referrals! For those that didn’t know, we can help connect you with real estate investor friendly agents in your area to help you get started investing in real estate. We recently made some changes to our website that we believe will better suit you in your real estate investing needs. For more information, visit www.millennial-realestate.com and head over to the “Start Investing” Tab. Best wishes and see you in the next one!

Not everyone who invests in real estate does so out of passion. For many, real estate is only a means to passive income, a strategic and technical machine that pumps passive wealth for as long as they choose. On the opposite end of the spectrum, there are investors out there who immerse themselves in all things real estate not only as a career, but as a lifestyle. Regardless of where successful real estate investors may fall on the spectrum, oftentimes, they can pinpoint one or several defining moments in their life that changed their trajectory forever. Kyle Marcotte began his journey at the same time he was beginning his adult life. For most of his life, he had done what he was told were the right things to do. He did well in school, behaved himself, and eventually even landed himself an athletic scholarship while attending University of California, Davis. What he quickly came to realize was that such a life may not be for him. He did not want to be told what to do for the rest of his professional life, nor did he want to lose his time at the will of others only for their benefit. Several months later, Kyle discovered Rich Dad Poor Dad and dropped out of college before the start of the next semester. He dedicated the next half of a year to learn as much as he could about investing in multi-family real estate, while networking with as many people as he can. In a relatively short amount of time, thanks to that same dedication to education and networking, Kyle was able to find a partner with experience investing in multi-family real estate and closed their first deal, which was a 107 unit apartment building. At the time of this recording, Kyle owns a total of 119 units worth over $5.5M. And aside from expanding his investment portfolio, he plans on making an even greater impact on the real estate community by teaching aspiring investors to achieve what he was able to by the age of 21. Some key takeaways from our conversation with Kyle: 1) Get on the same page with your partner(s). Work out a budget for your business, implement systems to maximize efficiency, and leverage software and services that will allow you to manage your business more effectively. 2) Go with a property management company that has an in house team that can do the work/labor for you or will help you find people who can. As a business owner, the more time you can spend working on your business, as opposed to working in it, usually the better off everyone involved will be. In Kyle’s experience, by selecting a trustworthy and dependable property manager, he’s usually left to overlook projects instead of doing the manual labor himself. 3) How to network as a young person in a nutshell: Find a meetup and introduce yourself to the host. For the next meetup, bring a friend. For the one after that, ask the host how you can help them. And finally, ask to be a speaker for future events. By doing so, not only will you show everyone attending the meetup that you are serious about investing in real estate, but you also establish credibility and expertise. Pro tip: When joining a new meetup, don’t come in too strong, but don’t wait too long to build your credibility. Present yourself in a professional way and you will be perceived as a professional. Don’t lie about what you know, but experience always helps when establishing expertise. Above all, add value to others’ life! 4) Find ways to help people doing what you already enjoy as opposed to focusing on only making every single endeavor profitable. In the long run, we believe an investment in someone will produce a greater ROI than any monetary one will. Kyle understands that the happiness found in financial freedom eventually plateaus, but if you can stay humble and help other people, happiness is never in short supply. If Kyle could go back and talk to his 16 year old self, he’d tell him, “Define your worth internally and not how other people perceive you.” An unexpected benefit of real estate investing, Kyle said, was the ability to spend more time with his parents. A piece of advice Kyle would tell his friends looking to get started in real estate would be to “Learn the most difficult parts first.” If you can learn the things you’re not so interested in sooner, the faster you will be able to learn the things you are interested in. Kyle recommends using Slack and Asana to help you streamline your business and be more efficient online. Kyle recommends reading The Bible for the simple reason that he believes not enough people are doing it or are recommending it. If you’d like to get in touch with Kyle, visit: www.kylemarcotte.com

Many people, investor or not, dream of traveling the world while having the freedom of location independence. And that’s all many of those people will ever do—dream. A great deal of said individuals will choose to not look past the self imposed limitations they have placed for themselves whether it be finance, mindset, or current circumstances.   In the case of our guest, Sarah Weaver, she began her real estate investing career without the intention of ever becoming an investor. Despite her skill and aptitude for the job, Sarah suddenly felt that in order to scale and grow her business as an agent, she had to be tied down to one place. This would be a defining moment for her in life.   Not two weeks after realizing she had been bitten by the travel bug, she began working for a company that allowed her to work remotely. Since then, she has not looked back. She has lived on four different continents and is slowly but surely approaching her 50th country to visit!    As a matter of fact, at the time of this recording, she is halfway across the world in New Zealand managing her units from a van, #vanlife, helping aspiring investors to get started doing what they love, and looking to further grow her portfolio regardless of what curveballs life throws at her. She works for a broker helping to connect real estate agents and investors together, while traveling as a digital nomad.   Some key takeaways from our conversation with Sarah: 1) When renting by the room (House Hacking or traditional investing), you can use a current tenant as a property manager. There’s already trust between you both because they have been renting from you, and they are going to be more pragmatic about choosing new, potential tenants because they are the ones who are going to be living with them. Sarah wouldn’t recommend this for every property and every situation, but if you can play your cards right, there is a great deal of leverage to be had. 2) Have real estate agents and other personnel on the ground as your eyes and ears. As much as you can look at neighborhoods on Google Maps and research crime in a given area, you won’t really know how those areas feel until you are there in person. Neighborhoods can change dramatically (for better or worse) and Google Maps doesn’t update regularly. But what if you can have other, more knowledgeable people do that for you? That’s what your team is there for! Use their professional insight to create winning scenarios. 3) “Buy the damn ticket and at least try it!” For those that want to work/invest remotely, don’t let your fear or discomfort stop you from giving yourself the opportunity to. Don’t sell your car and all your belongings right away, but give yourself a few weeks to try it. AirBNB makes it so easy nowadays to live in a fully furnished unit so there’s really never been a better time to make this dream a reality. If you feel you’re tied down to a desk, ask your boss to give you a trial run working remotely for a month. Just be an amazing employee during that month and go from there! Just like becoming an investor, get pre-approved then take action.  4) Figure out what you want, see what your options are, and pick one. Whether it be traveling, buying a property, or making a career change, there’s nothing more saddening and aggravating to the three of us than seeing someone with a lot of potential waste it through paralysis by analysis. Sometimes, all you really have to do is look at the cards you are dealt with and roll the dice.   If Sarah could go back and talk to her 16 year old self, she’d tell her, “It’s all going to be better than you imagined… the world is going to be so good to you.” An unexpected benefit of real estate investing, Sarah said, was being able to dream bigger than she ever thought possible. A piece of advice Sarah would tell her friends looking to get started in real estate would be to “Buy a house. Get pre approved and just do something. Your first deal is never going to be your best deal… [just] make sure it’s not your worst deal.” Sarah recommends using Wunderlist to help you keep track of tasks within a neat, digital to-do list. She recommends reading Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard, as well as Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die by Chip and Dan Heath to help you get your mindset bigger for your business.   If you’d like to get in touch with Sarah, visit: www.addictedtoroi.com or follow her on Instagram @sarahdweaver

Although many individuals start out their journey to financial freedom through real estate investing on purpose, some discover it accidentally. For the case of our guest, Shelby Osborne, she didn’t realize the power of passive, rental income until she moved away from her first primary residence. For six years, Shelby served in the Military in Washington State. Not too long after acquiring her first property (not for investment purposes), she was restationed to Fort Bragg in North Carolina. Instead of selling the home, she decided to rent it out and it turned into a great asset for her. Shortly after that, she decided to pursue real estate full time by investing for herself, as well as being a top producing agent her first year, winning Rookie of the Year for Keller Williams North and South Carolina. Up to date, Shelby owns a total of 41 units which consists of a variety of AirBNB Arbitrages and multi-family rentals. Shelby prefers using private money lending as it helps her be more creative with her deals. She also finds that being creative with BRRRR (Buy, Rehab, Rent, Refinance, Repeat) allows her to do more business more successfully. Although being self-employed has its own challenges, Shelby realized that she didn’t want to be an employee for the rest of her life, and pulled the trigger (pun intended) to growing her business. Some key takeaways from our conversation with Shelby: 1) “Who knows you, likes you, and trusts you.” Many investors make it sound like private money is when random people blindly and willingly give you money to invest. In reality, it’s about finding people who know, like, and trust you with their money. It’s about creating win-win situations and making sure the private lender is knowledgeable about what you are doing and what’s happening with their money. And if you structure deals properly, not only will you create favorable terms, but you open yourself up to repeat business for future investments. 2) You can always buy cheap, but you can’t always cash flow or obtain financing. Many investors are attracted to sub-100K markets—and that’s great—but it doesn’t always work for long term buy-and-holds. Banks and other lenders typically don’t like to lend on properties worth less than $100,000 due to the little return they would be getting on their investment (the investment being financing your deal). As a result, you may be stuck with a great property that will negatively impact your bottom line because you couldn’t get financing. 3) Quick tip for investing in military markets: The property prices/values and market rents are usually determined by what the military’s housing budget is for their veterans. A simple Google search will usually provide this information for you. From there, you can assess whether it is a market you want to pursue and begin assembling your team. As an added bonus, military markets can provide solid cash flow and insulation against market downturns and recessions. Shelby Osborne’s Key Terms and Definitions: 1) BRRRRNB: The BRRRR strategy listed above with the caveat of implementing an AirBNB short-term rental, as opposed to traditional long-term rentals. (Pronounced Burr-En-Be). 2) Pentaplex: Multi-family residence consisting of five units (e.g. duplex, triplex, quadplex, pentaplex). 3) VHA: Variable Housing Allowance. The government’s compensation for active service member’s housing expenses. 4) AirBNB Rental Arbitrage: Strategy in which you rent a unit yourself, and with the landlord’s permission, sublet that unit through AirBNB as a short term rental. In other words, you act as the AirBNB host without owning the property. 5) 1% Rule: Metric that states that the rental income you receive from a property equals 1% of the purchase price. 6) Delayed Financing: Strategy in which you purchase a home with cash up front (which may or may not include the rehab costs) and then “cash out” a portion of the equity from the property. Similar to a traditional “cash-out refinance,” but you don’t finance the property in the first place because you purchased outright with cash. This can potentially allow you to bypass a typically required seasoning period for lenders. If Shelby could go back and talk to her 16 year old self, she’d tell her, “Read more and care about things that actually matter.” An unexpected benefit of real estate investing, Shelby said, was being able to turn life into a fun game. All of a sudden work becomes a puzzle, and Shelby loves solving puzzles. When Shelby’s friends looking to get started in real estate ask her for advice, she simply sends them her file of listed action steps. So reach out to Shelby and get that PDF! Shelby recommends using Audible so you can learn on the go. She recommends reading The Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod and 12 Rules for Life by Jordan Peterson to help you mentally prepare for the journey ahead. If you’d like to get in touch with Shelby, visit: www.fivepillarsrealty.com or follow her on Instagram @realestatewithshelbyosborne

We recently had the chance to have our guest David Pere be a part of a panel where we discuss all things seller financing (see Episode 85). In this episode, we welcome him back to hear all about what he’s done since the last time we featured him on the show. Oftentimes, people who begin investing in real estate do it to supplement their income from a salary or quit their day jobs. Back in January of 2019, David introduced to us the idea and strategies to invest in real estate while serving in the military full time (see Episode 35). And since then, David has grown his out-of-state portfolio, taken part in a syndication, dabbled around with a flip, and is currently House Hacking in sunny San Diego. Up to this point, David is still serving in the Marines full time and simultaneously growing his business. He’s having a blast doing it and shows no sign of slowing down any time soon. Some key takeaways from our conversation with David: 1) Syndications are a good way to build wealth and you can definitely learn a lot about the business, but David wouldn’t recommend jumping into it as your first investment. There are many pieces to the puzzle, and it might just be a little too complex and a little too complicated for someone just getting started. 2) Be attentive to the contractors you hire. You don’t necessarily need to micromanage your contractors and handymen, but make sure you keep close tabs on their work. Make sure to look at the work they’ve done and make sure it’s done correctly. If you don’t know what to look for, make sure to have someone who does. This can be done by a trusted colleague or a property manager. 3) Be attentive to how you bill and pay your contractors. Projects can easily go over budget and become overrun because of poor planning. When dealing with the financial side of the business, you want to make sure you are on top of when your cash flows. If you want to stay profitable, do not get careless with your money. 4) Have reserves and budget accordingly. Despite having challenges with his rentals, David stays afloat because he has security in his investments. Many times, investors only focus on purchasing as cheap as possible, but ignore how to manage investments effectively as well. “Just because you can purchase a property for no money down doesn’t mean you should,” David says. Do your due diligence and create a plan with multiple exit strategies. If David could go back and talk to his 16 year old self, he’d tell him, “Start networking immediately and be better with your money!”   An unexpected benefit of real estate investing, David said, was the thrill of the hunt. David doesn’t necessarily need to work anymore, but he still does because it’s fun and he enjoys what he does. A piece of advice David would tell his friends looking to get started in real estate would be to “Learn, network, take action.” Surround yourself with people who are doing what you want to do. David recommends using Independent Community Bankers of America (ICBA) to help you find local community banks for financing and other perks that big institutions don’t offer. He recommends reading The Like Switch: An Ex-FBI Agent's Guide to Influencing, Attracting, and Winning People Over by Jack Schafer and Marvin Karlins to help you learn about the psychology involved in social interactions (because after all, real estate is a people business). If you’d like to get in touch with David, visit: www.frommilitarytomillionaire.com or follow him on Instagram @frommilitarytomillionaire

At the time of this recording, there is a lot of talk of the upcoming recession and economic downturn. Regardless of what others may say, however, we believe that this time around is different than that of the 2008 Housing Market Crash. But at the same time, many of the strategies used to hedge against recessions still apply. That’s the big difference.   We welcome back our first ever guest Jennifer Beadles (see Episode 1) to talk about her strategies to protect her business, portfolio, and tenants against recessions.    Since the last time we spoke, a lot has happened in Jennifer’s business. She has grown her portfolio, grew her investing team, and has traveled all over the world. Many investors get caught up working really hard that they never give themselves the opportunity to scale because they want to do all the work themselves. For Jennifer, she takes multiple vacations a year for weeks at a time and somehow still manages to thrive in her business. How does she do it?   Jennifer explains that she is able to work from anywhere in the world because of the systems and teams she has created. These systems include training tenants how to contact her if they need something, having a trusted handyman to make on-call repairs, and leveraging the service of agents to bring her deals even if she’s out of the country, all the while being able to automate more and more of her work within her business as well as scale higher and higher.    Some key takeaways from our conversation with Jennifer: 1) Use data and get referrals. You can spend time conducting all your own due diligence, but what’s the opportunity cost for you in doing that? By getting referrals with trusted individuals, not only are you able to grow your team organically, but you are also able to leverage their expert, local opinions about any information you are trying to figure out. 2) Be strict and stick to your criteria. Many investors fail to achieve extraordinary results because they keep switching up their strategies and give up too soon. And they keep giving themselves excuses to make bad investment decisions. Jennifer has used the same set of criteria since she began investing a decade ago and it still serves her well. Because of it, she is confident to invest regardless of the economic climate.  3) Prepare for bad times. Many new investors try to time the market or get lucky investing when times are good. It is usually these investors who get wiped out when times get tough. Instead, make sure to plan for recessions by asking yourself if tenants can still pay rent if the market collapses, and if you can still pay the mortgage if tenants stop paying rent. Set yourself up for upside, don’t pay attention only to the downside. 4) Build relationships with small community banks. When people begin to fear the market, real estate goes on sale. That is when these local banks are there to help you the most. While other large, national banks have to abide by many guidelines and red tape, local banks can give you fast and quality service to help you get ahead in your business.  If Jennifer could go back and talk to her 16 year old self, she’d tell her, “Keep hustling!” An unexpected benefit of real estate investing, Jennifer said, was the ability to travel and have freedom with time and money. A piece of advice Jennifer would tell her friends looking to get started in real estate would be to “House Hack [and] start with a duplex.” Jennifer recommends using any podcast app so you can learn more about real estate investing.  She recommends reading Tools of Titans by Tim Ferriss to help you learn more about how to succeed in your business.   If you’d like to get in touch with Jennifer, visit: www.agentsinvest.com

People come across real estate investing and discover financial freedom through all sorts of ways. In the case of Ann Belter, it was on some drunken night during a vacation with friends from work over some margaritas. Right then and there, she and her husband were introduced to Rich Dad Poor Dad and upon returning home, they decided that they were going to pursue financial freedom through real estate investing.   Fast forward a few months, she and her husband (boyfriend at the time), each purchased their own 4-plex with an FHA loan at 3.5% down. They were able to purchase two owner occupied homes simultaneously because they were not married yet. This was 13 years ago. As of today, they own 20 properties totaling 112 units, have retired from their W-2 jobs, and are financially independent.    If you did your math, you may have recognized that Ann and her husband got started investing during the peak right before the Great Recession. Unlike many investors at the time who were scared to invest because home values were rapidly declining, they were looking to gobble up as many properties as they can because of the great deals being made available.    What separated them from other investors? They invested for cash flow, not appreciation.   Some key takeaways from our conversation with Ann: 1) Relationships are key. Whether it’s during market downturns or to find off market deals, having and maintaining relationships with homeowners and other real estate professionals is what will propel you forward when times are tough.  2) Know your criteria. There is an abundant number of strategies and deals to be had in real estate, but that can also lead to your own downfall. By sticking to one (or a select few) strategies at a time, you are more likely to produce consistent results and create winning systems. For Ann, her criteria includes being in a close vicinity from her other properties and excludes high crime areas.  3) Establish credibility by creating win-win situations. All it takes is a book or two to learn the basic terminology and know-how to invest in real estate. By doing so, you are able to set your criteria which you can use to create meaningful relationships. Only then can you leverage these relationships and advance in your business. And that is what makes you an authority.    If Ann could go back and talk to her 16 year old self, she’d tell her, “Keep learning… It’s not about just getting by.” Read for knowledge and not only for leisure. An unexpected benefit of real estate investing, Ann said, is the amount of time she is able to spend with her family and the opportunity to teach her children new things. A piece of advice Tiffany would tell her friends looking to get started in real estate would be to “learn at least a little bit about real estate, read as much as you can, [and] don’t wait to get started.” Ann uses Google Suite to be able to use a business account, have business meetings, and store her business remotely in a cloud (to be later accessed anywhere in the world for when she is on vacation). She recommends reading Multi-Family Millions: How Anyone Can Reposition Apartments for Big Profits by David Lindahl to help you get started investing in Multi-Family real estate.   If you’d like to get in touch with Ann, visit: www.belterassociates.com or find her at BiggerPockets or Facebook @ Ann Belter.

The reason many people quit on real estate investing before they even get started is because of their belief in the high barrier to entry. One such barrier is being able to finance deals with limited capital and structure deals with limited experience (see Show 82). A solution many investors favor is the ability to use seller financing. As our guests in this episode put it, seller financing is when the seller has enough equity in their property and acts as the bank (or lender) to carry a mortgage on the property.   We welcome back Nick Giulioni (see Show 68) and David Pere (see Show 35) to get an in depth look at creative seller financing. Both these gentlemen have closed on several seller financed deals and are currently working to close on even more.    The reason they use seller financing is because of the ability to utilize their creativity and knowledge about the business to bypass institutional red tape that comes with real estate investing. Whereas in traditional lending you as the buyer only control closing date and purchase price, with seller financing, you can negotiate down payment, concessions, note term, interest, mortgage payment, and so much more (as much or as little as you choose, really). And if that isn’t enough, you can actually provide better means to serve the needs of the seller and solve their problems.   Some key takeaways from our conversation with Nick and David: 1) When looking to work with a seller you haven’t worked with before, establish your credibility up front. Earn their trust and ensure you are able to help each other. 2) When drafting up a seller financed note, make sure to run it by an attorney. Some states even require using a title company. Protect the seller, as well as yourself. 3) Have empathy. Put yourself in the shoes of the seller (as well as anyone else involved). By doing so, you are more likely to solve their problems, find more creative solutions, and increase the odds of having successful business. 4) Once again, seller financing directly involves working with the seller, but this is the beauty of it. Unlike lending institutions where you are constrained to “company policy and guidelines,” people are much more approachable. Therefore, you are more likely to be able to renegotiate if need be and find better, more logical solutions to any problems that may occur.   Nick uses Notion to help him sort out his documents and David uses the Google Suite to help him with all his day-to-day activities. Nick recommends reading Atomic Habits to help you get more out of the activities you do in your life and David recommends reading Big Debt Crises in order to learn how to deal with times of financial uncertainty.   To get in touch with Nick, contact him at nick@giulioni.com To get in touch with David, visit: www.frommilitarytomillionaire.com

For those that don’t already know, we love House Hacking and think it’s a fantastic way to not only build passive wealth, but also act as a catalyst for getting started in real estate investing. It’s a great gateway strategy into larger, more sophisticated deals. However, a niche that doesn’t get talked too much about amongst beginners is commercial property investing. Tiffany Alexi joins us in this episode to shed some light into the commercial property space and explain her journey from house hacking during college to unexpectedly becoming an owner of a commercial office building. It all began with a single condo she purchased (and House Hacked) during her senior year of college. A few years after that, it turned into two condos. Now, this is the point in which most people would have found the winning formula and repeated this until they found financial freedom. But with Alexi, she wanted more. Originally, she wanted to venture into larger multi-family apartment complexes, but due to the market constraints and timing, she was directed towards a commercial office building in which the numbers caught her attention. After further due diligence, and the execution of a 1031 Exchange, she sold off her two condos, and used those profits as a down payment for the new, more profitable building that has much greater potential.  Some key takeaways from our conversation with Tiffany: 1) Obtaining a real estate license is only a good idea if you know what you are going to use it for. There are fees that come with having one so make sure you get good use out of it. 2) Student rentals can be profitable, but turnover and upkeep can be costly. With a commercial property, you have one tenant, usually for years at a time. 3) Rent for a commercial property works slightly different than a residential one, but it all comes down to the lease. On the investor side, rents are calculated as (price ✕ square feet) per year. If Tiffany could go back and talk to her 16 year old self, she’d tell her, “Get a job… The earlier you start off hustling, the better off you’ll be.” An unexpected benefit of real estate investing, Tiffany said, was being able to have the security of financial freedom. By having this kind of security, she is able to take on more risk. A piece of advice Tiffany would tell her friends looking to get started in real estate would be to House Hack because “it’s a no brainer.” Tiffany uses Scannable to be able to scan important documents on the fly and transport them digitally. She recommends reading The Sell by Fredrick Ekland to help you in your entrepreneurial venture, as well as build your business through personal branding and key relationships.  If you’d like to get in touch with Tiffany, follow her on Instagram: @tiffany.alexy

Times of uncertainty and market volatility always raise concern in people’s financial lives, no surprise there. Real estate investing is no different. However, what sets apart pros is their ability to mitigate risk, plan ahead, and continue to win even when they are losing.    In this episode, we welcome back Diego Corzo to fill us in on his one and a half year update since we last spoke to him (see Episode 6). We talked about how his portfolio has grown in the past year and a half, touched on his strategy regarding short term rentals, and discussed ways he and others mitigate risk in times of uncertainty.    As of today, Diego has properties in Austin (where he resides in), Florida, and Tennessee. His properties include both short term AirBNB rentals, as well as long term residential rentals. Diego has taken up a partnership with a previous guest, Felipe Mejia (see Show 77) and is at the point in his life where his passive income generated from his rental properties are allowing him to acquire even more properties which generate even more rental income!   Some key takeaways from our conversation with Diego is that: 1) During times of difficulty, work together with your tenants and weather out the storm together. Get proof they need help and figure out a plan together. If your tenants don’t need assistance, business continues as usual. 2) Buying right is key. Just because times are good, doesn’t mean you can rest on your laurels. Instead enforce your buying criteria and increase your requirements for tenants. 3) On that note, don’t buy with little to no margin of error. Times aren’t always going to be good. 4) Pay attention to local markets and what specific activities are happening in your niche, as opposed to listening to major national news and trends. The more specific you are in your business, the better off you will be during market downturns.   If Diego could go back and talk to his 16 year old self, he’d tell him, “Tell your parents to buy you a house in college and rent it out to your friends.” An unexpected benefit of real estate investing, Diego said, was being able to buy future properties with current passive income. Two pieces of advice Diego would tell his friends looking to get started in real estate would be make sure you have the proper mindset and know your “why.” And before you actually go out investing in properties, get your financial life in order.  Diego uses Trulia to help in his real estate agent business because it allows him to track homes, buyers, sellers, etc.  He recommends reading The Richest Man in Babylon to help you get set with your money.   If you’d like to get in touch with Diego, find him at: ratracetofi.com, email him at info@diegocorzo.com, or follow him on Instagram @realdiegocorzo   Thank you to everyone that has reached out to us to connect them with our trusted real estate agents in their area! And congratulations to those who have even closed deals using our referrals! For those that didn’t know, we can help connect you with real estate investor friendly agents in your area to help you get started investing in real estate. We recently made some changes to our website that we believe will better suit you in your real estate investing needs. For more information, visit www.millennial-realestate.com and head over to the “Start Investing” Tab. Best wishes and see you in the next one!

One aspect of real estate investing that doesn’t get nearly enough of the attention it deserves is financing. While it is great to be excited starting out, many new real estate investors fail to recognize the unsustainability of their short term mindset. They are so focused on doing what it takes to close a deal now that it actually causes trouble for them later on. This is especially true when trying to finance your first couple of deals. Nghi Le joins us in this episode to go over how he encountered and overcame this exact roadblock. Nghi is an investor from Seattle and got started in 2015. For much of his life, he’s been in IT and software consulting. At the time, flipping was the “shiny object” so that’s what Nghi did starting out. Slowly but surely, he began to realize the pitfalls of flipping in his area. Profits were so low that he was actually making more money from his regular full time job. Plus, he didn’t have to deal with stresses and headaches of working with contractors—which actually brings us to what he and his company do now. For Nghi, he’s always enjoyed finding, structuring, and financing deals. And early on, he recognized that conventional financing with lending institutions put him in a major disadvantage against other investors. He needed to cling onto his full time job just so he can even qualify for a loan. And to add insult to injury, many times deals would fall through without lenders having his back. Why? At that point, lenders had already collected their fees and it didn’t matter to them if the deal actually closes. Nghi joined powers with a startup fintech (“Financial Technology”) company and they set out to provide lending services catered to investors who are facing the same problems they had when they were getting started. With their business, they seek to revolutionize the lending industry and help the next generation of investors large and small. Update to date, Nghi’s company offers a variety of short and long term loans that don’t have the red tape restrictions that many lending institutions implement, such as quick closings and no seasoning periods. They’ve conducted business in over 10 states and are looking to continue to grow organically. If Nghi could go back and talk to his 16 year old self, he’d tell him, “Spend time learning about real estate, as well as self development… learn how to maximize a crash.” An unexpected benefit of real estate investing, Nghi said, was having the opportunities that he’s had and being able to do what he wants all the while being one step closer to retirement.

Everyone knows what a “Fix and Flip Deal” is (you can even check out Episode 26 with Steven Pesavento or Episode 47 with Ian Reeves to learn more). A lesser known strategy you probably have not heard of is a “Fix and List Deal.” What is a Fix and List Deal, exactly?   Eric Young joins us in this episode to explain that this strategy works as follows: you as the investor finds a homeowner who has a distressed property looking to sell. Then, you take your capital and renovate the property (like you would with a regular flip). Finally, the seller lists and sells the property (keeping the difference in ARV) and you get reimbursed for all your hard work!   Before Eric discovered the Fix and List strategy, he worked as a superintendent for a commercial contractor for eight years, fixing and flipping properties on the side. The problem was he couldn’t scale how he wanted and, like many people getting started in real estate, felt that the barrier to entry was too costly. So Eric set out to find a way!   Eric wanted to be able to scale his business, and not lose money on his portfolio. Fix and List Deals help him do just that! Of the 90 Fix and List Deals he’s done in the past three years, he’s only had two go sour! We’d say that’s pretty good!   As of today, Eric is currently improving his track record, as well as finding more ways to differentiate himself from his competitors. It’s not long until this strategy catches on so he’s doing what he can in order to get ahead.   If Eric could go back and talk to his 16 year old self, he’d tell him, “You’re never going to achieve your goal of making money until you help other people.” An unexpected benefit of real estate investing, Eric said, was the power to turn a side hustle into a sustainable, long term business. One piece of advice Eric would tell his friends looking to get started in real estate would be, “To start with a Fix and List Deal!” Eric uses Xero to help with his bookkeeping, and recommends reading Built To Sell to help you get started investing in real estate.   If you’d like to get in touch with Eric Young or learn more about Fix and List Deals, you can find him at: www.fixandlistsecrets.com 

Student rentals come with a lot of preconceived notions about what they are and that they are a problematic type of rental property. This week our guest Ryan Chaw works to dispel that myth by telling us how he mitigates his risk and has turned his student room by room rentals into a profitable and manageable venture. 

With podcasts you always hear from the hosts, but sometimes you don't get to know about them much unless you pull all the snippets together of them from every single episode. This week we get a little more in depth with one of our hosts, Dan Mackin. He walks us through how he got into real estate, where it has lead him and the lessons he has learned up to this point. 

Short term rentals have been around forever, but it's only recently that they have become a more known investment strategy for everyone. This week we talk with Diya Liu about how she went from no rental income to over 100k NET income per year in just 13 months. Did we mention that was with just 3 properties! Diya gives us some great tips on finding those rentals and some great ways to finance them legally to where your cash flow can kill with just a few purchases.

We love House Hacking on this show and it's easy to see that. It's a relatively cheap way to get started investing in real estate and it's a reasonably easy way to grow your portfolio consistently. This week Felipe Mejia tells us how he did just that. After starting with a mobile home that he was gifted as a graduation gift he has grown to 14 units in about 5 years. It took some creativity and local knowledge, but he is on his way to a great portfolio and lifestyle freedom to do whatever he wants.

It's time for our first physician on the podcast! Chiagozie currently works as a Pediatric Anesthesiologist in upstate New York. During her time as a med student and resident the reality of being dependent upon a constantly changing industry for her income did not sit well. During that time she discovered real estate investing. Over the past few years she has gone from doing her first flip where she lost money to adding over a dozen units to her portfolio to start offsetting her dependency on the medical industry. For many investors their investments aren't a way out of their job that they love, it's just a way to make it so that they can continue to love what they do and provide long term stability for themselves and their families.

Many stories of investors seem to have everything line up to make it as simple as possible. They are single or have no kids, live in an area that home prices seem reasonable and just don't seem to have any big road blocks. This is why a story like this needs to be told. Sunny Burns has plenty of excuses he could have come up with to not start investing, but he and his wife pushed past those and made things happen. They invest just outside of New York City with kids and have made the whole scenario work. No matter what your excuses are there is almost always a way around them.

There are many ways to structure a deal when it comes to real estate. No matter what the deal is there always needs to be 2 things. 1. A property 2. Funds While those two will come in many different forms it's pretty inevitable that they will be needed to structure a deal. Our guest this week Zamontae Stinson helps bring those 2 parts together. By utilizing his network and some intentional social media posting Zamontae has helped bring some big deals together. It's a special way of making things happen and there are some great tips to follow. Take a listen!

While many of us like to complain that our market is too expensive to invest in there are those out there who just make it work. This week we talk with Emma Pace, our first Canadian investor on the show. She lives in the notoriously expensive market of Toronto, but has found some ways to make her investments make sense to save her cash, build cashflow and have a great portfolio. She tells us how utilizing sub markets can be hugely beneficial and how leveraging a partnership can build some great mutually beneficial situations that may not have worked individually. 

The new year is here and like many people out there you likely have goals to better yourself in 2020. While for some that may be their physique, for others that will be their well being. A big part of having a better life is to have better control over you money. One way that many people do this is through real estate investing. While it is a great way to make your life better it also takes some knowledge to do it correctly. This show is to get you some quick tips to get started so you use your time effectively and get yourself started in real estate investing sooner. Don't forget to check out our show from January 2019 "Seven Steps to Your First Real Estate Deal in 2019" for more tips on getting started.

We've been away for a bit now and wanted to let everyone know what's going on.

Within real estate investing there is a trend that seems to happen where many of the posts and articles you read make things seem super easy. They put a lot of glam onto the industry to make it sound like anyone can do it. While there is some truth to that statement there also lies the true world of real estate investing. It can be a hard lesson sometimes, but with some perseverance things can go in your favor. While that does not mean you will not continue to have lessons along the way it can be the determining factor between someone who succeeds in the industry and someone who fails. This week Brentin Hess tells us both sides of his experiences. From failing on his first flip to averaging 35k+ per flip. Also lessons about what running low income rentals are truly like and why systems and processes are a big deal if things need to run smoothly.

When listening to podcasts about real estate investing there is a common thread that you hear. "I want to retire early with real estate". While that's a sexy story it does not apply to the majority of investors who get started. Real estate investing is a great way for many people to give themselves some financial runway to allow them to take bigger risks with their career and live a happier and easier life. Our guest this week has done just that.  Nick Giulioni works a job that he enjoys in the bay area of California. While the job is fulfilling he realized that there are still great ways to make life less risky. To reduce that risk Nick started to invest in real estate. Due to being in the bay area that wasn't something he could do locally to accomplish his goal of cash flow. So Nick started to research around the country and landed on Indianapolis. In just over 2 years Nick has accrued 45 units through a myriad of methods and he shares with us today how he accomplished that feat and how it has changed his life.

One of the truly toughest hurdles when it comes to getting into anything as committed as real estate investing is your mindset. With all of the potential speed bumps and mental blockades there is plenty to keep any investor from succeeding. Keeping a positive and beneficial mindset is one of the best ways to continually move forward towards that goal of using real estate to improve your life. This week we talk with Daray Olaleye about how he changed his mindset to help him start achieving the life he desired. After multiple hiccups and road blocks Daray has progressed to a better life and now helps others improve their mindset to make the most of their life.