15 Rentals in 1 Year by Putting Time First

David:
This is the BiggerPockets podcast show 641.

Christian:
But you never know, right? Your next relationship, your next lead, your next investment partner could come from anywhere. If you’re always thinking of maximizing the time that you’re spending through your life, it compounds just like money does, right? Everybody has their 401k that compounds on interest every year. Time is the same exact way. And if you choose very carefully where you put that first minute, before you know it, you’re getting five or 10 minutes out for every minute you spend.

David:
What’s up, everyone? This is David Greene, your host of the BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast here with my co-host Rob Abasolo. Rob, how’s it going today?

Rob:
I’m feeling good, man. I’m feeling really good. I’m closing all my rings on my Apple Watch. And that’s honestly the only goal that’s a requirement every single day is to close my rings, get my steps in, burn some calories and hopefully get a little bit towards the who I used to be physically. It’s my big project for the next two or three months.

David:
It’s no joke.

Rob:
And then it’s over. Then I’m done. I’m just kidding. Yeah. Obviously.

David:
Trying to maintain fitness while you’re able to make money is really hard. It’s so hard because you’re like, “Oh, if I take off two hours and I go work out, I might lose 10 grand.” It’s always in your head. It’s very hard to stay disciplined with that.

Rob:
Yeah. The channel, pandemic, everything just really put a… Oh, having kids put a pause on anything physical for me for the last two years. As someone who’s always on camera, I was like, “Okay. All right. All right, buddy. It’s time. It’s time to trim you up, pal.” I give myself motivational talks in the mirror every day.

David:
Well, let’s keep at it. You can always send me those gym selfies, man. We’ll keep each other accountable.

Rob:
That’s right. You send me those every so often.

David:
Today’s show is nothing short of incredible. In today’s episode, Rob and I are interviewing my business partner, Christian Bachelder, who I built the One Brokerage with, who’s also a very prominent real estate investor. Christian has bought 15 homes over the last year through partnerships and by himself. And he shares a lot of the information that helped him to do that. So we get into Christian’s buy box, the criteria he looks for, which is very specific.
He’s also my partner in the One Brokerage. So we talk a lot about how he helps with financing of my deals, angles that we see that other people don’t know, what you should talk to your real estate broker about, how you could make your agent better. I mean, I could go on and on and on. This was a very, very, very detailed show that does run a little bit longer, but I want to make sure you listen all the way to the end because we share where you guys can get some more information to help make your realtors that you’re working with better. Rob, what were some of your favorite parts of the show?

Rob:
You know, I think it was a really nice… It was nice to hear him talk through his, I don’t know, the linear progression of why he started new companies and really evaluating his time. But we spoke a lot really about the return on time, which is really, really big. I think that’s a metric that people ignore quite often. We’re always chasing the cash on cash or the return, the ROI, right? But the actual time investment and reinvesting your time so that it starts to compound, we talk all about that and how that affects his businesses. I thought it was just a really interesting viewpoint.

David:
That is a very good point, and that will lead us to today’s quick tip, which is if you’re working with a realtor and you’re not thrilled about the service you’re getting, maybe they’re good, but they’re not great. Maybe they’re not even good, but you like them and you’re loyal to them. You don’t have to be stuck with a bad realtor, and no I’m not going to tell you to switch and go with me as your realtor, because I’m not licensed in every single state. What I am going to tell you is that there are resources out there that you can provide for them that will help them be better. BiggerPockets itself is the very best one. Tell your realtor about this podcast, get them listening to this, get them on the website. Many of them would do a much better job for you if they had access to the information that you do.
I write books to help realtors. You can find them at biggerpockets.com/store. Sold and Skill are the first two books that I wrote specifically meant to help the BiggerPockets community be better realtors and get better service from their realtors. In today’s show, Christian talks about how you can send your realtor to us and we will get them a free education to help you close more deals with them. We all get better when we share information. So if you’re not thrilled about what you’re getting, instead of getting frustrated and yelling at them, just be like, “Listen, I’m texting you a podcast, listen to this thing and then get back to me.”
All right. Today’s show is really good and a little bit long. So I want to get to it right away. Rob, is there anything you want to add before we bring in Christian?

Rob:
No, no. I don’t want to make the podcast even longer. So I’m going to amp here for a little bit and let’s get into it.

David:
Christian Bachelder, normally I would ask you to introduce yourself to our audience. However, because this is a special occasion, I’m going to take the liberty to do that myself. Let’s see how much of this I can get right.
Christian Bachelder is a UC Berkeley graduate with an engineering degree, a BJJ purple belt. He owns an Allstate Insurance Company. He is my partner in the One Brokerage, which might be the fastest growing loan company in the country. We just got back from a trip to Michigan, where we got invited out to learn from United Wholesale Mortgage because we did so much business with them. We got connections to the CEO and some other people within there that Christian works to get our clients better deals. Let’s see what else. You’re also a real estate agent that has sold houses. You own short-term rentals in various states.
We own one together in Tennessee and you’ve got several others you own as well as others that you have with partners. And we have plans on creating an actual lending company where brokers would come to us and we would be the one financing the loans for the investors. So what we would like to do is to create a situation where we go to the investors and we say, “We’re going to offer a product to real estate investors.” And then your local mortgage broker, if it’s not us, comes to us and we put a deal together that works for you as an investor.
Maybe most importantly, Christian and I shared a very important vision. So about six years ago, when I started the David Greene Team, I had a vision that I would like to have the real estate agent and the insurance company and the lender and the appraiser and the contractor and all the pieces that you will need under one roof so that you don’t have to worry about if the person that you’re working with is any good or not.
And I met Christian, and not only is the guy brilliant, as you guys are going to hear on this podcast, he’s got a brain like a computer, but he also had that exact same vision as he’s selling houses and he’s doing mortgages, and he’s doing the insurance and he was doing it at a smaller scale. And then like most people, we partnered and you ended up drinking from a fire hose. I will say you’re the only person that did not drown from that fire hose. So you impressed me, and we went into business together.
Now we are pulling back the curtain. For a long time people have heard about Christian, but didn’t really know who he was, and you guys are going to get to know him today. Christian, did I miss anything?

Christian:
Man, I think you cleared it all up. I think, well, that’ll be our show. That’s it, right?

Rob:
I think that’s it. Thanks for tuning in everybody, and we will catch on the next episode of BiggerPockets.

Christian:
There we go.

Rob:
Well, it’s just such an impressive resume. You’ve done a lot. You’ve got a lot of plans here. I guess my question just to get us started here in the podcast is, how the heck did you get here? You know, this is such a journey that you took to get to this point. What led you here?

Christian:
Yeah, it’s a question I’ve gotten a lot. I would probably argue that there’s not a whole lot of chemical engineer, mortgage brokers, real estate insurance brokers out there, but for the one other person that may be in the world, maybe we have some similarities. After graduating, as David shared, I did attend UC Berkeley. I was in a industry that had no fulfillment for me. I’m a people person. I can’t sit behind a computer, type in an algorithms and code all day.
Actually, I had a pretty early on mentor. A really good buddy of mine growing up, his dad kind of had a similar goal on a smaller scale of building this so-called one-stop shop, right? Where I always joke, my ultimate goal, if I reach where I’m trying to go, is to never write a referral check again, right?
If we could just create a network where people can go to, if you’re looking to invest, you don’t have to talk to anybody else. Right? We can find the home, finance the home, protect the home with an insurance policy, build your finances, maybe manage the property for you. That’s the idea. And then building a place where people can go just for a general advice. Right?
But to get back to the question, how I started, it was really just seeing every time that I sent a referral to a State Farm or an Allstate, there was never the level of service that I wanted for my client. Right? Similar to how David, David gives a lot of referrals out as well. And that’s his name, right? His name is attached to those people that he refers to. Now that I’m on the scale of him, you really feel that, right? If you refer to one person who gives the borrower a bad experience, it’s your name, right? They say, “This was your guy, your guy failed me.” Right?
I hold myself to a really high standard and it’s hard to hold other people accountable to the level that you hold yourself. So I’ve gotten really good at squeezing 25 hours out of a day, I guess, could be my best way to put it. You know, I sleep on average, I think Kawasaki said this the other day, too, sleep about five hours a day. It’s definitely a grind. But at the end of the day, if you can build processes and systems around you that allow you to maximize your time, you’re going to be able to succeed in building a company.

David:
So this is probably a good time to talk about just like transparently what my life is like and what Christian’s life is like now that we’re partnered together. We worry constantly that we’re going to let somebody down. We’re in this position where people look up to us. Rob, you’re now in that same boat. And they say, “Hey, David, can I talk to your CPA? Can I talk to your mortgage broker? Can I talk to your real estate agent?” They’re thinking in the back of their mind that that person is David. They get to know me. They hear me talking.
Podcasts are weird. I remember the first time I met Brandon Turner, who’s actually flying into San Francisco. I’m going to see him tonight. I’m like, “Hey, you don’t know this, but we’re already friends. I already know what coffee you order at Starbucks. I know all this about you. You don’t know me. So it’s kind of weird.” But that’s one of the cool things of a podcast is you get to know a personality. The downside is we are always worried. If a mistake happens and you trusted me, that takes it, it hits you so hard. But because of the level of volume that people are drawn to us about… That’s a terrible way of structuring that sentence. Because we have this platform and there’s so much volume of business we’re doing, our employees are going to make more mistake because they’re working with more people.
They’re going to be busier than somebody else might be, who’s in a similar situation. We’re constantly training them, pushing them, trying to get them to be better. But they’re not me. They’re not Christian. They’re not Rob. They’re not going to be quite as good, especially in the beginning. So we always are crossing our fingers and holding our breath like, “Oh, please nothing go wrong.” There’s a lot of stress that’s involved in that.
Part of how Christian and I have structured things is we’re not starting a business that we don’t do ourselves. Basically when someone comes to us to get a loan product, these are the products Christian found for me, because I’m probably the worst loan client in the world, which he can tell you about later. How do we make this work for David? Because if it’ll work for David, it will work for anybody. When you come to me to buy a house, you’re getting trained by agents that went through what I tell my buyer’s agents to do or when I’m selling my house, this is the way I do it. They got trained in the same thing.
Same for insurance and for the property management company will have at a certain point. My opinion is these are the best ways to run businesses is you did it yourself, you took what you learned and now you help service clients. The downside is when you have so many people you’re trying to help and your staff is new, there’s always going to be a little bit of hiccups. Maybe we could start off with just getting the downside out of the way. I’ve never really asked you this, Christian. What has your stress level been as you’re trying to keep up with the volume of business we’re doing and protecting my reputation while you’re doing that?

Christian:
Yeah, it’s a task. I mean, not only… When we first started, it was pretty much me, right? I was taking everything onto myself because I had such a high standard and I didn’t want to let you down. I didn’t want to let your customers down, your real estate team, all the people that we work with. And the most difficult part of the process was demanding that same level of work ethic and accountability from the people that we hired. Right? And the people that we joined on a team to tell them, “Hey, you’re going to get a level of leads and a level of customer access that you’re not going to get anywhere else.” Right? I mean, people come to us and they expect you, right? This is the similar struggles that you have with your real estate team.
It was about a 16 to 18-month grind unlike… You know, and this is somebody coming from arguably one of the most competitive majors at one of the most competitive schools. And that 12 to 18 months was like nothing I’d experienced. I mean, that I was driving all night mentally just through every recess of my brain to try to make this thing work. Right? I’m proud of what we built. It’s still a work in progress. But even today that’s a huge test to make sure that we’re holding up the name of BiggerPockets, the name of you, the name of everything that we represent in a good air.

David:
Yeah. And in a year we became one of the top mortgage brokerages in the country. Right? That’s very fast. It’d be like, imagine putting on that… I don’t know of the good analogy, but putting on 50 pounds of pure muscle in one year, it’s a strain on the body. It’s very difficult to do something like that. So we do take our job very seriously and we’re always trying to do things right. But I think, right, Rob? You had an experience with us where we funded the loan that we bought the property we bought together. One of the reasons Rob got, and I got a really good deal on that property is it sat on the market for a long time. I thought I was going to go buy four more of those properties after we closed. I don’t know if I told you, Rob, everything is more expensive and not as good as that house. That thing was a steal.

Rob:
Oh, yeah. Yeah. Scottsdale. Yeah, we got a good deal.

David:
But part of the reason is that it was sitting on five acres. Normal conventional lenders won’t fund loans when there’s that much land, because the concern would be well, are we funding the house? Are we funding the land? Because if we have to foreclose on land, we don’t know how to sell that. We can sell a property. So they put a limit on how much acreage, which most people would have no idea that that’s a requirement. I wouldn’t have had that idea if I wouldn’t have run into it. Well, having Christian on my side, he can go out there and he can find the lender that will do it. Or sometimes we can twist their arm and say, “Hey, we’re bringing you this many loans. You’re going to fund this one for us because you want to keep our business and we can help our clients in that way.”
The downside is just, it’s hard when you’re in Rob’s position, when the person you’re working with is also working with other clients and sometimes they’re not as experienced as Christian and I would be. So I’m noticing when you start these companies, there’s always positives and negatives. You kind of have to take both. But the benefit of, I think what the three of us are doing is we’re in the game, buying these properties ourselves, running into problems. Later in the show, I’ll talk about the 1031 problem that I just ran into when I was with Christian. He and I worked through that thing, but I would’ve never known that was even a problem. Now I’m able to come share it with everybody else. So this is the benefit of doing your business with a company that also does stuff themselves.
If you guys are going to partner with Rob on something, he has tiny homes, he has short term rentals. He’s very, very good at knowing what a person cares about when they go into the home. So if he’s helping you with what you’re trying to do, it’s experience. With Christian, he owns an insurance company. He knows angles other people don’t see. Same thing with mortgages. We can solve problems ways that other people can’t. Whoever you’re working with on your stuff, I’m always encouraging people. Try to do it with someone that owns homes. If your agent also owns properties in the area you’re buying, that’s the one that you want to use. And that’s how we’ve structured things. I went off on a little bit of a trail there, but Christian, do you feel like you are able to provide better service, solve problems, build a better business because you’re in the game of real estate yourself?

Christian:
Absolutely. This isn’t a pitch to just use us, right? I mean, there are mortgage brokers that invest out there in the world, but on just an average, working with a company with the morals and the foresight and the experience that we have, you’re not going to get that from a phone rep at Quicken. You’re not going to get that from a phone rep at better.com, right? I mean, you’re going to get that from somebody who practices what they preach, right? Who do it, who invest, who own properties. In my situation, I bought an insurance agency because frankly, I saw people get screwed with insurance coverages. Right? I saw people… I mean, David, after I reviewed your insurance policies, I was like, “You’re not insured correctly.”
Right? Like, “Let’s get this taken care of. Right? We got to get you insured properly.” I mean, that happens so much because the only advertisements you fee for insurance are say 15%. Right? People aren’t actually talking about what you’re getting.

David:
Or more.

Christian:
Yeah. There you go. You know? And a lizard’s the one telling you, right?

David:
Right.

Christian:
At the end of the day, if you’re working with somebody, it’s like that fiduciary relationship. If you’re working with a representative with your finances that is going to put your best interest first, you’re in a good spot. If they have the experience and the knowhow to know what your best interest is, you’re in the right spot.

David:
I’d like to point something about that, and then I’m going to… Rob, I’m going to toss it to you for an example. One thing that I’ve learned being in this business is how that person decides what’s in your best interest can be very different than how someone else does. So what I’m saying is if you’re going to a discount agent who says, I’ll sell your house for 1%, or a discount insurance company that says your premium will be this low. That is a way that they believe they’re bringing you value. “We’re the cheapest, we’re saving you the most money” until something happens. Or maybe a property management company that says, “I’ll manage your property for 3% or something” until something goes wrong. And then very quickly you’re like, “Oh wait, this was a terrible idea. I can’t get anyone on the phone.
I’m bouncing around in other countries. They’re denying me coverage. I’m going to come out of pocket $12,000 that I don’t have.” Your listing agent doesn’t sell your house for nearly as much money in there. Then they’re always frustrated later. I’ll tell you guys just a sneak peek. When we’re helping on the David Greene Team to buy houses for our clients, I purposely trigger listings that I know are bad brokerages or bad listing agents because we will out negotiate them. They’re not going to be as good. You don’t always realize that you’re losing out on something when you’re just looking for the cheapest thing. So in our world, we typically see like, we’ll get someone pre-approved for a loan. And then some other mortgage broker will say, “Oh, I can do it for less. Your interest rate will be less. Your closing cost would be like, not a lot less, just minimal amounts.” And they’ll go with that person.
The reason it was less is because their entire staff is in India on a different timetable that is not very incentivized to get your loan closed, and it takes them 60 days instead of 14 days. And you lose the entire deal because what you thought was you were getting value from a cheaper rate. I know before I got into the business with you, Christian, I had more than most people, but it was still a very limited understanding of how the mortgage industry even works. Like, why am I talking to you but the loans being done with somebody else over here? And why shouldn’t I just go to Wells Fargo? That’s where I bank. I could just get my loan there. There was all of this nuance that I never understood.
I’ve since become very skeptical when the first way someone says they bring value is they’re cheap. If that’s what you open with, right off the bat, I’m very nervous. Rob, this was a thing that you and I experienced together in Scottsdale, where you found an agent for us. And I was like, “I don’t know, man, that property management seems like… It seems kind of expensive what he’s looking for.” And you’re like, “Yeah, but the guy does this and this and this. And he knows all these things and he has…” And I’m like, “Oh wait, this, yeah, this is incredibly valuable. We’re not just getting his management. We’re getting his entire list of resources, the people that fix things when they break. We’re getting his expertise. We’re getting to know about the area.”
In that sense now, it becomes incredibly cheap. So I wanted to give each of you a minute to maybe give an example of a person you’ve used or an experience that you’ve had where you went with the more expensive option, but it either saved or made you much more money.

Rob:
Yeah. I got this one locked and loaded all the time. I mean, I always talk about on the channel quite a bit is hiring what I call your Airbnb Avengers. These are the people that are actually running your property when you’re doing self-management. So your Airbnb Avengers are going to be like your cleaners, your landscapers, your pest control, your pool maintenance, all that type of stuff. But the lifeblood of your business is always going to be your cleaning crew. And so very rarely do I negotiate with my cleaners because if they say that they want a hundred bucks and I say, “How about 90?” And they’re like, “Okay, I’ll take you on as a client.” Well, they’re going to give you 90% of their effort in my opinion. And so for me, I don’t really negotiate.
I had my cleaners for a long time. They were charging me $70 to clean my tiny house for about two years. And then I got the dreaded text about a month ago. He was like, “Hey man, we’re raising rates.” I was like, “All right, let’s talk about it. Why are you doing that? I want to understand.” He was like, “Well, it’s been two years and I’ve never asked for an adjustment. So I’d like $85 instead of 70.” I was like, Okay, that’s… You know, it’s significant, but I was like, “Okay, well, you deserve it because I have 293 reviews on this listing. I have a 4.95, which is really freaking hard with 300 reviews. And they all talk about how spotless the place is. So it’s worth it for me to pay an extra 15 bucks to keep my amazing cleaner, because then I know that it’s always going to be clean and I’ll always have great reviews. And thus I’ll always be more bookable.” So for me, I’m never really skimming out on cleaning when it comes to my short-term rental portfolio.

David:
What’s the cost of a cleaner that doesn’t show up and actually cleaner doesn’t do a good job, and your next guest walks into your property and it’s messy? What do you think that costs you when they put [inaudible 00:21:32]?

Rob:
Hundred to thousands. I mean, one bad cleaner cost us thousands of dollars one month in just refunds where they didn’t show up or they forgot, or they were really bad. We had to obviously let them go, but we had to let them go because we were like, “Look, dude, I…” We’re paying them. They’re cheap, but we’ve just refunded $900 in the last week. They’ve cost us $900. If we had just divided that over a year and just hired someone better, we would have better reviews. So it’s always one of those things that we’re learning constantly.

Christian:
Yeah. I mean, I’m just thinking as Rob’s talking here, I’m thinking their cleaning’s not worth that extra $15, that relationship you built was. Right? I mean, you’re paying $15 to keep the same people who you have two years of trust in, right? I mean, you have two years of relationship that you built with them and good work. Like you said, one bad cleaning is thousand dollar refund, $1,500 refund, depending on what your nightly rates are. I mean $15 increase, of course, nobody wants to hear it, but man, when you’re saving a relationship and trust and time out of your pocket, right? I say time out of your pocket, because it’s going to segue a little bit into this idea of your return on time. I mean, how much would you have to spend to fix a $15 error that you didn’t want to pay for?
Right? Obviously, with people like us, I’m pretty sure each of us would rather be doing a couple different things rather than trying to keep an Airbnb clean or I mean, we have a lot of different ways to spend our time and that relationship is just man, that’s… And it’s the same argument, right? Coming to a mortgage broker, coming to somebody that you trust, coming to an advisor, somebody who understands you. Okay, you’re talking about a difference of a couple thousand bucks on your closing cost or 8% or a quarter percent difference in your rate, but that other lender may not understand what you’re trying to do. Right? They may hinder your ability to continue to grow your portfolio with the product that they place you into. Right?
This is a really good example. Last time I did a video with you, David. We were talking about that loan product that came out the day that you went into escrow on your last property. If I didn’t know what you were trying to do, I wouldn’t have even told you to go get it, right? That completely changed your game plan for that property. Right? Obviously, we’re partners, but if you weren’t linked up with somebody who understood your position, that wouldn’t have even been an option. You would’ve had to completely pivot your financing strategy. I think it saved you like $300,000 on your down payment, something crazy, just because I knew what you were trying to do and I was actively thinking when I saw that product.
So a hundred percent, I mean the cheapest option… You know. We have a saying when we hire people here. Do you buy everything that you own at Walmart? Right? You could probably get the cheapest option at Walmart, but you don’t own everything from Walmart. You probably don’t want to get the things that you really care about from Walmart, right? Your finances should obviously land in that category. Right?

David:
Well, I think the average investor takes the perspective of they’re the hub and all of these ancillary companies are spokes that they need to make it happen. I need a lender. I need insurance. I need an agent. I need a property manager. That isn’t inaccurate, but that perspective creates this idea of I have to go tell them all. I have to solve my problem and tell them what I need. Right? So then I need to get a loan. What’s the cheapest rate I can get? I need to get a loan. What’s the best down payment program you have? And then they spend all their energy trying to figure out to solve their problem and then go to someone and say, can you fix it? Which isn’t bad, but it’s much better when you’re all sort of in the hub together. Like how Christian and I, we were just together for 10 days.
And while we’re there, we’re brainstorming on the most efficient way to put these things together because he knows what I’m trying to do. He’s like, “Ooh, this would be better in this situation” or “Let’s make sure we don’t make this.” Those little things he catches save us hours and hours and hours of time and money later. I guess you don’t pay money in hours, but you know what I mean? They cost money to do because we are working in it and he knows what my plan is. Those relationships are valuable. Property management companies that give me ideas. Like, we were just looking at properties in the Smoky Mountains. And when you have a good property manager that says, “Hey, here’s an idea. You could take that sleeper bed from this property you’ve got and you could move it over into this one. And if you got an extra two people sleeping here, it goes from 10 to 12. That’s probably going to be an extra $25,000 in revenue a year.”
Ideas like that that I wouldn’t have naturally thought of right away. Maybe four years later, I think of it. But in the moment, their experience is helping me a ton. It’s hard to see that when you’re just thinking like, I got to fix all my problems and what’s the cheapest option. That’s one of the reasons that we talk about being relationship based because not only do they make you money and save you time, but they let you stay focused on the things that are more productive for building a business. That’s one of the things I want to ask you, Christian, you’ve mentioned that I talk a lot about velocity of money. This concept that put your money out in the world, have it create equity, have it create cash flow, pull it back in and then send it out again.
You’re constantly sending money out in the world to add more value and then come back to you. That’s one of the ways that you build wealth, but you talk about the velocity of time. So would you mind sharing your philosophy because frankly you wouldn’t be able to do all the stuff that we do together. Run a mortgage company, run an insurance company, buy your own investment properties, train the guys. We’re working on creating a program for loan officers that want to learn how to do loans, where they can actually come to us and take a course where they will teach them. Here’s how you’d be a loan officer, similar to real estate agents. How do you put all this stuff together? What are you doing with your time to make that possible?

Christian:
Yeah, that’s a really good question. And even following up on Rob’s first question as well, this is kind of a fusion answer. We’ve hosted talks. We did one down Long Beach on that velocity time and I just couldn’t help but think when I was sitting there hearing you talk. I mean, people say time is money all the time, but really the equivalent, when somebody’s thinking of investing strategies and investing mindsets, everybody gets broken, you know just completely fed up with running analysis. You know, you get into analysis paralysis just on money, right? Like what’s your ROI? What’s the down payment requirements? Just like you’re saying, David, oh, I need the minimum down and the highest return. Right? But nobody’s thinking, man, in the time that it took you and this paralysis that you had to identify these properties, run numbers and you had to run a hundred numbers to buy one property.
You know, if you pivoted a little bit, right? And put some processes in place that allowed you to maybe buy three instead, your return would be three times as much. It’s that transition from thinking of where are my dollars going to where my time’s going? This is really the foundation of how I believe I arrived where I am now and why we continue to grow. A lot of people would look at what I’m doing and say, “There’s no way there’s enough hours in the day.” But if every hour that I spend is being compounded in the similar avenue of how David talks velocity of money, every dollar you put in investment property, whether you’re borrowing it or whether you’re long term renting it, you’re hopefully getting multiple returns on that dollar. Right? That’s how I think of time.
I’ll give a couple examples. When I first started out, the first example was I was a realtor, right? I was referring people over to a lender and I was referring people over to insurance agent. I started doing all three. So now every minute that I was spending with a client is now technically three minutes. I’m spending a minute with them as their insurance advisor, their real estate advisor and their lending advisor. Right? That was the idea. I’m maximizing every minute of time that I’m spending with the customers, and the customers felt that. They’re like, “Oh my God, I’ve never had a mortgage broker who could advise me on my insurance policy.” Right? That would lead to me getting referrals and getting people who… A real estate agent is never going to get an insurance referral, but I did. Right? Because I was maximizing the time I spent.
And even transitioning that into now with how we’re building our company, David and I, as he shared earlier, we bought a property together. So every minute that I’ve spent with David building our business relationship and our personal relationship has now evolved into a partner, a real estate investing partner relationship where I didn’t know when we first started a mortgage company that we would own property together. But every minute that we spent building this company was also building an investing relationship. Right? So my minutes have been compounded with David. And I told her, I’d give her a little bit of a shout out, but one of my… She just started as a client, Karen. Karen Skrabanik. David, you know her.

David:
Who you met because she was a client of the David Greene Team, started doing loans with us, right?

Christian:
Hundred percent. Absolutely. She came, she was a client of David’s on real estate side. We did her loan. And funny enough, I own a number of rental properties with her now. And every minute that I spent with her, I didn’t know, but I was spending it with an investment partner. Building a mindset together and analyzing properties together, and realizing that we were on the same page with a lot of our investment strategies, and eventually that led to a really good partnership forming. I can say there’s a million situations. I mean, David and Rob, you guys are co-hosts of this podcast. You guys bought a house together. You’re compounding the time that you spend with each other. Right?
So just in every avenue of life, and I know this is hyper specific to me, but the people who are listening, who are W2, when you go out on the weekends, right, you go to the beach, you go to the bar, you go out with your friends. Those could be future partners that you don’t even know yet. Right? I mean, it could be people that you buy your next property with. When you’re at your family reunion, whether you’re a salesman or you’re W2, and you’re looking to invest, your family members could be your partners, and you could be compounding that time.
Obviously, don’t make everything about work, right? You need your family time. But you never know, right? Your next relationship, your next lead, your next investment partner could come from anywhere. And if you’re always thinking of maximizing the time that you’re spending through your life, it compounds just like money does. Right? Everybody has their 401k that compounds on interest every year. Time is the same exact way. And if you choose very carefully where you put that first minute, before you know it, you’re getting five or 10 minutes out for every minute you spend.

Rob:
That’s really interesting. So I’m kind of curious, do you think of… Like, any decision you make or any business decision you make, do you ever think about the value of your time? Do you actually assign a dollar amount and thus use that to guide how you move forward or if you empower someone else, to sort of take the load off your plate or whatever?

Christian:
Yeah. A hundred percent. I mean, I wouldn’t say I’ve ever necessarily tied it to a dollar amount, although that’s really good advice. I should probably start doing that, but I just think it’s just… Like I said, there’s just so many opportunities where this could… I mean, it could be walking your dog at the park. Right? I mean, when I bought my mattress that I sleep on, I refinanced the guy who sold me my mattress. Like you never know. Right? I mean, there’s people everywhere that you can strike up a conversation with. There’s a lot of people, realtors who do it part-time and loan officers who do it part-time. They know because they’re in a sales position that every minute you don’t know where your next lead’s coming from, but if you’re really living with that, and I think that’s great advice, Rob, even tying it to a dollar amount. Like, Hey man, how much? If you had to get taken away from what you’re doing, I mean, I can even imagine with you or David.
I mean, imagine you guys couldn’t work for two weeks, how much money are you losing? Right? Imagine your phone died, you had no reception and you couldn’t leave your house. I mean, the amount of dollars that you would lose, and that’s a short period of time, that’s a week or two. Right? But the amount of impact and compounding on your time that you guys have in your networks and your spheres would be massively valuable, right? I mean, it’d be hundreds of thousand dollars probably if you guys couldn’t work for a month. Right? Not only for you, but David runs a team, right? David’s team would lose money. David’s businesses, Rob, your short-term rentals, your management companies, all that. I mean, how much would be lost there because of the way that you guys have compounded your time. I just think it’s such a valuable mindset instead of always making it about the dollar, right?

Rob:
Yeah. For sure. Well, you run that little exercise, man. I mean, I think it’s very eyeopening because that was for me, as I start to scale and really kind of run with all of the different businesses that are floating around in the ether right now, it’s tough because I have a tendency of wanting to do everything. But like you said, it’s like I’m trying to squeeze 25 hours out of a day and it’s really, really, really tough.
About six to 12 months ago, I really started calculating what my actual hourly rate, just so that I know, and effectively, it’s really eye-opening to see that because then I’d look at everything else that I do and everything else that I get cheap about and I don’t want to hire people for. I’m like, oh yeah, I’m losing thousands of dollars by just even thinking about this for two days. You know what I mean?

Christian:
Absolutely.

Rob:
It definitely helps guide me and empower me to delegate and develop teams a little bit more for sure.

Christian:
Yeah. It pushes that priority to the people that you do delegate towards. I mean, David and I have both have experiences with we hired the wrong person. Right? It took more time that we invested into them that didn’t have a reward. Right? I mean, especially if you’re teaching that mindset with people that you’re partnering with and your employees or whoever it is and the listeners’ lives that you’re using this with, if you’re also imparting that onto the people that you’re building with, now you’re compounding two people’s time. Right? And by you, whether it’s Rob, you using leverage, or David and I hiring an employee and having them do a job that we would do otherwise, if they’re also compounding their time, I mean you go four or five people deep in this mindset and you got five people doing a job of 50, right? I mean, that’s really how you build a team culture. You can build this mentality that man, time is so valuable that everybody’s now getting the maximum value from it.

David:
I think it would be valuable if we gave some practical examples of how we work this into our life. Like your example of I went to buy a mattress and I started a conversation, so I refinanced the guy’s house. I got a free mattress and I made money by going to buy something. I had the same experience where, when I bought my car, I ended up selling the guy a house, and so that paid for my car and then some. I got a free car out of it. If you have that perspective, everywhere you go, if you’re talking to people about, Hey, do you know anyone that might want to be selling a house? Do you know anyone who’s got a hoarder house or something?
Everybody remembers that weirdo in their life that has just crazy stuff in their home and their house is falling apart. When you ask those questions, they might get answered. So do you guys mind giving some… They don’t have to be actual examples. They could be hypothetical, but something that a listener who’s hearing this concept could walk away from after hearing this and say, “I’m going to start doing that.”

Christian:
Yeah. I can start. I think, everybody’s thinking of side hustles nowadays, right? It seems like everybody that we pre-approved drives for Uber or DoorDashes or whatever. It’s funny. I mean, it sounds like a joke, but everybody that we pre-approved got multiple sources of income on their tax returns. So I think of it from the analytical, like the mortgage broker side of things, right? When I see people give me their tax returns that have five or six different avenues of income, both of you guys are like this, right Rob?

Rob:
That’s me.

Christian:
Yeah. I mean, you got your courses, you got your real estate, you got businesses that you’re running, you got the podcast. Right? I mean really the easiest way for me to say that is that building multiple streams of income, maximizing the time you spend in each one. Right? I mean something like, and it doesn’t have to be driving for Uber. That’s the dumbed-down bare bones version, but it could be something as simple as that. Right? It could be something as simple as, hey, I want to… You know, if you’re good at something, right? I mean something that David and I are working on, as he alluded to, is creating this course. Right?
If you’re good at something, share it with people, right? Try to fill a niche. Try to fill your time with something that can benefit other people, and maybe you end up building a company around it. Right? I mean, I don’t think David or Rob, either of you guys probably predicted you’d be in the spots that you’re in, but because you were building a team surrounding yourself with people and maximizing your time, you guys really built something. Right? That’s the most bare bones version of it that I can think of.

Rob:
Right. You seem like you’ve gone down this… I was going to say rabbit hole, but it’s way more that. Well, it kind of is because you’re going down the intricacies of building businesses, and you’re very successful at this, and you have several businesses that are producing income for you. What was that moment… I guess in all of this sense, you have businesses and teams. What was the moment you decided to actually start investing in more real estate or more short-term rentals? Why did you do that versus continuing to pour into those businesses?

Christian:
That’s a really good question. Funny enough, I bought my first house, I think within the last 50 months. It’s been about two years and I could have purchased way sooner than that. Absolutely. I set a goal for myself where I wanted my businesses to be not self-running, but be a method of income that would be my safety net. Right? It would be, I can now invest with confidence knowing that if something did go wrong, I’ve built enough aside from real estate to withstand any windfalls that come. Right? I probably started investing a little bit late. Of course, now everybody goes back and says, I wish I bought more, but knowing that my businesses were my first pursuit, that’s where I felt like I got the biggest bang for my buck.
That allowed me to now grow at the level that I wanted. So I guess to answer your question, I didn’t start buying until I could buy at the speed and the level to which I really wanted to. Right? I hadn’t gotten there yet. Until I could, I mean, I purchased 15 homes in the last year, right? I mean, that’s more than one a month. Right? I wouldn’t have been able to do that.

Rob:
[inaudible 00:38:26].

Christian:
Yeah, I wouldn’t have been able to do that unless I built a really strong foundation that had enough cash flow coming in, had enough ability or had enough time where I had the ability to go dedicate time and resources to buying these properties because everyone’s an analysis. Everyone’s a partner that I partnered with or a property management company. I mean, you guys know the drill of property managers. You got to find boots on the ground, and everything that David writes in his long term investing book. I started only once I felt I had the confidence to do that, the way that I wanted to. I wanted to invest on my own terms. That was a little bit of when I made the switch.

David:
This is an awesome segue into how you take your compounding of time. I often talk about that same concept, but I use the word synergy. I always say, you want to get more than one benefit out of a single action, right? Like you and I were at dinner with our agent two nights ago, or maybe it was last night. It was two nights ago.

Christian:
Two nights ago.

David:
And we were talking to the agent and his brother is the property manager in the company. So while this is a dinner where we’re meeting to talk about the deals that I was looking at and get to know the agent, we’re also like, “The property manager’s right there. Let’s get his opinion on things. Let’s ask questions.” And then he tells us, yeah, these are the properties that tend to do the best. Now we work that into the conversation with the brother who does the sales and we’re like, “Hey, how would you find that property?”
And in one dinner, which we had to do anyways, because people have to eat, we built a relationship. We got to know about what properties perform better as a property manager. We got to learn how the buyer’s agent could find those. I honestly think, I see this all the time, that asking the right questions, we make them better. They walked away like, “We didn’t even think about that. These guys are really smart. They have the right ideas.” That’s synergy. That’s the velocity of your time. That’s improving the return you get on the time that you’re spending.
Now, as you just mentioned, buying properties is a time suck. I was just thinking on the way to the office to record this today. I have to fly to Tennessee to learn the area. And then even if I’m not flying to look at individual homes, I have to review the house, pull it up on a map, ask what the numbers are, run the calculation on those numbers, try to get a feel for what could be wrong with this property that I’m not seeing. That’s all before you even go in escrow. Now you’re looking at inspection reports and surveys and getting insurance quotes and having to talk to contractors about fixing things and having to order furniture and trying to figure out how you’re going to get that delivered.
One property is not just… You’re not just putting money into it. You’re putting a lot of time and energy to make this thing actually fruitful. Having a specific buy box that you know these are the numbers that I want to hit, these are the properties I’m looking for can be immensely powerful with saving you the time when you’re analyzing a ton of stuff and making sure that the work you do after going into escrow is not wasted. It’s actually going to turn into a return. Can you share us, Christian, how you came up with your numbers that have created your buy box and then what they are?

Christian:
Yeah, absolutely. So just to lay the foundation, I do invest in short-term rentals. That’s actually the entirety of my portfolio. This is specifically catered towards people obviously trying to follow suit in that regard, but I’ve developed what I call the 15%, the golden ratio, so to speak. That’s what I call it. But basically I want to see the gross revenue projections for the property. People are going to say, “Where do you get those?” Right? I wouldn’t say live and die by AirDNA. I wouldn’t say live and die by… I think Rabbu is the new one that’s out now. BiggerPockets has a short-term rental calculator. For those who aren’t using it, check out BiggerPockets. You can use a Rentalizer for free, pretty sweet.
But I wouldn’t say live and die by those. Especially once you form a partnership, whether it’s a property manager or somebody with some experience in the area, if you guys are looking in Tennessee and Florida and Virginia, this is something that I could help with. If you’re looking at other areas network, BiggerPockets is great, all the resources that they provide. But really getting some hands-on data of not just… AirDNA is a good estimate, but is there a comparable to my property that did this? Right? Did X percent this year. I like that to be 15% of my purchase price. So if a house is a million dollars, I want to see it gross 150,000 a year. Now, to be mindful, that does include my property maintenance. It’s not my net, right? A property’s not going to net 15%.
That would be a home run, go buy it right now. Right? But that’s before cleaning fees. That’s before taxes, all that. But I like to see a property that, just to add, let’s pull a specific example. One of my properties in Tennessee, I bought it for 650. It did right around a hundred thousand last year. That’s right around that 15% ratio. Right? It’s a little bit off, but it’s really close. The reason why I chose 15 is that 12 is where I actually want it to be. So I’m actually building in a 3% safety net. I’m building in a buffer, right? If I hit my 12, it’s a successful purchase in my mind.

David:
Can you define what you mean by 12?

Christian:
Yeah. If it’s a million dollars, I’m shooting for it to rent for 150,000. And just so everybody understands, that’s 15% of a million, right? If it rents for 120,000, that’s 12%. So I missed my mark by 30 grand and I’m still where I’m comfortable being.

David:
So you’re willing to accept a property that will rent for 12% of what you pay for it, but you make your target 15% in case you miss it by a little bit. Okay.

Christian:
The reason why I don’t make the goal 12 is that then I hit nine and I’m not happy with it. Right? So I always build in… And be careful guys with projections, with estimates. You know, I write 30 contracts to put one in escrow, right? I mean, our realtor out in Tennessee, David, can attest to this, right? We’ve put them through the grinder a little bit. Stick to your numbers, guys. I have another one as well. So it either has to fit that box, and if it does, it has to be in an area where I have no concern over the short-term rental regulations. It has to be an area that I can do. So no HOAs. I don’t really invest in HOAs unless it’s what are called condotels. This is similar to what I think you bought in Hawaii, David, where they’re protected short-term rentals.
So I would feel confident investing in there, but then you have your HOA fee, right? So that’s one buy box, 15% in an area where I have confidence in the future projections, or I have an alternative. If it’s potentially going to pivot away from short-term rental allowance regulations wise from the state government, it has to be able to pivot to a longterm rental and still cash flow. I’ll give an example. I purchased a 300… What was it? $350,000 single family in Virginia Beach in the state of Virginia. Lower property values, it’s something that I wasn’t shooting for the stars on them. However, I ran the numbers and my mortgage all in, I want to say it was about 1,700 bucks. The rental estimates was 2,200 that’s on a long term, 12-month lease, right? That was actually on the appraiser, so that was based on comps in the area.
Now it rents for, I think, four to 5,000 a month. We’re expecting it’ll do about 60,000 this year. So it’s hitting my numbers that I like, but it’ll transition well, because I don’t have a hundred percent confidence that the city of Virginia Beach will be short-term rental friendly for the foreseeable future. So I made that investment, knowing that my exit strategy is a really good long-term rental hold. That’s my second buy box. Those are the only two conditions where I’ll buy a property. I’ve said it to be super simple. I’ve given that to my realtors and I’ve given them a free for all write it, if it meets these numbers. And I work with two or three agents that I have some confidence in and not much more.

Rob:
Wow, that’s actually pretty simple. So a lot of people are usually like, okay, it’s got to be in this market and it’s got to have this bed, bath count, and it’s got to have this view or this amenity. Yours are strictly just on the numbers.

Christian:
Straightforward.

Rob:
Like you, as long as you can project it to be a 15% gross, I guess, 12 to 15%. And then your second criteria here that it can work for a long-term rental, then it doesn’t really matter. So your buy box is effectively national.

Christian:
It is, and that’s one thing. For instance, in Florida, insurance is high in Florida, right? They got the hurricanes. They got the wind. They got the water damage. So that’s something where if it’s in Florida, I do want to see it really hit in that 15. Right? I don’t want to get something in that 12 to 15 range, because I know that insurance is going to be a higher cost of owning. So you can pivot a little bit based on certain areas, especially if somebody kind of settles in to an area, you’ll be able to project those expenses a little bit more as opposed to Tennessee. I own a number of cabins in the Smoky Mountains. This is where David and I were last week actually. Some of them have indoor pools. Some of them have really good views, right?
Some of them are on lots that I believe will continue to appreciate as the city of Pigeon Forge, Gatlinburg, that whole area continue to be developed and improved and tourists keep staying high there. So I may be open to accepting a 13 or a 14% ROI there, not ROI, but this ratio, right? Because I know there’s a lot of other compensating factors that help that strike confidence in me as an investor. Right? I like the pool. Maybe we can use… David and I are considering using one of them as like a corporate retreat, right? So that may be a benefit where we can take our team there as a reward for high production or whatever the case is. That could be a really cool experience. So even if the properties don’t meet the perfect numbers, I set them that way because I’m setting a limit that if we underperform, I’m still okay with it.
Right? That disqualifies 90% of properties, because most of them don’t do that. But my realtors understand the ones that do meet this, we’re going to write competitive offers. We’re going to be aggressive and we’re going to get them in contract. Right? A realtor, David can speak to this, keeping it simple for a realtor, keeps the relationship healthy. Right? If I tell you that I’m going to buy this property, David, there’s no worse feeling than an investor telling you, “I will buy this property if you put it in front of me.” You put it in front of them and they say, “Oh, well, let me talk to the wife.”

David:
Yeah. “I don’t like the color.”

Christian:
“Let me think about it.” You know, that, right? I mean, it’s very clear. The realtors that we work with are… You know, and that’s once again, return on time, right? So I’m not spending time doing all these analysis.

David:
Here’s what I like about what you’re describing. It hit me when you were talking like, this is what’s different about working with us than with other people. It’s not a huge difference, but it brings clarity. What I think most people are doing is they’re saying, I want to hit this ROI. I want to be in this neighborhood. I want the ARV to be this much more than what I paid. They have all these criteria and it’s good to have criteria. Maybe they have seven criteria just like that. I want to be 10% under market value. I want blah, blah, blah. Very rarely does a property hit all seven. And so what happens is you just spin your wheels. You spend time, you don’t get anything. You never get a reward. You never get into the fun of this.
You never learn from swinging the bat. And so you just get stuck and you get discouraged. But what you’re describing is here is step one. I want it to be at 12 to 15% gross yearly revenue of what I’m buying it for. Here is step two. I would like it to be in one of these areas, because I know I can rent it out. Here’s step three. I’d like to have a backup plan. So the floor plan itself matters because I have to be able to rent this thing out if it doesn’t work as a short-term rental. I would also like for there to be some kind of upside. Now when I see, Ooh, this property is different. Like, I’m looking at one right now in an area where there’s not many more new construction. It works with the numbers, but over the next five years, it’s going to crush it with the numbers because they can’t build anything more. Okay?
What you’re saying is, “Hey, I may not hit my 15% number, but if I have something like what I just described, I will go down to 12 or maybe I would even go down to 10.” Right? Like there’s this balancing act that occurs in your head when you see the whole big picture. So you start with solid criteria and then you look at the pros and the cons and you weigh them out and the decisions become much less complicated, sort of become simple. And then you learn from it and you take that into the next thing. That is, in my head, the right way to be analyzing properties. It’s not letting a spreadsheet do all the work. There’s an element of creativity, of vision, right? A lot of the properties that we’re looking at, I looked at one, the one I just described, what I liked about it was it had six bedrooms and it had a game room.
It had plenty of places to put in sleeper beds to put enough people in the house and I can take one of the bedrooms and make it into a theater room. It’s perfectly set up for that. Okay? That is going to now add value to the property. People are more likely to book it and it’s not like it was a three bedroom house where I lost a bedroom. I can only do this because it’s six bedrooms. When the realtor is bringing me to the properties, they don’t see that. They just know, Hey, this one hits the numbers that you said. So I want to take that deal, and individually look at how I would maximize the value of the property.
And on that one, particularly because they’re not building them anymore up there, and I have the theater room thing and there’s a few other things that I can do to add value to the property, I’m going after it. Even if that one comes out at a 9% return instead of the 12 or the 15, it’s going to go up over time. What you’re getting into is ways that people can analyze deals without spending their entire day and getting discouraged.

Christian:
Yes.

David:
Can you share how you came up with these criteria that you operate by?

Christian:
Yeah. I came up with it with buying my first property with no mindset with no analysis, with no… I basically said I want a property of cash flows. Like most people get in Airbnb, I’d like to make some money. Right? Then I started seeing, oh, this one did pretty well. And I’m seeing on average, it seems like they’re doing 12 to 15%. I like that. Right? That helps me cash flow. That allows me to be profitable. That allows me to be able to restabilize it after a big expense, a roof, an AC. In one of my properties in Tennessee, I had the well pump go out. I live in California. I don’t know what a well pump is. You know, there’s no wells out here unless you’re outside of the main areas. Right? But that was an expense that I had to pivot from. Right?
But because my numbers were hitting my projections and where I am eventually ended up modeling this mindset after, it was very easy to cover. Right? I had, I guess 8,500 bucks, I think it cost to completely redo the well pump and it was in the account and we were able to make up for it in one month of rent. Right? I wish I could say I brainstormed this and was just the perfect analytical tool before my first purchase. But this was really built from my successes and my failures on doing it and seeing the ones that hit the numbers that I liked seeing.

David:
Which is why we’re always telling people, you got to take action. You can’t just wait till you have all the answers.

Rob:
Yeah. You got to kind of just figure it out as you go. For sure. I mean, pretty much my philosophies on what pencils on, what doesn’t just comes from really averaging out how things have really worked out for me in the past couple of years. So it’s the same thing, Christian. For me, it’s like, I don’t have this perfect set system that I developed in the lab or anything like that. Really it’s just an average or the median of what all my other properties perform at. Right? So for me, like you talk about your 15% gross. For me, just a 20% cash on cash. I keep it real simple, and as long as it hits that metric, then for the most part, I’m pretty happy with it. I agree, I don’t really take AirDNA to heart, not nor do I take Rabbu to heart.
It’s really just a gut check to be like, okay, this is the median aggregate that AirDNA is putting together. Now I need to go in and actually research the calendars of my competition. And so if AirDNA and Rabbu and Mash Buys or AllTheRooms, if they all kind of put out figures that get me to a 20%, then I’m like, “Okay, that’s a good starting point.” Now I need to actually go and examine my competition. I’ll go in and do what I call like a market audit where basically I’ll go and just look at everyone in that market and see overall, does this market tend to really level up on design or on amenities or on views? I really try to match up. You know, see where I match up against them or where the properties that I’m buying will match up against that demographic.
If I feel like I can outperform 90% of the market because I’m always aiming for top 10% of my market. If I feel like I can perform 90% of the market, then I already know my cash on cash will likely be more than that 20%. You know what I mean?

Christian:
Absolutely.

Rob:
It’s a new acronym here that I call LILS. Or no, LALS, little art, little science. You know, when we’re getting to it.

Christian:
Yeah, I like that.

Rob:
But yeah, I mean, it really… I wish it could be super objective because I teach this every day obviously to my students, but it really is just leaning on your experiences and the more you have and the more you can lock up and add to your portfolio, the easier it is to use that as anecdotal evidence on how you’re going to perform in the future.

Christian:
Not to beat the dead horse, but the only thing that… I mean, you don’t even think about it when you bought your first one, but you’re actually building a tool to better analyze future properties. So getting back into that velocity of time thing, the time that you spent buying those three properties is saving you exponentially more time buying the fourth one now. Right? And you didn’t even plan for that. Right? It’s like, “Oh, now I have a portfolio to create my own business.”

David:
Then you get to where they’re just bringing you a deal that you didn’t even ask for.

Christian:
Yeah, absolutely.

David:
Look at that. Right? They just bring it right to you. You don’t even have to go look for it.

Christian:
Yeah.

David:
I think, Rob, the only thing stopping private capital, hedge funds, BlackRock from buying every single property is the art component. If it was purely objective, we would all be getting pushed out of it. Right? That’s what’s beautiful about the real estate we’re buying is it takes time to look at it. And even though that can be frustrating, that’s what’s protecting you from having some computer algorithm to step in and buy every single house.

Rob:
Yeah. That’s very true. I was joking with one of my partners yesterday and I was like, it’s only a matter of time before BlackRock calls and they’re like, Hey, we were wrong. We don’t know how to do this. Can you please artfully choose our houses for us?

David:
It happened to Zillow, right? Some of those iBuyer programs that we’re just scooping them all up thinking a computer program could beat the actual investor. That’s the advantage that the BiggerPockets listener or the mom and pop investor has is they see angles like that that are not going to show up in the MLS listing. A lot of the properties Christian and I are looking at are literally in the MLS listed as a one bedroom house. So the property he owns that we stayed in is listed as a one bedroom house with 3,000 square feet. The reason is because of regulations regarding septic size and they’re only allowed to market at a certain bedrooms and the septic tank is a certain size, but he’s got a 3,000 square foot house. Right?
So how many big names are just going to skip right over there because it doesn’t show up in their search at all? Whereas when we look at this, we’re like, “Holy cow, you can sleep a lot more people in here.” So I’m always grateful that there’s errors and inaccuracy in the way that real estate works, because it gives you an opportunity to hit stuff like this. Christian, you mentioned helping me on a deal where you found creative financing that dropped my down payment from like 25% to 12%. You and I run into problems constantly. Well, really I run into the problem and I hand it to you and you have to go fix it. I’m like, “Here’s the round peg, there’s the square hole. What you going to do?” And then you get to figure out how we’re going to solve that, and you do an amazing job.

Christian:
It’s like you’re saying I have the fun job. Gotcha. Okay.

David:
Yes, that’s exactly right.

Rob:
I can confirm you guys always pull it off for sure.

Christian:
There you go. Appreciate that.

David:
That’s one of the things that I want to talk to you about are, can you share some of the creative ways that you get loans to close, maybe the advantage you have with the one brokerage and then loan programs that a person might not know about that we can help to get them to close on a deal with better terms or just close that all, that if they were just going to a retail bank and saying what’s your loan product, they would have no idea this exists.

Christian:
Yeah, really, really good question. I think what really differentiates us is the time that I put in with, I don’t want to call it the ownership, but that’s basically what it is, the ownership of the lending entities. I mean, I sit down with CEOs, David and I were just at a private broker event for UWM, who’s one of the biggest lenders in the nation. Right? We were invited and we got some FaceTime to give direct feedback into programs that they have. Right? So when you’re going to regular lenders, they’re not… You know, your loan officer at Wells Fargo probably isn’t sitting down with the head of Wells Fargo, right? I mean, we have a really unique opportunity, and this is why it’s so important also for people to respect these programs.
And if we get you a loan, we want you to analyze the property correctly because if we end up having all these default rates and all these things, it may not be a product that we can offer much longer, right? So we underwrite these things and work with the lenders to really build these products because of not only our experience, right? I want the products from me and David and Rob, and we’ve done loans for all you guys, but I want this product to then go maybe trial run and then really give it out to people and say, “Hey, this is an opportunity for you guys to buy where you couldn’t otherwise.” You know, our DSCR product is a really good example of that. There’s not a whole lot of lenders who will allow you to substitute in short-term rental income on a lot of loans.
That’s a big one, right? Especially people who are not completely new to short-term rentals, because a lot of the products want to see some experience there. But you go to a regular conventional lender and they’re not going to care what AirDNA says. They’re going to say, “There’s no way you’re going to rent.” You know, Rob, I mean that place that you guys bought in Arizona, no lender would ever buy that you’re renting it for what you guys are. Right? I mean, it’s just not reasonable with conventional mindsets. But I mean, that’s a really good one. We have some fun bridge products. That’s one where if you are able, this is a market that’s going to swing. If you are able to start getting things under market now, which hasn’t been possible the last two years, but we’re starting to see some price drops, some more competitive offers, being able to be accepted.
You know, we can lend on the appraised value as opposed to the purchase price. Right? We can say, this is the deal that we discuss on the past video for David. If you guys haven’t seen that, check that one out because we go into depth on this product. But David was able to shave off 10% of his down payment because the property over appraised by so much, right? We were able to treat that appraised value as the value of the property instead of the purchase price.

Rob:
I’m jealous, man. That’s crazy. That’s such a…

Christian:
It’s a sweet one.

Rob:
Can you do that for me, too?

Christian:
If you find a property that you’re under buying, right? I mean that’s absolutely… Obviously, that’s the unicorn property, right? That hasn’t been available for the last three years but…

Rob:
Well, I actually think the Scottsdale property, the second appraisal on that came in about $175,000 more than we paid for it. That was a nice little surprise.

David:
I found out, Rob, side note, I haven’t told you this. When I was out there looking at additional property, we bought that thing for less than what the land would cost if we just bought a lot that size.

Rob:
Whoa. Really? Yeah. Let’s double it and sell it.

David:
Yeah. Here’s something to think about. What I notice a lot of clients do, and I want to get your opinion on this, Christian, is they say, “Hey, can you get me a 12% down payment loan? Yes or no.” And if the answer’s no, then they make another phone call and they ask someone else, “Can you get me a 12% down?” Right? You don’t get that on every single deal. You work and you buy houses, and then this falls into the situation. We’re like, oh, I can maximize your deal this way. Other deals, you maximize in a different way.
So one of the things that we do since the David Greene Team and the One Brokerage works together and the One Brokerage gets to hear all of the cool strategies that we use when we’re working with the David Greene Team and vice versa is we will say instead of, “Hey, I’ll give you 900,000 for your house.” We say, “I’ll give you 875 for your house.” And they say, “Okay, deal.” And we say, “Actually, let’s make it 900 with 25,000 in closing costs.” Then we take the 25,000 in closing costs and buy your rate down. Like what, on a normal six and a 5% interest rate on a $900,000 house, can you spitball what you think that might buy the rate down to?

Christian:
Buy down to the fives. Yeah, for sure.

David:
Okay. So now you’re in the fives instead of six and a half. So that’s significantly cheaper than anybody else would’ve been able to pay, even though you paid $25,000 over, but because your rate is in the fives, that extra 25 you’re borrowing is very minimal. It doesn’t make your payment go hardly at all. Right? So now that deal works for you. Where it didn’t work for you or anyone at 6.5%, and what everyone else was doing was trying to bring the seller down on their price.
Well, we actually gave them more, but got you the house for cheaper. There’s a lot of strategies that when you’re working with the right person, they will recommend to you, what if you do this? What if you do this? It’s not always going to be the same thing. I think that’s a mistake people make as they heard about, “Oh, can you do this down payment? Or can you get this rate?” They’re the ones asking the questions rather than saying, “Here’s my goal. What do you think you could do to help me?”

Christian:
Yeah. That’s something that we pitch a lot. I mean, I think probably 50%, at least, of my properties that I bought during a really hot market were actually purchased with substantial seller credit. I mean, David, the deal that we got, we had a massive amount of seller credit, right, on the property in Tennessee. That’s a great point. This is where partnering us up with a realtor, we’re going to coach them on that. Right? So if you say, “Oh, my realtor doesn’t know how to do that.” Or “I don’t know how to do that. How do I word that?” Like, just give us their contact, right? I mean, we’re a brokerage that once again, practice is what we preach.
We know how these things go especially if you’re working on David’s team. This is something that with the market kind of we’re starting to see price drops, this is something that’s even more attainable now. Right? I mean, you can get the seller to pay for your rate, buy down. So all of you guys who are monitoring the market and oh my God rates are crazy. Have the seller buy down your rate, right? You’re getting the rate from a month and a half ago and that wouldn’t be available now if the seller didn’t credit you that money. Absolutely a tactic in a rising interest rate environment to kind of reset yourself prior to the last few rate increases.

David:
Which is why we get so excited when we see… It’s not that we’re happy rates are going up, right? Everyone’s a shock to everyone. Nobody likes it. But the effect of that is the market softens, other buyers, your competition, that everyone forgets they’re competing with other buyers. They always think they’re competing with the seller or they’re competing with their uncle that tells them not to buy a real estate. No, you are competing with all the other people that want that asset. They get hesitant and it opens up this window. That’s why I went and put eight properties under contract in a couple weeks here because I’m seeing, oh, this thing is in a great area. Great thing. It cash flows really well.
Everything works, but everybody else is afraid. They’re holding their breath and saying, “Is everything going to collapse? And I don’t want to jump in too soon.” But this softening gives us the opportunity, that’s what I’m trying to get at here, to use these techniques, to use these strategies, right? For the last six years, the only strategy has been write a higher offer.

Christian:
Yeah. Basically.

David:
That’s it. You pay more than the other buyers are paying or you don’t get the house.

Christian:
And waive your appraisal contingency.

David:
Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Now we’re keeping appraisal contingency. We’re keeping inspections. We’re keeping loan contingencies. We’re shopping around to find you better loans. We’re looking for ways to get your rate lower. Or a lot of the times we get people 15% down on investment properties instead of 20% down. There’s things like that we can bring into play. I think you have to be grateful that the market is softening because if you saw some of the tricks that we’re using to maximize what we’re doing, I think a lot of people would be really pleased.
More importantly, buyers are happy about what they’re paying to get the house. No one’s been happy for what they had to pay in the last six years. They’ve been happy afterwards, right? A year later, you’re like, “Well, this is great. I wish I’d bought more.” But at the time, no one felt good about it. This is finally a period of time where you can actually feel good about what you’re buying. I feel pretty good about the one we got, Rob. What do you think?

Rob:
Yeah. I mean, I was going to say like, we got a $75,000 seller credit on that. I think there’s obviously certain rules on how much of a seller credit you can get with a property and everything like that. We were like, “Man, 75,000 might be, we might be maxing this out. So we had to creatively shuffle things around. I think we might have bought down our rate.

David:
That’s what we did. Yeah.

Rob:
Yeah. I mean, we got that. We got full on, we got it fully furnished, which was halfway beneficial, halfway a bit of a torturous journey, getting rid of a lot of the grainy knickknacks, but it did end up… I think it’s a net positive on that one, but we negotiated pretty heavily on that one. And then we played hardball and we got it. And yeah. Then we got the appraisal back and we came in 150.

David:
Like I told you, the land is worth more than the land with a 6,000 square foot house on it. And the furniture thing you mentioned… We could do this all day because this is so fun. Let us know in the comments in YouTube, if you guys would like to hear more of these type of shows, where we talk about our deals. But you didn’t love the furniture on the Scottsdale property, which is fair because it wasn’t the best.

Rob:
Yeah.

David:
But we were also able to buy furniture relatively easy because it’s Scottsdale. They have a lot of stuff.

Rob:
Yeah. Yeah.

David:
Some of the properties that Christian and I are buying in different areas or that I’m buying in different areas, getting furniture is a pain in the butt because of supply chain issues. So being able to-

Rob:
Oh dear, especially Tennessee.

David:
A hundred percent, right? Being able to get that negotiated into the deal, not only saves you a ton of money because furniture’s very expensive, but it also saves you three or four months of waiting to get it furnished before you could book it, which could turn into five to 10 grand a month. Right? There’s a lot of ways that I’m seeing this is awesome for me. Could the market go down more? Sure. Will it go down more on some properties? Probably so. Does that mean that these are bad buys? No. Not at all.
It’s going to go back up again at some point, too. If it’s making a lot of money and I’m getting into the best areas, I think it’s a mistake to try to time a market because markets are all so different. What you’re seeing in Scottsdale in the luxury of really expensive space, that’s slowing down a little bit. What you’re seeing in Southern California, Los Angeles in the first time home buyer space has not stopped at all. It’s just as hot as it’s ever been. That’s another thing to keep in mind.
Christian, is there any last words you’d like to provide before we move on to the next segment of the show? When it comes to advice for a real estate investor who is trying to calculate like I’ve got the lender and the agent and all these strategies they talk about and I read Brandon Turner’s book on No (and Low) Money Down Real Estate. I really like what Rob’s doing. Like there’s so many things going around, where do they start? And when they walk into that position, what is it they should be looking for.?

Christian:
You’re saying with their first ever investment property?

David:
Or maybe just a newer person who wants to start buying it or maybe wants to buy more, they’ve got two or three and they’re like, these are going good. I want to scale. Give them an idea of where they should go, who they should start with and what they should be looking for.

Christian:
Yeah. I mean, I’m biased. I’d say our company, right? But aside from just who you’re talking to, the mindset is really, I believe we’re headed for a place in this country where if you don’t own property in the next three or five years, I don’t think you ever will. I think real estate is going to become such a hot asset and it’s going to be so hard to get competing with investors and corporations, everything. I really think, and this isn’t fear tactic. I’m not trying to preach that. So please don’t misrepresent, but just not be afraid to jump in. You know, I mean you can always… People are talking rates right now. America’s awesome with our finance strategy because you can refinance, right? I mean your six and a half percent rate that you have right now is not the rate that you’re going to have for 30 years.
Right? I mean, you refinance the moment the rates get low again. I mean, historically speaking, a 6% interest rate is not like this catastrophic interest rate.

David:
[inaudible 01:09:30].

Christian:
It’s a fairly healthy market rate on a mortgage. It’s not, you know. I mean, granted prices are high right now, but you pay down some equity if you, and obviously buy what you can afford. I’m not telling people to throw every last dollar they have into real estate. But if you can comfortably afford, don’t get caught up. Create a buy box. If you want to copy mine, awesome. If you want to copy Rob’s, awesome. But create something that you’re comfortable with.
If it hits these numbers, link up with an investor. If you’re buying short-term rentals, please talk to a short-term rental agent, right? Don’t go to the first time home buyer, down payment assistance person and say, I’m looking to buy an investment property. Surround yourself with investment-minded individuals, ourself as a lender, a short-term rental agent out in whatever area you’re looking at. And if you’re surrounding yourself with people who can correctly advise you, you’re going to end up in a better situation. It’s just surround yourself with that mindset.

David:
Yeah. I wasn’t saying you should just come to us, but if they do come to us or they go somewhere else, what questions should they be asking to get the ball rolling in the right direction?

Christian:
Like David was saying, don’t come and say, you got David 12% down. Let’s get it. Right? But really working with us, and we do consultation calls with every single person that reaches out to us. It’s 15 to 20 minutes of us understanding the roadmap that you’re trying to achieve toward success. I don’t know many agencies that do that like that, but that’s really how we have it built. Our first conversations should be come prepared, have us have a outline of what you’re trying to accomplish, and allow us to build the path for you. But when we build that path, you can’t be afraid to walk the path. Right? I could lay all the concrete brick in front of you that I want. If you’re not ready to take that first step, that meeting was in vain.

David:
I like that. The here’s what my goals are. Here’s what I want to do. Here’s the capital I have. Here’s my concerns. The person you’re working with should be able to paint a decently clear picture of several options, right?

Christian:
Absolutely.

David:
If their answer to you is, I don’t know what to tell you. What do you want? You want to get pre-approved? That’s not the right person, right?

Christian:
Yeah.

David:
Your agent says, so do you want a three bedroom or a four bedroom search? Not the right person. Right? You’re looking for that person that goes, “Oh, have you considered this? Or what we’re finding in this market is this is the case, and I can help you with all of these different things.” I think that’s a much better approach to take, especially if you’re trying to get into the market at a time where there’s a little bit more uncertainty.

Christian:
Absolutely. Yeah. An agent, a lender, even an insurance agent that really understands what you’re trying to accomplish is invaluable in this time right now, in this economic climate that we’re in. It’s vital to your success.

Rob:
Yeah, for sure. So you said you’re not trying to be a alarmist or anything like that. You think we should not make the thumbnail like all red and then we give you like red sort of demonized with like flames behind you and big title printed over.

Christian:
Buy right now. Yeah.

David:
Yeah. Let’s clarify that. Because I know in the comments we have something coming, he said, in three to five years, you won’t be able to buy real estate. They’re trying to get you to buy. There’s a crash coming. We’re not saying in every market in the entire country, you’ll never be able to own a home. Okay?

Christian:
Correct? That is true.

David:
I think that was a bit of an aggressive statement. But what you’re describing is there are changes happening that we see that the average person doesn’t, where institutional capital is a bit of a Godzilla. It’s coming in and smashing people and paying way more money than anyone realizes. And if some of those companies buy Airbnb, buy Vrbo, then they go buy all the properties. All of a sudden you put yours up there at Airbnb and it shows up as number 97 and the 96 above it is all the ones they own becomes very, very difficult for the mom and pop investor to compete.
I think in the hottest markets where they feel the safest, like the best areas with the best weather, the best travel, the best amenities, they will go in there and bully people out. Absolutely, I do agree with that. Real estate’s very local. So if you’re living in Virginia Beach where Christian bought his first property, I don’t think that this is going to happen there. Right? That’s not the same scenario, but I do think over time, real estate is becoming an asset class like a stock. It used to be so much labor to own real estate that the big companies didn’t do it. They just traded in easier things to own like stocks. As they are learning how to make this more automated, it is turning much more into something like a security. And when that happens, it’s a lot harder to buy it because your competition ramps up.
So just to be clear, I’ve got a lot of properties I’ve been looking at that that I’m slow playing. Okay? The one I described earlier is listed at 1.5. It’s dropped down to 1.45, and then 1.35. It’s sitting at 1.25. I’m going to write an offer at a million-fifty. Okay? I don’t expect I’m going to get that property, but it’s been on the market for a hundred days. This isn’t me going after a property that have been on the market for two days. Right? However, that million-fifty is a jab I throw and I look to see what are they going to respond with? What if they counter me at 1.125? Well, now they’ve come down pretty significant from their one. That’s more of a motivated person. Right? If it stays on the market, it’s moving in my direction. So in some scenarios, yes, take it slow. See what you can get. And then in other scenarios, depending on the property, you’re going to have to move quickly.
All right, Christian, we’re going to move on to the next segment of the show. It is the deal deep dive. In this segment of the show, we are going to dive deep into one particular deal that you have done. All right. This is the part of the show where we dive deep into one specific deal with our guests. Remember you two can do more deals with the help of BiggerPockets tools, and resources. All right, Christian, do you have a property in mind?

Christian:
I do.

David:
All right. Question number one. What kind of property is this?

Christian:
It’s a single family home in Bradenton, Florida with an additional casita, two bed, one bath, additional dwelling unit.

David:
Like an ADU or a granny unit.

Christian:
It’s an ADU. Correct.

Rob:
How did you find it?

Christian:
I found it through one of my local short-term rental agents out there who brought it up to us. It was on market. Wasn’t some special off market deal. So yeah, standard MLS.

David:
All right. How much did you pay for it?

Christian:
Original contract was for 830. We dropped it to 818 was our… Oh, I’m sorry. No, it was purchased for 830. It appraised for 818. So I actually overpaid slightly for this house.

Rob:
How did you negotiate the house?

Christian:
Negotiated, used a standard agent. It was when the market was very, very hot. I purchased it in 2021. So it wasn’t a whole lot of negotiating power there, but we didn’t negotiate, I believe four or $5,000 just for minor repairs, but it was a pretty clean cut deal.

David:
Okay. How’d you fund it?

Christian:
Funded it 15% down, DSCR loan, and actually our kind of flagship product that we use utilizing the expected rental income that it was going to produce as a short-term rental.

Rob:
What did you do with it?

Christian:
Yeah, so obviously, a little bit of foreshadowing there, but I’m using it as a short-term rental? This one is unique because it’s in Bradenton, Florida, which is a kind of a vacation destination. It’s about 45 minutes to an hour south of Tampa on the Gulf Coast of Florida. The numbers have been even higher than we expected. In six months, it did $97,000 in gross rent. We anticipated it would do about 150 to 160. So it’s on track for 180.
It’s by far and away out producing. The reason being we’re actually running it as two separate listings. You can either rent it out as a full six bedroom or the main house is a four and the casita is a two. So in the days where the main house is not rented, we just rent the back unit. It’s a shared backyard, so we have it kind of segmented where they could be two separate rentals. So really maximizing the occupancy rate on it and keeping it booked. You know, even if it’s a couple day filler, we just fill in the two bedroom casita there.

David:
What was the outcome?

Christian:
Outcome? Awesome short-term rental opportunity. If we sold it as an Airbnb right now, it’s probably already appreciated by 150,000. We got a realtor reach out to us to try to sell it. And listing price was going to be one million five. A million 50,000, I should say. So very satisfied with how that’s gone. We’re going to hold it for a short-term rental for the foreseeable future, but it’s doing very well for us. We’re very excited about it.

Rob:
What lessons did you learn from this deal?

Christian:
This was my first kind of bigger purchase. Everything prior to this time had been 700,000 and below. This was kind of my dipping my toes in the water of higher value properties. It made me realize if you have multiple units… This is the David Greene special, right? If you got multiple units, if you got heads and beds, added rental capacity, I knew it would have some benefits, but I did not forecast the level of the benefit that it would have with being able to fill up the days that were unrented instead of having it go four or five days unoccupied. Maybe you fill up three of those with 150, 200 bucks a night for the two bedroom. And it really, really made a difference for us. It’s going to do $30,000 more than we anticipated when we first reviewed it.

David:
All right. And this deal, who was the hero on your team?

Christian:
The hero on my team was for sure, my partner, I shouted out earlier. This is one that I purchased with Karen and we have a partnership where she manages for me. We self-manage, but she’s taken on the majority of it, everything from scheduling the cleaners to go in, to communicating with clients. We do have a perfect five star rating on that property on Airbnb, which we’re excited about. She got super host status and yeah, just that property has had a lot of really good reviews. It was remodeled. It did come furnished, which was a big one, and it was an active Airbnb. I forgot to add that. It was already a existing, running Airbnb, but yeah, Karen was absolutely… Couldn’t have done that one without her.

David:
All right. That’s going to wrap up our deal deep dive. We’re going to head over to the last segment of the show. It is the world famous.

Speaker 4:
Famous for…

David:
All right. First question for you, Christian. What is your favorite real estate book? I’m curious to hear you answer this because I know you don’t read.

Christian:
No, I don’t read. There you go. Showing my dirty secrets. Well, I think if I came onto a podcast hosted by my business partner and I didn’t shout out one of his books, I think the partnership would be concluded at that point. So I’m going to shout out any book written by David Greene. I do like the BRRRR one. The BRRRR method has blown up to a level that I don’t think anybody who originally thought about it intended, but yeah, BRRRR book just taught principles and concepts along… You know, that partnered with the long distance real estate investing. You know, those are morals and ideas that we teach in our company and that we do ourselves. I think the influence that those books had on the market is invaluable. I think it’s really, really awesome books.

Rob:
Good answer. Good answer. Favorite business book?

Christian:
I will say, I have read this one. Never Split the Difference, Chris Voss. I think just seeing things from the side of a hostage negotiator. If you guys haven’t read that book, absolutely recommend it. It just teaches you how to negotiate in an avenue that I didn’t think a whole lot before, but negotiating for people’s lives obviously is a different level than negotiating for real estate, but a lot of really good principles in that one.

Rob:
Great. When you’re not off buying 15 short-term rentals in a year, what are some of your hobbies?

Christian:
I love snowboarding. I had a pretty bad accident a couple years back that I actually haven’t snowboarded since, but absolutely love snowboarding. I’m one of the best five-foot-six basketball players that are out there. No, I’m kidding, but I love playing basketball. I’ve played it since I was very young and I’m a five foot six, five foot seven with shoes on white guy. So you can imagine the challenges that I had to go through, but absolutely love my basketball time.

David:
The books that Christian mentioned, if you want to buy those or any of the other BiggerPockets books, there is an entire library of stuff that will really help you get your investing career off the ground. You can find those at biggerpockets.com/store. That’s where you can buy any of the books that we have for sale.
My last question for you, what, in your opinion, sets apart successful investors from those who give up, fail or never get started?

Christian:
Gosh, I would just say action. Obviously, it’s easy to say, act and don’t have fear, but really just maximizing opportunity. Like David said earlier, when a market downturns or when things slow down, people like David and myself get really excited, right? We’re not scared of the rates. We’re not scared of the added risk of the market right now. We see this as a buying opportunity, right? We see this as an opportunity to get things that you couldn’t get last year.
So I think when the world presents you with lemons, try to get them squeezed. Make some lemonade out of them and make the best out of the unfortunate situation of our government printing 80% of the money supply, right? Let’s try to at least benefit a little bit from it.

Rob:
And lastly here, tell us where people can find out more about you.

Christian:
This is an interesting one. I do not have any social media. We have our website, the onebrokerage.com. It can be spelled out O-N-E or the number one. If you’re looking to get in contact with the team, I do have a BiggerPockets account. So if you just type in BiggerPockets, and put Christian Bachelder, you’ll see my account.

David:
How often do you check that, Christian?

Christian:
I check it actually pretty frequently. So I’m fairly active on BiggerPockets. If you guys direct message me, I will respond. But yeah, I don’t have an Instagram or a Twitter to shout out, but I prefer to keep it that way. Yeah. And if you find yourself on our website, the onebrokerage.com, navigate to the About Us tab, you’ll see my personal contact there, my email to reach out. Anything you need, advice, guidance, or to get pre-approved, I can definitely help you out.

David:
All right, Rob, what if people want to find out more about you?

Rob:
They can find me on YouTube over at Robuilt, R-O-B-U-I-L-T. And then you can also find me on Instagram at Robuilt, too and TikTok at Robuilto. Now, let me just take a moment to say that someone was smart enough to… So I captured Robuilto as a handle on TikTok because someone took Robuilt and someone then took Robuilto on Instagram, and they’re scamming people. So this is very confusing, but Robuilt on Instagram, not Robuilto, and then Robuilto on TikTok. I’m like, man, this is my life now. This is what we have to preface for everybody. So just make sure you’re not sending crypto to me or David. Okay? With that, what about you, David?

David:
I’m davidgreene24 and on YouTube I’m David Greene Real Estate. So please go, give me a follow. I still have way less followers than Brandon Turner, who’s not even on the podcast, and he lets me know every single time he sees me. And then just to hammer this point home, do not send me or any of these guys money on social media. When Christian and I were having lunch, I got a call from a cop friend of mine, who’s not the most tech savvy, a little bit older, and he got scammed. He sent a bunch of money to someone thinking he was sending it to me. It’s freaking heartbreaking.

Rob:
Oh, man.

David:
I’m doing everything I can to get the blue check mark on Instagram so that this won’t work. Instagram has denied me about 20 times that I’ve asked for it. I’m still trying to make that happen, but please tell everyone you know, they may have our pictures. They may have the… It looks just like our Instagram. It’s not us. It’s easy to copy those and create a fake account. The screen name will be a little different. They’ll put an underscore a period. They’ll add like an extra E in Greene or they maybe take one of the E’s and put three. Just something where you wouldn’t recognize it right off the bat. But please be careful because it’s the worst feeling ever when somebody that we know gets taken advantage of because they trusted us.

Rob:
Stay safe, peeps.

David:
All right, Christian, last question. If people would like to follow up with you and learn more about creative financing strategies, what it’s like to work with us as a mortgage broker, they want to know more about the short-term rentals you’re buying. They want to hear more about your buy box. They like what they heard and they want more. What do you recommend they do?

Christian:
Yeah. If you navigate to our website, the onebrokerage.com, top right, there’s an option for all our mastermind series. Feel free to enroll in them. There’s a little RSVP button. Those will be opportunities for us to share both what we’re doing personally, as well as to offer you guys some advice and guidance on potentially pursuing your next investment as well.

David:
I really like what you said about if they have a realtor who doesn’t know what we’re talking about, introduce them to you, right? Those realtors can go to these webinars. That’s free. We will teach about these loan products. Now your realtor has more information than they would’ve had. They’ve learned how to make a buy box for you. That’s really what we’re trying to do is help the whole overall experience be better because realtors aren’t really that great. Most loan officers are saying, I’m the cheapest, I’m the cheapest. They’re not understanding what investors are trying to do and we’re trying to correct that. That’s a great idea.

Christian:
Yeah. We’ll make your realtors better free of charge. We want to work with good realtors, guys.

David:
All right. Rob, anything you want to say before we get out of here?

Rob:
No, no thanks Christian, man. It’s always nice to hear from you. I can vouch for One Brokerage and everything. You guys have been really great, and give me a run for my money if you acquired 15 short-term rentals last year. So good on you. Good on you.

Christian:
Yeah. I appreciate you, guys. Yeah. Thanks for having me. Awesome. Awesome being here and yeah, hopefully we do it again soon.

David:
All right, guys. Great job. I’ll get us out of here. This is David Greene for Rob, our favorite client, Abasolo signing off.