December 2023

Matthew Graham, chief operating officer at Mortgage News Daily, joins ‘The Exchange’ to discuss the state of mortgage rates, their outlook for next year, and more.

Mindy:
Hello, our dear listeners, and welcome to the BiggerPockets Money Podcast where we are speaking with Jabbar Adesada today, who you might remember from episode 257.
Hello, hello, hello. My name is Mindy Jensen, and with me as always, is my real estate investor co-host, Scott Trench.

Scott:
Thanks, Mindy. It’s great to be here with my, you know the drill, money sergeant, Mindy Jensen.

Mindy:
Oh, I like. That was good. Scott and I are here to make financial independence less scary, less just for somebody else.
To introduce you to every money story, because we truly believe financial freedom is attainable for everyone, no matter when or where you are starting.

Scott:
That’s right. Whether you want to retire early and travel the world, go on to make big-time investments in assets like real estate like Jabbar, or start your own business, also like Jabbar.
We’ll help you reach your financial goals and get money out of the way, so you can launch yourself towards your dreams.

Mindy:
Today’s show features a 22-year-old enlisted Marine sergeant, who also just so happens to be a real estate entrepreneur with a $1 million net worth.
He also built a business that generates hundreds of thousands of dollars per year since graduating high school, with a combination of flipping, short-term rentals and long-term rentals.

Scott:
Yeah. This is the story of what energy, hustle, self-education, discipline, frugality and the interweaving, the interrelation of real estate investing into your personal life, can achieve for you in just a few short years. I know I had a similar experience to Jabbar in many ways, 9, 10 years ago when I was getting started.
Just how that foundation can set you up to absolutely see your business and personal wealth explode in the out years. It’s a real treat to do this now, because we last recorded with Jabbar in December 2021, when he had just purchased his first two properties. Actually, it was Dan Sheeks who recorded with him then, I was very jealous.
But he had purchased his first two properties by the age of 20, about $850,000 in real estate, and laid a really strong foundation of frugality and income from those properties. You’re in for a treat today, as we learn about how that set him up to absolutely explode heading into 2022 and 2023 from a business and personal wealth perspective.

Mindy:
Scott, I think what I’m hearing you say is everybody should be just like Jabbar.

Scott:
Let’s be like Jabbar.

Mindy:
Let’s be like Jabbar. Let’s not waste another second, let’s bring in Jabbar. Jabbar Adesada is a 22-year-old US Marine and real estate investor. We last spoke with him on the BiggerPockets Money Podcast in December of 2021.
At the time, Jabbar was new-ish to real estate and had the stated goal of becoming a millionaire by the time he turned 30. Today, we’re bringing Jabbar back on the show to update us on his journey and how he was able to, spoiler alert, beat his millionaire goal by nine years.
Jabbar, welcome back to the BiggerPockets Money Podcast. I’m so excited to talk to you today.

Jabbar:
Oh, that was an amazing introduction. Thank you so much for having me.

Mindy:
That’s your life. That’s not an amazing introduction. That’s just like, “Hey, here’s Jabbar.”

Jabbar:
But you said it so cool. You made me sound cooler, I thank you so much.

Mindy:
Well, was any of it not true?

Jabbar:
No, it’s true. It just sounds awesome when you say it.

Mindy:
Jabbar, before we jump into this, I wanted to recap a little chat we were having before we started recording.
I said, “Oh, so you’re a millionaire now?” Your response, what was your response?

Jabbar:
Finally.

Mindy:
Finally, and how old are you, Jabbar?

Jabbar:
I’m 22.

Mindy:
22, so finally. I thought it was hilarious and I was laughing like crazy, but also I want to point out that you’re 22. Don’t compare the beginning or middle of your journey to the middle or end of somebody else’s journey, because there’s different circumstances surrounding all of this.
I’m a couple of years older than you, Jabbar. I’ve been investing since longer than you were born. That doesn’t make me a better person, but it does make me a really bad person for you to compare your story to, because I had a head start that you didn’t. I was investing in the ’90s. You weren’t around in the ’90s, right?

Jabbar:
No, so I could be 45 secretly.

Mindy:
I just wanted to point out that yes, you’re finally a millionaire. There’s this idea around the FI community that, “Oh, I’ve discovered fire. Now I want to be a millionaire as fast as I possibly can.”
That’s a great goal, but it’s not going to happen overnight. Jabbar, how did it happen overnight for you?

Jabbar:
No. I think that really for me on my goal and my journey to financial independence, one of the things that I was intentional about at the beginning, was investing and then being extremely aggressive on my defense, which is my saving. I started off first focusing on setting up my financial foundation, which was increasing like, “How can I maximize my saving rate? How can I make sure that I am saving X amount of dollars every month?”
Then I’m just investing every single, last penny in excess of what I need. Then I started to focus on investing, but because I didn’t have a lot of money. Being a Marine just not making a lot, I was netting from my job between $1,500 to now $2,300 a month from the Marine Corps take home pay. Because I wasn’t making a lot of money, when I was looking at different real estate investing strategies, I was a lot more focused on cashflow.
Even though I was investing in assets that were increasing my net worth over time, I was increasing my income as well, because now I have a bunch of cashflow from the short-term rental properties that I had. It was a combination of just starting off with the defense, which was the saving. Getting into the offense, which was the increase of my income.
Then that also doubling as my investment side of the road, of just being able to increase my overall net worth. I’m excited to dive deep into that.

Scott:
Jabbar, we last chatted with you and I’m very jealous. I did not get to chat with you, it was actually one of our other co-hosts, Dan Sheeks, author of First to a Million, who got to interview you back in December 2021.
At that time, you had purchased your first rental property house hack that you were crushing it with a rent by the room strategy. You had just purchased your second property, which is a Smoky Mountain vacation rental for $630,000, $650,000 odd dollars with a partner.

Jabbar:
$600,000, yeah.

Scott:
Yeah. Would you mind just giving us a quick recap of the journey, getting to that point?
Then I’d love to hear and pick up the conversation from there. How did that vacation rental go and what have you been up to since?

Jabbar:
Yeah, absolutely. At the very beginning, I had that amazing house hack that started off as just my industry of rejection, because it was really difficult to be able to get that loan to be able to purchase that property so young. I bought that property when I was 19, making very little money, but I had, I think, around $25,000 or $30,000 saved up. I just had gotten my six months of credit history.
I had six months, so very slim credit history, and there’s just a bunch of roadblocks with me approaching different lenders to finally getting that one. With that one, I eventually was able to buy that property. That property ended up being something that basically matched my military income. All of a sudden, I was making my military salary and then cashflow from that. Which I think that year, my net cashflow year over year from 2021 on that property was $1,500.
It ended up being a little bit higher than I expected, $1,500 a month. At the time in the military, I was making around I believe $1,600, $1,700 a month by the end of the year. I was basically seeing, “Wow, I just literally gave myself almost 100% increase of my income by purchasing this property.” By seeing that being successful, I was able to partner with somebody on my next property.
Which basically was I didn’t put up any of the money, but I put up all of the work, the knowledge of finding the deal and putting the deal together, and managing everything. That property actually propelled me into not only getting more cashflow and additional net worth increase from that property. But it also gave me the credibility to start working with other investors to continue partnering. I did that for a little while.
I think I got up to I have five partners now on, I think, five additional of those, you put up all the money, I put in the work and then we split profits 50/50, because I found the deal, I’m managing the deal for lifetime. Then you guarantee the debt and then you also put in the money to investing in the project. Just like to wrap up today, before two years ago, I was at two units. Now, I have 25 units that I own.
Five of them are with partners, the other additional 20 of those are just solo me. Then I have also a bunch of properties, we have 12 or 13 construction properties. Flips, things like hotels, when I’m buying the property and immediately putting it on the market. I ventured off into several different strategies of real estate investing in business, to do what I was talking about with the offense.
Which I think has made the most meaningful impact and increase to my journey to becoming a millionaire rapidly, was just overall being more focused on increasing my income, because you can only save so much. But when you’re able to turn the offense or the income ladder or meter up, you have an exponential amount of room to grow there.

Scott:
Well, let’s dive into we’re in December, late 2021, and you just bought your next vacation rental.
At that point in time, you’re earning $18,000 a year in your military salary as an enlisted man. Did you even have BAH or BAS allowances at the time?

Jabbar:
No.

Scott:
No, okay. Those are basic allowance for housing and basic allowance for sustenance. Basically, they’re after-tax benefits that many military folks get, yet you weren’t even eligible for those at the time, I think at that point.
You’re really making essentially minimum wage and you have these two properties here. What was the next step on your journey and how did you get there following the last conversation we had?

Jabbar:
Yeah. The next step on my journey was, so I went into a space between December of 2021, and then I didn’t purchase my next few properties until June of 2022 actually.
Because I was having a really hard time finding deals. That was something that just got really difficult for me.

Scott:
Your first property was in Savannah, Georgia and your next property was in the Smoky Mountains as a rental.
Where were you looking for those deals leading up to that June 2022 mark?

Jabbar:
Oh God, it was terrible. I was looking all over the country. I remember I was looking in the Smoky Mountains. That was difficult. I was looking in the Blue Ridge, Georgia Mountains. I was looking in the Crystal Beach, Crystal Beach. I was looking at the Gulf Coast. I was looking at the Florida Panhandle until finally, I realized I just need to pick a place and focus on it.
Because I knew I was eligible to do another house act in Savannah, I decided that I was going to just focus in the general Savannah area, like Buford, Savannah, that type of deal so within an hour of Savannah. My next property actually ended up being a subject to property, which I had a Marine who was getting out of the Marine Corps, because he just had some difficulties with maintaining standards.
He was in a pretty distressed situation where he was going to be going back home to Texas, and he was losing his income and he also had a baby on the way. His property, he had bought it and he didn’t really have much equity, so it didn’t really make a lot of sense for him to sell at the time. I convinced him to let me do what’s called subject to or take the home over at subject to.
Meaning the mortgage stayed in his name, and then the deed, the title of the property, was transferred to my name. Now I controlled the property, and then I make the mortgage payments on the property. What I essentially did there, was I negotiated zero money down with a 10-year balloon. In 10 years, I’m going to be paying him I think it’s $80,000, either via sale, cash out, refinance.
Or he just has a note on the property, a secondary note on the property for $80,000. Then that allowed me to basically hold an asset at a 2.5% interest rate, at the time when interest rates were starting to go up significantly.

Scott:
Now this property was a military property. I assume that the seller, when they originally bought it, used a VA 0% down loan on the property. VA loans, to my understanding, are assumable.
Why did you choose to do the subject to and not move into the property and assume the mortgage into your name? What was the thought process there?

Jabbar:
Now, I hope people don’t think this is where Jabbar is greedy, because I knew that I could use my VA loan on an additional property. It would allow me instead of using my VA loan in locking it in for that year on one property.
I could get this property subject to, and then I could do zero down on another VA loan house hack, and then I’ll just have a two for one. I ended up buying those properties within 30 days of each other, which is even more awesome.

Mindy:
What was that second property, the one that you used your VA loan for?

Jabbar:
That second property was what was a triplex in Savannah, Georgia. It’s my most valuable possession. A lot of people don’t know this, but in Savannah, the short-term rental regulations are extremely strict. Maybe a lot of people do know this, but when you live in the property, the rules are very, very laxed and easy.
What I basically did, was I used my VA loan on a triplex that had an additional storage space to turn into a quadplex. I basically bought the property zero money down. I used a HELOC from my first property to fund the renovation of the fourth unit. Then I turned the three units and furnished them, and then turned them into cashflowing Airbnbs.
That significantly increased my net worth, because the valuation of that property, I haven’t gotten it appraised. This is just based off of the comps, is between $1.1 and $1.2 million. I bought that property for $695,000.

Scott:
Wow. You were able to qualify for that on an enlisted Marine income, because of the income you were generating from your first house hack, which was rental income on your tax return. The Airbnb portion of the income that you were generating.
Then because of the history, you were able to use the anticipated, perhaps long-term rental income from the additional units, to help you qualify to purchase a $600,000, $700,000 piece of real estate with a 0% down loan as a Marine.
That’s the power of house hacking getting started. If you bought a house first, you would’ve been totally ineligible for the next 10 years to qualify for another property. Am I getting close?

Jabbar:
Yeah, pretty much. The income from the Airbnb, that duplex I took over subject to, that just helped with just more additional savings. The income also from the property that I had left, was just also counted savings. It canceled out the debt that I had from the first property.
Then what really helped was the long-term, projected rents of the other three units was high enough that 75% of that was what allowed me to qualify for that loan. I got that loan at like a 5% interest rate, so really good now. Yeah.

Mindy:
Yeah, yeah. What I’m hearing is just the continuing tale of clever, think outside the box, creative ways to buy real estate, creative ways to add value to these properties.
I’m assuming you’re not buying beautiful, perfect properties that have in no way, any way to increase the value. It’s from $600,000 to $1.2 million. You didn’t get $400,000, $500,000 in equity because you added one unit. You did a lot of things to this unit, right?

Jabbar:
Yeah, the property’s beautiful. It was my first venture into renovating a property and that thing, let me tell you, drained my bank account at the time. I spent a lot of money on every single unit. Not just making that 14 unit, even though that was the biggest difference was getting those two bedrooms in there.
But really renovating the entire property, the property being a little bit on the more dated side, that all that stuff contributed to the increase in valuation. Because now it’s a beautiful, all new, renovated 2022 property.

Scott:
We talked a little bit about the valuation increase of this property. Can you give us the numbers around monthly income from a short-term rental basis?
What would the cashflow be if you converted them all to long-term after moving out of this property? Because the short-term rentals only work because you’re living in it right now.

Jabbar:
Yeah. Pretty much the way basically each unit, each unit is a two bed, one bath, and then I live in the one bedroom, one bath. If I basically got, man, pen and paper, because I haven’t done this in a while for the long-term rental math. But for the short-term rental math, each unit rents out between $4,000 and $6,000 a month between Airbnb and VRBO. My total expenses for the property are usually between $6,000 and $7,000 a month.
On the low end, if I’m doing $12,000 a month in gross rents, after everything is said and done, I’m usually at a cashflow of around, was it $4,000 or $5,000 a month? $4,000 or $5,000 a month after putting away for CapEx and maintenance things and things like that. If I converted them all to long-term rentals after me living out the property, I’d probably get $1,500 for mine and then $1,800 for the two bedroom. What is that?

Scott:
It’s about 6,900 bucks.

Jabbar:
Thank you for your help. It would be roughly about $1,000, almost $1,000.

Scott:
What’s your principal interest, taxes and insurance on the VA loan?

Jabbar:
It’s $4,500.

Scott:
Fantastic. Thank you for sharing all that. That’s awesome. You’re crushing it right now on this. It’s way more profitable to live there than to move out, it seems like.
I’ll be interested to see what happens next there, but fantastic. Can you give us the numbers on the other property, the one you bought subject to?

Jabbar:
That one, I got a really, really great deal. I took over that mortgage and since it’s a 2.25% interest rate, the total mortgage payment is $1,250. It’s $1,250, and then the total rents on that property are between $5,000 and $6,000 a month.
My total expenses are roughly around $2,000 before CapEx, maintenance and vacancy, and then $5,000, $6,000 a month. I’d roughly give it about $2,500, $3,000 a month in pure cashflow after everything.

Scott:
Okay. Coming out of June 2022, we pick up these two awesome deals. What happens next? What happens between then and now?

Jabbar:
This is where I believe real estate investing, I realized a strength that I had. My strength is I’m a really good operator. I’m able to find good deals, but I’m better at managing them, figuring out how to fund them, and basically the whole managerial aspect of it. I had a friend, my best friend, Marcel, who was in Myrtle Beach about three and a half hours away.
He was doing wholesaling and he was also becoming a real estate agent there. What I decided to do was I was like, “Hmm, my friend is doing this deal finding thing over there, and people are paying him assignment fees. What if he could just do the same thing here, and then we could just do business together as friends?” I can even expedite his journey here because I have a lot of connections.
I understand the market, I can teach him, I can help him. Basically, what I did was I moved him from where he was living in Myrtle Beach, to my very first property, that rent by the bedroom property. Then he became not only like a wholesaler, but then a real estate agent. Then what he started doing was he helped me buy three additional properties. Was it three or four?
That year, by the end of the year, time sometimes gets wonky. I believe it was three properties he helped me find as a real estate agent. I basically did the whole scenario again, where I had someone put up all the money, guarantee the debt for the property, and then he found the deal. But because he’s my resource, I was the one bringing that to the table to my partners/investors. Then we basically split the profit and cashflow and equity in that property 50/50.
That was another way where I was basically able to own more real estate without using my own capital, but by using my brain. That contributed to not only more net worth increase, but more cashflow. They’re all in Savannah, Georgia.

Scott:
Okay. Can you give us a breakdown on these deals? What are the deals that you found and who was your partner on them? How’d you qualify for them? How’d you finance them?

Jabbar:
Yeah. Pretty much what I did was I had, so for the first one it was a $200,000 property. Basically, the beautiful thing about being in a really strict area, and one of the reasons I decided about Savannah is because in the areas where everyone can do short-term rentals, guess what? You’re competing against the top short-term rental investors in the country.
People with more money than you, people who are more creative than you, people with more time than you a lot of the times. Whereas in Savannah, because it’s universally known as one of those cities that are really strict, not a lot of people know and take the time to study the market, to find where in Savannah you can legally and easily do short-term rentals.
In Savannah, I can say this on a podcast, because I’m just not afraid of giving value. Most people won’t take action on it anyways, just statistically is just in the county of Savannah, the regulations change drastically. All you need is to be outside the city limits and you need to apply for a short-term rental license. I’ve never had one that was denied.
I think it just couldn’t have been like a crime house or have any history of crime, I believe. That’s the biggest like, “This is the rule that if that property has been involved, it can’t qualify for a permit.” What I would do, basically being able to explain this to investors, I found people actually on Instagram who reached out to me to partner.
Because I did a lot of different podcasts and a lot of people knew me doing this with the cabin, and would reach out to me and say, “Hey, I want to basically do that same exact thing with you.” What I basically did was when I found a property and an opportunity, I basically go back and reach out to them, and Marcel would just find these deals on the MLS.
We’d just keep on putting offers in until one stuck, and then Marcel would sell me the property. The investor would be the one qualifying for the loan, whether it was a second home loan or a DSCR loan. They would be the ones who were putting up all the money for buying the property and then also furnishing the property.
Then another thing we did, was because I did have my cabin and I had the experience of being in an area that was highly competitive, is I knew how to be more competitive in a market where there’s not as much professional competition. I did things like add hot tubs to properties. I did things like hire a professional designer.
I did things like make sure that, now it’s a little bit even more advanced with my team, but I just did things that people in Savannah didn’t think were necessary. Because of that, I have an unfair advantage with my properties perform very, very great.

Mindy:
Okay. You said that your strength was running properties. Your strength is your creativity. Your strength is seeing a property and not taking it at face value. It’s, “Oh, what can I do with this? How can I make this into what I want it to be? How can I finance this when my income on paper says I can’t qualify?”
I’m going to partner with somebody who’s going to take on the debt for me. I’m going to add a second room or add a second unit. I’m going to live in the small unit. I’m going to do… That’s what makes you so amazing, Jabbar. How are you only 22?

Jabbar:
It’s just literally all the learning and education I got, was literally just listening and reading books by BiggerPockets. It’s like the perfect part, is that I learned how to think this by the ideas from other investors who have been on podcasts.
It’s not only BiggerPockets, it’s all the other ones as well, but it was just all that massive amount of just consumption, consumption. These things, I didn’t just think of these things, I just copied them from what other people were doing elsewhere.

Scott:
Jabbar, we have these three deals, and this is wonderful. This is an awesome story I hear. You’re buying them outside of the city, but inside of a county of Savannah.

Jabbar:
Yeah. Yes. Now I’m excited to talk about what I’m doing now and what’s completely different.

Scott:
Okay. But is there anything else between end of 2022 and these three or four properties and now that we should cover before we get to now?

Jabbar:
I could talk about lessons. I could talk about just pretty much I learned basically just with any investment, things are not always going to be immediately like your pro forma states it’s going to be. For one of the properties, we immediately had to do a capital call, which I’m also responsible for 50% of the risk. If the property, let’s say, loses money or there’s a huge expense that is not going to be covered by the money in our bank account, I have to come up with 50% of that as well.
We have a $8,000 plumbing issue at one property. We have a $6,000 HVAC unit at another property. Then at another property, just the increase in budget was so much over what we initially expected, that I had to actually come out of pocket even though it was supposed to be a zero-down deal just because it was off. I had to actually come out of pocket for the addition in construction costs for that final one in 2022.
It taught me why you want to have money when you’re investing in real estate. Real estate’s not a game where you can use everyone’s cashflow, cashflow, cashflow until you have several HVACs go out. That really changed my mind entering into 2023 realizing that I need to get actual cashflow from business. If I’m not going to get it from my job, I need to get it from business. Otherwise, I’m going to have all these properties and nothing to show for.
Or I could potentially go out of bankrupt if so many different, unexpected costs keep coming out. Because you get to $10,000 a month in cashflow but if you have a month of $50,000 in expenses and you only have $10,000 a month coming in, well, what are you going to do?

Mindy:
I love that you’re bringing this up. I wanted to ask about reserves. Honestly, I’m glad that you’re sharing that you had some issues, because you can go on YouTube and find no shortage of videos that talk about how great real estate is.
Then they just gloss over the fact that they had a $6,000 HVAC system that they had to do, an $8,000 plumbing. They just don’t tell you about that. That doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. They just didn’t tell you about it. I love that you’re sharing this with us. Thank you for your honesty. I really appreciate that.

Jabbar:
It changed my life.

Mindy:
Yeah. It’ll really like, “Boy, it’s awesome to have a great deal that doesn’t have any problems,” but you learn so much more when you run into these problems.

Jabbar:
Yeah. I actually was recently traveling, and I’m glad that you said that because everyone’s wanting things to be sunshine and rainbows. I met this millionaire, who lost his million dollar net worth, not once, not twice, but he lost his million dollar net worth five times, five times. Imagine you went from being a millionaire to not being a millionaire. It was all for different things and different lessons, but he did this example that was really cool.
Imagine you have a piece of paper and with that piece of paper, it’s nice and smooth. This piece of paper represents your journey to, let’s say, becoming a millionaire, becoming financially free because that’s what we do. It’s not for the titles, but it’s really for the time freedom. When you have a smooth piece of paper and the road to your journey is smooth, and you hit a roadblock at the top of that piece of paper, guess what happens?
You go all the way back down to the bottom. You don’t go back to $700,000, $500,000, you could go back to zero because you didn’t have any of those lessons. When you have a journey and you crumple that piece of paper, there’s all these divots. There’s all these divots in that piece of paper, that literally stop you from hitting rock bottom.
Those divots and crunches of the piece of paper represent all the journeys, all the trials and tribulations. Those $10,000 CapEx issues that you go through when you’re investing. You want to have a crumpled piece of paper. You want to have a lot of these different adversities on your investing journey, because that makes you a smarter investor.
When you have an issue, you don’t go back to rock bottom or back to square one, you’re just going back a few paces. You know exactly how to climb out of there and get back to where you were, and even go further because of all those mistakes and errors that you made. You should be grateful for them.

Mindy:
Yes, yes, yes. I could not agree more. I love it. Okay. You just mentioned a word that I want you to define for us. You said CapEx, and you’ve said this a couple of times.
Can you share what that means for our listeners? And while we’re at it, you said vacancy when you were throwing in CapEx a while ago, so explain what those are and why you want to take into account those?

Jabbar:
CapEx is going to be, it stands for capital expenditures. That’s all of your costs in the property that are going to affect it over time like the roof, the HVAC, the electrical, the plumbing, the foundation. These are things that maybe might not be an issue today, but over time these things tend to deteriorate and become issues that you have to initiate cash outflows for in the future.
That defines CapEx. It’s not like your immediate maintenance problem. Someone broke your, I don’t know, like your faucet. That’s maintenance. CapEx is going to be those things in the property, that you need to have in the property that just over time deteriorate. Then when you talk about vacancy, vacancy, everyone knows this, is your property’s not going to be 100% rented all the time.
If you see a pro forma and it suggests a pro forma meaning like an analysis of the property that’s going to be rented 100% of the time, you should be very, very skeptical and concerned. Because there’s going to be times where you have to stop maybe renting the property because of CapEx. You might have to stop renting the property because you have a tenant turnover, meaning a tenant’s moving out of the property.
There’s different reasons why you wouldn’t be receiving rents because different things happen with the property. Those expenses are things that you want to account for when you’re analyzing the property, because you want to be very realistic with your expectations for how the property will perform. These things are just things that will help you have a more accurate assumption of how good of a deal you’re actually buying when you purchase a property or an asset in general.

Mindy:
Awesome, thank you. I have a couple of questions for you. Are you still in the military?

Jabbar:
Yeah, I’m still in.

Mindy:
How do you have time to work?

Jabbar:
Well, because of just additional ventures, I do have a team now. Before it was all me and it was a lot. I never went out. Literally, the only time I would go out was to meet other real estate investors and I would miss a lot of sleep, honestly.
It was just me just running myself, just trying to take care of as much as possible and I was doing it, but then things just started getting out of reach for me. Then that’s when I started hiring people and taking a step back from having cashflow to invest in different things, to help me manage everything.

Scott:
I would love to hear about the process from getting these three properties to the current state that you’re in right now, what you’re currently doing.

Jabbar:
Perfect. Like I talked about before, I had that realization that CapEx is real. I don’t want to say cashflow is a myth, but cashflow I believe now, is truly meant to be a defensive mechanism to help you maintain and keep that property. I no longer believe that it’s something that I personally, for my long-term investing strategy, am comfortable with just solely relying on for different things like living.
If so, it should be a very small percentage. What I decided to start doing starting 2023 was I realized, I was like, “Okay, we’re not in a problem. But eventually just seeing the rate that we want to keep purchasing, we need to have some way to have larger cash injections into just my business, just to protect myself against all these unexpected expenses.”
Because it just seemed like I would have more and more, even on the properties that I had bought in 2021, I was having CapEx challenges. That’s when I decided to start flipping properties as a way to create more cash outflow. Then that also taught me about how I could renovate properties and managing contractors and things of that nature. The first month of 2023, I actually bought four properties in one month.
I bought three flips, a condo and two single-family homes, and then I bought another one of those partnership properties. That really one, the three flips ended up being profits of $54,000, $89,000 and $35,000. Those were just all me. Instead of me getting money partnering with investors and giving them equity, I would go to the same investors with similar investors. I’d have them purchase the property in cash, or loan me money to purchase the property in cash using debt.
I’d guarantee them an interest rate of between 10% and 12%. Sometimes I’d even offer points to make it more enticing to them, because I was now more so focused on that cash outlay, like that cash outflow coming back into the business. With that, I just started flipping properties. I went and I started buying a flip at the beginning of 2023 every month, one or two a month.

Scott:
Okay. Now walk us through, how long does a flip take for you? How many have you completed so far and how many are in process today?

Jabbar:
The average flip, it depends on the type of deal we’re doing because we’ve had some, and when I say we, is in June, I decided to partner with my best friend that I moved down here. But a flip, if we’re renovating it, it takes between three and five months from purchase, and it depends on a myriad of things, from purchase to sale. Three to five months is our average timeline from purchase, construction and sale.
Then if it’s a property that we’re just buying and immediately selling, we will close on the property. We’re not wholesaling it. We’re buying it and we’re immediately selling it to another investor, or we’re buying it and immediately selling it or putting it on the open market to be sold as is. We’re not touching that property at all. Those take about one to two months from purchase to sale typically.
We’ve done about eight of those purchase and sales, eight of those purchase and sales. We’ve also done about nine flips from purchase, sale and rehab. Purchase, rehab and sale, sorry.

Mindy:
You’ve mentioned your best friend is a real estate agent. Who else is on your team that’s allowing you to flip so quickly?
Because three months is amazing start to finish. Five months, that’s still a really good flip, but that wasn’t your first flip.

Jabbar:
My first flip took five months, but my second flip took three months total.

Mindy:
Who’s on your team that you’re able to flip so quickly, because it’s hard to find contractors? I don’t know if you know this, you can’t find them.

Jabbar:
Yeah. We’re having contractor issues actually right now. Pretty much I would say the biggest thing with what we had, was we had already identified or I had at the beginning it was just me. I had already identified a contractor, and that was the contractor I was using to help me renovate some of these properties that we’re keeping. That actually gave me the idea and then the confidence to start flipping.
Because I already had a relationship with this person, I had an idea of what their costs were and I started with that contractor. Then that contractor had several crews to where he was able to work on several different properties at once for us. I’m sorry. With that, we’ve ran through two different construction companies. But with them, they have usually a project manager and then a general contractor attached. Then they manage all the subs that are working on our properties.
Then for now, I also have a quality control manager that is on my payroll that is managing the project manager, and then who manages the general contractor, just to make sure that everything’s on the same page. Then my best friend is responsible for going to the projects and actually making sure that things are happening. If an update is sent from them or sent from my quality control person, he’s actually verifying with his eyes that these things are going on.

Mindy:
Do you have any issue mixing friends and business?

Jabbar:
Yes. From me and my best friend’s perspective, it’s like our business is split 50/50 and that wasn’t a business decision. That was very much a friend decision, but from a perspective of holding accountable, when someone makes a mistake, we don’t beat around the bush. It’s like, “Hey, this is what happened. You can’t do this again.” But it’s immediately solution oriented.
Everything just has to be solved. We don’t really have time for emotions, and sometimes that plays to our detriment because we work with other people who want to hear, express those things. But for us, like me being a Marine and then my best friend being very understanding the level of risk that we’re taking, we don’t have time to for anything that’s not a solution.
It’s very much so if you make a mistake, we address it and then we immediately just go after what can be done to address this mistake.

Scott:
Well, last question before we wrap up here is what’s next for you? Where’s all this lead for Jabbar?

Jabbar:
Sorry. For me now, it’s getting away from being side hustly, to more so actual business. Learning how hiring people and building out my team and building, out SOPs and different things to manage the business and keep track of things. Because it’s gotten so much to where sometimes there’s properties that I don’t even know the right address for. Sometimes there’s address discrepancies, so it’s just overall organizing the business.
Then also I would like to get into doing things like online, not guru-ish, but online education, helping other people who are young achieve and go along the same side of success. I haven’t had time to even think about that yet, but those are just future plans and just having fun. I get out the military next year, it’s super exciting. I’m finally going to be free to do what I love doing. Yeah. I was talking to Mindy before this.
I travel to Columbia. I’m a frequent Columbia South America visitor, so I’m excited to do a lot more traveling when I get out the military.

Mindy:
Because the military doesn’t offer you enough options to travel?

Jabbar:
Yeah, it’s crazy. I travel a lot too with them. Not so much lately because I’m getting out, but I’ve been to a few countries with them.

Mindy:
If somebody is listening who is 18, what is one piece of advice you would want them to walk away with?

Jabbar:
I would say that just from what I’ve realized, just growing as an investor and just going on my journey, is you just have to obsess over the education side of things first and then the rest will take care of itself. I noticed with a lot of young people, because I’ve helped quite a few young people in the military, and just as friends invest in their first property.
They want to escape the grind of just learning and just understanding what is CapEx, what is a cap rate? What is cash on cash, what are the different principles and different types of ways that you can invest? All of these, understanding the operations behind different strategies in real estate, I noticed that people want to escape that. I think that is where opportunity lies, is understanding those things very intimately.
Then when you’re taking action, you can confidently do so knowing that you’ve done all of the background education that’s needed, instead of trying to wing it or skip that. Then you’re not going to feel confident to move forward because you haven’t prepared. I guess it’s just a preparation for me. It’s something I look back to of being extremely grateful for, because I didn’t have to do 100 hours of education to become a house flipper.
I had already done it. I had already done the research before, and I just had to brush up and then start doing it.

Scott:
How much work have you done on the properties in your portfolio in the form of actually fixing things up, swinging a hammer and doing work on the property over the last couple of years?

Jabbar:
I’ve painted once. My very first property, I painted a fireplace.

Scott:
So that’s it?

Jabbar:
Yes, that’s all my experience. I painted a fireplace one time, I didn’t even paint it myself.
I took some Marines one weekend and we went to go paint, and they did probably like 75% of it, so I assisted with painting a fireplace.

Scott:
Well, Jabbar, where can people find out more about you, if they want to follow your remarkable journey?

Jabbar:
Yeah. On Instagram, @Jabbar_Investar. On TikTok, @Jabbar_Investar. That’s J-A-B-B-A-R_I-N-V-E-S-T-A-R. Investar instead of investor.

Scott:
This has been absolutely fantastic. What a wild ride you’ve been on the last couple of years. I look forward to seeing what you do when you’re released from your full-time job as a Marine right now, and seeing where this adventure leads, because I love the way you’re going about it.
I think you’re thinking about all the right things and you’re obviously taking on a lot of risk, but you know you’re taking a lot of risk and are trying to play the right amount of defense. I just really admire what you’ve been up to, Jabbar.

Jabbar:
Thank you so much, guys, for having me. It’s honestly a pleasure to be back and update everyone. I’m excited to be back again with hopefully some more exciting lessons to share.

Mindy:
Yeah. I can’t wait to see what you can do when you have time to invest.
All right. Jabbar, thank you so much for your time today. This is always fun to talk to you and we will talk to you again soon.

Jabbar:
See you.

Mindy:
All right, Scott. That was Jabbar Adesada and his amazing, wonderful, fabulous story. By the way, I want to remind everybody, he’s 22.
He did all of this stuff by age 22. I cannot wait to see what he has by age 23. What did you think of the show, Scott?

Scott:
Oh, just a fantastic human being and individual. Look at the energy and excitement he brings to his business. This guy, he’s somehow getting by with four or five hours of sleep, building a million dollar net worth, didn’t go to college, enlisted in the military out of high school, made 18 grand a year.
Didn’t even qualify for the actual benefits you get in the military like BAH and BAS that make life a lot easier for the first couple of years. Still bought his first couple of properties. Again, this self-imposed discipline. This is not a guy who’s going out and spending like a sailor even though he’s in the Marines.
I love using that joke. This is a guy who’s really frugal, and directs his energy and the best part of his attention to building a life for himself. He’s going to come out out of the military at the same age most people graduate college, not only with no student debt or things holding him back.
But with a multimillion dollar potentially net worth, and a thriving business and a reputation for discipline, industry, frugality, all of the things that you can want. The world’s his oyster in a way that it isn’t for a lot of folks. He did it the hard way without any advantages backing him up. Just total admiration for Jabbar. Let’s be like Jabbar.

Mindy:
Let’s be like Jabbar. If you did not catch his first episode, please go back and listen to episode 257 of the BiggerPockets Money Podcast where Jabbar tells his beginning story. Then go back and listen to this one again so you can catch all of his excitement, because he really is so in love with life and so excited at all the opportunities that he has available to him.
His superpower is his creativity and his willingness to learn the rules, and learn how to work within the rules creatively, to be able to make the most money he can make by investing in cashflowing assets. Doing what other people aren’t doing and really just knocking it out of the park. I love Jabbar. I love his story and I can’t wait to talk to him in a few years and see what he’s doing then.

Scott:
One thing I’ll also call out is in that enthusiasm and passion, there’s also wisdom, right? I’m hearing parts of it and I’m like, “Oh boy, how leveraged are we here? What’s the relative risk that we’re taking in this business relative position?” But when you think about it, he’s not that leveraged. He’s bought two house hacks and he’s bought one subject to deal. Everything else has been with a partner or inside of this large business.
He’s building up his cash reserves. He’s learned lessons that some people don’t learn for decades longer. I’m not going to say that his position isn’t without risk. He has serious risk in his portfolio, but he’s also got a very reasonable debt to equity position. He likely has most of his portfolio financed with long-term debt outside of the short-term projects that he’s working on.
He’s respectful of the risks that he’s taking here. He can lose, but he’s also got such a good chance to win, and I wouldn’t bet against him.

Mindy:
I would definitely not bet against him. All right, Scott. Should we get out of here?

Scott:
Let’s do it.

Mindy:
That wraps up this fantastic episode of the BiggerPockets Money Podcast. He is Scott Trench and I am Mindy Jensen saying toodle-oo, caribou.

Scott:
If you enjoyed today’s episode, please give us a five-star review on Spotify or Apple.
If you’re looking for even more money content, feel free to visit our YouTube channel at YouTube.com/BiggerPocketsMoney.

Mindy:
BiggerPockets Money was created by Mindy Jensen and Scott Trench, produced by Kailyn Bennett. Editing by Exodus Media, copywriting by Nate Weintraub.
Lastly, a big thank you to the BiggerPockets team for making this show possible.

Tracy Kasper, president of the National Association of Realtors, joins ‘The Exchange’ to discuss the housing market’s outlook for 2024, the drop in mortgage rates, and more.

Fannie Mae is predicting a recession in 2024 in its latest Economic Developments report. As a result, home sales are expected to bottom out next year before ultimately improving in 2025.

A 2024 recession has been repeatedly predicted by think tanks, individual economists, and financial experts. Fannie Mae adds its own forecast to the growing chorus of experts saying the same thing: Despite a strong economy, the U.S. is headed for a mild economic downturn next year.

An Economy Built on Shaky Foundations Means an Inevitable Crash

Why is this the most likely economic trajectory? For one, experts at Fannie Mae point out that the high GDP as of the third quarter of 2023—a very healthy 4.9%—is built on shaky foundations. This is economic growth fueled by debt spending rather than substantial growth in real income. 

In fact, real incomes grew by a very small 0.6% annualized in the third quarter. Simultaneously, the savings rate is declining and was 3.4% during the same period, a far cry from the robust 7% rate before the pandemic. 

All of these factors point to a situation where the current spending levels propping up the economy are unsustainable. Fannie Mae predicts that consumer spending will go down in 2024, reinstating a more ‘‘normal’’ relationship between spending and income. 

Therefore, Fannie Mae thinks GDP will decline 0.4% on a Q4/Q4 basis in 2024, although the negative figure is expected to result from the timing of the year-end report in the fourth quarter. It’s not indicative of a ‘‘deeper economic downturn.’’ 

The good news in Fannie Mae’s forecast is that the recession, if it does happen, will be very mild and won’t last into 2025, when the economy is expected to rebound, with a projected GDP of 1.6% for the year as a whole.

Anyone who’s read economic forecasts will know that labor market trends are a robust indicator of where the economy is headed as a whole. As of October, as the report points out, the unemployment rate is steadily growing. It’s currently at 3.9%, half a percentage up from April levels. Both initial and continuing unemployment claims are rising, which could again indicate that we are entering a recession. 

What About Real Estate?

Again, these are not alarming figures, which is good news for the economy in the long term. However, it’s not such good news for the housing market. Paradoxically, these unemployment levels aren’t quite high enough to make an immediate difference to interest rates. 

‘‘Given the unemployment rate is still below 4%, a premature easing of monetary policy would risk reanimating inflation, so we do not expect the Federal Reserve to be quick in cutting rates in coming months,’’ Fannie Mae’s report says. 

Needless to say, sustained high Fed rates translate into high mortgage rates that are hampering home sales. The Fannie Mae (FNMA/OTCQB) Economic and Strategic Research (ESR) Group expects things to get worse before they get better: Home sales will bottom out in early 2024, per the ESR report. 

There is a silver lining in this forecast, however: Interest rates will begin coming down in the second half of 2024, and Fannie Mae expects them to average 6.8% by the end of the year. This will happen regardless of whether there is a recession or the much-hoped-for ‘‘soft landing,’’ because the Fed’s fiscal policies are largely working toward the desired goal of reduced inflation rates. 

Final Thoughts

Overall, it could be a lot worse. While the housing market is currently suffering from surging interest rates and supply constraints, it will improve eventually. 

Doug Duncan, Fannie Mae senior vice president and chief economist, calls the results of the ESR report ‘‘unsurprising,” adding: 

“Housing has been and continues to be under serious affordability pressure, resulting in recessionary-level home sales activity. While many current owners with low mortgage rates will likely continue to be discouraged from listing their homes, we expect mortgage rates to trend modestly downward in 2024, which should help kick-start a gradual recovery in home sales into 2025.”

This isn’t to say that home sales will return to anything near pre-pandemic levels. This level of sales recovery ‘’will likely take years,’’ according to Fannie Mae’s experts. However, the worst will soon be behind the housing market: Fannie Mae forecasts that ‘’the bottom will be passed in 2024.’’ 

Investors should take heart. The housing market is not heading off a cliff—it’s just nearing the bottom of a trough.

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Don Peebles, The Peebles Corporation CEO and chairman, joins ‘Power Lunch’ to discuss his expectations for the commercial real estate market.

More people are moving out of state as Americans take advantage of remote and hybrid work to move across the country. In 2022 alone, 8.2 million people moved between states, according to the latest U.S. Census data.

The annual American Community Survey by the bureau found that overall, in 2022, state-to-state movers made up a larger share of movers, rising 19.9% compared to 18.8% the prior year. 

These numbers show a trend of rising state-to-state migration, even as overall movement has declined. Between 2021 and 2022, the overall migration rate dropped slightly, from 12.8% to 12.6%. 

In other words, while people are staying still overall, those who do move are increasingly likely to move to another state. So where are they going, where are they leaving, and why?

Where Are People Moving To? 

The number of people moving from one state to another was higher in the South and West compared to other parts of the country. In many cases, the states with the largest migration flows were people moving from one highly populated state to another. For example, many people living in California left for Texas and Arizona, while those in New York left for nearby New Jersey or sunny Florida.

According to one estimation of the Census data, Connecticut had the highest net rate of migration, at 1.58%, gaining 56,582 people between 2021 and 2022. Other areas with the highest net migration included warmer states like South Carolina, Florida, and Arizona.

What States and Areas Are People Leaving? 

Most of the places where people are moving out of state tend to be on the East Coast. New York, Maryland, and New Jersey were among the top places that lost residents in 2022, losing -1.25%, -1.08% and -1% of the total population, respectively.

Texas was among the states with the lowest outmigration rate at 11.7%, meaning those who did move were less likely to move out of state.

What These Trends Tell Us About the Real Estate Market 

Migration patterns have changed since the pandemic, according to William Frey, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. While fewer people are moving within their county, data suggests that longer-distance movement across states has risen.

“Longer-distance migration may continue to rise as younger workers become more willing to seek jobs across the country and as employment opportunities respond to the changing nature of work-residence patterns that began during the pandemic,” Frey wrote.

As people’s living habits change, that could also have longer-term consequences on the real estate market. With areas in less demand for housing, prices are more likely to fall.

For example, in Texas, which saw the least amount of people leave the state, the real estate market is in a correction. Prices in areas like Austin, once the poster child for the booming housing market, are dropping faster than the national average.

The opposite is true in markets with strong migration flows. In October, the median listing home price for a home in Raleigh, North Carolina, was 6.7% higher year over year. North Carolina was one of the states that saw a higher-than-average number of people move into the state from another state. 

The U.S. Census data also supports homebuyer migration trends, as many homebuyers are moving to large cities in the South. Home prices in Florida, for example, have steadily increased as more people move in from out of state, although prices have started to flatline. 

The Bottom Line 

It’s important to keep in mind that the U.S. Census data lags, so it’s possible that the numbers from this year will be different. Still, combined with looking at other data on where homeowners are moving to, it seems to hold up that migration trends are having an influence on prices in some real estate markets.

As more people move to seek better-paying jobs or flexible work schedules, those areas are likely to increase in price, while places that are declining in popularity (like Austin, Texas) are likely to see prices drop. 

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With 2023 coming to a close, it’s the best time to get ahead of your taxes. Get with your tax professional, figure out where you stand, and then make some final moves that could save you big bucks when it comes to tax time in a few months. Make sure you know exactly what your options are before you run out of time to do something about it. 

We talked to two expert real estate CPAs and asked them what they are advising clients to do, and importantly not do, in these last few weeks of the year.

Timing is Everything

Amanda Han is a real estate CPA and tax strategist and the author of The Book on Tax Strategies for the Savvy Real Estate Investor for BiggerPockets. She invests all across the U.S.

BiggerPockets: What should investors be looking to do at the end of the year to prep for taxes?

Some of the things investors should look at with respect to year-end is [thinking about] the timing of a transaction. For example, if you are close to closing on a sale that will have a lot of gain, consider deferring that income into Jan. 1 of next year. By delaying the close of that transaction for even just a few days, you can defer the taxes for a whole entire year. 

The opposite applies for expenses. If you need some expenses to offset this year’s income, consider prepaying some of those recurring items before the end of the year to accelerate the write-off into this year.

Even payments charged on a credit card by year-end can be potentially tax deductible. You may not need to have paid off the credit card [for it to count for tax year 2023].

BiggerPockets: What should investors avoid?

One thing investors should avoid is spending money just for purposes of tax deductions. In other words, if it’s not something you need, don’t pay for it just because you may get a tax benefit.

Be Proactive and Communicate With Your Tax Professional

Danielle Rutigliano is a CPA and real estate investor based in Long Island, New York. She is the owner of a boutique CPA firm that specializes in bookkeeping, tax planning, and tax preparation for real estate clients throughout the U.S. As an investor, she’s scaled her portfolio to a little over 40 units in New York, Indiana, and Tennessee in three years. 

BiggerPockets: What should investors be looking to do at the end of the year to prep for taxes?

Investors should be talking to their CPA, who specializes in real estate, before the end of the year to discuss last-minute tax-saving opportunities for 2023. 

They should discuss frequently missed deductions, such as the home office deduction, business use of cell phones, and gifts. They should also discuss if they qualify for the short-term rental loophole or real estate professional status for 2023. If the taxpayer has children, they should discuss with their CPA if it’s beneficial to pay their kids to help them in December for an additional deduction before year-end.  

Investors should keep their books organized and avoid waiting until the last minute to catch up, as this leads to missed deductions. 

Investors who purchased properties in 2023 should talk to their CPA to see if they can benefit from getting a cost segregation study done on their property, which would allow them to utilize bonus depreciation to maximize rental losses. 

Investors should consider prepaying for expenses or services in 2023 to maximize deductions if they are a cash-basis taxpayer. This could be insurance, real estate taxes, or other property-related expenses. 

Investors who have active real estate businesses, such as real estate agents, fix-and-flip investors, and wholesalers, should find out from their CPA if they would benefit from paying themselves a reasonable salary in December to reduce self-employment tax. 

BiggerPockets: What should investors avoid?

• Waiting until the last minute to finalize their 2023 bookkeeping. 
• Working with a tax preparer who does not understand the tax code for real estate clients. 
• Commingling business and personal expenses. 
• Putting rentals in S-Corps 
• Investors should try to avoid selling properties at a gain before year-end: They should try to push the closing to 2024 so they have a full year to plan to minimize the tax impact of that gain. 

BiggerPockets: What are some strategies you wished more people utilized?

• I wish more investors took advantage of real estate professional status because it is a very powerful strategy for tax savings. 
• Proper entity structuring is important and can save taxpayers significant costs. Putting properties in the wrong entity is a very costly mistake, and setting up a rental portfolio structure incorrectly can result in excessive tax preparation costs. 
• Bonus depreciation is also a very powerful tool. I hope that more investors work with their CPA to see if they can benefit from doing a cost segregation study. 

Dreading tax season?

Not sure how to maximize deductions for your real estate business? In The Book on Tax Strategies for the Savvy Real Estate Investor, CPAs Amanda Han and Matthew MacFarland share the practical information you need to not only do your taxes this year—but to also prepare an ongoing strategy that will make your next tax season that much easier.

Note By BiggerPockets: These are opinions written by the author and do not necessarily represent the opinions of BiggerPockets.

David:
Welcome to the BiggerPockets Real Estate podcast. Today is the second of two episodes about deals gone wrong, shows where you hear from real estate pros about mistakes they made so that you don’t have to, especially important in a challenging market like this one, where it’s very hard to make those numbers work.

Rob:
Today, we’re going to be diving right into a deal with our good friend, James Dainard, an expert investor and host of the BiggerPockets On The Market podcast. James calls this deal Humpty Dumpty because the property itself had a great fall, and it’s also a deal where he happened to lose $380,000.

David:
And I’ll say it again, being a strong real estate investor isn’t about never losing money, because that’s going to happen. It’s about being prepared so that when you do lose money, you bounce back, have strong fundamentals, know how to react, and have a plan to get yourself back in the game. Let’s get into it.

Rob:
So James, when did this deal happen and how experienced were you at the time?

James:
I would say I was very experienced. This deal happened in the last 24 months. I’ve been investing since 2005. One thing I can tell you is if you invest for a long period of time, you’re going to run into these deals more regularly than you want, but lots of practice before I got to this major loss. Mine was a $380,000 on my bank account loss. So it was not on paper. It was a real, real hit. And it was just a deal that we bought in 2019, and we finished it up in the worst time you could ever finish a deal in the last 10 years, in 2022, and it took a clip.

David:
All right, James, what kind of property was this?

James:
So it was just a single family, our bread and butter, single family fix-and-flip. It was a 2,000-square-foot house, major fixer, view property, great area, Seattle. But it’s what we do on the regular, buy a house, renovate it, and sell it for some money. It just went the wrong way this time.

Rob:
How’d you find it?

James:
We found it off-market. So this was actually a property that was listed on market for a couple different years, never sold. Sent out a mailing campaign, and the seller engaged with us, and we skirted it off-market, and we thought we got ourselves a home-run deal.

David:
All right. And how much did you pay for this house?

James:
So we paid $550,000 for it. And this is in a class A neighborhood of Seattle, and at the time, after the renovation, we felt very comfortable that we’d be able to sell it for 1.1 million, so a huge, huge spread on this deal.

Rob:
Okay. And what was the plan for this flip? BRRRR? Live-in flip?

James:
So it was a very, very heavy value add fix-and-flip property. It was a two bedroom, one bath, 1,500-square-foot house that we were going to add another 700 square feet into the basement. We were taking it all the way down to stud, rebuilding the whole house. Everything was getting done. We had a renovation cost of about $250,000 allocated for it, which is about 125 bucks a foot, and that’s pretty typical for us on that size renovation in Seattle.

David:
All right. And how far into this deal did you get before things went wrong?

James:
You know what? It took me about nine months before I realized how bad this deal was going to get, and the reason it took so long to know was in Seattle, part of these deals that can go really bad, it comes down to debt costs and it comes down to timing. Time kills all deals, whether you don’t make a decision or you do. And so we had bought this property, and in Seattle, when you’re doing a substantial renovation like that, you have to apply for permits, and these permits can take a long time before they get issued, which we had planned for, but we didn’t even start working on this property until seven months after we had purchased it.

Rob:
Wow. So was it just sitting like vacant that entire time?

James:
It was sitting vacant. We went through, we did our asbestos removal, our abatement, and our demo, and so we pulled a demo permit and did a couple other little permit items that we could pull over the counter as we were waiting for plan review from the city. So yeah, it’s a waiting game on these massive projects. You just kind of push it through, you can do what you can, and then you have to wait for that permit, which is not the fastest thing in a lot of metro markets.

Rob:
Right. And so it took about nine months to get that permit. That’s when your deal started going wrong. And that’s why the deal went wrong?

James:
Well, no. Then it started getting real wrong. So we got issued full building permits, engineered, we had it designed all by an architect, and we started getting into the framing on this house. So we had demoed it, and when we demoed it, we saw that there was some cracks and kind of sinking in the foundation that was a lot worse than we had thought. But I’ve done countless amounts of projects where we are repairing structural walls, foundations, and so for us, we brought out our foundation contractor, our structural engineer, and as we started demoing and framing the house, the house started shifting dramatically and it literally fell over like the Leaning… Or maybe another nickname for this is Leaning Tower of Leschi, because that was the neighborhood that that was in. The house, all of a sudden, went sideways on top of the hill, and we had to rush in with our foundation specialists. We jacked the house back up, re-poured a foundation wall, and got it stable.
So it was kind of like we dodged a bullet. But what had happened is we had full building permits, but we did not have a permit to jack the house up and re-pour a foundation wall. Now, we could have added that in if we knew we needed to do that in the original, but that’s a new permit at that point. So the neighbor was really concerned we were going to block the view when we jacked the house up. I met him there. I said, “Hey, just relax. It’s going back down. We have full building permits.” We went over the permits. He said, “Everything’s fine.” But then 24 hours kicked in and he freaked out again, called the city, city came out. They said, “This is outside your scope of work for your permit. You need to go back in for plan review,” which would’ve took another 9 to 10 months to reissue this permit. So then we would’ve been stuck on this house for 18 months, paying 12% interest in points to do the renovation.

Rob:
Dude, that’s wild. Genuinely, I’m not even kidding, my forehead hurts right now. Honestly, it’s coincidental, because it’s been hurting the last couple of days, but when you started telling me that, I was like, “Ow, it hurts.”

James:
Yeah. The pain just began to start at that point, Rob.

Rob:
Oh, really, there’s more?

James:
There’s always more.

Rob:
Yeah, just get us through this quick. Rip the bandaid off.

James:
So then we decided, “Hey, we got to rip the bandaid for real,” right? And we’re looking at our pro forma, because anytime you’re having a change in your plan, you need to reevaluate what you’re doing. And so at this point, we looked at what we’re doing. We knew we had to wait another nine months, we knew that the house value wasn’t going to shoot up dramatically, and that nine months of cost is going to be right around $100,000 for that house. It’s going to be about 80 grand. That was going to destroy our pro forma at that time, in addition to, we had an additional foundation cost. So we said, “Okay, our plan doesn’t look like it’s going to work well. We want to get through this deal, but we want to go to highest and best use. That’s what we’re always tracking.”
And so re-comp the property. We saw that new construction we’re selling for the high-2 millions to $3 million range, and we were on a prime street with a view, and that’s what sells, novelty sells. And so we decided, “Hey, if we got to wait nine months, then let’s just re-permit a new house instead of the house.” But we had already spent a hundred thousand dollars in jacking up this house, reframing it, siding it, windowing it, and roofing it, and so that was just dead cost. So our basis now went up by a hundred grand. We had nine months to sit there to get our first permit, and we had to wait another nine months. So this 550 purchase price just turned into about a 750 purchase price very, very quickly with debt costs and the money that we already spent on this property.
We get our permit, it gets issued, it takes us about 15 months to build this property, which is about three to four months longer than normal because we’re on a nasty slope with bad dirt, and we had to spend a substantial amount of money putting in our foundation, which we had accounted for, and we built one of the most beautiful homes that you can see, this really cool northwest modern, rooftop deck, concrete finishes. It was beautiful. But when you build a beautiful product, sometimes it doesn’t matter. And when we finally got to sell, we hit the worst possible market timing.
And the reason we missed the market timing is actually, let me take a step back. When we got the building permit issued after waiting 18 months, it was right in the rain season. You can’t put foundations in a rainy hillside that’s unstable during rain season, so we had to wait another four months before we could start the work. And because we had to wait that four months, it kicked the can down the road, and we listed right as interest rates started doubling rapidly, and our $3.1 million value got compressed by 15% very, very quickly because the market went into this quick free fall in Seattle, and we ended up selling it for 2.5 million. That’s $600,000 less than the comps were nine months prior for when we evaluated it.
Once you racked out all the purchase price, the bill costs, the debt costs, it ended up being a $380,000 hit. And not only that, what makes my skin boil on this deal even more is we had like $350,000 just sitting there for three years, not only not making money, but losing money that time, and the velocity of money and time value of money was just shot at that point. So it’s a $380,000 loss, but typically we make 20 to 30% on our money minimum for fix-and-flip on that point, so it’s really like we lost 6 to $700,000 with the time value of money, the loss of opportunity, and the nasty hit we took in getting in the red out the door.

Rob:
Okay, so let me ask a clarifying question here. Were you all in on this deal at 2.9, and so you sold that 2.6, and that’s how you lost your 380?

James:
Yes, yes. Because our debt costs, we had to hold cost this property for over 30 months. It’s basically 30 months, start to finish, right?

Rob:
You said an 8 to 10% interest rate?

James:
Yeah, it ended up being… So for the first 15 months or 14 months, we had flip debt, which was 12%, two points. When we went to issue a new building permit, we actually got our debt cost down to 6 1/2% with a new construction loan because we get really good friendly terms, but that’s a floating rate when you’re getting that kind of rate on a new construction.
So then in our pro forma, we had performed it all the way out at 6 1/2%, but by the time we were building it, we were up to 10% because the rates had jumped so dramatically. And so it was like an average cost of blend on there, but yeah, we had at least 250 to $300,000 in debt costs. We had a build cost of around, it cost us on average, usually we build a house for about 300 to 300 bucks a foot start to finish in Seattle, but when you’re on hillside, it costs a lot more, so we were about 400 bucks a foot for that build, which cost us about 1.25 on the build. So with all the debt costs, the build costs, and the cost of dirt and the waste of the renovation, we are into it for about, yeah, 2.6, 2.7 because we have about a 10% selling cost in Seattle.

Rob:
Wow. Okay. And so what did you learn, man? Because it seems like you learned a lot of things the hard way. Give us a couple of lessons from this deal.

James:
Well, you know, looking back, I don’t know if we did anything wrong. We were using stats and facts to make our decisions, and sometimes it’s just bad, bad market timing. What I would’ve definitely done wrong, and this is what we’re offering, especially on today’s market, we have a flatter market, it’s a little bit riskier, there’s not as much upside in them, it’s all about structuring your terms upfront right. So we knew going into this house that it was a nine-month permit with this owner. We should have offered to close on permits when our building permits were issued. We could have gave them large earnest money, we could have released it to them. That would’ve saved us about 100 to $110,000 in debt cost during that time, in addition to I wouldn’t have spent $100,000 on the renovation during that time as well.
And so it would’ve saved at least $100,000 right there, in addition to, if we wouldn’t have been in that deal and we got red-tagged and we had to put the foundation in, the $100,000 wouldn’t affect the performance so much. We could have stayed with our original plan and we could have tooken that plan all the way through. It would’ve probably still made us, even with the rates shooting up, $100,000 because that price point didn’t shift as much as the higher end. Around a million to a million-three in Seattle, it only came down 5 to 8% rapidly when the rate started jumping. The higher end dropped a lot quicker. And so if we would’ve stayed with our original plan, the loss of value would’ve been a lot less, we would’ve been in and out a lot quicker, and if we would’ve closed on permits, we could have done that all, but we just couldn’t absorb that debt cost.

David:
All right. So James, how has this deal helped you on future deals?

James:
Right now, what that told us was it was kind of the shift of… You know, every market’s different. Every market shift is going to teach you a different lesson. And what this was was the indicator for us that we need to switch our whole business model up for the next 24 to 36 months because we were officially in a shift of a market, right? We went from a razor-hot, high-appreciating market to an instantly declining flat market really quickly. In a flat market, it’s what it was in 2010 to 2014, you have to nail your construction plans and you have to stay inside that plan for you to make any money. There was no appreciation to save us. 2010 to 2014, it was execute the plan, make some money. If you don’t, you’re not going to make any.
And that was the sign that, hey, this is back to this market that we really got to get over, as we’re writing our offers, really think about the plan, structure your offer around the plan, not just the pro forma and what price you’re getting. And so it’s a shift in how we do business. We are not closing any properties on long permits as of right now. Now, we would’ve done it 36 months ago because the market was so red-hot and inventory was hard to find. You could factor in a little appreciation there and you knew it was going to rebound well. When you’re going in a flat, you got to execute well. And so everything that we’re closing on are long permits. Even this duplex I just bought recently, I closed with a long permit. They allowed me access beforehand. It allowed me to get cheaper financing. The cheaper debt and financing is making the deal a home run rather than a loser. So it’s really about structure for the next 12 to 24 months.

Rob:
And you’re not doing any long-term permitting stuff, you’re saying, because, yeah, the market, you just can’t really predict how crazy the market’s going to get in the next year, and so it’s just an overall risky play to have such a long timeline for some of these properties?

James:
We’re still doing it. Right now, we probably have like $6 million in land that we’re contracted on with long permit closes, but we’re contracted and not close, so the risk is, A, we only have to put up a little bit of earnest money, give it to the seller. That’s better than a down payment on a property. We get to keep our cash on hand right now as you’re kind of weathering through storms through your business and growing different departments. In addition to, we don’t have to rack that debt cost. Debt is expensive. There is no more 6, 7% hard money cost or lending costs. It’s 9 to 10%. So we can avoid that interest rate spread. And so we’re still doing them, but we’re not closing until the permits are issued or we can start our work today. We don’t want to start our work in nine months.

David:
That’s good stuff. So James, to recap yours, it sounds like time was the killer. The period that you don’t have any control over, when you’re waiting on the city to come back or you’re waiting on the weather to change, it was always something outside of your control that forced you to wait, where you just had to keep making those debt payments. And so what you learned about your deals was do as much as possible before the deal closes or structure this in a way that you limit your risk and your exposure to time that’s going to cost you money. James, anything you want to add?

James:
Yeah. Like a $380,000 loss, that can be detrimental. That’s a huge number on anybody. But the reason we could absorb that loss is because we had such a red-hot two years of flipping, where if we look at our three-year average of flipping properties, we absolutely crushed it. This was just how it ended, right? You can’t time the market perfectly every time. But the reason we could take that $380,000 loss is because we take 10% of our profits and we stick them over in a bucket because we know that there’s something coming at some point. Because even if you’re a really good investor, I always say you’re going to lose 1 out of 10. It’s just going to go wrong. And so you want to have that cash aside. We had just done really well on flipping. We had cash over here. We could absorb it.
And then we also didn’t let the fear of the loss trap us. Sometimes, like we could have refinanced this property and took a nasty loss every month trying to do a midterm rental, short-term rental, try to break even, but we wanted to get our cash back. Not only did we take the loss, we did get $200,000 of our own cash back to us, or 2 to 300,000. We put that money to work since taking that loss, and we have been making 30% returns on that money. We’ve turned that deal now twice, so we’ve already made back half of our loss in the last nine months by reinvesting it.
So don’t get locked up, don’t get afraid. You got to figure out how to rebound back out of it. If we would’ve just been like, “Hey, this isn’t for us right now,” it would’ve ended with a loss. Right now, we’ve already made traction on it. I bet you by the end of the 2024 or by the first quarter of 2024, I will have that loss redeemed. And so you’re going to take these as investors, but you’ve got to reposition, you got to reinvest, and you got to regrow. Things go up and down. Make sure you get it back up again.

David:
All right.
Thank you to all of the bigger losers on the panel today. It takes some guts to get up here and share your Ls, but we all benefit when it happens, so thank you a lot. If you’d like to get in touch with any of today’s panelists, including Rob or I, head over to the show notes and you can get our contact information as well as our social media. You can also find Mindy on the BiggerPockets Money show or James On The Markets BiggerPockets podcast, so check those out as well.
Any last words before we let you guys get out of here?

James:
Always be buying. Just buy your way out of it if you get yourself in trouble.

David:
Thanks a lot, everybody. We’ll see you on the next show.