January 2024

Lee Dong Wook, president and CEO of HD Hyundai XiteSolution, says it’ll be watching India’s elections, which bring “lots of uncertainty right now.”

Investing in real estate can be a great way to generate wealth, but it isn’t for everyone. For one, the term ‘‘passive income’’ really does not describe real estate investing accurately. 

Becoming an investor is a much more hands-on process than just buying a house and renting it out. All the maintenance and potential issues with tenants will become your responsibility. And if you want to grow your portfolio to multiple properties, the responsibilities will grow exponentially. 

The time and effort required simply isn’t realistic for someone who already has a full-time job, for example, or existing family commitments. On the other hand, some people would like to invest in real estate but just don’t have the cash.

Does this mean you have to give up on your dream of financial independence? No—there are other options that can help you generate substantial wealth, some of which don’t require you to be nearly as involved as real estate investing.

In a December episode of our podcast, Scott Trench and Mindy Jensen named the top five ways to get rich without investing in real estate. Here’s a look at each one. 

1. Index Funds

Obviously, one form of investing or another had to make this list. As Mindy points out, ‘‘When people think investing, they typically think of two schools of thought: real estate or stock market.’’

There are many different types of stock market investing, but investing in index funds is often recommended to the average or beginner investor. Why? You’re basically investing in the economy as a whole on the assumption that it will perform well over time. This is usually a less risky strategy than investing in just one segment of the economy or a single industry or product. 

Scott admits he’s ‘‘a big index fund investor” and has faith in the U.S. economy, which keeps growing and evolving thanks to the continuous introduction of new technologies such as the internet and artificial intelligence (AI). These make the economy more productive in the long term, and Scott thinks it’s ‘‘a very reasonable long-term assumption’’ that an index fund investor will get a 7% to 10% annualized return. 

Mindy adds that she, too, is a big index fund investor but tends to pick more ‘‘tech-heavy’’ indices. She also has VTSAX shares, which come with greater risk, ‘‘but also there’s a greater chance of reward.’’ 

Ultimately, the great thing about index fund investing is that it’s almost totally passive. And you don’t have to have a lot of cash to invest. You can put in as little or as much as you can afford—it’s completely up to you and your current financial capabilities. 

The downside? Index fund investing is a long-term game. You can sell at any time, but Scott warns investors against it: ‘‘I believe you should invest for a very long period of time.’’ 

In fact, both podcast hosts agree with Warren Buffett’s statement that his favorite holding time for investments is “forever.’’ The best mechanism here is repeatedly reinvesting the dividends you get, as this will yield you much higher returns over the years. 

And when is index fund investing not for you? According to Scott, it’s all about belief. If you think that the U.S. economy actually will shrink over time, with less GDP and less productivity across the economy, you may not feel so confident putting your money in the stock market.

2. 401(k)s and IRAs

401(k) and IRA investing is another way of saying that you’re investing in retirement accounts. 401(k) plans involve paying into pre-tax retirement funds, whereas the IRA method involves post-tax accounts and is more suitable for people with incomes under $100,000. 

If you’re going down the 401(k) route, you can contribute up to $23,000 for the 2024 tax year. The money comes out of your paycheck before taxes, also called a tax-deferred contribution. 

You will only pay tax on your investment when it comes to withdrawing dividends. You can withdraw early, preretirement, but this will come with a penalty. Employers can contribute to 401(k)s, but they’re also available to the self-employed.

Investing in 401(k)s can be ‘‘a super-powerful tool” for wealth building, as Scott explains: ‘‘If you take that $23,000 that you can invest in 2024, for example, and you get an 8% return by investing in things like stock market index funds, what we just talked about, you get to a million-dollar balance in that 401(k) in under 20 years.’’ 

The other option is the IRA route or paying into an individual retirement account. It has lower contribution limits: $6,500 in 2023 and $7,000 in 2024 ($8,000 if you’re 50 or older).  

3. Job-Hopping

There’s another super-effective way to improve your financial prospects, and it doesn’t require you to invest in anything other than advancing your own career. And the best way to do that these days is to switch jobs. 

The days when sticking with the same employer for decades yielded substantial promotions, and well-rewarded seniority are gone for most of us. Mindy points to a very important reality of the current job market: ‘‘There’s more money in the hiring budget for most companies than there is in the retention budget.’’ 

As an employee, you’re always in the strongest position when negotiating your salary before starting a new job. In 2022, 49% of job hoppers got inflation-beating raises, as opposed to only 42% of those who stuck with their employer. 

And if this makes you feel like you’re somehow being disloyal to your employer, don’t worry: Job-hopping is very normal now. As of January 2022, the average amount of time a U.S. employee stays with any one employer was just over four years. 

Scott and Mindy advise focusing on adding value to your resume with each new job, whether through upskilling or taking on new responsibilities. You then stay in your current job so long as your new skills (and added value) are being appropriately rewarded. Once you’ve plateaued at your current company, it’s perfectly fine to move on.

Scott does offer a word of caution about counting potential bonuses when job-hopping. Sure, a job may promise you $90,000, where 50% of that is a bonus, but you need to be able to afford the risk of not getting the bonus. If you’re living paycheck to paycheck, you need to concentrate on jobs that may offer you lower salaries, but the income is steady. 

4. Boring Businesses

Doesn’t sound too attractive, right? Actually, boring businesses are some of the most lucrative investment opportunities around. What do we mean by boring businesses? Scott gives a few examples: HVAC companies, dry cleaners, small trucking businesses, sanitation and plumbing businesses, and even asphalt paving businesses. 

Why are these unglamorous ventures some of the best ways to generate wealth? There are several reasons. One is that these types of businesses are surprisingly lucrative—they can generate $300,000 to as much as $750,000 a year. Given that a business typically sells for twice the amount of its annual cash flow, you could easily get $600,000 or more when it comes to selling the business and then reinvest that money into, for example, real estate. 

One thing potential investors will need to remember is that businesses are a lot of work—‘‘this will probably be a full-time job for at least six months to a year, maybe several years,’’ says Scott. Your job as an investor will involve systematizing and modernizing the businesses, as well as improving marketing strategies and reputation building. 

Remember, a lot of these businesses are owned by baby boomers and don’t even have websites, so “[there’s] tons of opportunity in this space and not enough competition from buyers at this point,” emphasizes Scott. This is definitely a less competitive investment space than real estate, but it can give you a great leg up to real estate investing in the future.

You also will need substantial amounts of cash to buy even a tiny business—in the hundreds of thousands. However, you may need a bit less if you manage to get a business association loan or seller financing to help you. 

If you’re interested but daunted by having to navigate an industry you know nothing about, consider buying a franchise. This type of business investing gives you a playbook, as it were, Scott explains. You don’t need to know as much about the ins and outs of running the business because the template is already there.

5. Side Hustles

Finally, the wealth-generating possibilities of side hustles should not be underestimated. These come with varying degrees of hands-on work and responsibility. Incomes also vary a great deal, depending on product and location, from $25,000 to as much as $100,000. 

Mindy recommends being mindful of ‘‘the location, the community needs, and the business viability.” That statistic about 90% of small businesses failing in the first year? It’s ‘‘not completely accurate, but it’s not completely inaccurate,’’ Mindy says. 

You need a plan and a buyer for your product, so do your research and make sure what you can offer will find demand. Scott also makes an important point about being honest with yourself about just how passive your side hustle will be. If you end up spending all your free time basically actively producing something for your new business, it may not make sense financially. 

Ideally, a side hustle should eventually take on its own momentum without you needing to put a ton of time and effort into it. ‘‘I think people fall into the trap of their side hustle not being as lucrative per hour as their day job in many cases,’’ warns Scott.

And if you do fail? Try something else. In fact, most successful side hustlers try out a few things before they strike proverbial gold. Keep trying—just choose wisely, and choose something that could one day allow you to quit your day job instead of having to work two jobs indefinitely. 

Final Thoughts

This is by no means an exhaustive list of ways to build wealth without investing in real estate. As Scott and Mindy admit, there are a ton of other ways, cryptocurrency and horse breeding among them. 

The point is to choose something you’re interested in and comfortable pursuing over a period of at least a few years. Remember: Most successful investing requires patience; some of it requires dedication and hands-on work. 

Who knows? It could even land you in an alternative career one day, so why not give it a try?

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

Things are shaping up for homebuilders. In fact, one big name in the industry is projecting that 2024 will mark the “golden age” for homebuilding, thanks to falling mortgage rates and frozen existing home supply, among other factors.

David O’Reilly, CEO of megalith developer Howard Hughes Corp., told CNBC last week, “We’re going to have the golden age of new home construction” in 2024, even calling the new home market “extraordinary” in its current form.

He’s not wrong: Homebuilding activity has surged in recent months. In November, single-family starts jumped 18% over October.

Starts have now increased steadily for four consecutive months, and experts are predicting further increases in new home construction in the new year. 

Why Homebuilding Will Surge in 2024

The National Association of Home Builders projects a 4% increase in starts across 2024, while Lawrence Yun, chief economist for the National Association of Realtors, is calling for a 13.5% increase in new home sales in the new year. 

The bump largely boils down to mortgage rates, which have fallen quite a bit from their near-8% peak in October. Now at just 6.61%, average rates on 30-year mortgages are at their most affordable point in over six months. 

The problem? It’s still not enough to spur existing homeowners to put their homes on the market. According to Zillow, as of July, about 80% of homeowners have an interest rate of 5% or less—so most property owners are not looking to trade in those low rates for today’s much higher ones (unless they absolutely have to). This constrains the supply of existing housing and pushes more buyers toward new construction instead.

There’s another perk buyers get with new homes, too: builder-offered buydowns. According to NAHB, 29% of homebuilders offered mortgage rate buydowns to buyers in October, and another 21% absorbed financing points for buyers, allowing them to essentially get lower rates completely free of charge.

O’Reilly told CNBC: “Not only can you pick size, location, but national homebuilders have been able to buy down mortgage rates and offer a lower mortgage rate for buyers.”

According to O’Reilly, builder buydowns range anywhere from 150 to 200 basis points, essentially letting buyers drop their rates from today’s 6.61% to a rate closer to 5% or below. On a $400,000 loan, that would mean a difference of about $500 in monthly payments.

A Continued Upper Hand

These aren’t flash-in-the-pan conditions, either. In fact, builders are likely to keep the upper hand as we move through 2024.

While the Federal Reserve is largely expected to cut rates next year—meaning mortgage rates will likely follow suit—most experts don’t expect rates to drop by any drastic amount. The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) currently predicts an average 30-year rate of 6.1% by year’s end, while Fannie Mae sees a 6.5% average at the close of 2024.

Even at the MBA’s more optimistic number, most existing homeowners would remain locked into their current low mortgage rates, squeezing existing housing supply and pushing buyers toward new construction—and the potentially lower rates they can offer. 

As O‘Reilly puts it: “That supply-demand imbalance [in the existing home market] should get worse into 2024, driving demand for new home construction.”

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If you’ve been reading the BiggerPockets Blog for any length of time now, you’ll have noticed that the Midwest has often been named as one of the best places to invest in real estate right now. It offers reasonable home and rental prices and stable job markets in major cities. The result is a buoyant housing market that has so far avoided the post-pandemic slump seen in other areas.

But what if we told you that, while all this is true, the Midwest is also the most at-risk area for flood damage over the next 20 years—with all the related consequences: abandoned communities, dropping house prices, and rising insurance costs that will make homes less attractive for both buyers and investors?

The Midwest: An Upcoming Flood Zone

Unfortunately, according to the latest cutting-edge research from the climate risk-focused nonprofit First Street Foundation, it’s all true. The Midwest has the highest projected share of what the foundation is calling Future Climate Abandonment Areas—areas that will see population declines over the period between 2023 and 2053 because of increasing damage from floods. 

How can we trust this new research? It’s highly detailed, and it’s based on real data from flood risk assessments performed on real homes. Instead of making sweeping statements about the most at-risk states (Florida and Texas are well known to be at huge risk of regular flooding), the researchers adopted what they’re calling a ‘‘granular’’ approach, assessing communities county by county and even block by block. ‘‘Climate risk is a house-by-house issue, not a state-by-state issue,’’ the report says.

This method of projecting where Climate Abandonment Areas will be clustered offers a great advantage because flood risk can vary significantly within small areas. Quite simply, even within a single city, there will be areas that are far more prone to flooding than others. It can even come down to one block of houses being at a greater risk than another. 

Looking at the map First Street provides as part of its report, high-risk areas are dotted throughout the country rather than covering whole states uniformly. However, it’s clear that the Midwest will experience climate-related relocations and property abandonment disproportionately over the next 20 years. 

The areas most at risk for these changes are located in Illinois, Michigan, Indiana, and Ohio. The cities projected to have the highest rate of growth of climate abandonment areas are Minneapolis (Hennepin and Ramsay counties), Indianapolis (Marion County), and Milwaukee.  

What the research doesn’t mean is that these areas will suffer some kind of disaster movie-style exodus. As the report explains, ‘‘While many areas in these states are projected to decline in population with high flood risk, other areas of the state may see growth as populations redistribute to avoid risk.’’

As the researchers emphasize, most research into migration patterns tends to focus on dramatic interstate migrations, e.g., from New York City to Florida. In reality, that’s not how the majority of Americans move. Most people move very locally, not just within their state but within their local county. These localized moves are driven by ‘‘individual preferences to remain close to their families, support networks, local labor market, and familiarity with the local housing market.’’

In other words, people may be pushed to leave their homes if they keep flooding, but they will tend to go to the next town over rather than across the country. 

Make Sure to Do Your Due Diligence

The First Street report drives home the importance of real estate investors doing thorough local research. Investing in low-flood risk areas should become best practice for anyone serious about investing in the Midwest. It could make a difference between investing in a community that will have a healthy housing market in a decade or two and one with an ailing housing market with low property values and unattractively high flood insurance premiums. 

In fact, a recent study has shown a direct correlation between increased flood risk and declining property values. Add to that the already existing problems with population declines in some areas of the Midwest, and the flood risk becomes a tipping point. 

The fact is that many people don’t want to move away from their homes—until they feel that there is no alternative. Communities that are already on the brink because of other issues (e.g., a lack of jobs) are more likely to empty out when the climate change risk is added to the equation. 

Philip Mulder, a professor at the risk and insurance department of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, explained the difference between the Midwest and somewhere like, say, Miami, in an interview with Fortune. Mulder points out that Miami is also at high risk of flooding, but it’s still a place with a vibrant economy, with many people still wanting to move there despite the flood risk, ‘‘whereas in the Midwest, you may see there’s not the same reason for people to be there. So flood risks become sort of a tipping point that pushes people out of communities.’’

Real estate investors who are looking at the Midwest should assess multiple risk factors when selecting a location to invest in. While flood risk on its own may not automatically make a place unsuitable for real estate investing, this factor, plus an existing population decline and a stagnant or declining local economy, almost certainly does.

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Well, 2023 has been another wild year in commercial real estate. The headlines continue to scream trouble for CRE. Many are getting increasingly fantastic. 

Some friends are asking me, “So…I hear it’s pretty tough in commercial real estate right now. How are you doing?” You may have wondered the same thing. 

Musical Chairs

Have you ever played the game musical chairs? I already knew a lot of syndicators were playing musical chairs with their investors’ capital. I’ve been writing and speaking about that since 2018.  

In this update, I didn’t really want to focus on negativity. But when I saw news of yet another multifamily syndicator pausing distributions this week, I was frustrated. 

My initial frustration was not necessarily with the operators. Many of them weren’t in the business during the 2008 Great Financial Crisis downturn, so they didn’t know any better. 

But that’s not right. Shouldn’t they have known better before accepting tens of millions (or more) of investors’ hard-earned capital? 

It seemed clear that overpaying, overleveraging, and liberally using floating-rate debt was like playing musical chairs. And while I love optimism, believing trees (rents) would grow to the sky while operating costs would remain stable amidst inflation and a tight job market was not optimism. I’ll let you decide how to label that behavior.  

The bottom line: The music had to stop and leave someone chairless.

I legitimately feel sorry for tens of thousands who invested in deals that have now paused distributions, are calling capital, or are in the process of foreclosure. Though I warned BiggerPockets readers and podcast listeners for several years, there was one big issue I admit I didn’t see coming: increased lender-mandated reserves for rate cap replacements. 

Here’s what I’m talking about: A lot of syndicators used floating-rate debt to acquire (often overpriced) properties and bought rate caps to protect against interest rate increases. Of course, no one dreamed interest rates would skyrocket like they did. 

These rate cap reserves typically expire in one to two years and must be renewed. In their covenants, lenders have the right to force syndicators to reserve cash flow (that could have been distributed to investors) for upcoming rate cap replacements. 

There is nothing devious about this; it is standard business. But these syndicators never expected the increased reserve mandates they got. Some went from $1,000 to $2,000 a month up to $70,000 or $80,000 per month (no, that’s not a typo). This represents an approximately 70-fold increase in some cases! 

It’s hard to imagine how many of these GPs are surviving. Especially since: 

• Insurance rates skyrocketed for many.
• Rents didn’t increase as projected in many markets and are decreasing in some.
• Overbuilt markets are experiencing incentivization of new tenants (free rents), pulling them away to new developments (properties).
• Expenses continued to rise with inflation.
• Property managers can’t find skilled labor within their budget.

Am I saying I’m any better? Or that my company is better than theirs? No.

I’m not pointing fingers. I made a lot of mistakes in my earlier years. Many of my mistakes helped form the strategy my partner and I followed to build our family of CRE funds. 

We’re not immune to problems or surprises. But our due diligence requirements are quite high. The type and amount of debt is a significant item on our checklist. 

So, What Are You Investing in Right Now? 

Some investors have asked for advice. What do I recommend right now? 

I’ll ask you. Are you swimming naked in a receding tide? Or shivering on the beach in a winter coat?  

As I stated, a quick scan of real estate investing news reveals a lot of bare skin, as well as reports of many LP investors retreating to the beach. You may choose to sit on the sidelines. But you don’t need to. Sound investments with solid profit potential are available [right] now if you know where to look. 

In fact, most professionals look for times like these to provide new acquisition and investment opportunities. When the tide goes out, not only are skinny dippers exposed, but many previously overpriced assets are available at a discount again. 

I’m indebted to James Eng at Old Capital Lending for putting together the following analysis.

Eng correlated cap rates for Prime Class A multifamily assets for the past several years. You can see that going in, cap rates were as low as 3.37% in the euphoric stage of April 2022—right before interest rates started rising.

Less than 18 months later, they are reported at 4.92%, over 1.5% higher, which translates to a 46% drop in value for these assets (1.55% / 3.37% = 46%). I don’t believe we are seeing a drop of this magnitude for most assets in the real world. 

While there is a significant drop in value in a short time, let’s face it: It could be worse. If cap rates expanded in direct proportion to interest rate rises, which is arguably reasonable, cap rates would be higher, and values would have dropped more. (Another reason we like 10-year holds is that short-term value drops do not impact ultimate results). 

I propose that the persistent housing supply-and-demand imbalance continues to prop up multifamily and other housing prices. A recent New York Times piece backs this up, stating that housing prices are “defying gravity.” 

Eng believes this points to a current point in the market cycle between “panic” and “despondency” (see cycle chart). Of course, the precise tracking of this important curve cannot be verified yet. These cycles can only be accurately measured in a rearview mirror—in this case, after the point of “hope” is reached or even surpassed.

Though I hate to prognosticate, I believe we are not at that point yet. Based on asking prices from many sellers at this point, I would place us back between “fear” and “panic.” 

What do you think? I’d love to hear from you. 

So, How Does That Play Out in the Real World?

A simple example of the seller and buyer value disconnect is visible in the realm of mobile home park investments. Some investors in our current fund have wondered why only about 3% of the fund consists of mobile home park acquisitions. 

We believe it is because many mobile home park owners (prospective sellers) do not need to sell. Most didn’t acquire their assets in the euphoric period, which motivated multifamily operators to overleverage with risky short-term debt. 

With little or no risky leverage, they’re not staring down looming refinance deadlines, so they don’t need to sell. They can hold on to their assets or, if selling, hold firm on their asking price—and they are doing just that. 

Here is a picture of the resulting sales volume in 2023: 

If we are indeed in the down-trending leg of the cycle, which seems obvious, this tells me we could enjoy significant acquisition opportunities ahead. This means we have not reached low tide yet.    

How Can You Pull This Off?

Whether you’re investing on the down leg of the cycle or the up leg—whether you think we’re at the top or the bottom—there are two words you must focus on to assure you’re investing, not speculating: due diligence.

And honestly, I thought due diligence would be easier. When we expanded our due diligence team from my partner and me by adding two more pros, I thought due diligence would get easier, and it would be easier to find new investments. 

But as our team and capabilities have grown, so has our expertise. We have a deeper understanding of things that can go wrong. And we recommend you think the same way. 

Look deeply at track records, teams, and projects. Check out backgrounds and references. Run worst-case scenarios on underwriting and ask sponsors hard questions. Consider if you want to be in a common equity position with preferred equity and debt in front of you.  

Let’s put this in perspective: We are a fund that invests in private commercial real estate deals. We have a great team. And we look deeply at a lot of deals. 

We tallied up the operators and deals we evaluated in a recent six-month period. Here are the results: 

If you’re about to put your hard-earned capital in the hands of a syndicator or fund manager, ask yourself if you’ve done the level of due diligence it takes to ensure you’re not turning what should be a stable CRE asset into a dangerous speculation.

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CNBC’s Robert Frank and Noble Black, real estate broker at Douglas Elliman, join ‘Power Lunch’ to discuss the luxury real estate trends in Q4 of 2023 and their outlook for 2024.

Ashley:
This is Real Estate Rookie, episode 354. My name is Ashley Kehr and I am here with my cohost, Tony J. Robinson.

Tony:
And welcome to the Real Estate Rookie podcast where every week, twice a week, we bring you the inspiration, motivation, and stories you need to hear to kickstart your investing journey. And, boy, do we have a story for you today.

Ashley:
We have a special guest, Brett Long on today, and he’s actually going to give us some great tips about flipping. We’re going to be talking about writing letters to find deals. We’re going to go through the process that Brett uses. And just to give you an idea, you don’t need a lot of money to actually do the process that he does to find houses to flip.

Tony:
We’re also going to touch on Ashley’s biggest fear, which is talking to off-market sellers. How do you approach those people? What do you say? And how do you actually make it a conversation that both of you end up enjoying?

Ashley:
So, Brett, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for taking the time to join us today to share your advice and your experience.

Brett:
Yeah. Glad to be here and thankful for the opportunity to come talk to you today.

Ashley:
We understand you’ve been investing since 2020. Can you give us an overview of what your portfolio looks like today?

Brett:
Yes. Today I’ve got three single family homes in my smaller market, and then I’ve got another triplex that’s a little bit closer to home. And between those six doors, total value is just shy of $1.5 million and the monthly cash flow is right around $2,200 a month.

Tony:
First, congratulations, man. That is amazing to be able to achieve those numbers in a relatively short period of time, man, so I’m super excited to dig into how you made that happen. But before we hear more about your marketing and what steps you’ve taken, what are you doing right now that’s working in this day and age? There’s a lot of folks, Brett, who are on the sidelines waiting for the perfect Goldilocks situation to get that first real estate investment. So what are you seeing this working right now for those people?

Brett:
Three main things that are working, right? Targeted lists with specific buy box and knowing exactly what you’re going after and being very specific about it. Two is personalized mailers, getting very specific with the language and information, and basically knowing who you’re talking to. And then third, taking that whole process at their pace. I think a lot of people realize that most people don’t like to be sold to, and so making sure that the whole process works for them in taking things at their pace.

Ashley:
Let’s break that down real quick. What is actually a buy box, and what are some general things that you should include when building your buy box?

Brett:
Yeah. So, to buy box is exactly like it sounds. You want to put certain things in the box for what you’re looking for. That’s property type, location. That could be square footage. That could be a very specific type of real estate, whether that’s single family, small multifamily, apartment buildings, really just getting very specific with exactly what you want to invest in and being able to paint that picture of, “That’s what I’m looking for.”

Tony:
So, Brett, I want to know, what was your buy box when you first started, and what steps did you take to build that out? Because I think for a lot of rookies that are listening, they maybe can understand the concept of buy box, but it’s like, how are people coming up with these boxes? Is it just arbitrary? Are there certain questions you’re asking yourself? What steps did you take to build out your buy box initially?

Brett:
For me, it was more of an emotional decision, but also an economic decision. So starting out, I knew I wanted to get into real estate, didn’t know where or how, and like a lot of people, I thought my direct market that I live in was too expensive because everything’s always too expensive. However, I grew up in a smaller town about an hour down the road and realized, maybe that’s an easier way, a more comfortable way for me to enter into real estate investing. I’ve always loved driving to and from school through some old historic neighborhoods back in my hometown.
We’ve got 100-year-old homes, and I drove through those back and forth across town for 15, 20 years and always saw these beautiful houses. However, over time, they started getting run down, and those are, to me, kind of a historical element of our town and one that I didn’t want to see go away. I think at that point I realized it all comes together, this smaller market that I felt was a little less risky, a little better entry point, but also being able to own and work on and improve these houses that I loved so much growing up.

Tony:
Brett, you’re a much more admirable real estate investor than I am because your buy box was emotional and data-driven. Reminds me of our friend, actually. I have a friend named Katie Neeson. Katie develops on Instagram, but she’s on a mission to revitalize her downtown, so a lot of her buy box is built around this desire to bring her downtown back to life. But for me it was very much economical. I was just thinking, “What’s my budget? What can I actually afford to purchase?”
So that puts a cap typically on purchase price and size of property. What zip code do I want to invest in? Where have I seen the strongest rental data to support what it is I’m looking for? And then also just condition the property. What kind of rehab project am I willing to take on? And when you think about those things, your ability to purchase, location data and project scope, usually those are things that you put together to build out your buy box.

Brett:
Yeah, absolutely. I can definitely speak to more of the economic side of things as well. So starting out, like a lot of newbies, don’t have a lot of money to invest as well, so looking for a lower price point. So looking for something probably about $120,000 all in when I was starting out. That includes purchase and rehab costs and holding costs along with that. But also, to your point, getting smart about places of population growth and economic drivers. I think that’s something that keyed me on to my hometown because, when I was growing up, the city was pretty much the same for what seemed like 20 years.
I left for a long time and came back in the area more recently and realized a lot had changed. There were a lot of industrial parks being built, a lot of life sciences and manufacturing companies who were coming to build in Sanford. It’s a more affordable market than the Raleigh area that I’m based in, Raleigh, North Carolina. And I think one of the biggest things that hit me was, I was driving through probably late 2019 and saw a Starbucks in my small town and realized, “Wait a second. Starbucks? Starbucks is putting something in this town?” And realized if they were willing to make the investment, it was probably a good signal for a growing area.

Ashley:
So, Brett, I want to get more into the market, but to clarify, you are actually flipping homes to buy rentals?

Brett:
Correct. Correct. So, a mix of both. BRRRR has always spoken to me, but flipping to be able to continue to generate that revenue, to be able to continue to buy and hold. Basically want to have multiple exit strategies with any property, but it’s got to make sense on both of those ends, whether that be a BRRRR property or being able to flip and sell at the end of the project. I’ve actually got two properties, two single family properties, that I wanted to have buy and hold originally, but they just made too much sense as flips and so let those go.

Ashley:
I’m very curious to hear more about this market where you’re able to make that last-minute decision because that’s not always the case in every market where you have to plan and strategize ahead of time before actually purchasing the property. But before we get into that, let’s take a short break and we’ll be right back.
Okay, and welcome back. Brett is going to talk to us about the market where he is able to make a last-minute decision whether he is going to flip a house or turn it into a rental after doing the rehab. So, Brett, let’s get into that market. Can you tell us a little bit more about it and how you found it and decided that you could actually do this in your market?

Brett:
Yes. Like I said, grew up in the market so have an intimate knowledge, and also still have a lot of friends and family that live in that market. So, even though I’m not there-

Ashley:
And what market is it, Brett?

Brett:
Sanford, North Carolina.

Ashley:
Okay.

Tony:
Sanford. And just to give us some context, Brett, Sanford, what’s the nearest big city?

Brett:
We call it a big city, but the capital of North Carolina is Raleigh, North Carolina. That’s where I live, and that’s about an hour away. But Charlotte, North Carolina, is also probably even bigger from a population standpoint, but that’s about two hours away to the west.

Ashley:
Tony still doesn’t know where that is. He doesn’t-

Tony:
Yeah, absolutely. I got to open up the maps right now to see where that’s at. But-

Brett:
Not too far from the North Carolina mountains.

Tony:
There you go. When you say smaller city, how many people are actually in that city? What’s the population?

Brett:
Yeah, the city population is probably around 30,000, and there’s only one real city in the whole county, and it’s the smallest county in North Carolina. But 50,000 people across the entire county. It’s not a one stoplight town, but it’s definitely not a really large area from a population standpoint. But I think that’s definitely going to change over the course of the next three to five years with all the industry that’s moving in, especially with, one of the ones I hadn’t mentioned, a company called VinFast is an electric vehicle maker out of Vietnam.
They just announced last year that they’re going to be probably about 10 minutes down the road from Sanford. They rezoned part of this area to include it in the Sanford city limits for tax purposes. And again, it’s right between where I live and the Sanford market. So Sanford’s definitely a path of progress opportunity.

Tony:
Just really quickly, Brett, you just said an important word. What do you mean when you say path of progress? And what are some of the indicators a rookie should maybe look for to know if the city they’re thinking about is also in a path of progress?

Brett:
In a lot of different markets, especially over the past three years with how much real estate has boomed, a lot of markets feel too expensive. And when you feel that way, a lot of other people feel that way as well, and there’s a lot of different ancillary markets that live outside of those major areas, and companies and corporations understand this as well. So, they’re moving slightly outside of that range in order to be able to capitalize on lower prices from land and development standpoint, and still be close enough to these major markets that they can be there in a short amount of time. The path of progress is understanding where those company industries are moving to and getting in the path of progress before the major population growth happens so that you can catch that tailwind.

Tony:
Great explanation, Brett. And honestly, I’m seeing a lot of the same things in the short-term rental space as well in the Airbnb industry. A lot of our strategy right now is moving away from some of those big vacation hotspots that everyone across the country knows because those markets are a little overheated in terms of purchase price, and there’s more competition. And we’re looking for more of those secondary, tertiary markets that are outside of those big metros that we can go into.
We’re actually going to be closing in a couple of weeks here on a 13-unit motel, and it’s very much in a tertiary market. But we’ve got big goals for this property because one of the benefits is, A, lower purchase price, we’ve got an amazing deal, but, B, that lack of competition means that if you just do a little bit better, you’re really setting yourself up to stand above the competition in that market. So I love to see that it’s working both on the short-term side and the long-term side as well.

Brett:
Absolutely. And that’s a great point is the competition piece. That’s not something that I mentioned when I was talking about it. When you start going to these secondary and tertiary markets, if you’re getting there before a lot of other people, there is a lot less competition. And especially if you’ve got a narrow buy box, the more focus and specific you can get from both a location and a buy box perspective, the less competition you’re going to have.

Ashley:
So, Brett, once you identified this market, what was the actual process you took or you are taking now to source your deals?

Brett:
Yeah. The first deal that I got was actually an MLS deal, and it was right at the beginning of 2020, right when they were shutting everything down. We had just had our second daughter and I convinced my wife that now was the best time to get into real estate during the beginning of a pandemic and just having a new baby girl. And so, got that under contract right at the beginning of the COVID lockdown and spent a lot of blood, sweat and tears working on this house in a very high traffic area of Sanford, and transforming what was an all-brown house, like a 1920s all-brown, two-story house that blended into the background and worked on transforming that into the former beauty that it had.
Now it’s a beautiful, light blue house on the corner that generated a lot of traffic and conversation in the community because people have driven by this house for so long, and that was the entry point of, “All right, I like this buy box. This makes sense.” And Ashley, to your question, as I was working on that house during nights and weekends, I would literally just drive around the neighborhood and drive for dollars. Not anything fancy, literally, with a notebook and my phone camera and taking pictures of these properties and writing down addresses and dropping pins. It doesn’t even have to be a long process, 10, 15 minutes at most, and just doing it where I found time. That eventually built up. It’s not a large area, but it built up a list of 77 different properties that fit my buy box.

Tony:
So, Brett, just to clarify here, you said that you were spending 10 to 15 minutes at a time, you built up a list of over 70 properties for you to target. How much did it cost you to do that?

Brett:
It cost me $0 to do that. It’s time and energy. That’s it.

Ashley:
Gas money.

Brett:
Yeah, essentially gas money. But it was essentially where I was going to and from anyway. So, to your point, not very much money at all, if any. Just, it’s the energy.

Tony:
And the reason I ask that question, Brett, is because there are so many rookies who are listening right now that are not taking action because they don’t have the capital, they don’t have this, they don’t have that. But what you just said is that you built a list of over 70 ideal properties that fit your buy box 15 minutes at a time with zero money.

Brett:
Yes.

Tony:
That means there’s no reason for any rookie that’s listening to not replicate what you just said, to go out there into their own backyard and start searching for deals that same way as well.

Brett:
Exactly. And it provides a good training ground if you haven’t done any marketing, if you will, or direct mail, and doing it on a smaller scale and getting your feet under you and understanding that process and how that looks and how it works to really be able to succeed or fail on a small scale and then be able to tweak that in the future for any other future marketing campaigns that you might want to do.

Ashley:
Tell us a little bit about your branding strategy in the marketing. Were you sending out handwritten letters? Did you get logo design? What are some of the important pieces that somebody should do for their branding? Is it yard signs? Give us some examples.

Brett:
Yeah, absolutely. It honestly started with an overall plan that I was committed to doing this and I bought this on-market property, and that I wanted to do off-market properties, and listening to the BiggerPockets podcast for so long and getting a lot of different ideas and understanding where you want to go ahead of time so you can be thinking about how to prepare and plan for where you want to be. So during that first project, I realized, if I want to continue doing this, I need to be visible and have people understand who I am and what I’m doing, even without having a one-to-one conversation with them.
So one of the first things I did was go online and create a yard sign with no logo or anything, just colors and company name. And at that time I realized I should probably have a website as well, drive them somewhere so that they understood. So over the course of about a week, ordered these signs, bought a domain, went online and created this website to provide information about who I am and what I do, and provide communication and inbound if anyone had questions about what was going on. And so stuck this yard sign right out in the middle of the yard.
I was up late afternoon on a hot July painting the side of a house so people could associate this color scheme and this website with that guy that’s up there on the ladder doing this work and improving this house. That was the initial phase of planning for the off-market campaign. And so that second phase was collecting all of those leads for me to create a list out of. And literally, again, to what Tony mentioned earlier, zero cost to find those mailing addresses and literally went on our city tax site and cross-referenced those properties to find the mailing address of the owner so I could create this list.

Ashley:
Which, to clarify, to break it down even more miniscule as you’re going, searching your county that you’re in and you’re looking for the property tax bills, and usually you can just type in the address and it’ll pull up a copy of the tax bill and it’ll show you the owner’s name and the mailing address where the property taxes are sent to. So that way you know, okay, so the person doesn’t live here, or maybe they do live there, but that’s the mailing address where they receive their mail, so even could be a PO box sometimes, too.

Brett:
Exactly. And you can find out a lot of information on these free tax sites because they tell you the mailing address, when the last sale was, what the tax assessment is. Sometimes they provide a drawing of the property itself and when any sort of improvements were made to the property. So a really good space to get to learn more about the property itself for free.
And so in doing that process, I built out an Excel spreadsheet with all of the property owners’ names and mailing addresses along with their property address, and started to create a mailer piece that I could send to each of these people. I definitely wanted personalization involved in this to speak to these people directly because I was letting them know who I was and wanted to make it more of a personal touch and not a cold, like, “Hey, I’m just looking to buy a house. Just looking to buy a house. Will you sell me your house?”

Tony:
So, Brett, what exactly did you say? Give us the template of, hey, how do I create this personalized mailer to send out to folks.

Brett:
I paired that from a branding perspective with what I put on my website as well, to kind of echo this sentiment that I was going to be communicating to people, which is like, “Hey, I’m just a regular guy. I grew up here. I want to help improve the community and save some of these houses that are in maybe ill-repair or people just can’t keep up with, and yours caught my eye.”
And at that point there’s a lot more nuts and bolts into the personalization, but literally taking all the information from the spreadsheet that I built, and including their name, the actual property address, and talking about the property with the information from the sheet so it isn’t just a, “Hey, so-and-so,” or, “Hi there, I like your property at X,” and really putting a personal touch on there. But essentially introducing them to who I am and what my company is about, and if they’re interested in selling I’d love to have a conversation with them.

Ashley:
I got a question for you, Brett, on that. If an LLC owns the property, how do you make it personal without just saying, “Hello, Ashley LLC?”

Brett:
Yeah, great question. In those instances, and, man, I’d have to go back and check, but finding a warmer way to do that, or not even addressing it in a personalized manner at all. So you might start something with, “Hi, Tony,” or, “Hi, Ashley,” in a letter, but build that list out in such a way that, if it is an LLC, you can go in and remove that so it doesn’t look terrible. Like you just said, if I wrote a letter that said, “Hi, Lee County LLC,” they’d be like, “Well, clearly they don’t know what they’re doing. I’m just a number.”
But literally building these out was a simple mail merge with Microsoft Word and using that Excel file, so when the mail merge is complete, you can go and customize each one of those letters. You can go customize the text within those individual letters in this large file, this Microsoft Word file that has 77 letters in it. At that point you can go in and delete. “All right, this is an LLC. I’m taking out the whole top of that.” The same thing with some of the property addresses where you can tweak it a little bit and format it so it looks better and there aren’t any mistakes.

Tony:
And just to clarify what Brett’s talking about, a mail merge is basically, you can take data from an Excel file and automatically populate a Word document with the data from the Excel file. So instead of having to manually type out 77 letters, you just type the letter once with the mail merge notes and then it’ll do it automatically. Anyway, Google mail merge and you’ll get a pretty quick and thorough explanation on that.
Now, Brett, I want to transition to what I think is going to be my favorite part of this episode, which is getting Ashley over her fear of talking directly to sellers. We’re going to get to that in a second, but before we do, let’s hear a quick word from our show sponsors.
All right, Brett, so we are back and I want to get into, your phone’s ringing, people are responding to these letters you’re sending out, someone actually calls, and now you’ve got to talk to someone. So what are you saying when you’re actually having these conversations with the sellers?

Brett:
Yeah, it’s a great question. And to back up a step. For me, personally, as a screening effort to understand when is a call coming in from one of these mailers, I created just a free Google Voice number that separated it from my personal number, so that’s the number I put on all these letters. For several different reasons that’s a good idea, but one of the main ones is to segregate that inbound traffic so you really understand, “Okay, this phone call I’m about to answer, I need to answer as, ‘Hi, I’m Brett from Team Long Properties,’” and have a professional sense to it as opposed to, “I don’t know who this number is. I’m not picking it up.” But, yes, once they answer, it’s typically just a warm greeting like, “Hi, I’m Brett from Team Long Properties. Who am I speaking with?”
And they’ll tell me who they are and usually they’ll give a brief introduction, but one of the first questions I ask them is, “So what made you pick up the phone today? Why are we talking right now?” And that’s when they typically go into a little bit of, “Hey, either your letter spoke to me. It was very personal and I understand, and it meets my expectations for who I’d want to purchase my house.” Or, “Hey, I’m in this situation that I don’t know if I want to sell, but I definitely might, but I have some questions first.” And basically that one question of, “So why did you call me today?” can open up a lot of different pathways for where that conversation could go. You always have a call sheet for specific questions you want to know about the property itself.
But I think it’s very important to take that initial phone call, and the first part of that phone call at their pace, and letting them dictate the beginning of that conversation because that’s how I want to brand and personalize what I do in real estate investing. This is not a fast, pushy thing. This can take as long as we need. I want to make sure that when we’re doing this process at the end of it, whether it ends in a transaction or not, that you feel good about how things went and I feel good about how things went, because if either of those things is not true, then this is not going to work for anybody. And this is something I want to continue to do in this market. So I want to make sure that people are treated right and they know that it’s more than just a quick sale, fast-money approach.

Tony:
Love that approach, Brett. And just one thing I want to share, this actually comes from Brett Daniels. I don’t think we’ve had him on the Rookie podcast before, but he has a lot of great content around wholesaling and specifically talking to people on the phone. What he encourages folks to do is to get four things. You want, condition of the property, their motivation for selling, the timeline, and then their asking price. And if you can get those four things, typically it allows you to have a really good dialogue around, “Hey, can we actually make this deal work?” So, Ashley, let me ask you, hearing that, does it make you less nervous, more excited about talking to people?

Ashley:
Well, I’ve done two batches of mailers and both times I did Google Voice, which I think is a phenomenal tip to give out, is to do that because you know that it’s somebody calling who got your mailer and it’s separate from your cell phone, but on your cell phone I guess, but not your cell phone number. And my immediate reaction… So, it was linked to me and my business partner, and he would take all the calls, but I still had it linked to my phone so I could see what’s going through and everything. And my immediate reaction would be, “Don’t answer, don’t talk to anyone.” And my job would be, I would Google the phone number real quick and try to find their address before he even answered the phone and said hello.
But we had Nate Robbins on the show and I think he talked more about cold calling. Where, Brett, you already have a warm lead where that, I feel like I would be way more comfortable with because you already know they’re calling because they’re interested about something, or maybe they’re just curious, they want to know what you would pay for their house. But either way, it’s not the, we’re just reaching out out of the blue and cold calling them. But Nate was episode 326, if anyone’s interested in hearing that side of talking to people on the phone, because I did learn a lot from him, too. So, Brett, when you’re on the phone with people, how are you being transparent about your process of purchasing their home?

Brett:
Yeah. Very, very good question. And, Tony, what you mentioned, I actually dug up my old notebook that has my screening questions that I would use, and I’d carry around this everywhere, just in case somebody called, I could wrestle it up real quick so I would remember, “I need to make sure I hit all of these things,” like you mentioned. Or, “Do you live there? Is it rented? What’s the condition of the house? Has any work been done on it recently? Do you own it free and clear?” A lot of different questions that lead to that next step in the process to where you figure out, by the end of the call, “Is this something that we should take the next step on? Is this something you’re still interested in?” And that’s the kickoff for asking what you asked about, which is, what does the rest of this process look like?
At that point you’ve got a go-no-go decision, right? After talking with them, they’ve felt me out, I’ve felt them out, and usually by the end of that conversation, either I realize this is maybe not something I want to pursue, or they realize, maybe I’m just not willing to sell. But if they do, I ask, “Is this something you’d like to continue with, move forward and move on to next steps?” And if they say yes, I start to explain what that whole process looks like and take it high-level start to finish to let them know like, “All right. Well, the next step after this would be me finding some time to come on-site and actually see the property and walk the property and verify some of the key things that we talked about today, and just verify the condition and understand the property itself.”
After that, I need to go back and understand, all right, if there are things that need to be done to the house, I need to run some numbers to figure out, is this something that’s going to make sense from a purchase and rehab standpoint? And just being very honest with them and letting them know, like, “Hey, I understand that you may be interested in selling, but if these numbers don’t make sense, this is not something I’m going to be able to move forward with either. But if for some reason we can’t move forward, I’m happy to help you with the information that I have and figure out what may be the best direction for you to go in.”
But talking them through that whole process of, all right, after the on-site, I may need to get an inspection to understand the property itself even more depending on what we see. And then at that point we’ll talk final numbers, and if we both come to a price that makes sense for both of us, then I start to explain what the actual closing process looks like so that they have a high level of how the whole thing works up front.

Tony:
Love that, Brett, and I appreciate you walking us through that. I think a lot of folks, they get the idea of sending the mail, but what happens afterwards is where they get a little nervous. And, guys, I’m going to put a little Easter egg at the end of this episode if our producers will help us out, but I have a hilarious voicemail from a very angry property owner that called me back a few years ago, and I’ll tack it on the end of this episode if you guys want to listen.

Speaker 4:
Hi, Sarah. My name’s (beep). I call bullsh*t (beep). You weren’t randomly driving around here with cash. I get one to two calls a day for the last two months. I’m an individual who enjoys privacy, but I’ve been getting one to two calls a day for the last two months of people who think they want to buy my (beep) property and make money off of it. I’m also a real estate investor, but I’m not stupid, so (beep) don’t call me again.

Tony:
So Brett, what I want to ask you is, for all these deals that you’ve done, about how much did it actually cost you to get started? Ballpark. What was the total investment for these seven deals?

Brett:
Geez, for the seven deals? Let’s see. I think the first portion, a few hundred dollars and rounding out a second marketing campaign, a few hundred dollars more. Funny, but probably just under $700 for the seven deals, and it’s not anything extravagant. Literally, the most expensive thing was I bought a printer so that I could print these letters. I found all the letters so I could print these letters out, and there’s some more of the personalization where I sign each one. And printing envelopes and stamp and return addresses, but that’s literally the most expensive part of that. Outside of that, it’s stamps, it’s paper. It’s not a lot of money to get started.

Tony:
Brett, I think you’re a shining example of just taking action, not being super fancy about it, not being worried about step 20 when you’re on step one. It’s just like, “Hey, what can I do next, and how can I keep making progress, and how can I stay consistent?” I think it’s a super important lesson for rookies that are listening. So I want to finish off, Brett, by asking you, and we touched on this a little bit at the top of the show, but there are a lot of people right now who are worried about investing in real estate. Interest rates are climbing, you’ve seen prices going up, prices going down. We’ve been on this rollercoaster ride, and a lot of folks are just waiting. So, what’s your take? Is it risky to flip homes right now, today?

Brett:
It can be if you’re not prepared and you don’t have a plan. I think now is a great opportunity to get into the market because of that fear and uncertainty. That’s the environment that I got started in with COVID. I can’t tell you how many people told me at the time, “Don’t do this. This is not a good idea. Everything’s going to go crazy.” And lo and behold, it was actually the best time to get started. And I think that’s another opportunity coming here soon. But back to why it’s a good time, you have to know what you’re doing. You have to have a good buy box, you have to buy properties at the right price. You have to understand the rehab costs and what you’re doing, and underwrite effectively upfront so that the numbers don’t lie.
You may have less opportunities now. Things may not pencil the way that they used to, but I think going in with a very specific plan and understanding very specifically what you want to do and what those numbers look like, I think it’s a great time, and especially now with off-market deals. There’s a lot of people who may want to sell but just can’t, and that’s where that conversation can go to where they feel like, “I can’t put my home on the market. There aren’t enough buyers out there.” Or, “I’ve wanted to sell my home for so long, but interest rates went up and I just don’t feel like my property is marketable enough to compete.” So, yeah, there’s definitely a lot of opportunities. You just have to be very specific about how you’re going about it and know your numbers, stick to your numbers.

Ashley:
Right. With your profits from the flips, we talked a little bit about how you’re flipping to buy rentals. Can you tell us a little bit of how those numbers work out? What are you making on average profit from the flips, and then how are you using that to buy the rentals?

Brett:
That first property, it was listed at 100,000 on market. I offered 60 and got it under contract for 70. We ended up putting, probably, let me see where that number is. Yeah, we put $47,000 in renovations into it and we had conservatively estimated that the ARV was going to be 160 and it ended up appraising at 181. So that’s a lot more money that we can take out and then reinvest into the next deal. So basically taking those profits from either a BRRRR and pulling that money out, or the revenue from a flip and then rolling that into the next deal.

Ashley:
Well, Brett, thank you for coming on and taking the time to share your process for creating your list, creating your buy box, and working us through and making me overcome my fear of talking to people. And I think Jody was too kind when he said it was talking to sellers or potential sellers. I think it’s just people in general, answering the phone. But if you want to find out more information about Brett or about Tony or I, we are going to link Brett’s website and our social media handles into the show description. You can find that below if you’re watching on YouTube or your favorite podcast platform.
I hope you guys learned a ton as to how you can take action today with building your buy box, doing driving for dollars, building that list out, and sending out those personalized mailers and waiting for the phone to ring. And I know it’s around the holidays and this is going to be released into January I believe. But I will tell you, last year I sent out mailers and I didn’t realize what I was doing and they got delivered to everyone the day before Christmas Eve. And I thought, “This is the worst timing.”
You have no idea how many times my phone rang that day. And so, don’t worry about waiting until the perfect time to send the mailers either. Just start taking action. You can always send another round of them a month later, two months later, three months later. Well, Brett, thank you very much. I’m Ashley, and he’s Tony, and we will be back with another guest and we’ll see you guys at the Real Estate Rookie podcast.
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