Libraries aren’t just repositories of books. They’re also a great place to inspire your business’s content curation efforts. After all, the library system is based on finding exactly what you need when you need it most.

Whether I walk into a library searching for a genre or a fellow entrepreneur’s book, I can locate it fairly easily. (Thank you, Dewey Decimal System.) All I have to do is type some information into the library’s database and I’m rewarded with an answer. It’s efficient, convenient, and accurate.

How does all this relate to curated content? Simply put, the content your team curates serves as a sort of library for everyone in your company. When you or your colleagues need a whitepaper, case study, article, or related asset, you should be able to count on your content library as a trustworthy resource.

Having a wealth of curated content at your fingertips isn’t just nice to have, either. In today’s fast-paced marketplace, it’s essential. It can take days or even weeks to pull together useful, high-quality content pieces. Rather than waiting — and potentially losing a sale, budding investor, employee, or new partner — you need your content to be ready to go.

The good news is that you probably already have the beginnings of a curated content library in the form of existing collateral such as blog posts. However, to give your people the tools they deserve, you’ll need to begin building out your content collection. Try these techniques to keep your unique content flowing and leverage it in your branding, marketing, selling, and support efforts.

1. Add a content curation element to your existing content development strategy.

Search Engine Journal reports that around seven out of 10 marketers rely on content. Accordingly, the chances are very high that you have a content development strategy in the works. That’s great, but you need to make certain you’re actively curating content that will be useful later.

For instance, you might want to add a task like “write one client case study per month” to your existing content development strategy. Even if you’re not sure how you’ll use the case study beyond publishing it on your site, that’s okay. For instance, case studies can be extraordinarily helpful as educational pieces and call-to-action triggers. A case study you write this quarter may not seem pertinent immediately. But a salesperson could depend on it next year to move a lead through the sales pipeline.

Remember: Your curated content is basically bulking out your corporation’s private library. To ensure that your library grows, you need to add curated content generation into your strategic marketing mix.

2. Teach your team members how to use your curated content.

Once you begin to increase your available content, be sure to store it in a centralized place. That way, it’s accessible to all employees. However, never assume that your team members will begin using your curated content just because it’s available. On the contrary, you’ll have to train them on how it can assist them in their jobs.

For instance, let’s say you’ve assigned one of your marketers to keep your business’s social media presence strong and consistent. That’s important because letting your social media engagement wane will hurt your brand’s perception. Ideally, posting two to three times weekly can help you stay in front of your target audiences.

Of course, it can be tough to add variety to posts. One way to be more versatile is to pull some quotes or snippets from curated content, which is something your employee might not know how to do without a little prompting. Most longer content like pillars and studies contain compelling blurbs. A quick quote could drive readers to click on a link to find out more or share your insights with their followers. The result is more interaction for your brand thanks to the clever use of curated content.

3. Think outside the text-only box when engaging in content curation.

There’s little doubt that traditional digital marketing items like blogs, whitepapers, and even transcripts are essential elements of your content library. They’re hardly the only types of content that belong there, though. Other types of media can be just as valuable.

Take videos. Did you know that Oberlo statistics suggest 91% of consumers are eager to get their hands and eyes on more branded video content? If you’re not producing video content as part of your curated collection, you’re missing out on a golden opportunity. The same goes for content in the form of imagery, such as infographics, slideshows, and charts.

If you’re worried that you’ll be spending too much time producing all this extra content, think again. It’s often simpler to get more mileage out of a single piece of content than you might assume. One blog post containing statistics could be spun into an informative graph, a topic-adjacent video “teaser”, or a bulleted PowerPoint presentation. Rather than reinventing the wheel, you just squeeze a little more juice from content you’ve previously invested in.

4. Add some outsider media to your curated content.

There’s nothing that says your organization’s content has to all come from internal sources. Outsider pieces like recently published journalistic writings, industry-related deep dives, and YouTube or Vimeo videos can be included as resources. Truth be told, they can help motivate leads by providing objective, third-party viewpoints.

Pretend you’re trying to close a deal with a qualified prospect. You’re not having much luck, so you go to your centralized repository of curated content. After a little searching, you discover a recently published piece from The New York Times that you believe would nudge your prospect closer to conversion. You compose an email, send the link to the article, and ask to schedule a follow-up meeting.

The point here is that you don’t have to depend only on your staffers to produce all your curated content. In fact, having content from diverse places can sometimes be the best way to add credibility to your company’s position. Even content like user-generated reviews that talk about your competition can have a positive impact depending on the situation.

Does it take time to aggregate a library of curated content? Sure. You’ll never regret making it part of your overall marketing strategy, though. The first time you’re able to move the needle on a sale or educate a new hire with curated content, you’ll be glad you added “librarian” to your title.

Andrew Eweka is a prominent figure in the consultancy field with over 20 years of experience. He also has over a decade of experience in the Nigerian oil and gas industry. His journey has culminated in roles as CEO, chairman, founder and board member, in a range of industries including healthcare and e-commerce.

His main aim in business is bridging the gap between Africa and the rest of the world. This article will uncover the powerful mindset and tactics that have helped Andrew Eweka to achieve his ongoing professional mission.

Dr Byron Cole: Could you tell us about your journey in the consultancy field and how it has shaped your approach as the CEO & Chairman of 1stMan Global and CEO of Brompton AGI FZ LLE?

Andrew Eweka: My journey in the consultancy field has been marked by a deep commitment to problem-solving and strategic thinking. Over the years, I’ve had the privilege of working with diverse organizations, helping them navigate complex challenges and seize opportunities. This experience has reinforced the importance of innovation, adaptability, and a global perspective. As the CEO & Chairman of 1stMan Global and CEO of Brompton AGI FZ LLE, this consultancy background has shaped my approach in two key ways. Firstly, it has instilled in me a keen sense of client-centricity, focusing on delivering tailored solutions that align with the unique needs of each organization. Secondly, it has emphasized the value of fostering a culture of collaboration, where diverse talents and perspectives come together to drive growth and transformation.

Cole: With your extensive experience in various corporate roles and board memberships, how do you balance the diverse interests of different companies you are involved with?

Eweka: Balancing the diverse interests of multiple companies requires a delicate blend of strategic alignment and effective communication. Drawing on my experience, I prioritize open dialogue and transparent communication across all entities. This helps ensure that overarching goals are shared, and potential conflicts are addressed proactively. Furthermore, I encourage cross-pollination of ideas and practices among the companies I’m involved with. By identifying common challenges and best practices, we can streamline processes, maximize efficiency, and create synergies that benefit all stakeholders.

Cole: As someone who has brought global businesses into Nigeria and West Africa, what challenges and opportunities do you see in expanding international companies into these regions?

Eweka: Expanding international companies into Nigeria and West Africa presents a unique blend of challenges and opportunities. On one hand, these regions offer immense growth potential due to their large consumer base and emerging markets. However, navigating regulatory complexities, cultural differences, and infrastructural limitations can be daunting. By focusing on localized strategies, investing in building strong local partnerships, and conducting thorough market research, we can mitigate risks and capitalize on the enormous opportunities these regions offer.

Cole: Could you share your vision for bridging the gap between Africa and the rest of the world in terms of business? What strategies are you employing to achieve this?

Eweka: My vision revolves around fostering mutually beneficial partnerships between Africa and the global business community. This involves facilitating knowledge exchange, technology transfer, and investment that can drive sustainable development across the continent. To achieve this, I emphasize the importance of education and capacity building, nurturing a new generation of African entrepreneurs who can compete on a global stage. By promoting cultural understanding, facilitating trade agreements, and leveraging technology, we can establish a more level playing field that benefits both African economies and the broader international business landscape.

Cole: Apart from your business ventures, you’re also a co-founder of Wazima Health and a non-profit football academy. How do these initiatives contribute to your goal of harnessing youth potential and bridging gaps?

Eweka: Wazima Health and the non-profit football academy reflect my commitment to harnessing youth potential and bridging socioeconomic gaps. Wazima Health addresses healthcare disparities by providing accessible medical services to under served communities, improving overall well-being. The football academy, on the other hand, offers a platform for youth talent development, instilling values of teamwork, discipline, and ambition. These initiatives align with my belief that empowering the youth is crucial for sustainable development. By investing in education, health, and skills development, we create a foundation for brighter futures and contribute to narrowing societal disparities.

Cole: In today’s rapidly changing business landscape, how do you stay ahead of the curve and adapt your strategies to new challenges and trends?

Eweka: Staying ahead of the curve requires a commitment to continuous learning and a proactive approach to change. I emphasize the importance of staying well-informed about industry trends, technological advancements, and market shifts. Regularly engaging in research, attending conferences, and seeking diverse perspectives helps me anticipate challenges and identify emerging opportunities. Agility is key. I encourage my teams to embrace innovation, experiment with new approaches, and be willing to pivot when necessary. This adaptability allows us to respond effectively to evolving customer needs and market dynamics.

Cole: The concept of global business can be complex and intricate. How do you simplify this concept and make it accessible to a wide audience, especially those who might not have a background in business?

Eweka: Global business, at its core, is about connecting people, products, and ideas across borders. I often use relatable metaphors to illustrate this concept. Just as individuals can learn from different cultures and experiences, businesses can thrive by collaborating with diverse markets and leveraging each other’s strengths. I also emphasize the tangible impacts of global business, such as job creation, improved access to products, and enhanced quality of life. By highlighting these real-world outcomes, I make the concept more relatable and accessible to audiences without a business background.

Cole: Collaboration and networking are crucial in the business world. How do you approach building and maintaining meaningful connections within your extensive network?

Eweka: Building and maintaining connections is about authenticity and value creation. I prioritize meaningful interactions over transactional exchanges. This involves actively seeking opportunities to collaborate, share insights, and offer support to others in my network. I also value diversity within my network, seeking out voices from different industries, backgrounds, and regions. Regular communication through platforms like industry events, social media, and even personalized emails helps nurture these relationships over time.

Cole: Could you share a memorable success story from your career that highlights the impact of your efforts in bringing global businesses to Africa?

Eweka: One standout success story involved bringing a tech startup specializing in renewable energy solutions to Africa. By identifying the need for sustainable power sources across the continent, we positioned the company to provide affordable and eco-friendly energy solutions. Through strategic partnerships with local governments and businesses, we successfully implemented these solutions in various regions, positively impacting both the environment and local economies. This success demonstrated the transformative power of aligning global expertise with local needs, driving positive change and illustrating the potential of international collaborations in Africa.

Andrew Eweka’s Tips For Aspiring Entrepreneurs And Leaders

1. Lead with purpose. Understand the core values that drive you and the impact you want to make. Combine this with a hunger for continuous learning and a willingness to step out of your comfort zone.
2. Embrace failure as a stepping stone to success. Every setback is a chance to learn, pivot, and grow stronger.
3. Surround yourself with a diverse and supportive network. Collaboration and mentorship can provide invaluable insights and accelerate your growth.

David:
Welcome to the BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast. I am the host of the biggest, the best and the Baddest Real Estate podcast where we arm you with the information that you need to start building long-term wealth through real estate today. It doesn’t take that many properties to achieve financial freedom. It just takes the right ones, and that’s what we’re talking about is how you can identify the right property so that you can get to the same place that Brandon and I and tens of thousands of other people have got to. We’re going to call this the Real Estate Investor Master Journey. This is your step-by-step guide to mastering real estate investing and it’s going to be so much more simple than you think. So glad to have everybody today. We have a bonus episode. It is the 90 Day Challenge.
In today’s episode, you’re going to be listening to me walking you through a webinar where we will go over how to achieve your goals with a 90 day plan of action, how to determine cashflow potential quickly and efficiently so you don’t waste your time. How to fund deals even with little money available and how to come up with a long-term strategy for wealth that you can execute over a shorter period of time. It’s all about building momentum and I’m going to share with you some strategies for how you can do just that.
We are heading into the last quarter of the year, as crazy as that sounds. And if you set a goal to purchase property this year, there is still time to get that done. So if you’re somebody who’s been struggling with taking action, you need a little more direction, you need a framework that you can use, you should really like today’s show because we are going to be getting into the brass tacks. Now as a little FYI, I originally recorded this earlier in the year when rates were lower, so they are a little bit higher now, but the principles, the analysis that you’re going to be learning, the way to look at real estate has not changed, but because rates are a little higher, you might just want to write lower offers or chase different deals than you would have before.
If you’re someone who struggled with taking action because you didn’t feel confident, you’re going to love today’s show. We talk about how analyzing deal after deal after deal can get you comfortable with knowing what’s going to make money and what’s going to lose money. And with that comfortability comes confidence, and with confidence comes action. And we all know what happens if you take consistent action. Now, at the end of the show today, you’re going to have an opportunity to sign up for a BiggerPockets Pro membership, if that’s something that you’d like and because you’re listening to this now I’d like to offer you a discount. So if you use the following code, you could get 20% off your BiggerPockets Pro membership. The code is YTChallenge23. Use that when you’re signing up for a BiggerPockets Pro membership and get yourself 20% off courtesy of yours truly, David Greene.
Now the code is podchallenge23. That’s PODchallenge23. If you use that code when you’re checking out, you can get yourself 20% off courtesy of yours truly, David Greene, because I appreciate you listening to my podcast. All right, let’s get into it.
All right, let’s get started with today’s webinar. Yep, my pleasure. Thank you for asking the question. The 90 Day Challenge, how to get your first or next property in the next 90 days, hosted by yours truly, David Greene, host of the BiggerPockets podcast. Please feel free to follow me on Instagram or anywhere else, @DavidGreene24. There’s a good chance that you’ll be listening to this and I have a question that I won’t be able to get to. So you can DM me or even better, you can send me a message on the BiggerPockets platform and I can get to you there.
So as you’re listening, go ahead and take your phone out because there’s going to be several times throughout this slideshow where I’m going to ask you to take a picture of, like a screenshot because you’re going to want to remember that stuff, so you’re going to want to have your phone handy when you do that. All right, thanks for coming. This should be fun. Here’s our goal. It’s very simple. I want help you build a step-by-step plan to buy your first or next property in the next 90 days, no matter how much experience, time or money that you currently have. Let’s talk a little bit about us, a BiggerPockets. Basically it’s a website that has a blog, a forum, podcasts, webinars, webinar replays, analysis tools, networking opportunities, books, videos and more that are all designed to help you use real estate investing to achieve your goals. There’s a free membership that includes education, networking, Q&A, forums and confidence to take action.
There’s a pro membership, expert education and data investment calculators, landlord legal forums and tools to take action because at BiggerPockets, we believe that real estate is the greatest wealth building tool in the world. It’s not quick and easy, but simply a business that can be learned. Anyone can invest regardless of past or current position. I, David Greene, I’m a real estate investor myself. I live in the Bay Area in California.
I own rental property, I flip houses, I invest in commercial real estate, I invest in short-term rentals. I hold some notes, basically people that pay me like I’m the bank on their mortgage. I am the host of the BiggerPockets podcast, formerly with Brandon Turner and a new co-host is going to be revealed pretty soon here. I’ve written a couple books for BiggerPockets, the BRRRR, Buy, Rehab, Rent, Refinance, Repeat, Long-Distance Real Estate Investing, as well as SOLD: Every Real Estate Agent’s Guide to Building a Profitable Business. And there’s two more books coming out after SOLD that are written towards agents to help them be better at their job and to understand how to serve clients at a higher level. I’ve been featured in Forbes, HGTV, CNN and more. And like you, I was once a newbie to real estate.
And here’s why I put all this in there. I just want you to understand that you’re listening to someone coming from my perspective because the advice I’m going to give you today, it’s good that you understand what I’m doing so you understand why I’m giving you the advice I am. But it doesn’t matter where I’m right now. At one point I was sitting right where you are. I just kept going on this journey of real estate investing. I really liked it and I ended up getting able to do all that cool stuff. And that’s what’s awesome about real estate because the more you give to it, the more it gives back to you. Succeeding in real estate is similar to succeeding in anything, and this is what I really want to highlight. There is no magic or secret to becoming an amazing real estate investor. It’s probably in my opinion, one of or the easiest ways to succeed at building wealth. I don’t think there’s a better way than real estate, at least not that what I’ve ever found.
So you shouldn’t be surprised that investing in real estate success is just like success in anything else you do. And what do I mean? Well, what do people do to succeed in general? They have a strong reason or a why for getting into shape. People have to know why they’re doing something if they’re going to stay committed to it. They then think about it, read about it, talk about it, and in other ways obsess about getting into shape. They focus on a particular set of workouts. They don’t just do anything. It’s very purposeful and intentional, what they’re going to do when they go workout, they educate themselves on the proper form so they don’t get injured. They surround themselves with others who are trying to improve their physique. They don’t fall for get ripped quick schemes or programs, but they do pay for equipment tools and gym memberships.
This one’s so important is you’re going to spend some money if you want to get into shape, but it doesn’t have to be a get ripped quick scheme, or a get rich quick scheme. You see what we did there? It’s just finding the right equipment, the right tools and the right gym to put their time into. And then this is what’s super important. They show up consistently despite not seeing immediate progress. They just keep pushing play. This is so, so big. Anything you do, like right now I’m trying to undertake juujitsu and it is super hard. I’m not seeing a lot of progress. But I have to keep going. Every single person I talk to says the secret is you just keep showing up. If you’re tired and you don’t want to actually roll or spar, then don’t. Just come to the class and learn the techniques, watch other people doing it, get in the community of people, have fun, build relationships here, but you have to keep coming. Every single person is saying the same thing and it just makes me think about all the other things I’ve been successful at.
How did I become successful? I kept going when other people stopped. This is a fourplex that my buddy Brandon bought. That’s his little daughter Rosie that he’s holding in the front door. This thing makes him $1,432 a month. This is a triplex that he owns. This makes him a little over $1,000 a month. This is a fourplex that he turned into a fiveplex. This one makes them almost $1,600 a month. It doesn’t take that many properties to achieve financial freedom. It just takes the right ones and that’s what we’re talking about is how you can identify the right property so that you can get to the same place that Brandon and I and tens of thousands of other people have got to. We’re going to call this the real estate investor master journey. This is your step-by-step guide to mastering real estate investing and it’s going to be going to be so much more simple than you think.
So go ahead, get yourself ready. We’re going to get started at the meat and potatoes of our presentation today and I hope you guys are excited because I’m not blowing smoke. This is all stuff that I’ve done and I was just a police officer that didn’t want to have to be a police officer anymore, and I worked my way right out of it. And whatever situation you’re at in life, you can do it too. Step number one, your purpose. This is the why that we talked about in the workout analogy. Why do you want to invest in real estate in the first place?
Let’s go over a couple of reasons why some people do it. They want wealth, they want flashiness, they want nice cars. They want to feel like they’re a somebody. They want to show off. They want to go to conferences and be able to say, “I have 700 units,” and use fancy phrases like cap rate and say finance instead of finance and talk about their door count, which is hilarious to me because I know quite a few investors that end up including the garage door, the front door, the side door, the back door, the bathroom door, the closet door. There’s a lot of doors that get worked into these accounts. Is that why you want to do it or are you looking for a different motive? Here’s why I say that. If your motive for working out is because you want to look good to find a romantic partner, it will usually be enough to get you in the gym and eating better and in shape. But when you find your partner, you’ll probably stop.
Your why was just to get to that point and that was all. If your reason for working out was that you wanted to be healthy so you could live longer or you wanted to find a partner and make them proud of who they’re with, you wanted to really, really serve them by being fit. When you find that partner, you’ll continue to work out. The why really, really matters. A lot of people are in a situation in life where they’re not happy. They have a lack of security. Maybe they’re insecure as a person, they’re watching other people around them doing better or they don’t like their job, they just want to get out of their job right now. Well, if that’s your reason, you’ll probably pursue real estate until you get out of that pain and then you’ll stop. And the thing that sucks about that is that real estate is designed to get better and better and better over time.
It’s like the compound interest theory. To me, real estate investing is much, much more like planting a tree. The reason this works so well but that so few people do it is the delayed gratification component of it. Every time I buy a house right now, I am serving future David. All the money that I make in real estate right now came from decisions I made in my past. You don’t get the immediate gratification of it. And so I’m bringing this up right now to just sort of make clarity to you that the reason to get into this is for the longterm. It’s just like when you first start going to the gym. You don’t see progress, you just feel sore. It just hurts all the time. And the worst thing ever is when you start going and you get in some progress and then you stop and then you got to start all over again. And you’re always in that just agony of getting started, but you never see the results.
The only reason that you should get into fitness is you’re going to consistently stick with it. You’re going to keep going to the gym, you’re going to keep eating healthy, you’re going to build good habits and then it’s impossible to not be in shape, but then you get all the benefits of being in shape. Well, we’re talking about financial fitness today. Real estate works just the same way. You’re looking at what this property is going to be doing for you in five years, in 10 years, in 30 years, not what it’s going to be doing for you immediately. So this is a good question for you to ask yourself. I think you guys should all take a picture of this. I’m going to give you a minute to take a picture of this screen here. As you ask yourself this question, why do you want to invest in real estate?
I want you to consider writing down your answer. Come up with a list of all the reasons why you want to do it. Brandon bought that house where he was holding his daughter in the picture to give to her. It’s one of the coolest things he’s going to do. He’s buying this house. He put it on a loan that the property will be paid off in 18 years. He’s going to live off the cashflow for those 18 years and when Rosie turns 18, she gets that house. At that time with the loan being paid off and the appreciation that’s happened, she should be able to pay for her college, her car, her first property, a vacation anywhere she wants to go and more, just from that one house. She will be set for life if she makes good decisions. Brandon made a decision and in 18 years after he made it, his kid will have incredible benefit which will then benefit him.
That’s a wonderful story of how real estate can work and when it works well. When it doesn’t work well is when you’re in a financial bind and you’re trying to get out of it using real estate right away. So if you guys write down all the reasons why you want to invest in real estate, you’ll start to see it’s because you want to leave a legacy for your kids because you want to put your money in a good, safe place where it’s going to grow over time, because you want something to focus on other than the stuff in life that you’re staring at right now that isn’t doing anything for you. And those are powerful whys and you will need them to get through this long-term commitment that we’re talking about.
Step number two is plan. How are you going to invest in real estate? You’ve got a lot of different what we call niches or if you want to be fancy, you could call them niches. Single family homes, small multifamily, large multifamily, office space, retail space, mobile homes, mobile home parks or raw land. Those are examples of different ways you can invest in real estate. Then you’ve got these strategies, buy and hold. I use that one all the time. Fix and flip, I use that one occasionally. Now here’s the cool thing is all of these strategies can work in most cases for any niche. Wholesaling, that’s where you put a property under contract and then you sell the contract to someone else for a profit. Development, buying turnkey properties using the BRRRR method, house hacking, student rentals, vacation rentals. There’s a lot of strategies you can use with each niche and all you got to do, it’s not important which one you pick, it’s just important that you pick one and that you start making progress on it. Pick a niche and one strategy to begin with. You don’t need to learn at all.
So where will you invest in real estate? Well, you’ve got options. You’ve got local versus long distance. And then once you pick one of those two, you’ve got neighborhood. That’s really where you got to be asking, do I want to start my own backyard and make a niche and a strategy work here or do I want to go somewhere else where I like the market better? And then once you pick the overall area, which neighborhood do you want to be in? And then study your market. You want to know the ins and outs of what type of people buy houses there, what an average house is worth, what part of town is where the best deals are going to be, where the demand for tenants is going to be, where the best school districts are.
This is why most people start where they live because they already know the market, but it’s not about where you live, it’s about what you know. So pick the market you want to know and then study it so well that it’s like you know it as if you live there. Step number three, you got to find the deals. Now, a lot of people start off with step number three as step number one, and that’s the problem. They didn’t start off with their why. What’s the reason I’m doing this? And then they didn’t come up with a plan. So every deal looks like a good deal or a bad deal. They don’t know because they don’t know what they’re looking for. That’s why you shouldn’t be doing this until step three. How are you going to find these real estate deals?
Well, here’s a few different ways. The simple way, go to realtor.com or zillow.com, sort by your criteria and then look for hidden potential. And I’m going to describe hidden potential in a second here, but I can give you an even easier way than this. Find a real estate agent that you like and have them start looking for you. Tell them what your criteria are and have them start sending you deals and then you can supplement that with Realtor or Zillow. If you live in California, you should be hitting me up because we can do this for you. If you don’t live in California, you should be trying to see if I know a realtor that I can refer you to or if you can use the BiggerPockets agent finder to find one. But going on Realtor and Zillow is only as good as what’s in the MLS. And then you’re going to have to find a realtor to ask your questions to once you find a house anyway.
So starting with the real estate agent in my opinion is the best way to go. Then supplement your search with stuff like Realtor Zillow. When I say look for hidden potential, here’s what guys like me look for in a property. There was a time 2010, ’11, ’12 where what I was looking for was the most motivated seller. There was a ton of houses on the market, nobody was really trying to buy them a deal was getting at below market value. So I would look for the seller that needed to get rid of a house and I would make the most aggressive offer I could, and that’s how I made money in real estate. We are now in a market where there’s hardly any motivated sellers. Everybody wants to own the asset. That’s why you’re here right now. You want to own real estate. Back when there were deals everywhere, there weren’t people showing up to webinars asking how to buy them.
Nobody wanted to buy them. That was why there were deals. Well, we’ve done a 180. We’re now in a position where everybody wants to buy this stuff. So instead of trying to find a motivated seller, which is isn’t going to happen because they’re not motivated if everyone wants to buy their house, I look for things that other investors are missing. So I’m looking at a house right now in Moraga, California and I wrote an offer on it and actually, you know what? I’m going to text my agent right now. I say my agent, he’s one of the agents on my team, and ask where we are with it. Just remembered.
So this is a property that sat vacant for a long time and eventually came off the market because the owners were unhappy with the lack of offers they got, and they blamed their agent for it. So I went and looked at this house and I saw it’s a weird floor plan. I can see why people weren’t wanting the home. That was the obvious answer. But then I also saw it has a huge basement that already has plumbing and electrical run to it but isn’t finished. It also has an area in the upper floor to build a loft that would massively increase the square footage of the home, and then it has a setup that it can be split up into different units and rented out individually. When I look at that house, I see the ability to create a lot of rent potential in an amazing area and add square footage.
What everyone else saw was a weird floor plan on a house that was in a gray area but they didn’t like. That’s what we mean by looking for hidden potential. If you can develop these creative eyes and see angles that other people missed, you can find deals in plain view basically where other people are looking at them but not seeing what you’re seeing. Then there’s the medium method. Get in your car and drive. Find a vacant or a rundown property and add it to your CRM, that stands for customer relationship manager. This is basically a database to attract things with. Mail letters or postcards to the prospect so you can actually say, hey, that house right there looks run down. I’m going to send a letter or a postcard to the owner of that house and tell them I want to buy it.
Continue to repeat those first three steps over and over and over and over. And then once you actually get people that are saying, Yeah, you can buy my house. What you want to pay for it?” You can start to spend your time negotiating with those people that are calling and hiring other people to drive for you. Then they go find the addresses, they tell them, and then you look them up and then you call the owners and you just spend your time negotiating. You could download a large list of prospects from Listsource, PropStream or other places. You can mail letters or postcards to thousands of people a month and then just answer your phone. We call this direct mail. So the medium method will be driving and looking for the houses yourself. The advanced method is sending out letters and letting those people come to you.
These are all ways that you’re basically just filling up a funnel of leads that you can then start to pursue, and we’re going to talk about that pretty soon. But you got to get leads however you can, whether your agent’s helping you find them on the MLS, which is my preferred method, or you’re going after them yourself, which is what a lot of people do, like wholesalers typically do that. That’s where it all starts is you start with leads. And remember that I said success in one thing is usually the same way that you’re successful at a lot of other stuff. It’s true. If I want to run a successful real estate business, I start off by looking for leads. How many people want to buy a house or sell a house that I can get to come to me?
I have a mortgage company. How many people want to get a loan that I can talk to and I can say, “Hey, you should use my company.” That’s where every single business starts, so you shouldn’t be surprised that that’s where we start now. But how do I get these leads to analyze? Well, here’s one way you go to biggerpockets.com/blogs/provideos, and why don’t you guys go ahead and take a picture here. Here’s the thing to understand about a property. Every property has a home run number. This is a price you can get it for that makes it a home run. Now, here’s a caveat I’ll add to that. Real estate markets change and shift just like economies change and shift. And what are the mistakes that I see people make when it comes to building wealth or making money… how do I want to say this? I’m about to use a sports analogy because we’re looking at a ballpark.
So if you’re not into sports, hang with me. The way you build wealth is very similar to the way you win at sports. And the thing that makes it similar is you are competing with other people who are also trying to get what you want, right? You want money, so does other people. You want the best job, so do other people. You want these best properties, so do other people, right? Sports is I’m trying to get the ball in the basket or the football in the end zone or I’m trying to get the baseball into an open space that I can hit it and the other team has a whole bunch of people that are trying to stop me. All the strategy of sports has to do with how do we do what we want and stop them from doing what they want? And that’s why I can use those analogies when we’re talking about building wealth.
So we’re talking about a home run number, because there’s other people that are trying to stop you. The thing about sports is that the rules of the game change the way the game is played, change and evolve over time, and so do economies. What worked to make money in different aspects in 2002 is different than what works to make money in 2010, which is different than 2020. And I give you examples of this. In 2001, ’02, having a website or being able to code and make websites gave you a huge advantage. At that time, computer networking was massively popular. If you could take two computers, connect them to each other and make them communicate, you could make a buttload of money. That sounds crazy right now, but technology hadn’t increased to where it’s at. So you had to have really good problem solving skills to connect two computers together in the same office.
We didn’t have just a cloud that everything would connect to. Well, at a certain point, the technology improved to where that could be done automatically, you didn’t have to manually do it. And then computer networkers were kind of out of business. Just like people that could create a webpage became much less needed when you could just go to Wix or Squarespace and have a template to make your own page. You see how that talks? Well, let’s fast forward to 2010. There’s tons of real estate out there. Nobody has the money to buy it and nobody wants to own it because we think we’re going into a depression. And buying real estate felt like buying an anchor, is going to pull you down. You’re basically just signing up for a mortgage. You’re going to have to pay. You don’t know if you’re going to have tenants that are going to want to live there because none of those people had jobs.
The way you won in that area or in that market I should say, would be to get a house way below what you thought it would appraise for. That would be your home run number. In 2020, 2022, in the future, you don’t win that. Same way. It’s not like there’s nobody that wants to buy a house. The government’s printing money, they’re handing it out to everybody. The economy’s doing relatively well. Most people have jobs and are not afraid of not having a job. In fact, a lot of them are working from home. There’s a shortage in housing. So now that your home run number has to be calculated differently, now you have to look at it more like, what is this house going to be worth in five years or 10 years and where else can I spend my money?
And in that case, real estate almost always ends up looking like the home run when you compare it to other asset classes. Step number four, analyze the deals. So you’ve got leads, now you’ve got to analyze them. This is what we call the lapse system. Guys, take a picture of this screen. This is the easiest, simplest way to understand what you’re trying to do as a real estate investor. It’s four steps. Really, it’s only three steps. The fourth step is just a result. You start with leads, we talked about that. You can get them from a realtor, you can get them from zillow.com. You can get them from telling all your friends, I’m looking to buy houses. You can get them from driving around and looking for properties that need help. You can get them from sending letters. All these things, they’re just ways to get leads.
When the leads come in, you analyze them. That’s how you look to see would this be the right property for me? And we’re going to talk about how BiggerPockets can help you do that in a little bit here. When you see one that makes it through your analysis and looks good, you pursue it. And then once you’ve pursued it, you either have success or you don’t. So it’s finding leads, analyzing them and pursuing them that we’re just doing over and over and over and over as real estate investors. And then when you do it enough times you find success. So here’s an example. You send out 300 direct mail letters.
You get back 40 people that said, “Hey, I might want to sell you my house.” So you know how 40 leads to analyze. Out of those 40, you make 12 offers. Those are the ones you pursue. So we started off by sending out 300 letters. That gave us 40 leads. We analyzed those 40 leads out of those 40, we like 12. We wrote offers on 12, and then one of them was accepted. That ends up with 1432 a month in cashflow and $100,000 in equity.
This is how simple it is. This is why I told you in the beginning you’re not a rocket scientist. But it’s not easy. You still have to send letters, you still have to find leads. Then you got to know how to analyze them. And that’s not rocket science either, but it does take some time. And then you got to pursue the ones you like and you have to be able to make that decision and pursue them correctly. So it’s not complicated, but it’s not easy, which is the best thing. It’s just like fitness. Getting fit is really not complicated. It’s eating good foods and burning calories, which is hard. That’s the thing, is we don’t like doing it. We don’t want to commit to it. So what does your process look like. As we’re talking about this, are things coming to mind that you think you could do?
How will you generate leads? Right now, what is the next actionable step that you can commit to doing that will get you leads? How many leads or how many deals will you analyze out of those leads? How many are you going to analyze in a month or a week or a day? Can you commit to that? If you were going to get in shape, you’d say how many times a week you’re going to work out, you’d plan out your workout session, right? Mine typically looks like Monday is chest and triceps, Tuesday is shoulders and biceps, Wednesday is back and usually a little bit of abs. And then Thursday or Friday would be legs, and then weekend is some form of cardio or whatever I missed during the week, that muscle group’s ready to go. And then I supplement that with juujitsu training and trail running.
So I know if I want to be in shape where I need to be. It’s in my calendar and I know what I’m working out, I have a plan. And I’m not in the best shape, but that just shows I don’t commit to this the best and I don’t eat the best. I’m slowly eating better, but I still don’t eat great. Real estate will work the exact same way. I put way more time into business and real estate, which is why I’m more financially fit than I’m physically fit. And I want you to be that way too. I want you to get financially fit. But the process of getting there is exactly the same as getting fit in anything else that you do. How many offers will you make in a month, in a week, in a day?
So let’s do one together right now, so that you can see how incredibly easy BiggerPockets makes it to do what I’m talking about, right? We’re going to analyze this deal right here. This is 185 Landings Drive in Frankfurt, Kentucky. Let me show you how easy it is to analyze a deal. You’re going to hover over tools and then you are going to go to Rent Estimator. Now we’re going to put in the address of the property we’re looking at. 185 landings Drive in, I think it was Frankfurt. Yes. Got to click on this. Don’t hit search address until you’ve clicked on the button because it won’t know what it’s searching for. Now, this property was a two bedroom, one bathroom, and I realize you guys probably didn’t see it. I just took it right off of the screen. It showed that it was eight bedrooms and it was four bathrooms and it was four units.
So we know that if it’s eight bedrooms and four bathrooms, every unit has two bedrooms and one bathroom. So we are going to tell the BiggerPockets software to look up properties near this one, 185 Landings Drive, that have two bedrooms and one bathroom. And this is what it tells us. The confidence is high that this property will generate $630 a month. That’s what those are renting for right now. Now let’s say you’re skeptical and you go, “Oh, I don’t know. How can I trust this?” Well, that’s actually good, you should be that way. You scroll down here and you can see all these other comparable areas or properties and you can see what they’re renting for. Now, I do this all the time. So I see this one here is renting for 925. That’s significantly more. It’s also a two, one, right? Well, it might have more square footage than mine, so maybe that’s why it’s renting for more. But let’s say it doesn’t.
Well, what I would do is I would Google 112 Lee Court in Frankfurt and I would look at the pictures of it and I would see, ooh, my property has dingy carpet and oak cabinets and outdated appliances. The only difference between this one is it has hardwood floors, an updated kitchen and tile shower bathrooms. So the question would be how much money would I have to spend and make mine look like Lee Court, because then I am more likely to get 925 a month instead of 630, which would significantly improve my cashflow. Now that’s assuming that it’s in the same neighborhood. You see how a lot of these properties here, I think this one’s ours right there. These are in a similar area, probably all multifamily housing. These ones are kind of spread out. These three look like they’re in the same spot, but these are kind of spread out.
This might be a better area. Maybe because it’s closer to Kentucky State University, it’s a little bit nicer. Maybe these aren’t quite as nice. And so that 930 comp is one of the properties that’s down here. If you see this one right, 902, whereas these ones don’t quite go for as much. These are more in the 600s, but this is how we real estate investors value properties. And I’m kind of better at doing this maybe than an average person because I’ve run a real estate team for a while now and I look at real estate and I understand how it’s valued, but you don’t have to be an expert to be able to understand the basics I’m going over right now. I’m really hoping that as you’re listening to this, you’re learning something and you’re seeing how you could do the same thing. And if you have any questions about this I didn’t get to, just send me a DM or send me a message on BiggerPockets, I’ll do my best to get back to you there.
So now that we can see that, we believe we would get 630 a month per unit, and we know there’s four units. I just went in my calculator and I did 630 times four, and that told me 2520. So I can expect to get a gross rents of about 2520 on this property. Now that I know what it would rent for, I’m going to go back to tools and I’m going to click on calculators, rental property, start a new report. I’m going to let software do all the work for me, and you guys are going to be amazed at how easy and how accurate analyzing deals can be once you have leads. So our lead is 180 Landings Drive, I hope it was Drive, in Frankfurt. Yep, there it is. Click on it if you want.
You can add a photo of the property. You can put it in here because you’re going to save this. You can go back to it later. We’re going to put a purchase price. What was the purchase price? 240. Put that in here. 240,000. It’s asking me for the closing costs. Well, David, I don’t know that I’m not an agent like you that buys a bunch of properties and writes books and I have better hair than you, but that’s about all. Okay, don’t worry. If you click right here on calculating closing costs, BiggerPockets has it set up so you can see what number you should put in there. Typical closing costs are 1 to 2% of the purchase price of the property, but can differ depending on location of financing. If unsure, one point a half percent of the purchase prices is a good number to begin with.
Now, when you get closer to actually buying this deal, your realtor and your title company can tell you what they’re going to be. But in the beginning, we don’t need exact numbers, we need ballparks. So we’re going to go with five grand, which is a little closer to 2% than 1%, just to be a little conservative. Then you click next and it takes you to loan details. Now, if you’re buying the house as a house hack, you might put in 10% down, maybe 0% down if it’s a VA loan. We’re going to assume that we’re buying this as investment property, which means we’re going to need to put 20% down. And because that’s what we chose, if you click on 25, this number goes up, 20 goes back down, it knows at the purchase price we said you don’t have to do the math. It’s telling you right now your down payment is going to be 48,000.
Let’s say the interest rate on an investment property I’d say is right around 4% right now on a primary residence, it’s a little closer to three and a half, but investment properties are a little more. And no points. Points would just be money that you would pay to buy your rate lower. And then for the loan term, you always want to put in 30 years because what most loans are, 30 year. And you want to go for a fixed rate, not an adjustable rate in most cases. Click on next for income. Gross monthly income, remember I said it was 2520. That was the 630 per unit times four. Now we’re going to talk about expenses.
What are the property taxes going to be? Well, you’ve got a button right here if you want to figure out how you can determine your property taxes. I know in most cases it’s about less than 1.5% a year. So I’m going to multiply 240 times 0.015, which is 1.5%. That’s 3,600 in a year. It will most likely be less than that. We’re going with a higher number here. So we have 3,600 and we’re going to click annual. That’s how much you’re going to pay for property taxes. The insurance on this thing is, I’m going to guess just based on my experience, it’s going to be about $75 a month. Now, when you actually put it in contract, if you’re pursuing this deal, you can call an insurance company and get a quote. You’re going to have to, the lender is probably going to make you do that. So if it ends up being $500 a month, you just back out of the deal, but it’s never going to be $500 a month.
It’ll probably be less than the 75. But when we’re initially analyzing a property, this is what we want. We want ballpark figures because the time it takes to go get exact numbers for every property that you haven’t even bought yet is usually not a good investment. We’re going to budget for repairs and maintenance. 5%. We’re going to budget for vacancy, 5% of the gross rent. Same for capital expenditures, and we’re going to put 8% in there for management. Now, the tenants are going to pay their own electricity and gas and their own water and sewer, and let’s say we’re going to pay the garbage. So in that case, let’s say that’s going to be $50 a month.
Click finish analysis. Here is the awesome, get ready for it. This calculator is going to do all of this for us. We don’t have to be good at math. So with the numbers that we’ve put in here, it’s telling us that we can expect a cash flow $604 a month. It’s getting that from the 2520 of income that we put in and the expenses of 1915 that it calculated for us giving us a cash on cash return of a little over 13.5%.
This is just a breakdown of how it came up with the numbers, if you like to see information presented this way, and it’s telling us the total cash needed would be 53,000. The monthly expenses breakdown looks like this. This orange part is going to be the variable expenses. That’s going to be the vacancy, the CapEx, the maintenance. This blue part, the biggest part of it, is going to be the mortgage. It’s just showing you of your expenses, this is how they’re broken down. The net operating income, that’s how much money we can expect to make this property to make in a year. And then again, we see the cash on cash return. Now, here’s my favorite part. I love this graph. This graph shows me over a extended period of time, like 20 years, what I can expect the property to do. Now, personally, I think us at BiggerPockets, we are very conservative.
We’re assuming a 3% growth rate. Most parts of the country are seeing way more than a 3%. So it should be much better than this in real terms than it is theoretically. But you can see we brought the property for 240 and the value of it is slowly going up over time. You can also see right here, this purple line, this is the loan, this is the money that we borrowed in order to get the property, is slowly going down over time. And the difference between what it’s worth and what we owe is the equity we have. You see that it really grows. And if you come down here and you look at the cashflow, the year one cashflow is going to be around $7,613. Well, that grows, it grows and grows as rents go up every single year. And so in year 30, it’s more like 22,000. I bet you it’s going to be three or four times that with the way things are going right now. But this is a conservative estimate.
Same thing for the equity, right? You see your equity that’s growing, growing, growing, growing, growing over time. Who wouldn’t want to make a decision right now that would be worth $435,000 in 30 years? What if you made 30 decisions like that, where all of them were worth 435,000? Do you think there’s any way real estate won’t make you a multimillionaire if you take action today and wait, and then take more action and wait, and you keep taking action so that your future, you becomes massively wealthy because of things that present day you did right now. So here’s what the experts know. It’s not about timing the market. This is what everybody wants to do is, “I want to wait to buy the dip.” It’s about time in the market. I, David Greene, don’t wait to buy the dip. I buy all the time.
Now, what I will say is I am more aggressive at dips. But that doesn’t mean I do nothing In the meantime. Sometimes in life I need to focus on fitness or health, and I put way more effort into it. Sometimes in life you’re going through a hard time. You’re going through a breakup, you’re having a hard time with your family, you got some bad news, and you actually got to be in the gym a lot more to work some of that out. Other times, I’m super busy and I just have to find a way to get in there sometimes. That’s how I look at real estate. When there’s a dip in the market, I’m in the gym all the time. I’m looking at deals constantly, I’m writing way more offers, I’m being way more aggressive. I think it’s a great market to buy. I really ramp up what I’m doing.
But when it’s not a dip, it’s not like I just don’t go to the gym at all. That would be crazy. I still buy, I’m just a little more careful or I use a different type of strategy or I adjust the way that I’m planning on doing this so that it’s not going to be immediate gratification, maybe it’s longer term. You guys want an example? Let me know in the chat if you want me to give an example of what this would look like in real life, what I’m describing here. If not, I can move on with the rest of the presentation. We don’t have to get into a real life analysis of time in the market versus timing the market. Anybody else want me to share what that would look like from practical terms? Okay, you want an example? There we go.
In 2010, it was… maybe I shouldn’t say that. In a market like 2010 when there’s tons of deals out there. So there was a time where I was investing in North Florida and there weren’t a lot of other investors there, and there was a ton of depressed properties. They were just distressed and depressed and they needed a lot of work. I was buying three to five properties a month at that time. I wasn’t competing with anyone else. I hadn’t been foolish, and talked about it on the podcast, to where everybody started doing what I was doing. Properties were sitting on the market for six months at a time. I had a really good contractor that was doing all the work. I was scooping them up left and I really wasn’t focusing much on real estate sales.
I didn’t have a mortgage company. I wasn’t hiring agents and training them on my teams. I was like, man, I got a great opportunity, I’m going to buy as much real estate as I can. And I went hard. And then at a certain point, because I talked about it too much, other people started investing in that same area. And then the contractors got harder and harder to use, and then the deals started to dry up, other people were going after them. And then it just got harder and harder to do, right? So when I recognized, okay, I can’t get as many deals here as I was before, I shifted my focus and I started hiring new agents and growing my team and training them and selling houses for clients and making money and building wealth in other ways. But I never stopped buying there. I just put less time towards that exercise in the gym, right? I’m not working on my biceps as much. Maybe I’m doing leg day more would be a good way to look at it.
And when I did buy, I shifted into different things. So what I would do then is I started to move into where I am now, where I’m buying luxury properties in really good markets that are very expensive because I know that if we do have a crash, those markets don’t get hit as hard. I also know my cash on cash return is going to be way lower when I first buy them. Those are long-term plays. In 10 years, they’re going to make me hundreds and hundreds, if not millions of dollars per property. In short term, it’s going to be kind of lean. That’s the way that it works. So I’ve shifted my strategy to that because it’s so competitive right now. If we get to a point where for whatever reason we hit another depression, no one wants to buy real estate, I’ll go back to the other way.
What I’m trying to highlight is it would be foolish to say, I’m not going to buy any real estate right now. There’s people that are making really good money in short-term rentals. I’ve moved into that myself a little bit, but it’s more work. You actually have to manage a short-term rental. It’s not like it used to be where it was set it and forget it. I just bought it and gave it to a property manager. Maybe you have to do the same thing. To get time in this market, you might have to go to a more active source of income where it’s not quite as passive. But then once the market shifts, maybe that house becomes just a long-term rental, you don’t have to worry about it anymore. You’ve got all kinds of options. But what I don’t want you to do is say, it’s hard to get a deal, so I shouldn’t buy right now. I’m making more money in the deals I’m buying right now in a hard market than I was when it was easy, and I don’t want you guys to miss out.
And then number two, focus on what your portfolio will look like 10 years from now. Cannot stress this enough. Everyone who, three or four years ago was telling me, maybe two to three years ago would be a better example, “David, there’s a pandemic. We have shelter in place. The economy is going to be crippled. We’re never going to recover from this. I’m selling everything. I’m not buying anything right now and I’m going to hold onto my cash.” I said, “Okay, well, I don’t think you should. I don’t think that’s going to happen. I think you’re thinking very shortsighted. This is actually a great opportunity to buy.” And a lot of people said, “Nope, I’m getting out of the game.” And they sold properties or they dropped out of escrows, or they just stopped looking. Those same people, those have lost out on over six figures of equity minimum at the market that I’m in the Bay Area.
So the houses that we had under contract for clients that backed out were over $200,000 cheaper than what they are right now. And the reason is that we didn’t go into a recession. We printed a bunch of money, we caused a lot of inflation. And so the number one thing that I see that stops people from buying is when they feel like it’s too hot, prices are going too high, and they don’t realize that it’s not just the prices are going high, it’s that the value of money is going down. A million dollars is not what it used to be. $100,000 is not what it used to be. Used to be, if you made $100,000 a year, you were set. That’s like middle income in the Bay Area right now. I don’t mean to sound, it’s just so expensive to live here, but that’s not really that much money.
And in the future, $100,000 won’t be considered hardly anything with the way inflation is going. You can’t make decisions based on the snapshot of right now because you’re not buying real estate for one year, you’re buying it for 30 years, 40 years, 50 years. So what I do is I say, in 10 years, what will this property look like? So let’s take for example, the one that I described that I just texted my agent to see if we have it under contract yet, in Moraga. I wrote an offer for 2.25 million on that property. It’s going to have an extensive rehab. In 10 years, I think that property is probably going to be more like five to $6 million. And I can say that because the rate of inflation that we’re seeing, that is not ridiculous to think about. This is even before I fix it up and before that area takes off, just off standard rates of inflation, that’s what I would think we’re going to see.
So what I’m saying is in 10 years, this will be worth five or 6 million. Now what do I have to do to make it 10 years? Well, I have to increase the cash flow. I’m going to do that by adding square footage so I can rent those areas out. All right, how do I get my money back out of this deal? So it’s not like I can’t buy more real estate. All right, well, I also have to upgrade the house, make it look nicer so that I can increase the value so I can refinance it and get my money back out. So I need a remodel that makes the house nicer, adds square footage, which makes it worth more and increases the cashflow. I can do that. Let’s move on it. So now what’s going to end up happening is I’m going to have this place, fix it up, refinance it.
I’ll probably leave 100 or $200,000 in this deal, but I’ll get most of the money back out. And then in 10 years, it’s worth five or six million. And I’ve made three to $4 million from this one property. And what if I do that three or four times a year? It’s not like I’m running around with my hair on fire. It’s funny, hair on fire because I don’t have hair. But these are examples. Now, maybe you don’t live in a market where there’s $2 million houses. I get that, but you might be where they have four or $500,000 houses and in 10 years those are going to be million dollar properties, probably more. So what are you doing right now so that you 10 years from now has 10 to 20 properties that have all gained $500,000 in equity? There’s not a lot of these assets going around.
Either you’re one of the people who get them and benefits from it or you’re one of the people who doesn’t and says, “I wish I would have,” like all the people 10 years ago from today that are saying this, “I wish I would’ve bought back then.” This is why you’re here today at this webinar. This is why God, the universe, whatever you believe has you here because it’s telling you real estate is the safest, most dependable, delayed gratification. It’s just like fitness. It takes a long time to get going, but no one ever says, “Oh, I really worked out a little too much. It was too healthy. I wish I wouldn’t have done that.” Everybody says, “I wish I would’ve built better habits for working out.” And I’m sharing with you how I did it and how I’m still doing it because I’m still into it.
I’m not trying to take your money. I’m not saying, “Hey, I want all your money. Give it to me so I can go build wealth.” I can invest your money for you. I do that and I do pay people, but I’m telling you that you need to go do this. If you’re here today, you need to get these tools that I’m showing you. You need to get into the game now so that the 10 year version of you in the future is thanking you for what you did.
Step number five, get funding. You know what? Take a picture of this one. I want you guys to really dwell on this. Did that example of how I shift strategies help you guys? Looks like most of you’re saying yes, or at least you’re sending emojis that would indicate so. Awesome, I’m glad I could help there. All right, step number five, you got to get funding. So how will you fund your real estate deals? Well, you’ve got several options. Conventional loans, partnerships, hard money lenders or house hacking. They’re similar, but these are the ways that people typically borrow money to buy their real estate. The key to financing real estate is to get a great deal. If you get a really good deal, it’s going to appraise for what you’re paying for it. You’re going to be able to raise the money easy.
Now, I have a company that can help you with this and you guys can reach out to me and I’ll connect you with them. Basically, we have loans where if your property makes enough money, it would cashflow enough, which most of them will, you can use that income to get the loan. So as long as you’re getting a good deal, as long as you’re getting a property that brings in more income than it’s going to cost to own it, the lender will let you borrow on it and then you can go to somebody else that might have more money than you and say, “Hey, do you want to cover the down payment? I’ll take care of the deal, the loan and the management. We can split it.”
The point here is if you get a good enough deal, the money will find you. The people that have trouble with financing are usually not getting very good deals. But what if I don’t have any money? Well, BiggerPockets has something for you too. The pro videos page. It includes a workshop run by Brandon Turner and me, how to Invest with No or Low Money Down. It’s this guy right up here. This is probably the best work that Brandon and I ever did together. It was magical. It was like The Beatles, what’s the best Beatles album, the white album, the black album, I’m not really a big Beatles fan. But when you know you’re in that zone and you’re just doing some great, great work, that’s how it was. And the whole thing was about how to invest in real estate when you don’t have a lot of money. And if you’re a BiggerPockets Pro member, you get access to all of these workshops, lease options, house hacking partnerships, the one I did with Brandon, you get it all if you’re a pro member, for free.
And then step number six, motivation. How long will you stay persistent for the long haul? Nobody got fit in two months of intense work. They were already fit if two months of intense work helped them. This is the long haul you’re signing up for. Are you going to get involved in a mastermind group? I run one for this exact purpose. A lot of other people do the same thing. It’s a way that you can hold people accountable, teach them, get them excited, is kind of the difference between if you have to go to the gym yourself or if you’ve got a workout partner. Man, I’ll tell you what, if I got a time in life where somebody’s working out with me, I am like 90% more likely to go and more likely to enjoy it and I get a better workout in because now I have a spotter.
What about daily journaling or tracking? Are you daily reminding yourself of what your goals are? How about performance coaching? I have performance coaches, and let me tell you, they are expensive. I spend $6,000 a month and more sometimes just on coaching for the various businesses that we have. Okay? Now that $6,000 that I spend earns me way more because of the way that they improve how well me and my team perform. But you got to spend a little bit of money sometimes to get a much bigger return, just like investing. And that’s it. That is the real estate investor master journey. It’s six steps. It’s purpose, finding your purpose, having a plan, finding the deals, analyzing the deals, getting your funding and staying motivated.
You do these six things and you’ll be successful. Why don’t you go ahead and take a picture of the wheel here so you can remind yourself of how simple this is. The 90 day challenge, plan, prepare, purchase. Complete all six phases of the master journey in the next 90 days by working on your business 15 minutes a day, five days a week for 90 days in a row.
Life doesn’t get better by chance, it gets better by change. Great, great quote by Jim Rohn. There’s two kinds of people, all right. And if you’ve ever dated somebody who’s the wrong type, you know the frustration I’m talking about, if you’ve ever had a partner with somebody like a business partner, that was the wrong type. If you’ve ever had a friend, whatever it is, you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about. There are people who wait for life to come to them and change things for them. These are often people that live by their feelings. If they’re in a bad mood or a depressed mood, they just don’t do anything. If they’re in a good mood, they’re really excited. But they wait for life to bow to them. And I know this is a deep thing, but it’s so true.
There’s people that are just waiting for their boss to come say, “You know what? We’re going to give you a promotion. Will you try harder?” They’re waiting for Prince Charming to come out of the woodwork and say, “I’ve been waiting my whole life for you.” Now is when you should actually start trying to be a better person. They’re waiting for that amazing deal to drop in their lap and then their phone to ring with a lender who says, “I’ve got a bunch of money. Do you want to use it?” And a contractor that’s like, I need work so bad, I’ll do it for cheap, and they just keep waiting for that for chance and it doesn’t happen because life doesn’t get better that way. It gets better by change. It rewards the people that go seek, right? I want a partner. I’m going to become the kind of person that a partner would want to be with. I want a business partner. I’m going to learn skills a business partner would want. I want that raise. I’m going to do a great job right now and make sure my boss sees it.
Those are the people that are rewarded and that’s what I mean by the two kind of people. If you’re attending a webinar like this, it does not matter how much information I share with you. It does not matter how much I talk about what I’m doing or I give you strategy. If you’re waiting for life to do something for you, it will never ever happen. You will dance around the dance floor but never actually find a partner. You’ll orbit the planet but never touch down. You’ll get close, but you won’t get to where you’re actually benefiting. That happens when you make a choice to change and you make it your responsibility to go get the things that you want.
Real estate investing often feels like this. This is so good. I know this because as an agent, I’ve had more people than I can count, come in my office and sit down and when we really, really, really get to what’s behind their fear, it’s, “I don’t want to end up with a house that I don’t like. I don’t want to end up with a property that I don’t realize everything is going to go wrong.” What they think is they pick a property, they jump off the cliff and they hope that they like where they land and the property that they get is where they land. That is not how it should feel. If you’re feeling that you’re doing it wrong, you have the wrong agent, you have the wrong strategy, you have the wrong mindset. It is not like this. I’ve never bought a deal that felt like this right here.
If you catch yourself hoping that you like where you land, you need to get off the hopium. Hopium is not a good strategy. It doesn’t help you. It’s a lie. What it should feel like is this… let me give you a practical example. Do you guys like that? Tell me, in the chat, if you want me to give you a practical example of how real estate should feel like walking on a trail, on a path with other people. I don’t want to belabor the point if you guys are already kind of seeing what I’m saying. But tell me if you want me to give you an example of how real estate investing should look like this. I’m seeing the yes. It should be step-by-step. Every step on this path at the end of this path is the property that you’re trying to get or the goal that you’re trying to achieve, all right?
The first thing that you should notice is you’re not doing it alone. There are other people with you, that will help you teach you be there for you when you fall. Maybe they’ve walked this path before. Like me, I’m a guide. I do this constantly. I’m up and down this path all the time. So I can tell you, here’s where you avoid the poison ivy. Here’s where the water’s going to be. Here’s where the shade is. This is where we’re going to stop. Oh, we don’t want to go that way. Oh, this time of day shouldn’t go that way. This is not the right market for that. We’re a guide, we know what to expect. But even more practical than that, it is one step at a time. You look at leads, you get leads, you analyze them. 60% of them won’t work. On those leads, you stop moving forward, you’re okay, you’re safe. You didn’t jump off the cliff on the 40% that worked. You pursue them. Out of those, maybe 10% of them get back to you.
The other 90% of those leads, you throw them away. You’re okay, you didn’t jump off the cliff. Out of the 10% that got back to you, you maybe put it in contract. That still isn’t the end of the journey. That’s just one step. After you go into contract, you order an inspection, you look at the inspection report. If it looks bad, you stop going down the path. You don’t buy it, you didn’t jump off the cliff. If the inspection report looks good, you negotiate with the other side to see if you can get a little extra money. You take another step. Now comes the appraisal. Oh, the appraisal came in low and the seller won’t come down on their price.
Okay, we stopped moving forward. I didn’t jump off the cliff. I’m okay. Right? Then we agree on the appraisal or the appraisal comes back well. You look up what the rents would be for the area. Rents are way lower than I thought. I talked to a property manager, they said, we’re not going to get that much. You’re okay. You stop. You quit walking. It is a little step after a little step, after a little step with very little actual commitment on your part to that deal. Now you have to be committed to the process of walking this path. But you don’t have to be committed to the process of every single deal taking that path. That’s why you shouldn’t be scared, it’s why I’m not scared. I routinely will have a person come to me and say, “David, here’s this amazing deal. I think you should buy it.” And I will say, “Great, write up the offer right now, put it in contract.” I’m known for this. We call it the five minute offer.
I will just wrap something up and put it in contract right away, but I will have contingencies in that contract that I can back out if I don’t like something and I know exactly what I’m looking for. And then if I move forward with it and I get the inspection report done and, oh man, it’s got some terrible termites or horrible foundations, it’s going to be $50,000 to fix, I go to the seller and I say, “I need you to give me a 50,000 credit or I need you to fix these things or I need you to drop the price. You don’t want to do it, okay, I’m just backing out of the deal. No harm, no foul.” Get my money back. I’m not scared to take this journey because I realize I’m not just jumping off a cliff and hoping that I like where I land, and that’s the same way that it should feel for you.
It’s only scary when you feel like you don’t know the path. But when you’ve got a guide with you or other people walk in the journey with you, your risk is significantly decreased and it’s not scary anymore. At BP, we build tools to help investors on their journey toward their life goals. This is not just theory. This is how thousands of real estate investors, including myself, have found financial freedom.
So here are two big questions. Are you fired up and truly committed to using real estate to obtain financial freedom? And I’m not just saying, are you interested in it? Okay, do you feel some emotion? Do you feel some passion? Are you excited? Are you like, “This is where I’m supposed to be, this feels right”? This is one of the only times in my life where I’ve been like, that’s it, I know that’s what I need to do. I just don’t know how to get there. And number two, will you take on the 90-day challenge and commit to working 15 minutes a day, five days a week for 90 days, pursuing the lapse funnel, looking for leads, analyzing them and pursuing them?
Here’s another great quote. If more information was the answer, we would all be billionaires with perfect abs. I’ve given you a lot of information. You can get a lot of information on our podcasts, on our YouTube channel. You get a lot of information anywhere. It won’t be what you need. We all know what it takes to get abs. And it’s discipline, it’s accountability, it’s passion, it’s action. It’s not information.
So what’s the key to success, if we want to get a financial six pack? It’s action. There’s no way around it. This is the only way that you get abs is you eat really, really good and you work them out. And not only action, but daily consistent action, right? You can’t get abs by eating really healthy for half the day and then the rest of the time you don’t. It has to be consistent with what you’re doing. Here is a line from Ethan, who’s a pro member in Washington. “I just put my first investment property under contract today. You’re a webinar challenged me from the planning stages to taking action. Thank you for the motivation and valuable information the BP team provides.”
This is from Dawn. “Congrats on your book. Great information as always. I wouldn’t expect anything less from BP. I did the 90 day challenge last year, which led me to my first rental property after analyzing dozens or even a hundred and placing offers on several to land the best one for me. I love BP and I love the BP books and other products. Still waiting on t-shirts.”
I don’t know why you came here today. Are you tired of working your full-time job? It could be draining if you don’t like it. Do you need to start preparing for your future retirement? Are you tired of being a wantrepreneur instead of an entrepreneur? Well, here’s what I do know. Real estate investing works If you work it. It’s just like saying exercise works, if you exercise. Our goal at BiggerPockets is to help you reach your financial goals through real estate, and that’s why we created incredible tools to help you get there faster and with less pain.
BiggerPockets Pro is the way that I recommend you go about doing that. BiggerPockets Pro helps you analyze properties and get your next deal faster. You can analyze properties in minutes, like we just did together and determine which ones are worth pursuing with unlimited access to deal analysis calculators. Those are what I walked you guys through when you saw how easy it is to work this lapse funnel. You can become a better investor with curated article and video content, webinar replays and exclusive articles covering everything you need to make smart investments and avoid bad markets. This is all the content that’s available to BiggerPockets Pro members. We’ve got multifamily investing tips with Brandon Turner and Brian Murray, investing in today’s market economic trends and the impact of the real estate landscape. You’ve got videos on how to use SEO to grow your business, finding and funding great deals with Anson Young who wrote the book of the same name for BiggerPockets. Canadian Investing, how a newbie can start building wealth through real estate, all of this cool stuff available only to pro members.
You could show the community that you mean business with your pro badge. Blaine Alger here has a pro badge. So if Blaine messages me or anyone else we know, he’s not just a lookie Lou, he’s not a wantrepreneur. He’s committed to this process. That’s a person I know that really, really, really wants to be a real estate investor. You can save time and money and minimize risk with lawyer approved lease documents for all 50 states. So BiggerPockets that’s had their lawyers put together standard lease agreements for all 50 states if you want to manage your own properties, available to you for free, if you’re a pro member. And then you get thousands of dollars on loans and other tools that you can use in your real estate business with BiggerPockets perks, you can save that money.
Plus, you can gain access to our discounted educational bootcamps. So these are all companies that have partnered with BiggerPockets to give discounts to their members. Foreclosure.com, where you find foreclosures, AirDNA where you analyze deals for short-term rentals. Open Letter Marketing, a company where you can send letters to people to find leads, all kinds of cool stuff. And then you can accurately estimate rental rates based on local property comparables, listing recency at proximity to your location using the BiggerPockets Rent Estimator tool. This is the one that I walked through with you guys where we figured out how much that property would rent for. That’s available for pro members as well, for free. Very, very powerful tool in your real estate investing world. But what’s the biggest reason to go pro? Because it works.
The BiggerPockets calculators are my go-to for analyzing potential properties. There’s no way I could analyze the volume properties I do without being a pro member. I locked up my first three unit almost a year ago that I’m now selling for a almost $70,000 profit that will go to towards something larger. The BiggerPockets calculators were a huge factor in making sure my numbers were right. This is from Aaron Caraho. Is there any of you here who don’t want an extra $70,000 just because they got a deal? I know that sounds crazy, but in many markets that’s actually not even that much. There’s bigger amounts. I bought one in Pleasant Hill, California in October, so that’s about four months, and that one’s gone up $200,000 in four months, right? There’s just so much money floating around right now that there’s so much inflation that if you’re not taking action, you’re falling behind. Back in June, I intended one of your webinars right afterwards, I signed up for Pro in the next couple of weeks.
I analyzed a bunch of deals. Eventually I found a fourplex. I got it under contract three weeks after signing up for Pro and a week later I closed on another property that was six units. Big thank you to you and the entire team. Final quick tip, sign up for Pro. I made my money back at the closing table. This is from Patrick Menifee. Now, because you sat through this webinar, I have the authorization to give you 20% off of a pro membership should you desire to do one using the code on the screen. So please take a minute to grab your phone and take a picture of the screen so you can get that code.
And there’s more. I can give you more than just 20% off. All right, so you’re going to need that code there. You have to make sure you spell it correctly. If you want a BiggerPockets Pro membership, it’s $390 a year. Now for a premium one, that’s what I have, it’s actually $1,200 a year. That’s for agents and other people that are trying to get leads out of BiggerPockets. But if you’re pro, it’s way cheaper. It’s only $390 a year. It’s not that much. But if you sign up now with that 20% off code, it’s only 312. This is a incredibly low expense for the year for your real estate investing journey. This is less than one home inspection, right? This is less than one home warranty. You’re going to spend way more than this just looking at properties that you put in contract doing your due diligence. This is less than a roof inspection in many cases. But you’re going to need this to find the properties that you even want to put into contract in the first place because it has its tools to help you figure it out.
Okay. You are also going to get the intention journal. This is proven accountability tool to keep you on track towards your next investment goal. There is weekly battle planning pages for goal review, habit tracking, taking notes and more, and a daily action pages for your morning routine, time blocking, goal review, evening reflection and more. Because this is the 90-day plan, we’re giving away the intention journal, which normally costs $40, for free. You’re going to get this workshop that I told you was the best thing that Brandon and I have ever done, a $200 value, for free. This is the Investing with No or Low Money Down Workshop. You’re going to get the Finding Great Deals Masterclass. This is where Brandon Turner sat down with four experts in four different niches, door knocking, direct mail marketing, building relationships, and driving for dollars. He interviewed people that crush it at these things, and we’re going to give them to you so that you can watch how you could do the same. A $990 value, for free.
You’re also going to get Brandon’s free ebook, The Best Ways to Find Real Estate Deals for Investing Success, for free. Now, you’re going to get access to bootcamps as well. So if you’re pro, you get exclusive access to BiggerPockets Real Estate Investing bootcamps. If you’re not pro, you cannot go to these. Pro annual members can join a la carte at a discounted price. Every week, you get access to on-demand videos from Ashley Kehr, live Q&A sessions with real estate investing experts, homework assignments to apply your knowledge and an accountability group based on your investing interest locations and more. $1,000 value if you sign up now.
So let’s talk about everything you’re going to get. It’s over $2,000 value in bonuses. You get 20% off your Pro Annual membership. You get the $40 Intention Journal. You get the workshop with Brandon and I together. You get the How to Find Great Deals Class. You get the online bootcamp access, and all you have to do is take the code I gave you and go to biggerpockets.com/proupgrade. So if this is something you guys are interested in, I’m going to give you a second to go to biggerpockets.com/proupgrade and put that code in. Biggerpockets.com/proupgrade.
Now, you have to choose the annual option if you want all the perks. You can still sign up for Pro if you want to go monthly, but annual is the one that you need to pick if you want those free perks that we talked about. Now, what if you’re already pro? Well, you’re going to get access to all the same things. If you want to watch the videos, you go to biggerpockets.com/pro/videos and you can find the online bootcamp information at biggerpockets.com/bootcamp.
And here’s our guarantee at BiggerPockets. Give Pro a try for up to 30 days. If you don’t love it, just email [email protected] and get a 100% refund just for trying it out. You’re going to go to biggerpockets.com/proupgrade, and you’re going to put in the code that was on the screen. I want to make sure that it works. So anybody here that signs up, please tell me if that code is working or if we have some kind of glitch so I can make sure you don’t miss out on the discount and you don’t miss out on the perks.
And this is a great quote that every successful person I know believes. If you really want to do something, you’ll find a way, and if you don’t, you’ll find an excuse. Very true words. If you want to become a millionaire, you will. Everyone else… not everyone, a lot of other people have done it. You can do it too. If you don’t want to do it, you’ll find a way to make an excuse not to. That’s it. That just tells you what’s in your heart. There’s people that really want for it to happen, they make a way. And there’s people that wish that it would happen, and they make an excuse.
Okay. What questions do you guys have? I’m going to see if anybody here was able to sign up. Dean, “Is a membership like this tax-deductible?” Yes, you’d have to check with your CPA, but I deduct mine. It is a business expense for your real estate investing business. Absolutely. Do the tools work for Canada? Yes, there are many Canadian members that are pro members and they use the same tools. Good question there too.
All right, what questions do you guys have for me? It looks like I’ve given you guys a lot to go on. I would highly encourage you, if you’re on the fence, to go ahead and do it, especially because there’s a guarantee that if you don’t like it, you can get your money back. And relatively speaking, it’s not that much money compared to what you are going to be spending money on as a real estate investor and what you’ll get out of it. The $312 a year when you consider how much money you’re going to make in real estate, you’re going to make more than that in one month, and you’re going to have these properties for many months, right?
12 months in a year times 30 years, you could do the math, and that’s only for one property. I would highly recommend it. Let’s see. Ian says, “That was a really motivating webinar.” Thank you so much. That is my pleasure. Dean says, “I’ve become an accidental landlord through military moves and have a good chunk of equity in two properties. Would you recommend selling to use the equity or more aggressive investing or just keeping them long-term?” Dean, you’re going to need to message me about that on BiggerPockets and let me know what area they’re in and I can give you a better idea of what to do. What it’s going to come down to is we’re going to analyze how much of a return you’re making on the equity that is in them, and then see if we can get a higher return if we invested somewhere else.
Bilal, “Pro, for sure.” Congratulations, Bilal. I love that you just took your first step towards being a real estate millionaire. That is awesome. All right, I’m going to let you guys get out of here. Thank you very much for your time. Again, if you’re in California, make sure you reach out to me because I want to meet you. If you are not in California, that’s okay. Follow me on social media, @David Greene24. Send me a message through the BiggerPockets platform. Let me know how I can help you. I have lots of different ways. You can also check out my website, DavidGreene24.com. That’s got a little bit of all the stuff I’m involved in, so go through that, see which of those things might be interesting to you, and then send me a message and I’ll see how me and my team can help you.
Really appreciate you guys. Thank you so much. Love that you’re in the BiggerPockets community now. You’re on a journey with over 2 million other people that are all searching and seeking for the same thing as you and all want to help you get there so you’re in the right place. I will see all of you on the next one, and God bless you.
And that was our show. Thank you so much for joining. If you’re not a Pro member yet, I hope that you’ll sign up with that 20% discount that I offered earlier. Again, that’s YTChallenge23. And if you’re not a pro member yet, but you want to be one, please remember you’ve got a discount code waiting for you. That is PodChallenge23. Thanks again for listening. I’ve enjoyed being able to teach you. You can find me at DavidGreene24 on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, whatever your fancy, or you can check out my entire website at DavidGreene24.com and see all the ways that I can help you build your wealth through real estate. If you’ve got time, check out another BiggerPockets video. And if not, I will see you on the next one.

Dave:
Hey, everyone. Welcome to On the Market. I’m your host, Dave Meyer, joined today by James. James. How are you?

James:
I’m good. I’m excited to talk about, we get to hang out some deal junkies today. My kind of show.

Dave:
Yeah, this is your favorite kind of show. We are going to be doing a flippers’ panel today. So we’ve brought in three, well, two flippers on top of James, who’s obviously an expert flipper. We have Tarl Yarber, who has been around the BP sphere for a long time. So if you watch BiggerPockets YouTube, he’s been on a lot of our podcasts before. So if you know Tarl, excellent, very experienced flipper. And we also have Jessie Rodriguez joining us, host of HGTV’s Vintage Flip. He operates mostly out of Southern California.
James, given everything that’s going on, it’s an interesting time for flippers. What are you looking forward to talking to these guys about?

James:
I’m looking forward to just adjustments, right? With every market cycle you got to change all your businesses, but especially your flipping, like how you’re doing it, who you’re hiring, and how you’re [inaudible 00:01:12]. And how people are making money, because people are a little spooked right now, but it’s a good business to be in.

Dave:
Yeah. Yeah. And today I expect that we are going to hear the good, bad and ugly. There’s obviously some good stuff in here, but we both know Tarl, He likes to keep it real and explain all the sort of behind the scenes things that are going on, and it’s not all glitz and glam and some of the challenges of the business. So I think anyone who has has a preliminary interest in flipping is definitely going to want to listen to this show, because I think between the three of you there’s something like 1500 deals flipped, something crazy like that. How many of you flipped?

James:
We have done about five to 600. We’ve been involved in over 3,500 transactions with flips with our clients, blended money and ourselves. So it’s over a billion dollars in flips we’ve done.

Dave:
What?

James:
Yeah, or transactions with flips. So we hit that threshold last year.

Dave:
Wow. Oh my God, that’s insane. All right, well, I’m sorry to have said 1500. Yeah, a little tired. Just a couple deals. Wow, 3,500, that is wild.
Well, today in this episode we are going to hear a little bit about a concept called dollar cost averaging. If you’ve never heard of it before, it’s a term popularized in the stock market. And the general idea is that rather than trying to time the market, you inject capital into your portfolio at regular increments. So if it’s stock market, maybe you take some money, put it in once a month when you get your paycheck or something like that. With real estate, maybe it’s you flip a house every six months regardless of market conditions, or buy a rental every two years. And the idea is basically that because asset values accelerate over time, if you can just pin your success to the average return, you’re going to do really well. And this is sort of just this sort of humble way of admitting you can’t time the market, and you’re just going to ride the general market sentiment. So just wanted everyone to be aware of what that is before we get into that show. But with no further ado, let’s bring on Jessie and Tarl.
Jessie, can you tell us a little bit about yourself for those of our audience who don’t know you already?

Jessie:
Well, what’s up, Dave? Thanks for having us. James, Tarl, how are you, guys? So started flipping in 2010 after the market crashed. I was a big REO agent, so sold hundreds and hundreds of houses. Started seeing everybody else buy my stuff, and I said, “What the hell is going on here? Why are these people buying homes that are depressed, that are underwater, but the rest of America don’t want to buy anything?” And picked up one of the investors, started working with them, became a mentor, and taught me the game of flipping. Still one of my good friends to this day, I still lean on him. And then here I am, 12 years later after doing that very first deal that I bought for $65,000 in Southern California, which is insane when you think about it. It’s like 650,000 now.
I probably should have learned the buy and hold game in 2010, because of what I want to be right now. But over 400 flips later, still active, 17 of my pipeline today in this crazy market that we’re in. I’m terrified of it and love it. It’s an addiction. And I am flipping in Southern California, which is one of the hardest markets in the country to really do it, where my average purchase price is like a million bucks, and average rehab is 350,000. So, when you say 15 or 16 deals, all of a sudden it equals 20 million bucks out, which is a lot of money. And thank God James gives me all his money so I can do it. So yeah, it’s been fun, man. I love doing it. It’s crazy.

Dave:
Nice. Well, we can at least give you a space to talk about your addiction here today in good company.
Tarl, you’ve obviously been around BiggerPockets for a very long time and a regular on our YouTube channel. But for those of you who don’t know, can you tell us a bit about your flipping experience?

Tarl:
Yeah, sure. So I bought a seminar in 2005 when I was 20 years old, it was called How to Turn $10 Into $10,000 in 30 Days or Less. And it was about wholesaling real estate. I did three deals. And the third deal, we made a hundred grand on as a double close, and then I quit, because I hated every second of it. So I didn’t get back into it until 2010. And actually, it’s funny, Jessie, so you said you were an REO agent. Were you in Southern California at the time?

Jessie:
Yeah, Southern California.

Tarl:
Yeah. So I got associated with a company called Charter Home Alliance outside of Scottsdale, Arizona, where we were a SAM contractor for Fannie Mae. So we would do service area management. So we would do construction for Fannie Mae on REOs, and that’s how I got back into the industry, was I flew around and opened up seven different states. And basically in a nutshell, met all the REO agents, met all the contractors, set up tons of networks. And through that we got involved back into investing in real estate mainly because everything was just sitting there, and REO was insane, and we had access to all the infrastructure and operations. Me and two of my buddies basically started another company and then started buying. That went well until February 2014, and then the three of us broke up because the other two became, in my opinion, they became crazy. Money does funny things to third people.
So one of them got into drugs, it was just stupid stuff and I left immediately. Never wanted to do it again. And then in October 2014, one of the funds that we partnered with a lot hit me up in Seattle. This is when I moved to Seattle and said, “Hey, let’s partner up in JV on deals.” And I started fixating real estate at that time. That’s when I started buying a ton from Jimmy, actually, James is there on this. I think in, what, 2015 or 2016 bought 30 houses from me, I can’t remember how many, but that was how I got back into the business.
And then by mid 2015, I stopped partnering with people and started doing everything internally at that point and went crazy. If you add everything up, approaching probably 680 plus deals or so, give or take, since 2010. And that also includes all my partnership ones that I did with my buddies in 2010, 11, 12, 13, and part of 14. And then, yeah, mostly Seattle, Tacoma, since 2015, also Portland. And now I live in Austin.

Dave:
Nice. Do you still hate it?

Tarl:
Oh, I’ve never liked it.

Dave:
Not Austin, just real estate.

Tarl:
Oh, yeah. I like Austin. I’ve only done real estate for money, and I’ve never enjoyed it too much. I’ve enjoyed the bank account.

Dave:
Wait, are you being serious?

James:
Honestly, I love that.

Tarl:
I’m a hundred percent serious.

Dave:
It’s a means to an end, right? You don’t have to love it.

Jessie:
I don’t think I’ve ever heard somebody say it like that, that’s so successful. I love the, “I actually hate it, just like the money.”

Tarl:
It’s more fun to say, “Yeah, I hate real estate.” I mean, I hate moments for sure. I love holding onto real estate now, which is great, until a tenant becomes an issue and I hear about it. I do everything I can to know nothing about what’s going on with our tenants on our properties, but I know we’re going through an eviction right now. And I hate hearing about that stuff and whatnot. So it’s great when I look my balance sheet, that’s fun.

Jessie:
It’s funny you say that because I hate rentals. I’m addicted to the flip. I mean, any deal, whenever I buy a rental, and James owns a few, I look at it and I go, “Yes, $200 in cashflow. Woo, let’s go, baby.” Or flip it and make $42,000. And it’s like, now here I am 10 years later and I have eight freaking rentals. That’s it. And it’s like probably should have kept some of those.

Tarl:
We’re in the same boat on that. I didn’t keep my first rental until 2016.

James:
And at the end of the day, each property has a purpose, and that’s the purpose of flipping. We could keep them, you can buy them, but at the time you’re making a decision to increase every property. I don’t really have any regrets of the properties I sold because each flip had a purpose. And for the last 20 years as we’ve been flipping homes, it always has a purpose, and you have to kind of adapt and change with the markets. And right now, the purpose is-

Dave:
The purpose just making you as much money as possible.

James:
It’s to grow your cash. The more cash and capital you have, the more passive income you can have, and the more passive income you’ve got coming in, the more you can chill out, even though I have not figured out how to chill out yet. But it all has a purpose. And right now it would’ve been great to keep them, but in today’s market, it’s hard to keep rental properties because the rates are so high. And flipping has a really good purpose in today’s market, you can buy properties still increase your cash, and with the cost of money being very expensive and everything being expensive, it will grow the capital.
And that’s the beautiful thing about flipping in today’s market, in this market has been changing rapidly with their interest rates. And I think what we’re diving into deep today is you can flip in any type of market. I’m excited to have Jessie and Tarl in here because they’re a bunch of deal junkies, and I get along well with deal junkies. It’s not chasing that deal and growing money. With flipping right now though, Jessie, I know you’re in a very expensive market, the rates are expensive. I know for us as borrowers and flippers, cost of money has gone from 8-9% to 10 to 12%. What kind of changes have you made in today’s market with buying with the cost of money being at where it’s at your whole times, and then also with the dispos taking a little bit longer? Because it makes a huge impact when you’re buying a million bucks, that’s 10, 12 grand a month in your hold times.

Jessie:
Yeah, I mean it’s a ton. So I’m at just under one point and nine and a half still. So my rates are still pretty good on hard money with a 15% down of load to cost. So it’s decent. I loved it when it was 10% down. The key right now is I’m buying a lot less though, James, where I used to keep 25 flips going up one time, and that doesn’t mean I’m flipping 25 at one time, just means I’m holding 25 and making payments on a bunch while I’m flipping 10. So I’ve gone down to 11, 15, because I’m trying to turn them faster. I looked at the math and I said, “How many crews do I have? Let’s divide it up. How fast can I turn these? How long can I let something sit?” Because the problem when you’re a flipper is you don’t ever want to say no to a deal.
Someone brings you an opportunity, you say no, you worry that it’ll come back again. One, I’ve got some patience now and I’ve been okay to say no to some stuff and let them realize, “Hey, I’m still buying. I just need to sit tight on this one because I’m maxed out.” But it’s all about speed. Because we see rates right now are going up. What’s going to happen happen? We’re hitting the winter months. Is it going to slow down? We had a great peak this spring where everything I sold, I sold for five, 8% above list price, which was fantastic. And when you look at it, I’m looking at the average of the whole year. I hate what could be coming here in a couple of months in November and December, where I list something and I might get 5% less now, but I made up for it in the front half of the year.
The way I look at, I’m always flipping, and I’ve been flipping for 10 years straight, is, I don’t necessarily look at every deal on a deal by deal basis. Obviously, I want to win on every single deal, but I’m okay with looking at, “All right, I flipped 28 this year. I was definitely way up on all of them. Couple that didn’t work out because I went overrun on costs, or timing, or I did a bunch of projects where I’m adding accessory dwelling units, so that picked up the timeline set of six months. I’m at 12 months, I’m at 15 months on some of them.” But the value add is so big that I’m able to offset if the market adjusts a little bit.
So there’s a balance there in those that I really like. So a lot of it right now is just speed, speed, speed. And luckily, my money is still pretty good. But when I started I was at three points and 12% on my hard money. I see people like, “Oh, rates are so high, rates are so high.” I mean, I flipped a couple of hundred homes at three points and 12%. So it can still be done, just buy better.

James:
I was getting loan shark money back in the day, it seemed like in 2008 we were financed at four points at 18%, and that was the best we could do in 2008. And I’m pretty sure my legs would’ve got broke. We didn’t even turned the money.

Tarl:
To that point though, Jimmy, I mean, those of us that were in the market even that time period, I think about why Jessie didn’t buy you hold onto much. I didn’t hold on too much. It was hard to get long-term financing, but it was easy to get… You had hard money, so it was like a lot of us were flipping because money was harder to get, but deals were out there. And I think that’s just something to realize a lot of us, we can’t wait for the market to crash if it crashes at all. But when it does, money’s harder to get and people usually run away from at that point. Or they don’t keep the deals or they flip them or whatever, a wholesale or something like that.

Jessie:
Yeah, because the DSCR wasn’t around in 2008, 9, 10, 11 and 12, when you could buy everything for under a hundred grand in California and then BRRRR out of it. That’s a newer product. So you’re right, I remember having these amazing deals, having a ton of equity and then being like, “Okay, I can’t refi out of them, because I already own four or five in my name,” where there used to be a cap on conventional financing on how many you can have in your name and things like that. So it’s been good the last couple of years with all the BRRRR, and the DSCR stuff.
And James, you mentioned earlier about there’s a function for the money and right now maybe if we can’t refinance out of stuff, or it doesn’t make sense to hold the rental. So yeah, this is the capital growth phase of our business for the last few years. You guys, I mean, James, you probably held onto a lot of deals in the last two, three years when you were able to get three and a half, four and a half percent DSCR loans, I would imagine. Now, if those aren’t penciling, now you’re like, “Just turn the money, build more capital. If the market shifts in another two years and rates come down again, then you move to that cycle again and you hold more rentals.” Am I guessing that correctly?

James:
Yeah, as capital gets constrained, and I think this is a good thing to discuss, flippers have to adjust. In every market you have to adjust. And money was really loose. You had DSCR loans, which were basically loans that covered… Your income would get you qualified for the loan, right? So if you had higher rents, the lender’s going to lend your loan amounts based on the income you’re bringing in. Hard money was cheaper too. Down payments were lower. And what’s happened with hard money is it’s gone kind of back to what it was. Standard hard money downs were 20% down. And lenders have to protect themselves as the market gets riskier, and that’s what it is done for flippers is it’s tightened up the market again, but it’s just, as the money increases, that just means we have to pivot. And so Jessie and Tarl, what pivots have you guys had to make when you’re buying now, when you have an extra two to three points on your monthly interest?
I know it’s affected us quite a bit, because we’ve been flipping a lot of multimillion dollar properties. So if I got a $2 million loan, my payment is 2020 grand a month. And if I got 10 of them, it’s a big nut. And so that basically boxes me into where I can only do a certain amount of projects of that size. What pivots have you guys made to buying in today’s market? Because as the market has cooled down, it’s also created some amazing opportunities. We’ve been buying things a lot cheaper right now. How have you adjusted around? For us, we got to buy deeper, we add extra carry timelines on there. If our average flip was taken to about six to seven months, we’re running our performance at eight to nine months just to be safe. What adjustments have you made with this cost of money, because has really locked up some flippers and it’s made a lot of them go to the sidelines rather than just keep buying?

Jessie:
Well, I’m seeing, I’ve moved a lot back to the minor cosmetic when I started in 2008 and 2010. So [inaudible 00:16:52]. Trying to get into a property and see if I can flip it at four months, but not doing the additions, not doing the accessory dwelling units like I’ve done for the last couple of years. It’s not to say I won’t do one if I see a big opportunity, but I’ve got a handful of the deals that I’ve sold in the last three months that it was lipstick. I mean, it was just new cabinets, new countertops, laminate wood floors, the way I used to do it. The stuff that I don’t want to post on Instagram, the finished product looks like something that Tarl would have to flip my flip. But I’m getting in and getting out fast and make it 40 grand, and the carrying costs are very low, hard moneylenders are very happy with me right now, my private guys because turning the capital.
Because a year ago, they’re like, “Hey, man, you’re holding onto this low for 12 months, 14 months. We need you to start turning this a little bit quicker.” So I’m really glad the adjustment happened, because it kind of got me back to the beginning of when I first started flipping, and how it was just a volume game, just quick, quick, quick, instead of chasing big home runs on large purchase prices. That’s probably the biggest adjustment that I’ve made.

Tarl:
For me, I mean, full disclosure on my part, I wouldn’t say I’m one of the guys on the sidelines, but I definitely for sure am not on the starting line right now when it comes to investing out there. I’ve been looking for any excuse whatsoever for probably the last four years to stop buying properties. And last year I already moved out of Washington, all my properties I own are in Seattle and Tacoma area, and I was just looking for an excuse even before the market shifted and before rates even went up to just stop buying in that area to begin with for a period of time. I think it’s just because I was burnt out of that area and I just didn’t want to be there. That had nothing to do with markets whatsoever. It just had everything to do with personal lifestyle. But when the market changed and when the rates went up, I used that as a reason to say, “All right, I just don’t want to buy right now.”
So we closed everything out last year. And then here in the Austin area, I was really seriously looking for some time. What we instead did when it comes to finance and money, when it comes to debt wise, the stuff that we have done has been more with private capital, and also with private lenders instead of traditional lenders. And any type of financing that I’ve had to do outside of that has all been just internal stuff that I’ve already had with lines of credit and so forth. And it’s just made it a lot cleaner on our end.
Right now, I’m very seriously digging into multiple markets to jump back into. I’m still looking at Seattle/Tacoma to jump back in there again. That’s why I was like, “Hey, Jimmy, I’ll call you later.” But for the most part, there’s a few other markets that I’m more focused on, just because of cashflow purposes and being able to buy cash, raising money and so forth to be able to do that, instead as a cash hold, instead of having to deal with having to get debt and rely on DSCRs and all that stuff right now with rates being so high.
And that’s what I’m more focused on more than anything right now. It’s forced me to do what I should have done a while ago, which is focused on the long-term. I think one of the things that I’ve loved about house flipping is that, I joke about you get to weigh your money instead of count it, when you do it. But at the same time, I have a good buddy of mine that only bought and hold since basically 2009. And he does really, really well with budgets, right? He’s making 200 bucks a month on a house. He’d have to save money up and go buy another down payment, and get another down payment and save up for another down payment, or leverage and get a line of credit, and then use that to go get more down payments on the houses and then pay those off, so forth.
So he is really good at budgeting. When you look at a lot of house flippers that were making a lot of money, we were the opposite. We didn’t have to budget it as much because we were making so much cash and whatnot for it. So it also had me thinking short term all the time, like six-month increments instead of long-term increments. And for me personally, with the way rates are, I’m happy that it’s done that. I am hoping that the rates don’t ever go down anytime soon. I hope they stay up.

Dave:
Why? Because you want prices to go down?

Tarl:
I don’t think it’s going to affect single family as much as people might believe due to rates. We can talk about unemployment, I think that’ll affect single family more than the rates will. But if the rates dropped right now today, I think it would just destroy our economy in so many ways. There’s reasons for that. It’s already on track for that. But real estate shouldn’t spike up like it did the last few years. We all know that. We’ve all benefited from that. I’m thankful for it. But at the same time, if it all of a sudden just dropped dramatically right now, it’s going to create more issues than good.
And also bring more people back in the market and create more competition in the short run drive prices up again, which I don’t think is a good thing. And I got a lot to say about that, but that’s where my brain is right now. I want the rates to stay up right now.

Dave:
So, why then are you considering jumping back into the market? And are you looking at flipping or more of a buy and hold strategy?

Tarl:
Both. So the reason why I’m jumping back in is I can’t time the market, it’s at the end of the day. For me, I took a little break, and being able to just have more fun and shore up some stuff on my end, we’ve been putting more money into the deals we already have. We have some commercial properties, we’ve built up more. We have some single families, we have some build projects that we wanted to get back on track and stuff for our end. And more focusing on that to be more strategic this time, and not just reacting to just flip, flip, flip, buy, buy, buy, because you have a machine that you have to feed. That’s one of the things that is cool, is you get to build this great operation when it comes to flipping, but at the same time you got to feed that machine. And I always kind of hated having to flip to feed the machine, versus being able to keep everything and whatnot, which that’s just more my mentality lifestyle wise in my head. Dave, I’m sorry, I ranted, what was the question again?

Dave:
No, you answered my question. I was just asking about flipping or renting. It sounds like both.

Tarl:
Yeah, both opportunistically. But more on the long-term thinking of it. So dollar cost averaging houses and whatnot, being able to sit there and go, I can’t time when the best market is. I’ve thought the market was going to crash since 2016. And every single month I’m like, “This is the month we’re all doomed.” And I’ve been wrong every freaking time. So when Covid hit and your bank stopped lending, I’m like, “Get rid of everything.” We didn’t do that, but I was definitely thinking it. So I’m sure some of us were too.
But at the same time I’m like, “I can’t do that.” So instead, I think single family is still a good investment. I think that, for me, getting back in the game more hardcore over the next 18 months has a lot to do with what I think might happen in the multifamily world and commercial world later down the line, so that we’re building up our credibility still in the space in different markets. So that way when things kind of fall apart in the other asset classes, we already have the ground and operations set up in the markets we want to be in to be able to maybe grab some bank owed properties that are more in the multifamily side.

Dave:
And before we move on, Tarl, I want to ask, because I think you’re the only one here who’s actively looking at new markets. What are you looking for in those new markets for flipping or buying hold?

Tarl:
So we’re looking at everything as cash. So we’re not really caring about the interest rates as much. So things have the pencil out there. So it’s got to be, I could list some of the markets, but for the most part, if we’re buying something cash and forcing the appreciation on it through the burst strategy, but without actually refinancing instead holding a cash, then these markets have to be able to pencil out at least on an eight cap of some sort, seven to eight cap, for a rental buy and hold. But that’s also forcing the appreciation through the bird strategy. And at the same time, there’s got to be demand in those areas and have property management in those areas, and all that stuff, because we don’t self-manage inside. So there’s great markets that I’ve been looking at that are fantastic for maybe a flip, but would suck for buy and hold because property management would suck in that area.
And at the same time for us, we’re looking at where are people moving to? Where are the jobs going? What’s the sustainability? Was it one trick pony kind of town that’s out there that’s dependent on one industry? Just all the basic stuff that you’re going to want to look at for long-term growth. Versus flips, there’s tons of, I think you could flip anywhere, in my opinion. Doesn’t matter what’s happening in that market, I literally think you could flip anywhere and jump into a market and make something happen. It’s just, do you want to hold onto that property for five to 10 years in that market? That’s where the challenges come in that kind of change our thinking on things. I’ve never thought long-term in this business, ever, so it’s always been six months at a time. So it’s been an interesting game that we’ve been playing lately on my end to get rid of that thinking.

James:
And I think what Tarl mentioned is a lot of flippers did, they took a little break to look at what’s going on with their current existing business to change their strategies around reset, because this market is creating different types of opportunities to flip properties a different way. Things that have caused us issues are the cost of labor. The market has gone up dramatically over the last three years. The labor has been a nightmare getting people to work, and getting people to show up. Especially in expensive markets, like Jessie, I know you’re in LA, right? Not only was there a lot of flippers going on, there was a lot of residential purchasers buying and building their dream homes, which are sucking up a lot of our flipping talent. Jessie, how have you combated? Because I know in West Coast cities, Tarl’s there, I’m there, they’re expensive, the labor’s a lot more expensive.
As we go into this new market, rates have changed, is creating different types of opportunities that you can buy. So things that we’re looking at is, how do we also reduce the labor costs and do things a little bit differently? What have you been doing to get those costs down? Because that’s a big deal going in. Money’s expensive, labor’s expensive, and the resale’s not quite as expensive as it was. So you got to change things around. So what have you been doing to battle that labor market down? It’s been a huge nuisance for us.

Jessie:
Yeah. So I think that the fact that there was Covid and everybody started building, actually helped me, because I definitely had a laziness factor where I had my handful of crews that I’ve worked with for so long that I stopped kind of micromanaging the numbers. It’s like a roof would used to be 10 grand, then it went to 22,000 or whatever, and it was like, “Well, but my prices went up a hundred grand. So I’m making more money so it makes sense that they’re making more money.” And I just didn’t question it. Then last year’s market happened. And all of a sudden it’s like, “Oh my god, this market’s going down. What are we going to do?” And I adjusted and I said, “Okay, well, I need to just get through my inventory.” So I stopped buying for nine or 10 months total, just kind of like what you talked about.
And it was all a function of I just want capital to come back in so I can reassess. And when I was doing that, all of a sudden I’m like, “Hey, I need to go get three bids for this roof. Let’s clean up all these systems. Let’s button down the budget. Let’s make sure that we’re not just being sloppy because we’re used to doing so deals and used to making money and we weren’t watching it.” So the biggest thing we did, James, was just kind of get back to the basics of saying, “Hey, I love you and I appreciate you and I know we worked together for five years, but your prices have creeped on me a ton, so I’m just going to go get two more bids.” And then I can get those bids and I could go back to leveraging them.
And the one thing, because when you have a crew that you’ve been working with for five years, 10 years, that they’ve never had to go get another job, because they know that Jessie’s always feeding the machine like Tarl said, right? It’s like, “I got to make sure I keep buying a house, because I don’t want to lose that crew.” That is a legitimate fear, because I don’t want to have to go out there and train. Well, last year when I knew I was downsizing the business and slowing it down, I was like, “Oh, I’m starting over, essentially. I don’t mind going and interviewing new crews.” And that was huge.
I brought my cost down on these rehabs like 30, 35%. And it was kind of sad to say how loose I was for so long, because when money’s coming in, you don’t necessarily need to micromanage every little piece of it. So for the last 10 months, 11 months, we’ve been buying a ton, and scaling the business back up. But at these better margins now, at these better expense models, which has been really, really cool. So plus, making sure that I’m flipping them faster. Yesterday I did a video where I said, “I’m busting the Dave Ramsey debt model of stacking payments to chip away at one credit card, then move all that money to the next,” it’s called the flip stacking model. I’m moving three crews to a house today.
Because I’m like, “Hey, if this market’s going to adjust on us the next three months and I’ve got 11, am I working on 11 at a time and then I’m five months from now, and then they all come on the market?” I’m like, “No, I need something on the market in two weeks.” So it’s like landscape crew, exterior crew, interior crew, pulling from three different houses onto one and get everything, get that house done in two weeks, and then stack that crew to the next one. Because now I just want to make sure I’m getting something on the market every two to three weeks, instead of the last five months of like, “Oh, I’m going to have all these beautiful projects, and then you’re kind of slow because waiting for a sub.”
It’s like, “No, I’m moving everybody and I don’t care if they’re on top of each other, and I don’t care if they’re off at me, that the painter doesn’t like that the one guy’s there, and they’re always pointing fingers.” It’s like, “Deal with it. I need this house done. Everybody’s on. We need to be on the market by September 15th and then the next project by October 1st, the next project by October 15th.”
So that was I think a topic that I did, or an idea that I did, six, seven months ago when the market was different, or a year ago, and it really worked. And then all of a sudden I stopped doing it again. And then now I’m like, “Go right back to that model. Let’s push, push, push.” So just micromanaging the crews more than ever has been a huge way to get those costs down and making them realize that I’m not just a fat cat that they can always count on and that I’m not checking their budgets or their numbers anymore.

Dave:
It’s really interesting, everyone, you sort of get complacent and you start trusting people. And I mean, it’s just inevitable. But I’m curious, how big a turnover was it? You run a lot of crews, how many are you still with that were with you before you started this crackdown?

Jessie:
So last year, seven crews that I had for multiple years, and I’m down to two.

Dave:
Oh, okay. But are you still at seven total crews, but you replaced five?

Jessie:
No. So from seven down to two, up to five. Added three more. What I’m realizing is the old model of the two-man crew, or the three-man crew, that would do everything on a house, doesn’t seem to make sense today like it did seven, eight years ago. I’m actually finding that it’s cheaper to go to every single sub, than the idea where it used to be like, “Oh, this one crew does paint, laminate baseboards, they install cabinets, they do all the minor electrical, minor plumbing.” Now it’s like, “Dude, it’s cheaper for me to go with a stucco guy than to have my two-man crew,” because when you’re paying these guys 200 bucks a day, or 250 a day for a two, three-person crew, and then it takes them three weeks to do stucco versus a professional crew that comes in, the cost may be the same, but the speed. That’s the biggest thing right now. Everything is speed.
If I can have a stucco crew out there while I have the wood floor guys on the inside, while someone else is building a fence and the exterior, it’s better to go that route because I just knocked out three trades in the same week and a half than having that crew that kind of jumped, because I was trying to save 20 grand. It’s not saving me 20 grand when we have 10% interest rates on these hard money loads.

Tarl:
I think the biggest thing you just said to everybody listening to this is how much we’re all excited to be learning how to flip houses because we want to learn construction. And all of us got into this business because we love construction. And the fact that you’re just mapping out a lot of what you just said, Jessie, though, requires a lot of project coordination, project management, timing, being able to figure out, making sure the subs don’t step on each other and stuff that you don’t have electrician going in there at the wrong time. And the same thing with plumbers and HVAC guys and whatever.
But that requires a lot of, which is all true, I mean, the three of us, Dave, I don’t know if you flip, sorry.

Dave:
Nope.

Tarl:
For the three of us that do, most of us have gone to that model of hiring subs directly versus the one GC, but it is because we leveled up our construction game because we had to, right? At some point. If we all wanted to, we’d hire one GC and walk away and never see the house again until it’s done and they call us up saying, “You can list it.” That’d be freaking awesome. That doesn’t happen.

Jessie:
We just have to be better buyers to do that, right? We can get it for 30 cents on the dollar, let the builder do it, make his 25% GC fee.

Tarl:
Yeah, but that’s what happened when the market shifted. I think it brought up so much to people how bad they were at their operations in their business, in a sense. And where our business as house flippers or investors, the 80 plus percent of it is in the construction of the rehab on the day-to-day working aspect of it. The acquisition side of it, you can be like me where we don’t door knock or do direct marketing, we just go buy from wholesalers and agents. So you have to have that aspect of making sure you’re comping the properties correctly and you’re getting the right deal. Or you can be a business that’s also direct marketing, acquisition and sales, all that great stuff, and you’re buying the properties in additional to rehab. But if you’re just focusing on buying the properties and most of the business is in the construction of the rehab and making sure you’re staying that budget, and with the way things have been, I think it woke up a lot of house flippers to be how bad they were at that.
And in order to make the business work today, it’s having more sure numbers. I remember, Jimmy, I don’t know if you remember this, I remember you and I talking on the phone I think in 2022 or 2021, I can’t remember. I think it was 2021. We were just like, “Let’s just throw darts to figure out what construction cost is going to be today because it’s changing so dramatically.” But that said the other aspect of when the market shifted a lot of house flippers, there’s a number of house flippers that were terrified of losing their ass, basically, and losing money, and the way rates are and whatnot. And because their projects were behind and there’s a bunch that did, but Jimmy, not to keep bringing you up, but I remember us being at BP CON last year and we were kind of talking about that, and I agree a hundred percent with what you said, is these guys that were complaining about losing money, they’re not remembering that they made a million bucks flipping houses already. They just didn’t save any of their money.
So the reason why most house flippers lose at markets like this is because of poor cashflow. And I mean, business cashflow.

Jessie:
And how most flippers the last few years thought they were Gs is because they flipped the house and it made a hundred grand more than they expected. Even though the rehab costs went up 50,000, and they still made a hundred, right? It’s like had nothing to do with the flipper, had to do with the market, just went up a ton because of Covid. And then they started getting cocky, and then they started buying at lower spreads, because everything was like, “Well, this deal has upside.” And that’s terrible. I mean, that is the quickest way to exit this damn business as a flipper, is to break your buy box just because you want to do a deal.

Tarl:
Yeah, or spend all your money. I mean, we lost 150,000 last year on properties, but that would destroy a lot of people. But at the same time it’s like, “All right, because we have cash that we were able to handle it, and it’s also an average of all the houses we do and everything, it’s just part of the business.” But I guess the thing I’m trying to say is that if you’re in this business, make sure you’re managing your cash flow because things change, stuff happens.

Dave:
Along those lines, are you seeing people leave the business not as voluntarily as Tarl may have due to force of circumstance?

Tarl:
I have. You could see it in, I mean, I don’t know who else has access to this stuff, but you could see it in the amount of people looking for new debt. And so what I’ve noticed is that people that were the A players before Covid and during Covid, were more likely to wait and see because they’ve already built it up. That’s what I’ve seen at least from people I’ve talked to, all the event stuff that we host and everything, that they’re more likely to not be jumping head first, because from what I’ve noticed, they don’t want to lose what they built. So it’s more of a fear aspect of, “I’ve built this up, I don’t want to lose it by risking it.” So they’ve already risked it before they build it, so they don’t want to do it again. And that’s not everybody, for sure, but there’s definitely a good chunk of people out there like that.

James:
And scared money don’t make money.

Tarl:
A hundred percent, a hundred percent.

James:
People are leaving and it’s like good, I’m thankful. Because honestly, it was too oversaturated for a minute and people were making bad decisions. And what we talked about is people got lazy, including myself. It’s like you could buy anything and it was going up in value. You could mismanage your project, you were going to make money. Now it’s gotten back to the grassroots of flipping. Buy a good deal, manage the construction, manage your plan, you can make account for your cost, and you can make money at it. And what it’s done, it’s funny because you hear people say like, “Oh, flipping’s a terrible thing right now.”
I hope everyone continues to think so because the margins we are getting, we were buying at a 30% cash on cash return prior to Covid, and that’s with leverage in there. It’s about a 13 to 15% cash on cash return. Now we are hitting 50 to 60% cash on cash with big fixers in there. So the margin has doubled, so it makes it less risky, even though the market’s a little bit hairy right now. Rates keep creeping up, it’s very sergy, people show up one day, they don’t show up the next. And you kind of have to weigh it out. But as long as you can pat it and there’s enough margin in the deal, my worst case scenario on a couple of my deals is I work for free. I’m still going through the process, but if the market corrects further, there’s still enough padding in there to get the deal done.
And so there’s some really, really good opportunities if you can put your pen to pencil, and you want to figure it out, like Jessie said, bring out more people, have it bid out numerous times. We basically fired every one of our contractors from the last couple of years and we restart, because it’s either get on the ship or get off the ship. And unfortunately, a lot of them, now they’re all calling us for work too. “Hey, can I get work?” And it’s like, “Hey, no, I will give you work, but we got to talk about this.” And so the sediment, it’s funny, it goes in surges. Your flippers are no different than your consumers. Every time the rate shifts like a quarter point, they show up to your house and it goes back up, they don’t show. The flippers are the same way. They’re like, “Oh, I heard it goes well, I’m going to look for a second,” and then pull back out. So you consistently keep buying, the margins are better.

Tarl:
Yeah, that’s a dollar cost averaging aspect of it, where, I mean, you can’t time the market you just got to… But I mean, everybody’s got their personal preference with what they want to do with their money at the same time.

Dave:
But Tarl, I wanted to ask you about that because dollar cost averaging I feel like works really well for rentals where there’s less risk of principal law, actually losing money. You could underperform, but it’s kind of a paper loss. For people who are relatively new, do you still recommend that strategy? Because if they have all of this capital invested into a pretty volatile industry right now, you might not get to average it out. It might just be one and done for you.

Tarl:
Yeah. No, you got to make money on that deal.

Dave:
Your first one, you got to hit it. You got to make money on that first deal. You got to make money on the first 10, right?

Tarl:
None of my advice ever, ever, whether it’s on my Instagram or anything I’ve ever done, has ever been for new people. I just want to throw that out there.

Dave:
Okay. All right. Fair.

Tarl:
No, you got to have money to lose and be okay with it. And you’re always risking. I mean, everything at the same time, and everything we do, is educated guessing. That’s what it is. We’re like, “Hey, I feel really well-educated and I’m guessing really strong because I’ve done this enough.” You’re measuring risk. Risk equals reward. It’s all about mitigating that risk and whatever you’re comfortable with. And I’ve seen a lot of new people that when the market was going up, still lose their ass, because they didn’t know how to measure their risk associate appropriately. It doesn’t matter what’s going on with the market, it could be going up and you could lose money, and there’s plenty of people that did that, right? And there could be going down and you can make a ton of money. So I’m not really too concerned about that. But whoever’s investing, I mean, if you’re taking your hard-earned cash or other people’s hard-earned cash, I hope you know what you’re doing. That’s what it boils down to.

Jessie:
I always say, and this is going to go opposite, I always felt like flipping is not risky. There’s so much science to it if you follow the science, and you establish a really good buy box, 65% of a RV. You know what I mean? The market would really have, everything would have to go wrong, which of course it could happen, but even through the last year, there was one loss that I took in the last 10 years on a house. There was some breakevens, or made five or 10 grand. And that loss that I took was out when I went out of state, when I left my core market and I was like, “Oh, I want to buy in Park City.” I also bought it to be an Airbnb. So I had this one plan and then decide, construction went bad, everything took forever, storms hit, and then I was like, “You know what? Forget this, dude. I don’t want this rental. The rents aren’t going to be as good.”
And then I decided to sell it, and that’s when I took the hundred thousand loss. And I was honestly happy to take it, because I was like, “Just get me the heck out of this market.” I moved to something I don’t know, go back to where the science makes sense for me, where I know Southern California real estate like I know it inside and out being a realtor here for 17 years. And so I feel so comfortable and safe flipping if I stay within my parameters.

Tarl:
I do want to add to that though. It’s just not to throw it out there, but it’s for those people or anybody listening to this that’s not on the West Coast, they might not have those same experiences with flipping and feeling comfortable with it, because us on the West Coast, we definitely benefit when it comes to market appreciation versus other markets and so forth. So it’s not always the same when it comes to that market.

Jessie:
Well, and that’s why I won’t buy out of state. You see a lot of talk about go get deals in Columbus, Ohio, or rentals. It’s like, even to buy a rental in California is so expensive. But when I look at like, okay, it’s expensive, I get more depreciation, I’m going to get more of an appreciation play over years, because this is one of those markets that goes up the most, rents increase at a crazy high rate. So if you are really good at buying every great flip, or not every, most great flips are usually good rentals because you’re buying for 60 cents on the dollar. And then we have all this upside. So it’s like when I have this great debate with friends that are like, “Dude, go buy 50 units in Ohio,” and I’m like, “I’ll go buy a four unit in LA where a one bedroom rents for 3,500 bucks a month.”
But I think I stay within my comfort zone, and why I think it’s safe to be an investor, right? Follow your buy box and stay where you know the market. I bought one deal a couple of months ago in Johnson City, Tennessee. Random as all can be because I was like, I want to test a place where I’m buying something for 70 grand that if everything goes sideways, it’s like, “All right, who caress? It’s 70 grand. I’ll still make a 5% cash on cash return, no debt on it,” stuff like that. And then I’ll see if I feel comfortable and start to go in those directions and do a little bit of more out of state. But every time I do the math on it, I’m like, “Just go buy a fourplex in LA.” With ADU laws, make it six units. It’s such an easy way to make money, I feel like, in a comfortable area.

Dave:
All right. So before we get out of here, this has been a very interesting conversation. Did not go the way I was expecting it to, and I like that.

Tarl:
We could change it. What do you want us to say?

Jessie:
What was the topic?

Dave:
No, I love it. I really like the diversity of opinions here. It’s great. But I am curious if people are interested in getting into flipping. Let’s start with you, Jessie. Do you have any advice on what they should be thinking about as we head into, not just an already difficult time, going into a difficult season of the year with rates marching upward? What advice would you offer?

Jessie:
I’d say when you’re penciling something out, overestimate on your rehabs, overestimate on how long it’s going to take. Just build a buffer in every single direction, which means it’s going to be harder to buy the deal. But if you do that, then the science is going to make sense and you’re going to be safer. So, I also think that flipping, I made a lot of money through the downturn, I made a lot of money in the up. I think we’re going to be fine, and just stick to buying something and be quick with it. If you’re going to buy something and you’re going to, “Oh, it’s going to take me 15 months to do,” don’t do it. Don’t buy something that’s tenant occupied. I get people all the time, it’s like, “I’ve seen this great deal. It’s got tenants in it.”
Like, no, not in California. Do not do that, right? Buy something vacant. Buy something that could be a minor cosmetic fix. Get in and out 90 days or back on the market in 90 days, and you’ll make a little bit of money. You’ll win, you’ll feel good, you’ll learn a lot, because it’s education on the first five, 10 deals, right? You’re going to have to go through all those growing pains. And us with four or five, 600 deals, we’re still learning.
So I would just take it safe. And I’m not a big off market guy. I’m big into agent outreach. I love getting deals from realtors. I feel like I get some of the best deals I’ve ever gotten. Not necessarily the MLS, but just realtors. So it’s focusing and hitting agents like crazy, and letting them know you’re an investor, I think is one of the best places to get a deal even right now.

Dave:
All right. Tarl, I know you are against giving newbie advice, but could we ask you for one nugget?

Tarl:
What’s escrow? That’s the quick no, anyways.
No, no. I’m totally onboard with that. I think one of the very first thing is, what is your buy box? What is the deal to you? And that doesn’t mean, what’s the deal to me? What’s the deal to Jimmy? What’s the deal to Jessie? We’re all different buy boxes at the end of the day, even though Jimmy and I were in the same market forever. But still, he’ll buy stuff that I won’t buy, and vice versa. There was a period of time where I bought a ton in Tacoma for years. And I’d get the deals from Jimmy because he didn’t want them then. But now he’ll take them all, I guess. But at the same time though, it’s like, “What’s your buy box?” So if you’re looking at a lot of deals and it’s like, “I don’t see any good deals.” And most of the time when I’m talking to somebody new and is saying there’s no good deals, it’s because they don’t know what a good deal is to them yet. They haven’t really refined that buy box for themselves.
And then once you have that buy box, make sure it’s realistic in whatever market you’re in. Because that’s the other aspect. You can have a great buy box that any of us would love, but then it might not be something that exists in the market that you’re at. And additionally, if everybody’s in this game at different levels, so some people are starting out with zero capital, some people have a lot of capital. At the end of the day, it’s like you really only need three things to do any deal, and that’s time, money, and expertise. So which one do you have? Are you the person with all the time that has no expertise and no money? Well, then you’ve got to go find people that have those things and add value, or go figure out how to wholesale, or something like that.
Which is a lot harder than it looks, by the way, the wholesale. It looks like it’s easy, but it’s not. You have to know a lot about the business to be very good at wholesaling. But that said, maybe you have a lot of money, but you don’t have the time and you don’t have the expertise. Cool. Maybe you shouldn’t go flip a house. Maybe you should go lend that out to somebody or partner up in JV. So just know where you’re at in that game and know what a buy box is for you, and then start looking for that stuff.

Dave:
That’s great advice. Thank you. James, you got anything for us before we go?

James:
Yeah. I think the best advice, if I was starting over again, is, everyone’s taught to chase the deal. If you get the good deal, you’ll make money. And flipping is a business, and you got to build it backwards, right? You don’t go start selling trinkets on Amazon and just going out and buying product without understanding the cost. Build your team, then build your buy box, because your buy box is going to get built based on the resources and people you have around you. If you’re new, go get your lender locked down. How much cash you need to put in that deal? What’s your cost going to be on that? Go work with contractors, find out what they’re good at, and then based on your resources, build your buy box and go start buying.
And so everyone, don’t skip the line and go buy the deal. Go get prepared to buy the deal and buy the right one. And if you have the right people around you and you have the right systems around you, that’s where you can flip in any market. And so focus on the people and the resources, not the deal right now. Once you have that, then go start buying.

Tarl:
That’s what I meant to say. All that.

Dave:
I concur. We’ll edit it. So it sounds like you all just said that. All right. Well, thank you all so much. This has been a great conversation. We appreciate your time and expertise here. Jessie, if people want to follow you, learn more about you, where should they do that?

Jessie:
On Instagram, at Jessie Rodriguez, J-E-S-S-I-E, for the spelling of Jessie. At Jessie Rodriguez.

Dave:
Nice. What about you, Tarl?

Tarl:
At Tarl Yarber, on Instagram.

Dave:
All right. James, why don’t you just tell us where we can find you?

James:
Best way is probably Instagram at jdaineflips, or jamesdainard.com.

Dave:
All right. Well, Jessie and Charles, thanks again.

Tarl:
Thanks, guys. It was fun.

Jessie:
Dave, thanks so much. James, thank you.

Dave:
On the market is created by me, Dave Meyer and Kaylinn Bennett. Produced by Kaylinn Bennett; editing by Joel Esparza and Onyx Media; research by Puja Gendal, copywriting by Nate Weintraub. And a very special thanks to the entire BiggerPockets team. The content on the show on the market are opinions only. All listeners should independently verify data points, opinions, and investment strategies.

Raunaq Singh, Roam founder and CEO, joins ‘Power Lunch’ to discuss how his company takes advantage of assumable mortgages to undercut high mortgage rates.

In her series exploring how couples are navigating their marriage, money, and mindset, Jessica Abo sat down with Katie Love, the founder of Love Social Media, and her husband, Aaron Martin, who is the father behind the social media account @stayathomedad.

The Story That Changed Everything

It was Christmas Eve in Columbus, Ohio, and TV news reporter Katie Love was assigned to cover a heartbreaking story. “A family of four died in a fire when their Christmas tree fell over in the middle of the night,” Love says. Her voice trembled with emotion as she delivered the tragic news. ‘I was devastated for obvious reasons and went back to the newsroom very emotional.’ The weight of the story had clearly taken its toll.

However, when Love returned to the station, she was met with an unexpected inquiry. The news director called her into his office and asked a perplexing question: ‘Why didn’t I see that Katie Love smile on TV this morning?’ Confused and taken aback, Love couldn’t fathom what he was getting at until it became apparent that he had been watching her report on mute and was completely unaware that she had just delivered the tragic news that an entire family was gone.”

Meanwhile Love says her boyfriend at the time, Aaron Martin, was an investigative reporter in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and was not dealing with feedback on his hair, wardrobe, or facial expressions. “He was getting called in for his storytelling and his writing.”

Around the time they got engaged, Love got a reporting offer in Pittsburgh, which meant she and Martin could work and live in the same city. But two weeks before she was supposed to start her job, she realized the toll working in TV news had taken on her mental health and decided it was time to do something else.

“I learned a lot about the power of social media. I’d covered a lot of missing persons cases and if a mother got me a poster that I could blast out on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter, everybody knew about that child being missing in a few hours versus waiting for the five and six o’clock news to talk about this person,” she says.

Seeing the power of how information could be disseminated on social media so quickly made Love feel alive and she realized that she wanted to bottle that up and work with female founders and their online presence.

Going Out On Her Own

When Love told Martin she was going to start her own social media agency, he told her it was a great idea. “In my head, I’m thinking, you know, small businesses take a while to succeed. I had no doubt Katie would be successful. I just figured we’d be living off of my salary for at least a couple years, maybe longer until she got things going.”

Things moved a lot faster than both expected and by the end of year one, Love was out-earning her fiancé. By year five, her business hit 7-figures and she was creating social media strategies for celebrities like Noami Watts and Bethenny Frankel.

“It was fantastic. I couldn’t have been happier because she was doing what she loved and was doing it really well,” he says.

The Realities of Startup Life

After a long day of investigative journalism, Martin would come home and just want to unwind. “We did a lot of watching TV while she worked on her laptop,” he says. So there were certainly challenges at times where I remember saying like, ‘Hey, can you log off for a little bit so we can hang out?’”

Love admits she was working, 24/7 because the success of her company was on her shoulders. “Whether I got a client or not or money came in was all on me,” she says. “But I had to figure out for our marriage, how to shut the laptop sometimes.”

Martin says his advice for other couples facing this challenge is to be vocal. “‘I would say, ‘Hey, you know, I really want you to be present for this.’”

He also shared he accepts Love for who she is and gives her grace when he knows she needs to work.

Parenting Through COVID

Six weeks into the lockdown, Love and Martin welcomed Adley into the world. Throughout the first year of their daughter’s life, Martin had long workdays, leaving home at eight in the morning and returning at eight at night. Love found herself navigating the challenges of motherhood while simultaneously scaling a company. The pressures of the ongoing pandemic weighed heavily on Martin as he ventured into the outside world, with the constant worry of exposing his wife and daughter to the threat of COVID. Additionally, he grappled with a sense of guilt, knowing that Love had an overflowing plate. “When you’re doing all that while sleep deprived, it can create a lot of tension. So we certainly had our fair share of struggles, but luckily, we’re very good at talking things out on something’s bothering us. We don’t let it simmer. We talk right away.”

In 2020, Katie’s revenue doubled and she went from three to six employees. They had been talking about moving to Miami to be closer to family and decided it was time.

#StayAtHomeDad

With Love working more, a move in the works and no nanny, Martin suggested he stay at home with Adley for a few months while he looked for a new job. “And that was two years ago,” he says. “It quickly became something that not only did I enjoy because I realized how much time I had been missing with Adley and not getting to experience it. But I realized how much I could help Katie as well, and liked how much I could take off her plate.”

While Martin took to his new role well, he and Love were caught off guard. “I don’t think either of us understood how difficult it was going to be changing our entire parenting dynamic a year and a half into Adley’s life,” she says. “Katie was working from home and doing a lot of parenting while I was gone. She had a much larger say in a lot of decisions about parenting just naturally because she was there. So things that I didn’t really care about before, now that I’m staying home with her, not only do I care about, but I have really strong opinions about. And it took several months for us to get comfortable, but I think it’s made us stronger because of it,” he says.

With Love being social media savvy, she decided to buy the @stayathomedad handle for Aaron as a fun little gift. And having that handle has opened him up to being in the New York Times and other opportunities.

It’s a system Love and Martin have figured out for their family. But it’s a lifestyle that doesn’t come without other people’s judgment. “When I went to pick up my daughter from school, a teacher said, ‘I’m not used to seeing you! Why don’t you ever come and pick her up? You should be the one picking her up. We always see your husband, you’re never here,’” she says. “It’s painful to hear that,” Love admits.

While she works on navigating life with mom guilt, her advice to other working parents is to focus on what’s making you happy and drown out the noise, “or else you’ll never get to where you want to be.”

Martin has advice to share as well.

“I just feel like the idea of people being as understanding as possible and really just accepting that there are different dynamics that are out there as long as the kids are healthy and happy and it works best for your family, then that’s what you should do.”