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David:
This is the BiggerPockets Podcast show 651.

Craig:
If your friend is asking about what you’re doing and how much you’re paying for the mortgage and how much he’s paying for the mortgage and all that, I always recommend being 100% honest because if you can empower somebody to do the same thing as you and to empower someone to house hack, then you’re going to completely change the trajectory of their lives, and that’s worth so much more than a couple hundred dollars a month or being a little bit sketchy about how much you’re getting paid or how much you’re paying and all that. So I highly recommend if you’ve got the opportunity to help somebody see the light and they’re asking to 100% just tell the truth. It’s way easier than lying.

David:
What’s going on, everyone? This is David Greene, your host of the BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast. Here today with a Seeing Greene episode, where I have called for backup. On this show, we’re going to be taking your questions as always, but with a little bit of a twist. We’ve got several other BiggerPockets personalities that have come in to help me by answering your questions. So you guys are in for a treat. You’re going to get my perspective and a lot of other people’s.
First, today’s quick tip. Do you need a group to help support you on your journey to your first or next property and a place to get your specific questions answered beyond this podcast? Well, check out biggerpockets.com/enroll if you want more info or to participate in one of our five different bootcamps. Thank you for being a loyal listener. We’re offering a 10% discount off your enrollment by using the code BOOTCAMP10. Almost 50 bucks off and a free year of pro membership can be yours. Already pro? You get a screaming price on this already great value opportunity. Invest in yourself and check out the BiggerPockets Bootcamp.
All right. Let’s go to our first question.

Ashley:
Hi, everyone. My name is Ashley Kehr, and I’m excited to be here today on Seeing Greene. I am the host of the Real Estate Rookie Podcast, along with Tony Robinson, and I’m also hosting two bootcamps coming this fall. So let’s get to today’s question.
Today’s question is from Juan Murano. His question is, “I’m getting into the thought of investment properties and I want a mentor. I do have a friend that does it, but she buys single-family in multifamily homes out of state, which scare me. I don’t know where to start my research for rental properties and areas to purchase in. How do I figure that out? I feel like little things like landlord states and tenant states leases for rental properties and finding people scare me. I don’t want to find videos on it. I want to be able to do my own research. Where do I start?”
Well, this is a great question, Juan, and there’s a couple things in here. So let’s start with your first one is that you want to find a mentor. So right in your question to me, you said that you do have a friend that buys single-family and multifamily homes, which I think right there is someone that could possibly be a mentor to you. Even if that ends up not being the real estate investing strategy that you want to go into, I think that they have invested in real estate there’s going to be a ton of value for you.
So just starting those conversations with that person, and even if you don’t feel like they’re adding a lot of value to what you want to do, it is going to motivate you and inspire you to be able to talk to somebody who is investing and also give you maybe that courage to get past analysis paralysis too. So I would say, start there with your friends. Start opening the conversation and talk to them as much as you can. Maybe offer to buy them some coffee or take them out to lunch I think is a great start.
Then you talked about where to start with the research or the areas to purchase them. So if you’re going to do out-of-state investing, one thing that I really like to look at is where are other people investing. I know you said you don’t want to watch a video on it. You want to be able to do your own research, but you have to start somewhere with finding markets and think about how many markets there are across the whole US. There are a ton.
When you look at the map, then you can bounce around from city to city. So if you were to pull up Zillow or realtor.com, you can hone in on one city, but you start zooming out and you start looking and, “Wow, there’s properties here that maybe in my budget.” Then you head over to Ohio, and then you’re bouncing down to Florida and going all over.
So what I recommend is go online. Go on the BiggerPockets forums. Go on social media. Start following other real estate investors, and look where they are investing. Then maybe pick three to five cities that interest you, and then do your research from there. So start your own market analysis and go through and look at the things that you want to evaluate in a market.
So for example, first of all, are properties within your budget? Maybe you have loan approval for up to 150,000 or that’s your cash to purchase a property, you’re not going to go into markets where you’re buying $500,000 houses and that’s maybe the average home sales. You’re going to look for markets that have houses that are available for $150,000. So that’s a big thing there.
The second thing is is you want to be a landlord, and you are 100% correct that there are different laws and regulations in different states. So there’s landlord states that are favorable to the landlord, and then there’s states that are also favorable to the tenants. So that also could be a great starting point for you is looking at states that have landlord-friendly laws, meaning that the laws there are beneficial to the landlord, and that is most likely going to give you a better investment than if you are going into states where the tenant has the benefit.
So I invest personally in New York. That’s where I’m from, and it is definitely a tenant-friendly state. So when an eviction comes up on a property, it is a lot harder to get that tenant out of the property than it would be, per se, if you were in Texas or a state that is a landlord-friendly state. So if you are going out-of-state anyways, that is definitely something to look at.
Other things to look at are possibly what is the median income in that market? Can people there afford the type of property or the type of rent that you want to charge? What are the rental rates there? So there’s a lot of things. Also, the industry, what kind of jobs are in this community, in this market? So if you’re looking at a market that only has one big business there, and that’s where a lot of employees, a lot of the people in the town, what happens if that business shuts down? All those people move to a different market because there’s no longer jobs there. So that’s why I always like to find at least three prominent places of employment that bring people in for those jobs.
So for example, in Houston, Texas, there’s healthcare, there’s a lot of oil jobs there. So looking at these markets, what’s bringing people into them? Then also look at the trends too of people moving into those markets. So those are just a couple of the many things that you can look at when you’re doing market analysis, but I would say start building a list of things that you want to look at in a market.
In my bootcamp, we go over this too, in the rookie bootcamp, as to all these things we list down to things you can analyze when you’re finding your market, but I think watching BiggerPockets YouTube videos and videos of other investors can definitely help you, but you still want to verify and do your own research.
So my recommendation for your question would be to go to your friend for a mentor, post it in the BiggerPockets forums to see if anybody out there is looking for help with anything. Do you have a special skill or something that you can do to add value to another investor so that they do mentor you?
Then second, look where other people are investing and then verify the data that you see in those markets to see if it suits what your goals and what your real estate investing strategy is, and then go from there, and make sure you do not get stuck in analysis paralysis. So make sure you take action. Every deal is not going to be a home run, and your first deal does not have to be a home run deal. So make sure you remember that and you don’t get too stuck in over analyzing.
Well, thank you, David, so much for having me on Seeing Greene. If you guys want to learn more about what I do, you can follow me on Instagram, @wealthfromrentals, and back to you, David.

David:
All right. Well, thank you, Ashley. That was a fantastic answer, and what a way to start this show. There’s enough information in that reply for an entire podcast. I love the points that you made. The looking for the employment is really big. I think a lot of investors look at the cashflow they’re going to get. They want to find the ROI, but they don’t dig in and say why is it doing that, why are people moving here, what are the driving forces and fundamentals behind the number that pops up on your spreadsheet. That’s what a real good investor does is they understand at a pretty high level what makes a market drive, why the supply is what it is, why the demand is what it is, what the benefits of that market are, and what the drawbacks are as well because every market’s going to have drawbacks.
You just have to understand, “Why are they drawbacks? What are they? Is that something I can live with?” You’re never going to find a perfect market. That’s a mistake a lot of people make because they keep looking forever because every market they find has something wrong with it, but there’s always going to be something wrong with every single market. That’s just the way that life works because if there wasn’t, somebody else would’ve already bought all of those houses and there wouldn’t be an opportunity. So thanks for that, Ashley. That was fantastic advice.
Our next question comes from Tony Spencer about short-term rentals, and we have none other than BiggerPockets published author Avery Carl here to answer on this topic.

Avery:
Hey, guys. It’s Avery Carl, BiggerPockets author of Short-Term Rental, Long-Term Wealth, and the BiggerPockets short-term rental bootcamp instructor. Today’s question comes from Tony Spencer in the Seattle area. Tony currently owns his home with a basement apartment and is about to go live with his first Airbrrrrnb and will have 300,000 to put down on a second Airbnb suit. He says he’s a member of several Airbnb social media groups and, “I’m looking to buy my second short-term rental very soon.” He also says he sees that everyone is panicking about their lack of bookings compared to the last few years. Sounds like it could be due to maybe the new algorithm with Airbnb and/or inflation in general.
His question is, “Do you see the STR market trending in any certain direction with fears about the economy or do you think that there might be an upcoming opportunity in this asset class cooling off in the near future? Finally, I’m basing this question off anecdotal evidence from social media posts, but I’ve yet to see any current data about STR bookings being down across the board. Do you know where I can find such current data to support or deny this information? Thanks as always. Love the show.”
Okay. So Tony, this is a really, really good question, and I’m going to try to not be too long-winded in my answer. So I have seen a lot of people panicking about bookings over the past few months, I would say, especially back in April and May when Airbnb rolled out their new algorithm. It did affect some things. That has since been corrected. Airbnb has walked that back a little bit. So we’re not seeing as much of an issue with that.
I also think that a lot of the panic that we see in social media posts is from people who bought in the last 18 months, especially people who bought at the end of 2020 or during 2021 who have not been through normal seasonality yet. So May is typically a slow month because it’s right between everyone having been on vacation in April and for spring break, and then also everyone about to be going on vacation for the summer. So May is a pretty quiet month in terms of STR. So I think it’s a combination of owners who bought in a really high year who haven’t been through normal seasonality yet, and then the Airbnb algorithm messing with everyone’s bookings on top of that.
In terms of the market trends, I think with my real estate agent business, I’ve seen that now really is the best time in the past two years to get under contract on a short-term rental. In 2020 and 2021, every single property that hit the market, even if it was just a completely astronomical number that made no sense at all, was getting a hundred offers. Now with the uncertainty with the economy and also interest prices, I mean, interest rates going up, there’s some uncertainty in the market, which has created an opportunity for buyers.
So the weaker-handed buyers have been shaken out of the market, and also, there’s a lot of sellers who I call them FOMO sellers. They’ve seen that their neighbors have sold six months to a year ago for just crazy prices, and they see the market changing and they’re like, “Oh, no. I missed the boat. I guess I better list now.” So it’s creating more supply in the market.
So last year, you had to make these crazy aggressive offers on every single property. Now, you can actually negotiate with sellers. You can offer under asking. You can ask for sellers to contribute to closing costs again. You can actually get better deals than you’ve been able to in the past two years. Now, interest rates are certainly a factor, so you want to make sure that you account for that line item, but in terms of actually being able to get deals, it’s a really good opportunity right now for buyers.
In terms of finding current data on booking, so I’ve seen people answer that question both ways of some people have less bookings than last year, some people are doing better. My personal ones are actually doing a little bit better than last year. So I think that’s due to a number of factors. I think that time in the market, so people who have more reviews are typically seeing a little bit more traction in the current market.
So I don’t necessarily think that bookings are down across the board just like the real estate market in terms of sales is not national but regional. I think that with short-term rental and bookings and things like that, everything is really very market-specific as well. So what’s happening in one market with bookings is not necessarily happening in every market with bookings. So there might be some that are up or down, but it’s not necessarily an across the board thing.
A really good place to find current data on what bookings are looking like, there’s a few different places where you can find short-term rental data. AirDNA is one. It’s paid. Rabbu is another one. It’s free. Then also, if you already are a short-term rental owner and you have PriceLabs, which is a pricing tool that is used to dynamically price your property, there’s a function within PriceLabs called the Market Dashboards, and it’s a 30-day snapshot of how the entire market in that area has been performing. So I would check out all of those places and use data from several different sources because no one dataset is necessarily perfect. So take a look at all of that data from all three of those sources and draw your own conclusions from there.

David:
Wow. Thank you for that, Avery. Once again, just like with Ashley, you brought a ton of value in the reply there. Couple things stand out to me that I want to capitalize on and highlight for our listeners. First would be very good point, 2021 was probably going to be known as in baseball, that was the juiced ball era when everyone was hitting the home runs or maybe it was the steroid era, but numbers were artificially inflated for that period of time because COVID had shut down a lot of the world and people wanted to travel to get away from the big cities that were closed and go to more areas that had a little more freedom and less restrictions. So they traveled and Airbnb exploded.
Now, we’re still sitting on the momentum of that amazing time and that’s why many listeners here are thinking, “Hey, I want to get into short-term rentals.” I traveled during that same period of time and I enjoyed it. I want to buy the house. You combine that with the fact that it’s becoming very difficult to find cashflowing properties as more demand continues to flood into the asset class that we at BiggerPockets love real estate investing, but supply stays relatively constrained and you’ve got more competition. So in order to make a cash flow now, you’re looking at short-term rentals.
So there’s several factors that have evolved to create this world that we’re getting into, and I do think this is just my two sense, right? I’m planning that over the next three to five years there’s going to be a ramp up period to get the short-term rentals that I’m buying right now going. I don’t think I’m going to buy it and step into 100% occupancy or close to that right off the bat. I think it’s actually going to be slow. I think in the future, the people who manage really good short-term rentals are going to be getting repeat guests. I think that because there’s so much competition for people going on Airbnb and they have tons of homes to choose from. As more and more people start renting out their houses, more and more investors like us buy these houses and put them on VRBO, on Airbnb, everywhere that you can find them.
There’s more supply to choose from. So as supply goes up and demand stays the same or doesn’t keep up with it, you’re going to see prices come down. So to combat that, I’m planning on getting return guests. I want to give every guest such a great stay that instead of going on Airbnb and saying, “Where should I stay in this market?” they go, “I’m going back to that house that I stayed at last time.” I think that many people would be good to do the same.
So think about your reviews. Think about the experience you’re giving your guests. Remember, when you buy a short-term rental, you are not buying passive income. You are actually buying a business and you’re going to have to run it with the same effort that you put into a business or hire a manager that will do that for you. It’s a great asset class to get into, but it is definitely not the same as just buying a fourplex and letting your property manager that you pay 8% rent the units out and collecting that check. There’s more work that goes into it.
Avery, thank you very much for that awesome answer and the level of detail that you put into that. All right. Next up is a question from Daniel Leja about house hacking, and who better than BiggerPockets house hacking extraordinaire Craig Curelop, who wrote the book on house hacking for BiggerPockets publishing to help me answer?

Craig:
Hey, everyone. This is Craig Curelop, house hacking extraordinaire and instructor for the BiggerPockets house hacking bootcamp. Today’s question comes from Daniel Leja from the bay area of Berkeley, California. Here it goes. “On the BiggerPockets Podcast I’ve been listening for years,” and he hears a lot of people talking about house hacking, but doesn’t recall too much about renting to friends and family. He did a 14 plus bedroom house hack for a few years, which is a little bit crazy, and from his experience, there’s a lot of differences between renting to a standard tenant and renting from friends and family. So Daniel’s question is, “How do you differentiate and how do you treat renting to a family member and a friend versus just a standard tenant like a stranger you don’t know?”
So there’s a few different things that I would personally do differently here when renting to friends and family or a stranger. Obviously, when you’re renting to a stranger or just traditional tenant that you’re getting, it’s a little bit more of a transaction. So you need to make sure you do your background check and credit check and all that good stuff.
So I wouldn’t do a background check on a friend or family, but I would do a credit score because you definitely want to make sure their credit score is still good, but if they’re friends and family, then I’ve probably got a pretty good idea of their background. Now, if you are curious about their background, I would definitely recommend doing the background check, right? It doesn’t really matter either way, but, again, I probably would avoid doing that for friends and family.
The second thing is that if you’re renting to a friend or family member, you already know them, you likely already know their tendencies, and so there’s a little bit less of a risk for you. When you’re renting to a friend or family member, there is that obligation to give them the friends and family discount. So I would probably charge them 50 to 100 dollars less in rent so that they can basically live with you, and again, it’s a little bit less of a risk for you because you know that you get along with this person and you know their tendencies.
For a security deposit, I would charge the same amount that I would anybody else, but I would just charge one month’s rent. So if you’re going to give them $100 discount on the rent, give them $100 discount on the security deposit. Then there is that balance when you’re dealing with a tenant-landlord relationship. You would like to be friendly with your tenants, but you don’t really like to be friends with your tenants. However, if your friend is moving in, you have to be friends with them.
So I always like to use the reference of hats, right? So 95% of the time when you’re moving in and out of the house and you’re going out to dinner and all that, you guys are going to be friends, but if something ever comes up where you need to discuss something in the lease, you need to discuss renewing rent, you need to discuss a late payment, then you say, “Hey, man. I know we’re friends, but right now we’re not friends. I am your landlord. You are my tenant, and that’s the relationship we’re going to have for this conversation. You need to pay me this amount on this time,” or whatever the discussion is. You make sure you have that and you make sure the roles are defined in that conversation, and you sit down and you be serious with them, right? I think with friends a lot of times you’re going to be joking around and smiling, but don’t do that if you’re having a serious conversation with them.
You 100% have them sign a lease. I have seen time and time again friends just do verbal leases. I literally witnessed this less than a week ago. They signed a verbal lease, didn’t really sign any lease, and then the guy decided they wanted to move out early, but there was no lease in place. So now one guy is getting screwed and it’s the landlord that’s getting screwed over. So I recommend always signing a lease, whether it’s your sister, your friend or a complete stranger. Always sign a lease.
If your friend is asking about what you’re doing and how much you’re paying for the mortgage and how much he’s paying for the mortgage and all of that, I always recommend being 100% honest because if you can empower somebody to do the same thing as you, and to empower someone to house hack, then you’re going to completely change the trajectory of their lives, and that’s worth so much more than a couple hundred dollars a month or being a little bit sketchy about how much you’re getting paid or how much you are paying and all of that. So I highly recommend if you’ve got the opportunity to help somebody see the light and they’re asking, then 100% just tell the truth. It’s way easier than lying.
Oftentimes too, friends will ask for a little bit of leeway, a little bit of discounts, all of that kind of stuff. I really would not discount it any more than the already agreed upon amount. So if you’re going to do $100 off, stick to the $100 off. Make sure they pay on time, and if they don’t pay on time, charge them the late fees, right? Treat your business like a business even though a friend is moving in.
So that’s my answer on how you treat family and friends differently than tenants. A lot of it is the same. You just maybe give them a little bit of a discount and you have a little bit more leeway.

David:
Also some great advice. This is an amazing episode. I should have done this a long time ago. Just bring in the Avengers to do the heavy lifting for me here. All right. There’s something that I really want to call out about the question as a warning sign. So one of the things that you learn in jujitsu is people will get themselves into a horribly compromising situation. Okay? It’s almost like a checkmate, and then they go to the instructor and they say, “How do you get out of this?” The answer is usually, “You just never let yourself get into that. Okay? You made a mistake three moves ago that led to this.”
If you think about like going down a slide at a waterpark or something, when you’re three quarters of the way down and you’re like, “Okay. How do I stop? How do I go back to the top and start over?” once there’s that much momentum going in a negative direction, probably you’re not getting out of that situation. It’s going to happen. There’s a big word I was trying to think of there, but it’s still too early in the morning and I couldn’t find it.
So when somebody says to you, “Are you making a profit on this property?” that’s letting you see what’s in their mind. They are tipping their hand, if we’re going to use the jujitsu thing here. They’re showing you what they’re about to do. You need to be very careful about that.
So let me give you an example from my personal life. This was when I was young David. I still had hair. I was about 100 pound skinnier almost. My dad was very handy. He was still alive at that time. So there was a house down the street from where we lived and I had a lot of capital and I had already bought maybe one or two investment properties or maybe I hadn’t bought anything yet. I think I’d just been toying around with the idea.
I looked at the numbers and I was like, “Hey, why don’t we buy this house and flip it?” My dad knew how to do the work. I had the money to buy it. So we were sitting there talking about it. My brother Chris said, “Hey, I want to do this too.”
I’m like, “Okay. Well, if you put in part of the down payment, you can have that percentage of the profit.” We were just going to pay my dad to do the work.
He said, “Okay. Well, how much would I have to put in?”
I basically wrote it down, “Well, if you take X amount of the capital we’re putting into the deal, you will get that same number of the profit. So if you’re putting in 20% of the equity, you’ll get 20% of the profit.”
My brother thought for a minute and he’s like, “That’s not fair.”
I was like, “Well, what do you mean?”
He’s like, “You’re asking me to put in 80% of all of my money, but I’m only going to get 20% of the profit.”
He was very young, and I just remember thinking, I got frustrated, “It doesn’t matter what percentage of your money it is. It matters how much we’re putting in the deal,” but he had a different standard of fairness than I did. Eventually, that’s why I didn’t bring him in to doing that deal.
That’s what I want to bring up is there are many different standards of fairness. The entire concept of fair is actually very subjective. There’s an article in BiggerPockets blog if you go look up, Google what is fair in the blog. I can’t remember who wrote it, but I remember it was very well-written that talks about different ways of looking at the world.
So if your friend or your family is going to rent your house, their idea of fair might be, “You’re going to give me a hookup. You’re not going to make me pay like a normal landlord did. We’re friends. You won’t treat me like everyone else because that wouldn’t be fair. Remember when I bought the ice cream when you didn’t have money? Remember on your birthday when I got you a better present and you forgot about my birthday last year?”
Well, now you’re just making that up to me. You see how this can get out of hand very easy. So if someone’s asking the question, “Is that fair that you’re making a profit?” it’s probably just not someone you want to rent to. There was another example that I can think of in my life where I was going to rent out rooms to different people and fair market rent was $500 a room or $600 a room. So I said, “Hey, this is what you would pay.” The question that my friend came back with is, “Well, how much is that of the total rent? Why am I having to pay more than one quarter of what the mortgage would be on this house?”
I was like, “Because we’re not basing your rent off of what my mortgage is. We’re basing the rent off of what you would pay somewhere else,” and that tipped their hat. I realized, “Ooh, I’m not renting to this person. They’re already showing me that we’re going to have problems later,” because if my mortgage was $2,000 and market rent would’ve been $3,000 or maybe $500 a room for a six bedroom, they were wanting to be paying one fourth of what my mortgage was, not what market rent was.
So keep an eye out for that. If you get any kind of an inkling that someone has a completely different standard of fairness, it’s like trying to have a conversation with someone in a different language. You would not ask someone for help. If you went and spoke English and they replied back in French and you didn’t speak French, you would go on and find another person to ask for help. This is the same thing. The standard of fairness is like a language. Everyone needs to speak a common language if you’re going to move forward with your deal. So save yourself some headache by keeping that in mind.

Craig:
Next question is from Austin Weber out of Fort Worth, Texas. “Hey, David. I love the show, especially you’re Seeing Greene episodes. My question is about where the lines are drawn for bill splitting versus claiming house hacking income. My girlfriend and I just bought our first house, which is on a conventional loan, only in my name currently. She isn’t particularly interested in learning about real estate, but she’s happy to help me do it, except she does not want to house hack. However, she will be paying me rent every month. So it isn’t exactly a house hack, but the money is going towards paying down the mortgage. I was curious if that is something I could claim as additional income and pay the taxes on in order to supplement on a W-income to show a history of rental income to help with additional loans in the future.”
So it sounds like Austin here is he’s going to charge his girlfriend a little bit of rent, that rent is going to, hopefully, he’s asking if that rent will count as income and his debt-to-income ratio to help him qualify for a larger mortgage. I would say, oftentimes, if you can get a lease signed, then your lender will take 75% of that lease and use that towards your debt-to-income ratio.
Now, each lender is different and these rules seem to change pretty frequently. I feel like almost every six months these things are changing. I would say, one, try to get your girlfriend to sign a lease and see if the lender would accept that, and then you may not have to really pay taxes on that amount because it is going to be such a small amount you’re going to be leaving there and all that. If you do want to claim that as income, supplemental income, again, it’ll be a pretty nominal amount. It’ll probably get washed out from depreciation anyway. So I would recommend doing both, right? Claim the income. It’ll get washed out on the depreciation on your house more likely than not, and then use that lease to help you boost your income and your debt-to-income ratio. David, I know that you’ve got a mortgage company here. So I’m curious to hear your thoughts on what Austin can do.

David:
Thank you for that, Craig. This is a very good question. Unfortunately, the answer is not a positive one. No. If you own a primary residence and you collect income for that property, you cannot use that income to help qualify for future property. So it will not be included in your debt-to-income ratio. So if your girlfriend’s paying you 800 bucks, you can’t use that $800 and say that that is your income. However, if you claim it, it will still be taxed. So that’s just something to keep in mind that IRS rules are much different than the lending rules when it comes to your DTI.
All right. Our next question comes from Max Wheelhouse in Philly, and who better to answer a question from Philly than my good friend Matt Faircloth? Also a BiggerPockets published author. You wrote the book on raising private capital. Matt, let’s hear what you have to say.

Matt:
Thanks, David Greene. Hey, guys. Matt Faircloth here. I am the author of the awesome book BiggerPockets bestseller, Raising Private Capital, and also one of the educators in the BiggerPockets multifamily bootcamp. Seats are limited so make sure you join us. Can’t wait to see you guys there. Honored to be here with you guys. Got a question coming in here, which is really interesting, a multifamily question, David. This is coming from Max from Philadelphia. Max lives in Philadelphia. He’s doing some deals all the way up in Redding, Pennsylvania Scranton area. He’s got a smattering of multifamily assets, 30 units, so scattered around. His cousin is running it for him. Max, like a lot of people, wants to trade up and scale into larger multifamily properties, which means selling all those assets and buying something larger. So really exciting stuff. A lot of people that have built a smaller portfolio want to scale into larger portfolios.
Here’s a few tips, Max, a few thoughts that I got for you. Love that you’re keeping into the family. You got your family want to invest with you. You got your cousin that’s running those assets for you. That’s awesome. Just don’t treat family like family when you do business with them. You still got to have written contracts when you’re working with family. So don’t not have the level of paperwork you will with someone else just because it’s family. Because it’s your blood doesn’t give you a discount on paperwork and LLC setups and those kinds of things. So as you scale up and do larger deals, make sure that you and your cousin have a written agreement and that your family members that want to invest with you also have written agreements.
Great attorneys are there to do that for reasonable numbers. Use an attorney to do it to set up yourself for a syndication because what you’re talking about for people investing with you as you scale your business and as you roll up, even though they’re family, it’s still a syndication. So you still need to do those things.
Other things that I want to just point out here for you, Max, is that in your question you talk a little depth about how, “Well, I don’t have this kind of skillset yet to run a larger multifamily, and I don’t want to let my family down.” I get it. Here’s a few consolations for you. Larger multifamily functions just like smaller multifamily in a few facets. Unit turns, well, you’re going to go and turn an apartment the same way you would in a bigger apartment building that you would in a smaller apartment building. It actually gets easier because the units are likely around the same size. If you’ve seen one of them, you’ve likely seen all of them. They look all the same in that.
So the upgrades and turns that you do on a small multifamily are going to be very, very similar to what you’re going to do in a larger multifamily. You’re still going to have common area maintenance, probably grass to mow, and maybe hallways to get swept and things like that. You’re still going to have utilities that are paid by the landlord. Some are paid by the tenant. You’re still going to have real estate taxes you need to monitor. Make sure the town’s treating you fairly with regards to your tax bill. Those are all the same.
Here’s a few things that are different in large multifamily that you need to prepare yourself to get ready for and to start to think about as you scale into larger multifamily. You’re going to start setting aside a little bit of money each month for capital reserves, X amount of dollars per unit. There’s a lot of opinions on that. The older the building, the more you want to set aside for things like roof repairs and window replacements and HVACs going out on you and that kind of stuff.
Additionally, and this is a good thing, for larger multifamily, there is a compounding effect to rent increases. If you have a 100-unit department building and you’re able to raise rents by 50 bucks on every apartment, that is $5,000 per month that you’ve increased the income on that property, and 50 bucks, it’s not that much to do. You might be able to justify 50 bucks from every tenant by doing some common area improvements, by maybe adding a small amenity onsite, one of those kinds of things. So there is a way to force appreciation very quickly in larger multi. So be prepared for the algebra that it takes to raise rents times the amount of units that you have. Over a shorter period of time, you can increase your revenue.
The biggest factor you got here, Max, before I leave you is that payroll is a major factor. The small multifamily portfolio you have likely does not have full dedicated staff. If you go and do what you’re talking about doing and buying a 50, 60, 70-unit apartment building, you may have a dedicated maintenance technician or even a dedicated leasing agent. As you get into larger and larger properties, you may have a dedicated site manager that runs the entire property for you and does all the ins and outs of that property. Be prepared to budget for the payroll for that person. Maybe it’s partially your cousin. Maybe it’s someone that works for or with them in managing that portfolio.
Best of luck, Max. Sounds like you’re well on your way. David Greene, back to you, my friend.

David:
Okay. Thank you, Matt. That was also awesome. You’re in a really tough spot there, Max, and I can understand. I think that you should listen to your feelings in this. When your emotions are telling you, “I don’t want to borrow money to get into an asset class for the first time,” you should listen. You need to be especially careful when you’re borrowing other people’s money. That’s not a position that you should ever be in when you’re new and you’re learning on somebody else’s dime. My personal opinion, you learn on your own dime. Once you’re really good at it, then you can actually start borrowing money from other people.
So I’ll give you another personal anecdotal example from my life. It’s funny that this came up because today is the first day ever that I borrow money from a family member. My mom and her new husband have just let me borrow $200,000, and I’ll be paying them 10% interest on that money, and she was terrified, which is funny, because of everyone in the world that she could trust to give her money, do you think I would be at the top of that list? I probably am, but she was still just so, so nervous.
So she finally signed the documentation today and she’ll be wiring over that money, and she just texted me during this and said, “Man, this is such a relief. I feel so good. I’m finally taking some steps to take control my financial future. I worked for that money and now that money is working for me.” So congratulations, mom and Bruce. Glad that I could help you guys out, but this is a good example of how borrowing money from family becomes complicated. Even though I’m her son and she can trust me, there’s still some nerves when it comes to letting people borrow money. So don’t get into that space until you’re actually experienced in doing it.
You’re already doing the right thing. You’re reading the Multifamily Millionaire by Brandon Turner and Brian Murray, who works at ODC with Brandon. I love that because that book talks about how you make money in small multifamily, which Brandon specialized in and how you make money with big multifamily, which Brian specialized in. So once you understand both sides, there’s a pretty clear connection between the two. So you’re on the right path. Don’t give up. Keep going. Thank you, Matt, for your encouraging advice.
Okay. Let’s keep it moving. Our next question comes from Ethan F. in Utah and will be answered by Ashley.

Ashley:
Hey, you guys. It’s Ashley again, and I have another question. This question comes from Ethan in Utah. “My wife and I have stumbled into real estate and we have a question about it. We call this strategy property waking, leaving a wake of rental properties as we change our personal residence. There are two principles to the strategy. The first principle is to not sell your primary residence, but turn it into a rental property when you move. It’s okay to refinance, but ideally, you will have a cashflowing property. The second principle is the next primary residence has to have a house hack or rental in it. This will ensure you have the ability to save for the next property. Also, when house shopping for your next primary residence, you should be thinking about how you will have rental income while you are in it, for example, short-term rental, duplex, et cetera, and how you will maximize rental income when you leave.
Our question is, is there an opportunity cost to doing this that will hit us later on? Are we missing some critical details in this plan? Do we have an obvious blind spot we just aren’t seeing? Something worth noting, we also have the ability to invest in the stock market and other assets with decent returns and little management fees. So we are thinking not just about cashflow and equity, but what will the cash out look like and how will it be taxed. Would we be better just selling off properties and just invest the profits?
So we do know when you sell your primary residence and have lived in the property for two of the last five years, you can avoid capital gains tax, which is a huge benefit. If we have to sell rental property down the road, we will get hit with capital gains if we don’t do a 1031 exchange, but hopefully, we’ll have more equity in the home at that point, and we will net out with a higher profit. Instead, the goal is to have each home we leave become a rental property that cash flows. Typically, we are buying at nice zip codes because we live there. So we will have to leave more money in the property in order to have it cashflow. Thank you for answering our long-winded question.”
Okay. Ethan, let’s go through this. First of all, this is awesome because I recently last year discovered a wake surfing behind a boat, so I love the name property waking, and I think this is great. Congratulations on your success of doing this thus far of getting these rental properties in place using house hacking for your primary residence and being able to save money that way. That is super awesome, and I’m really excited for you guys.
The best part is is that you’re asking a question where you are having options. Yes, it may seem like a hard decision if you’re doing the right thing or the wrong thing, but I think you’re in a position where no matter what path you choose to go down with your real estate investing strategy, that’s going to be a win for you, but I understand that you’re asking this question because you want to maximize your return and maximize your investing. So let’s break this down.
So the first question you had is, is there an opportunity cost to doing this that will hit you later on? So are there any blind spots, something that you weren’t seeing? The first thing to think of is, are you actually ever going to sell these properties? So as you mentioned, if it is a primary residence, you will not get taxed on the property. You lived in the property for two of the last five years. So one option you could do is to when you get a property, if you lived in it for two years, is that fifth year, go and sell it and you will get the tax-free gains on that.
The next thing is if you do decide to go and sell the investment property and you are getting taxed at capital gains is what is the value of that to you? Why would you want to go and sell the property? Why do you need this lump sum of money? So you did mention that you have the ability to invest in other asset classes that may be more passive to you.
So let’s look at how much time are you putting into managing these properties, how much time are you putting into acquiring these properties, and figure out maybe what … Is it every week you’re putting in five hours towards this? One thing that you can do is you can do a time study. So actually, sit down for two weeks in everything you do, just write it down and how long it took you. So you can do this for your personal life. You could do it just for managing your properties, but take a look at that, and what is your time worth to you. So what are you cashflowing off those properties right now and how much time are you putting into it? Put a dollar amount to each hour that you’re putting into this property. You also have to take into account any cash that you have put into these properties too.
So put a dollar amount to your time and say, “You know what? I’m actually not getting that great of a return because I’m putting so much time into this,” where maybe you’re getting a 15% return on your investment when you’re investing into these rental properties, but if you go and put it into, say, the stock market and you expect to get a 10% return on your money, maybe it’s worth giving up that 5% because you don’t have to do anything except put your money into the account and let the stock market do its thing. So I think time freedom and evaluating your time that you’re putting into it is going to play a big part into helping you figure out which investing strategy is best for you.
As far as blind spots down the road, yes, you could get hit with a huge tax bill, but if you bought this house for $100,000, and 20 years from now, and you’ve cashflowed from it, made money from it every single year, and 20 years from now you go and sell it for a million dollars, okay, what’s the tax going to be on that? It’s going to depend on what the capital gains tax rate is at that time, but say you get hit with 30% on your taxes. So you’re going to take that 30% away, but you still made that huge gain. So it might be worth it to take that lump sum and pay the taxes too on it. So that’s definitely something you have to look at is, are you going to see as much appreciation and value of when you want to sell the property?
If you’re going to hold the property just for a short period of time and then you’re going to sell it and maybe it hasn’t even appreciated that much, you’re going to get hit with a tax bill because of your depreciation on the property that has … So when you are taxed on the property, you’re going to look at the depreciation that has come off the property too to see what profit is actually going to be calculated by the IRS when you’re selling that property. So even though you bought the property for $100,000, if you held it for a while and it’s depreciated down to $50,000 and you’re selling it for 200,000, that tax basis is going to be that 50,000 minus the depreciation, not what you bought the property for.
So all these things are definitely great to tax plan with an accountant or a CPA, especially one that has experience with real estate investing. Every year, sit down with them. It’s great to have a CPA to do your tax return, but even better to actually tax plan and say, “Hey, these are the things I’m looking to do in my business with my real estate investing strategy this coming year. What are some things I need to know?” Having that CPA to help you tax plan can save you so much money.
Another option that you could do too is if you decide, “You know what? This is too much work for me managing these rentals, I don’t want to outsource it. I just want to be done and I want to take the money, invest it into the stock market,” go and do seller financing. So find another investor who wants to take over these rental properties, and then that has your taxes spread out over time because you’re not taking that lump sum from the property, and you’re getting monthly payments from the seller financing, and then you can go in turn and take that and invest it into the stock market or another asset class, and it spreads out how much you are taxed each year onto the income you received from that property sale.
So let’s go on to the next question that you had is that you want to look at investing the profits into something else. So even though we are a real estate investing show here, I think it is great to diversify your portfolio. So maybe if you decide that, yes, you want to invest into the stock market and maybe you’re going for some index funds, which I love to invest into, is that you look at, “Okay. What’s the property we should sell this year, and we’re going to take the profit from that, and we’re going to invest that into the stock market, but we will hold the other properties?”
So in that scenario, I would look at which property right now is going to qualify for the lived in it for two years out of five years, and that’s going to be a tax-free gain. That’s the one I would sell. That’s the one I would get rid of. Then I would invest that lump sum, but you had also said in here that you have saved some money and that you use that because you are house hacking your current property now.
So maybe you just take those savings and keep everything you have in your portfolio now. Take those savings instead of buying your next rental and invest that into the stock market or the other passive income stream that you want to have and then start saving again and then go towards your next rental.
So I think it’s awesome. I think it’s amazing that you have so many options. One thing to note to look at too is when you are house hacking and you want to do them as short-term rentals or long-term rentals, make sure you’re understanding in the market that you’re investing in if those short-term rental laws or regulations can change. So are there really strict short-term rental regulations in place now where it’s a very small chance that they will change because if you have these properties and they’re running as short-term rentals right now and they’re in a market that maybe doesn’t have any rules or regulations so that one day the town or the village can come and say, “You know what? We need to start regulating this. It’s getting out of hand,” and they put a stop at that, is that going to hurt your business too?
So I think looking at your strategy and making sure that it’s foolproof going forward to help you make your decision as to what houses you want to keep and which ones you want to get rid of, but Ethan, congratulations to you and your wife on property waking, and best of luck to you guys. Send me a message on Instagram, @wealthfromrentals. I’d love to talk to you about this more and maybe get you on the Real Estate Rookie episode. So that would be great. Well, David, thanks for having me back to answer this question.

David:
All right. Thank you, Ashley, once again for some very good feedback. I really love seeing you flourish in your role as a BiggerPockets Podcast host. You are clearly stepping up your game. So thank you for that.
All right. What Ethan F. refers to as property walking, I think, is probably one of the most solid strategies that everyone listening to this should be doing. You combine it with house hacking and you’ve got a guaranteed way to become a real estate millionaire without much work. You literally just buy a new primary residence every year using a very low down payment option anywhere between three and a half to five percent. Maybe you could get up to 10 for multifamily properties, and then next year you move out of it and you do it again, and you got yourself a rental property that you put 5% down instead of 20 to 25 percent down. It is a no brainer.
The only thing I would add to this is that in addition to buying one house to live in for yourself, maybe try to buy another house long distance real estate investing using the BRRRR method, flipping a house, some of the other strategies we talk about, but make this your meat and potatoes. This should be the staple of your diet, and then anything that you’re buying on top of that every year can be the fun food that you supplement your regular diet with, but this is a great strategy. Keep it up, keep doing it, and let us know how it goes.
Our next question comes from Steve in Reno and will once again be answered by Avery Carl.

Avery:
Hey, guys. It’s Avery again. This next question comes from Steve in Reno. Steve says, “Reno is a tough cashflow market so I’ve been looking into short-term rentals. I feel like it’s a great market for STRs with lots of conventions and close proximity to Lake Tahoe. Assuming the yield curve inversion does, in fact, lead to a recession in the next year or two, travel and vacationing tend to be one of the first things to go away. How would you suggest I proceed so I don’t get caught with my pants down?”
Okay, Steve. So I have a lot to say about this particular question. I would say the number one thing you want to do before you even do anything else, check the regulations in Reno, and not just the current regulations, call the city and see if there’s anything coming down the pipe, if there’s anything that’s been discussed or brought up in the most recent city council meetings about potential changes because just because the rules are the way they are now does not mean that they’re always going to be that way, especially in a metro market like that.
If we are, in fact, entering into a potential recession, I think the most important thing when choosing where to invest in a short-term rental is choosing the right market. So I don’t know a lot about Reno, specifically, but the first markets to go in a recession are the markets that are really difficult and expensive to get to. So if it’s an area where you pretty much have to fly there if you want to go there, you can’t really drive, the majority of the tourism coming to that area or visitors coming to the area are having to fly and it’s expensive, that is going to be a red flag for me. I try to stick to markets that are more drivable, that most of the visitors and tourism coming in are driving because along with that, it makes it a little bit more affordable to get there. So accessibility and affordability are really important when it comes to what tourists are willing to pay and what they’re willing to do. So keep that in mind.
How would I suggest that you proceed so you don’t get caught with your pants down? So if you’re buying in a metro market like Reno, I would suggest that you are able to convert it to a long term if possible, and I don’t give that advice for every single market. If you’re buying in a vacation market, totally different. That’s a separate strategy, but talking about a market like Reno, I would want to make sure that it is something that you can still cashflow or at least at the very least breakeven on if you do have to convert it to a long term because people just aren’t traveling there.
I really don’t think that we’re going to see a situation where no one will be traveling anywhere like COVID, for example. So you will still probably be able to at least breakeven without having to convert to a long term, but it is nice that you can do that if you want to in a market like that. So I would just say make sure you don’t spend too much to where the numbers don’t work as a long term, and then also of course, always the BRRRR strategy. You’re not necessarily a full BRRRR but a value add, where you’re buying a property that you can add a lot of value to so you’re not spending as much on the property itself, so your expenses will be less when it comes time to start short term running it. So I hope that answers your question, Steve.

David:
All right. Thank you, Avery. Great advice. I think, in general, anytime you’re buying a short-term rental, if you can find the angle of you could convert it into a long-term rental so that it would cash flow, I’m a fan of that, in general. Then also just to put in there, if you can figure out a way to add value, adding square footage, buying a property below market value, buying a property that needs some work and fixing it up so that you’re going to make the ARV higher, all of that is a great way to hedge the risk that is inherent in short-term rentals because it is true that we could be seeing a recession, that it’s very likely that travel could go down.
So what I’m doing when I’m telling everyone else is plan that whatever numbers you’re running you’re going to maybe get 70% of that. So whatever the data is telling you, just takes 70% of it and run your numbers that way and make sure that you’re at least breaking even or coming close, and you can weather that storm if it does come because we don’t invest in real estate for one year, we invest in real estate for the long term.
Our next video comes from AJ in Long Island and will be answered once again by Craig Curelop.

Craig:
Next question is AJ from Long Island, New York, who started house hacking back in 2012. He’s got a whole lot of equity in his house. So his question is if he wants to buy another investment property, does it make more sense to just pull equity out of his current home using a HELOC to invest in another or are there are other options that he can do?
So AJ, there are a lot of options you can do. I would like to say you probably have a good amount of equity in your house if you bought it back in 2012. So the HELOC would be my personal favorite. The reason why is that you can get a pretty good amount in your HELOC if it’s appreciated over the last 10 years, and that’ll likely be enough for a 20% down payment somewhere in the US. The great thing about that is that you’re only going to be paying for that HELOC when you draw down upon it. So you’re not really in a rush to find a deal, you’re not really increasing your mortgage right away, and all that kind of stuff.
So another option would be to refinance it. So if you refinance it, then you’re going to get a whole bunch of cash back, probably a little bit more than you would if you just did a traditional HELOC, but you’re going to be required to pay that additional monthly payment no matter what. So you don’t really have that option of acting when the deal comes you’re going to have the money, you’re going to be paying the extra cash flow, and you’re going to feel the pressure to find a deal as soon as you can.
That’s my thoughts. Again, you have the option between a HELOC and a refinance. My personal, what I would recommend is just go with the HELOC so you have a little bit more of that flexibility. David, what would you do?

David:
Thanks, Craig. Love your help with that answer. This is going to make a lot of people a lot of money. I’m glad to see you guys on the Seeing Greene episode helping me out here. We’re going to switch it up for a little bit at this segment of this show. I like to read some of the comments that come out of our YouTube channel. If you didn’t know, if you’re listening to this as a podcast, you can also listen to it on YouTube. I’m not paid or endorsed by YouTube to say this, but one of the things that I did was I switched over to YouTube Premium. I think it’s $15 a month or something. YouTube will play even when the app is closed. Ever been listening to a YouTube video that you were really liking and then a text message came in and you’re like, “Ah, I can only open it up when the banner shows up on my screen and YouTube will keep playing, but if I have to close the app to reopen my text app, then the YouTube video would stop playing?” and you’re stuck like, “Do I keep listening or do I reply to this person?” I know many of you are smiling because you’ve been in that same dilemma.
Well, I solved that by getting YouTube Premium and now, I can listen to it all the time. So YouTube is pretty much always playing. When I combine that with my AirPods that I have, I could always be getting new content, and that’s how I stay ahead of the game. It’s why I don’t get caught off guard by changes in the market or different strategies or problems that could be coming because I’m always staying educated, and I would love for you guys to do the same. I’d love to be in your ears all the time with this soft silky voice warning you about how you can avoid mistakes in real estate and pointing out areas where you can make money.
So with that being said, go to YouTube, listen to us, and then leave some comments. I want to hear what you think about this show. What did you like? What do you wish we would talk about more? What topics do you want us to get into, and where do you think I screwed it up? Yes, you can give me negative feedback as well. I don’t take it personal.
All right. Our first comment comes from Chris Calero and he says, “Absolutely love these kind of videos. I feel like many of my questions were answered.”
Well, thank you, Chris. I believe when you say these kind of videos, you’re referring to the Seeing Greene episodes. I’m really glad to hear you guys like these. You know when Brandon Turner stepped away from the podcast, go do other stuff, we wanted to figure out a way that we could continue to bring you even more value in different ways because we didn’t have that big, beautiful beard right behind me helping give commentaries. So glad that you guys like these. I want to keep them going too.
Next comment comes from SL, “I’ve heard you mentioned basically staying away from Missouri on a few episodes and I’m wondering why. I’ve relocated here and have four flips going on and two BRRRRs going. That’s a lot happening here. I think you underestimate Kansas City, Missouri and Kansas City a lot.”
Well, to my knowledge, I don’t think I’ve ever specifically said don’t invest in Missouri. You may be referring to where I talk about the Midwest. I have given some warnings about staying away from those markets, and I appreciate you saying this because it gives me a chance to clarify what I meant when I make those kind of comments. I don’t think that there is a bad market in the country. Every market works if you understand the strategy. I think that there are people who take shortcuts and are prone to making mistakes in certain areas more than others.
So one way I think investors get into trouble is it’s very obvious right now that there’s not a lot of cashflowing properties available. Very hard to find anything that cashflows at all. So when the road becomes steep, you got to climb uphill to find the better deal. Many human beings will stop walking up and they’ll just look for a downhill road. If you’re trying to get cash flow, which most investors are, and if you’re newer and don’t have a ton of capital, which the majority of investors are in that situation, the downhill road leads into the Midwest.
Homes are priced much cheaper. The price-to-rent ratios are much stronger. It becomes very attractive to say, “Oh, I’m just going to go there. I’m going to go buy in Indiana.” I have mentioned Indiana more than Missouri just because I hear so many new investors saying, “I’m buying in Indiana.” 90% of them are all in Indiana. I don’t think that that market is strong enough to warrant having 90% of investors there. So why are they there? Well, they’re there because the prices are very low and it doesn’t feel as scary.
The concern that I would have is that you think that when you buy a property with a low price point and a strong price-to-rent ratio, but you don’t factor in. You’re not going to see growth. Rents don’t go up there. The money that I’ve made in real estate from the cashflow side has not been when I bought it on year one, it’s been five years later, 10 years later. Think about buying in Denver, Colorado five years ago or even 10 years ago. When you first ran the numbers on your duplex, they probably didn’t look all that sexy. Five years later with high growth wages going up inflation, you’re looking really, really good. It’s that idea of delayed gratification that I’m really getting at. I want more people to take a bigger picture of you. I don’t want them looking for a quick fix where they can get a bunch of cashflow and then start spending that money or quit their job or make major life decisions because they bought two properties. You want to be in this for the long haul.
Now, it sounds like you, SL, are doing great in Missouri. If you have four flips going on in a market that’s tough to flip in, you’re finding deals below market value. You should be doing what you’re doing there. If you have two BRRRRs going on, which are very similar to flips, I’m assuming these are deals that you got below market value that also cashflow. If you’re finding stuff below market value, you can make it work anywhere. So you should keep doing this, and other people who are understanding the Kansas City, Missouri market or Kansas City, they can do the same thing, but I don’t want people who are not getting stuff under market value, who are not getting great deals to just go pick something off Zillow and go buy it and say, “Well, everybody else is doing this so I will too.”
Our next one comes from Stephanie Mocris who says, “I’m honored to have my question answered by David Greene.” She got the E at the end of my name right. Way to go, Stephanie. “It was pretty surreal hearing him say my name on the podcast. David, I am saving your words like gold. Thank you again for all that you and your team are doing for other learning real estate investors. You guys are changing people’s lives.”
Well, thank you, Stephanie. Not only did you put yourself out there and asked the question on YouTube, but then you looked and saw that we put your name out on the podcast and went on YouTube again and put another comment, and now you’re getting mentioned again on the BiggerPockets Podcast. You can now officially tell people, “My name is Stephanie Mocris and I have been featured on the biggest real estate podcast in the world.” So way to go. Good for you.
In case you guys are wondering why my background looks different than normal, well, this month, maybe the last 30, 40 days or so, I will be traveling looking at different investment property, checking out properties I’ve already bought, attending a couple different events. So right now, I am in Scottsdale, Arizona looking at new investment property out here. After that, I’ll be headed to Austin for Keller Williams Mega Camp, and then I’ll be heading up to the Blue Ridge Mountains in Georgia to check property out there.
So join me on this journey wherever you are, where you’re looking at properties. Put the podcast on. Listen as you’re going. There’s nothing as fun as looking at houses, analyzing opportunity, and hearing BiggerPockets in the background doing it while you’re there. It’s a perfect combination. It’s like peanut butter and jelly. It’s like Pop Rocks and Coke. You can’t do anything better than this.
So thank you, guys. Please go to the comment section on YouTube. Let me know what you think about the show, and I would love to include you in the commentary on the next Seeing Greene episode.
If you are listening to this podcast on an app, please take a quick second to give us a rating and review. We really like honest feedback on iTunes. I guess they call it now maybe the Apple Podcast app, Spotify, Stitcher, wherever you listen to shows. Please give us a review, and keep in mind, we love constructive feedback. So if you give us advice of what you’d like to see different, I will do my best to see that come to fruition.
Ultimately, what I would love is to have a new podcast drop every single day of a different type. So you’ve got Seeing Greene on one day, a traditional episode on another, a coaching call on another, a round table discussion about what’s happening in real estate on another. I’d just love for all of you guys to have as much fun and be as addicted to real estate as I am. So let us know what you would like to see.

Matt:
Hey, Dave. We’ve got a good one here. I’ve got one from Janelle from Bay City, Michigan. Another multifamily question. Janelle faces a problem that a lot of people do when they’re looking for multifamily deals. She’s like, “Hey, guys. I’m looking on LoopNet, and Crexi, C-R-E-X-I, for multifamily deals. First question is, should the price be valued and based on the cap rate of the area and the actual NOI?” Get back to what she means by actual in a second here. “Then if the new owner is able to create an NOI increase in the performance, shouldn’t that be to the benefit of the new owner to then refi and/or sell based on the new NOI?”
In essence, what Janelle’s saying here is that when she’s looking at properties, the broker is pricing the property based on future performance. Let’s break that down. First, let’s talk about how properties are priced. They’re priced based on a cap rate, which is simply a risk factor on a neighborhood. So Detroit, Michigan may have a higher cap rate because Detroit has a perceivable higher risk factor as an investment area than some city based on Raleigh, North Carolina may have, right?
So without drilling into local cap rate specific inside of a market or whatever, it’s just simply a risk factor that folks may want to have, maybe willing to take a higher risk and invest in an area like Detroit versus Raleigh. So the cap rates will be high. The higher the cap rate, the higher the rate of risk that you’re willing to take for an investment in that market. Cap rate’s calculated by looking at the purchase price of a property. So if a property is selling for a million dollars and you look at the cap rate of 5%, that if I take that million, multiply it by the cap rate of 5%, the property should be able to produce a NOI of $50,000.
NOI is simply the rent that a property produces minus all of it expenses except for debt. So all your expenses except for debt service equals NOI. So income minus expense, NOI. There it is. So a million dollar property at a 5% cap rate should be producing 50 grand per year in downside and downline revenue after expenses are paid and you can apply that revenue towards debt service or another way to look at it is the NOI is how much money a property would make if you owned it free and clear. So that’s what all that stuff means.
Now, what Janelle’s facing here is a broker is saying, “Well, we’re going to take a property and we’re going to sell it to you for more, let’s say 1.2, 1.3 million based on that $50,000 NOI because at some point in the future, you should be able to raise rents or build a laundry room or do some common area improvements or … Well, the market has gone up more and the owner hasn’t increased rents.”
That’s not really the way the broker should be doing it. So what Janelle’s saying is that the broker’s pricing, putting today’s price for future performance, which isn’t really a fair way to do it. There’s some kid glove guidance I’ll give you guys here. Okay? You want to talk to the broker. This is always worth a phone conversation, not worth just a, “Oh, it’s overpriced and move on,” or you don’t want to rub the broker’s nose in something where like, “Hey, you’ve included future performance or work that I’m going to do as a buyer. You’ve given credit to the seller for those improvements that haven’t been done yet.”
You don’t really call them out. You want to just say, “Well, I’m going to be making an offer. I make my offers based on current performance, Mr. and Mrs. Broker.” So just tell them this is how you do it. This is how you’ve been taught to do it, and this is how you’re going to be pricing the property. Just say, “Well, here’s what the last 12 months worth of performance says the property did. That’s called a trailing 12, and I’m going to look at the trailing 12 on the property and say it did $20,000. The market cap rate that I understand it to be is this,” and you could even ask the broker what they think the market cap rate for that market is and they’ll tell you. Then you give them a price based on actual performance.
If it doesn’t match what they’re asking on the property, then kindly, politely call out that, “Well, I’m pricing it based on actual performance. You can put your own factors on there, but this is how I’m pricing it,” and be willing to put your offer in writing and put some backup in writing too, but again, you don’t want to go calling names or throwing rocks to the broker here because this is they’re living. You can kindly approach them with some feedback and don’t be afraid to put your offer in writing with some real backup of how you’re coming up with your calculations.
I’ll underscore one more thing I just said. Make sure the broker tells you what they think the market cap rate is because it’s given them some input. If they’re completely off on that, then that’s another factor you could dig into or maybe talk to some other brokers about what they think the cap rate for the market you’re looking at is. It is a bit of an art in this kind of thing. So make sure that you’re willing to do that art and get your conversation skills really, really tight and talking to the broker about these kinds of things. Best of luck, Janelle. Sounds like you’re well on your way. Back to you, David.

David:
All right. Thank you, Matt Faircloth, once again for a great answer. Appreciate you and appreciate all of you listeners as well. This has been a little bit of a longer episode because we brought a ton of value. So I’m going to let you get out of here. Thank you again for checking out this Seeing Greene episode while I’m in Scottsdale, Arizona. Appreciate your guys’ attention, time, and love, and we love you back. Check out another episode and let us know in the comments on YouTube what you think. I will catch you on the next one.

CNBC’s ‘Halftime Report’ investment committee, Bryn Talkington, Josh Brown, Steve Weiss and Jim Lebenthal, discuss their takeaways from the Fed minutes.

Ashley:
This is Real Estate Rookie, Episode 210.

Alex:
I think one thing that doesn’t get talked about enough early on in real estate is not so much about how do I do this thing. Everybody wants that very technical, how do I BRRRR something, how do I refinance something, but nobody talks to the kind of beginners, the rookies about is this method of investing going to suit your personality, your skill set, and your goals, and that is never a conversation I had on 20 years ago when I started investing. It was like, hey, everybody, I knew bought a house, used their VA loan, and then they moved, and they rented it out, and then you just rinse and repeat.

Ashley:
My name is Ashley Kehr, and I’m here with my co-host, Tony Robinson

Tony:
And welcome to The Real Estate Rookie Podcast where every week, twice a week, we bring you the inspiration, information, motivation, and education you need to kickstart your investing journey. What I like to do to start these episodes off is read some reviews from the wonderful people in our rookie community. This week’s review comes from username, Bravesmith28 and Bravesmith says, “Impacted my life greatly. This podcast has been constantly pushing me in my real estate investing career. Listening to this podcast has got me thinking about different strategies to funneling leads to figure out what the property can be used for financing. I’ve purchased three single family properties since listened to this podcast, and I’m about to do my first short-term rental. I would not have even thought about this without the BiggerPockets podcast, and I’m looking forward to growing my business.”
So, Bravesmith, we appreciate you, congratulations on your success, and if you’re listening to this podcast and you have not yet left us a review, ask yourself what you’re doing with your life. All right? The more rating and reviews we get, the more folks we can reach, the more folks we can help, and that is our ultimate goal here at The Rookie Podcast. So, Ashley Kehr, boring banter time, tell me what’s going on. How are you?

Ashley:
Well, there’s one thing I just need to know before you can even get into anything with the podcast. When you do your intro, after I say our names and you say what this podcast is about, do you have that memorized, or do you have it written in front of you? I just need to know because you-

Tony:
I just kind of spitball it every time.

Ashley:
I know you do.

Tony:
It just kind of rolls off.

Ashley:
You do such a great job. Yeah.

Tony:
Thank you. Thank you. I’m glad it comes across as consistent. That’s what I was shooting for.

Ashley:
Yeah, and I’m so glad that you have that role, and I only have to remember our names and the episode number.

Tony:
I always think the same thing when you’re finishing the episodes and you’re like, “All right, I’m Ashley Kehr, blah, blah, blah,” and then you close it out. I feel like I would’ve screwed that up every single time.

Ashley:
Yeah, but it’s only just our names and our Instagram accounts, and then the ending, I just, see you later or see you next time or thanks for listening. It’s different every time. There is a sheer moment of panic every time where I’m like, “What do I say to end?”

Tony:
What do I say? Yeah, but you do a great job. You do a great job.

Ashley:
Thank you, thank you.

Tony:
And on that point, right, we read one of the reviews. It was a mean review saying that they hate our boring banter and this, that, and the other, and it’s been so crazy, Ashley. We’ve been hosting these monthly meetups, and since that episode aired, I don’t even remember which episode number it was that we talked about those mean reviews, I’ve had so many people at these meetups come to me and say, “I was so upset when I heard you guys say that. I don’t agree with that person at all. I love what you guys talk about. I love hearing about your guys’ stories.” So, just know that for the folks that appreciate me and Ashley sharing our personal stories at the beginning of the episodes, we appreciate you guys.

Ashley:
Maybe I need to get the courage to read that one review that was directed at me. Maybe one time it’ll be like, was it Jimmy Fallon that does the mean tweets where I read it out loud?

Tony:
We do a whole Saturday episode about this.

Ashley:
It’s a review where I laugh and cry at the same time. So, one day, I will work up the courage to read it out loud on the podcast. Maybe, Tony, one time we’re doing a live podcast, we’ll do a couple shots or something, then I’ll be good.

Tony:
There you go. In Denver, in Denver next.

Ashley:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, what’s new with you, Tony? What deals are you working on right now?

Tony:
Yeah, I mean, same old, same old. We’ve got four rehabs we’re working on right now, another three or four short-term rentals that we’re getting set up that we’ve already purchased. So, just busy, busy, busy. I think, depending on where this hotel deal goes, we might slow down a little bit on the acquisition side just to kind stabilize this hotel and stop my hair from falling out. So, we’ll see what happens.

Ashley:
Is there any left to fall out?

Tony:
No, there’s none. We bought them all. We’ve got them all.

Ashley:
Yeah, today I went and looked at a commercial property. So, it’s two units, and the majority of it, 80% of it, the larger unit is vacant, and then there is a smaller unit that is occupied right now, but there’s also a kiosk for a local bank that has an ATM there, and I cannot believe how much they pay in rent just to put this little ATM kiosk in the parking lot. It takes up no space. They don’t have any reserved of the parking spots. It’s not part of any of the building square footage, just off to the side, and they pay a ridiculous amount of rent, and when I was meeting with the property manager today, he said that at all of the buildings, he manages almost every single one, they reach out to a bank and ask them if they want to put a ATM kiosk in the parking lot of their plaza. So, I thought that was really cool.

Tony:
So, what’s your plan with the property?

Ashley:
So, it’s actually another investor that wants to buy it because he owns the adjacent property, and so, we went into it kind of looking at it for him, but he doesn’t need the whole square footage of the building. So, we kind of looked at the tenant that’s there now. Their lease is up in January, this coming January, and as of right now, it’s just, of course, they say we’re in negotiations, but that’s coming up really close. So, if that tenant was to move out, I’d be worried about what to put in that unit, but I think there’s huge potential in the front of the building. So, the other investor can take the back of the building and use it for what he needs, and then the front of the building, I think would be great indoor climate-controlled self-storage because there is none in the area.
So, just walk in this property, Daryl and I could visualize it. We’re like mapping out the unit sizes that could go in there and the walkways would be here, and we’re like, “Okay, we got to get AJ on the phone. What are we going to do here?” You guys don’t know AJ Osborne, self-storage king. But yeah, so that was exciting. But first we need to find out if the other investor can occupy the other unit, and if it makes sense for his current business to step in and take over this one. So, we had a little meeting with him and it was like you need to go to your manager and you need to break down, okay, what’s your new overhead going to be? How much can you increase your business by? And is there going to be a profit? Is this going to be worthwhile?
So, once we get those numbers in, then we can analyze the deal a bit better and see how it turns out, but exciting. It’s always exciting when… That’s the most exciting part to me, and I feel like I haven’t really gone and looked at a property in a while that I’ve been super excited about-

Tony:
You’re excited about.

Ashley:
… and I could just visualize this is how we can make income off of it because of different things they do. And so, yeah, just pumped up today from that.

Tony:
Yeah, I can see it. I can see the excitement.

Ashley:
And you know what? It actually made me realize this is what I need to get back to because Daryl handles a lot of that now is the acquisition side. It’s like I need to get a lot of other stuff off my plate so I can get back to the thing that I really love, and that’s acquiring the deals and underwriting them and figuring out how to make money off them.

Tony:
And not to go too far off a tangent, Ashley, but I love that. You’re saying that because when we interviewed Pat and Tim Rhode, their podcast will come out after this one, it’ll be episode 216, but they’re the founders of GoBundance, and in that episode, they talked about how they coach entrepreneurs to move from 100% obligation to 100% interest, and I feel like you and I have always struggled with that. Not struggled with it, but we haven’t been able to make that shift fully yet in our own businesses, right, and I’m in the same boat where it’s like I’m so excited to start building this team where they can handle all the things that I’m obligated to do, and I can really start focusing on the things that I’m mostly interested in. So, I’m glad that you’re starting to take those steps. I can see the excitement just vibing off your body.

Ashley:
I know, I’m super up today about it, and I don’t even know if this deal is going to happen. There’s so many moving pieces, but just day one going in and visualizing, and then I was so pumped up on the way home that I drove by this property that I drive by pretty much every single day, and I see it out of the corner of my eye and everything, but after looking at this other property, I was just like, “Wait, I could do this at this property. I could do this at that property.” I called the listing agent. I got some more information. I’m going to see that one tomorrow morning now too.

Tony:
There you go. You’re on a roll.

Ashley:
So, it’s just like when you’re motivated and you’re inspired and you’re pumped up, I feel like it gets the juices flowing like, okay, more ideas, more ideas then kind of flow through, and that’s why I love this podcast because listening to it and having these guests on, every single time I get motivated and excited.

Tony:
Yeah. Well, let’s talk about the guests today.

Ashley:
Yeah.

Tony:
Yeah, we have Alex and Beth on the podcast. So, Alex and Beth, they actually just recently wrote a book for BiggerPockets, and I’m going to give you the full title. It is called Lend to Live: Earn Hassle-Free Passive Income in Real Estate with Private Money Lending. So, essentially, the premise of this book is both Beth and Alex operate as private money lenders, and they’re kind of talking about what it’s like to be a real estate investor from that angle, but they also give people, I guess, advice on how to find private money lenders to work with. So, they’re kind of hit it from both sides, and I think they do a really good breakdown for new investors who have no experience, who have no deals about how those folks can go out and find and work with potential private money lenders, even if you have no one in your network.

Ashley:
Yeah, and that’s also something super exciting is using other people’s money to purchase a deal, and as you start learning about these different creative ways to finance a deal, it’s looking at a properties, okay, what are the different ways I can make money, but also looking at the property and saying, “Okay, what are the different ways I can finance this?”
So, this episode right here is just a great little crash course on using other people’s money to finance a deal, but also if you actually realize that you don’t want to own the property, you don’t want to be a landlord, and Alex says a statement about her in the beginning as to why she became a private money lender, and I think it’s really important to listen to because there’s all these different types of real estate investing, but they’re all different kinds of roles and passivity and being active in them, and they have different kind of responsibilities that you have when you pick a certain kind of real estate strategy or different type of way to invest in real estate. So, if you’re kind on the fence about what you want to do in real estate, this is a great episode to listen to too.

Tony:
Yeah, real quick, Ash, I’m glad you mentioned what Alex said at the top of the show about defining why she became a private money lender because I think that’s going to break down a lot of limiting beliefs that real estate rookies have when it comes to finding private money lenders and that they don’t have the skill set to find those folks. So, really, really pay attention when Alex goes into that piece.

Ashley:
Okay. Well, let’s get into the show. Alex and Beth, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for joining us. Alex, let’s start with you. Could you tell us a little bit about yourself and your history with real estate?

Alex:
Sure. I am a military spouse of 22 years now. I’m currently sitting my 19th address in 22 years, and the reason that’s important is that actually led to the reason I do private lending over other ways of investing in real estate.

Ashley:
That’s awesome. Well, we can’t wait to hear more about that, but you are here today because of something exciting that has come out. So, do you want to share that news and then we can move on to Beth?

Alex:
Sure. So, we now have a book out on the BiggerPockets platform, and it’s about private lending, and then really it’s from the perspective of how to be a private lender, but active investors can also find value in it in that it’s going to kind of teach you what private lenders are looking for, and you can also kind of work your network to say, “Hey, this is how I’m going to safeguard my capital. Here, I’ve read everything in this book. This is the action steps I’m going to take.” So, it’s really kind of written for both sides of the house.

Ashley:
Awesome. Well, we can’t wait to learn more and kind of get a crash course in both of those things. And Beth, what about you?

Beth:
Yeah, so I started in real estate investing in the early 2000s. I’d always considered it to be something that would be a side hustle. I grew up at my dad’s flip projects and his rehab projects and begrudgingly had to be there, but it gave me a lot of foundation to want to invest in real estate when I got older. I just happened to get into private money lending because of a blind date that I was set on. He’s now my husband, and we are running a private money matchmaking business, I would call it, in the Washington market, and over the years, we just kind of realized that a lot of people wanted to passively invest in real estate through private lending, and it became kind of a long arduous journey to grow it into an active business. So, Alex and I decided with our corporate education and academia background, we just kind of wanted to go public with private lending.

Tony:
So, Beth, I mean, you threw me for a second there when you said you started lending because of a blind date. I thought you became a private money lender to the person you went on the blind date with, but not quite how it worked out. I like your story a little bit better. So, I’m really curious. So, both of you, and I know we’ll get into this a little bit later, but both of you decided to lend or to become real estate investors because of the private money approach. So, Alex, we’ll start with you. Why was that the route that you chose to go down over the traditional buying a property and getting the tenants and doing that whole thing?

Alex:
So, just to be fair, I did those other options. I was a long-term landlord. I did fix and flip. I was absolutely miserable doing both of those things. I think one thing that doesn’t get talked about enough early on in real estate is not so much about how do I do this thing. Everybody wants that very technical, how do I BRRRR something, how do I refinance something, but nobody talks to the kind of beginners, the rookies about is this method of investing going to suit your personality, your skill set, and your goals, and that is never a conversation I had on 20 years ago when I started investing. It was like, hey, everybody, I knew bought a house, used their VA loan, and then they moved, and they rented it out, and then you just rinse and repeat, and while that can be a viable way to do something, it did not suit our skill set.
Just as an example, my husband and I do not have children. I don’t like children because I don’t want to babysit other human beings. Anybody who’s ever had to deal with contractors and tenants know all you’re doing is babysitting adult human beings, and it drove me crazy, whereas when I was lending money, whether it’s JV or kind of just as a lienholder on a property, I still had some relationship with them. It was still kind of collaborative which is what I enjoyed, but I didn’t have to babysit them. I didn’t have to go and say, “Hey, you installed the wrong beige tile in this room. It needed to be this other tile,” and stuff like that just drove me insane.
So, I finally just kind of happened upon this and I just discovered kind of, hey, this actually suits my personality. It suits my skill set and then also suits my lifestyle because, like I mentioned earlier, I move so much so the idea of trying to have six rentals in six different places we’ve lived being a long-term landlord from 2,000 miles away is just miserable to me. But not saying it’s a bad way to invest. It just, it didn’t suit my lifestyle as a military spouse.

Tony:
Beth, what about you?

Beth:
Well, my journey into private landing was kind of born out a necessity. So, as I mentioned, I was set up on a blind date. At the time, I was just a single mother of two. I was working part-time as a tech consultant, just trying to get my life back together. I had done flips, live-in flips, but my ex-husband was the other half of the sweat equity, and I just didn’t really see how I could possibly do it again and go it alone. And so, when Matt, my now husband, brought up the idea of getting in a private lending, he wanted to do it again, he’d done it in the past and had a couple of interested friends that also wanted to invest their capital, I was intrigued.
I mean, I learned about real estate investing through my parents, but I never knew how they sourced the capital for their project. So, after that date, and I tell this story all the time, I went home and googled private lending. I didn’t even know what it was, and I thought what an interesting way for me to be able to invest passively in real estate and still afford me the opportunity to grow my generational wealth and be a mom first. And so, that was the reason I got started into it.

Tony:
So, just to kind of clarify, what you guys are saying is that there are people who exist that are willing to take the money that they’ve earned and give it to someone else so that that person can then go invest in real estate, and all that person has to do is pay the first person back. That’s a thing that happens in the world today.

Alex:
All the time.

Beth:
Absolutely. I mean, BiggerPockets, everywhere you talk about it, it talks about other people’s money, right? Well, where are the other people in OPM? And they do exist out there.

Ashley:
Okay. So, let’s start to tailor this for rookie investors. You’re a rookie investor and maybe your ears picked up like, “Okay, I don’t have money. Maybe this is the way I can find money.” As a rookie, a new investor, how do you find the people like you, those other people? What are some steps they can take?

Alex:
I would say the first slices is realistically is going to your local meetup or local REIA event and just participating. That could be in virtual events. They get together at a micro brewery, coffee shop, whatever it is because a lot of times the private lenders like we are talking about today are not going to come forward with a formalized rate and term sheet. We’re a little more on the lurker side of life, not creepy, but we’re paying attention to who’s in our market and what they’re doing and how they’re doing it.
So, I would say showing up consistently and just talking about your business plan, if you know your numbers, “Hey, I’m looking for three-bedroom, two-bathroom homes in this city for this price range, and I plan on doing moderate rehabs,” and that gives everybody in your network a good idea of what you’re looking to buy. So, if you have also happen to have wholesalers in the room, they know, “Oh, wait a minute. I just heard this person say they want three twos in this city with this purchase price,” and anybody that has capital in the room also would be like, “Oh, okay. Well, I’m interested in lending in that city too.” So, it ends up being a point where you have to build your network.

Tony:
Beth, what about for you? What advice do you have for new folks that are looking to find those private money lenders?

Beth:
Yeah, I completely agree with Alex. I think it’s going to become more of a local network type of thing and not looking at the national level for private lenders. There’s a saying that people don’t care about what you know until they know that you care. So, lead in with personal relationships first. Always talk about the kind of work that you’re doing, and the more that you share about that, the more that people will become interested and want to know more and perhaps maybe invest in you and the projects.

Ashley:
A common question that Tony and I received often and I’m sure a lot of other investors get too is if they do have somebody that is willing to lend to them privately, the question that we get asked is how do I structure it, what is the correct way to structure it? And there’s no correct way, but what advice can you give to someone to here’s a starting point as to the first offer to have them put together some kind of deal? Do you have any advice or tips for that as how they should even approach the person with an offer, or do you just leave it up to the private lender to tell you what their terms are?

Alex:
I would say it kind of goes both ways. Private lending in the way we are talking about private lending is very much a relationship model. So, not necessarily this is it. There are some guidelines. Legally, we have to stay within these certain guidelines, but for the most part, it’s not this is hard and fast, this is everything we do, it’s two points for origination, 10% annualized rate. It’s really going to matter on the property, the person, just the deal as a whole.
But I would say having that discussion early on of what they lend on because for example, some private lenders might not lend on multifamily. They will be only single-family home investors. So, getting a real clear idea what they’re willing to lend on will be a great starting point and then specifically how you can protect them. So, if you are an active investor and you’re asking someone to send you $100,000 and everything’s going to run through closing. So just to be clear, no one’s exchanging money outside of closing, but you’re going to send $100,000 to this closing company and just kind of hope and pray this person performs like they’re saying.
So you can have a conversation with them and say, “Hey, this is how I’m going to protect you in the deal. You’ll be in the first lien position or first mortgage, first deed of trust, whatever it happens to be in your state. I’m going to have adequate hazard insurance. I’m going to get lenders title insurance. We’ll have a legal professional that’s knowledgeable in lending draw up the documentation.” So, when you start talking to them about all these ways that as an active investor I’m going to protect your money as a lender to me, that usually really kind of helps calm the fears of that potential new lender because they’re like, “Oh, okay. Well, I hadn’t even thought about that. I’m glad you thought about that.”

Ashley:
So, Alex, you mentioned something in there. You said that an example of a structure could be two points and then 10% interest annualized. Can you explain that for somebody who doesn’t even begin to comprehend what those terms even mean?

Alex:
Sure. So, anytime in the lending space somebody talks about points, it’s usually in the context of percentage points. So, two points for an origination fee would be 2% of the loan amount. So, if it’s a $100,000 property, it would be $2,000 in origination if it’s a two points origination fee. Annualized interest is the amount of interest you would pay over the course of 12 months. So, just to keep numbers simple, if it’s a 12% annualized interest rate, that means you’re roughly paying about 1% of the loan amount every single month in interest-only payments which are different than amortized mortgage payments which a lot of the people who might be, you bought your primary residence, and you’ve kind of had that shock of looking at your mortgage statement and be like, “I only had like $26 go towards my principal balance this month because I just closed on my house,” so it’s a little bit different from that structure. These are generally interest-only payments and they’re for a short time period, whereas your primary residence is 30 years and it’s an amortized payment.

Ashley:
Thank you so much for explaining that. Would you say that’s almost like two things that somebody could look at as a starting point? So, some of the advice I always give rookie investors when they’re trying to figure it out is just put something on paper that works for you and present it to the person you’re trying to get to finance your deal and then negotiate from there. Besides the interest rate and points, is there anything else that they should think of ahead of time when they’re kind of putting together a structure or an offer?

Beth:
I was going to say there’s so many more terms to consider other than just the rate and the points to pay for the loan. I think that’s the obvious choice to lead in on the conversation with working with lenders, but really performance matters greatly, understanding the length of the terms, how they’ll operate, and what kind of needs they’ll have from you as the borrower. The last thing you want, especially as a rookie is to have a lender that might want to meddle. I mean, I’ve had some lenders that have shown up to job sites before and you’re like, “Oh, what are you doing there?” They have to be included and communicated to effectively to understand where you’re at on a project, but you also, to Alex’s point, don’t need a babysitter.
So, understanding how the lender will operate, what kind of terms it can offer, if you have a hiccup in your deal and maybe you need a few more bucks to get across the finish line, are they willing to do so, are they flexible. So, those are some of the more qualitative aspects to vetting out a lender that I think are probably more important than rates and terms. Of course, you need to back into a specific profit margin, so your numbers need to pencil out correctly, but that really to me is one of the last factors to take into consideration when looking at a lender.

Tony:
I love that point, Beth, about making sure that there’s also a good working relationship there. Like you mentioned the phrase you don’t want a babysitter as your private money lender, and to someone that maybe has never worked the private money before, they might be willing to take money from anybody, anybody that’s got a pulse and is willing to give them that those funds. But I think, yes, when you get to a certain point, you definitely want to vet that private money lender to make sure that there is a good match there.
I want to go back just really quickly to the finding the private money lender piece because I always think about where I was when I started my investing career, and I had no network of people that had the liquid funds or the network worth to be a private money lender to me. I didn’t have friends, I didn’t have family, I didn’t have really anyone in my close circle that could do that for me, and I’m sure there’s a lot of rookie investors that are probably in that same boat. So, Alex, you mentioned going to the local meetup and kind of building relationships through there, but Beth, I’m curious to hear your take because you said that you work now as a matchmaker between new investors and private money lenders. Can you give us some more details on what that looks like?

Beth:
Sure. I think that one of the best ways to be able to legitimize yourself as a borrower is not only attend these types of REIA meetups, local real estate investing meetups so that you can share your story and make personal connections with people, but also sharing your successes or a little bit more about who you are on social media. I will tell you that most private lenders that I work with will do their digging. We put our inner psycho on and start stalking you on the internet to see what we can find out about you first, and so, it’s really important to showcase what you’re doing out there in terms of what are you learning about. Even if you don’t have any experience, where are you going to grow your experience and your education about real estate investing? That will naturally attract people to come and investigate what you’re doing and maybe it’ll peak their interest to want to invest in your projects and in to you particularly.

Tony:
Yeah. So, I want to get into the flip side of this actually being the private money lender, but one last follow up before we do. Alex, I’ll start with you on this one. So, say that I’m out there, I’m sharing my journey, and again, say I have no deals. Right? I’m a complete rookie, and I’m sure in my journey where I’m underwriting these deals, and I’m posting on my Instagram story, and I’m going to the meetups, and I’m talking to people. What happens when I actually find the deal that I need private money lending for? How do I actually open up that conversation with folks to see if they might be interested? As I’m meeting people, should I be asking them like, “Hey, would you ever be interested in lending in a private money situation?” Or should I wait until I have the deal and say, “Hey, I know we’ve never talked about this, but would you be interested?” Just kind of walk us through what you feel is the best approach for a rookie that’s done zero deals to start that conversation.

Alex:
I would say probably the first case, let people know of early, ahead of time, this is the type of property I’m shopping for, this is the business model I want to pursue. For example, if you are a BRRRR investor, maybe having a conversation with your local community bank or a mortgage broker so you can have a preapproval so when you start that conversation, you can say, “Hey, look, I want to BRRRR my first property, but I need funds to actually close on it, but I have a preapproval from a bank. I know I’m going to be able to refinance out.” That shows anybody, especially a private lender, that you’ve kind of thought about the numbers, you have the credit worthiness to refinance out because us as lenders are only paid out when you either sell the property or refinance the property. So, it’s very important to us that the exit strategy you’re putting forward actually is feasible, that you’re going to be able to do it.
And so, I’d say letting people know what you’re doing, how you’re doing it. Talking about your underwriting would really help too because if I could go in and scroll through Facebook, for example, and see you’ve analyzed five deals in the last two weeks, and you’re putting out numbers that seem realistic, even if you didn’t get the deal, put a contract out and didn’t get it, but you’re still putting numbers forward that are realistic, okay, your ARV isn’t super inflated. Your rehab cost budget looks pretty healthy and pretty accurate. To me, that’s going to let me know that, okay, they might be junior, they might be green, but they’re taking the steps, they’re educating themselves, and they’re learning about the process, and they’ve thought about how to get my money back to me.

Tony:
Beth, would you agree with that same approach?

Beth:
I’d a hundred percent agree. To the point that a borrower can really address lenders from the point of view of a lender, practicing underwriting deals, creating project proformas, sharing out your knowledge and not even just practicing it, but sharing with lenders and not be afraid to hear your deal kind of sucks. I’ve said it to a lot of investors before too. They actually appreciate that candor, and it gives them the practice of being able to present a deal, present themselves with a prospective lender, and I think that that’s just good experience to have, and when you pair yourself with a lender with experience or even another investor, right, maybe it’s doing some practice role-playing with another active investor, trying to pitch a deal to them as if they were going to invest as a creditor on the project, it’s just really good experience to have.
The more that you can practice and articulate your numbers, the better you’re going to come across to a lender, even without experience because we lend to borrowers all the time who are just getting started. Our mantra is everyone is just starting the same journey, they just may be on an earlier chapter than we are, but they still deserve a chance. So, without experience, you still have a chance to make a move so long as you’re practicing each of those steps along the way in terms of finding the right deal, underwriting it, presenting it to a lender, showcasing what you can bring to the table, and how you can safeguard their capital investment in you and the project will certainly go a long ways towards establishing some credibility.

Ashley:
That’s great advice. I love that step of don’t be afraid to take criticism as an investor pitching your deal. That’s almost like a checks and balance right there by having the private lender give you that criticism, give you that feedback. So, that’s awesome. I want to now take it and transition it to the other side. So, maybe someone listening is like Alex, and Alex, you hit it on the head right there by saying it’s babysitting adults when you have tenants. That was what made me want to quit property management was getting videos from a tenant videoing her ceiling because the tenant upstairs was banging their toilet seat too loud when they shut it, things like that. So, what if you want to be a private money lender? How do you put yourself out there without getting tons of people coming at you like, “Oh, give me money”? How do you weed through the deals? What’s your best advice for somebody who wants to start out as a private money lender?

Alex:
So, for private money lending the way we are doing, it tends to be very hyper local. So, if you happen to live in an area where you are willing to lend, I would recommend first stop is talking to an attorney that is familiar with lending specifically in your state. That may not be the person you closed your loan with when you bought your primary residence because a lot of those attorneys, not that they’re not capable, but they get emailed the mortgage documents from the lender. They didn’t self-generate them. So, I would say making sure you have that, you know what the legal guardrails are. Do you need to be an LLC? Do you need your borrower to be an LLC? How many loans can you do in a year and not be licensed? Do you even need a mortgage broker’s license?
And then second off, we are always lending on non-owner occupied property. It has to be investment property. So, again, because that owner-occupied property falls underneath federal regulations, whereas non-owner occupied property falls under state regulations. So, I would say knowing your location first where you’re willing to lend and then figuring out the laws that are associated with that location, and then start drilling down to what are you willing to lend on? Are you okay doing just single-family homes that need a quick fix and flip? Are you willing to take on something that has considerable damage from a flood or fire, maybe needs mold remediation? Do you want to handle projects where everything’s being taken down to the studs and they’re adding another thousand square feet? So, it sounds kind of counterintuitive when I say limit, limit, limit, pick a state, pick a market, pick a type of property, but the second you kind of put yourself out there, you’re going to get pitched everything. And so, the closer you can get to that ideal, quote unquote, ideal situation, it’s going to bring the right deal forward faster.

Ashley:
Alex, I think that’s such a great point you made, basically building a criteria. You hear that so often when you’re going after single-family homes or small multi-family. Have your criteria so you can weed through the deals. I’ve never even thought of, as a private money lender, have your criteria set too as to what you’re going to lend on, what kind of return you want. So, thank you for sharing that. Beth, what advice do you have for rookies that would like to get into private money lending?

Beth:
Well, just to add onto what Alex said, I mean, in our book, we actually have a personal assessment that is more of a pre-step to even getting started which allows you to really explore what your personal risk tolerance is, as she said, kind of ring-fence in what you want in terms of a project, a property, the loan size, the interest return that you’re expecting, but also exploring why you’re doing this to begin with because as she mentioned, getting into a real estate meetup room and saying that you’ve got money to lend, you kind of become the most popular person in the room. So, making sure that you understand that you want to do this passively, like I did. I started because I wanted to maintain being a mom first, and boy, it blew up into being an active business really fast, and it was hard for me at first. I think we’re finally in a good state where it can become more passive again, but really understanding why you’re getting into private lending to begin with, and so, that assessment really helps.
The second thing that I would add on is that private lending is not a DIY project. To Alex’s point, it takes a team. It takes a virtual team. It takes a team in place in the market that you’re going to be lending on if that’s not your local market. If you’re going to have some questions around hazard insurance, you might need to make a relationship with an insurance agent that can help vet out the insurance binder for you to make sure that it’s sufficient enough and that if there was a claim on a property that you get paid out. You’re going to need help evaluating projects and properties. That might mean that you need to get some valuation support from a real estate agent or another active investor who can take a look at a deal and give you a second opinion. You definitely need attorneys there. You need a title, an escrow company, or a closer. Some states close through attorneys. But having a whole team ready in place for you is extremely important because private lending starts with a relationship, but it still needs to be handled like a business transaction. There needs to be legal documentation created, signed, notarized, recorded, and put into place first so that nothing happens after the loan originates, or we try to mitigate as much as we can, right?

Tony:
Beth, Alex, I want to ask both of you a question and just give me a quick yes or a no, then we’ll kind of deep dive from there. Beth, have you ever lost money on a private money deal before?

Beth:
No.

Tony:
Alex, have you ever lost money on a private money deal before?

Alex:
No.

Tony:
So, you guys have both been pretty successful with this, and I mean, I’ve shared my journey obviously on the podcast. My second deal that I ever did as real estate investor, this house in Shreveport, Louisiana, lost $30,000, took me a year and a half to sell that stupid thing. So, I mean, there’s always risk in real estate investing, and even as a private money lender, there’s risk there as well. So, the fact that both of you have never lost money in a deal, you’ve been successful, I guess, what red flags should I be looking out for as a new private money lender to make sure that I don’t lose money on that deal?

Alex:
I would say making sure you don’t kind of mix that business with friendship because most people are going to say, because I see it on the BiggerPockets forum all the time, “Hey, my cousin’s best friend has a $100,000 they want to lend to me as a lender. Now I don’t know what the next step is.” And normally they’re just like, “Oh, they’ll give me the $100,000.” So, I would rather that everybody take home the message that things need to flow through the closing table because, like to Beth’s point, there’s going to be professionals that are involved in this transaction that not necessarily you’ve hired them to be on your side, but there’s other people looking out for the wellbeing of the deal. The title company is obviously going to be doing title search which includes some background information, like if there’s federal tax liens, they’re also going to appear on the title report.
So, having those professionals in place and being able to call and ask questions and say, “Hey, this works, does this fit what I’m looking to try and do?” So, I’d really say leaning into that team of experienced professionals is going to be the best way, or even just talking to another private lender and say, “Hey, I got this deal. I’m looking to fund it. This is the parameters. What do you think?” And everybody’s risk tolerance is going to be different. You could post that same question to 10 different private lenders and you’re going to get everything from yes, no, and maybe, and for different reasons from each private lender. So, I would say just really leaning into that network that Beth mentioned is going to be crucial for anybody new to private lending.

Beth:
Yeah, I would add while I haven’t personally lost any principle, nor have any of my investors in my circle, I’ve had plenty of investors or would-be private lenders come to me with stories of having lost principle. I just want to point out first that when people do lose principle, it’s not to any fault of their own. They trusted in the good intentions of others. Sometimes they just get mixed up with a bad player. Oftentimes, there’s a couple of key things that happen. One is the legal documentation just isn’t there. They either have poorly written documentation that doesn’t cover them legally, or there just wasn’t any legal documentation to begin with. I see that a lot. I’m concerned and I’m surprised actually how many deals occur without any legal documentation or promissory note, and then it’s not secured against real estate as well, making it really difficult to go after the borrower after that loan is in place.
So, the other issue that I would say that is even if it is secured by real estate, a really big issue here is that their borrower sometimes just has no skin in the game. Maybe the lender funded a hundred percent of the purchase price, and even then some of the rehab with a promise that they’ll get both an interest income as well as maybe a small equity share when the project is done. The problem with that is that they’re immediately underwater if the borrower goes dark, or maybe a general contractor comes in and scams the borrower to no fault to the borrower, but the GC runs off with a whole bunch of money and the borrower gets upset and just walks from the project. Why? Because it’s too easy. There’s no skin in the game.
So, an equity buffer, which for rookies is measured out in what we call an LTV or a loan to value which really means how much is the loan amount against how much it’s worth. So, if you have a $100,000 loan on a property that’s only worth 75,000 because you gave $25,000 for a cosmetic rehab also, as a lender, you’re immediately underwater. Your loan to value is in excess of a hundred percent. So, I really prescribed having a really significant equity buffer in place. We typically do our loans at 65 to 70% loan to value, and that gives you a 30% equity buffer in case something happens. And then we also try to require the borrower to come to table with some skin in the game, whether that’s in the form of a down payment, sometimes they’ll collateralize another property that they own, like a rental, in order to have some sort of tie into the project themselves that makes them want to perform.

Ashley:
Beth, in that scenario, do you allow them to go to another private lender to make up maybe another 20%. Say you’re lending them 60 and then they bring an additional 20 of their own. Do you allow that, or is it just, you’re bringing 60, and then they have to bring the 40 on their own, as in their own funds as you’ll look for proof of funds?

Beth:
Sure. Yes, we have. I will say it’s very circumstantial. There have been a few cases where the seller was willing to carry back some money in second position, meaning if we’re going to fund 600,000 out of a million-dollar deal, the seller says, “I will carry back that $400,000 behind your loan for a five-year term at 5%.” And if they’re willing to do so, on occasion, we’ve let that happen for experienced borrowers. I wouldn’t say that’s something that I would recommend for a lot of lenders. And one thing I don’t really like and allow is to have private lending fund that remaining balance, the down payment, also known as gap funding. Whether that’s secured or not, it’s just, again, they don’t have any skin in the game, and so, the borrower could easily walk. I try to make sure that I understand where their down payment’s coming from, and I’ll let Alex chime in on this because I know that she has a little bit more personal experience with these types of scenarios.

Alex:
Yeah, we often see new real estate investors working with, again, people in their networks who are new lenders and they say, “Oh, I have $20,000. I want to be a lender on this deal, and I’m going to do gap funding.” And a lot of times what they end up doing is they just give this active investor $20,000, they may or may not even get a promissory note back, and then they say, “Hey, here you go. This is the 20% down that you needed for that $100,000 house,” and while we might have been in a fantastic bull market for the last 18 years, however long it’s been since 2008, now that we’re kind of in a place in the market, in the economic cycle where that just rampant appreciation asset value, that’s going to be potentially a source that’s going to eat away at your equity buffer.
So, right now, your loan might be at 80% loan to value, but six months from now when they finish the rehab, if the market continues to soften, maybe you’re now at 90% or maybe you end up at 100%, and if you are someone that’s willing to take on that second lien, if you even put a lien on the property for that extra 20,000, you’re very easily going to be underwater. If anything goes wrong with that property, the tenants damage it, it’s has a fire and burns down and they don’t have adequate insurance, the market gets soft, there’s things that can happen that are outside the borrower’s control where if you’re providing that gap funding, you’re automatically underwater. And just for my personal risk tolerance and where we are in the economic cycle, doing that 20% down gap funding for another active investor so they can go and get a loan for the other 80% is just too far out of my risk tolerance with where we are in the market right now.

Ashley:
Well, thank you guys so much for sharing that with us. All of the information today has been great. So, if anybody wants to learn more, where can they find your book?

Alex:
They can find the book on the BiggerPockets bookstore. It’s available now, and the Audible and ebook version will be available on Amazon. There is an ebook version also on BiggerPockets, but the Amazon and Audible will be available middle of August. I think August 16th is the release date for those. So, anybody wants to listen while they’re driving around town, you can get the Audible version in a couple weeks.

Ashley:
Awesome. And you guys can go to biggerpockets.com/bookstore to check out Lend to Live, and also all the other BiggerPockets books. Beth, where can people reach out to you and find out some more information about you?

Beth:
Well, I’m on BiggerPockets so they can reach out to me there and message me there. I also have a website, flynnfamilylending.com. That’s my private lending matchmaking business, and so, I can be reached there as well.

Ashley:
And Alex?

Alex:
You can reach me at our email address. It’s [email protected], and the two is the number two. That’ll reach either one of us. Please feel free to reach out and I’m on LinkedIn and BiggerPockets as well. So, just look for my name and happy to have a connection there and send a message there as well.

Ashley:
Well, thank you guys so much. We really appreciate you coming on and giving us this little crash course on private lending, and rookies, definitely check out this book because even if you have ways to finance your first couple of deals, you can never have enough money in real estate. So, this will be a great resource to help you get started, whether you want to find private lending or you want to be a private lender. Well, Alex and Beth, thank you so much for joining us today. I’m Ashley, @wealthfromrentals, and he’s Tony, @tonyjrobinson on Instagram, and we’ll see you guys back on Wednesday for another episode of Real Estate Rookie.

Dave:
Hey, everyone. Welcome to On the Market. I’m your host, Dave Meyer. We all know that the housing market over the last couple of years has been absolutely red hot, but starting at the beginning of 2022, there have been a lot of headwinds that have caused people to wonder if the housing market is going to crash or see some modest declines over the next couple of years. And if you listen to the show, you probably know that on a national level, the housing market is still doing pretty well, but we are starting to see some pretty significant signs that the hot market we’ve been in is starting to cool down. But really, real estate investing is all local. So as an investor, what you’re probably wondering is what’s… It doesn’t matter as much what’s happening on a national scale, you’re probably curious what’s happening in a market that you currently invest in or one that you’re thinking about investing in.
So today, that’s what we’re going to talk about. We are going to talk about which markets are doing well and are showing signs that they can continue growing despite these economic headwinds. And we’re going to talk about the other types of markets that are showing some weakness and potentially are going to see declines over the next couple of years. Now, I’m going to mention some specific markets here, but I obviously can’t discuss every single market in the country in this podcast so I’m also going to share with you some data points that you should be looking at in your own individual investing so you can make your own evaluation on whether or not your specific markets are poised for further growth or they might see some setbacks in the next couple of years.Before we jump into it, let’s hear a quick word from our sponsor.
All right, so today we’re going to get into which markets are poised for growth and which are at risk of seeing declines over the next couple of years. Before we do the specific things that are happening right now, let’s just do a quick couple minute recap on what has led to this point in the housing market. First, we all know that home prices have been going up like crazy. They are up 43% since the beginning of the pandemic. So if you started in March of 2020 and went to July of 2022, prices have gone up 43%. That is insane. Usually, that takes decades to see that level of growth. And so, obviously when you see that kind of growth, people wonder if we’re in a bubble. And that is a good question. There is certainly some level of speculation, which is what causes a bubble. There is some level of speculation in the housing market, but there are also strong fundamentals that led to this really rapid appreciation.
Those fundamentals are first and foremost, demographics. I say this all the time, but it is true and it is not going to change. Millennials are now the largest generation in the US, and they’re at peak. Family formation and home buying age, that leads to a lot of demand. Second, we have seen interest rates near the lowest they have ever been and likely will ever go. And that also raises demand and improves affordability. People can just spend more on houses when interest rates are super low. Third, inflation and the abundance of money. We’ve talked about this a lot as well. We’ve seen the Fed injected trillions of dollars into the economy, and that pushes up asset prices and something that we saw for a while, not just in the housing market, but in the stock market and the crypto market as well.
And then lastly is extremely low inventory. We have seen days on market, which is the amount of time it’s takes to sell a home hover around 15 to 18 days over the last couple of years, when normally it’s 30 or 40 or 50 days to sell a house. And when there’s just so few houses on the market, it’s going to increase prices. That’s just how supply and demand work.
So there is some speculation, and this is important because when we talk about whether or not housing prices are going to go down, we have to understand why they went up in the first place. And these four things, demographics, low interest rate, inflation and low inventory are vitally important to what the situation is right now. When we’re talking about prices going down, we have to ask ourselves, “Are any of these four things starting to decline?” And the fact is, yes, some of them are. Let’s just take them one by one.
Demographics, that’s not going to change, right? Millennials, they are the age that they are, and maybe they will put off buying house or forming a family by a year or two, but you can’t really escape demographics. This is something that just drives economic forces long in a much more significant way than any of these short term trends. And so demographics are going to contribute to high demand in the housing market for the foreseeable future. Two, inflation. The money has already been printed. There’s new bills coming out in Congress that might even print more money. And so there is likely going to be more inflation over the next couple of years.
Now, I do think there are some signs. As of this recording, we did just see that in July, the CPI went down from 9.1% year over year to 8.5% year over year. That is an encouraging sign. But even if inflation peaked, and it is definitely too early to tell whether it peaked or not, it is likely going to be a very slow return to normal for inflation even if we did hit a peak. So I do think inflation is probably still there and going to be contributing to the housing market over the next couple of years. So far, demographics and inflation both support the housing market and have, at least I should say, it puts upward pressure on the housing market.
Now on the other side, interest rates are really what’s putting downward pressure on the housing market. Interest rates have risen. They were about 3.1% in January of 2022. As of this recording, they’re in the low to mid 5s for the average 30 year fixed rate mortgage. And that’s for the record, not for investors. That’s just for owner occupants.
And so that’s a really significant change. I mean, that is hundreds, if not, thousands of dollars per month in mortgage payments that it has gone up. And that just means people can’t spend as much on a home because their payments are going to be so much higher each month because of interest rates. We found some data from Black Knight, that puts out great data by the way, shows that housing affordability is now at its worst point since the early 1980s. And this is really important for pricing in the housing market because if people can’t afford to buy homes, they’re not going to. And so that decreases demand. And when demand falls, that is when prices can fall as well.
This just is a really important thing because from 2008, like after the recession, the housing market crashed and prices went down 20% and we entered this really low interest rate period that lasted nearly 15 years, housing from 2008 to 2020 was really relatively affordable. It’s like one of the cheapest it’s been at least in the last 40 or 50 years in the United States. And now fast forward, two years later, we’ve gone from a relatively very affordable housing market to a relatively very expensive housing market. And this is going to put significant downward pressure on the housing market.
The last thing here is inventory of course. This is sort of the X factor because so far over the last couple years, inventory, the number of houses that are on the market for people to buy has been down a lot, like a joke of a number. It’s been down to numbers that are maybe 1/3 or half of what they are normally. And so that has contributed to a lot of competition, which pushes up prices. This is the X factor because in some markets it’s starting to come back really dramatically, while in others it’s actually declining. And so we’ll get into that in a little bit.
So hopefully, this gives you some good context for what’s going on here, that demographics and inflation are probably going to keep putting upward pressure on the housing market, interest rates are putting downward pressure, and inventory is the X factor that’s sort of working on a market by market basis.
Okay. So that’s on a national scale, but what we want to talk about is a regional scale. What is happening in the individual housing markets and how are you as an investor or aspiring investor going to be impacted by this? And because we’re still in the midst of this market cooling period, there’s really no way to tell for sure which markets conceded decline. So I just want to get that out of the way. I don’t have a crystal ball. I don’t know exactly what’s going to happen. This is just my best reading of the data as it exists today.
I want to look at a few different measurements and lead indicators because obviously we don’t know for certain. So in those types of situation, what I do and I recommend you do is try and look at a lot of different data sources and see if there are themes that are emerging between different ways of measuring this. And that gives you a good general sense of what might happen. The data I want to look at is year over year price data. So that means I’m going to look at data that from June 2022 as compared to June 2021. We’re going to look at month over month price data, which is basically just last month compared to this month. We’ll look at inventory and days on market. Remember, that’s sort of the X factor. And then we’ll also talk about affordability a bit.
So first things first, year over year. In no markets are prices coming down year over year. I just want people to sort of internalize that because there are so many headlines right now that it’s like, “The housing market is cooling. It’s crashing. There’s a correction.” And that I do think is true. I do think there is a correction, we’re in the midst of that. But to keep that in context, there is no market that I’ve seen where housing prices have gone down on a year over year basis. And normally in the housing market, we look at year over year data because it’s seasonal, right? Because prices always are a little bit higher in the summer, they go down in the winter. The best way to measure the market and the way that most economists and housing market analysts and pretty much everyone looks at it is year over year data.
And so in that respect, nothing has gone down yet. But we can look at this data still and tell some interesting things because year over year, most housing markets were going up like crazy for the last couple years. So in Austin, for example, last year it went up 45% year over year, but now it’s down to 23% year over year. And 23% is still absolutely absurd. But the fact that the growth rate went from 45% to 23%, it got cut in half essentially, is really significant. It shows that the housing market is cooling. We’re not in this red scorching hot ultra competitive market anymore where things are just going up and up and up. They are starting to moderate. So that’s Austin. And on a year over year basis, Austin I think is the most dramatic shift that we’ve seen. But we also see cities on the west coast that are experiencing this as well.
So Sacramento went down 13.4%, San Jose at 11, Phoenix at 11, Seattle at 10 and Riverside, California at 10. So those are some of the most dramatic drops that we’ve seen in growth rate. So remember, I’m just going to say it one more time. That does not mean that prices went down year over year it means the rate of growth declined. So that’s something you should be looking at in your market as well, is, where things growing at 30% year over year and now they’re at 2% or 3%, that to me is a big sign that your market is shifting a lot. So year over year, normally in normal times, that’s what I’d really focus on. But because things are changing so much right now, I do think it’s important to look at month over month data. And in certain markets, it does seem like prices have actually peaked and are starting to come down.
And as I mentioned, normally we see a peak in the summer, things start to come down and then they peak again the next summer. And usually, that’s like July, August, maybe even September. But it looks like we might have hit a housing market peak in June and we’re seeing certain west coast cities that are now seeing declines on a month over month basis. So from May to June, for example, in San Jose, California prices went down 5%. In Seattle, they went down 4%. San Francisco was 3. Denver was one and a half. Portland and Phoenix are also up there. So these aren’t crazy numbers. We’re not seeing things drop really dramatically. And you won’t. The housing market doesn’t work like stocks. It doesn’t work like cryptocurrency. You’re not going to see a 20% drop in a month. That will never happen. Almost never. I shouldn’t say never. But that is very unlikely to happen.
But on these two basis, you’re seeing a trend occur, right? These cities, mostly on the west coast is what I’m seeing, that are seeing the most dramatic drops are Sacramento, San Jose, Seattle, San Francisco, a couple places in Denver and Utah are all showing that they might have hit a peak and are starting to decline. Honestly, these are kind of predictable. I think for anyone like me who follows these markets and was predicting which cities might see declines first, it was these cities, right? I mean, I probably would’ve thrown Boise on there and we’ll talk about Boise in a little bit. But the super expensive markets where affordability is relatively low, those are going to be the ones to go down first, because as we discussed earlier, what’s putting downward pressure on the housing market is affordability.So the cities that have the lowest affordability are the ones that are going to go down first.
And so again, I think it’s important and I want to just reiterate that these declines are not that large. And the market in this period, like in the last year, has seen huge increases in inventory, a lot of these markets. And we’ve seen huge declines in affordability. But all that said, the housing market is holding up, in my opinion, relatively well. I do think things are likely going to go down more. Don’t get me wrong. That’s my personal opinion. I just believe that. But I just want to reiterate that things are not going crazy despite really adverse conditions for the housing market. Things are only going down modestly. And to me, that sort of reiterates and reinforces my belief that I’ve held for a while is that we are unlikely to see a crash in the housing market. And I’d say that somewhere between 15, 20%, like I just see that as being very, very unrealistic.
Okay. So those two data sets year over year, month over month, both pointing to west coast cities, super expensive cities starting to see declines. But let’s look forward, right? Those are things that already happened. And to look forward, we can use what I call a lead indicator. That’s basically a data point that helps you predict a different data point in the future. So the lead indicators I want to look at are days on market and inventory, because those are a good measure of supply and demand. And if those things start to go up, it could predict housing market price declines in the future.
And so let’s just look at where we are with inventory. So inventory, like I said, was super low throughout the pandemic. It was a fraction of what it used to be, but that is starting to change. San Francisco is the first market in the country to officially return to pre pandemic inventory level. So that’s really significant, because to me, if prices are going to decline, you have to get to a normal housing market first. And having pre pandemic, inventory numbers is how you get to a normal housing market. And so San Francisco is the first city in the country where we’ve seen that. San Jose, another city is right behind that, just 1%. Las Vegas has seen its inventory skyrocketed. It used to be 40% below where it normally is, now it’s just 7% below. So it hasn’t reached pre pandemic levels yet, but it’s getting darn close. We’re also seeing Phoenix and Austin.
So again, what I said at the beginning of this show is that you want to look at multiple data points and see what trends emerge. So we’re already seeing trends emerge, right? San Francisco, San Jose, Las Vegas, Phoenix, Austin, they are showing up on all of these different data points as places that are potentially going to see housing market declines. I don’t know if that’s going to happen, but the data is suggesting that these are some of the weakest markets in the United States.
Okay. So that’s basically what we’re seeing, right? When I do my research and I look at particular markets that are overvalued or likely going to see these declines, these cities are leading the way. Now, if you are investing in a city and you didn’t hear me mention it and you’re thinking, “Oh my God, my city is doing great. There’s no chance to decline,” that’s not what I’m saying. I’m just giving you like the top five or 10 that are at the highest risk. And so if you want to figure out for yourself, which you should, you can download some data. I’ll put the link that I created. You can download the data to get inventory and pricing information and days on market for every city in the country. We’ll put that in the show notes. You should do this research for yourself.
The next thing I want to talk about is just some context about if you start to see more declines, like how bad it could get, because I think that’s what people really fear. You see 3% decline in Seattle and you’re like, “Okay, I can live with 3%. That’s not crazy. But is it going to be 20% like it was in the great recession?” Well, I don’t maintain economic models. I can’t say for sure, but we did find some research that is from Moody’s Analytics. It’s one of the biggest analytics market research firms in the whole country. They did some forecasts and they predicted basically which markets were likely to do well and likely to see declines between now and 2024. So it’s just cool because it gives you sort of like an 18 month time horizon, which I think is a really good way of looking at this because that’s probably, in my mind, we’re going to probably see inflation for a while and uncertain economic conditions for a while. And so forecasting out about 18 months I think should be a good frame of reference for you.
What they predicted was that three cities in Florida were actually going to be the most at risk. So it’s the Villages, which is one of the fastest growing communities in the whole country. It’s called the Villages, Florida, Punta Gorda and Cape Coral. So those are three, followed by Spokane, Washington. So they think those are going to be the worst till 2024. And according to them, the biggest decline in the country will be for the Villages at negative 13%. And that’s significant, right? 13% decline when you’re leveraged and when you’re buying into super expensive asset is a pretty big deal.
But keep in mind first that during the great recession, home prices did decline 20% nationally, and we are talking about the absolute worst city. If you start looking at some of the other cities that they’re predicting, it’s more in the 3, 4, 5, 7% decline. And so this is sort of what I… I have said something a couple months ago that my projection through 2024 was plus or minus 10%. So at best, it would be up 10% in the next through 2024. And at worst it would be down 20%. And I think this sort of reinforces that idea. I know that’s a super wide range because we just don’t know. It’s harder to make a better prediction than that, but I do think this reinforces the idea that the worst case scenario on a national level is probably not worse than a 10% decline.
On the other hand, Moody’s forecast that some cities are going to grow, and this sort of reinforces what we talk about on the show all the time, that certain markets are going to decline, certain markets are going to go up. Apparently, Moody’s Analytics agrees with us and they think that these particular markets, honestly, I have barely heard of any of these cities, are going to go up. So the top one is Albany, Georgia, and they’re giving that 10%. They think through 2024 it’s going to be a 10% increase. Then we have Casper, Wyoming. I’ve actually been there. I’ve heard of that one, 8%. New Bern, North Carolina at 7.6%. Augusta, Georgia, 7.2%. And Hartford, Connecticut at 7%. So again, we are seeing that some markets are going to keep growing in all… The most likely scenario I should say is that some markets are going to keep growing maybe up to about 8, 9, 10% up until 2024. Some markets are going to decline probably at worst in the 10 to 12% range through 2024. So it’s a wide spread.
I think that’s super interesting because it makes it sort of a researcher’s market, right? Like if you’re listening to the show and you like looking at data, that means that some markets are not going to do well. Some are going to do well. And if you do your research, you might be able to find the markets that are going to outperform the national housing market right now.
So across all of this research, I just want to sort of summarize the different things that we’re seeing as commonalities for the markets that are likely going to decline. Number one is massive appreciation. If something went up 60%, it is probably more likely to go down. Second is increasing inventory in days on market. And I really want to stress this one. You can find this data in the download. We’ll put that in the show notes. You can look at this on Realtor or Redfin, there’s data for this. But if inventory and days on market are starting to approach pre pandemic levels in your market, that is a very significant sign that your market might start to see housing declines. I don’t know if it’s going to happen for sure. Not in every single market, but to me, that’s the number one thing I would be looking for.
Next is migration hotspots. A lot of places like Boise and Austin and Phoenix saw huge increases in housing prices because a lot of people were moving there and with a potential recession. With just the economy just like slowing down, there’s a lot of uncertainty, migration is likely going to slow down. It doesn’t mean people are going to move back to where they’re from, but I think it’s going to slow down and that’s going to take a little fuel out of the fire.
And then the last thing as we talked about before is about affordability. Look at places that are really unaffordable. Those are the most likely to see declines. And based on some of the things that we’ve seen, you can see these are places like Austin, Sacramento, Phoenix, Boise is on that list, and honestly, a lot of cities in Florida. So those are some of the places where according to Black Knight, the payment to income ratio, which is basically how much money you make in versus what your mortgage payment is, is above 70%, which is absurd and makes it at what some of the least affordable markets in the entire country. If you want sort of a list of some of the big markets that I’ve seen that I personally believe are at sort of a higher risk…
And again, I don’t have a crystal ball. What I’m doing here is I’m looking at these different metrics, year over year data, month over month data, inventory data, days on market and affordability, I’m looking at all of that. I keep seeing certain cities come up over and over again even though these are independent analyses, and what I see are that Austin, Boise, Phoenix, Las Vegas, Reno, also Fort Myers, Florida, couple cities in Colorado where I invest, Colorado Springs, Denver, Boulder, definitely they’re already starting to see declines, Salt Lake city and Provo in Utah and Spokane, Washington. Those are ones that I just keep seeing over and over again. Again, I can’t tell you what’s going to happen, but those ones continue to show signs of some weakness and some wobbliness.
On the other hand, there are cities that are looking strong. And the one that keeps coming up, it’s kind of a random city. I mean, I grew up near here, but you never hear it sort of mentioned on a national level, but Hartford, Connecticut showing very strong signs, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Virginia Beach, Virginia. If you want a large city, one of the biggest cities in the country, Chicago, Illinois still looks like a very good housing market. Albany, New York, Honolulu and Philadelphia all look relatively strong. And again, this is just me sitting here in August, in the beginning of August, telling you how the data reads. It’s going to change. And so if you’re an investor, you have to keep looking at these things over and over. This is just a snapshot in time on what we’re looking at today.
So that’s what I got for you guys. Hopefully this is helpful to you if you are worried about a housing market correction, or some people are excited about a housing market correction. Maybe you can’t afford to get into the housing market right now and you’d like to see prices come down and you’re wondering which markets that you’ve been looking at might start to see something come down and make it relatively more affordable for you to jump into it. So hopefully, this is helpful.
Just remember these couple of things. One, every market is going to be different. We’re seeing that more than ever. Over the last couple years, everything was going up. But in a normal housing market, regional differences, city differences are very significant. We’re returning to a time like that. Make sure to look for yourself. There’s going to be a lot of articles about this. Hell, I just listed a bunch of cities. That’s just my opinion. Don’t take my word for it. Go investigate this for yourself. Look at the data for yourself and determine what you think is going to happen.
Next, I also want to point out that even within a market, different neighborhoods and different asset classes and different price points are going to be pretty different right now, too. You’re starting to see like James, on one of our recent shows, was saying that in Seattle, high price point luxury market is getting hit way harder than affordable stuff and more affordable side of the spectrum was actually continuing to go up. That’s in the same market. So you need to be looking at these things. You can download some of the data, again, completely for free on biggerpockets.com. Just click on the link in the show notes. Just remember that this is sort of a researcher’s market. This is a good time to be someone who’s interested in data and dig into this.
Thank you all so much for listening. We’d love to know what you’re seeing in your market. We’re super curious, and it’d be helpful for other investors. So if you are doing this research and learning more about your individual market, we encourage you to go on biggerpockets.com. This show has its own forums. There’s an On the Market forums on biggerpockets.com. So we encourage you to go onto BiggerPockets forums, check that out and tell us what’s happening in your market. I will be on there. I would love to hear for it. I will respond to you. So go tell us what is going on in the market so we can all learn together as a community. Again, thank you all so much for listening to On the Market. My name’s Dave Meyer. If you want to interact with me and give me feedback about this show, I really appreciate that. You can do that on Instagram, where I am @thedatadeli. We’ll see you all next time.
On the Market is created by me, Dave Meyer, and Kalin Bennett. Produced by Kalin Bennett. Editing by Joel Ascarza and OnyxMedia. 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.

Robert Shiller, Yale University professor of economics and Case-Shiller Index co-founder, joins ‘Power Lunch’ to discuss homebuilder sentiment, why homebuilders aren’t building and if home prices are actually starting to declining.

Ashley:
This is Real Estate Rookie episode 200 and niner.

Kenneth:
So people are realizing that there’s something going on in the economy. So I think it’s bringing fear to the market. Kind of what we’ve been doing is just trying to educate, because if you keep your money in the bank right now, it’s not making anything, it’s actually losing money, if you want to be, technicalities. Also, if you put it in stocks, I mean that would be very fearful. I would be scared to do that. And then crypto, I mean, that would be another thing that I would say was probably not the best idea. So where is the best place to put the money? I personally would say, and this might be biased, but I think it’s real estate just because it would hold its value, at least to an extent.

Ashley:
My name is Ashley Kehr, and I’m here with my cohost, Tony Robinson.

Tony:
And welcome to The Real Estate Rookie podcast, where every week, twice a week, we bring you the inspiration, information and education you need to kickstart your investing journey. Now, usually I kind of start this part of the episode with reading some highlights from recent reviews that we’ve gotten on the podcast, but today I’m going to switch it up just a little bit, and I want to read some comments we got on YouTube for one of our recent episodes we put out on YouTube. And in that episode, Ashley and I talked about how one of the reviews talked about how boring Ashley and I are, and we like to read some of the bad reviews from time to time as well. And we just so much appreciated how the rookie community came to have our back.
So someone said, I love their chemistry, I also love the rookie podcast because every guest provides tangible lessons learned. Someone else said, imaginary. Derek said, I love you guys and you’re genuine chemistry. The show is amazing and extremely helpful. Please invite me to the next pool party. Someone else said, I love Ashley’s laughing. It’s so genuine. Please don’t stop due to negative reviews. You seem so much fun. And the last one, this one is from Paul Garza says, don’t change. I learn from your intro. I like to hear what you guys are personally working on. Makes me think of different situations and angles. So guys, we love that you appreciate the boring banter between me and Ashley. And I love that we now have a new name for the intro of the podcast, the boring banter. So why don’t we get into some for today, Ashley, what’s new with you? Give me some boring updates.

Ashley:
Well, first of all, I want to say, I love you guys so much and thank you. Those really warmed my heart, reading those messages. And even if everybody hated my laugh, I cannot make it go away. I can’t help it. So thank you guys. We really appreciate you guys taking the time to make those comments for us.

Tony:
So what’s new, Ash? Give me some boring banter about Ashley Kehr’s universe these days.

Ashley:
Well, I’m super excited because Tony and I are headed to Denver, where we are going to do a podcast recording together, live in person, and then we are also hosting a meetup in Denver, so that is going to be August 15th. I’m not sure when this episode is airing, before or after, but if you guys were there, it was great to see you. I think this will come out after and then, but yeah, it’s always great to get together with Tony and Sarah. And then after that headed to Tony’s short-term rental conference. And then it will be BPCon, so super excited for it to be in sunny San Diego this year. So if you guys haven’t checked it out, go to biggerpockets.com/events, and hopefully we’ll see you there.

Tony:
Lots of travel, lots of good things happening. I guess the only update that I have on the business side is that we’re, the city that we invest in, actually, I think we did this for Rookie Reply about the permit changes for some of the cities we invest in.

Ashley:
Yeah. In Josh [inaudible 00:03:36].

Tony:
Yeah. So that’s causing us to kind of adjust our game plan, but there’s a lot of folks who are now, and this has always been the case of short-term rentals, people that are afraid to invest in cities where the regulations are a little bit more stringent, but honestly, I’ve never seen that as a bad thing, if anything, it just kind of weeds out some of your competition. So it means there’s less people that are going to be looking to buy, which means, A, you have a little bit more leverage when you’re purchasing properties and then, B, when you’re actually operating, obviously there’s less short-term rentals. That means there’s less supply, which means there’s potentially opportunity for you to charge more and higher prices, so.
Just another day in life of a short-term rental host, but trying to keep things moving. But anyway, we got a good guest today, right? So this is the end of the trilogy. We have Kenneth Donis and we’ve had all three of the Donis brothers on the podcast. So we have them together in episode 175. So Kenneth, Jeffrey, and Kerwin all came onto that episode together. And then we’ve been bringing each brother on separately to kind of talk about their specific parts of the business. So again, they were all together on 175, then Jeffrey was on episode 193, Kerwin was 199, and then we finish off today with Kenneth on 209. Kenneth, welcome back to the podcast, brother, excited to have you on kind of finishing out the trilogy of the Donis brothers. How you been, man? How you doing?

Kenneth:
I’m doing well, man. Thank you guys so much for having me. How are you guys doing?

Ashley:
Good.

Tony:
Man, trying to keep up with you. You and your brothers just travel all over the place. I see you guys posting pictures at this conference and that conference and seems like you guys are out there networking and making connections, man.

Kenneth:
Yeah, absolutely. We definitely try to have fun with it, trying to meet a lot of people. In this business it’s really about who you know, not what you know. Well, I would say it’s about what you know too, but definitely a lot more on who you know, so.

Ashley:
Kenneth, before we get into this episode anymore, can you just give a little bit of information about yourself and what you’re doing in real estate right now? Just in case somebody didn’t listen to your previous episode.

Kenneth:
Yeah, absolutely. Well, like they said, and thank you, Tony, for the introduction, Kenneth Donis here. One of three of the Donis brothers. I’m Head of Marketing for our company, Donis Investment Group. Currently we have a little north of a thousand units in our portfolio right now, looking to acquire some more. So we’re slowly growing, but yeah, thank you guys so much for having me.

Ashley:
And Kenneth, let’s break that down because I don’t want everybody to think that we brought on some expert who’s been doing it for 20 years and has built up a thousand units, and not to say you’re not an expert, but just tell everyone how long you’ve been doing this and how exactly you acquired those thousand units?

Kenneth:
Yeah. So my brothers and I started in real estate wholesaling a few years ago and we’ve been at multi-family for going on two years now. So it’s been a slow burn, but we’ve been able to be co-sponsored on a few deals alongside some of our partners we’re in a bigger mastermind group called Think Multifamily, so we definitely give a big shout out to them. That’s pretty much how we’ve been able to be a part of bigger projects, to be quite honest.

Ashley:
Okay. So let’s break that down a little bit. And confirm or deny this if I’m explaining this correctly. So within that group of people or other people that you’ve partnered with, you have either brought the deal or you’ve provided some kind of value to be a general partner in the deal. So it’s not like you’re going out and you’re just taken down a thousand units, the three of you by yourself, but you are strategizing as to how you can provide value and to get a piece of the pie. Is that correct?

Kenneth:
Yes, that is correct. So in this business, what we came to learn is in multi-family it’s really a team sport and in team sports you have different people that play different roles in different positions. So in different various of acquisitions that we’ve had we’ve helped out with different things. So yeah, I mean, it’s just a bunch of, pretty much, partners and we all have our own role and we all have our respective areas in which we can help out.

Ashley:
Kenneth that is great. Realizing, so young and so new into real estate, investing is leveraging those partnerships and obviously it’s turned you guys into experienced investors. You’ve built up a large portfolio and you’ve made tons of connections. Today, we want to focus on your piece of your company though, the marketing and the acquisitions, so let’s kind of start there. What’s the first thing you want to go over today, that is part of your job role?

Tony:
Sorry, Kenneth, really quickly before you jump into that. If you can, just for the listeners that aren’t yet familiar with the phrase syndication, just give us a quick rundown of what that is and then lean into to the part that you focus on.

Kenneth:
Yeah, absolutely. So basically the word, syndication, is just gathering money and then going out and buy something. So in this case, apartment syndication, so we’ll go out, gather the equity. Of course, we’re taking debt on these properties. So we’ll go out and gather the equity in order to buy apartment complexes. And then, of course, our investors that invest with us, they get a return on their investment or the money that they put into the deal, so that’s just kind of what it is in a nutshell. What I do is I’m Head of Acquisitions, so I am the one underwriting. Well, first off, meeting with brokers, getting deals, underwriting deals, touring the deals, pretty much all upfront, trying to find a deal, trying to find an opportunity in which we can provide our investors.

Ashley:
So the majority of these deals, are you guys the ones that are finding them and then bringing them to other people that are already general partners on a deal to build a team, and how are you selecting as to who you take your deal to?

Kenneth:
Yeah. So, like I said, in this group, we have been co-sponsors, meaning that we’ve helped out on various other items. So we’ve had other partners that actually found the deal. We’re actually working on our first deal that we’re working on that we found, or I found, in Atlanta. But as far as how we figure out what to take to our investors, well, first off, we go by market, we just want to… We have a buy box, right? So it’s kind of the similar to single family. You can look at every single multi-family apartment, but I mean, there’s so many of them that it would be too broad. So you have to narrow it down to what you’re looking for and what you would be willing to, I guess, put up with, right? So, one, the market, so whether you want to invest in a tertiary market, meaning it’s not as populated, it’s a little bit smaller, maybe not as much activity.
Or a primary market, something like Charlotte or Dallas, or like a larger market, that’s a little bit more competitive, but obviously they have steady rent growth, steady job growth. And then you go into looking into the asset itself. So do you want to invest in a little bit older assets, ’60s, ’50s product, and either, usually with those products, there’s sometimes a lot of problems with like plumbing and electrical, just because everything’s so old, or do you just want to do newer assets? Things that were built in the 2000s or late 1990s. So that’s kind of the buy box. Now, it also depends on how many units you would like to acquire. So if you’re syndicating, you could pretty much syndicate any amount of units, but obviously the more units you have, the larger the purchase price will be. So depending on your capacity or if you’re just buying it yourself, you can buy a few units and, or continue to buy larger, a hundred plus, 200, 300 units. So I think narrowing it down is very important.

Ashley:
Kenneth, how are you creating that criteria? So for example, part of your criteria is it must be at least like a hundred doors or something like that. How did you come up with that number? What’s, if someone out there is looking to go and do multi-family, how can they be like, okay, I know that I can maximize my return if I’m getting over a hundred units or I want to be in a B to A-class market. What are some tips and tricks you can give to people to help them actually define what their criteria is going to be, instead of just saying, oh, I know that I want luxury units? What’s the best way they can actually figure out where they’re going to get the best return?

Kenneth:
Yeah. Great question. And I think, I like to say, honestly, if the numbers make sense, I think any deal is a good deal. So if it’s a good deal, I think, doesn’t really matter about the unit size. Obviously the larger, the better, because you get a little bit economies, the scale, meaning you’re not spending more per unit, so you have a certain threshold as far as expenses, so a certain amount of units cover your expenses, if that makes sense? So after you surpass a certain threshold within the unit sizes, you’re not really increasing the amount of expenses, so you’re just making more profit. But I would say, it really depends on your situation.
If you think you have, if you’re an executive that is in a large corporation or a large company and you have a network of people that are making 100, 200, maybe more, thousand dollars a year, there’s a potential for you to be able to syndicate a lot of money and therefore you can go out and buy a larger asset. But if that’s not your case, if maybe you’re just at your job and maybe you’re not surrounded by people that are a little bit higher-net-worth, you can go out and buy a smaller apartment complex or a quadplex or a duplex. So it really depends on your own situation. That’s what, at least, what I would say, but it’s all down to the numbers, right?

Ashley:
So the first thing you would say to look at is what is your budget, almost. So if you’re going to be doing a syndication, if you’re going to be raising money, how much money can you raise if you’re going to be borrowing private money? How much is that? If you’re getting bank financing. How much do you believe that you’ll be able to get for a property and then kind of look at what the average cost is for that many doors. And this all applies to even single family homes or duplexes too. So you can narrow your criteria, your buy box, to look at properties that are within your budget.

Kenneth:
Exactly.

Ashley:
And then also you mentioned too, how many doors are going to cover your expenses? So look at the overhead. So if you have a property that has 20 units and it’s going to cost you X amount to have the driveway snow-plowed, but you can look at a property that has a hundred units but it’s still going to cost the same because it’s the same size driveway, or something like that, to have it plowed. I think that’s also, that’s great advice right there too, is to look at what is the overhead of the expenses where they’re most likely not going to change as those units increase.

Kenneth:
Yes. That is a hundred percent correct. And to touch on your first point. So it’s not just, I would say not really just your budget. I would also say, like I said, this apartments is really a business in which it’s who you know, because I personally don’t have the net worth or the liquidity in order to sign and qualify for these loans but I have a network of people that can sign on these loans and they have the experience, they have the net worth, they have the liquidity.
So, if you surround yourself or go out and meet people that can KP or basically be a key principle and sign on these loans or they could tell you, hey, I can write a cheque for, I have investors that can write a cheque for 10 million or whatever the amount, 1 million. So it’s also about who you know. So if you can, not necessarily how much money you have or your direct… Not exactly just how much money you have directly, but how much money around the people that you know have, and, or their net worth, pretty much.

Ashley:
Isn’t it funny, at least for me growing up, I was always taught, never co-sign for anyone, never co-sign on an auto loan. And now, as investors, we want to be the person that eventually co-signs for a $10 million to loan for a property. But yeah, it’s just funny how that changes.

Kenneth:
Yeah. I, a hundred percent, agree. And the reason is because, one, this is good debt, right? So this debt, as long as the asset keeps performing, that debt that you’re taking out is making you money, right? So we’ve always been taught, obviously car loans, house, depending on your perspective, those might not be the best kind of debt. And two, you get a slice of the pie for just signing on the loan. And I mean, yes, it’s somewhat of a risk, but these are all a majority non-recourse debt, meaning that as long as you’re not committing fraud and, or just operating the property correctly and you’re not doing anything that would pretty much trigger a bad boy carve-out, they can’t come after you personally. So you’re using your balance sheet and there’s, I would say, I wouldn’t say that there’s no downside or no risk, but there’s very minimal risk, I would say. So that’s why people do it.

Tony:
Yeah. So Kenneth, you’ve done a great job, but I just want to kind of like rephrase it, that way people would see it a little bit more clearly. So what are all the things that should go into someone’s buy box? So you talked about like number of doors, you talked about condition. What are the other few pieces someone should really narrow in on when they’re talking about their buy box?

Kenneth:
Yeah. So area, I’d say median household income, number of doors, which would kind of correlate with purchase price. So I think those kind of go hand in hand. Year built and yeah, those are pretty much, I would say are… And crime, but I think that kind of goes hand in hand with the area and stuff.

Tony:
So, I mean, and obviously you’re looking at price as well, right? You know that, hey, I’m not going to buy a property that’s a $100,000, I’m not going to buy a property that’s $100 million. So how are you determining what price point that you’re going after? Because since this is a syndication, obviously you don’t have the money in the bank today. So it’s like, how do you know what’s a reasonable price point for you to get under contract that you can then go out and raise money for?

Kenneth:
Yeah. Great question. And I think, so we kind of have an understanding as to, in our network, how much money we could put together if we had a deal that checked all the boxes, pretty much so to say. So if it’s in a great area, there’s job growth, population growth, the median household income is good, the asset is not old, doesn’t necessarily need a lot of work, there’s not a lot of crime. So if it checks all the boxes, what can our partners, some of our partners or the people that we know, how much money do we think we could bring to the deal? So that’s kind of what we look at first because, obviously, we’re bringing the equity, you’re raising the equity so that you can get the loan. And that’s kind of how we kind of reverse engineer to see, okay, well, this is our maximum purchase price, or at least this is where we feel comfortable.

Tony:
So there’s always the issues to you, Kenneth, with soft commitments, like soft commitments versus money wired, right? You can have one money for the soft commitments, but it’s going to be a different number when the money actually gets wired in. So what kind of buffer do you typically kind of look for? Right. It’s like, I don’t know, say for example, you’re buying a property and, we’ll just use round numbers, so it’s easier, but say you’re buying a property that’s a million dollars and say that your down payment and what you need comes out to, I don’t know, $400,000, what you need to close and execute your business plan. How much would you want to see in soft commitments before actually getting that property under contract to make sure that you can close on it?

Kenneth:
Yeah. I would say probably close to double. Well, I wouldn’t say double and that’s because… Yeah, I’d probably say maybe like three-fourths more, so let’s say like 600, likely. So we have a little bit extra that’s, I think that, that would be a safe, comfortable number.

Tony:
Okay. And then one last question on the money raising piece, we can keep moving. So given where the market is at today, I think there’s a lot of fear and uncertainty amongst some investors. Some people understand that this is a good time to buy because there’s less competition. Other investors are a little bit more frightened. How is the current market cycle impact, A, your underwriting in general, but then, B, your ability to go out there and raise the funds that you guys need?

Kenneth:
Yeah. So two huge things that just come to mind. A few, I’d say like six to eight months ago, we were getting 75, 80% leverage on, pretty much all day, on any asset that we were looking at, as long as the area was a good area. Nowadays, we’re getting quoted 65% leverage, 65 to 70% leverage, which obviously means that you need to raise more money. And then I would also touch on with everything going on in the pullback that we’ve seen in stock market, crypto and people, it’s an obvious that what, I don’t know if it was obvious, but I would say a lot of people are starting to realize that there’s less loan applications being applied for, I guess, for people in search for homes. And this is because interest rates are going up and that therefore correlates with the amount that you’re going to be paying per month.
So people are realizing that there’s something going on in the economy. So I think it’s bringing fear to the market. So I think kind of what we’ve been doing is just trying to educate, because if you keep your money in the bank right now, it’s not making anything, it’s actually losing money, if you want to be technicalities. Also, if you put it in stocks, I mean that would be very fearful. I would be scared to do that. And then crypto, I mean, that would be another thing that I would say is probably not the best idea. So where is the best place to put the money? I personally would say, and this might be biased, but I think it’s real estate just because it would hold its value, at least to an extent.

Tony:
Yeah. Just one follow up on that.

Kenneth:
Yeah.

Tony:
Can’t remember which hedge fund it was. It was either Blackstone or one of those big hedge funds. And they recently announced that they raised $30 billion for a real estate fund they’re going to be launching here shortly. And I think that was like one of the biggest raises they’ve done when it came to real estate. And one of their big selling points was that real estate is one of the best hedges against inflation. And I think that’s why there was so much interest and why they were able to garner so much investor capitals because real estate is one of the best ways to make sure that your capital, at least paces with, but can oftentimes outpace the rate of inflation.

Kenneth:
A hundred percent. I definitely agree. I mean, there’s a lot of different asset classes or investment vehicles that you can pretty much invest in, but we’ve, especially now, we’re all starting to realize, well, I guess I kind of knew this, but a lot of people are starting to realize that they aren’t as secure as you would think. And so there’s all this money that is now starting to be pulled out of these markets and they’re sophisticated enough to know that they don’t want to just leave their money in the bank. So they’re all chasing after an asset class that has been proven to pretty much beat inflation year by year.

Ashley:
Yeah. The only thing I would add to that is with putting money into the stock market, I think that if you are going to hold your money in the stock market for a long time, now could be a great time because if you look at the 30-year history of the stock market, especially index funds. Pretty much all my stock market money is in Vanguard Index Funds. And I still think that’s a great way to diversify if you don’t need your money within the next maybe several years, I think that you can see some growth there. But still 100%, real estate is still my favorite investment strategy that there is because you have so much more control over it.

Kenneth:
I agree. I mean, you don’t take a loss until you sell, right? So.

Ashley:
Yeah. So Kenneth, now that we’ve kind of talked about what your buy box is, your criteria. What is the next step? You find a property that fits that criteria, what happens next?

Kenneth:
Yeah. So there’s a underwriting process and a lot of people can do this on back of the napkin kind of thing, but we usually use an analyzer. So we go through our analyzer, we analyze the deal. There’s a lot of steps, I guess you could say, that you would want to go through and check out to make sure that these numbers make sense.

Ashley:
Kenneth, so when you mention your analyzer, is this like a software? Is this like a spreadsheet you guys put together? What exactly is that?

Kenneth:
It’s a spreadsheet. And like I said, I’m a part of a group. So the group actually built a spreadsheet. I could be biased when I say this, but I think that I’ve seen several spreadsheets and I think that this is the most in depth spreadsheet out there. And like I said, I’ve seen a few of them. I haven’t seen all of them, so that might be a biased thought. But I would say, obviously we want to look at the comps, see what other comparable properties, similar vintage, similar area, what they’re renting for and what condition their units are in. So obviously if you see this property and it’s ’80s build, let’s say, but it isn’t renovated, let’s say, but you see other properties that are similar in ’80s vintage in the same area that have grander countertops, new flooring, new cabinets, paint, the whole nine, but they’re getting $200 more.
Well, we can obviously tell that this subject property is not achieving those rents because they’re not in the same condition, but we can also conclude that if we went in and did the same renovations, we can likely get that same rent bump, so that’s kind of what we look into. So the rent comps. We also want to make sure that we get quotes. Several, there’s a several, a checklist. So we want to make sure that we get quotes from our insurance company, because you can take a guess as to what insurance will be, but I think most insurance companies provide free soft quotes, which they can, they’re pretty accurate. So it doesn’t take them that long either. So you would want to get an insurance quote to see what you’ll be paying an insurance.
We usually like to either consult a tax consultant because taxes can be very tricky depending on what county and they change in every county. Some counties they freeze, some counties they reassess on sale. It’s different all over the place. So there’s not like one strategy. So a tax consultant is what we usually like to do, but you could call your tax office and just kind of ask them, a historically, how do they appraise and what their millage rates are, which is just kind of what they assess.

Ashley:
So you’re talking about like calling the assessor’s office?

Kenneth:
Yeah, exactly. And they can pretty much provide guidance, but we just like to be pretty accurate with our numbers.

Tony:
Kenneth, one follow up question. I’ve actually never heard of a tax consultant when it comes to identifying property taxes. Usually what we do is we just call the county of the city or whatever. Where do you find this tax consultant? Is there like a website where folks do this? Or is it like just, yeah. How do you find this person?

Kenneth:
Yeah, well, I was put in touch, so like I said, that’s the good thing about being in a group, I guess that kind of has already people that they’ve used in the past. But I’m sure you could just Google tax consultant or tax assessor consultant then I’m sure that there’s, there’s tons of companies out there that just specialize, especially in certain areas. You would just want to make sure that, obviously, that person that you’re consulting is familiar with the tax in that county because if they’re not, like I said, it can change in counties and in each state there can be tons of counties, so. Yeah.

Tony:
Ashley, have you ever used a tax consultant or do you typically just reach out to the county assessor’s office too?

Ashley:
Yeah, just the assessor’s office.

Kenneth:
Yeah.

Tony:
Yeah. Interesting. All right. Sorry, Kenneth, didn’t want to get you off track, but I just wanted to [inaudible 00:27:23].

Kenneth:
No worries.

Tony:
So continue.

Kenneth:
And the reason we do that is, well, yes, to get a better accurate representation as to what the property taxes will be. Because if you’re in this, whenever single family, obviously you’re holding for long-term, but in the value on a multi-family property is what it produces an income. So if you’re incorrect about your numbers, that can negatively affect or positively affect your valuation. So we just want to make sure we’re as accurate. And also once you hire one, they can also try to pretty much appeal the assessment. So that’s kind of usually you use a tax consultant to appeal or go to the county and just appeal on your values so that they can lower your taxes. But yeah, so I guess the next thing on the list, we like to consult our local property management company.
So although we are, I would say, experts in the areas that we’re investing in, no one knows that area better than usually our property management companies. So we usually like to build relationships with property management companies that are in those areas that we’re investing in so that when we find an opportunity, we can go to them and they could potentially, they can provide us a budget for expenses, what similar properties of similar vintages and in this similar area are running at. For example, what they’re spending on marketing or payroll, things like that, because they know that market better than most people because they usually manage lots of units in that area. And also what they think based on the comps, what they think rents could be pushed to and what renovations you would need in order to achieve those rents. So I think, and we rely heavily on our property management company.

Tony:
And let me ask just one clarifying question, Kenneth. You’re running through a lot of really, I think, beneficial things to do, but are you doing all of this before or after submitting your initial offer to the seller, to the broker?

Kenneth:
Yeah. So this is all before we submit an offer. And the reason why is because in this business, it’s all about reputation and people, there’s a term called retrading, which basically means you go back and try to ask for a discount. And if you do that without, obviously, if you go in and do due diligence and find that there’s foundation issues and no one knew, or termite damage, for example, no one even knew that there was termite damage, then you need a discount because you need to repair that. But if it’s just because you didn’t do your numbers correctly, you’ll get a negative connotation to your name and it’s not really, it’s very frowned upon in this space.

Tony:
Gotcha.

Kenneth:
So we just want to make sure we have all of our ducks in a row, so that when we submit an offer, we don’t have to go back and try to get a discount for something we should have already kind of looked at.

Ashley:
Kenneth, how long does this initial checklist for underwriting take you? To get an insurance quote, to talk with your property management company. What’s an average timeframe? So if you think of an investor right now, or the past year, not even right now, going after single family or duplex, especially on the MLS, it’s like you have to analyze that deal that day. So what is kind of the timeframe look like for multi-family doing the underwriting?

Kenneth:
Yeah. And this depends, obviously, on various factors. Unfortunately, you have to depend on other people who are also very busy and are probably receiving tons of deals, especially now. But I would say, usually, I mean the initial underwriting, which I do, I guesstimate most of these numbers before I go to insurance, property management or a tax consultant. So I try to find those numbers for myself and just see, usually because I know the area and the market and things like that, usually they’re not too far off.
So if they don’t even pass that first, I don’t even go to that step. But once I do send it out to them, I’d say it takes anywhere from four days to a week for them to get back. Usually the, it depends on how much time we have, but on these deals it’s not like you’re buying, it’s usually pretty hefty of a price, so usually you have a lot of time to submit an offer. So I’d say usually they’re on market for at least a few, I’d say minimum two weeks, most of the time, almost like a month. So you have plenty of time.

Ashley:
So when this property, the underwriting goes through and you’re like, yes, we want to make an offer. Are you putting together a full contract? Are you submitting a letter of intent, an LOI? What’s kind of the next step after that?

Kenneth:
Yeah. So once you figure out like, okay, I like the area, I like the price, this makes sense for us, the returns are great. You then draft up a letter of intent, which just, it’s a non-binding agreement pretty much, just stating that this is the price, these are the terms. So usually not, more so now there’s less pushback, but usually on multi-family you’re putting hard money, day one, how much you’re going to be putting, there’s a certain period for due diligence, which is pretty standard in single family as well. And then how long you’ll take to close. So I think standard 60 days here in multi-family. So you kind of draft up the price, the terms and it’s a non-binding agreement, so it’s just showing your intent, but people pretty much respect that heavily in apartments.

Ashley:
So you guys can Google an LOI, a letter of intent, online and find a million different samples of what it looks like. And it’s very common in the commercial real estate world for a letter of intent to be submitted to a seller before you actually have a full contract drafted. So kind of what are some key elements of your letter of intent that you think everybody should use in theirs?

Kenneth:
Yeah. So like you said, you can find a ton of them. So obviously, the date, who it’s going to, the purchase price, the address, well, at least the name of the property, if you want the address but I just usually put the name, the purchase price, how much earnest money or hard money, if you want to put that, how long you’ll have to close, how long you’ll have for due diligence, and whether or not you’ll have financing contingency. Everything else can pretty much be spelled out in the contract. Which, I mean, the contracts are usually really long, so you don’t necessarily have to go into all of that.

Ashley:
So after you’ve submitted the LOI and put that together, what does the due diligent look like? Are you driving comps? Are you going to the actual property? Are you sending people there? What’s that the due diligence process look like for you?

Kenneth:
Yes. So, and I meant to say it, so before submitting an LOI, usually we tour the property. Now there’s some companies that don’t tour, they don’t even want to spend their time looking at it if they’re not even going to win the deal. And it really just depends on what you want to do. I personally think it’s just best to look at it, that way you’re not wasting your time or the other’s, seller’s or broker’s time.
So usually we like to get on site. We like to tour the property. Usually they’ll show you a renovated unit and then a classic unit, and then you’ll get to walk around. You’ll get to look at the amenities. You’ll get, I mean, you could drive the area. So usually we like to drive the area. We like to take a look at the comps that have sold, so sales comps. We like to take a look at rent comps. If we have the ability, we like to potentially schedule tours and secret shop, pretty much, rent comps to see kind of what their units are with our own eyes. Because you can look at it on the internet, but it looks a lot different, usually, in person. So we like to do all of that before submitting the LOI, and then yes, we submit the LOI.

Ashley:
And, of course, when you ask to see a unit as a potential buyer, they’re going to show you the best unit there is.

Kenneth:
Yes, exactly. Yeah.

Ashley:
So, you do the whole checklist and then once you’re like, okay, we like this deal, then you kind of save the actual visiting of the property last and then you’re going and writing your offer?

Kenneth:
Yes. That is usually the very last thing that we do.

Tony:
One follow up question on that, Kenneth. Where do you live in relation to the markets you’re investing in? Because I can imagine for some folks, say you live in California but you’re looking at the Dallas or the Midwest somewhere, it could get expensive trying to find all those properties before actually submitting your LOI. So how do you guys balance that, not wasting too much money up front if the deal doesn’t go anywhere?

Kenneth:
Yeah. And that’s a great question. So we do have properties that are a little away. So we’re in North Carolina and we own properties in Florida. We try to look for deals that are in North Carolina and Georgia, which are either driving distance or just a quick flight away. I would say or recommend that you look in your backyard, unless you’re in a market that you wouldn’t want to be investing in, which is up to your own preferences, right?
But I think the best would be to start just because if you, whenever you look at a map, usually in a place that you live, you can pretty quickly say, oh, I know where that’s at, that’s near this store or near this area and this area’s good, or I don’t know if I want to be in that area. So you kind of already understand that because I’m sure you’ve been driving to work. You’ve either been taking your dog to the veterinarian. You kind of already know the area. So I think that, that would be the best thing to kind of start off with in your backyard.

Tony:
Cool.

Ashley:
The last little piece here that I don’t think we touched on is when you are going to, you’re underwriting the deal, who are you talking to about financing the deals to get that, to find out how much you’re going to have to leverage the deal for, how much money you think you can raise, who’s going to sign for the loan, things like that? Are there key people you discuss that with before you go into underwriting?

Kenneth:
Yes. So as far as financing, so when we do underwrite, we do send it as well to, we use a mortgage broker that all of our group pretty much uses. But you can, I mean, the amount of debt that’s out there, as long as you qualify obviously, is actually insane. So especially with multi-family, they want to lend on these assets as long as it’s a good asset and you can prove that there is value potential. So I would say, you can pretty much Google any mortgage broker, go on LinkedIn and you can find them there. They’re all over the place. Fortunately for us, we have someone that we use and we also have someone that has the capability to, at least for all the deals we’re doing, they have the capability to sign on the loan as a key principle.
But like I said, it really just depends on your network of people. So if you know someone that’s pretty high network or net worth, I mean, and they’ve already told you that they’re willing to sign on loans, you can kind of keep that in mind. They’ll obvious, the mortgage broker will ask for balance sheets and liquidity state proof, things like that and also schedule real estate owned and things like that. But you can kind of have that in line before you go out and submit an offer, I’d say.

Tony:
Well, Kenneth, you’ve done a great job of walking us through kind of what that checklist looks like. But I just want to recap for the listeners to kind of package it up for them. So first you underwrite the deal, right? Then you’re getting your quotes, your insurance, your mortgage, your property management, your taxes. If all those things check out, then you’re actually trying to get boots on the ground, go walk the property, drive the comps. And then if everything checks out, you move on actually submitting your LOI. Does that sound about right?

Kenneth:
Yes. That’s a hundred percent correct.

Tony:
Okay. Awesome, man. So there’s a few pieces there that I want to spend a little bit more time drilling into because I think this is where most newer investors might find some challenges, but first is actually meeting with and networking with brokers. So early in my investing career, we had aspiration of also going into multi-family syndication. We had a really difficult time getting decent deals from brokers, right? Most brokers, they kind of have their Rolodex of syndicators that they get their deals to first, and if those syndicators don’t want it, then they’ll kind of start sharing it with other people, right? Which usually means you’re getting leftovers.

Kenneth:
Yeah.

Tony:
So how can a new investor, I guess, position themselves when talking to a broker to not get the deals that no one else wanted?

Kenneth:
Yeah, absolutely. So first of all, I mean, I think getting to know someone is the best way, honestly, and in order to do that, you need to see them in person, whether that’s you tell them that you’re going to be in the area, or if you live there, telling them, asking them if they want to go grab dinner or not dinner, usually lunch, I do. So go grab lunch or a coffee or something. That way you can get face to face, or if you’re already on their list and you go, usually you can go to their website, sign up for their email blast and they send you deals. So if they send you a deal and it’s on market, you can usually schedule a tour with them and go out and just tour with them, get to know them. And that way they kind of understand, they see you, they see that you’re serious.
And you just get in front of them because then you get to know them. You talk to them, you kind of learn about their story. They kind of learn about you. They see that you’re real, because most people they’ve never met before. So regardless, although you probably won’t be the number one person they think of, you will very easily differentiate yourself to the thousands of people that they have on their list, just because they have already seen you and they’ve gotten to speak to you, and you can get to know someone pretty easily when you speak with them in person because energy’s everything.

Ashley:
Let me ask you this. What’s a piece of advice you have where someone can get in front of somebody, like a really busy person, where if you ask them to coffee, you ask them to dinner, to buy them dinner, if you want to just stop into their office and talk, that, that’s not going to happen because they’re too busy for that. Even if it is somebody who wants your business, if you’re not somebody they know already has a track record or can definitely close a deal, it’s going to be a lot harder to get in front of someone. So do you have an advice of how you can stick out in their mind at all? Is it sending them a gift every single week or nonstop phone calls, sending letter, love letters.

Kenneth:
Yeah.

Ashley:
I don’t know. What would your advice be on that?

Kenneth:
That’s a great question. So two things, if you’re speaking about brokers, in general, in order to, I guess, get brokers to like you, I would say just really getting in front of them. I mean, like I said, whether or not you can, sometimes they give opportunities. If you constantly go on tours, you constantly underway and then you answer them and tell them, hey, this deal does not work because of X, I don’t like the area or the returns are not there or just kind of explain why the deal doesn’t work for you. They’ll start to kind of understand what you’re looking for and they understand you’re serious, but if they send you something and then you just never answer them, they won’t ever really understand kind of why the deal didn’t work. So you’re not really helping them.
Now, if you’re just talking about, I’d say, I guess, valuable people or people that are high-net-worth or just people that don’t have much time, I’d say the number one way is to start a podcast. We, on our podcast, we’ve been able to bring a ton of people. We’ve been able to ask them good questions, but really sometimes questions that we have ourselves. And most people, if you kind of invite them to your podcast, most of the time, they would love to get on a podcast because it’s more exposure for them. And they’re not going to just ask you, how many downloads do you have or anything like that, anything crazy. And over time, you’ll have great conversations with a lot of people. Usually you’ll get their email, at least. Sometimes you can even get their phone number on their signup sheet. And yeah, you can stay in contact or email them once in a while.

Tony:
That’s a great tip, Kenneth, about starting your own podcast. And I’ve shared the story many times, but when I started my first podcast, that was a big part of my motivation as well. It was just like meet as many people as I could. And I was putting out three episodes a week when I first started my podcast and I was doing the math. I was like three people a week at 52 weeks a year, that’s like over a 150 people I’m going to get to meet and talk with, as I’m doing this podcast. And I love that. But one follow up question. How many deals would you say you have to look at? How many deals will a broker send you before you find one that’s actually worth something? Is it one good deal for every five? Is it one good deal for every 100? Where do you kind of fall in that spectrum?

Kenneth:
Yeah. I would say, so I guess, and I think maybe things have changed now. I think the market is turning into a buyer’s market. So we kind of have more say. But as of recently, usually it’s about every 100 deals, 10 of them will make sense for you or fit your, I guess, criteria or something or get… Yeah, your criteria, I mean. And then out of those 10, you’ll probably submit those 10 offers, and out of those 10 you’ll potentially get one or two accepted. And then out of those one or two, you’ll close on one. So two accepted you’ll close on one. So that’s kind of like the metric, I guess. So we aim to underwrite a 100 deals. I wouldn’t say as fast as possible, but we kind of know once we’re getting closer to a 100, it just seems to work out somehow.

Ashley:
And that shows the importance of keeping track too. So you actually know what that metric is within your business.

Kenneth:
Absolutely. Yeah. Organization is key, for sure.

Ashley:
Yeah. Kenneth, this has been all great advice and I want to keep it going by moving on to our Rookie Request Line. As a listener, you can call in at any time to 1-888-5-ROOKIE, and leave us a voicemail. Tony and I will get it, and we may pick it to be played on our show for a guest. So this week’s question is from Nick Bowers from Colorado Springs. I have a question regarding my first investment. I’m investing out of state. Now I’m torn between cash flow or appreciation. I’m worried that I can’t do a cash-out refi on multi-family and grow my portfolio. Which avenue do you guys suggest? Thank you for your time and I love the show. So what would be your advice there, Kenneth?

Kenneth:
Yeah, so especially in times like now, I would say obviously you want to be in a market in which there’s potential for appreciation, but I would say that the number one thing that you should not compromise is cash flow. As long as the property is cash flowing, it doesn’t matter what the value is. You’re still making money. You can still service the debt. You can still service all of the expenses and you can keep it. The worst thing to happen in real estate is not to be able to make your payments or have negative cash flow because that’s kind of what can hurt you if there is a downturn. Evaluations may fluctuate, but if your property’s just producing income and usually rents stay steady through recessions, which is pretty historical, you will be fine. So I would say cash flow for sure. But obviously, you would like to look into a market that has potential for some upside.

Tony:
Yeah. Kenneth, that’s a great point. And honestly, this question about cash flow versus appreciation comes up a lot and, honestly, I think it comes down to the unique person situation. If you’re trying to replace your W-2 income as fast as you possibly can, appreciation isn’t going to help you a whole heck of a lot, right? You need cash flow. But if you’re just trying to invest as a way to help supplement your retirement, then yeah, maybe cash flow isn’t as important today and you’re more concerned about appreciation. So whenever someone asks this question about appreciation versus cash flow, I think it’s a deeply personal question that’s really more aligned with what that person’s goals are when it comes to real estate investing. For me, cash flow is always more important because I knew I needed the money coming in to replace my W-2 income. So I think hopefully that helps point you in the right direction.

Kenneth:
Yeah. Correct.

Tony:
Kenneth, we want to take you onto our rookie exam. So I know you answered this back when you were on with your brothers, but maybe we can tailor your answers today to be a little bit more about the acquisition side of the business you’re focused on. So if you’re ready, we’ll take you to the rookie exam.

Kenneth:
Awesome. Let’s do it.

Tony:
All right. So question number one. What’s one actionable thing people should do after listening to this episode?

Kenneth:
Yes. So I mean, whether you learn how to underwrite, and underwriting can be pretty, it can get complex, but I would say it can be very simple as well. Just learn how to underwrite on the back of the napkin. And or if you have, if you can find an analyzer that you want to use or a model that you want to use, just underwrite deals, whether or not you’re going to go out and look at them or you don’t have to go through all the way, but just understanding why the numbers are the way they are and what makes them that way. I think just looking at deals and learning how to underwrite deals is just the most important thing.

Ashley:
And if you need something to use to analyze a deal, you can go to biggerpockets.com and use the calculators on there to analyze a deal.

Kenneth:
Exactly.

Ashley:
You get five times free and then, but if you’re a pro member it’s unlimited, so.

Kenneth:
There you go.

Ashley:
A really great, easy way to get started because there’s a little link next to every expense, every income input, every input has a little blue link and you click on that and it tells you what it is and where to get that information from. So really great for beginners and experienced investors too. Hey, Kenneth, one question real quick. When you are talking to a mortgage broker, you’re talking to investors, you have some kind of report or you’re showing your calculator, your spreadsheet to these people, that’s super beneficial, right? To have something to kind of put in front of them, instead of just saying, hey, this deal is going to cash flow X amount without showing the proof. Yeah.

Kenneth:
Yeah, exactly. So you obviously build a pro forma, which is just looking into the future, what you think you’ll be spending on each item like payroll, what taxes will be, what marketing is going to be. Just going through those line items and what you think you’ll spend, and then also where you think income will be based on where you think you can push rents. So kind of showing them that spreadsheet and those numbers kind of helps them put together an image or the vision as what you’re seeing.

Ashley:
Yeah, and the Bigger Pockets calculator reports have, once you analyze it, you can just print off a report, little pretty chart, all your numbers on it to show to people. So mortgage brokers or investors on the deal.

Kenneth:
Awesome. Yeah.

Ashley:
Okay. So our next question for you, Kenneth, is as far as your role in marketing acquisitions, what’s one tool, software app, or system in your business that you use?

Kenneth:
I would say CoStar, but that might be a little pricey. Really, I mean, honestly, you can use apartments.com. I sometimes go to apartments.com. I mean, maybe it’s not really like software, but apartments.com, I mean, that’s literally, I’d say, a majority of the time that’s where most apartments market their rent and they put pictures there. They try to make their property look as beautiful as possible and try to market. Because whenever you search up, if you’re moving to a new place and you search up apartments for wherever, apartments.com does their own marketing, so likely their ad or their website is going to be the first link up in the top. So most apartments and us included, we use apartments.com and we market on apartments.com. So I use that to look up rent comp. So I find the subject property and then I’ll look at other properties in the area and kind of see what their finishes are, what their renovations look like, and then what they’re renting their units out for.

Tony:
Awesome brother. So last question for you, where do you plan on being in five years?

Kenneth:
Five years. Oh, wow. That’s a long time from now. So we have, I’d say, some pretty audacious goals. We’ve come across people that have grown their companies pretty quickly. So I’d say one year, five years, I’d say half a billion of assets under management and on the acquisition side, so not as a co-sponsor, pretty much as acquisitions, at least. So yeah, I’d say that, that’s our goal. So whether, and I would say units, but wherever, depending on the market, it could be a 100,000 per unit or a 130,000 per unit. So I think that kind of varies. So yeah, I’d say, closer to a half a billion in management.

Tony:
I love that Kenneth. So our goal in our business is to get to 1 billion in 10 years. So half a billion in five years is almost the same thing, man. So I love that.

Kenneth:
That’s our tenure, so that I just had to do, yeah.

Tony:
You did cut it in half, right?

Kenneth:
Yeah.

Tony:
I love it, man. All right, cool. So let me highlight this week’s rookie rockstar. This is Jason V from Wilmington, North Carolina. I’ve actually never been there, but we’re actually looking at some properties in the North Carolina area. So I might have to pick your brain Kenneth. But Jason says that he’s been investing for two years now and wants hear his most recent success story, but he closed in an eightplex last week. And as part of this deal, he was able to complete a 1031 exchange and got his first commercial property, first commercial loan.
So he believes that the fair market value with the current rent is around $700,000. He plans to do a cash-out refi in six to 12 months and hopefully pull out $200,000. And he’s believing that the value at that time of the property would be about a million bucks, which is amazing, right? To increase the value in such a short period of time. So Jason, congratulations to you, excited to see you get that first commercial deal done. And hopefully we’ll get you on the show soon, once this deal wraps up. So you can tell us all about it.

Kenneth:
Yeah. Jason, congrats. Wilmington is like two and a half, I’m in Durham, North Carolina, so that’s a two and a half hour drive from us. My brother actually studied at UNC Wilmington before dropping out and pursuing real estate full-time. But congrats, that’s awesome. Hit us up, so we can link.

Ashley:
Yeah. Great job, Jason. Excited to see what you do with the deal. Well, Kenneth, thank you so much for joining us again, back on the podcast. Can you tell everyone where they can reach out to you and find out some more information about you?

Kenneth:
Yes, absolutely. So you guys can find us on pretty much at @donisbrothers and that’s Donis, D-O-N as in Nancy, I-S and then brothers on YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, where else? Oh, TikTok. Pretty much every platform.

Tony:
Everywhere.

Kenneth:
Yeah, pretty much everywhere. And then our website is www.donisinvestmentgroup.com, if you guys want to learn more about investing in multi-family and why that might be beneficial for you guys. Yeah, you guys should check us out.

Ashley:
Hey, well, thank you so much. We really enjoyed having you back. So make sure you guys go back and take a listen to the Donis brothers episode. So we had the first episode with all three of them, number 175. Jeffrey was on 193 and Kerwin was on 199. So yeah, thank you so much for joining us. I’m Ashley, @wealthfromrentals and he’s Tony, @tonyjrobinson. And we will be back with another episode.