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Dave:
Hey, everyone. Welcome to On the Market. I’m your host, Dave Meyer, joined by Jamil Damji, for a very special episode today. Do you want to tell everyone who’s coming on today, Jamil?

Jamil:
It’s my best friend, my best buddy in the whole world, Pace Morby. I am thrilled to have him here. He’s a real estate genius, and he’s going to school us all in the world of creative finance. Your minds are going to be blown.

Dave:
Honestly, mine was. It was so cool, and just so you know, we obviously… Pace has so much information, but we brought him on today because what he’s really known for and what he’s a specialist in is creative finance. We’re going to talk about two specific strategies, seller financing and sub-to, and both of those, given the interest rate environment that we’re in right now are becoming, at least in my opinion, you’ll hear all about this, more and more attractive options for everyday real estate investors. It gives you options to pay less in interest basically, and so-

Jamil:
Absolutely.

Dave:
… if you are running into 6% interest rates and you’re worried about that and it’s causing you to shy away from deals, you’re definitely, definitely going to want to listen to this episode. All right, we ran way too long in talking to Pace because it was fun and he has such a great story, so we’ll keep this introduction short, and let’s welcome Pace Morby onto On the Market.
Pace Morby, welcome to On the Market. Thank you so much for being here.

Pace:
My favorite show in real estate, brother. Thank you for having me, both of you.

Dave:
Oh, you’re just saying that. You say that to all of the shows.

Pace:
I don’t. This show is unbelievable. I’ve been waiting for BiggerPockets to do something this epic. You guys are the best.

Dave:
Awesome. Well thank you. I want to start because if our audience doesn’t know, we are in the presence right now of one of the great bromances in real estate investing right now, I think, right? I mean-

Jamil:
A hundred percent.

Dave:
… Pace and-

Jamil:
That’s a-

Dave:
… Jamil, if you don’t know, are on a show on A&E called Triple Digit Flip. They work together, and I’m just curious, I don’t even know the backstory. How did you guys meet and start running these businesses together?

Pace:
Oh, can I tell this story?

Dave:
Please do, Pace.

Pace:
Okay, so this is an interesting story, maybe to us, but I was a contractor for a long time. I was working for Opendoor, Offerpad, Zillow. I was their main contractor doing all their turns here in Phoenix, Arizona. I would do their work, bill them, send them an invoice, and that’s how I was making money on their fix and flips. Well, Opendoor changed their business model. They went from spending a lot of money on renovations to very little. They threw in an algorithm where they go, “Look, hey, Pace, we’ve got some news for you.” I go into the office. I have 180 employees at the time just dedicated only to Opendoor. We were doing like a million a month in revenue with them.
They come in. I talk to a lady named Megan. She goes, “Well, we’ve got some good news and some bad news. The good news is, here’s a bonus check for a hundred thousand dollars. Thanks for all the hard work.” I’m like, “Yes.” “Then, the bad news is we’re going to change our entire business model, so we’re going to go from spending an average of $50,000 per house to spending closer to $3,000 per house.”

Dave:
Whoa.

Pace:
You imagine having 180 employees dedicated to that business model, and then all of a sudden you need maybe one-tenth of them?

Dave:
Wow.

Pace:
What I did is I deviated my business to focus on local fix and flippers and I said, “Okay, I’m not going to let go of my guys. I love my guys. I love my business. I’m going to deviate my clientele to find local fix and flippers that are doing also turns and that kind of stuff, quick fix and flips.” I find a guy, I’m not proud of this, but I found a guy that essentially was running a Ponzi scheme. I got into him a million dollars, so Dave, I’ve always been really creative.
How I built my business as a construction contractor is I would go to guys like this gentleman, let’s just say his name is John. It’s not John, but let’s just say it is John, and I’d go, “Hey, I see you’re fixing and flipping. I see public record. You’re doing 20, 30 deals a year. How about I come in and be your contractor? I will fund, I will be a line of credit to you, and I will fund your renovations and you can pay me at the end of your project when you sell the house.”
It was the fastest way to grow a business because essentially, all of these people that are fixing and flipping, they’re going, “Okay, well, I can get hard money to purchase the house, but how am I going to pay for the renovation?” I essentially was their private money lender and their contractor. Blew up my business like crazy. I was so well-known in town as the contractor to go to because of the creative way that I would go in and build my business. Well, this worked until it didn’t, and there was a guy that was buying really bad deals and he was borrowing money from friends, family. Finally, he hears about me and he calls me up, starts courting me.
Very long story short, four years later, I’m into this guy well over a million dollars in cash, and he comes to me and he goes, “I’ll get you all your money back. I know you’ve got these rentals, these sub-to and seller finance and these private house you have. If you can sell all of those and get me the cash I need to wrap up these next 20 projects, I can get you flush. I just need to finish these next 20 projects.”
The problem, Dave, is I was just so deep into this hole at this point, I couldn’t see way out except for I’m going to dig… Here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to dig myself out and like get a tunnel to go upwards. That’s what I was thinking, so I go and sell 40 rentals, I sell my personal house just to save my bacon. Essentially, in the midst of all of this, I go, “I need a confidant. I need somebody that I can trust and I can get some advice from because everybody’s telling me I’m crazy.”
I was almost looking for somebody to justify my position. I was looking for… Whatever truth you seek, you will find it, like whatever… If you go out and you want to believe your own lies, I wanted to believe the lie that this guy was ever going to pay me back. I wanted to believe it so desperately, so I was going around town finding people that had done business with him trying to find somebody that was like, “No, the guy’s credible.” Well, I run into Jamil’s name and I’m like trying to find this guy Jamil. People talked about Jamil. He was like a ghost in town. He was doing 10, 15… Literally, this guy was a ghost. He was like a night owl. Nobody even knew where he was or anything, but people were doing deals with him, a lot of deals, like 15, 20 deals every single month.
His name was on the lips of like some of the most prolific investors here in Phoenix, so his name would come up everywhere I’d go, restaurants, eating with people, going to RIAs. I’d hear people on YouTube podcasting about, “This guy Jamil, this guy Jamil, but don’t talk about his name.” I don’t know what this… He was like Machiavelli. It was the craziest thing ever.

Dave:
Don’t look him in the eyes, whatever you do.

Pace:
Basically, it was just like that, and I go on Instagram. I find this guy with a user name of @jdamji, and it has no photos, no posts, and his profile photo is an owl.

Dave:
So mysterious.

Pace:
Seriously, this is it. I DM him and I go, “Hey, man, I’m in trouble with this guy named John, and I heard you’ve done a lot of deals with this guy. I’m kind of looking for somebody to help me through this with some advice.” Jamil takes two weeks to reply to me. This would be before Jamil was on social media. This was years ago, roughly six, seven years ago. Jamil goes, “We need to meet for lunch. We need to have a conversation.” This is a much longer story, but I’m going to wrap it up in 30 seconds.
Jamil sits me down and shows me through public record that this guy was running a Ponzi scheme. He was paying over retail value for houses with other wholesalers because what he was trying to do, this was his business model, he would tell all the wholesalers in town, “Go find me deals. Bring them all to me and I’ll do dispo or sell those to you to end buyers.” The way to beat out all his competition, from other people that were doing disposition, is he would overpay for these houses. Eight out of 10 times it would work, and the other 20% of the time he would overpay and he couldn’t sell the deal, but he didn’t want to go back to that wholesaler and say, “I’m going to bail on that deal,” and ruin that relationship. What he would do is he would bring the house to me and go, “Dig me out of this hole. Fund the construction. Hopefully we can rehab ourselves out of this bad decision I made.”
Jamil sits me down, shows me all through public record, “Pace, this guy’s leveraging 18% hard money. He’s got second position and third position loans from friends and families. This guy is running a Ponzi scheme to like the highest level.”

Dave:
Wow.

Pace:
Dave, I still didn’t believe Jamil. I sold my personal house.

Dave:
Oh, no.

Pace:
I sold 40 rentals and I got enough cash to give this guy. Right as I gave this guy the rest of my cash, I went through this six-month thing of liquidating all my assets to dig myself out, I get a bankruptcy letter. Hits me right on my doorstep, and the guy, he ends up filing bankruptcy on nearly $16 million of debt.

Dave:
Oh my God.

Jamil:
Yeah.

Dave:
Wow.

Pace:
Bonkers.

Dave:
I’m sorry to hear that. That’s horrible.

Pace:
It was one of the greatest things that ever happened to me, to be honest, okay.

Jamil:
It was.

Pace:
One of the reasons why is because I learned to never doubt a single thing that Jamil Damji has to say.

Dave:
It’s… Yeah, we all have to just… Whatever Jamil says, we have to follow from now on.

Pace:
Basically. This is what started a wonderful relationship. Jamil and I were actually competitors. We’ve always been competitors. We chase after the same cash deals here locally, and we go into a meetup, let’s say there’s a 200-person meetup here in Phoenix. Him and I are working the room with the same goal to get deals from people in that room. I’ll run up to people and I’ll go, “Hey, you got a deal for me?” They go, “I already sold it to Jamil.” I’m like, “Gosh, dang it.”
That’s how our relationship started. We started hanging out with each other a lot, and we realized that we were like the yin to each other’s yang. We started having so much fun that one day Jamil comes to me and he says, this is like three years into our relationship, he says, “I think we should take this buddy comedy on the road.” I think what we do is we just fly around and we go to local RIAs and we talk to people about how collaborating with your competition is one of the greatest things you could ever do.
I’m almost done with this story. This is how we ended up getting a TV show, too. We go and we spend money and time and energy going to these RIAs and people would say stuff like, “Man, do you have a coaching product?” We’re like, “No, we’re here to help you. We don’t have a product. We’re not coaches. We’re just here to show you what collaboration’s like.” People were dumbfounded and we created this amazing cult-like following of people that were like, “Wow, these guys are like genuinely here to just lay down the truth and teach us.” We’d go on appointments with people. We would go door-knocking. We would fly all over the country and do this with people.
Well, one day, Jamil and I are like, “Let’s take a two-week break.” At this time, I was just starting my YouTube channel and I go, “Cool. I’m going to go film YouTube. You go home, you take a break.” We’ve been on the road for like 60 days straight and just helping people. The day we get home, I get a text message from a guy named Ryan and he says, “Pace, I’ve got this deal. Cash deal, $165,000.” I go, “Love it. I want it. Send it to me. I’ll fix and flip that.” Five minutes later, Dave, he goes, “I’m sorry. The price is now $175,000.” I’m like, “What? Why? Why didn’t you just send it to me at 175? Why are we playing this game?” He says, “Well, because I have another guy bidding. He said he’d pay 175.” I go, “Gosh, dang it. Fine, I’ll pay 176.”
He comes back and he goes, “Okay, it’s 185 now.” This other guy just keeps hiking it up, and so I text Jamil and I go, “Bro, am I crazy to think that there’s no way to make money on this deal? Would you comp this for me? Some idiot is bidding me up on the other side of this wholesaler and I’m about to pay 186 for this thing I was about to pay 165 for.” Jamil goes, “I’m the other idiot.”

Dave:
That’s amazing. Did either of you buy it?

Pace:
We bought it together. It was one of those-

Dave:
Okay, yeah.

Pace:
… first deals we did together, and so I said, “Let’s just buy the deal together. Let’s stop bidding each other up. Dave, what we did is we went on Instagram and we told people, “Hey, we’ve never seen the house. We bought it sight unseen like you do fixing and flipping a lot of times. We go, “Meet us at the property. We’re going to do a walk-through.” We bring our YouTube crew and we ended up having like 40, 50 people go to this walk-through just randomly within like two hours of us posting this Instagram Story.
People show up. We film the YouTube video with all these people walking through the property with us, and Jamil’s just being hilarious, like he’s picking up the seller’s, the previous homeowner’s clothes and putting them on and using different voices and stuff. Well, dude, this is the craziest thing. Somebody sends this YouTube video to A&E-

Dave:
Whoa.

Pace:
… and they go, “There’s nothing like these two on TV. They’re competitors, but they’re collaborating, and they’re bringing the audience to the actual house.” Think about that. All these videos people do about like, “Hey, look at my house,” it’s like we started doing videos where we brought the audience as a live audience to our YouTube videos. A&E just fell in love with the strategy and what we loved, and so we got a TV show out of all of this stuff, so when… People are like, “I feel so bad that this guy filed bankruptcy on you,” I’m like, “It was the beginning of the greatest path of my life.”

Dave:
It’s so funny how that works out. It seems to always be the time you’re in the depths of despair that some glimmer of hope or something changes that leads to that best thing. I think that’s a really good lesson for people just investing in general, and appreciate you sharing your losses. Jamil did this on one of our previous episodes, too, but in this age of social media, you see people just presenting these front where everything is so great and there’s no losses and you’re always winning and making millions. There are hard times and it’s really cool to see how you turned what must have been really difficult, I’m sure it was really difficult at the time, into something that has been so fruitful and enjoyable for both of you.

Pace:
Yeah, it’s interesting. Looking at like the people who have a victim mentality versus, “How do I win the situation?” How do I… What’s that martial arts where you take the momentum being thrown at you and you throw it a different direction?

Dave:
That’s Jiu-Jitsu.

Pace:
Okay, cool, so it’s like Jiu-Jitsu. It’s like, “Okay, whatever energy’s being thrown at me, I’m going to use that momentum versus absorbing it and becoming the victim of that energy.” These are the things I’ve learned from Jamil is like how to use that energy properly, and it’s the same thing in this market right now. I see a lot of people complaining about interest rates and this and all these other things, and I’m like, “Guys, use these things to your advantage. You can either be a victim, or you can dominate in this exact market.” Jamil’s story about the 50… It was the 53-unit deal that you were talking about?

Jamil:
Yeah, yeah.

Pace:
Great story, and when it was going… I was watching this happen to Jamil, I was like, “I already know what you’re going to do, man. You’re going to use this as a learning lesson for hundreds of thousands of people to hear this story.” I think that video’s doing really, really well. People are loving it in the comments and stuff. Was that just recently released?

Jamil:
Yeah, it was just a released podcast we did here-

Pace:
[inaudible 00:16:29].

Jamil:
… on BiggerPockets.

Pace:
Anyway, the market, it’s changed a lot and I see a lot of people complaining about it and I’m over here thriving in this environment, excited about when these types of things happen, interest rate hikes, economic turmoil, those types of things. You just got to use it to your advantage. That’s all there is to it.

Jamil:
You know, to add to that, Pace, the interesting thing is for me, I’m a single-family guy. I’m a wholesaler. That’s my niche and I et it. I can wholesale and comp and do all these things in my sleep because it’s in my DNA, but I really want to get involved in other things. Pace and I, we both have an extremely lucrative life and I’m here, he watched me write a huge check to the IRS last year, and then he showed me his $3500 refund. I know how much money he makes, and so I’m like dumbfounded. I’m like, “Bro, what are you doing? How are you mitigating your tax situation? How are you accomplishing this?” This is the hardest thing that is in my life right now is, how do I keep the money I’m earning?
Had I done… Had I listened to Pace more, I would have been in this deal in a different structure. I would have been in this deal creatively and it would have saved my bacon, it would have saved the earnest money. The deal would have worked if I had put the deal together the way that he does. I’m watching this guy travel around the country, still right now, buying deals in Texas, buying deals in North Carolina, buying deals everywhere across the country using creative methods, minimizing his tax situation by depreciation, creating massive cash flow. While everybody is screaming about lending terms, he’s creating his own.

Dave:
Well, that is a perfect segue, and totally agree because we wanted to have yo on here, Pace, because you’ve become known in the real estate investing community for being one of the most creative people when it comes to financing deals. There is this challenge now, and I’m sure you’ll teach us how to make the best of it, but interest rates have nearly doubled over the last couple of months. For people who are just approaching their real estate investing with conventional mortgages, that makes cash flow more difficult to find. It makes everything less affordable, and so I’d love for you to just help our audience understand what alternative options are out there and how you, like you said, are thriving in this type of environment.

Pace:
Okay, cool, so last year, I did 40 BRRRRR deals, single-family BRRRRR deals. I don’t talk a lot about BRRRRR because it’s not on-brand for me. It confuses like what I’m talking about, but I love the BRRRRR strategy. I did 40 last year. This year, I’ll do less than 20.

Jamil:
Yes. I don’t know that you necessarily love it, Pace.

Pace:
Right. Okay. What it is is I guess I feel like I’m in a different lane. That’s all there is to it. I’ll do 20 deals this year that are BRRRRR and they’re way compressed, way, way, way compressed. A lot of the deals we had in our pipeline back in January that we were planning on buying and… You know, a lot of times, the BRRRRR strategy will take three to nine months, sometimes upwards of 12 depending on the size of the deal. We had to cancel a lot of deals or go back and renegotiate with the sellers and say, “I can’t do this on cash. We need to do this on terms instead.” Some of those sellers were like, “You’re renegotiating. This is not good business practice, and I’d rather just cancel the contract with you.” Some of those sellers were amenable to a seller finance situation, which was great.
Here’s the thing. Last year, dong 40 BRRRRR deals, this year doing 20, you can see that somebody doing BRRRRR, me actively, my business cut in half. However, last year, I acquired about a hundred rentals through seller finance. This year, I will buy 900 doors with seller finance and subject-to, 900, so my business has more than 9Xed through this economic situation. It’s because… I don’t know if you guys have ever heard of the analogy of fishing, where people will think that you fishing… Fishing works all day long. You could go out to a river or a lake and you can fish all day long and you will catch fish. No matter what time of day, you will catch fish.
However, there are certain conditions during the day where the kelp comes up off the floor and things are happening in the water based on the moon and all sorts of things that when your lure is in the water at those times, the fish are way more active. They’re taking the same bait that they weren’t taking two hours prior. That’s very similar to creative finance, so the creative finance strategies that we’re seeing dominate right now are seller finance, subject to novation agreements. Arbitrage right now is crazy, like Airbnb Arbitrage is crazy right now. Then, finally, lease options.
The two that I love more than anything is subject-to and seller finance, so I’ll give you a really good example. I’ve got a deal in San Angelo, Texas. 43-unit multifamily, zero dollars down, 4% interest, and the seller’s giving me 50-year terms with no balloon.

Dave:
Whoa.

Pace:
Whoa, right?

Dave:
Can you explain a little bit about why? Like what-

Pace:
Yes.

Dave:
… is the psychology of a seller that-

Jamil:
[inaudible 00:21:59].

Dave:
… motivates them to do that?

Pace:
Bro, I can tell you, this is one of the biggest barriers to entering into creative finance is that you… Rule number one of creative finance is never lose money. Okay, always cash flow. That’s rule number one. Rule number two is never put your brain in the seller’s head because so many times we’re like, “Why would they do this?” Oftentimes, the answer is because they have a lot more money than you do. They’re way older than you. They’re way more experienced than you are, and most people entering into real estate that are brand new that don’t understand creative finance are like, “Why would somebody give up a property that I’m desperately trying to get my hands on? Why would they do it in a way that makes so much sense for me?”
I’ll give you this story. Gentleman’s name is Mario. I actually was so excited about this guy because I flew out to San Angelo and I spent a whole day with him recording. I got 19 reasons why he did this deal this way, and I recorded the whole thing so that people could have it, and it’s on YouTube. You guys can hear Mario with his own words. He moves to America. He’s Romanian. He moves to America 35 years ago. The first deal he ever did was a subject-to deal. Why? He couldn’t get bank financing. He was a foreigner. He didn’t have the money, and so he’s like, “I want to get into real estate. What’s the only way I can do that?” Well, seller finance or subject-to.
He does a subject-to 35 years ago, and then he purchases an entire real estate portfolio and nearly $300 million of real estate over about 10 years all using creative finance because that was the only thing he knew. What you learn through all of this is a lot of times, people, what you focus on expands. People focus on BRRRRR, they focus on cash deals, and that’s what expands in their universe. Meanwhile, I say no to cash deals. People send me a deal on my Instagram. “Pace, I got a great deal.” Perfect, send it to somebody else. Send it to Jamil. I don’t want cash deals. I only want creative, and because of that, I’m overwhelmed. I turn down a hundred deals for every one that I buy.
Why did Mario do this? Number one, he’s 55 years old. He wants to truly retire. How does a seller sell a $3 million asset, not pay taxes, and truly retire? Well, some people will say, “Well, he should 1031 it. He should roll his gains to the next deal.” Okay, well, two things have to happen for that. One, he has to have another deal, and if he’s trying to retire, does that sound like something he wants? No, he doesn’t.

Dave:
Not retiring.

Pace:
He wants to retire, so, one, he doesn’t want another deal to roll into. Two, he says, “I don’t have another deal,” and so it makes sense for me if I take my money in interest payments from you, 4% interest, maybe I die tomorrow. Maybe I die in 20 years. Maybe I die in 30 years, but either way, I don’t need the money today. I just don’t want to give it to the IRS. I want those payments to go to my children. That’s another reason. The payments will bear interest. One of the things I ask in my interview, I go, “So Mario, will you make more money on this real estate transaction than you would going through a cash deal?” He goes, “Oh my gosh, literally three times more money. I will make three times more money on this deal.”
Here’s a couple of reasons why. One, no agents involved. Two, no appraisals are involved. Three, we’re not going through months and months and months of inspections and all that kind of stuff. You get a deal under contract with seller finance on multifamily or anything, and I can close three days later. Go through a title company. Takes almost no time. He can sell at the price that makes sense for him, so if you run this deal, this deal is only worth about 2.85 million. I bought it for 3 million. I overpaid on paper for this deal, but the difference is I didn’t give him a down payment. I immediately inherit a multifamily property that’s bringing in $30,000 a month after my payment to him because he’s been upgraded from landlord to lender. He’s now the lender. He receives payments from me. After all my CapEx, after my property management, after everything, I net $11,000 net net, in my pocket every month on day one.

Dave:
That’s with “overpaying” for that property?

Pace:
That’s overpaying for the property.

Jamil:
The landlord’s going to make, well, the owner’s going to make tremendously more money because even at 4% interest, that’s him. He’s the bank now. You paid him more money from the property than he would have gotten, and now he’s actually getting that. You guys ever look at an amortization schedule? It’ll make you sick.

Pace:
It’ll make you sick. If you go to… BiggerPockets has a bunch of amazing calculators. You guys should go look at those, but so, one, he did the calculation and when we were talking to him, it was a cold call. We cold call multifamily deals that are over 30 units and under 150 units. That’s where we get the deals from. People have a lot of equity. We’ll call them and say, “Hey, are you interested in selling?” That’s where this lead came from. Mario does the calculation.
He says, “If I put this on the market, I can sell this for 2.85 million probably. I’m going to have to go through a broker, and they’re going to have a broker, and we’re going to pay all of these commissions and all of these things and it’s going to take six months for me to get out of the deal. How about I just sell it for 2.85 million on seller finance and I put 4% interest on it so by the time I sold it for cash,” he says, “I would have walked away with about $2.45 million out of the 2.85?”
$450,000 went in his pocket, at least on paper, and the great thing is he’ll bear interest on that additional $450,000, not only the 2.4. Those are a couple of big reasons. The biggest reason I find with sellers on seller finance is they want to mitigate their tax liability. You only get paid on what you receive. I’m sorry, you only get taxed on what you receive. He’s not going to get taxed on that full $2.85 million today. He’ll get taxed only as he receives the money, and if he stretches that out over 50 years, he’s going to have other write-offs next year that will actually mitigate the gain that he gets next year. He essentially can set up a zero taxable event on this deal by stretching this deal out.
Those are like five of the 19 reasons he gave. His biggest thing is he like, “Honestly, I just make a decision, I go with it.” The other thing is, he now still has control of that asset. I own it, but he’s my bank. We set up a clause in the seller finance situation where if I default, it immediately reverts back to him. He keeps any payments I’ve made along the way. He keeps any improvements, any rent raises I have. He’s like, “This is the safest investment I could ever make. Where else am I going to put my $2.85 million right now? The stock market’s crashing, crypto’s crashing, everything’s crashing. Where else am I going to put my money that’s safe, secure, and I know the asset better than the person who bought it from me?”

Jamil:
Pace, what’s the instrument that you’re using called that reverts the property right back to the seller in case of a default?

Pace:
It’s called a performance deed. It’s something me an attorney created about six years ago where you get sellers that go, “Well, what if you default?” I go, “That’s a really great question. How do I create an instrument, a document that protects the seller and myself in the event that I default? Let’s say I get abducted by aliens. I’m not around to make the payment. I’m not around to manage the property anymore.
How does that seller get it in a traditional sense as they go foreclose on you? Who wants to foreclose on you? Nobody, and so what you do is you have a clause in your deed, or I’m sorry, in your deed of trust that’s called a performance clause. It says that on the 31st day of me being late, the property will revert back to them. The way we do that is we have a deed in lieu document that is pre-signed, notarized that the seller can go and file in the event that I default.

Dave:
That’s super cool. I mean, you have to… At first, when you say 4%, it’s kind of like, “Oh, 4% is not a great interest rate,” but you have to understand the seller’s mentality, like you said, and the context of what else is available for someone who wants to retire. Normally, someone might take that money. They might sell it to you just for cash or whatever, put it in a savings account because back in the day, you could earn 5% on a savings account. Now, it’s, what, 0.5% or something like that. Or, if you’re approaching retirement, a lot of times a financial advisor will advise you to put money in bonds. Bonds now are yielding far less than 4%, for example.
It really depends on where you are in your career. If you’re 22 years old and you’re trying to get wealthy as quickly as possible, 4% probably doesn’t sound that attractive to you, but if you’re 55 years old and you’re trying to retire and you can have, as Pace said, an extremely safe investment that yields you more than the other safe investments out there like a savings account or a bond right now, then, that is an incredibly attractive offer. I’m curious, Pace, if these like market conditions that we’re seeing right now are helping you generate leads. Are you seeing a bigger influx of people who are interested in this given what else is going on in the economy?

Pace:
Yeah, the word I would use is overwhelming, and if you don’t mind, I want to put a button on that 4%. If people understand amortization calculators, most of the interest you receive is in the first 10, 15 years. Effectively, that investor or that lender, Mario in this example, he’s not making 4% for the first 10 years. Then, if you do the research, what’s the average amount of time that an investor will keep a property before they refinance and pull the cash out of the deal to roll into another deal? It’s about seven to 12 years.
He’s looking at this like, “I’m going to give you a 50-year note, but you’re going to get greedy to the point where this is going to go up in value. You’re going to see a million dollars sitting on the table in equity and you’re going to go get a refinance at 5% with your bank, and I’m going to get paid all the way off.” I will have borne or bore 4% interest, which probably is more effective, is probably more at like a 12 to 14% rate considering that most of the payments I’m making are interest. It’s like 85% interest.

Dave:
That’s such a good point. Yeah, that’s such a good point that… If anyone doesn’t understand this, quick, as you said, you pay most of your interest in the first couple of years, but I appreciate this because it allows me to shamelessly plug my book that’s coming out-

Pace:
Yes, please.

Dave:
… which explains all of this. It’s called Real Estate by the Numbers. It’s available for preorder now on BiggerPockets, but it talks all about amortization and how loans work. That’s a really great point, Pace. Thank you for bringing that up, is that both as a buyer, it’s not great because you’re paying more money to the bank for the first couple of years. That’s why if you only hold the rental property for the first couple of years, you actually don’t do that well and it’s better to hold it for a long period of time, but if you are the seller, it’s completely different. If you’re seller financing, you’re making so much interest up front and that, I hadn’t even thought about that. That’s such an attractive option.

Pace:
Yeah, it really is, and if you really think about most investors strategies is that I go buy even a BRRRRR deal. I do a BRRRRR strategy. I’d take over a deal, sub-to. I’d buy something on seller finance. It’s going to appreciate, and you’re going to have some loan paydown, so what ends up happening is you go, “Where can I get some tax-free chunks of money?” You go refinance for four years, eight years, 12 years. We currently have close to…. We’re a little over a thousand doors right now in our portfolio, and I don’t have a single loan in my portfolio that’s older than seven years.

Dave:
Oh, wow.

Pace:
It just goes to tell you that we’re refinancing a lot. Like in December, we refinanced seven properties. We pulled a million and a half dollars out. We took that million and a half dollars, rolled it into new deals, and so most sellers that are savvy in seller finance, especially the multifamily world, most of those sellers, they bought their deals on seller finance. That’s how common this is. They are like, “Oh, of course, I’ll give you a 30-year note or a 50-year note because I know you’re not going to last 10 years.”

Jamil:
Pace, do you find that sellers in multifamily are more open to this seller finance are subject to structure than in single family? Or do you think it’s fairly even?

Pace:
It’s not even remotely close to even. It is so dramatically different. Sellers in the single-family realm, they’ve only bought one, maybe two properties their whole life, and so they don’t even remember what the word “escrow” means, let alone anything else. I’d say in the single-family realm, the first 300 deals I got in single-family, I surpassed that. That took me years to get that. In multifamily, I did that in a quarter because multifamily sellers, typically multifamily sellers used to be multifamily buyers. Going out and getting a commercial loan in multifamily requires a net worth requirement and it requires liquidity.
It is so challenging to go out and get a multifamily loan, and so most multifamily purchasers also use seller finance in order to get into the assets they hold today. It’s very common, and so when you say terms to a single-family seller, they go, “Wait, what? What are terms?” I tell the infamous F-150 story probably 50 times a week because it dumbs down what creative finance is to a single-family op or homeowner. When I talk to sellers on storage units, like A.J. Osborne, a lot of everybody knows A.J. Osborne. I was helping one of his acquisition guys the other day talk to a storage unit operator. I brought up terms and the guy’s like, “Oh yeah, I’m down for terms. You give me 20% down, I’ll carry the rest of the deal, all day long.”
A.J. Osborne’s team is like, “Oh my gosh, it was that easy?” I go, “Yeah, this guy probably bought it… I put the guy on mute, I go, “He probably bought this on seller finance.” I take him off mute and I go, “By chance, did you buy this asset with seller finance?” He goes, “Oh yeah, I buy all of my stuff with seller finance.” It so overwhelmingly common in the multifamily and commercial space because of the challenge of getting loans in that space.

Dave:
That’s really, yeah, I had never really thought about that, but yeah, I’m sure it’s so much easier for you to talk to people who have done this before. For those of us, myself included, who really just buy smaller things, it feels like no one would want to do this and that it would be a lot of education for single-family homes, but if you focus on multifamily, it sounds like there’s maybe just less resistance and there’s more comfort with it right off the bat.

Pace:
Yeah, I would say that 20% of what I’ve learned about creative finance has actually come from my sellers and a hundred percent of those sellers were multifamily sellers because these guys have owned, guys and gals, they’ve owned these assets for 20, 30, 40 years. They’ve taken the tax depreciation, they’ve done all the things, and now they’re at a point where like, “Where else can I put my money that’s safe? I can’t, and I don’t want to manage these anymore.”
This is what’s great about multifamily, too, and seller finance is that most of the operators in multifamily are Ma and Pa operators, which means they don’t have an operations manager, they don’t have an asset manager. They don’t even have property managers. Most of these people are going and physically knocking on the doors of their tenants and collecting rents on their 20-unit, 30-unit, 50-unit deals. When you ask for a P&L, some of them are like, “Huh, how about I just show you my bank account? I’ll show you my deposits.” That is very, very common in the 30- to 150-unit range.

Jamil:
Those sellers, because they don’t have a P&L, they can’t even… their buyer couldn’t even get a loan.

Pace:
No, and it is so common, so here’s what happens. A lot of them will go… Okay, like I’ve got a seller named Moe in Corpus Christi. He’s got 25 million in multifamily real estate. We just closed on 3 million of it and I’m slated to buy the next 25 million over the next two years from this guy. I’m going to like own 1% of Corpus Christi in two years. It’ll be great.” Moe, he started in life, a lot of these sellers started in life as business operators and they go, “All right.” Moe owned convenience stores. He goes, “Okay, I’m making money as a convenience store operator. I need to put my money somewhere I can get tax benefits.” They go to strip malls, they go to what they know. He’s already in a commercial building, so he buys the strip mall that he was renting in.
He then goes and buys multifamily, multifamily, multifamily. Gets to a point and goes, “Okay, I’ve got enough cash coming in. I really don’t want to operate this. This has become a nightmare for me.” Who do they hire? They hire their wife or their kids. They’re not going to Masterminds. They’re not learning how to scale their business. They’re not doing what we’re doing. These are old school people that have been doing this like with pencil and paper. Microsoft Excel is advanced for them legitimately.
You go to them and say, “Hey, I can take over this asset. I’ll pay you close to what you’re currently making now. You just got to let me get into this deal with very little money down, low interest, and give me a good runway that I can go and raise the rents and do something else with it.” Moe could not even… Moe goes, “Oh my gosh, you would take these off my,” this was a big paradigm shift for me. Everybody says, “Why do sellers do this? It doesn’t make sense.”
Then, Moe, my seller currently, is like, “Wait, you would take these off my hands and you would make a payment to me? Oh my gosh, this is like a dream come true. I have been sitting there dealing with tenants.” I go, “Well, Moe, the problem is you didn’t hire a property manager.” He goes, “Yeah, I don’t do well with people. I love my tenants, but I don’t like employees.” They don’t scale a business that is functional, and so you come in and you’re essentially taking over their business. It is so… It is like taking candy from a baby because we know how to scale and operate businesses.

Dave:
Yeah, but you’re not like stealing from them, you know? It’s not taking-

Pace:
No, I’m giving them more money-

Dave:
… from a baby.

Pace:
… than anywhere else.

Dave:
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. There’s just candy for everyone. You’re just helping them. You’re giving them almost it sounds like the same amount of capital that they need to live their lives, and you’re just taking over the asset, which is pretty incredible.

Jamil:
You think about that too, right? Because of the amortization schedule, they’re really getting all of that income right out the front, but guess what> They’re doing it without having to work now.

Pace:
The thing with like a cash deal that I… You know, we’ve done a lot of wholesale, a lot of wholesale, a lot of fix and flip. We still are very active in that business. I just don’t talk about it as much because it’s not my passion, it’s not where my heart lies. I love being ultra creative and figuring things out, and I could go on and tell you a whole bunch of stories about recent deals that we’re working on if we have the time. I look at a cash deal, and really when I’m going and buying, let’s say, a house that the ARV is $300,000. I could sell it on the market after I renovate it for $300,000. In order to make a good amount of money, I got to buy that for like 160, 170 because I know I’m going to have to go put 50 grand into it.
A seller has to sell a property to me for 50 cents on the dollar in order for me to make money, and so they’re getting something. Obviously, the house isn’t worth 300 grand in the condition I’m buying it in, but I’m basically buying all of that potential, and I have to really get my number as far down as possible for me to make as much money as possible. In creative finance, it is the only thing that I can make the seller win at a very high level, mitigate tax, have large amounts of money coming into them over time. Then, on my side, I can pay them more, but it actually becomes easier for me to acquire that asset because of the way I enter that deal. Zero dollars down or… I have not done a deal where I’ve put more than 7% down in, I don’t know, probably six, seven years.

Dave:
That’s crazy.

Pace:
It’s crazy. This deal with Moe, let me break this down really quickly. The deal with Moe, Corpus Christi, it’s the 30-unit, buying it for $3 million, so a hundred thousand dollars a unit. I go do… We get it under contract seller finance He wants 10% down. I go, “No, I’m not going to do 10% down, Moe. That’s crazy. All my other sellers are giving me 5% down.” He goes, “Okay, great.” “Well, I’ll give you 5% down.”
That’s $150,000. For most people that are new to this business, that seems incredibly daunting, and it is, but when I was brand new to this, that money wouldn’t come from me. I would just go to other people and go, “Hey, I’ve got a deal under contract. Who wants to be my financial partner? You bring the money, I bring the deal. We go 50-50.” Now, I’m 50% owner of a $3 million asset with no money out of my pocket, so 5% down. With Moe, it’s 3% interest, 50 years with him on the mortgage.
We go do the inspection and I go, “Man, in order for me to raise rents and take this asset over, I’m going to have to put a hundred thousand dollars into this $3 million deal.” I go to Moe and I go, “Hey, Moe, I’m still okay with putting a $150,000 down, but I want that $150,000 to actually go into the renovation.” Moe goes, “Okay, I’m cool with that.” I just want to make sure you’re going to operate this properly. My down payment is actually going into the renovation directly.

Dave:
Yeah. I mean, that’s why you call it seller or creative finance. It’s an incredibly creative way to use your money to mutually benefit both you and the seller. I’m curious, for Moe, this deal or the deal you were talking about before, have you done the analysis? Or do you think they would pencil if you were just using rates like-

Pace:
No.

Dave:
… if you just went to a bank and go… Just there’s no way, right?

Pace:
They won’t pencil unless you are okay with losing money for three years.

Dave:
No, that’s not pencil, right?

Pace:
No.

Dave:
I mean, I guess maybe for some people.

Pace:
I see some people… I saw a guy teaching creative finance. That’s why my first rule of creative finance is never lose money, even on day one. It’s never okay to buy a deal in the hopes that you’re going to raise the rents at some point to make the deal work. It needs to work-

Jamil:
Cash flow from day one.

Pace:
… day one, like maybe within 60 days because sometimes you got to improve it and get it filled up and whatever else, but definitely within the first 60 days. If I went down, for example, let’s look at the Mario deal. If I went down and I went to get a loan for that multifamily deal, my lender is going to give me… Right now, a commercial loan is about 6%. It’s double, it’s double what I’m paying, or it’s 50% higher than what I’m paying Mario.
Then, the lender is going to ask me to put about 30% down. That’s $900,000, and this is why people have to go and do syndications and funds is because they’re like, “Hey, guys, I got to go put 30% down on this deal. Let’s go pool our money together and I’ll give the lender 70% of the deal.” Guys, I didn’t have to raise any money for that Mario deal, and I’m a hundred percent the owner, no syndication, no fund because of the way that the terms allowed me to get into the deal.

Dave:
Do you think this is… I mean, sort of we asked this before, but is this just giving you more deal flow? Other people who aren’t considering seller finance just can’t make these deals work. Are you just finding that you can… You basically have a broader pool of deals to pull from because you have the ability to make deals work that people who aren’t thinking this creatively can’t make them work.

Pace:
Yeah. I’m like the guy in Santa’s shop that like I take all the broken toys that people screw up on and I make them better than what anybody else can. I’m in this little room by myself and I’m just tinkering around and making things work and people are like, “How did you do that?”

Jamil:
My community is cash buyer wholesale, and so a lot of the people we’re talking to that’s…. If we’re working agents, we tend to find if we can’t make a deal work based off of a cash price because maybe the house is too nice and it doesn’t need all these repairs or maybe the seller just doesn’t want to come off their number. What’ll happen a lot is people from my community will connect from people from Pace’s Subto community and they will create an opportunity there where normally there wouldn’t have been.
Even people in wholesale take note that this strategy adds a tremendous amount of tools to your tool belt because now when you’re… Say, for instance, you’re cold calling and you’re going direct to homeowners. They want a number that just doesn’t make sense for you. You can now monetize that because people are wholesaling these creative deals. My student body, they’re not all that interested in collecting property. They’re not super worried about depreciation or wanting to property manage or do the things that Pace is trying to do, but Pace is at a different season of his life and he wants to collect and have assets. There’s people that’ll pay assignment fees for these opportunities.

Pace:
I just paid a $210,000 assignment fee on a massive seller finance deal that I just bought, $210,000. People learn how to lock up the contract or at least get the seller interested, and then me or somebody on my team gets on the phone and actually works out all of the details. Then, I’ll pay somebody a massive assignment fee. That was 0% seller finance, so for me it made a lot of sense for me to pay a big assignment fee. They asked for 500,000. I’m like, “No,” but I ended up paying $210,000 to somebody for an assignment on a creative finance deal, so-

Jamil:
I think that was…. Was that an Astro student that you did that with?

Pace:
It was an Astro student, yeah.

Jamil:
Yeah, because I heard about that. It was a big win that we had on one of our support calls. They were like, “I just made $200,000 selling a deal to your best friend.”

Pace:
You know, it’s funny as I’ve got a text message right now from Ryan Larue, and if you remember at the-

Jamil:
He’s awesome.

Pace:
… very beginning of the show-

Jamil:
Yep.

Pace:
… Ryan is the guy that was between Jamil and I, that he was the guy pitting us against each other that ended up getting us a TV show. Ryan’s got a deal right now in Phoenix, 49 units, seller wants full retail for the multifamily. The challenge is he was in contract with somebody else buying it. What do you think happened to that contract?

Jamil:
Ooh, they walked away from their earnest money and had to tuck their tail between their legs because they couldn’t get lending.

Pace:
That’s exactly it. They locked the deal up. They put hard earnest money down. They were going to buy the multifamily with 30% down, get their lender to come to the table, and the deal had fell apart because interest rates came up. Ryan watches me. He’s not one of my students, but he watches me all the time. He goes, “This is the greatest thing.” He’s like, “I get one wholesaler that will bring me four or five deals a year that they’re like, ‘I don’t know what to do with this, but the guy says he is open to terms.’ I go, ‘Great. Let me get on the phone, and I work out terms.’”
It’s a 49-unit deal in Phoenix. Seller just wants his number. Here’s the thing thing for you to understand if you’re in the audience. Why do sellers like seller finance? They want to win at one thing. They want to win at their number. These guys are real estate investors at the end of the day. They look at things on spreadsheets. People don’t realize this. Wealthy people don’t have billions of dollars sitting in their bank account. They have assets that they add up and they go, “That’s my net worth.” When a seller is willing to sell something to you on seller finance, their number one priority is selling it at top dollar so they can say, “I won the game.”

Dave:
Yeah. They want that top line number. That’s what they care about because they’re like, “I bought it for X and I want it to double or I want to sell it for Y.” They’re willing to negotiate with you to make sure that that top line number is what they want it to be.

Pace:
I’ve got a really great single-family deal. I’d love to show it to you guys if we’ve got the time. Here’s the deal, so this is my document. You can see the seller who sold this house to me. By the way, I have their permission. They’re great, that we’ve done videos with them. We just closed on this deal, what was this? What was the date? July 15th, so roughly a month ago I closed on this deal. Single-family property, but it has two houses on it, literally two three-bed, two-bath houses on the same property. Look at what my monthly installments say, principal only. This lead came from a failed wholesaler locking this up at too high of a price and then trying to sell it to a hedge fund. The hedge funds, because of interest rates, they slowed down their buying, and in a lot of ways, just stopped buying altogether.
All these wholesalers are going around town canceling deals on sellers, and I come in and I’m just gobbling deals up. That was a zero down, zero percent interest seller finance deal with a seller. The same exact day, I bought a subject-to deal, same exact situation. The seller refinanced last year. I get a lot of sellers that have refinanced in the last two, three years, pulled out their equity, and now they’re in a situation where marketing softening, days on market have gone from three days on market to 90 days on market type of thing. Now, they’re like, “I can’t sell my house. I have very little equity, and now I’m getting low-ball offers.” We’re coming in and picking up houses left and right on sub-to because people are just saying, “Take over my house and give me 2,000 bucks for moving expenses and here’s my house. We’re just getting free houses with subject-to right now.

Dave:
That’s unbelievable and a good segue because I want to talk about subject-to, and I’m going to do a terrible job explaining what it is. You’ll do it better, but basically what it means if, correct me if I’m wrong here, is that rather than buying a house by taking out a loan in your own name or even using something like a death service coverage ratio loan, you’re basically just taking over the existing owner’s loan. To me, one of the main reasons I was so excited to have you on here today is that something like 50% of homeowners right now have a mortgage under 4%, right?

Jamil:
Yeah, wow.

Dave:
If you are trying to buy a home and 6% isn’t working for you, it just seems like a no-brainer for sub-to because you could assume you have a 50-50 chance that if you approach someone and they’re interested that that loan is going to be under 4%, which just seems incredibly attractive right now.

Pace:
Our average sub-to interest rate on all of our real estate-owned sheet is 3.2%.

Dave:
That’s crazy. That’s so good.

Pace:
That’s our average. We have deals, we have VA loans that are like 2.6%. We have so many, like my personal… the personal house I live in right now, it’s a… I bought this house for $3.3 million. Interest rate on it is 2.8% on a $3 million sub-to deal.

Dave:
Unreal, and if they’re similarly to seller finance, are you seeing a lot of willingness and deal flow right now? One thing-

Pace:
Yeah.

Dave:
… we talked about in the show is that there is this theory right now. Have you heard like the lock-in effect?

Pace:
Mm-hmm.

Dave:
Where people aren’t going to sell-

Pace:
Stuck in their houses.

Dave:
… because they don’t want to sell and pick up a new mortgage at 6% or whatever. I’m just curious if like sub-to deals are slowing down for you because people know that they’ve got something valuable at 3% and they don’t want to give it up?

Pace:
No, not at all, so here’s an interesting thing. I differentiate seller finance and sub-to in this way. Sub-to means the seller’s typically going through a painful situation. No matter what the economy’s doing, no matter what is going on, somebody’s always going through a divorce, somebody’s always going to lose their job. Something’s going to happen all the time. No matter what’s going on, the best of markets, the worst of markets, you’re not going to stop people from fighting with each other and getting divorced. These things happen.

Jamil:
Are you saying sub-to is great for like distress?

Pace:
Yep. Sub-to is pain. Distressful situation typically, and seller finance, so I call it pain and gain. Sub-to, it’s all about pain. Seller finance, it’s all about gain. That seller wants that gain. They want that top line number. That’s the most important thing to them. In sub-to, people are saying, “I can’t sell my house. It’s not selling. I need to get out of it.” Expired listings, if you guys want to go get a sub-to deal today, look at expired listings, thousands and thousands. I could pull up right now online public record. I could pull up thousands of expired listings just in the last 60 days in just Maricopa County alone.

Jamil:
You could just… Even easier than that, if you go… I mean, right now, I have a student who’s been cold calling real estate agents live and anything that’s sitting on the market even over 90 days, this doesn’t require you to go and do any research, guys. You can go right on to any of these platforms and look at days on market, 90 days or more, and you can call any of those real estate agents and ask them if their sellers would be open to terms. They are, “Really? Really? You want to do a deal? Oh my God, yes. Let me get my seller on the phone and let’s see if we can put this together.” It’s literally that easy right now.

Pace:
I’ve got a deal with an agent we just closed on last week. It was her first sub-to deal, and she said, “I had this property listed for 60 days. The homeowner had a job opportunity in New Zealand. He left thinking, ‘Hey, market’s hot. It’s going to sell in like a couple of days.’ He leaves, leaves the house vacant. Now, he’s got a mortgage payment he’s paying.” I come along. Somebody on my team calls. It was 60-day-old listing. We call the agent and we go, “Hey, what if we just take over the payments on that? Would the seller be open?” She goes, “Wait, that’s not possible. I’ve never heard of that before.” We go, “Well, if you talk to either our escrow officer or maybe our attorney, they can explain it to you that we do this all of the time, a few times a week just here in Phoenix, Arizona. She’s like, “Let me throw it by my seller.”
She calls the seller and the seller goes, “Oh yeah, subject-to? Yeah, I’ll do that all day long.” Seller knew what subject-to was and he was like, “I just don’t want to make the payment anymore. Take the house over.” It’s a five-bed, three-bath house. We’re turning it into an Airbnb. I took over payments. We paid the agent in that situation, so people always have that question. “Well, if you’re working a sub-to deal where you’re taking over payments and the seller’s getting basically no money, how do you pay the agent? Do you pay the agent?” Absolutely. Think about how most people buy houses. That’s a $700,000 house we’re taking over, by the way, a $700,000 house. If I’m a traditional buyer, how much money am I bringing in cash to the table to buy that deal? 150 to 200,000.

Jamil:
Yeah, 20%.

Pace:
I come to the table by paying this lady 20 grand in commissions. I’m $120,000 less to get into that deal than anybody else.

Dave:
You’re making the agent whole basically. You’re paying that 2.8-

Pace:
Yeah.

Dave:
… 3% commission or whatever.

Pace:
Basically the way I looked at it, too, is I bought the greatest testimonial from an agent you could ever ask for because she goes and she’s doing a video with us this week. She’s just like, “This is crazy that this solved my problem as an agent and my broker didn’t teach this to me. Nobody taught this to me. I thought that there’s no way that this is possible, and here you go.” She’s like, “I get listings that people come to me and they go, ‘I have no equity in this deal. Can you sell it?’ The agent says, ‘I can’t help you.’”

Dave:
Right.

Jamil:
Mm-hmm.

Pace:
This helps agents, it helps brokers, it helps the sellers. It is absolutely amazing. Going back to like what’s going on in the market right now, what I love about… The exit strategies are amplified as well because now, all of these buyers being told, “Interest rates are at 6%. You’re going to have to bring more money to the table,” all of this. If you’re a buyer, my sister McLaren, here’s a great example. My sister McLaren, she wants to move back to Phoenix, Arizona, and she’s like, Pace, everything’s 6%.” I’m like, “McLaren, just have your husband call on expired listings.” She calls an expired listings. Fourth phone call she gets ahold of is an agent who couldn’t even sell their own house. She’s moving into the house in two weeks, taking over payments, no money to the seller, expired listings.

Dave:
How does it work? Can you just explain quickly how it works with no money to the seller?

Pace:
The seller just says, “I don’t have enough, I don’t have any equity in the deal,” so why… If I-

Dave:
Oh, because they don’t have any equity, so they don’t even care. They wouldn’t make money even if they did sell it outright.

Jamil:
They’d actually have to come to the table with money if they were going to sell a traditional.

Pace:
Yeah, I’ve got a great… One of my favorite stories I ever had is a guy named Dave Byarsky. Listing was five and a half months old. The agent calls me up. She goes, “My listing’s going to expire in two weeks. I don’t know what to do. I didn’t know this guy didn’t have equity. He had just pulled cash out, refi six months prior. He has no money, and every time we get an offer, I have to deliver bad news that he’s going to have to cut a check for $40,000 to get rid of this house.” I go, “Okay, well, I can take over his payments,” and she’s like, “Would you? Would you?” I go, “Yeah, sure.”
Dave Byarsky, who’s now still a friend of mine, I go in and I say, “Hey, I can take over the payments.” He goes, “Amazing, so you’re telling me I don’t have to write?” It goes… Your mindset needs to go from, “Wait, why am I not paying the seller?”, to understanding that the seller’s going to say, “Wait, I don’t have to pay you anything?” Dave was so skeptical. He was like, “You’re going to send me an invoice or something. You’re going to send… There’s no way that… This is the seller says, ‘This is too good to be true.’” I am putting money in their pocket. I’m holding them back from having to deploy $40,000 to get rid of something they no longer want.

Dave:
Yeah.

Pace:
This is why we have to remind ourselves, “Don’t put your brain in the seller’s head.”

Jamil:
That’s so real though, guys, and I think a lot of people in the real estate investing space, the barrier to entry for them is always that.

Pace:
Mindset.

Jamil:
It’s your mindset. You’re not thinking the way that the other people are thinking. You have to step out of your shoes and you have to look at deals from the perspective of the different parties.

Pace:
Here’s a good action step for people that are wanting to know, “How do I go get a sub-to deal today?” Okay, go find expired listings. Google “expired listings” if you have to. There’s a hundred websites that sell expired listings, or if you have an agent in your local market, just call your agent and go, “Hey, can you pull all expired listings from the MLS?” Very, very simple. All you do is you call these people and you say, “Hey, I noticed your listing expired. Was there something you were looking for on the market that you were not able to receive?” That’s the question.
You let them talk and they tell you, “My agent this, they didn’t do open houses.” You’re going to hear them complain about somebody is now the common enemy is what I call it. You now have rapport you’re building. “Oh man, I’m sorry to hear that. I’m so sorry to hear that, I’m so sorry to hear that.” “Well, you know, me and my team, we’re buying properties. I’m wondering, would you be open to an offer of us making payments to you on that house instead of giving you a lump sum up front?”
It’s very simple. That is it. You’ve got people that were just beat up by the market and they obviously wanted to sell. They’re telling you on public record they want to sell their property. They’re also telling you on public record they weren’t able to, so you calling them, you’re going to be their savior. This is not hard sales. This is not, “Pace, how do I negotiate? Pace, how do I say the magical words?” Guys, they want to sell their properties and they were not able to do so.

Dave:
This is incredible advice, Pace. Thank you, and unfortunately, we have to go. You have incredible stories. I could listen to this all day, but we can’t. I got to ask you before we get out of here, you’re obviously very in tune with what’s happening in the market and the economy. What do you think’s going to happen just on a large scale in the housing market over the next couple of months? You think we’re going to see some declines? Or how do you see things playing out over the next year or two?

Pace:
You know, it’s interesting because there’s people on YouTube that are creating salacious material so that they can get clicks.

Dave:
It pisses me off.

Pace:
It’s really tough because like the only person I really watch is Dave, you, Dave, because you go through-

Dave:
[inaudible 01:02:35].

Pace:
… and it’s based on numbers. You actually go through. You analyze software. You look at what’s going on. There’s a couple of other people I really respect as well. Kenny McElroy, you guys have had him on your show. He’s epic. Outside of that, everybody else is just on YouTube trying to get YouTube to pay them Google AdSense, whatever it is.
Here’s what I look at. Interest rates change things dramatically. Jamil said something to me the other day. He says, “Pace, if I walk over to a thermostat and I turn that thermostat from 75 down to 68 degrees, wouldn’t I be crazy to think that that room was not going to cool off?” Like, “Well, yeah, of course, unless the air conditioning unit’s broken.” He’s like, “That’s the thing. The market is going to cool off because of interest rates.” It’s going to happen and it has happened. It’s slowed down our fix and flips. It’s slowed down a lot of things, but that’s a great thing. It resettles the sellers because really, where do deals come from? They come from sellers. The seller is the beginning of a real estate transaction.
When you settle down what their expectations are like, “I’m going to go sell the house on the market in 14 minutes,” then that gives us an opportunity to jump in and buy these types of deals. I’m happy about it. I know that the Fed is meeting again on I believe September 20th or September 21st. They’re 100% without a doubt raising rates again.

Dave:
Of course, yeah.

Pace:
Right. We saw what a rate hike did or a couple of rate hikes did to us this year. It doubled and tripled the days on the market, and I think that right now because lenders, they’ve basically hedged against that and they raised their rates a little bit higher than the Fed did. We’ve been actually seeing the lenders shrink down a little bit to accommodate that overexaggeration essentially. Right now, I think for like a month and a half, I think activity’s going to come back up a little bit, but on September 20th and 21st, we’re going to see another rate hike. It’s going to slow down. The last quarter of this year, if you’re in traditional real estate, strap in for a fun ride, but you’re not going to be priced out of the market. Your people are still going to be buying, it’s just that you got to be reasonable on your sales price.
For us in the fix and flip game, forget about creative finance, forget about wholesale. In the fix and flip game, what all of us have done is we have all been aggressive for the last two or three years. We know the ARV’s 300 grand and we still list the property for $350,000 because we now the market was hot the last couple of years. When we say, “Oh my gosh, our listing only sold for $310,000. We had to take a $40,000 price haircut.” It’s like, “No you didn’t, knucklehead. You sold it for 10 grand still over what it was worth.

Jamil:
Yeah. People are always like, “I’m losing money.” It’s like, “No, you’re not. You just made all this money. You just made slightly less than your dream pie in the sky amount that you were going to ask for was going to make you.

Pace:
I just think the rocket boosters are just slowing down. I still think that we’ve got a lot of growth. I think this is the greatest time to get into real estate personally, not just creative finance, but other stuff. I love the market. Somebody comes to me the other day, Dave, and they give me this alternative real estate investment, or not real estate investment, a different type of investment. I go, “Dude, all day long, the only thing I will ever invest my money in is real estate,” and I’m not wasting my time and energy anywhere else. It’s the safest, best, and this market, I’m excited about it.

Dave:
All right. I love it, and just to continue your analogy there, it’s like you turn it down from 75 to 68, 68’s still pretty warm, you know? It’s like it’s not-

Pace:
Yeah.

Dave:
… like it’s crashing. It’s not like it’s going to 32 degrees, and I completely agree with you. I think cooling is good. It’s good for everyone. It’s good for home buyers, it’s good for home sellers, it’s good for investors. I know there’s a lot of headlines out there, people are freaking out, but take it from Pace, Jamil. These guys are doing just dozens of deals every single week or every single month, and if they’re investing, it should give the rest of us who aren’t as active a lot of confidence and perspective about how to take advantage of this market.

Pace:
Love it.

Dave:
Pace, thank you so much for being here. I know you have so many different social medias and things, but if people want to learn more from you or connect with you, where should they do that?

Pace:
Go to YouTube and type in “BiggerPockets Pace Morby.” Go watch my BiggerPockets episode that I was interviewed last November. It’s a very, very popular episode.

Dave:
I listen to it. It was extremely good, and you really get into like the details of how to pull these strategies off, so that definitely… listen to that. I should have asked you this off the air, but you’re writing a book for BiggerPockets?

Pace:
Yeah, we are. We’re currently in the first round of editing right now. They’re cleaning up all my foul language and making it nice.

Dave:
Nice. We got two shameless book plugs into this podcast episode, which is great. Jamil, we’re going to have to get you to write one next.

Jamil:
I’m in the process.

Dave:
Oh, really? Excellent.

Jamil:
Yeah, The BiggerPockets First Wholesaling Book.

Dave:
Ooh, yeah.

Pace:
All right.

Jamil:
Yes, yes.

Dave:
We should start a little book club here. We’re all BiggerPockets authors now. All right. Well, Pace, Jamil, thank you guys both for being here. We really appreciate it.
Man, Jamil, that was awesome. Man, you get to listen to Pace talk every day, I guess, but, man, he’s-

Jamil:
All the time, man.

Dave:
… got incredible stories and he’s such a good storyteller. It is so fascinating to listen to him, and just one of the most unique approaches to real estate that I’ve ever heard.

Jamil:
Honest to God, and really guys, if you did not pick up a million dollars worth of game in this episode, listen again.

Dave:
Dude, I was just sitting here the whole time thinking like, “How do I get a sub-to deal? I got to start thinking about-

Jamil:
That’s it.

Dave:
… “seller financing.” It’s inspiring, honestly.

Jamil:
The best. He’s the best. Love him.

Dave:
It’s great, and I loved hearing the story of how you guys met. You know, you guys are such a duo. I was envisioning you had this like meet cute one time where you’re competing over a wholesale deal and your eyes locked and it was love-

Jamil:
Oh, it was-

Dave:
… at first sight, but-

Jamil:
… hearts and all the things.

Dave:
Yeah, yeah, exactly. The romantic music started playing in the background, but-

Jamil:
It’s truly one of those friendships that’s so easy for me. I love traveling around the country with him. I’m godfather to his two daughters. You know, like-

Dave:
Wow.

Jamil:
… it’s… This is a real friendship, and it’s a friendship of my life. There’s nobody in the world that I’d rather be doing this with.

Dave:
Dude, I love hearing that because we talk, obviously, about economics and making money and all of this stuff here, but you want to have fun with your life. You want real estate investing not to be stressful or to this thing that you’re always worried about. You want us to have a good time, and I think you and Pace are such a good model of what a good business partnership/friendship can be and something we all-

Jamil:
Or-

Dave:
… probably aspire to.

Jamil:
… business competition because-

Dave:
I know, it’s so crazy.

Jamil:
… we compete so much. You know, we’re really not partners. We really compete. It’s just like, how do you love the guy you deck?

Dave:
Yeah, yeah. It is great, and I think it’s a good lesson for people because there’s you and Pace are such a good example of people who share so much information and you’re not afraid of competition. You’re not-

Jamil:
No.

Dave:
… withholding information or talking about your failures or successes because you’re worried someone’s going to compete with you. You can obviously… You gain more, you learn more by engaging with your competition and just engaging with the community in general, just like being a part of the larger real estate investment community has so much to offer. Thank you, everyone, for listening. We’ll see you all next time.
On the Market is created by me, Dave Meyer, and Kailyn Bennett. Produced by Kailyn Bennett, editing by Joel Esparza and Onyx Media, 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.

Speaker 4:
Come on.

David:
This is the BiggerPockets podcast show 654.

Amy:
I’m getting the commitment, but I’m still building rapport and trust. I’ll explain to you how the flow of money works. But right now, don’t even worry about it. We’ll cross that bridge when or if we get there. Once somebody invests with you, and they process the wire, that’s a step for the FACT framework, the transactions piece, then we really want to take a step back and look at how we nurture our network. How do we follow up with our private money lenders so that two things happen? Number one, they reinvest, and number two, they increase their investment amount.

David:
What’s going on, everyone? This is David Greene live from the Smokey Mountains. Actually, it’s not live to you, but it’s live to me. I’m here looking at cabins, and checking on some of the ones that I just bought, and getting to do a BiggerPockets podcast from the area. I’m joined by fellow Smokey Mountain investor and my co-host for the podcast, Rob Abasolo. Rob, how’s it going today?

Rob:
Hey, man. I am barely making it through the day. You know what I mean?

David:
I totally understand. I made a joke on Instagram the other day about this is a bear market, and it got quite the response. Apparently, dad jokes are making a comeback here.

Rob:
Oh yeah. They’ve been popular since 1972. I don’t know why that was the invention of them, but they’ve been big for a while. I actually done some research on this topic now that I’m a father.

David:
I just didn’t know they were big outside of dads. People that are not dads are really liking dad jokes these days.

Rob:
You know what, it’s cool to be a dad, man. It is so cool. You should try it sometime.

David:
You got dad bods. You got dad jokes.

Rob:
I will hopefully not have a dad bod in the next couple of months, man. I’ve been hitting the bike every single day. Little by little, I’m chipping away. I’m going from dad bod to-

David:
Hard to make something to rhyme with that on the spot, isn’t it?

Rob:
It is. I didn’t really think that out.

David:
Dad bod.

Rob:
I usually practice my jokes in the mirror.

David:
From dad bod to rad bod.

Rob:
There we go, rad bod. Rob bod, how about that?

David:
Thank you, Producer Eric. Eric’s one of those guys, our producer for this show, that you never would think is in the hip hop. Then you’re at a karaoke night one day, and he steps up, and he just starts freestyle rapping, and knows every single word to some KRS-One song that most people who just heard me say that have no idea who I’m talking about. He’s that guy that always surprises you, so thank you for that, Eric. Let’s get to today’s show. Thank you guys for hanging out through that semi-ridiculous intro we just had.
In today’s show, Rob and I are going to be interviewing Amy Mahjoory. Amy has a four-part system that helps raise money in a very simple way that is very effective. We’re going to start off today’s show with a treat for you guys. Josiah listened to the first interview that we did with Amy, put her system into practice, and found himself with someone that was willing to let him borrow money right off the bat. He explains what he did, how he did it, and how it worked out.
Then Rob and Amy asked him some question about what’s going on. It is a fantastic example of how simple this system is when you work it. Rob, what are some of your favorite parts of today’s show?

Rob:
I raised a decent amount of money. I’m raising money now for a fund that I’m putting together on a motel. Honestly, I don’t think that you can ever stop improving on how you raise capital. I’ve been raising capital now for probably two or three years. My style to do that has really evolved over the years. Even listening to this episode today, I’m like, “Oh, I can really see how it affects my fundraising game for the better to really just start putting an actual system so that you can think of fundraising a little bit more in a linear progression.”
Because for me, my thoughts are always in the ether. I’m always the ad lib guy that’s like, “Let’s go with the flow.” But having the direct system on how to approach getting money from investors, I think, is going to be super valuable for everyone listening at home.

David:
My two cents, the real estate investing space is changing rapidly every year. I mean, if you just look in the last 10 years how much it’s changed, it’s wildly different. There’s a lot of reasons why, but I think the biggest reason is that real state investing used to be a good old boys club. You needed to have a mentor in the city you worked at that knew how to be an investor that could teach you the ropes. This was… It was like jujitsu before the Gracie’s made it popular. If you didn’t know Gracie, you weren’t learning jujitsu.
Well, it’s different now. This is one of the biggest podcasts on all of iTunes. There’s tons of people on social media that are sharing all the information. Real estate investors like to talk. This is not a place where everyone keeps their secrets. Information is everywhere. That increases competition after these assets, and it’s one of the reasons that even though the market is slowing down, we’re entering into a bear market, as you guys will hear about later in today’s show, there’s still a lot of competition for the best assets.
That’s because it’s much easier to own them than it ever was before. You need to get into the private money game, whether you are actually raising money to buy these assets, or you are lending your money to someone else to make a passive return. There is a space for both people. My opinion, the next evolution of real estate investing is going to be crowdfunding made easy. NFTs are going to play a role in this. We interviewed Ryan Pineda, and he talked about that on the episode that we did with him.
I’m raising more money. Rob’s raising money also, but we’re doing it in 100% different ways, so we’re appealing to a different type of investor, who’s looking for a different risk reward profile. I would highly recommend if you’re someone who knows real estate investing is going to be a part of your future that you listen to episodes like this, want to pay a lot of attention, because these skills will be huge in helping you scale your portfolio faster.
Before we get into the show with Amy, today’s quick tip is head over to biggerpockets.com/reshow, where Amy, our guest today, has some free information that you can claim for yourself. That’s biggerpockets.com/reshow. The RE is for real estate, but it would spell reshow, and claim your free stuff today. Rob, any last words before we get to the show?

Rob:
If you have ever been interested in learning how to defend yourself against a bear, then I would definitely stick around until the very end of the episode, because we give some very tactical tips on that one.

David:
Little known fact, the B in BJJ actually stands for bear. It’s a misnomer that it’s Brazilian, but that’s not true. It was developed in the rainforest of Brazil, where people were being killed every single day, and the Russians actually copied it. Now, they have their kids wrestling bears for skills. We get into that at the end of the show, so it’s not enough to make a lot of money. In real estate, you’ve also got to be able to protect that money, especially from hungry bears.

Rob:
And pretend like you know about bears, so that’s always important.

David:
Amy Mahjoory, welcome back to the BiggerPockets podcast. So lovely to have you today. How have you been?

Amy:
I’ve been great. Thank you for having me. Excited to catch up with you guys today.

David:
Yes. Now, I’m going to have you recap what we talked about in the first two episodes where we interviewed you. But before we do that, we actually have a guest who heard the episode, and put your advice into practice, and it worked out very well. Josiah, welcome to the show.

Josiah:
Thank you, David. I am a small business owner out of Southern Oregon. I have a pool and spa cleaning and repair business. This business gives me the unique opportunity to get in with people I might not otherwise have access to. Then lately, I’ve been trying to work that into possibly people to partner with or invest with. So basically, lately, I started implementing the four-second power pitch. I did this by building rapport over time with my clients. I would talk to them about being in real estate.
A little backstory with our real estate, my wife and I, she’s my partner. We have our first home that we bought that we turned into our first rental. That was in 2021, or no, sorry, 2020. Then in 2021, we cashed out, refinanced that. Then the beginning of this year, we’ve done two deals so far. We’re definitely rookie investors, but we’re starting to see some momentum. Our second deal was actually an out-of-state property that my wife and I did after reading your book on Out of State Investing. Then we ended up buying that one, all cash, refinancing it, and then using that money into a tiny home Airbnb that we did on our property that we own, that we live on here in Southern Oregon.
Obviously, I got that inspiration from Rob, and following him on his Robuilt channel. We just finished that project May 18th. All along the way, I’ve been talking with my clients about what it is we’re doing, and just building rapport with them, and building myself up as not just a pool guy, but also a real estate investor who is implementing different strategies, and growing consistently. When I’m building rapport with my clients and stuff, most of them have… On their pool guy, they have big houses.
Basically, when I meet these clients initially, they’re clients with big houses and pools most of the time. I’ll try to build rapport with them by complimenting their house first. I’ll say, “Hey, this is a beautiful house you got, and a lovely pool. What is it that you do that lets you afford a house like this?” I’ll ask them questions about themselves, and what it is they do. That also gives me information on, what their interests are, or if they’re business owners as well, and then helps qualify them in my mind while I’m also trying to build rapport with them.
I would say, “Hey, how do you afford such a lovely house and pool?” This process takes a long time. It’s not like it’s something that happens overnight when I’m building rapport with them. I’ll often see them intermittently. It could be due, and so when they do that, it helps me build rapport with them and a relationship, but it also at the same time helps qualify them as a potential partner in the future, and if there’s someone, I think, that I’d be able to work with or not. So, whenever I see them, I always try to update them on what it is I’m doing or what it was we last talked about, and then jump ahead to where we’re at now with those projects.
The tiny home has been the biggest thing for us. A lot of people have been super interested in that. Obviously, they’re really trendy and stuff, but we’ve had phenomenal success with that. We’ve set it up to the highest level we possibly could, and because of that, it’s been booked out about 95% to 99% of the time since when we first launched it on May 18th. When I tell them stuff like that, I mean, we’re getting about a 60% return on our investment right now, and they’re just blown away by that fact. So, lately when I talk about that, I was able to caveat it into possibly getting partners or private money investors lately.
I did that simply by asking them. They would say, “Hey, that’s phenomenal what you’re doing.” I’d just be like, “Hey, we’re working on another project right now where I might be taking on private investors. Is just sitting back and collecting income from real estate something that you might be interested in? You wouldn’t have to manage it at all, or do any extra work. We’d do all the leg work for you.” I’ve done that with four or five of my clients now, and I’ve had really good success.

Rob:
That’s amazing. I was wondering what your parlay was, because I know for Amy, she talks about going out, and you meet someone. You say, “I helped someone get double digit returns in real estate,” because you’re introducing each other, and you’re like, “I don’t know what you do. What do you do? I do this and that.” Obviously, if you’re the owner of this company, that part is that they know what you do. So, how have you worked on your transitions? Does it change from client to client, or do you think you have a pretty streamlined pitch at this point?

Josiah:
I mean, I’m new to implementing the strategy, so it’s definitely not streamlined. I work on it as I go, but it definitely changes a little bit client to client depending on what their exact scenario is. This has been such a great strategy though, because it is something to get your foot in the door, and open up people to conversations in the future. Then it just opens their mind a little bit. Then later on, I hope to be able to meet with them, go through and dive in a little bit deeper.
I guess that’s what I’m looking for help with next. Like, what are the next steps? Amy, maybe you could help me with this, but as I try to transition them from just opening their mind up to this idea, and them liking it to actually guiding them.

Amy:
Josiah is the perfect investor who he said earlier is a part-time investor. He’s a great example of someone who just he trusts in the system. He’s just following a script. He implemented it. Even if he had any fears of how to follow up, he’s like, “I got this. I’ll figure that out later.” You guys saw him commenting in the chat box earlier for what do I say next. This is what I keep telling people. You guys, this really does work. It’s been test and measured for 10 years. It’s a great strategy to just get your foot in the door, and then see where the conversation leads you.

Rob:
You’re just getting started. You start putting yourself out there. You’re practicing and perfecting and still ironing out your pitch here. You actually had some success, and you had someone that actually they wanted to work with you. Tell us about the deal that you’re going to be putting together, and how you’re going to be using the funding to make that deal come to life.

Josiah:
I’m actually looking at a deal local to me in Shady Cove, Oregon. It’s a Kenny property. It’s on about four and a half acres right on the edge of town here. It’s a pretty forested area, but it’s got two tax lots and three little cottages on the property right now. What I’m trying to do is remodel these cottages, get them up to rent specs for short-term rentals, and then we add a couple of RV pads, and do a couple more of the tiny homes with the decks around it, and make it just like this little camping community of tiny homes in RV or cottages.
Then maybe because it is four and a half acres, and there’s a nice, lightly sloped hillside do a glamping setup up on the hillside with decks and stuff that come off of it in the future. That’s the ultimate dream. Luckily, this property is off market right now, and so the seller is open to seller financing as well, which is phenomenal. So, it’s just trying the pieces together with everything, and try to figure out basically what the next steps are. I mean, should I focus on maybe finding money for the deal, or trying to get it more structured before I try to raise money for it, and where should I go from here?

Rob:
Awesome, man. Well, it sounds like you hit a home run on your first set of pitches here, not only because you actually were able to secure financing from a private investor, but because it’s a seller finance deal, which these days, I mean, that’s going to be the best interest rate you’re probably going to find on the market. But I’m curious, Amy, since you are the fundraising royalty here on the pod, well, how would you approach this situation?

Amy:
This is a great problem to have. You’re putting together this deal. Definitely don’t wait until you have finalized the deal. We always want to be proactively raising capital as we are looking for leads. So Josiah, you’re off to a great start. Continue those conversations. At this point, you’ll want to follow up, even if it’s just a high-level overview about the deal, but start educating your audience on, “This is what’s in it for me. This is what’s in it for you, and I can help you with this. Here’s what it looks like to invest with us.”
Everyone is so into the short-term rental game now. They love it, the creative ways of basically vacationing, so I think your audience will love that strategy as well.

Josiah:
That’s great. As far as structuring the deal goes, do you think I should look at, because it is my first deal with partners, maybe trying to make it a little higher incentivization to get people to work with me until I have a more solid track record, or do you think my track record that I have so far just personally is probably good enough?

Amy:
I think it’s the latter of the two. This is such a common question. A lot of people will want to increase what they’re offering, because of their lack of experience or limited experience, or maybe because of the fear of the unknown. I’m going to go straight into coaching mode and say, “Hey, you don’t need to offer more.” We can talk about what that offer looks like. You’ve already got a great amount of experience. I mean, you have a portfolio you’re starting to build at your clientele.
I mean, technically, you’re in the real estate industry anyways, because of the service that you provide from a pooling aspect. I think as long as you are able to convey your message clearly, and you have a solid deal, and you know your numbers, you’ll be fine with your current offer.

Rob:
I agree with that. I would say don’t negotiate against yourself unless you have to. That’s honestly the biggest mistake I’ve ever made with partnerships or investors is negotiating myself with some really juicy terms. I think, you go in with the terms that you want, and have in your back pocket what you’re actually willing to do. I actually do believe that you should have some flexibility, because whether or not you make money on your first deal with an investor from your end, I think, the experience is a lot more valuable working with an investor, understanding how to manage timelines and budgets.
Don’t give it away for free, but be flexible if they push back a little bit. I would even just make sure that you have answers to all the different questions that they’re going to ask, because with the type of property and the projects that you have going on, there will be some possible roadblocks with permitting and making sure that everything is head to toe completely legit from a permitting and a conditional use permit and all that stuff standpoint. Make sure that you know your stuff, because the more you know, and the more of an expert that you can present yourself as to the investor, the easier it will be to talk them down the ledge a bit, and get the terms that you want.

Josiah:
Thank you very much for all your help in answering my questions, and explaining this to me. I’ll keep you guys updated on how it goes. I hope to see you around.

Rob:
Awesome, man. Good luck with everything.

David:
All right. We wanted to bring Josiah in so that you guys could see that this works. If you work, it wasn’t too long after hearing this information that he put it into play, and now he’s got himself a pretty cool opportunity that it’s safe to say wouldn’t have if he wouldn’t have done this. Amy, first off, thank you very much for your help to our community, and helping Josiah. If you wouldn’t mind, could you just give us a recap on what we talked about on the first two episodes where we discussed your system?

Amy:
Sure. Absolutely. We kicked it off with common fears and objections when it comes to raising capital, which are all very common, whether it’s we don’t have the time, or we don’t have the experience. Even Josiah touched on that, right? We talked about the importance of as you get out there and build your foundation, you want to be very confident in who you are and what you’re doing, because if our audience, in this case, private money lenders, sense any timidness or uncertainty in our voice, they’re not going to invest with us. That really led us into taking action.
What does that four-second power pitch look like, and who do we start to connect with? Really, the answer there was anyone. The minute we leave our house, everyone we encounter is a prospective private money lender, so what does that script look like? Step one from here on out is targeting anyone and everyone with cash or assets collecting dust, and dropping that four-second power pitch on them. If they don’t ask you what you do, so you can drop the four-second power pitch, then why don’t we ask them what they do, so the law of reciprocity finds its way back to us, and we can continue with that conversation.

Rob:
Yes. Basically, you are asking them, “Hey, what do you do?” Just in hopes that from a general, what’s it called, courtesy that they’ll at least pretend to be interested in what you do, and then you actually hit them with the pitch, and then they are actually interested, right? Is that the idea, or if you have a good connection with them at the very beginning, then you can just really lead with that?

Amy:
Absolutely, and it’s all of the above. Now, there are going to be people that we’re going to choose to target who we have a preexisting relationship with. Those conversations will be a little less scripted and more casual. We’re still going to treat it like a business though, whereas those who we don’t have a relationship with, on the last episode, we talked about converting our Uber drivers into private money lenders or people at airports or on airplanes or sporting events.
In that case, we want to target them, and be strategic, and hope that if they don’t ask us what we do, that when we start that conversation, it ends up leading down that direction.

Rob:
Definitely. This is like at the end of every episode, when I’m like, “Dave, where can people find you on social media?” Because I want him to ask me that back, so I can plug my social medias, but then he forgets half the time, and I’m like, “Come on, man.”

David:
Or did I forget? Perhaps I know what you’re doing.

Rob:
Exactly. Amy, can you clarify for us really quickly what is the F, and then what is the A specifically? I know we’ve got an acronym going here.

Amy:
Sure. The FACT framework, the F is for foundation, so how do we build our foundation? Make sure we understand who we are, what we’re doing. We want to know our role. Why are we doing this? What’s in it for us? What’s in it for them, our audience? The A is for action. Now that we’ve built our foundation, we’re confident in what we’re doing, and why we’re doing it. We’re going to get out there and start taking action, and start building rapport with anyone and everyone. It starts with that four-second power pitch.

Rob:
Awesome. Can you take us through what we’re going to be talking about today, because we’re going to be talking about basically the second half of this, and then how we can actually close these investors using the rest of the framework, right?

Amy:
Absolutely. There are a lot of strategies that we can implement when it comes to building rapport and trust with people above and beyond the four-second power pitch. I’ll share a few of those. I think we actually went through several of them on the last episode, the meet-up strategy, the high ticket event strategy. We can touch on more of those if you would like. It’s really step three of the FACT framework, which is the credibility piece. Now that we’re out there 24/7, we’re taking action. We’re building trust and rapport with everyone.
We’re planting that seed with everyone. We want to start to lock up coffee talks, whether they’re in person or virtually. During those 30-minute coffee talks, we want to be able to introduce a different credibility piece to our audience, because over time, these credibility pieces will increase their confidence in who we are and what we’re doing, which will eventually get us to invest with us. That’s what we’ll focus on today is the credibility piece.

Rob:
Awesome. Just so that I’m understanding, because I want to make sure that we’re really clear on all the different steps here. When you say taking action, we did talk about doing the meetups, for example, because that will establish you as a local authority. That is step… That is in the A aspect of it, right, taking action, or is that in the credibility, or is that in this limbo in between?

Amy:
It’s going to be in step two, taking action. The five strategies we discussed on episode two about taking action, there are many more that we can implement if we had the time. Anytime we’re out there building our list, if you will, or building our Rolodex, or connecting with people, that’s all going to be a part of taking action.

Rob:
Awesome. Well, let’s dive in to see the credibility aspect of this, and how we basically transition from taking action to actually posing ourselves as experts, and giving ourselves credibility so that people want to invest with us.

Amy:
Sure. I was just going through… I actually just completed a capital raise for a project here in Austin, Texas. Earlier, I’d mentioned that we’re going to come across all sorts of private money lenders, people who have never done this before, and then very seasoned private money lenders. In this case, the individual I was talking to was an expert private money lender. So, I explained to him, “Hey, in my business, I have over 16 different credibility pieces. I know you understand the business, so you just tell me what you want to see, and I will show it to you.”
In this case, he wanted to see my deal analyzer, which is my very detailed cost-benefit analysis, which takes into account every cost variable, including profits. I’m an open book. I will show everyone my personal financial situation. I will show them potential profits, because I want them to see how much is there in case we don’t hit our numbers, right? He wanted to see the deal analyzer. He wanted to see my list of frequently asked questions, which is simply a six-page PDF of every question I have received over the last 10 years packaged into a nice brochure.
Then he wanted to see my experienced private money presentation. These three things I just emailed to him. Normally, I would schedule a Zoom. I would say, “Hey, let me take you through each piece.” I would actually only start with a generic private money presentation if the individual was not experienced. So above and beyond the list of frequently asked questions, and my property analysis template, my deal analyzer, my private money presentation, which I’ll take most people through on step one, it’s really just a high-level overview. Again, I’m not dropping any details on, “This is who I am. This is my background. Here’s why I raise capital, right?”
“Here’s what’s in it for me. Here are all the reasons why my private money lenders love me. Here’s what’s in it for our private money lenders, and then here’s an example of what a deal looks like very high level.” Then I give them a call to action. “Hey, if you’re interested in learning more about the different investment opportunities we have, let me know. We’ll schedule a follow-up meeting. I’ll introduce you to my team, so on and so forth,” but there’s still no call to action as far as investing is concerned. That’s going to come later. That’s the generic private money presentation.
For those of you who are talking to somebody who has done this before, and they’ve lent on deals, my experienced private money presentation, it’s going to have more strategies in there. It’s going to talk about what it looks like to leverage out of retirement accounts. It’s going to go into a more detailed overview of what different investment opportunities look like, so the financial acumen’s going to be a little bit higher in this case. This is a great example of why I’ve got 16 different credibility pieces. We’ve got contracts. We’ve got org charts. We’ve got our business plans, and I just pick and choose depending on who I’m talking to.

Rob:
This is really interesting, because I came into thinking about the credibility aspect of this a little bit differently, just so that I am getting this because I want to use this myself. Obviously, I use components of this, but having a more linear progression, I think, is going to be very helpful for everyone listening at home. So when you’re taking action, for example, in the meetup aspect of it, and you talked about establishing yourself as a local authority, I was thinking of that as establishing credibility, which of course it does.
You’re actually talking about the credibility of you as someone who handles someone’s money. As an investor, if I’m going to give you my money, I want to feel that you are a credible financial savvy person that can actually deploy that, and perform fiduciary duty versus the credibility component of, “Hey, I build a lot of houses. Look, I’m successful. I have good returns.” I know that they’re similar, but I think one seems more financially focused when you’re establishing the credibility, versus I was thinking it was more like, “Hey, look at me. I’m pretty legit from the real estate side.” Is there much of a difference in these two camps?

Amy:
There is a difference, and it’ll be a combination of the two, because we really need to know our numbers, right? I always tell people, “Your experience doesn’t matter. What matters is the deal.” Sure, we have to be able to articulate things clearly and concisely, and know how to build our power team of experts, because if you lack experience, as long as you know how to bring together contractors, designers, architects, your experience doesn’t matter. What matters is the equity and the deal. That’s where our financial acumen comes into play, and so we want to be able to explain both sides of that to our private money lenders.

Rob:
This is very helpful. This is actually one of the… This is what I needed when I was first embarking in my raising money journey many years ago. When I was just a tiny little Robuilt, I remember I was thinking, “Oh, I build houses. I do Airbnb. I make great money on Airbnb. It shouldn’t be very hard to raise money,” and I went to my father-in-law’s brother, I guess. Was it my uncle in-law? He was like, “I’d be interested in investing. What you got?” So, I put a presentation together that was so focused on the nuts and bolts of Airbnb.
I was like, “All right, here’s what I’ve done. Here’s how much money I make. Here’s what the cash flow is going to be.” Then he hit me with the wild what I thought at the time, because I wasn’t really into this yet, but he hit me with a wild list of very investment and financial specific questions like IRRs. If this, then what? What about capital contributions? Who gets paid back first in the investment? Does your equity vest before or after you’ve paid back my investment?
To all of those questions, I felt so blindsided. I was like, “I don’t know. I mean, it’s going to make money, man. What’s the problem?” Then he was like, “This is not for me.” I was like, “Wow, this guy, he doesn’t get it. He doesn’t get Airbnb, man.” But in retrospect, I see how I failed on the second half of this. Building the credibility here definitely is important.

Amy:
That’s such a great example. Thank you for sharing of why we have to know our numbers because… This is why I created six pages of FAQs that we don’t want to only memorize them. We really want to understand them, because the private money lenders out there who have done this before, and who know what they’re doing, you will come across PMLs who will purposely ask you the same question five different ways just to test your knowledge on the logistics, but also on the financials, right? We really have to know how our process works. If we don’t, we should not be out there ethically raising capital for deals.

Rob:
100%. When you say that you put together this list of FAQs and your presentations, I know for me, we have a pretty dialed presentation. We have our own internal list of FAQs, but it’s not like we just discovered that overnight. We discovered that through failure of raising money time and time again, because every investor would ask the same question, or, like you said, a different version of the same question. So, every single time we got out of an investment meeting where we didn’t secure the capital, we were like, “Oh, we should probably think this through. What happens when partner A wants to exit the business? Do we want to have a vesting period, and all this type of stuff?”
For sure, I think as you continue to develop your pitch and your power pitch and your power presentation, just know it’s not going to be perfect when you’re getting started. You’re probably going to have a few bumps and bruises. Not everyone is going to have the wonderful Josiah story, obviously, where he’s able to lock it down super fast. I know for me, at this point, and obviously I have more of a platform, but even outside of that, I actually still don’t even talk about the platform necessarily when I’m approaching new investors, just because I want them to know that I know my stuff. I want to prove that I actually do know a lot of the financial acumen that you talked about.

David:
Amy, what do you think about the credibility being a spectrum where when you have less credibility as far as track record or knowledge, you have to put more work up front in the deal itself, like Rob talking to his uncle in-law who probably knew more about real estate than Rob did? He’s asking all these questions and stuff I wouldn’t be asking unless they were a little experienced, versus somebody later in their career, who’s got an established track record. I was trying to avoid using me as an example, but that’s the easiest way, where I bought real estate for 10 or 15 years before I ever talk to someone about raising money.
I don’t have to put as much effort into explaining all these intricate details. It’s like, “Well, it’s David. I trust him.” How do you see that progressing?

Amy:
I always respond the same way, and I get this question all the time, which is if you don’t have a lot of experience as an investor, then lean on your team of experts, because you’re not going to be the one grouting the tile, right? So as the business owner and entrepreneur, as long as you know how to analyze a deal, and you know how to build a power team, then what I do is I bring my team into these conversations. I’ll say, “Hey, even though I’ve only been doing this for a year, or I’ve never done a deal before, this is my general contractor. He’s been doing this for 25 years. This is why we picked this neighborhood, specifically these three blocks.”
“This is my designer. She owns her own design firm. This is my real estate attorney. It’s his law firm. We’ve been working together collectively, and building our strategy for the last 12 months. If you would like, I’d be more than happy to schedule a call so that you can talk to my general contractor directly.” It really is… You want to create this team that feels empowered, because I always tell people, “I’m not successful because of the things I’ve done. I’m successful because of my team, and it’s my team that helps me shine.” That’s how I overcome that objection.

David:
How about if you walk us through a deal you’ve done, and maybe hit on how you covered all four of these steps in your deal so we can see what it looks like in a real-life application?

Amy:
Sure. Absolutely. You know what, before I forget, if you would like, because I’m sure there are going to be a lot of questions about how do I create a private money presentation? What are all the details that go into it? I’ll just give you, guys, a copy, and if you want to share it with everyone, feel free to do so. Take it. Implement it. I’ll script it out for you, so those of you listening can read it and even practice at home, and then get out there and start implementing it.

Rob:
Sure. That sounds amazing. Thank you.

Amy:
As I mentioned earlier, there was a deal. Why don’t we start with my very first deal that I raised capital on, because I had only done one deal prior to that? On my very first deal, we often talk about mistakes or lessons learned. On the very first deal that I completed in downtown Chicago, I did not use private money. I was working my full-time job. I was trying to build my power team, and so I had the gap funding in the bank, and I ended up putting that into the deal. Well, two weeks later, my acquisitions manager, which is just a fancy way, you guys, of saying realtor brought me two passive income properties.
All I needed for each rental property, they were small single family homes, it was either $20,000 or $25,000 each. Each property would have cash flowed $300 a month, so we’re talking about $600 in positive cash flow every single month that I wasn’t able to pull the trigger on, because I had put my own money into my fix and flip, and I had not prioritized the art of raising capital, so I couldn’t just raise the capital today for the down payment. For me, that was a really hard lesson to learn. I always say, “Look, is $600 a month going to retire us?” No, but that’s one example of one missed opportunity, and think about how quickly that can start to add up.
I really hustled. I reprioritized. I shifted my focus in my business, and on the very next deal, I ended up raising from a complete stranger to begin with $390,000 in 21 days. Now, I hustled. I was on the phone every day. So when it came to building my foundation, before I had started actually picking up the phone to call people, and requesting referral, after referral, after referral, which we talked about on previous episodes, I made sure as a part of building my foundation, I had my online presence completed, so I had a website. I had social media profiles.
I didn’t have huge followers. Nobody knew me back then, but I made sure I had LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram, and it said I’m a real estate investor. For those of you who don’t have a social media presence yet, go copy mine. I’m giving you permission right now. Copy my social media. Have at it. There’s your online presence for your website. Create a landing page. You don’t need anything fancy. Just have something, because whether we like it or not, private money lenders are going to Google us and go to our website.
I practiced my scripts. I recorded myself on my phone to make sure that I was very smooth when I was chatting over the phone, because I was still reading some of the scripts I had created 10 years ago. Then I felt comfortable getting out there, and picking up the phone to call people. That was how I built my foundation. I would call people through referrals. The first thing I would do is drop that four-second power pitch on them. Then when they wanted to learn more, now that I’m taking action, and connecting with them, I’d schedule a coffee talk. I would take them through my general basic private money presentation, which I’m going to give you guys a copy of.
I remember the gentleman during that three-week time period that I was hustling, and I was on the phone every day. So to those of you listening, this doesn’t mean in three weeks, I raised almost $400,000 through an email automation or a social media post. I’m hustling. I’m finding every single credibility piece that I can, and sharing it with as many prospective private money lenders as I can all through the four-second power pitch on all through requesting referrals, the meetup strategy, the fundraising strategy, so on and so forth.
I would hop as a part of the credibility piece, step three, in my FACT framework. During these 30-minute coffee talks, I would take them through their private money presentation. Then before I would end that coffee talk, which by the way, in a perfect world, you want to get through your presentation in 15 minutes. In the beginning, you’re going to take 45. That’s normal. It’s all a part of the process, and the learning curve, and in a perfect world, which I know we don’t live in. During these 30-minute coffee talks, you want to give your audience time to talk about who they are as well, and their experience investing, what their expectations are.
But before we would end up the conversation, I would ask, “So what do you think? Do you have any questions? Are you interested in knowing more?” I didn’t say, “Do you want to invest in that deal?” I was $400,000 for. I was looking for a private money. I never said, “All right, so do you want to wire the 400,000?” Even though internally I knew it was crunch time, right? I would get the commitment, and they would, most of the time, want to know more. Because I’d practice my presentation, they could sense the confidence in my voice. They could sense the energy.
Then that would lead into multiple coffee talks, again, where I’m introducing them through other credibility pieces, such as the contracts I use in my deals, or the design piece, or I’d share architectural renderings. I would show them what it would look like to leverage out of their retirement accounts. Once they committed, then step four, the transactional piece is I would take them through before they process any wire. This is where I’m at right now on a new raise I’m doing here in Austin, Texas. I would say, “Hey, let me know.”
So, this gentleman’s going to let me know within the next 24 hours if he wants to invest $300,000. I said to him, “Hey, once you decide whether or not you want to invest, then let’s hop on another zoom.” I’m getting the commitment, but I’m still building rapport and trust. I’ll explain to you how the flow of money works, but right now, don’t even worry about it. We’ll cross that bridge when or if we get there. Once somebody invests with you, and they process the wire, that’s a step for the FACT framework, the transactions piece.
Then we really want to take a step back, and look at how we nurture our network. How do we follow up with our private money lenders so that two things happen? Number one, they reinvest. Number two, they increase their investment amount. That’s going to go into our nurture system, but that’s at a very high level how I raised the first 400. I parlay that into how I’m working on the next 300 on my current deal.

Rob:
Awesome. Let me clarify on the C on the credibility aspect of it. When you end that power pitch or not the, sorry, the coffee talk, you’re going to say, “Do you want to know more?” I got to imagine that a large percentage of those people are like, “Keep going.” Do you try to cram it all in that meeting, or because you can, I don’t want to say close them while they’re warm, or do you schedule another… I know you said you do multiple coffee talks. How does this play out for you usually?

Amy:
I don’t want to cram it as much as I can into one meeting, even if the investor is a seasoned investor, like the gentleman I’m talking to right now, because it can still be overwhelming. It’s a lot of content. Even if you guys email me an executive summary before we even talk about the deal, I’m going to be like, “What is this? What are all these numbers? What are they doing?” I probably will either delete or not read it, actually not if it came from you guys, but that’s a whole nother conversation.
Whether it was 10 years ago or today, I still approach it in the four-step process, and I will still offer to take my private money lenders through all the credibility pieces. Similar to what David said earlier, sure. Now through social media, now through these interviews, now through my experience, I have people who reach out to me saying, “I want to invest with you.” There are going to be times where a lot of people don’t even know who I am, but whether they know me or not, I still offer to take them through the four-step process.

Rob:
That’s really cool. So then at the end of the transaction side, you talk about the nurturing. I imagine that at the same time, you do want to be a little high touch probably for at least the couple of days or the week after. That way, someone doesn’t wire you $100,000, and then you stop talking to them, and they’re like, “Well, what happened here?” Is there a little bit extra communication that happens directly after just to cure any buyer’s remorse that might be setting in for an investor?

Amy:
Yes. I always take care of my private money lenders, and I like to over communicate, but in a respectful way. For example, the gentleman I was just talking to to today about this Austin raise. He said, “All right.” He goes, “I’ll send you an email, and then you’re just going to email me wire instructions if I decide to move forward.” I said, “No. Even now 10 years later, I’m still not going to raise capital through an email blast. I’m going to pick up the phone, and call my top 10. I’ve got 10 private money lenders who I go to first. I’m not going to text them.”
This gentleman asked, “Do you have an opt-in page, so I can learn more about future investment opportunities?” I laughed, because I was like, “Oh my God, no. I’ve been doing this for 10 years, and I don’t. I don’t have an opt-in page. A lot of investors do, but that’s because I really focus on building and sustaining that relationship with my private money lenders through old school strategies, picking up the phone and talking, or going out for lunch or coffee.” That’s how I will… That’s a part of how I nurture those relationships.

Rob:
That’s awesome. I can really see, even for me, how this is going to play out, because I’m currently doing a raise right now for a $7 million 23-unit motel, and a lot of the times, there’s the platform, right? That helps me establish, I guess, the foundation where I can talk about it, and get people interested in that project. But I haven’t really… I had a marketing plan in mind, but now I think I’m going to adjust it based on what we talked about today, which is I talk about it. I gather the interested leads. Then I was going to… I plan on now hosting meetups, or I guess virtual workshops, if you will, or virtual meetups with people. That way, I can reach the entire country.
That would be a taking action, getting people in a room, telling them about what I do, telling them about the deal, and then going to credibility at that point, taking it from the group setting down to individual, as you call it, coffee talks where we actually start taking those calls with investors to actually walk them through the specifics of the deal, not just the actual real estate side of it, but talking through the actual nuts and bolts of a syndication, limited partnerships, the general partners, and everything like that, and then finally the transaction side where we then have to get them through all the nuts and bolts of that too.
Make sure that they’re accredited. Make sure that they actually are able to sign up online, get them into the portal, and then as we just talked about, keeping it high touch there for the next couple of weeks, so just to make sure that everybody’s updated. You have already influenced my raising strategy on what I’m doing right now. Thank you.

Amy:
Thank you, sir. I’d love to hear both your thoughts on this, because to me, raising capital is fun. Talking to people and networking, it’s fun. I always tell investors, “It ends up turning into not so much a game,” but you don’t even realize eventually once you get good at raising capital, you don’t even realize that it’s happening. You’ll be out there every day raising capital. For me, I like spending time with my private money lenders. My private money lenders have become my friends. We take vacations together. We go on masterminds together.
So in my business, and everyone’s process may be different, once a private money lender has invested a million dollars with me, it can either be in one lump sum or across multiple deals. I will pay to fly them out to the job site, give them this VIP experience, take them out to dinner, sit down with my team, walk through properties. They love that. It’s another great way to continue to develop that long-term relationship. So now, not only are they reinvesting with us, and reinvesting greater amounts, but now they’re starting to introduce us to our network of prospective investors.
But what do you guys think? What has your experience been there?

Rob:
I think that’s really great. I wanted… When we were going to originally launch our fund, where we were going to build a few houses or 23 houses in Joshua tree, we actually had intended to allow the different investors to stay at those properties at short-term rentals. We’re building a short-term rental portfolio. Come and actually stay there a few nights once it’s all done, which is great, but it’s not instant gratification, right? I definitely think that there’s a level of credibility even that’s added when you say, “Hey, thanks so much for investing. Come out. We’ll meet you out there. We’ll fly you out there, and we’ll actually take you through the project,” because I mean, I’m sure you know.
Actually walking a project is completely different than seeing it online. David and I hadn’t seen the Spanish mansion that we bought in Scottsdale in person previous to buying it, and then we showed up, and we were like, “Whoa, this was worth it. This was worth the massive investment that we just made.” It’s a little magical, especially as an investor to actually walk through something that you purchased in, that you participated in, and it’s very surreal. I think as long as you can keep that up, and keep an investor very, I don’t want to say enchanted, but very excited about the opportunity, then, I think, the funds there open up, because we have investors that we work with now.
We are relatively high touch. We definitely communicate with them and everything. But the more you can do that, and the more you can nurture that relationship like you’re talking about, they tend to want to invest again and again and again. It definitely is a strategy worth pursuing to get someone out there to actually see the property. But I don’t know. That’s me. What about you, Dave?

David:
I have a lot of thoughts on this topic, and I don’t want to make this a two-hour episode, so why don’t we do this? We will let Amy have the last word on this show, wrap up what she was describing. I will save my thoughts for the follow-up episode to this episode, which will be putting a button in it, as you might say, Rob. We’ll get into what do you do once you’ve got someone who’s like, “I’ve got some money to lend?” You work the FACT process. It works out. How do you invest that money?
There’s debt. There’s equity. There’s combinations of the two. There’s all kinds of creative ways, so I think that this would be a good thing to get into once we’ve finished the four-part system. So if you want to hear my advice or my feedback on what I do when I’m raising money, or different ways to do it, you’re going to have to listen to the next episode. Before we get out of here, Amy, do you have any final thoughts that you’d like to leave us with?

Amy:
Sure. Just as we wrap step four, the FACT framework, and those transactions are coming in, we talked briefly about the VIP experience, and defining what our follow-up system looks like, and how we’re going to nurture our network moving forward. I always like to be clear with my private money lenders, and let them know, “Hey, you are an investor in this deal. So as far as I’m concerned, this project is just as much yours as it is mine.” Use this in your portfolio. Put this on your website as one of your properties that’s coming soon.
Blast on all over social media. Tell your friends and family members about this amazing new build that’s coming up in Austin, Texas, and just be comfortable sharing this project as a part of your own, because I really believe that this is yours just as much as it is mine.

David:
That’s awesome. Robin, what do you think about the show so far? Any last words for us before we get out of here?

Rob:
No, I was just going to say that the reason I say put a button on it is because you’re cute as a button when you talk about real estate, David. That’s all.

David:
Speaking of cute as a button, there are so many bears. I’m out here in the Smokey Mountains right now looking at more cabins. I’ve seen about seven bears in two days. They’re everywhere. I mean, I just thought it was every once in a while, you might see a bear, but no, they’re walking down the street. They’re going into people’s front yards. I was literally looking at a house, and a bear came walking up on the porch as I was stepping outside to open the door, and see the view out of the corner of my eye. What I thought was a black lab was actually a very big black bear.
Well, I guess it would be very big for a lab. It was small for a bear, but still, it just comes sauntering up, looks right at you, cruises around, sniffs around for food, walks away. It’s amazing how they’re everywhere out here. I keep hearing people call them cute. It’s like, “That’s not what I think of when I see a bear.” I see that’s an apex predator. That is not afraid of anything. That is competition for me. I don’t see them cute at all. Amy, what’s your thoughts on that? Are bears cute, or are they scary?

Amy:
They are not cute. Even in giant black lab, I love dogs, but no, I’m like, “I don’t know.” I haven’t even been to Yosemite. I don’t jive well with bears.

David:
Rob, you were going to say?

Rob:
I had a bear walk up to me at my chalet in Gatlinburg when I bought it. It was probably about four or five feet away. Like you said, just casual. I was right next to someone, and I got… I was tying my shoe, and I got up, and I was like… I just started… Basically me and the person I was next to, we realized it at the same time. She was like, “Bear!” We did what you’re supposed to do, which is just run as fast as you can away from the bear. We made it out alive. We’re okay.
I’m glad she did, because I was out of words. I later found out that what you’re supposed to do is instead of running, you’re just supposed to point at it, and shout out its insecurities to its face, but I didn’t know that tidbit at the time. I could go back [inaudible 00:51:31].

David:
Your partner never approved of you, and the bear will just turn around and run away.

Rob:
That’s right. I guess I wish I had known that, but it’s okay. We made it out alive.

David:
You have really small pause for a bear your size.

Rob:
You call those bear pause.

David:
Barely pause at all. On our final episode, you will get to hear Amy’s insults towards a bear that she uses to keep herself safe when she does encounter a bear as well. Don’t miss it. Rob, if people want to find out more about you, where can they go?

Rob:
Oh my gosh. You asked, dude. You pick up quick, man. You can find me on YouTube over at Robuilt. That’s R-O-B-U-I-L-T. You can find me on Instagram at Robuilt as well, and TikTok at Robuilto. What about you, David?

David:
I’m DavidGreene24. I’m now doing YouTube lives at youtube.com/davidgreenerealestate. If you guys want to come in and ask me questions, feel free. But most importantly, Amy, if someone wants to give you money, or they want to learn more about your FACT system, where can they find out more about you?

Amy:
Sure. You guys can catch me on Instagram at AmyMahjoory, or just come join us in October. I’m doing a live event in Long Beach, California. We’ll have a two-day conference all about real estate and money, and it’s going to be a lot of fun.

David:
All right. Most importantly, you can follow BiggerPockets for more than just the podcast. We have a YouTube channel where I interview different people. Other people are interviewed about different things. If there’s a specific topic, short-term rentals, finding on-market deals, finding off-market deals, commercial real estate, whatever your flavor is, head over to YouTube, and check out the BiggerPockets YouTube channel, because there’s a ton of content, much of it shorter than this, but more specific in nature.
You can get lost in there, and I hope you do because it’s good to spend your time watching real estate videos instead of cat videos or on TikTok. BiggerPockets is much better for your financial future. All right, Amy, thank you so much. If you guys would like to hear Amy again, all you got to do is check out the next episode. Please like, share, and subscribe this episode on the podcast. We love you, and we’ll see you on the next one. This is David Greene for Rob “the bear cub” Abasolo signing off.

Ken Leon, director of equity research at CFRA, joins ‘Power Lunch’ to discuss the homebuilder sell-off as the housing economy braces for a rise in mortgage rates.

CNBC’s Diana Olick joins ‘The Exchange’ to discuss recent housing data, which seems to show there are cracks forming in the housing market, and that could be good news for buyers.

Mindy:
Welcome to the BiggerPockets Money Podcast show number 330, Finance Friday Edition, where we interview Dan Sheeks, my daughter, Claire Jensen, and talk about the ultimate teen money hack for parents.

Dan:
The authorized user on a credit card is an amazing hack to start the teenager with a good credit score before they turn 18, having money conversations involving them and paying the household bills before the strategy we’ve talked about today is implemented. They should be involved with some of the decisions for the household budget. They should be clicking the mouse to pay the bills every month. Talk to them about budgeting. Have them start tracking their income and expenses, even if it’s as a teenager not a lot of money’s coming in and out.

Mindy:
Hello, hello, hello. My name is Mindy Jensen, and today is a family affair, plus Dan. My husband Carl is here today. You know him from 1500days.com and from the Mile High Fi Podcast.

Carl:
Woohoo. Thank you so much for having me.

Mindy:
That sounds weird.

Carl:
It’s early. My brain is not working yet. I don’t know what to say. I’m lost for words.

Dan:
I think it was perfect, Carl.

Carl:
Thank you, Dan. One person appreciates me. Claire, what did you think of my intro?

Claire:
I think that this is going fabulously so far.

Mindy:
It gets better, I swear, and also sitting beside me is my lovely 15-year-old daughter, Claire Jensen.

Claire:
Hi.

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

Carl:
Scott is not here, that rhymes, so I get to read the next part. Whether you want to retire early and travel the world, go on to make big time investments and assets like real estate, start your own business or teach your children how to handle their finances, we’ll help you reach your financial goals and get money out of the way so you can launch yourself towards your dreams and more dinosaurs. I like dinosaurs.

Mindy:
Okay. Today’s episode is for you and your teen. Dan Sheeks is the teen authority, the author of First To A Million: A Teenager’s Guide To Achieving Early Financial Freedom, and he recently spoke at Camp FI Rocky Mountain, which is a weekend retreat that travels around the country for like-minded people where there are several speakers over the weekend. Dan’s talk was about teaching your teen about money, and it blew me away. I instantly thought two things. Number one, I want to do this with my kids, and number two, I want to get Dan on the show to talk about this method. So Dan Sheeks, welcome back to the BiggerPockets Money Podcast.

Dan:
Great to be back. Thanks for having me. I can’t do a Carl Jensen intro, but I’ll do my best.

Mindy:
Well, you don’t have that dinosaur thing going on.

Carl:
You have to really work at it to sound as bad as me, Dan.

Dan:
I’ll keep practicing.

Mindy:
So Dan, when you were giving your talk at Camp FI, I poked Carl and I said, “I want to do this with Claire. I want to do this with our kids.” Daphne is 12. I think she’s a little too young for this. Why don’t you share your concept, a high level and then we’ll get into it a little bit deeper?

Dan:
Yeah. The high level version, I call the method the ultimate teen money hack for parents, meaning that this is something parents can use with their teenagers, and it’s, I think, the best way to introduce your children to money, how it works, how to handle it, how to be responsible with money while they’re still in your household, so they’re still under your supervision, under your control, you can monitor the situation. So then when they leave your house, they are good to go. They understand money. They’re responsible. They have good habits set in place versus what everyone else does, including pretty much everybody I know. The teen graduates from high school, they go off to college or elsewhere, and then they start learning how to handle their money as an adult, and things don’t always go well, should we say. So this is a strategy to help eliminate those problems.

Carl:
Dan, where were you 25 years ago or how long ago was I in college? A long time ago, but I came out of college with $60,000 in debt, and lot that was credit card debt, not a lot, but over 10,000. So Dan, if we could just go back time-

Dan:
Same.

Carl:
… after you’re done with this, if you could invent a time machine, we’ll go back and then you can set me right. I’d be far better off right now. Dan, how about you?

Dan:
I was the same way. I graduated college with lots of student loan debt and continued to rack up more, by the way. I’m working on that time machine, and if I can make it work, not only will I not take out student loans, I’ll be buying lots and lots of real estate back in my 20s. I wish I could do that.

Carl:
I will invest in that syndication deal.

Mindy:
Okay. So Dan, how does your system work?

Dan:
Yeah. So to get into the nuts and bolts, I won’t go into every single detail. I will say this, at the end, if there are parents listening or people who know someone who might be interested in a detailed PDF, I’ll give them my email address and people can shoot me email and I have something I can send them. So this is a way to get your teenagers in a place where they’re responsible and they’re comfortable and they’re confident with money before they leave your household.
So you’re basically going to give them full responsibility of their finances while they’re still in your house, and it’s almost full responsibility. I would say 90% because they are still teenagers and they still probably do need some supervision and definitely some training. So the plan is completely adjustable, customizable. So as I lay it out here today, everyone should just keep in mind that you can make tweaks. You can make changes. You can do things differently. You can change as you go through it. It doesn’t have to be exactly the way I lay it out right now.
To begin, the best idea is to start tracking the spending that you as a parent do or the money you spend on your child, everything from food, clothing, school expenses, insurance, their part of the cellphone bill, everything that you spend on your child. Now, that might be eyeopening, and that might be surprising if you start adding up all the money, but it also includes annual costs. So if they go to a summer camp or once a year if they have some other expense, that should be included in the tracking.
So the goal is, as a parent, to have a very, not exact, but a very good idea of how much money do I actually spend on, let’s say in this case, Claire, in a given year because what you’re going to do then is divide that by 12, and you’re going to give your teenager a stipend, a monthly stipend that they then use to pay their expenses, and we’ll get into how that works.
One of the other ways to prepare is that I would definitely have a savings account and a checking account set up for your teenager. If they’re under 18, then that would be a joint account, which is super easy to do. If they’re 18, you could just have them open up their own account, but you might want to help them do that. So they’re going to have their own checking and savings account.
Once you figure out how much that monthly stipend, and by the way, I don’t like to call it a stipend. I like to call the paycheck because the idea here is that you’re training them that they are going to once a month get this paycheck direct deposited into their checking account, and what that looks like is that the parent just transfers the money into their checking account let’s say on the first of the month every month. You can do it twice a month too if you want and just divide it by two. So they’re going to get their “paycheck” deposited into their checking account, and then they are responsible for budgeting that money to pay all their bills throughout the month.
A lot of those bills they pay are simply going to be them transferring back to their parents the money for let’s say food, cellphone bill, health insurance, possibly rent, if you want to throw that in there too. So that’s what it looks like in a nutshell.
Now, I’ve seen it done different ways where some parents will say to their teen, “You’re going to pay for all of your expenses except for housing.” So maybe they don’t charge them rent or, “You’re going to pay for all your expenses, except we will still pay for any food you eat in the house, but any food you eat at school or at a restaurant, even if you’re out with us at a restaurant, that’s going to be coming out of your account,” but again, it’s flexible. You can do it however you want.
So they are responsible for paying all of their bills. If they’d happen to have a part-time job where they have some other source of income or a different revenue stream and you know they make $200 a month from their part-time job, then you should include that in the calculation of how much their monthly stipend slash paycheck should be because I think it’s even more powerful when the teenager realizes that when they pay every bill, part of that money is money that they’ve earned, and it teaches them the value of the dollars. So if they do have a part-time job or some other source of revenue, then incorporate that into … Don’t just let them keep all that. Have them use some of that to pay their bills.
Then so every month they’re paying their share of the bills. They can use their debit card and their checking account to buy things on their own. If they go out to Chipotle or Jimmy John’s, debit card. They can transfer money back and forth to parents depending on the bills themselves. Now, as a parent myself, here’s some extra things I would throw into that. I would teach them that when that monthly paycheck comes in to their checking account from you, that they first pay themselves first.
So they get trained that if that, and let’s just make some easy numbers here, if that’s $1,000, that X percent of that is going to go into maybe their savings account for some future investments or their future self, right? So teach them to pay themselves first right out of the gate with this system. Teach them what a weekly expense looks like, monthly expense, yearly expense, and how they need to budget for that. So if the sports camp costs $1,000, they should be putting away X amount of dollars per month, so that when that expense comes up in let’s say July, that they have the money to pay for it. They need to plan ahead for that annual expenditure that might be a big number.
They should also create an emergency fund. Perhaps that’s a second savings account. They’re putting money into that until they have three to six months of their expenses saved up. They can think about long-term savings for family vacation or investing or giving. Do they want to donate any of this money? Then their own fun and entertainment, budgeting for that stuff. So they will be paying for everything.
If the family goes out to a restaurant, let’s say they go to Applebee’s and they’re sitting down. They’re separate checks, right? So the teenager is going to order items off the menu knowing that at the end of the meal, they’re going to pay for their check with their debit card and their parents aren’t going to cover it. This will create a situation where they start looking not just at the menu items, but the prices, and they’ll start asking themselves, “Is this $6 dessert worth it? Am I really willing to spend $6 because it’s mine, and if I don’t spend it, I get to keep that $6?” So it forces them, clothing, looking at, “Do I want the name brand clothing versus maybe something from a low-end store or even a secondhand store?”
They should pay their share of the utilities, their share of the cellphone bills, school supplies, toiletries. If they have a car, then they should be taking care of all their car expenses, the maintenance, the gas, the insurance. They pay for their haircuts, their gym membership, everything, but as a parent, you’re giving them enough money. The idea is that they’re not going to run out. You’re giving them enough money and you’re allowing them to teach themselves how to budget.
The last thing I’ll say as a parent, and this is maybe the most important is you have to be able to let them make mistakes. Don’t rescue them before the mistake. So if they spend more than that’s in their account, let them do that and feel what it’s like to pay a fee to the bank because they overdraw in their account. If they missed a payment and it’s late, and as a parent, you could have due dates for some of your bills, then they have to pay a surcharge for that late payment and let them feel what it feels like to have to pay an extra $20 because they forgot to pay it on time.
If they’re learning these lessons in the house before they’re out in the real world, and you as a parent can monitor and make sure everything is going well. Last thing I’ll say is that if they do run out of money, the idea is then that they’re not going to be able to buy the things they need. You as a parent, you could step in, and I recommend giving them a short-term loan. So maybe you loan them $500 with some interest, so they can feel how that works, so that they can pay their bills for that month, and then they need to budget for paying back that loan in the following months. So that’s the down and dirty idea and, yeah, if you have questions, we can go into it.

Mindy:
Oh, we have questions. I love this. The reason that I love this is because, like Carl said, when he turned 18, he went to college and it was just like, “Here you go. You turn them loose,” and what happens? You get on campus. I think they’ve changed this now, but we’re old. You get on campus and they’re like, “Hey, would you like a free T-shirt? Sign up for this credit card?” and now you’re in debt for tens of thousands of dollars for a free, stupid T-shirt that you don’t even wear. You sleep in it maybe or do you still have that T-shirt, Carl?

Carl:
No. I have the Frisbee, though.

Mindy:
Oh, okay. Sure. So you’ve mentioned debit card. One thing that the FI community really goes nuts over is credit cards and credit card points. Do you have any guidance on credit cards with points attached? I know because she’s 15 she can’t get a credit card. I know this because I tried to get a credit card for her because they sent her an application and they’re like, “Why did you fill this out? She can’t get one until she’s 18.” I’m like, “Well, you sent it to me.” So we might do a joint card with her as an authorized user. Do you have any comments on that?

Dan:
Yeah, do it. Absolutely. I didn’t mention that, but yes, you nailed it. If they’re under 18, then I would open up a credit card account. Technically, it’s in the name of the parent, but you add the teenager as an authorized user, and they’re the only ones that use it, right? So they get their own credit card with that account, with their name on it. They can use their credit card. They can start to see and learn what it feels like to build up points, and then also, and this is a bonus, a huge bonus, not many people know this, but even though they’re a minor at that point, most of the time, those credit card payments if they’re using it, those monthly hopefully on time credit card payments will build the minor’s credit score and credit history even though they’re not 18 yet, and then that will carry over into their adult life. So I think a credit card is a great way to go, but I would make sure it’s a separate account that the parent never uses, only the teenager.

Mindy:
Yeah, and an added bonus for that is because Carl and I have 800 plus credit scores, once she turns 18, our credit score, because she’s an authorized user on our card, transfers to her. So she’ll be 18 years old with an 800 credit score.

Dan:
It’s not as hard as you think to get a high credit score when you’re young. I have many members in my community that have done it in the first year to two years after turning 18. Their credit scores are in the upper 700s. Even though their history’s short, everything on the report, everything on their history is solid. They’re making on-time payments and they’re managing it well, but if you do make one mistake when you’re young, it has a much more significant hit to your score than an adult.

Carl:
There’s one thing I really, really like about this strategy, and I’ll back up a second. I talked a little bit about my big money mistake on episode 335 of BiggerPockets Money. Is that correct, Mindy?

Mindy:
Yes.

Carl:
Okay. Yeah. It was episode 335. After I had my first job, it wasn’t too long after that that the great recession came, and what I did is I stopped investing. So at the best possible time to invest money, the stock market was on sale, I freaked out and stopped, and that was a big mistake that’ll eventually cost me probably millions of dollars if I live long enough.
So the thing I really like about this, Dan, is this gives them an opportunity to make the mistake when it’s not going to be that bad. If you’re 15 and you get your stipend or payment on the first of the month and you go to the mall and go crazy and blow it all and you have to get a loan, that’s something that a lot of people might not learn until they’re in their 20s, but this is an opportunity to do it when you’re 15 or 16 or 14, and by the time you’re in the real world and a real functioning human adult, you’re going to be set. You’re going to have it figured out. Well, you might not have it completely figured out, but you’ll be in better shape than most.

Dan:
I agree, and I’ll add this to it. So Carl and Mindy, your two daughters, which I need to say this, by the way, we all got to hang out at Camp FI. I met Claire and Daphne and we hung out and they were great with my son, Callum. Your daughters and, Claire, don’t let this go to your head, but your daughters are amazing. They are super mature, well-rounded, awesome young women, and I mean this. If my son Callum turns out to be half as amazing as your daughters, I’ll be very, very happy. They’re awesome kids, and they have the benefit of having Carl and Mindy Jensen as parents.
So without a doubt, these two, you’re Claire, and I don’t want to talk about you, you’re here, Claire and Daphne are ready to implement this strategy. I don’t have any doubt, but I would say to other parents, don’t just throw your child into this as the only thing you ever have done. This needs to be preceded by many money conversations and other things that you do in your household, including them in the household bills and budget and stuff. I wouldn’t just do this out of the gate. This is, like I said, it’s the ultimate teen money hack. So it needs to be the finale of when they’re with you at home to before you send them out into the real world.

Carl:
I’ll make one other quick comment. The other thing I really like about this is not that my children do this, but if they decided they wanted to stay in the shower for an hour, they’re going to pay for that. They’re going to directly see the results, and I’m not quite sure how to meter her that, maybe a device on the shower-

Dan:
I don’t know either.

Carl:
… a timer like, “Claire, hit the timer when you start.” Claire, you don’t do this, but I know other people who have kids who this is an issue with and, “Sure, you could take that hour shower if you want, but guess what? You’re going to pay for it.”

Dan:
It’s an extra five bucks.

Carl:
Yup.

Claire:
A way to save money. I’ll just not shower. Does that work?

Mindy:
Ew. No.

Carl:
Okay. Now, we’re getting into super lean fire.

Claire:
Just kidding.

Dan:
Well, that brings up a good point because Claire just said she would just not shower, which isn’t really an option, but what you will find when your teenagers are going through this system is that they will start finding ways to be frugal that will, I think, impress you. So not showering every day hopefully isn’t one of those, but being more selective at a restaurant. I think if the parent does decide to not charge them, I don’t know if that’s the right word, for the food they eat in the household, it’s really difficult to estimate what the value of the food they eat in the household is because if you did, the teenager is just going to sneak down in the middle of the night, eat everything in your fridge, and then not tell you about it.
So usually, parents will just say, “Anything you eat in the house is free,” and if that’s the truth, then you might see your teenagers start packing a lunch for high school as they go to school instead of going out to lunch or eating in the cafeteria and paying because that saves them money. So you’ll start to see changes in the way they purchase things, fun things, clothes because they know that if they don’t spend that money, it’s theirs, they get to keep it, and that’s a different feeling than, “Mom and dad just buy everything I need, and I don’t get to keep anything left over.”

Mindy:
To be clear, the not showering thing was the joke. I’ve met her. That’s not going to happen, but, Claire, what questions do you have about this plan and what do you think of this plan?

Claire:
First off, I love it because I think it was probably when I was two, ever since I was two I wanted independence. So this is a fun way to experience it while also having it be preparation for the real world, which I think is fun. I don’t know. It feels like growing up in a FI family just feels like a really fun game because I’ve been prepared for the future my whole life.

Carl:
Claire, do we ever talk about money in our house?

Claire:
All day every day.

Carl:
Do you know what an index fund is, Claire?

Claire:
Yes.

Carl:
Do you know what the value of Tesla stock is or the current state of the S&P 500?

Claire:
Yeah, roughly.

Carl:
Good.

Dan:
She passed the quiz.

Carl:
Claire, do you have any questions for Dan or-

Claire:
So I have a couple questions. The first one is what happens if my parents want to go on a vacation because I went to Europe earlier this summer with my school trip and I had to pay for the whole thing or my portion of it because that was a trip that I chose to go on, but I feel like my parents usually choose to go on trips. So do I get allotted more money for that? Do I have to pay for it from my own allowance? Do we calculate that into the yearly fund? How does that work?

Dan:
Good question. So you’re talking about a vacation that the family is planning to go on.

Claire:
Yup.

Dan:
Yeah. So in my mind, this is how I would do it as a parent. I would set it up this way. I would say, “Claire, we are going to Disney World in June, and you’re going, but as you know, you are going to pay for your slice of that vacation, and we have built that into the stipend.” Most families don’t. They take a big vacation every year or it’s somewhat consistent. So Claire then, on that vacation, would pay for her own airfare, her slice of the hotel, her own admission ticket to Disney World, her souvenirs, her food in the park, and her bill in the restaurants that they go to.
If as a parent, and I think any discussions about money are advantageous. So if the Disney World vacation was going to be more expensive than the average, then I think the parent and teen should sit down and say, “All right. This is going to be way more expensive than what I was budgeting for or what we had thought about. So parents, I need a little extra money for this vacation. Can you give me a little extra in the next three or four months so I can save up for this vacation that’s more expensive than the average average one we take?”
The parents might come back and say, “Well, we’ll give you a little bit extra, but to earn more, I want to see some more chores around the house or some more clean up the backyard or something like that, and then we’ll pay you some extra money to help you afford your vacation to Disney World because you are going.”
At Camp FI, someone asked the same question, and there were teenagers there, and I think it was Sarah Grace who said, “Well, what if I just don’t want to go? What if I just say I don’t want to go to Disney World and I get to save all that money?” I mean, that’s not the point. Family vacations are important. So as a parent I would say, “Well, you’re going and you’re paying for your share,” but as you know, together have the conversation to find out what’s the best way to plan and budget and give them the money that they would need to actually pay for it.

Mindy:
I did think that was funny that they both had the same first question.

Dan:
I don’t know what that says about all teenagers that they would even consider not going on vacation with their family to save a couple thousand bucks, but it’s probably not a bad thought to have.

Claire:
FI kids, they’re a whole other brand. So I had another question that I thought of while you were talking about that. Do we still get paid for chores around the house?

Dan:
I think so. Yeah. Yes. Anything that you’re doing around the house that’s extra, I think, yes, you should get paid, but if the family’s doing an allowance, I think that would go away just like a set allowance no matter what because that would be part of the stipend or paycheck, if you will.

Carl:
Claire, I’ve got some big construction projects coming off, if you would like to learn how to tile or frame or even run electricity, I’m very safe. I’ve only shocked myself a couple times. You’ll be safe. You can earn extra money.

Claire:
Okay. First of all-

Carl:
How do you feel about that?

Claire:
… I would love to learn how to tile. Second of all, I’ve gotten electrocuted by my light switch before.

Mindy:
Shocked. Electrocuted is different.

Claire:
Shocked, whatever. I got shocked by my light switch.

Carl:
Yeah, that was my fault. I didn’t put the switch plate cover on on time.

Mindy:
Yeah. Just don’t touch the hot wires.

Claire:
Okay, great.

Mindy:
Okay. Back to the questions.

Claire:
Yeah. What happens if there’s money left over at the end of the month or year, however, whatever segment you’re paying it in? Do we just get to keep that and put it in our savings?

Dan:
Well, assuming, so when you say money left over, I’m going to assume that is money left over after you’ve put money away for what you know are your annual expenses. So if there’s a sports camp in the summer and it costs 500 bucks, you’re putting a little bit of money away every month so when that sports camp comes up, you have the money to pay for it. So if you have already allotted for all of your big annual expenses and there’s money left over, awesome, it’s yours. You as a teenager get to decide what you do with that money. It can go into savings. It can go into an investment. It can go into a new snowboard or a new video game or a really nice dinner out with your boyfriend, girlfriend. If there’s money left over, yeah, it’s yours. You get to do what you want with it.

Claire:
Cool. I like that plan.

Mindy:
It could go into your emergency fund so that you could continue to save for these big expenses.

Claire:
The amount of knowledge I have about an emergency fund, I could write a whole book.

Dan:
I will say my answer, I was assuming the emergency fund was already funded, yeah, you would want to get your emergency fund to a place where it’s set before you started spending extra money.

Claire:
Can the amount of money fluctuate each month? If we’re doing something that costs more like a sports camp, I know I go to camp every summer, so do we get allotted more money for that month to cover it?

Dan:
The idea is no, that the paycheck is the same every month because when you work for a company, unless you have some bonus or commission, your paycheck is the same every month. However, again, going back to what I said at the very beginning, this is customizable. It is adjustable. It is flexible. So if the parents and the teen agree that things are a little off, then absolutely it can change or there can be a one-time “bonus” for a month, summer bonus to cover some expenditures in the summer.
It’s not like all the decisions are made and then they’re done. The parents and the teen will be communicating hopefully often, weekly, if not more often than that, about how things are going. The parents can monitor the checking account because they have access to it. They can monitor the debit card. They can monitor the credit card. They can monitor the savings account, which they should do, and if changes need to be made, then talk about it, agree on it, and make those changes.

Mindy:
Ooh, Scott and I talked about having a money date with your spouse. I’m trying to find that episode. I can’t find it, but I think having a money date with your child where you go over once a month or maybe even over the first month, once a week you come in, “How’s it going with your spending? How is it going with your budgeting, and how do you feel about the amount of money that we gave you?” because I’m assuming you help guide them with budgeting. It isn’t just, “Hey, we listened to that Dan Sheeks and Claire Jensen episode, we’re going to do that. Here’s $1,000. Good luck.”
I’m assuming that if you’re planning on doing this, it’s because you love your children. You want to teach them about money. So you’re going to sit down and show them. I mean, you could show them how to track their spending by showing them my budget over at biggerpockets.com/Mindysbudget, where I am tracking my spending. Have you seen that?

Claire:
no.

Mindy:
Oh, okay. Well, you’ve heard me talk about it, right?

Claire:
Yeah.

Mindy:
Yeah, all the time, and having a way to track your spending so you can see where your money’s going. It’s one thing I think to have $1,000, and it’s quite another to be like, “Wait. I got $1,000 yesterday and now I have a 1.50 left. Where did that money go? Oh, I forgot. I had to pay mom rent, and I had to pay for my share of the utilities, and I had to pay all of these things. I don’t really have $1,000 a month. Now I have $300 that has to get me through the rest of the month.” So I think that would be really important. We’re going to talk about money more, Claire.

Claire:
Oh, great.

Carl:
One thing I’d like to do for Claire, just to get a quick question for me, is the investing portion. Once she has a job that has reportable income, I’d like her to open up a Roth IRA and I would like to match her contributions 100%. That’ll really help her get ahead in the future, and it’ll also incentivize her to really save. Hey, Claire. For every dollar you invest, I’m going to give you another dollar, an instant 100% return. What do you think about that, Dan?

Dan:
I think that’s great. I think that would be separate from this whole strategy. I think that would just be something where you say, “It’s not included in the monthly stipend paycheck. It’s not included in your expenses. It’s just something I want to do for you, but in the strategy, you need to save money to invest in that IRA, that Roth IRA so that I can match it,” and let them budget for that.

Claire:
Okay. Yeah. I love that. I love that plan.

Dan:
You love free money, right?

Claire:
Oh, yeah. It’s my favorite.

Carl:
Claire, do you have any other questions for Dan?

Claire:
Yeah, I had one last one. It’s smaller and it might be more of a personal thing. If we’re paying for the meal at the restaurant and then we get separate checks, do we also pay for the tip?

Mindy:
Mm-hmm. That’s your expense.

Claire:
No, I like that idea. I’m just clarifying.

Carl:
You’re clarifying.

Claire:
Knew you were going to say that.

Dan:
Oh, I like that one. That’s good. That’s a teacher joke. Nice one. Probably the 1,510th time Claire’s heard it, but first time I’ve heard that one. I like it.

Mindy:
Now every Claire student that Dan has is going to hear it.

Dan:
Yeah.

Mindy:
Okay. So Dan, at what age or level of maturity do you recommend parents start thinking about this ultimate teen money hack because I know my kid is 15. I probably could have started this with Claire when she was 14. She’s 15 and a half, actually, almost 16. I don’t know that Daphne is ready at 12 and a half. She’s in seventh grade. Claire’s in high school. Where do parents start thinking about this?

Dan:
I think it’s probably right about where Claire is. I think let’s start from the back end. If you know they’re going to move out of your house at let’s say age 18, I think a good length of time to run this strategy with them would be around a year to get through at least one full year. So I would think that the latest you’d probably want to do it is about a year before they graduate high school or right about there, so around age 17. The earlier you can start it, the better, but most teenagers are not Claire. To start them at 13, 14, 15 might be too early, but it really is a case-by-case basis.
Most people listening to this podcast who are parents probably are somewhat similar to the Jensen family, where they’re having money conversations with their teens, I hope. So that age could be lower. It could be around freshman in high school, but if the family’s just beginning to have money conversations, then you might wait a year or two. Again, like I said, the ultimate team money hack for parents isn’t something you just do out of the gate. It’s the finale. It’s the end of their journey with you learning about money. There’s other things you should be doing ahead of time to set them up for success in this strategy.

Mindy:
Awesome. Dan, are there any other suggestions or tips that you have for parents who are listening to this and are as blown away about it as I was when I heard you share it at Camp FI?

Dan:
I mean, I have dozens and dozens of tips for parents. Yeah. I could go on and on. I think one tip I would give parents is the book that I have, First To A Million, which is published by BiggerPockets. Thank you to BiggerPockets. It’s meant for the teenager, but as a parent, buy that book, read it yourself, and then give it to your teen and talk about all the different topics and strategies that are in the book, and then buy them the workbook and have them work through that. I wrote those things just for teenagers, and parents definitely need to be involved with that.
The authorized user on a credit card is an amazing hack to start the teenager with a good credit score before they turn 18. Having money conversations, involving them in paying the household bills before the strategy we’ve talked about today is implemented. They should be involved with some of the decisions for the household budget. They should be clicking the mouse to pay the bills every month. Talk to them about budgeting. Have them start tracking their income and expenses even if it’s as a teenager not a lot of money’s coming in and out, but have them use mint.com or some other free app to track their expenses and their income so they can see where their money’s going. There’s so many things. There’s so many things.

Carl:
Yeah. I’ll second your book, Dan. While I was reading that, I know it’s geared towards getting your kids’ finances together, but as I was reading your book, my thought was, “Wow. There’s a lot of adults who could really benefit from the knowledge in this too.” One of the things I liked about your book is it’s all encompassing. I would say you don’t go super deep. You’re not going to go into a simple path to wealth depth on why index funds are the right answer, but you cover it and you mention it. So your book is a great starting point for a lot of different topics.
The other thing I want to say about you, Dan, is I had the honor to go to your book launch party, and I met a lot of members of your tribe, the SheeksFreaks, and seen these young people who are 21 years old just inspired by you and killing it in life. So inspirational. These people who say, “I can’t do this,” look to the SheeksFreaks. You can do it and, Dan, you can point people to a lot of examples. Super cool.

Dan:
Speaking of which, we need to get Claire in the SheeksFreaks group.

Claire:
I just started reading the book and it is so good, but yeah, I would love to join the group.

Dan:
Awesome. Awesome.

Mindy:
Yeah. Thanks, Dan. She’s reading your book. She’s like, “This is amazing. I’m learning so much,” and Rachel Richards spoke at Camp FI and she’s like, “That was so great. I learned so much from Rachel.” I’m like, “Are you kidding me? You know I’ve been telling you all the same stuff, right?”

Dan:
Welcome to my life as a teacher. For those who don’t know, I’m a high school teacher and I will talk about certain things over and over and over in class, and then I’ll have a guest speaker come in and say the same thing and my students are like, “Why didn’t you ever tell us about that? That’s so awesome.” “I’ve told you 10 times.” It’s much like being a parent. Yes.

Mindy:
Claire, do you have any final thoughts about this?

Claire:
I can’t think of anything right now. I mean, I probably will as soon as we hit stop recording.

Mindy:
That’s how it goes.

Claire:
Yeah. I’m just honestly really excited.

Mindy:
Okay. Well, we’re going to try this for a couple of months and we’ll come back and check back in with you around November. So after you’ve done this for August and September and October, we’ll circle back. Dan, I’d love for you to join us again as well to check in with Claire and see how her spending and budgeting is going. Carl, you and I have some homework to do to figure out how much money we’re going to be giving Claire, and we’ve got a credit card to look into. Yeah, don’t get excited about that credit card, girl.

Claire:
I’m scared of credit cards to be honest.

Mindy:
Just don’t spend everything.

Claire:
I won’t.

Mindy:
Credit cards aren’t scary. Credit cards can be really a powerful tool if you use them right, and they can get you into a lot of trouble, but luckily, your bossy mom will be there to teach you how to use it right.

Claire:
I know.

Mindy:
Dad will be there too.

Dan:
If you don’t want, Claire, if you don’t want your parents telling you how to use your credit card, keep reading First To A Million and that will tell you exactly how to do it.

Claire:
Okay. Will do.

Mindy:
Okay. Dan, you mentioned that you would share your email address so people can reach out and get a PDF about this plan. Please tell people where they can find you.

Dan:
Yeah. So [email protected], and SheeksFreaks is S-H-E-E-K-S-F-R-E-A-K-S. I’m sure you’ll put that in the show notes. So if you’re a parent or if you know someone who has a teenager that would maybe be interested in this strategy, just send me an email and I have a PDF I can send you that goes over everything we talked about today and then a little bit more too.

Mindy:
Awesome. Dan, I really appreciate you inventing this idea. I really appreciate you sharing it at Camp FI. Shout out to Stephen Baughier, the founder of Camp FI, for bringing you there to introduce this to us. The beauty of this plan is the simplicity, and yeah, the beauty of this plan is the simplicity in it to teach your child how to handle their finances while they still have the safety net of living with you. I’m super excited to see what Claire does with it.

Dan:
I am too, and I’m excited to check back in. I need to do this. I should have said this at the beginning. A shout out to my buddy, Adam Carroll, who actually planted the seed for this strategy a few years ago on one of his Ted Talks, I think. By the way, parents of teenagers, I will pitch this for Adam, he has a documentary called Broke, Busted, and Disgusted, and it is about the student loan debt crisis in America that every parent and every teenager, frankly, should watch. Broke, Busted, and Disgusted, Google it. Yeah. So Adam Carroll is probably the founder of this idea. I definitely took it to the next level, but I want to give him credit.

Mindy:
From episode 330 of the BiggerPockets Money Podcast, we’ve been joined today by Dan Sheeks, Carl Jensen, and Claire Jensen. I am Mindy Jensen saying it’s all about the Benjamin’s baby.

Jeana Curro, head of agency MBS research at Bank of America, and John Lovallo, UBS Senior Equity research analyst, join ‘Closing Bell’ to discuss the housing market as home prices fell for the first time in 3 years last month. Home prices declined 0.77% from June to July, according to Black Knight.