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David:
This is the BiggerPockets podcast show, 670.

Kathy:
This is a wonderful time to get in. And you might even find that the metrics you’re searching for are the same, because if interest rates are up, the prices are down, the cash flow might be the same as if prices were high and interest rates low. The difference is you’re getting the asset for less, so over time, if you’re able to re-fi at some point, whenever that day comes, when it makes sense to re-fi, your cash flow increases even more.

David:
What’s going on everyone? I am David Green, your host of the BiggerPockets real estate podcast. Here today with a special episode for you. We’re doing BiggerNews with my co-host Dave Meyer. Dave, what’s going on?

Dave:
Not much, man. It’s great to be back. You still have me laughing from before the recording. I’m still trying to get my act together.

David:
We have a lot of fun here and that will translate into the show. But in addition to fun, you’re going to get a lot of amazing information. So in the BiggerNews episodes, we have created these to bring you what’s going on in the current state of the market, what’s happening with interest rates, what’s going on with the Fed, what’s happening with the country as a whole, which markets are exploding, which ones are shrinking, the information you need to make the best decisions possible for yourself all backed by data. Which is why we’ve got Dave Meyer here, because he’s the data guy. In today’s show, we have a special guest. We have Kathy Fettke of Real Wealth Network returning. She was our first ever guest on the BiggerNews podcast. And she comes in to talk about a term that I think is fantastic that my co-host, Dave Meyer here came up with, defensive investing.
So in our show we’re going to talk about how to invest in a defensive way, which I recommend doing when the market starts to turn like it is now. Before we get to Kathy, today’s quick tip is you got three options. And Dave Meyer brought this up, I thought it was brilliant, you can either play offense, you could play defense, or you can just not play the game. When it comes to investing, I don’t think this is the best time to be offensive. You don’t want to be just buying stuff in droves without looking at it very closely. You don’t want to buy any kind of real estate or buy it anywhere. You also don’t want to just sit out and not play at all, because you don’t know if you’re going to have a window to buy, like we have right now, this is one of the best buying opportunities that we’ve had period, in the last 10 years.
So what we recommend is defensive investing and we get into that in today’s show. But basically, you want to make calculated, careful and somewhat… I don’t want… Nothing in real estate is ever guaranteed, but you put the odds in your favor that this will be a very solid long-term investment based on strong fundamentals as opposed to speculation. Another important topic in today’s show that you want to make sure you listen all the way to the end to hear about, is time manage management or budgeting your time. Both Kathy, Dave and I give some really good information about how we get the most out of our day, how we stay productive and how we get as much done as possible.

Dave:
Yeah, it’s a great episode. Kathy’s one of the best, smartest investors out there, so you definitely want to stick around. But before we get into that great discussion with Kathy, let’s talk about some of the headlines recently, David, because if anyone is out there, you all know there’s just so much crazy economic news going on right now. But the number one thing has to be the Fed’s decision last week. And probably everyone has heard that the Fed raised their interest rate by 75 basis points, which is basically 0.75% and that’s pretty well known, that was expected. But there’s something more to this press conference and the announcement. And it really to me at least, was a showcase that the Fed is not messing around. They released some forward guidance that showed that they think rates are going to go up even more before the end of the year and even more into 2023. So that shows that we’re going to be in a higher interest rate environment for a while.
And if you look at Jerome Powell’s press conference, he was not pulling any punches. He was basically saying, “We are going full send, we are not stopping. We are going to basically go after inflation, even if it causes a recession, even if it causes job losses or a decline in the housing market.” And people have always speculated about this, but he basically said it more clearly than I think we’ve heard it articulated in the past. So I’m curious, David, what do you think of this really emphatic release by the Fed and what this means for real estate investors?

David:
Well, this was clearly a warning shot. When you see a warning shot you know things are getting serious. It’s not, “Oh we might be coming into the enemy or a battle.” It’s likely going to happen. So it doesn’t mean to run, tuck your tail and hide and panic and let fear overwhelm you, because we still live, in my opinion, the best country in the entire world. And we’ve got more tools to get ourselves out of a deep depression than anyone else. But it means that the current standard of living that we’ve been enjoying and some of the perks that we’ve had, probably are going to be going away. So if you’ve got a job, I would count that as a blessing and I would work very hard at keeping that job, more layoffs could be coming.
If you’re working in an industry that’s not really forward leading or maybe you’re in the blockbuster of whatever space you’re in, look for a different industry. This is a time where I think big economic changes are going to be happening. What I like about what Jerome Powell did, was he was clear and upfront about the fact they’re going to continue raising interest rates. When there’s uncertainty, when they don’t tell you exactly what’s going to happen, it leads to a lot of speculation in the stock market, in the mortgage backed securities market, in the economy as a whole. So by just coming out and saying, here’s what is going to happen, it does give us a little bit of an advantage as to how we can prepare for what’s to come.

Dave:
Yeah, I totally agree. It’s not what I think most people want to hear, but at least we know, because people have been speculating for a while that the Fed was going to “pivot.” Basically, they were going to start raising the rates up until the point where they got to a neutral interest rate and then they would maybe slow down, see what’s going happen. But now the Fed is just telling us that we should expect things to keep going up. That tells me a couple things, like mortgage rates are probably going to go up a little bit more over the next couple months. So if you could get a rate lock now that might not be the worst idea.
But that this is going to put a lot of downward pressure on housing prices for a while. If we were in this place where the Fed was going to take their foot off the gas, maybe coast for a while, more markets would probably be able to be resilient against that. Now, if we see two years of high rates, I think that’s going to put a lot of pressure on housing prices. But like David was saying, that just means you just need to change your strategy, it doesn’t mean that you need to get out of the game at all.

David:
And there’s a few areas that this might benefit us. It’d be nice to see food prices stop going up so fast. Asset classes that are highly financable, like cars and homes, it should keep the prices from going up faster, maybe even push them down. And the last piece I’ll say is savers could finally be rewarded. When is the last time that putting money in the bank and saving it was actually a viable option? It’d be nice to see some of that come back, especially for the aging part of the demographics, where people have retired and they’re living on fixed incomes. They were planning on getting return on that money and it’s been a big goose egg for a long time.

Dave:
That’s a really very good point, I totally agree. And for people who haven’t been able to afford houses, some markets might decline and you might be able to get into that. So that’s in my mind, going to put sustained downward pressure on prices. On the other side though, there’s this other dynamic in the housing market that might put upward pressure on the housing market. And again, the housing market, there’s all these forces. Some put downward pressure, some put upward pressure, no one knows exactly what the mix is going to be. But I just want to present that not everything is pointing down. So this is other dynamic that’s going on where new listings, which is basically just the number of properties that are put up for sale, are down 18% year over year, which is a lot.
People do not want to sell their houses right now, and we’ve been speculating about this for a couple months, this idea of the rate lock where people are going to be locked into these low mortgages. They don’t want to sell into a declining market to only get a mortgage at a higher rate and that doesn’t sound very good to me, so I understand why they would do that. And if inventory flattens out, which it is already in some markets or starts to decline, that could at least put a backstop on some of the declines that we might see or level it out, I don’t really know. But it’s just this really interesting phenomenon that’s going on, because right now everything is so weird and interesting. But curious, are you seeing this in your market and what do you make of this?

David:
I’m seeing this in a lot of markets, because as you know, I invest long distance. So I study a lot of the different markets and I’ll say if real estate has a relationship status on Facebook, it’s complicated.

Dave:
It’s super complicated.

David:
There’s a lot of things that factor into this and that’s why I get frustrated if someone says, “Oh, rates are going up, prices are going down.” No, rates going up affects demand, but a lot of other things affect demand. And then you’ve got supply, you actually got to balance both of these. So this is a clear indication that supply is not increasing. So even if demand is decreasing, it doesn’t necessarily turn into a difference in size.

Dave:
Exactly.

David:
Because supplies are… And why wouldn’t supply stay the same? Do you want to go sell your house at your 2.99 rate and go get into one that’s seven and a half and probably not that much cheaper of a price? It’s no reason for people to go put their house on the market and sell it. So what I would tend to see when this phenomena happens, what I observe, is that less houses come on the market, but they also don’t sell as fast. So at this point you’ve still got the majority of buyers that are hanging out in the background saying, “I want to see your prices come down.” Sellers are over there, like, “Well, the Cop show my house is worth this.” The days on market starts to go up. So you’re in a bit of a standoff, it doesn’t necessarily mean prices drop. And my strategy in that standoff, like I talked about in today’s show is that I go after the houses that I want the most with a very aggressive offer. And I look for the seller that isn’t getting interest from anyone else or who just flinches before I do.

Dave:
That’s very good perspective. Man, I love your analysis saying that Facebook, it’s complicated. It’s like, why did I pick this year to start a podcast about the economy? It’s so complicated. I guess in some ways now, it’s needed to more than ever. And I hope to people listening to this, this is helpful. But it’s like, why couldn’t I start a podcast about predicting the housing market five years ago? It’s like what’s going to happen? It’s going to go up. What’s going to happen? It’s going to go up.

David:
Real estate used to be like the Golden Girls, you knew what you were going to get every episode.

Dave:
Exactly.

David:
It was fairly predictable, right? It’s turned into Game of Thrones. Every episode you’re like, what radical, amazing change is going to happen between one podcast and the next one?

Dave:
Nothing is safe.

David:
Yeah.

Dave:
Nothing is safe. We have no idea what’s going to happen next, it’s just a free for all. But like you said, that’s why this episode is so good. It doesn’t necessarily mean… Oftentimes when there’s more risk, there’s more opportunity. When people are afraid, that’s when you often have less competition. So there’s pros and cons to the situation.

David:
Right.

Dave:
So that’s why it’s all about just staying informed and knowing what’s happening and adjusting your strategy, because there are good things about what was happening a year ago and there were bad things about that. Right now there are good things about what’s happening right now and there are bad things about that. It’s just about being cognizant of which way the wind is blowing and adjusting accordingly.

David:
Yeah, if you missed an episode of Golden Girls, you could still watch the next one and you’d be fine. You missed an episode of Game of Thrones, you’re lost. So don’t miss an episode of the BiggerNews podcast or any of the other podcasts, because things are changing rapidly.

Dave:
Yeah, if you missed an episode of Game of Thrones, I would call in sick to work, because you couldn’t go, because everyone would be talking about it and you’d missed the whole thing. Yeah, you can’t go.

David:
If you don’t know what Jerome Powell said, you are way behind what everything else is happening in the market.

Dave:
Exactly.

David:
All right. Our third headline to bring up has to do with you Mr. Dave Meyer and your new book Real Estate by the Numbers, analyze like a pro and get a holistic view of your portfolio. Tell me a little about this book and why you wrote it.

Dave:
Well, thanks man. So I wrote this book with Jay Scott. You know Jay, right?

David:
Mm-hmm.

Dave:
Yeah, so Jay and I wrote this book, because we are both numbers nerds. No, but really, basically we looked at the market and I get a lot of questions about analyzing deals, about learning some of the math, some of the formulas that help you analyze deals. And I didn’t find any one resource that was helping people holistically understand it’s not about math and formulas, it’s really about the concepts and the ideas behind investing, compounding the time value of money and using all the tools that your disposal as an investor to be able to look at a deal holistically. I don’t know if you see this, but sometimes I talk to people and they’re like, “Cash on cash return, cash on cash return.” That’s all they care about. Or they talk about force appreciation, force appreciation, that’s all they care about. Both are good things, but you have to be able to look at deals and real estate in this holistic sense.
And so that’s what the book’s about. Super excited about it and thanks for letting me talk about it quickly. We’re also going to have a couple of shows about this. Jay’s coming on, I think next week or something, so we’re all going to talk about the economy. Jay is super knowledgeable about recession investing, so definitely stick around for that. But yeah, I should just mention that it’s in presale right now and if you’re interested in the book, you should buy now, because you’ll get 10% off if you use the code Dave. And Jay and I are both giving away coaching. We’re doing a webinar for anyone who does a presale. So definitely check that out if you’re interested.

David:
Well, I want to thank you for writing that book, because I can’t say how excited I am enough that you’re bringing attention to the fact that real estate is about more than just cash on cash return.

Dave:
This is your thing.

David:
We typically call cash on cash return, ROI. Yeah, because if you’re just looking at it, real estate’s not much more appealing than stocks or some bonds or NFTs or crypto or a lot of other things that are out there, that all provided cash on cash return. Real estate makes you money in so many different ways that if you’re only focusing on one out of those, I basically have 10 ways that I think real estate makes you money, you’re missing out on 90% of the benefits of it, theoretically. So I’m glad that somebody is bringing attention. It’s not that cash on catch return doesn’t matter, it’s that it’s not all that matters. You don’t want to miss the forest for the trees.

Dave:
Exactly.

David:
And as I understand it, Dave, you’ve been doing a little bit of a tour talking about the book and the information that’s in it. So if you guys would like to hear Dave on the Rookie podcast, keep an eye out for the October 8th release. And then he will also be on the regular Bigger podcast show on October 11th, where he gets into how to think an investor. And Jay Scott’s on that interview with Rob, it’s really good. And if you guys like, I throw my 2 cents in there after the fact, a little bit of a reaction style to the interview that you all recorded. So everybody keep an eye out for October 8th and October 11th releases that have to do with Dave’s book. And Dave, if people want to get the book, where can they go?

Dave:
Just to the BiggerPockets bookstore, go to biggerpockets.com/numbers. And again, if you do it now, you can get 10% off, which is great. And yeah, thank you guys for having me and Jay on the 10th and 11th. We’re both super excited and proud of the book, think that there’s a lot of value there. So thanks for letting us come talk about it.

David:
Right on. I’m sure it’s a great book. Can you give the code if people want to get a discount?

Dave:
Oh yeah, it’s Dave like my name, D-A-V-E.

David:
D-A-V-E, there it is. All right, let’s bring in Kathy and let’s talk some real estate.

Dave:
All right, well Kathy Fette, welcome back to the Real Estate podcast for BiggerPockets. Thanks for coming here.

Kathy:
Oh, it’s always an honor to be with you guys.

Dave:
Well, I have the pleasure of seeing you all the time Kathy, because we’re on the other BiggerPockets podcast, On the Market together. But this is a reunion, because I think it was maybe about a year ago you were our first guest ever for BiggerNews. And since then, David and I have been doing these shows once a month and we’ve been having a great time bringing market data and trends to the masses. So thank you for helping us start this part of BiggerPockets.

Kathy:
Oh it’s so fun. On the Market show is just a blast, but I also learn a lot every time from the other co-hosts.

Dave:
Well, today we are going to talk about defensive investing. And David, this is something I hear you talk about a lot on the show, about the differences between defensive and offensive investing. For anyone who hasn’t heard this framework that you use, could you recap it for us briefly?

David:
Yeah, a lot of it comes from my personality. I think I’m perceived by people as being aggressive, go buy, I often get told, “Well, he’s a real estate agent, of course he says you should buy houses.” But I’m buying them myself at the same time. My personality just tends to be more conservative. I always look at the what could go wrong. I’m always thinking about the downside, I’m trying to protect against it. And when I’m investing, I’m typically not chasing after the highest return I can get. I’m usually looking for the safest option. But because I look at the property itself, the area, the asset class, whatever it is as being safer, it allows me to take action more freely. I don’t have that little, what we call the drunk monkey in your head screaming at you saying, “Don’t do it, this could happen. What if this? Everyone’s going to think that.”
By literally choosing asset classes that are more recession resistant or areas of the country that have stronger, long term outlooks, even if they don’t look as desirable right now, I find areas where other people are not flocking to, so I don’t have as much competition. I don’t get into that situation where 12 people want the same house. And I can also invest with confidence that I’m going to feel really good about this investment in five to 10 years versus really good right away. I find that when I analyze deals, this is not always true, but in general, you usually have a tortoise or the hare approach. There’s deals that on the spreadsheet look amazing in year one, you’ve got a 20% ROI, 15% ROI, sometimes short term rentals that can get into 40, 50% ROI.
But over a long period of time they’re in areas that are not growth oriented. People are not moving there, businesses are not moving there, wages are not increasing there, supply is not constricted, so they can just keep building more homes. And you find that in 15 or 20 years your house is worth very close to what you paid for it before. Versus areas that don’t look amazing up front. This would be the tortoise approach, that a lot of people see the cash on cash return and just gloss right over. Those over the long term can look really, really good. A hyper example I could give you would be investing in Malibu. Kathy knows that area, she’s in Southern California. It’s very difficult to find anything that would cash flow probably at all, let alone solid in an area like Malibu. But if you hold it for 10 years, it’s very difficult to find anything that isn’t going to make you obscene amounts of money.
Now I’m not advocating everyone goes and invests in Malibu, obviously that’s for a very specific avatar of investor, but it does highlight the point. And on the other end of that spectrum could be a turnkey property. “Oh this looks great, we’re just going to go into someplace in the Midwest, there’s houses everywhere. They just build them nonstop. I’ll go buy one of those and my cash on cash return can look really good.” And then as the house is falling apart, it’s not appreciating, you can’t pull money out of it to fix up the roof, fix up some of the capital expenditures you have. Rents are not going up, because there’s so much supply that demand never outpaces it and you hit the opposite results. So I try to avoid either extreme, right. It’s a spectrum and you want to figure out where to fit, but defensive investing is this idea that you are looking at long term fundamentals and delaying gratification and making investment choices with that perspective.

Dave:
And is this something you do always or is this a reaction to current market conditions?

David:
That’s a really good question too. In general, I lean more that way, but in different markets I play the game very differently. So in a market like this one, which we never know if a market’s going to crash or if it’s going to climb, you can’t tell and I’ve just made peace with the fact that I don’t know. But there are markets where odds are, like the one we’re in now, it’s likely to go down more before it goes up at least significantly. The Fed is announced they’re going to continue rising rates, they’re trying to slow things down. You’re getting an issue where home sellers don’t want to put their house back on the market, we can go into that later, because they’re going to lose that 2.99 rate that they have. They’re going to have to get into a higher rate. And then there’s not a lot of inventory to choose from. So when I think we are more likely to be headed down, I tend to invest more conservatively.
This is where I would pick the areas that I think are going to be safer long term where I see people moving to, even if the cash on cash return doesn’t blow me away. If I see that’s an area that in general Americans are trending towards moving into, it’s got a favorable tax environment, it’s got a favorable business environment, the demographics show that people and businesses are moving in that direction, I will favor that over an area, maybe a C class neighborhood. Now if we’ve just had a crash like what we had in 2009, 2010, 2011, I feel much better if I’m going to get into some of those C or C minus neighborhoods because you’re almost at the point where you’ve got nowhere to go but up. So in general, the philosophy that I preach is if it’s post crash, you can be much more liberal with what you buy.
You can go after areas where price points are lower and it’s easier to get into that area and the cash on cash return looks really good, because even if for some reason you don’t love it, you’re going to ride the elevator up and you can exit if you have to. But if you’re at a point where you’re thinking it might crash, you actually have to get extra conservative, because those A class properties, those A class locations, they don’t get hammered like the D class areas do. If you just think about whoever’s listening from wherever they live, the best neighborhoods in your city or the best cities in your state, the last time we had a crash, they had a dip. The worst areas were decimated. So we’re at that point where we’re looking like we could be heading over a cliff, nobody’s really sure, I want to be extra conservative about the areas and the asset class that I invest in at a time like this.

Dave:
Kathy, what do you think about this framework of defensive versus offensive investing?

Kathy:
A hundred percent, everything he just said. But I’m opposite by nature, I tend to jump into things. I’m a quick start, if you follow the Kolbe personality test. I need enough research and then I’m ready to jump in. Fortunately, I’m married to someone who needs all the information, so we help each other out, he slows me down and I speed him up. Otherwise, we probably wouldn’t own hardly any real estate if I weren’t in the picture, so that’s good. Listen to your spouse and listen to each other and each other’s fears and that can actually help you both move forward, that’s just my little marital advice. But back in 2005 when I didn’t know anything about out-of-state investing, I did have Robert Kiyosaki on the show and he gave me some fundamentals that I’ve stuck with since then, which is almost 20 years. And of course, if you don’t know who that is, that’s the author of Rich Dad, Poor Dad who’s changed many lives.
So I was lucky enough to have him on my show and at the time it was a San Francisco radio show before podcasts. And he was really explaining the dynamics of what was coming and it was so shocking that nobody could see what he could see when it was so obvious. And David, I was a mortgage broker back then and I knew something was wrong, it didn’t pass the sniff test at all. Being able to give teaser rates, not even the full payment to qualify people, knowing that when that payment adjusted, they would never ever be able to make that payment. But those were the loans, that’s what people were getting. So it’s intuitively like, this is going to fall apart. But the headlines were saying the opposite and even real estate experts were saying it, that it was going to be fine. But Kiyosaki was saying, “Oh no, no, no, these are going to reset in 2007.” So he had already sold all of his high price real estate. He made a killing in the growth markets.
But then when he knew when these loans were going to reset, it was in the books. People knew when that was going to happen. He just sold everything in the high price markets and bought in Texas. So I was like, “Why Texas?” And he explained it’s the biggest job growth in the country, the biggest population growth as a result. And yet home prices are still 26% undervalued compared to incomes there. The prices had not gone up as fast as the incomes, I mean, what a scenario. So it made sense to me and being a quick start, I’m like, “Rich, I want to go to Texas-”

David:
“I’m moving to Texas.”

Kathy:
And [inaudible 00:24:56]. Not even moving, I just was like, “Let’s go.” We ended up coming home with five properties, because if you remember, you could get loaned on investment properties an unlimited number with no money down. So yeah, I bought five of them in that trip. We went back and bought more and this was at the top of the market, it was 2005, 2006. And yet when everything crashed a few years later, those properties stayed rented, because like you were saying, we bought in really good neighborhoods. We had A class schools, it was near jobs, it was near new infrastructure growth. This is really important to me, if you know that a city is investing billions of dollars, billions of dollars in their infrastructure, they have been studying that for decades of where growth is going, they know. That when you see that new infrastructure coming in, it’s like, “Oh okay, this is a really a growth area.”
So it just made sense to us, we helped thousands of people do the same. And it was like being on a, I don’t know, if you’re in a movie and you’re watching this earthquake happen and some people are in the middle of it that it caves in and the there’s other people on the side just watching them fall. That’s what it felt like on those Texas properties. The ground was shaking but we were fine except for the properties that we didn’t follow that advice on. The California properties we kept or we bought three properties in Boise where there was two employers at the time, it didn’t make it through that.

Dave:
Wrong bubble for that one.

Kathy:
Wrong bubble, yeah. It would’ve been better to wait, yeah.

Dave:
This bubble would’ve been good.

Kathy:
Exactly. So those fundamentals we’ve carried, that’s really how we built our company and the foundation of look for those things, look for where the job growth is. And I don’t mean a little, I made the mistake and Dave knows, of following job growth to North Dakota during the oil boom. But I tell everybody, never invest in an area that’s dependent on one industry. Well, I did and then the rug got pulled out, oil prices crashed and I’m stuck with land in North Dakota. So when you go to other places, you look at, we really still like Florida, Orlando, Jacksonville, these areas have diversified employment centers now. They didn’t 10 years ago, it’s a different market today. So really sticking with those dynamics of job growth, population growth and affordability and infrastructure, I feel really comfortable even investing today and we are, we’re going big actually. We think there’s some amazing opportunities today.

Dave:
Can you tell us a little bit about, obviously not the specific opportunities if you don’t want to, but just the characteristics, what are the trends and the data points that get you excited about opportunities in this type of market?

Kathy:
Well, I like to see, like I said, I think the government controls a lot more than we realize, this is not your parents economy and is not your grandparents’ economy. This is a very manipulated economy and a lot of it is, we’re just the puppets of the puppeteers who control the levers. And right now those levers are saying we’re going to crash this economy. I mean, Jerome Powell just came right out last week. I was way more positive a month ago as you know, Dave.

Dave:
Same.

Kathy:
And then he comes out and he is like, “No, we’re going to kill it. We’re going to kill jobs.”

Dave:
He’s not messing around anymore, yeah. That was like, “Anyone thinks I’m messing around, I’m going to crush your dreams right now.”

Kathy:
Oh, he’s really totally fine with that.

Dave:
But honestly, as an investor it’s better, right? Now you know where we stand. It’s obviously not great for prices in the housing market, but personally, at least for me, especially if you’re trying to be defensive like we’re talking about today, it’s better to know what they’re intending to do rather than being in limbo.

Kathy:
Yeah, I really had this rosy belief that the central banking system wasn’t on a mission to make lives worse. And again, I know that bigger picture, maybe they don’t, maybe that’s not their intention. But for the Federal Reserve, which is the banking system, it is not a government entity, for them to just flood the market with so much money and buy mortgage backed securities to keep rates low for so long, to stimulate a housing market that was already stimulated, it didn’t need that help, to then just drive… Everybody knows if you keep rates low, it’s going to make prices higher, because payments are low, people can afford more. And you also know that when you pull that back, it’s going to do the opposite. So they’re the ones who flooded the market with money and kept rates low and now they’re like, “Oh, maybe we shouldn’t do that. We’re going to take all that away from you. Sorry, I gave you some candy, I’m going to have to take that back. You can’t keep that.” And you’re just like, I already maybe swallowed it.
Anyway, these are interesting times and I follow what the Fed says and I believe them. And this time we’ve got to be really defensive, way more defensive. I’m already defensive now, because I’m older and I think that my natural tendency is to dive in and just go for it. But as you get older and you’ve taken losses and you’ve had to start over and I’ve had to start over several times, once you get to my age, you don’t want to start over. So already I was being careful for the past decade, because it was really hard going through 2008, I never want to do that again. Anyone who did doesn’t want to do it again. So I was already staying low leverage. This is defensive to me, low leverage. I got sometimes no debt and sometimes super cheap debt, long term rates, 30 year fixed.
Rich and I would have these fights, I’d be like, “Honey, why don’t we just get a lower rate at a 10 year arm?” And he’s like, “No, the 30 years not that much more, just lock it in then you don’t have to worry, we’re old.” It’s basically what he is saying. So low leverage, long-term debt that’s fixed so you don’t have to worry about that variable. And lots of reserves on hand, lots of reserves and I personally either want to buy properties that are fixed up like new or brand new, because then you don’t have so much of those issues of repairs to worry about. And believe me, I bought plenty of old houses that cash flowed great until they didn’t, I guess plumbing broke and I spent 20 grand fixing it. So those are the keys to me in defensive investing. I’m not worried about this, because we’re super low leverage and have reserves and we’re in strong markets and in good properties in those markets that people want to live in.

Dave:
So David, I know you just went on a buying spree I think, I don’t know if that’s what you would call it, but it seems like it. What defensive tactics did you use to make sure that you were cushioning yourself against potential price declines?

David:
I’m still on that spree actually. It slowed down from where it was, but I put a property contract yesterday-

Dave:
Nice.

David:
That I’ve been working on for about a month and a half. And another one I’m really close on. So part of my strategy has been, rather than seeing a property and going after it with everything you have, that was the way you had to do it the last seven years. There was no light stepping around this thing, you couldn’t throw jabs, you had to throw in your offer a knockout punch and if you didn’t get the deal, you weren’t getting another chance. I look at it now I got a lot of lines in the water and I’ve got some sellers that are interested and I’m waiting as the news tips in my favor I guess there’s so much to say, I want to make sure I don’t just go in rabbit trails all over the place, because we’re talking about defensive tactics here.
But I guess one of them would be not falling in love with any one particular deal. I’ve got a lot of them that I’m interested in. They’re all A class properties, I probably never would’ve even had a chance to get in the last seven to eight years, because they got so much interest, everybody wanted it, that I can go after them now. And I’m not writing an offer with the intention of getting it accepted on the first try. I used to do the opposite, I would tell people, if you want that asset, if this is a good asset, give it everything you got, you one chance. You’re like Eminem in Eight Mile. This is your shot, do not miss your chance to blow. Now I really look at if an offer is a jab, I’m looking to see how my opponent reacts to that offer. I want to know what the seller does. If they accept my offer on the first one in the markets I’m investing, at least I went too aggressive, right? That was a mistake.
So I’m writing them low and I’m waiting to see who’s going to come back. And so this particular deal was listed at $1,175,000, it’s a 5,000 square foot cabin in a really, really good location in Blue Ridge, Georgia, which is where people in Atlanta would go to visit if they want to go to the mountains. A beautiful property, several acres of stream running through it. And it has a massive four car garage with a livable, two bedroom, one bathroom space above it, that garage can be converted in the living space and I basically could double the square footage of the house. It’s a really good borough opportunity, in a really good location, in incredible condition. Like what Kathy said, I don’t think that there’s one thing that I would need to fix about this property other than a couple mosquitoes that hang around that stream that seem to love me.
But I’m not just going in and writing a strong offer. They were listed at $1,175,000 and I wrote an offer at $1,000,050 and I asked for about $35,000 in closing cost credits and they said no. And so I waited and I waited and I waited and what do you know? Jerome Powell comes out and says, “Interest rates are going up, unemployment’s going to go up. The economy’s going to take a hit.” Fear courses through the entire seller’s market. This property and three others that I had offers in all came back that same day and said, “We’ll accept your offer that you wrote a month and a half ago.” So you have the combination of sellers sitting on the market realizing that their house isn’t selling, with this news coming out, that it’s going to be even worse. And then I’m in a position I can say, “Well, that was my offer a month and a half ago. Rates have gone up, their house has been sitting longer.”
I have my agents go back and try to negotiate it down. So instead of the $1,000,50, I ended up getting it at £1,000,025 with even more closing costs. So now I’m getting it a little bit under a million when it was originally listed a little under $1,200,000. And this is a property that is going to bring in a ton of short term rental. I’m going to double the size of it. The cash on cash return will not look incredible right off the bat, because short term rentals typically need a little bit of time to build up your client base. You have to get some tweaks, this one was currently not being used as a short term rental, so it doesn’t have reviews. But it’s in an area seven minutes from downtown that everybody wants to visit. Basically, I’ll almost double the revenue by taking that other structure and converting it into living space.
There’s a ton of things about it that I really like, but I just was patient. It’s like this aggressive defensiveness. I wrote a lot of offers, I wrote them aggressively, they said no. I said, “That’s fine, we’ll check in every week or two.” Sellers are sitting there marinating in their own juices right now. They’re worried, I would be too. No one’s buying houses like they used to be. Now I don’t want to go after the worst inventory. I don’t want to go after the same properties that all the rest of my competition going after, they’re still selling. I don’t want go buy a short-term rental that has 500 other cabins or properties that look just like it. Or buy into an area where I don’t think people are going to be continually vacationing into, or even worse an area where regulation laws could be impacted that would not let you use a short-term rental. So I’m going to safer spots, no one’s going to shut down short-term rentals in these vacation destinations, where everybody’s renting cabins and the whole economy is dependent upon tourism.
So right off the bat’s, that’s a little bit of a safer shot. And then I’m going after a bird deal that I can add a lot of value. I would imagine just based on the square footage in the area, I’m probably going to add close to $300,000 of equity to this property, putting $60,000 into the rehab. And then the last piece is just how many different offers I have out there. You can take your time, you can wait and see which seller is most motivated, frankly. And I really like this, if I’m going after grade A real estate. I don’t like this method as much if I’m trying to buy into C class areas or states or locations that people are not moving to.
Because even if you get the deal, it’s not a guarantee. It doesn’t have a big upside. You don’t know what’s going to happen. We might be in this situation for two to three more years before we lower rates. No one really knows what’s going to happen. So when there’s uncertainty like that, I want to follow the ancient principles of real estate, location, location, location. Where are people moving? Where are wages rising? Where is the highest demand going to be? And when I look backwards, what’s the property I’m going to say I’m so glad I own this, I love having this in my portfolio?

Dave:
That’s great, great tactical advice. I’d love to keep asking more questions about this, but we don’t have that much more time. And I have a couple other questions I definitely want to get to here. So Kathy, I’ll ask you this, in defensive investing, we’re talking about long term buying, but when we are potentially going to see increased unemployment, I mean, the Fed basically predict an increase in unemployment, we could be in a recession right now or we’re probably heading towards one. How do you square defensive investing with the fact that this might impact tenants and renters? Are you afraid that rents could soften or vacancies will go up? And is there any way that you can mitigate against that?

Kathy:
Yeah, I absolutely think there will be an uptick in foreclosures and in evictions, because again, it was Jerome Powell’s really, really harsh words of just last week that I think has everybody going, “Oh, he’s going to go for it.” So again, it just comes back to those fundamentals I said. If you’re in an area that has a big diversification of employment and different kinds of employers, so for example, we know that baby boomers are aging, so the medical industry is strong. I think it will continue to be strong. We are in a situation where we have a shortage of energy. So I really do believe that areas like Texas are going to stay strong. They’re not dependent on energy by any means, they’ve got every kind of employer is there, makes me feel comfortable. Florida, I’m comfortable there, because you have still a lot, like I said, these baby boomers and now younger people retiring, now they are retiring, they weren’t 10 years ago, now they are. And it’s a lot cheaper and it’s really pleasant in Florida and the Carolinas and Georgia and the southeast in general.
So a lot of demographic shifts happening in those areas. And diversification that wasn’t there 10 years ago in terms of employment. So first of all, stop underwriting as if you know that rents are going to go up, because you don’t know that. And when I see these multi-family deals come across my desk and they’re like, “Oh yeah, rents are going to go up.” Well, you know what? You could find yourself in a big problem if you’re wrong. And especially if you take an investor money and you’re wrong. So just underwrite things with the possibility that maybe rents will go down and that there could be evictions. And if you’re in an area where it’s hard to evict people, you need to keep that in mind too. I live in California where, and David you know, people can be very savvy and stay in your property for a year if they know what they’re doing.
So I want to be in an area like Texas or Florida where that’s not the case, where there are landlord laws and you do need to pay your rent and if you don’t, you have to leave. Don’t make the assumption that landlords can handle paying everybody’s rent, it’s not the case. So it’s all about the underwriting and making sure you’re in a landlord friendly area and that there’s huge job diversification and a big renter pool, because again, I try to keep my properties in the median price range of what the average person can afford. And so if you’re in a big market with a million renters and you’re in that median price range that the most people in that area can afford what you’re offering, again, I think you’re really setting yourself up defensively.

David:
I think you made a really good point as particularly about rents rising in the multi-family space. And I just want to highlight it, because the assumption if we say rents are rising, that would mean rents rise everywhere in the entire country over every asset class and that’s not how it works. Rents rise when demand grows higher than supply and wages increase to the point it can support a higher rent payment. Well, we’ve been having builders creating multifamily properties, particularly in inner city for years. I mean, if you were in any big city in the country, you saw these cranes all over the place creating multifamily housing in downtown areas. There’s a lot more supply in those spaces than demand. And so multifamily particularly is one asset that I think is exposed in more areas than single family, because we’ve been building more of those units. We haven’t been building as much single family housing in those same spaces.

Dave:
Yeah, I was actually looking at some data recently that showed that although construction permits and units are declining, David, that’s actually more in single family, they’re really starting to fall off. And the amounts of permits for multi-family units are pretty steady, probably because multifamily operators know it’s going to take them two or three years to build something and maybe we’ll be through the worst of this. But just something to note that more supply is continuing to come online there faster than single family homes.

David:
And when you hear us talk about rents are going up, that does not mean in every asset class everywhere, it’s highly localized.

Dave:
And it’s Kathy’s favorite saying, right? There is no national housing market. She’s completely right.

Kathy:
And there were boom markets that everyone just went frenzied over. So one example is Phoenix where there’s 19,000 new single family units coming online that may be able to be absorbed. But some areas didn’t get that action, where isn’t a lot of national builders going in. They don’t have that new inventory coming in. So always looking at permits and new starts versus job growth, I think is really important.

Dave:
That’s great advice. Well, we do have to wrap up here, but Kathy, do you have any last word about how to be defensive in this market?

Kathy:
Well, I know that people are probably really scared, but I really want to leave this saying, this is an exciting time to get in. As much as it might feel like, oh this is scary, when you look at headlines, you’ve got to look at, how do I interpret this? So if you are seeing prices go down, well who’s that good for? That’s good for the buyer. So if you’re just getting in and you’re a buyer, this is such a better time than last year when you had to overpay and get in line and not be able to negotiate, now you can, you don’t have competition. This is a wonderful time to get in. And you might even find that the metrics you’re searching for are the same, because if interest rates are up but prices are down, the cash flow might be the same as if prices were high and interest rates low. The difference is you’re getting the asset for less. So over time, if you’re able to re-fi at some point, whenever that day comes, when it makes sense to re-fi your cash flow increases even more.

Dave:
That’s great. That’s a great point. I mean, I didn’t experience the 2008 crash. I started buying in about 2010, but that was before the bottom of the market and it feels the same vibe. No one really knows what’s going to happen, but things when you look at them on paper, this makes sense. And you’re just looking around, everyone’s really nervous, but this is actually pencils out and it’s starting to feel like the same vibe, at least to me. David, any last words for you on this?

David:
I like Kathy’s point, if you had to choose between a high price and a low rate and a low rate and a high price, you’re better off getting it at a lower price. Your property taxes will be lower plus you have the ability to refinance in the future. And even though we’re all doom and gloom, because rates are high and the market has slowed down a little bit, still we all know that at a certain point rates are going to go back down. The Fed is purposely trying to raise them to slow the economy down and what’s going to happen to the price of assets when rates go back down? It’s not a shocker, we all know what’s going to happen.
And we will be talking about this moment in time, like, oh, I wish I had bought when I had the chance, that was a nice little window and now prices are high and all of these buyers are back in the game and there’s multiple offers and iBuyers and hedge funds are going to come right back in. It’s going to push out the mom and pop. So you can look at higher rates as a curse or you could look at it like a blessing, it’s a bit of both. But the key is when you’re following podcasts like this one, getting information like this, that you play your hand according to the cards that you’re dealt at the time. Right now we have higher rates, we have an opportunity to get houses at much less than I think what their inherent value would be. It won’t be that way forever. When rates do go back down these properties that we’re talking about buying right now, they’re going to be worth a lot more.

Dave:
All right. Great advice from both of you, thank you. I think this is super helpful. I mean, what you’re saying makes total sense, I notice more opportunity. Every single investor I speak to says there’s more opportunity right now. I think this is just a universal observation by people who are super active in the market. But at the same time, because there’s so much uncertainty, it makes very logical sense to be a defensively minded investor at this period of time. All right, so we’re going to move on to another segment. It’s a little bit different.
It’s not about real estate per se, but it’s about sort getting your mindset right to be a real estate investor. And we’re going to talk about time management. Both of you obviously very busy people, David, you host this podcast, Kathy, you’re on two podcasts, you’re both actively investing, running businesses, You speak at every conference in the country. Kathy, we’ll throw this to you first, could you give us a quick tip on how do you manage all this stuff? You’re doing so much stuff. How do you manage your time in a way that allows you to accomplish all your goals?

Kathy:
Well, have to look at leaders of large corporations and ask how do they get it all done? And they get it done, because they have good people. So that started 15 years ago when we started growing Real Wealth and my first person was a bookkeeper, because I was just like, I handed her box of stuff, I’m like, “I don’t do this part.” And that was like, “Oh my gosh, she does this better and she’s good at it.” So I was like, “What else can I offload?” And so that’s been the key to success, is getting people that are better than you at certain things you’re not good at. Instead of like, “Oh, I’m going to go hire my mom or my sister for this thing that they don’t know anything about.” I’ve done that a few times, not my mom, but friends. And it’s like, “No, get someone who’s really good at it, has done it before.” I wouldn’t want to hire a new bookkeeper who has never done that, I was going to get a really good one.
So I have a personal assistant, she handles my email, she handles my scheduling. We ended up hiring investment counselors to talk to investors, because there’s no way I could talk to thousands and they’re… So it’s good people. On a personal level, one of the big changes that Rich and I have made lately is your day starts the night before. It’s an interesting philosophy and I forget who said it or what book we read about that. But we were getting a little lazy, having a lot of wine at night and watching a movie and it was probably a COVID thing and up till midnight. But we both wake up naturally around five, so we weren’t getting enough sleep. We were a little hungover, I mean, not really, but even just a glass of wine affects me. So now we go to bed early, we don’t watch TV only on the weekends, don’t drink wine midweek. And get up early, fresh, able to focus, do some yoga, some meditation, exercise, and just start the day looking at the calendar, what do I have planned? Structure it properly and that works way better.

Dave:
That’s great. Still like those wine nights every once in a while.

Kathy:
Oh yeah, for sure.

Dave:
You got it, you still got to do it, but for the most part-

Kathy:
Weekends.

Dave:
You got to be disciplined.

Kathy:
Yeah.

Dave:
What about you, David? How do you manage this?

David:
All right, I’ve got four tips that I can share for time management.

Dave:
Ooh.

David:
So the first thing I’ll say is to be completely transparent, it is pretty much every day that I have 20 things to do and enough time to do 12. So part of my life is just accepting that eight of those things are not going to be done. So you have to figure out how you can get a little bit of progress done to buy yourself some time. Or prioritize what needs to be done or see what action can be done that might cover two of these things, because sometimes that’s the case too. Tip number one, don’t be reactive. This is how most people live their lives. They wait for something to come to them and they go, “Oh, there’s a fire I got to put out.” And they just jump right into it, okay? It’s very common for everyone else in the world to feel that whatever their issue is, should be as much of a priority to you as it is to them, even if it’s their own fault that they got into that mess.
So when someone comes and says, “Hey David, can you look at this? Can you do that? Can you fix this problem? This just happened, ah.” I immediately say, “This needs to be scheduled on the calendar. This is not a thing that I have to stop what I’m doing and jump into this, just because emotionally it would make you feel really good if I prioritize this over what I’m doing.” Which leads me to tip number two. Schedule everything. I have times in the day scheduled to bring me all of these problems that popped up that someone needs help with. I tend to tell the leaders in my company that they do this with me and then they also do it with the people that are subordinate to them. You don’t want someone texting you to say, “What do you do when a buyer does this? What do you do when the contractor says this?” You write that in a Google document.
You have a scheduled 15 minute meeting and you go over every bullet point that’s in that document that was written down, at one time as efficiently as possible. And then oftentimes we will share that document before the meeting. And so you can answer some of the stuff without even getting on a call. It’s much faster to type in an answer than it is to have a conversation where you get a bunch of background details, that don’t really matter. And a bunch of non-essentials when you’re just trying to solve a problem. So schedule everything that you do, if it’s not on your schedule, it doesn’t exist. Number three, you got to know what moves the needle. Not everything we do is the same. If you’re just a pure investor and you’re saying, “How do I find time to analyze deals?” If I sat and watched you analyze deals, you’re probably analyzing a deal that I would look at before you even started and say it will never work.
This is why we have rules of thumb, stuff like the 1% rule, stuff like buying in areas where you shouldn’t be buying, stuff like buying a property that’s already occupied by tenants and you’d be basically buying an eviction. There’s certain things that automatically disqualify a deal and just putting a little bit of effort before you jump into it will help you. I personally think people that like analyzing deals do it just because it’s fun. These are the high C’s on the DiSC profile, the analytical people, they will sit there. And I’ve had these buyers before that want to go over on a spreadsheet, all nine deals and look at every one of them in depth when they’ve already decided they don’t want to buy any of them. Stop doing that, if you’re not going to buy it, stop looking at it. And then the fourth one is use different muscles. So what I mean by that is, if you go to the gym and you are working out, there’s several different ways you’re burning energy.
So if I’m just doing bicep curls, I can only do it for so long before my bicep wears out. Well, I also have overall glucose in my bloodstream that I need to burn as energy to make that muscle contract. I could burn my bicep muscle out but still have glucose left over to work out another muscle system. And then I go do legs or I go do shoulders or something and all of a sudden I’m not fatigued and tired anymore, I can work out that muscle. When I run out of glucose, I’m completely done. So you have an amount of energy you can burn in a day that your attention can actually hold and focus on certain things and that’s going to determine when you’re done.
So you have to make sure you don’t go into a dead sprint and burn all of that by just getting into really tough meetings to start your day, with really difficult, problematic people. Got to be careful who you let into your life in the first place that burns all of your glucose to where you’re just done by lunchtime. “I just don’t even want to make money anymore. This is not worth it.” And the other thing is I break up my day by using different muscles. I don’t sit there and hammer the same muscle, because it wears out. I can’t write a book for 12 hours a day. I can’t be in meetings for 12 hours a day. I can’t solve difficult problems and I can’t review emails, I can’t do any of those one thing, because I’ll just get tired.
But I can break it up, so I will often record a podcast like this get done, use a different muscle by answering emails, use a different muscle by working on an outline for a book. Go step outside and take a walk while I call a couple people and talk. Get some sunshine, get some fresh air, come back in, grab a quick bite to eat, record the next piece of content I’m making. And basically, I don’t work out every muscle through the gym. I bounce around between the machines so that I can get more out of myself throughout the day.

Dave:
Wow, that’s great advice. I like that idea. Sometimes if you do two or three podcasts in a row, which I think we’re all doing today, it’s hard. I know people probably think, “Oh, they just talk on a podcast.” It’s like you have to pay a lot of attention, it’s exhausting. It’s nice to break it up a little bit.

David:
How about you, Dave? Do you have any tips?

Dave:
Yeah, I actually do. So one thing I think I do, I don’t know if I made this up, I’ve never heard anyone else do it, but I have something I consider my time budget. Everyone has a budget where they allocate dollars to certain things and they’re rigid about that. I have to confess, I’ve never had a financial budget in my whole life. But I do try to keep a time budget and I identify things that I want to do that are non-negotiable for me. So every item on my time budget has an amount of time I’m going to put towards it per week and then a priority level. So sleep, non-negotiable, got to do it. Time with my partner, got to do it. For me, I really like to exercise, so that’s something that’s nonnegotiable for me. But then everything else is a little bit below that.
And so for example, something that I had, some budgeting changes I had to make recently, is this year in 2022, I launched a podcast. Kathy’s on it, you guys have both been on it. And I also wrote a book and that’s on top of my full-time job at BiggerPockets. And so I had to look at my budget and say, “There are only so many hours in a week, how am I going to add to this?” And I basically decided no more active real estate deals. I’m only going to invest passively this year. And when I hear you guys talk about all your deals, I get a lot of FOMO.
But it’s a decision and a commitment I made to be able to do the other things I want to do in my life right now. And it helps you stay focused, at least for me, it helps me stay focused and not chase every opportunity, because ultimately, there is a lot of opportunity. And when you see markets like this, you guys are talking about, there’s a lot of different things. And I think you just need to be very intentional and deliberate about how you’re going to spend your time. And that gives you a better chance of achieving the fewer things that you decide to do. So I don’t know if anyone else does it, but it works for me.

David:
That’s pretty good.

Dave:
Well, thank you both for being here. This was a fun reunion. Kathy, we’re going to have to do this every Fall. We’re going to do a one year anniversary of BiggerNews. And so we appreciate you being here and looking forward to having you obviously on On the Market and seeing you both in San Diego. We’re filming this right before the conference, and we’ll see if one glass of wine really does it for Kathy.

Kathy:
Oh no, it’s going to be a weekend, I’m going to be drinking then.

Dave:
All right, great. Well, Kathy, where can people find you if they want to connect?

Kathy:
realwealth.com is our brokerage where we help people acquire investment properties nationwide. And then Grow Developments, growdevelopments.com is my syndication company.

Dave:
Awesome. And as if anyone listening to this doesn’t know where to find you, David, but what’s your Instagram and YouTube?

David:
It’s still not nearly as much as Brandon Turners. And even though he’s off the podcast, he’s still [inaudible 00:58:21].

Dave:
We got to get you up there, man.

David:
That’s what I’m saying, man.

Dave:
Yeah.

David:
I’ll take a pity follow. I’m not too proud to beg, not at all. I don’t want to have to grow a beard down to my belly button just to get attention like Brandon did. So please, if you like my content, go follow me at davidgreene24 and I’m on YouTube at David Greene Real Estate. And Dave, what about you?

Dave:
I am mostly on Instagram where you can find me at thedatadeli.

David:
All right. And last, for all of our listeners, please do us a favor, if you like this content, let us know in YouTube on the comments. We actually read those and we do take them seriously. So if you wish the show was longer, let us know. If you like the speed and the pace that we’re doing it at, the length, let us know that too. If you wish we had covered a certain point in depth more, let us know. We just may do a future show to satisfy your desires at a later date. Thank you guys, both Dave and Kathy for having me on and for sharing your knowledge. I think you both gave some really good, insightful things and I will get us out of here. This is David Greene for Kathy Real Wealth Fettke. And Dave, the Derek Jeter of Real Estate Meyers signing off.

Dave:
Hey, everyone. Welcome to On The Market. I’m your host, Dave Meyer, joined today by James Dainard. James, what’s going on man?

James:
Just grinding it out in the Pacific Northwest right now. We’re dealing with the market, shaking out, so just pivoting, changing things and keeping our nose down and getting things done.

Dave:
I mean, I guess I’m pretending asking you what’s going on. We’ve spent the whole day together, so I’ve talked to you a little bit. But maybe before we jump into the awesome interview we have today, what are you focusing on up there in the Pacific Northwest to keep your business moving during this very strange economic climate?

James:
A lot. We’ve made structural changes at every business. The way we’ve been doing the last 24 months we’ve thrown out the window, and we’ve replaced staff or reposition staff, and we’re just rebuilding the companies, because at the end of the day, every market is a different business and you just have to pivot, change and get things moving.
And as I’m seeing the market kind of slow down, I don’t want to wait until the very end, I want to do it right now. And so make your pivots, build your infrastructure out, and then start looking at the deals you’re going to be buying next.

Dave:
That’s great advice. We also have a great interview today that you dreamed up. This is someone you know. Can you tell us a little bit about Tommy, who’s going to be joining us in a little bit here?

James:
Yeah. I met Tommy actually two years ago, because we’re real estate brokers as sources investment properties. And they came to our town, Seattle, and they changed everything for a while. They came in heavily funded, very good clients, very good builders.
And the cool thing is they built a very high quality home and they spent a lot of time perfecting the layouts for the demographics that want to come in. And for us as brokers, it’s made us very easy to sell. But as an investor, it’s also made me be an admirer, because I’m like, “Hey, I need to kind of do what they’re doing because it’s working so well.”
But they’re a very sharp company, very great organization. They have very good systems in play. Their team is amazing. They build a great product. And the thing I like about him, he’s not just a home builder, he’s an investor guy.
He understands the whole game, he gets the whole big picture. He’s not just putting up two by fours and citing. They’re financially planning and expanding through every market, so it’s just a really exciting company to know in general.

Dave:
Oh, absolutely. It’s great. And I think if you’re thinking, “Oh, I’m not a builder. I’m not a developer,” you’re still going to want to listen to this, because Tommy has an incredible way of explaining how he uses data to find opportunities that’s applicable to people who invest pretty much in anything, particularly in real estate.
We get into a great conversation about how to find product market fit that is applicable to people who invest in any type of asset class. You’re definitely going to want to stick around and hear what Tommy has to say. Anything else you think our audience should listen out for in this interview?

James:
Just understanding the trends. And what I really enjoyed about the conversation was just it’s a simple business when you’re looking at deals. We’re going from a seller’s to a buyer’s market. The true investors like stable. And he wants a stable market, just like I want a stable market. And most of us just this transition is not a bad thing, it’s a good thing, and it allows you to actually grow your business a lot better.

Dave:
Right on. All right. We’re going to take a quick break, but after that we’re going to welcome Tommy Beadel, the CEO of Thomas James Holmes to On The Market. Tommy, welcome to On The Market. Thank you so much for joining us today.

Tom:
Yeah, thanks for having me.

Dave:
Could you start by telling our audience a little bit about how you got into real estate in the first place?

Tom:
How I got in real estate in the first place. Ah, gosh. How deep do you want me to go? I mean, I was sitting on my couch after a late night in college watching an infomercial about a guy who said, “Buy real estate, get rich with no money out of your pocket.” I ended up at a seminar at LAX Airport where they taught you how to leverage up your credit cards or ask for more balance on your credit card so you can go out and buy a home.
And I ended up buying my first home in Long Beach in 2001, 100% financing back when you could get that. I was a full income documentation earner at the time, so it wasn’t one of those crazy stated income loans. But bought a condo, rented one of the rooms out to my brother and my roommate, which functionally paid the entire mortgage payment, I was like, “I live for free. This is amazing. How do I buy more real estate?”
That was my first foray into real estate back then. Then I got into the mortgage business, did mortgages during the mortgage boom from 2001 till 2008. Had started Thomas James Capital, a mortgage company in ’06 was my first kind of foray of starting my own business. And started as a mortgage business and then have had to adapt over the last 16 years to where you can make money doing real estate, and have found myself into the new construction, single lot infill development business.

Dave:
I got to ask you, do you remember how much that seminar cost you back in 2001?

Tom:
It was free actually.

Dave:
What?

Tom:
It was free. I’m convinced though what they told you was ask for more limits on your credit cards because on day two we’re going to sell you the next seminar. Right? I didn’t buy the next seminar. I was like, “Ah, you just told me how to do it.” So no, never spent a dollar on the seminars.

Dave:
Wow. I was thinking to myself, “I’ve never interviewed anyone who has walked out of one of those seminars better off for it.” Congratulations on being someone who did. That’s awesome. Can you tell us a little bit about what you’re doing now and what your construction company does?

Tom:
Well, yeah. Thomas James Holmes, we’re the country’s largest single lot tear down home builder, where what we do is we go into a market and buy a old home in the best neighborhoods to live in. We call it the right home right where people want it. The neighborhoods where people want to live have really old homes.
And so we go and buy that home, tear it down and build a new home in its place. We’re currently operating in Southern California, both in Orange County, Newport Beach area and the west side of Los Angeles, as well as the Silicon Valley.
We’re in the greater neighborhoods of Seattle and the Seattle Market, Kirkland, Bellevue, et cetera. And then we’re in the city of Denver and also in the city of Phoenix. And so we’ve grown a business that enables us to replace functionally obsolete old homes in the best neighborhoods where people want to live.

Dave:
I want to get more into the specific markets that you operate in. But how did you come to settle on that niche of tear down homes, single lot building? What drew you to that niche of new construction?

Tom:
Listen, I would describe myself 16 years ago as a opportunistic real estate investor. Right? 16 years ago I was in the mortgage business because you could make a lot of money doing mortgages. And then in 2008 mortgages stopped and I started buying foreclosures. We were one of the larger foreclosure buyers at the LA County Auctions from 2008 to 2012.
But it’s opportunistic, because that was a finite period of time where there were inefficiencies in the foreclosure market that you could leverage and have an advantage from, but it’s not permanent. Right? The mortgage business where we could make a bunch of money from ’01 to 2006 was not a permanent stable business. The foreclosure business was again a moment in time. And what I found through all of this is businesses have cycles that exist, again, mortgages or foreclosures.
And even fixing and flipping homes, it’s this period of time where there’s a disparity between what you can buy and what you can sell for. What I saw in new construction was a permanent business. It was a business that there is supply of hundreds of thousands of old homes that ultimately need to be torn down. And there’s demand from a consumer for great homes in the neighborhoods where they want to live yet there’s no supply of that home stock in the market.
And when I look at the macro dynamics of the market, the big public builders can never play in those markets because there is no land. If you correlate what we do versus a Toll Brothers, or a NAR, or D.R. Horton, they develop land and they monetize that land through home building efforts. Right?
And what we do in the markets where we are, there is no land to then monetize. What we’re doing is we’re really playing on the arbitrage of square footage that is there and what can be there.
The housing stock that was built in this country in these prime neighborhoods 80 years ago on average was underbuilt for how today’s consumer lives. 80 years ago the consumer lived in a two bedroom, one bath, three bedroom, two bath, ranch style home with a detached garage, single story living, across the country at single story living.
And that you look at these major public master plan builders and they build on smaller lots, they build two story homes where today’s modern family lives in a call it a 2,500, 3000 square foot home with an attached garage in the front and your downstairs comes out to your backyard. It’s just very different the way construction is now 80 years later.
And so what I saw in this business was a resilient business that wasn’t dependent on a moment in time of a real estate market or an economic cycle, right? That there’s always a need or demand for high quality homes in the best neighborhoods and there’s always a supply of these old homes that ultimately need to be torn down in those markets. And so saw this real ability to scale a different type of business to meet the consumer demand in these marketplaces.

James:
Tommy, part of the reason that you went from trustee, or would you say that part of the reason you went from trustee sales to new construction was also the scalability factor? Because I know a lot of people that listen are the smaller flippers and they’re trying to scale their business, and it’s very difficult to scale a remodel flipping business because every house is so different and it’s harder to systemize the construction.
Is that kind of how you guys pivoted? Because I know we went from flipping to now we flip and build. We’re much smaller than you guys it. But the reason we like building is it’s so much easier to actually build a business around, whereas flipping every house is different no matter what systems you have in line. Was it just like the next step?
Because kind of what you described is you are the paperclip investor. You started with a seminar, you essentially did something the BiggerPockets called house hacking, getting your first deal, renting that out, growing it, going in a flipping and now you’re running a extremely large new construction company. I mean, do you think you did that just because you targeted more of the scaling or was it more the investment engine that grew up faster?

Tom:
I think ultimately what you’re saying I describe with the word predictable. And the difference between the different models is predictability. If I go back to how I got into new construction, because I think it’s kind of interesting, Dave, which answers your question, James, is that we were a conduit at the foreclosure sales for other wholesale investors. Right?
Most buyers during the foreclosure boom weren’t able to go to an auction regularly, understand the dynamics happening at the auction guarantee title, all of the things that go along with buying at a foreclosure auction. And so we were a conduit for the smaller investors at these auctions back then.
And I had a partner of ours that was utilizing our services to get access to the foreclosure market and he was buying in neighborhoods that I didn’t understand the value of the real estate. And I looked at only the improvement as the value. Right?
I would look at the property and say it’s a whatever, 2000 square foot home on an 8,000 square foot lot, was built in 1950. And how much will that 2000 foot home be worth if we fixed it up, a typical fix and flip type model? And this gentleman was buying in the valley of Los Angeles in the San Fernando Valley, like in Chino, Sherman Oaks, et cetera.
And I’ll never forget one time we were talking about a property in Sherman Oaks and he said, “I’ll pay a million dollars for it.” And I said, “I can’t lay my money out for you because that house isn’t worth a million dollars. I’m going to be on the hook.” I asked him, “What are you doing? I have to understand why I should feel comfortable.” He said, “Well I’m not buying the house, Tommy, I’m buying the land sitting underneath it,” and this light bulb went off, like, “What do you mean you’re buying the land?”
Well, there’s a math problem that exists to build a home on that lot. The math problem is how much square footage can I build an FAR over the lot area, and then how much does it cost to build that square foot, right? What you’re talking about James on the fix and flip model is one 1950s home versus another 1950s home. I could say it’s a hundred bucks to remodel, but I don’t know until I get in and do I see the foundation and the HVAC and all of these things.
But building a new home on a 10,000 foot lot in this neighborhood on a flat pad versus building a home on this one is the same. It’s predictable, right? And predictable leads to scalability. And so when you can look at a math equation … I mean, I look at real estate as a math equation, right? And when that math equation is simple, pay X scholars for the dirt, pay X dollars for construction, have revenue of Y dollars, that math translates everywhere.
It doesn’t translate to the actual piece of property, which is where you find scalable challenges. Right? When we were doing fix and flip, and we did hundreds and hundreds of these things from ’08 to 2012, you had wildly profitable deals and mediocre deals, and then some really bad apples that you didn’t know what the construction was going to be and they kind of all had a weighted average that was acceptable.
When you go into new construction, we think of it as every deal should be predictable because you go in knowing your cost of construction and knowing if you build that this is the value of what you will be building against. I think scale requires predictability. Scale requires capital. Capital wants predictable returns on their capital, and so that’s how we really push to scale the business.

James:
Got it. Because that makes sense. For us, we’ve been able to scale our … We built town homes has been a lot easier for us to scale that out. And as we’re purchasing, it’s just a simple math equation, which every house is a lot different.
But as you guys are expanding into different markets, how have you guys been able to predict those markets? Because every market is so different. The climate is different, how you build. The cost are different each market. And then also just the value of the market conditions can swing.
You guys are in a desert state, a rainy state in the Pacific Northwest, you get the sunshine in SoCal, and then you get both the perfect climate in Colorado in my opinion. What made you guys want to move into those markets and then whatever you guys had to change to scale around that?

Tom:
Again, we look at supply and demand characteristics in a market on a macro basis. What’s the absorption of real estate? What’s the supply of the land or the old real estate that we can build on? And do the macro trends provide for a market to build in? I can tell you we thought years ago that building homes between the different markets was drastically different in building costs. It’s really not. Right?
Building a home in Arizona is very similar to Seattle, is very similar to Denver. Like as I described to my teams, a two by four in Arizona is the same cost as a two by four in Denver is the same cost as in Seattle. The labor cost of building a home in those markets is also very similar. The labor force in this country is very similar. I mean, you’re going to get slight swings, but the cost of building homes is very similar.
Yes, you have to build different. Every house we build in Denver, the majority of the homes we build in Denver, they have basements because of the climate. The majority of homes we build in Arizona or Phoenix are single story. There’s nuances market to market, but in general the cost of construction is very similar as you build homes in each one of those markets.
And so it’s really then extrapolating that same math problem across into these different regions and looking at where the math equation works. What I love about real estate is the data is so rich. Right? I can see where is land selling at a price that I can pay, because I know what it’s going to cost to build and I know what I then can sell because the data tells me what you can sell homes for in that same zip code. And so we’ve been able to really study how the business works in these different environments very predictably.

Dave:
Tommy, what about the specific markets that you invested in attracted you to them? You said you look at macroeconomic data, and that’s something we focus a lot on this show. You mentioned absorption rates. Are there any other key data points that you look at that you recommend to other investors they look at if they’re trying to expand to new markets?

Tom:
It depends on what you’re looking for. I’m looking to build a business long term that does this compared to investing in an asset today that’s going to have a yield tomorrow or in the next six months. Where am I going to place my capital? I’m making a bet that these markets long term have the financial viability to be in.
It just depends on which investor you are. Right? If you are looking to grow your business into multiple markets, there’s a lot more factors that go into what’s the scalability of that marketplace. What are the job trends happening in that marketplace? What are the regulatory trends happening around densification or additional ability to grow and scale the model?
I think if you’re an investor looking at how do I place my money today, to me it all comes down to supply and demand. Right? I think, and we track this in every one of our markets and markets we’re going into, what is the supply and what’s the demand, right? How many months of inventory are there? How many weeks of inventory are there in these marketplaces?
And where you see supply, outpacing demand and supply growing, you have caution, right? It’s basic simple economic function of supply and demand. And I think that it’s so key that sometimes people forget that if I’m going to place my money here, they’re looking at the deal and the economic terms of that deal, but they’re forgetting that there’s a broader market that they’re competing with on that deal. Right?
There’s a lot of times where people will look at, well, I’m going to be new so I’m only going to compare to new. I think we forget so many times that what is the consumer? Who are we trying to attract? We’re trying to attract a dollar to buy our home. I mean, I correlate it to a car as an example. Take the luxury segment, say it’s a Mercedes, a BMW, an Audi or now a Tesla in that, and I’m trying to attract a customer that has $70,000 to spend on a car, I’m going to look at all my options, right?
Real estate is no different. If I have a million and a half dollars in Seattle, I’m going to say, “Where does my million and a half dollars go best?” Right? If my work center is Downtown Seattle or Bellevue, what’s my pattern to work? Where does the spouse work? And where does my million a half dollars go furthest? Do I get a great town? Do I get an old single family? Do I get a new single family in a more up and coming neighborhood?
Where does my million and a half dollars spend best? And so when you look at supply and demand, I have to say as an investor, what’s the demand for the dollars? The dollars that are out there that I’m trying to attract to the product, what’s the demand and what’s the supply that’s trying to attract those dollars?
And so many times we get very bead focused in a neighborhood and say, “Oh, well, yes, there’s nothing in this neighborhood. Okay, but there’s 10 things in the neighborhood next door, which is the same proximity to work centers as that.” And so again, Dave, I think it sounds more macro the way that I look at it.
We’re managing over a billion dollars worth of real estate in these markets, and so we have to look at these major trends compared to did I buy this singular deal correct? And where do I want to do that singular deal? It really depends on which investor you are and how you want to place that investment of capital into the marketplace.

James:
When you guys are reviewing these trends, I mean, do you guys dig deep into the demographics? With each state there’s a different demand for each type of buyer pool. I was telling Dave before is that you guys spend so much time. You can walk into one of your homes and it could be an 800 to 900 square foot house, but how it’s laid out, they’re so carefully laid out, they feel massive, which is what people are looking for.
They’re looking for space, especially in tight size units. Besides just the normal trends, which are absorption rates, days on market, a median home price, how deep with you guys scaling out are you going into the demographics and going to that next layer of data so you can plan accordingly? Because on a build too, it’s a 12 to 24 month plan a lot of times. How far are you going down the line by digging into even deeper into the data?

Tom:
Yeah, that’s one of the unique parts of only building new construction is we get to design something from scratch every time. We’re not limited by the existing house that we have to remodel. We get to really say what is it that consumers want? Who is our target profile that we’re looking at? Yes, absolutely, James.
We go very deep with that volume of real estate that we own of who are the buyers? What is the life stage of the buyers? Are they empty nesters? Are they young couples? Are they singles? Are they divorcees? What’s the ethnicity of a buyer? Because different ethnicities in different markets want different characteristics of a home, and the layouts of a home, the things that are important to those people.
We do consumer surveys to understand what they’re willing to pay more for or less for, where they’re valuing things that are in excess of the cost to build them. Is yard space more important than a rooftop deck, or just different characteristics of a home that a buyer wants? And really understanding who the consumer is in the market and then how you design the product for the consumer.
And it’s very similar across five markets. You get nuances of demographics, age and ethnicity depending on which market you are in. But the consumer profile is actually very similar. And so then the design to meet that consumer profile is very consistent.
So then once you know who the consumer is, what they value and what they’re willing to spend money on, then we use that data to engage our architects to really design the best home for the market. And so, yes, we definitely go that next step when we get into buying homes.

James:
And so Tommy, how important do you think that is? Obviously we’re going through a market transition right now. Cost of money has gone up, things are slowing down. And one thing that I know Thomas James Homes been able to do is still move a lot of units compared to a lot of builders that are sitting there.
And I do know most local home builders aren’t digging that deep into the demographics. They’re going for that surface level data. And our show is about going to that next level to where you can mitigate risk, protect yourself. Do you think that the extra layer of research on demographics and what people want is helping you guys move the product a little bit better than a lot of different builders?
At least in our local Pacific Northwest market You guys have been able to do that. How important do you think that is for investors to be digging to the extra layer right now as we kind of transition into different types of pricing across the board?

Tom:
Yeah, look, I think a big part of it depends on the volume you’re doing. If I had a few homes to sell at a certain price point, you’d price them correctly, move the inventory. We’ve taken market positions, like in Seattle where we developed those cottages. The cottages were developed very purposely for a very specific part of the market.
We knew that. That’s why we designed them for those. Right? We knew people wanted to not be in towns. The people that are buying our thousand square foot cottages are not town home buyers, because there’s plenty of town homes for those people to buy, but they want to live actually in smaller space, but on two stories compared to three or four stories.
And so we knew that was a void in the market, which is why we developed a product to meet that void. And then knowing that, knowing who we built it for, marketing to that customer, telling them why we built it, telling them what’s great about it for them really helps us be able to move that inventory.
If we went in and built these cottages and just said, “They’re for everybody,” well, they’re not. They were built very purposefully. And so yes, I think understanding our consumer segment is important because it allows us who to focus on to market the product and really tailor our message to the people correctly to show them why we built those homes for them.

Dave:
Tommy, I think this is a great lesson for everyone listening to this. I mean, what you’re describing really sounds like just making sure you find a good product market fit between the product that you’re building and what the demand is. And this is true of obviously pretty much every business out there, and real estate investing is no different.
Even if you’re not a builder like Tommy or James, but even if you are a buy and hold investor, it’s important to consider the properties that you’re buying and if the type of product that you’re buying in a particular market makes sense for the people who are living there. You don’t want to necessarily buy a huge single family really nice home in the middle of a young college town.
There’s just different products that are meant for different types of people. And I think Tommy you did a great job articulating that, but I want to make sure everyone understands that it’s not just for builders here, this is for every type of investor should be thinking about who ultimately is going to be either renting or buying the property that you’re investing in.

Tom:
Well, look, Dave, real estate is an inefficient business real estate. That’s why people can make money in it. Where you get up to these big, huge commercial multi-family type projects, that’s where the efficiencies are gained and you have all the large Wall Street type money going after those things, because there’s no inefficiencies.
What you’re really describing is find the inefficiencies, understand them and beat them. As you were saying that I thought of a rental property. It’s funny, my wife and I actually bought a rental property here in Orange County a few months ago because I saw inefficiencies. I saw that there’s nothing nice and new in the market and there’s demand for somebody to have a nice new single family home and where the disparity of rent people will pay to have something new is.
And so we bought this home, remodeled it, made it beautiful and rented it in 10 days for $5 per square foot when the average in the market is like 350 a foot, because people will pay for that something that’s nice. And so that’s an inefficiency that’s found in the marketplace. And ultimately what I’ve done with new construction is found the largest inefficiency that exists and then taken advantage of that inefficiency in the marketplace for single family new construction.
We actually build rentals in Los Angeles for the same reason. I have about a hundred rental properties with a venture where we build brand new construction rentals in the marketplace for this investor that wants to own that disparity of where there’s demand for new construction living and people want out of a condo or out of a multi-family apartment building, they really want to live in a single family type home. It’s really understanding those different inefficiencies and seeing if there’s an ability to capitalize on them.

Dave:
Tommy, you mentioned earlier that one of the things you look at is of course absorption rate and months of supply. Those have been going up a lot, especially in the new construction market. How is that impacting your outlook over the next couple of years?

Tom:
Without getting into the specific data we track, we all saw what happened when the stock market kind of bottomed in the middle of June and interest rates started to run up, the supply started out pacing the demand for homes. And so what we’re tracking, is that a trend that’s going to continue or is that a trend that comes off?
Well, it’s a trend that happened through July and that trend has come off slightly in terms of supply of new construction homes or the price points where people are selling. And what we’re really tracking is months of absorption or weeks of absorption in the marketplace.
If there’s 70 available homes at the price point you’re trying to sell, and there’s seven selling a week, there’s 10 weeks of absorption in that product. I think what it’s helped us do is really on the buying side as well is where you’re seeing more supply of the input.
The input for us is land. And so if we go into a marketplace saying we’re going to pay a million dollars in this market for land, if we see the weeks of supply going from three weeks to six weeks to 10 weeks, that tells me that land will be cheaper in the coming months. And so then you slow down and you buy correctly, because the land will come down. Right?
It may not come down today, but when we buy a property we’re going to hold them for 18 months or longer. And so it’s really understanding how do we get in at the right basis. And what you really want to track is … I love a market that’s not a buyer’s market and it’s not a seller’s market but it’s just a market. And I feel like where we are right now is just a market.
Five months ago it was a seller’s market. We could demand anything. Through the middle of the summer, it was trending towards a buyer’s market, but that’s come off. And so I just want a normalized market where there’s constant supply of inventory and constant absorption of that same inventory.
The swings is what really causes in both ways. Look, as a seller, I’d love a seller’s market for my inventory, but I don’t want to buy inventory in a seller’s market to build new homes on. We just want a good constant market. And we track these trends by each neighborhood we’re in, by the major metros and across all the metros simultaneously to really see how should we be making decisions on selling homes and then buying new inventory.

James:
As you guys are tracking the data and the absorption rates, one thing that we’ve noticed, especially over the last 90 days or since June, is builders appetites have really backed out. They’re being very, very aggressive. The last 12 to 24 months they’ve calmed down. And then we’ve seen a dramatic drop in building permits and applications over the last 90 days.
I think nationally building permits are down 1.3%, or for single family housing they’re down 5% from last year. Do you see that more is a concern that the builder market is pulling back or more a good opportunity because there is such low supply that there could be this void in the market to where new construction could become this premium product that is expensive just because there’s just not a lot to cover?
I know for us as investors, whether we’re flippers or developers or buy and hold, we’re looking for the gaps. Where are people not kind of playing in? And as people pull back on permits, there is going to be less inventory coming, which for me, I like selling the product that nobody else has. Are you guys looking at that more as something to be cautious of or more something that you’re getting exciting on?

Tom:
Look, the challenge with new construction is we’re buying something today that we’re not going to sell for another year and a half. You’re trying to predict what the absorption of real estate will be at the end of 2023 going into ’24 with your buying patterns today. That you almost need a crystal ball for.
However, what we see is this demand that is not stopping. Right? Has the demand slowed slightly. Sure. But there’s demand for real estate in the markets. And I think it’s hard for me, James, because I have a very myopic view, because the only thing I understand is brand new homes in the best markets. When you look at flipping homes, it’s very hard for me to tell you what that real estate trend will be doing or new construction.
I only look at new construction in the best neighborhoods of Seattle. Seattle versus Tacoma, very different real estate trends. Because the demand in the prime neighborhoods, Northeast Ballard, Queen Anne, et cetera, of Seattle, it’s kind of hard to compare that to the overall global new construction building permits.
My view becomes very myopic in what is new construction in the best marketplaces. If permits in the markets where I am slows, investors are slowing down their buying, it provides more opportunities for me to buy and buy less expensively. But when I get to the back, 18 months from now I’m going to have less competition.
Because if I’m the one buying today, if six months ago we were buying five pieces of inventory to build new, and now I’m the one buying three pieces of inventory and the others have not bought the other two pieces, 18 months from now I’m going to own the only supply in the marketplace.
I kind of like that trend, but I also understand investors, right? I’m a very different investor, more of an institutional investor, invest in capital that is here to play through all market cycles compared to the smaller guy who’s investing friends and family money personally guaranteed on loans. There’s a lot more market factors in play when you’re making those very close to home personal decisions.

James:
And are you guys tracking that in every market that you’re in, like how many building permits are going through? And have you seen any trends stick out more? Because again, you’re in four different types of market, all good markets but different. They have different types of business sectors. Have you seen any drop more than others?

Tom:
Yeah, I’d love if you could share with me the way to track building permits because we have a very hard time tracking new construction building permits. They kind of are all lumped together. And so there’s not a good clean way to aggregate and track that data. Where we’re tracking it more is who’s buying the real estate that we’re not buying and what are they doing with it?
If we have a property that we don’t buy, are they remodeling it? Are they living in it or are they really going in and building a new home? Our number one competitor that we compete with across all five markets that we’re in are actually not other builders.
They’re homeowners buying the real estate to own and live in, or remodel and live in. There’s less development than there is I want that piece of property to own in the marketplace.

James:
Got it. I mean, that makes sense.

Dave:
One thing I wanted to ask you, Tommy, before we let you go is about material costs. It’s something that we’ve been trying to keep track of and I know has scared away some people from flipping, or getting into new construction or development. Have you seen material costs stabilize over the last couple of months or are you still seeing rapid rise … Well, I guess I should ask you, are you seeing rapid rises and sort of what are you seeing in the material costs?

Tom:
No, look, we’ve definitely seen a stabilization in materials. Lumber has come back down. We’re actually seeing a reduction in lumber costs across every market right now. You’re still have inflation. There’s certain cost codes that are inflating along with inflation trends, light fixtures, tile.
There’s a lot of materials that go into building a home that are dependent on oil. And so as oil costs went up, you saw much larger increases in oil cost. The markets that we build in require the labor force to come from outside the area. As oil was up and gas prices were up, you saw a larger influx in your labor cost because the labor had to move themselves to these job sites.
We’ve seen with fuel costs coming back down and lumber coming back down a stabilization, but we still have cost inflation pressures like anyone else does in the market. You got to keep in mind, 40, 50% of every cost to build, whether I think you’re remodeling or building new is labor. And that labor is paying more for their rent, they’re paying more for their groceries, they’re paying more for the fuel and their car, for the clothes that they’re wearing.
And so how do they pay for that? They have to charge more for their labor cost. And so 50% of the cost of construction is really affected by labor. And as a general term, the labor is being affected by CPI index like anybody else. Only about half of it is material cost and that material cost can be all over the place.
But the other major influence is really on labor. What I do think is good is we’re not seeing these drastic spikes anymore. I think we’ve gotten back to some sort of normalization, although now I hear that there’s so many products sitting in warehouses in the US that maybe some of the materials will actually come down over time because we overreacted to the short supply of supply chain issues and filled a bunch of warehouses with stuff here in the US that we need.
We’ll see if we really get cost reductions, I’m not counting on it. And we expect constant inflation due to labor. We just would hope it gets back more normalized than high 8% CPI or inflation index ,and gets back down into the threes and fours, which is pretty normal in construction costs.

James:
Are you guys accounting for more of this in your upfront underwriting, or what have you guys had to do over the last 12 months to kind of battle that labor? I know for us we’ve had to bring in people on staff. We just brought our labor in-house, because it was a way for us to control the cost more. Have you guys had to pivot that way at all or change your systems, or is it more just, “Hey, we got to account for this, build it into the proforma and put the plan in motion.”?

Tom:
Yeah, I think the biggest part for us is having the feedback loop of what it’s costing us to build today. We’re underwriting a new deal based upon our cost today. And so you’re always trying to maintain that feedback loop. If my HVAC is going up today in September, then I know I need to start budgeting more for the jobs that I’m buying that I’ll be putting HVAC in six, seven months from now.
We’re trying to constantly maintain that feedback loop of what’s the cost today and how’s that going to translate when we incur that cost down the road, because there’s a lag time when we buy a new project. The nice part is we don’t buy 400 lots, or buy a big master plan community and cut into foreign lots and locked into our land basis.
We’re always buying new land. And so we are always able to update our underwriting based upon what our current costs are. And so it’s really trying to maintain that feedback loop of different cost codes and where the changes are happening so that you don’t get surprised by them the next time you’re building that home.

Dave:
All right, Tommy, thank you so much. This has been super helpful. Is there anything else you think our audience of new, aspiring and existing real estate investors should know about how to navigate current market conditions or anything else you’d like to share?

Tom:
Yeah, no, look, it just takes taking a little bit of chance and hedging your risk as an investor. I mean, I’m sure some of your investors were like me 15 years ago when you were putting everything into a real estate deal and betting a lot on that.
Sometimes you have to make big bets to go to where you want, and you really have to figure out what it is you are doing. I’ll just share the last thing with you, Dave and James, is that I think you got to figure out as an investor what your goals are and what you’re ultimately trying to accomplish.
Are you trying to build a business? Are you trying to take advantage of a moment in time in a real estate arbitrage? And if you’re going to really build a business and invest capital and take risk, personal, professional, et cetera, why are you doing it? Right?
What’s the bigger, greater goal? If it’s just another dollar, that could be the greater goal. Right? But I love what Simon Sinek says, is, “Figure out your why and the what becomes way easier.” There’s a great YouTube video about it. But as these investors are out there taking risk, going out on a limb, doing deals, building businesses, why are you ultimately doing it at the end of the day?
And figuring out why you’re doing it really helps kind of alleviate all the stress that comes along with the risk that you’re taking in the marketplace. I hope that helps. But Dave and James, appreciate you guys having me on your show today. I really enjoy sharing with you, and hopefully your users learn something from me, and that is don’t pay for real estate seminars at the LAX Airport.

Dave:
Just go to the first day.

Tom:
There you go. There you go.

Dave:
And Tommy, if people want to connect with you, where can they do that?

Tom:
You can message me through LinkedIn, Tommy Beadel, B-E-A-D-E-L. You guys have it spelled L-E, but it’s E-L at the top there. Appreciate any messages you want to send.

James:
If you guys are any deal guys in those markets, look them up. They are great people to work with, a great company to work with. If you got deals, Colorado, Phoenix, Seattle, SoCal, all the new wholesalers out there, reach out to them.

Tom:
Thanks, James. Yes, no, we always like to buy new real estate deals. As a realtor asked me last week, “How do you feel about the market?” And I said, “I can’t find enough land to buy.” And they said, “No, no, but how do you feel about the market?” And I said, “I just said. I can’t find enough land to buy,” which means I feel good about the market. All right guys. Thanks so much. Thanks for having me. See you.

Dave:
All right, take care. All right, James, what’d you think?

James:
Oh, I thought that was awesome. For me as an investor, I’m always looking at how do you scale, how do you kind of move and grow and just … I mean, the fact that these guys can build on all four different areas pretty rapidly in a short amount of time, it really goes back to why people should watch our podcast.
Track the trends, learn what’s going on, and then you can build a business around those trends, not just about your gut feelings. I mean, he’s just taking data, analyzing it, and then putting his motion in play. And I did relate with a lot of what he said.
Scaling as an investor is just, it’s about having the right system, not just the right vision going, “Can I scale this and grow this down the road?” Because that is the hardest part of our business. We start with a certain amount of capital. How do you grow as fast as possible? But it shows that all those house hackers out there, you can go from house hacking to being the largest spot lot builder in the whole nation.

Dave:
Yeah, that was an incredible story. I loved his personal story. What he was talking about in terms of the data was fascinating to me, because we look at a lot of macroeconomic trends, looking at absorption rates, inventory, this sort of stuff makes a lot of sense to me.
What he talked about that I wish I was better at and could do more of is getting that data about what people want, what the consumer is buying. Because I love what he was saying about, generally speaking just about product market fit, and thinking about exactly who the intended buyer is.
But even if you’re a buy and hold investor, think about who the renter is going to be. And is the product that you are buying going to be appealing to the people who live in that area and who want to live in that type of building?
I got to find a better way to find that data. I wonder if he’s just doing like, I should have asked him, surveys or talking to agents. Or do you have any thoughts on how you get that kind of data about what layouts people want, what kind of architecture they want? I’ve never seen anything like that.

James:
Yeah, there’s some cool stuff out there you can do with … We do it actually for off-market tracking, like when we’re more targeting sellers, like who is the demographic that is most likely to sell? You can do the same thing. There’s a lot of different data scientists and analytics companies out there that for us as a wholesaling company we actually hire them, they go through our data and they give us our top list to go off of, and I think they do the same thing.

Dave:
Oh, really?

James:
Oh, yeah. It is not cheap. It’s expensive, but it makes your conversion rate substantially higher. And again, going back to his point, by them taking that extra layer of research and not going off your gut or just the surface to analytics, they’ve been able to sell a lot of units too.
Just like we can get our conversion rate by going to that demographics likeliness to sell or likeliness to buy, you can really kind of plan ahead and not be the odd man out. Because as the market’s transitioning right now, the last thing you want is to be the odd man out property. You don’t want to be the weird rental. You don’t want to be the weird remodeled flip.

Dave:
Totally.

James:
You don’t want to be the new construction lot with a negative impact, and that’s what makes your deal move right now.

Dave:
Yeah, that’s really good advice. I mean, I don’t know if that’s something applicable to our audience if it’s super expensive to buy it, but I mean, maybe it’s as simple as just talking to agents in your area too, just figuring out what type of things people want.
I know when I talk to my agent in Denver, he can always just tell me off the top of his head, “People want ranches right now. People are really digging detached garages,” or, “Renters are looking for this.” Try and gather that data some way. I wish I had some better advice from you other than paying a lot of money. But if you can get it, you’ll definitely have an advantage in the market.

James:
And there is one I do know of that’s not very expensive. It’s called NeighborhoodScout.

Dave:
Oh, yeah.

James:
Yeah. You can pull up every little neighborhood. And they show you the demographics moving in, the demographics moving out. And it’s actually super handy. It does not cost thousands of dollars. And you can buy it just for the little area that you’re in.

Dave:
Oh, perfect. That’s awesome. Thank you. Well, yeah, I’ve used that in the past. I’ve never used it for that purpose, but that’s great advice. Check out NeighborhoodScout if you want to get this kind of data. All right, James, thanks so much. I mean, it’s been a fun day. We’ve been together all day and hopefully I guess we’re going to be together in person real soon.

James:
I’m so excited for BPCON. I think it’s going to be a special one.

Dave:
Yeah. I mean, I feel like we’ve been talking about this for a really long time and now it’s finally here. I’m looking forward to seeing you in a week and a half.

James:
This is my first BiggerPockets conference too.

Dave:
Oh, really? You haven’t been?

James:
Yeah. No, I couldn’t make the last couple because of kids, kid commitment.

Dave:
Oh. Sweet man. Well, we’ll have a great time. And hopefully some of our listeners will be there. But if not, we’ll definitely be posting a lot. We’re going to do a podcast there that we will release so people can hear it.
And yeah, if you want to connect with me at any point about this episode or anything, you could do that on Instagram where I’m @thedatadeli. You can also follow BPCON there. James, what’s your Instagram handle or where should people connect with you?

James:
Yeah, the easiest way to connect with me is definitely on Instagram @jdainflips or our YouTube channel at Project Re. And definitely reach out. I know I’ll be around. And if you catch me at a conference, one thing you do know is I won’t stop talking. Come up, ask me questions, you will get answers. I’m very friendly.

Dave:
That’s a dangerous thing to start telling people.

James:
It’s terrible. I’ll go for eight hours straight. It’s bad.

Dave:
You’re going to be drinking those Rockstars and up till 5:00 in the morning.

James:
Sales juice. Sales juice.

Dave:
All right, thanks man, for being here. And everyone listening, thank you so much for being here and listening to us. Hope you learned a lot today like I did. We’ll see you next time for On The Market. On The Market is created by me, Dave Meyer, and Kailyn Bennett. Produced by Kailyn Bennett. Editing by Joel Esparza and OnyxMedia. Copywriting by Nate Weintraub. And a very special thanks to the entire BiggerPockets team. The content on the show, On The Market, are opinions only. All listeners should independently verify data points, opinions, and investment strategies.

Legendary investor Jim Chanos and Carson Block, investor and founder of Muddy Waters Research, join CNBC’s Dominic Chu at the Delivering Alpha conference to discuss the meltdown in the Chinese real estate market and how it should be a much bigger story than it is.

Dewardic McNeal, Longview Global managing director, joins ‘The Exchange’ to discuss China’s real estate market and the problems its seeing now.

David:
This is The BiggerPockets Podcast, show 669. Get yourself around other people that are committed to their goals. And it doesn’t have to be real estate. Get yourself around other people that are committed to staying in the gym. Get yourself around other people that are committed to eating healthier foods. Get yourself around other people that are committed to having better marriages or being better parents or managing their wealth better. The first thing that you can do is when you start telling other people good job for what you did, it will silence the need you have inside yourself to hear it. I don’t know why it works like this, but it’s almost the equivalent of if you’re really hungry but you give someone else food, your hunger can go away. What’s going on everyone? This is David Greene, you are host of the BiggerPockets Real Estate podcast here today with a Seeing Greene episode.
If you’re new to BiggerPockets, you’re going to love it. This is a place where the best real estate investors in the world come to learn how to invest in real estate and build big wealth. And if this is your first time hearing a Seeing Greene episode, you’re in for a treat. In these shows we take questions directly from our community. Areas that they’re stuck in, advice that they need, hurdles they’re having a hard time overcoming or they’ve got a bunch of different options they don’t know which is the best one to take and I do my best to give them advice from my perspective as the person who’s Seeing Greene. In today’s show we’ve got some really good stuff. We get into a very good conversation about the timeline you should give a property manager to turn a property around, as well as what you should look for if you’re going to switch to a new property manager.
We talk about what the IRS considers a real estate professional and how you can take advantage of all the tax benefits that come from that designation. And we get into if real estate syndications are as beneficial as they may seem. All that and more in today’s show. But before we get to our first question, today’s quick tip is, this episode is dropping right when BP Con 2022 is starting. So what are you doing to get out there and make connections or foster the relationships that will take your business to the next level? Do you have a game plan to go demonstrate value to a potential mentor and get someone personally invested in your success? Have you evaluated what skills and talents you’re bringing to the table? Spend some time today to make your next event, conference, or coffee meeting that much more impactful so that you can supercharge the speed that you get through your learning curve and get into making big money and having big success soon. All right, let’s get to our first question.

Collin:
Hey David, thanks so much for taking the time to review my question. My question has to do with the BRRRR strategy. Given how hard it could be these days to lock down a contractor, given how far out in advance contractors tend to be booked, how do you balance the process of sourcing the right property to BRRRR with the process of ensuring that a reliable contractor will be available to perform the rehab process shortly after the property is closed on? The last thing you want to do is have to soak expenses to hold the property while you wait weeks or even months for the contractor to start the job. Thanks so much again for taking the time to respond to my question. Really appreciate all the great content you’re putting out there.

David:
All right. Thank you Collin. Some pretty good questions that you’re asking there. Let’s start with where we are in today’s market. With the interest rate hike we’ve had, we’ve seen a decrease in demand. And not every market’s the same, but in many markets across the country we’re actually seeing a slowdown. So I’m having an easier time finding contractors right now than I have had in recent past because there’s not as many transactions happening. So a contractor’s talents are in less of a state of demand, which means it’s easier to find contractors to do deals. That’s one thing to keep in mind. There’s also contractors out there that are busy and then there’s others that are actually looking for work. So I would say double down on the amount of people that you ask for referrals from different contractors that can do work. Then you’ve got the fact there’s different kinds of contractors.
There’s some contractors that just communicate with you, look really fancy and professional, spend a bunch of money on SEO so that you find their company when you’re googling them, and they sub out all the work to completely different companies. So they might go to a plumbing company and say, “I’ve got a job. What are you going to charge?” And the plumber says, “20 grand.” And the contractor tacks plumbing as 30 grand onto the bid and they make a $10,000 spread because they found the plumber. You’ve got other contractors, and these are the types that I tend to prefer, that have a plumber on in their company or a person that can do plumbing work that comes and does it. And so you’re not paying as much as if they contracted to a completely different company. There’s also the fact that in today’s market when houses are not flying out the shelves in every single market across the country like they have been, that you can get a longer escrow period.
If you put the house in contract and the contractor says, “Well I can’t start for another three weeks.”, you can go back to that seller and say, “Hey, can we close three weeks later? Can we delay escrow? Can I maybe close in a week and a half later?” And you only have to soak the cost of a week and a half instead of the full three weeks. So you’ve got something there. And then another thing that I’ll do … Because I have a couple BRRRRs going on right now and I got a property in contract today as we’re making this episode and that’s going to be a BRRRR. Now, part of that property can be rented out as is and another part of the property needs to be renovated. So in that case, I’m going to rent out the property as is as soon as I close as a short term rental. And when the contractor can start the work, that’s when I’ll shut down renting it out while he takes about 30 days to complete the renovations and I get it back on the market.
So not every property has this problem where you can’t do anything with it until it can be renovated. Now if you’re doing kitchen, bathroom remodeling in a single unit property, yeah, you’re going to be soaking those costs. So what I would do is I would look at building that into your offer. So if you know it’s going to be another three weeks before you can get to the job and you are going to spend $3,000 a month on mortgage, maybe see if you can get the house for $9,000 less or get $9,000 credited back to you from the seller to cover those expenses. Look for some creative ways that you can get the seller to pay for some of those expenses that you’re going to have if they won’t delay the escrow. But in any regard, I’m finding that right now is an easier time to BRRRR than what I’ve seen in the last eight years.
All right, our next question comes from Jake in Pennsylvania. The good old PA. “Are real estate syndications as beneficial as they seem? Would you recommend them for a beginner investor or should I focus more on multi-family rentals to start out?” Okay, let’s dig into this. I don’t know that a syndication will ever be as beneficial as it seems because how it seems is usually going to be the syndicator paying for some kind of sponsored ad on social media or selling you at some kind of a conference to say, invest in my fund, invest in my syndication, because they want your money. So I’ve never looked at it as if they’re as beneficial as they seem. I’ve looked at them as are they as beneficial as buying a house for myself?
And I have invested in syndications, primarily with my partner Andrew Cushman. He and I buy apartment buildings together and we’ve structured some like that. But I also spend more of my money on residential properties that I own myself, not in syndication. So sometimes I’ll invest in a syndication because I’m having a hard time getting a loan. Sometimes I’ll invest in a syndication because there’s not that many good deals out there. Sometimes I’ll invest in a syndication because I’m really busy and I don’t have time to manage a BRRRR, a rehab, getting a property up and off the ground and running so I’ll just give my money into a syndication and get it back in a couple years. I’ve done that a few times. There’s different reasons why I might want to. In general, I would say most people are probably going to be better off investing it themselves.
And here’s why. When you start off buying your own properties, you’re not only getting the return on your money but you’re gaining knowledge. You will learn so much more buying a deal and making mistakes and getting better than you will handing your money to a syndicator who’s going to go buy a deal, make mistakes and get better off of your money. I’d rather see you, Jake, house hacking. If you don’t have a property at all, house hack. I’ve said it before, I will say it again. Everyone listening should be house hacking one house every year. Every single year for at least the next 10 years you should be getting a primary residence, and probably longer because you can often get primary residences after you have 10 properties. If that’s all you did in your whole career, you would be very wealthy at the end of your career if you just bought a house, a year, house hacking, putting 5% down or three and a half percent down sometimes.
Now anything you buy in addition to that, you should weigh, is it better to buy the rental and put 20% down or is it better to put that money into a syndication? If you’re going to focus on multi-family rentals, you’re probably talking small multi-family. That’s going to be two to four units. Just make sure you’re doing that in an area that is not crime ridden, not full of problems from problematic tenants and is an area where you’re seeing population growth. One of the benefits of a syndication if this syndicator is good is they’re more likely to have done their homework on the area that they’re investing in because they have a lot of money going into it. So if the person’s good, they avoid buying into bad areas, which you as a new investor can easily wander into.
And if you look at most problems in real estate, it comes from someone that bought in the wrong area. So it all depends on your goals, how you’re going to vet the performance, if you’re trying to maximize your capital, how much time you have to put into it. There’s active and there’s passive and there’s a scale in between and you have to ask yourself how much you’re willing to do. You also have to be an accredited investor in most syndications, which you may not be. In which case it becomes a very easy answer. You should be buying your own properties. But if you’re looking at a small multi-family and you can buy it on your own and man, house hack is just staring you in the face. Just buy a triplex or a fourplex every single year. Don’t make this complicated. Get the best one that you can. Live in one unit, rent out the rest, then buy another one next year and rent out the one that you were living in right now and you’ll end up accumulating rental properties for five to 10% down instead of 20 to 25% down and your capital will go much further.

Paul:
Hi David. My name is Paul Charbonneau and I live in the Dallas Fort Worth area and I invest in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. My partner and I started this about two and a half years ago and over that time we have purchased 20 single family houses and we used private equity to purchase those and right now we’re working on our first refinance. And if we refinance 10 of them, or half of them, that will pay off the note and we will own the other 10 scott free. So, so far, so good. Everything seems to be working according to plan. But my question to you comes from a tax perspective. I work full-time W2 job and right now I could only take the tax loss for the passive income. It cannot offset any of my W2 income the way I’m reading it. And the only way to get past that hurdle is to become a real estate professional.
And I was looking up what that entails. And you can correct me if I’m wrong, but I think it says more than 50% of the personal services you perform in all businesses during the year must be performed in a real estate business you materially participate in. So that would tell me that maybe if I worked at a title company, I’m in real estate, but that’s not anything that I have a personal stake in. So I think that doesn’t qualify, but I would like clarification on that. And then the other thing says that you have to spend at least 750 hours in the calendar year in real estate services or businesses and I think I qualify on that aspect. I could easily do real estate all day. So the question that I have is can I reduce my hours at my W2 job? And let’s say I go part-time to a thousand hours a year. At that point, if I work 1,001 hours on real estate, do I qualify as a real estate professional under the IRS guidelines? And then the second part of that question is going to be, how do they look at the number of hours that you worked? Does scouring Zillow count? Talking to my property management group? I assume that works. What about talking to my realtor? All of those conversation emails. What constitutes as working 750 hours? Look forward to hearing your answer. Thank you.

David:
Hey there Paul. Thank you for this. First off, you’re asking the right questions. I love that you’re saying how do I do this, not am I doing this or can I do this or I can’t do this. You’re asking the right question. You’re also asking it in the right forum. Thank you very much for posting this on Seeing Greene. If you guys would like to also ask a question, just go to biggerpodcast.com/david and you can ask a question just like Paul. Now Paul, I do need to preface this by saying this is not legal advice. I am not a CPA and so I don’t know exactly what the law is. Now, I can understand the law as you read it and that is my understanding of what you said. Very similar to a 1031. I know most of the main stipulations, rules and regulations. Where you get tripped up with legal matters is in case law.
Now, in many cases in the law, if you guys have never heard of the phrase case law before, you have a hard and fast rule such as you have to perform 750 hours a year doing real estate related activities or you have to spend more than 50% of your time on something that you would be materially affected by. Something along those lines. However, sometimes there’s ambiguity in what would be materially affected or what would be considered real estate related activities. That’s where case law comes into effect. Now, case law is when judges look at a specific case and set a precedent saying, hey, in this case we found that this work did not constitute real estate related activity or this case it did. So your question about Zillow is a great question. Would that count? We would have to ask a CPA who knows the case law on that specific situation.
Has there been a person that claimed to the IRS, I’m a real estate professional because I looked at Zillow for houses as part of the acquisition part of my business, and if so, how did the court rule in that specific case? That then determines precedent or what we call case law. Now, coming from law enforcement, I had to study this laboriously. I was constantly learning case law when it came to use of force, evidence, rules when it came to the fourth amendment, which is really big in law enforcement. Search and seizure. If we find evidence of a crime on someone, there’s certain times where it’s admissible in court, there’s other times where it’s not admissible in court and you had to learn the case law to know how to make your case stick. That’s the same in the situation that you’re in here. So I’m going to tell you that you should run this by a CPA before anything that I tell you is something that you go put into practice.
What I can tell you is what I would do if I was in your situation. Part of why I am an entrepreneur now instead of just working the W2 job is because everything that I do is real estate related. I have a real estate sales team. The David Greene Team. I have a real estate loan company, The One Brokerage. I do real estate investing myself. I’m now raising money and helping invest it for other people. That’s Greene Capital. I write books about real estate. I make podcasts about real estate. I make YouTube videos about real estate. I write books about real estate. All of this stuff is real estate related so that it’s not hard for me to qualify as a full-time real estate professional so I save in taxes in a big, big way. You could do the same thing. The question is, is your W2 job holding you back?
And this is the case for so many people, Paul. I think you’re this prototypical, awesome example of a BiggerPockets member. You love real estate, you bleed real estate, you eat and breathe it, you can’t get enough of it. You listen to all the podcasts, you love to talk about it at barbecues. You’re the guy that all your friends come up to you because you have all the real estate answers and they’re fascinated by it. But yet you still have a foot or maybe a foot and a half in the corporate W2 world that stops you from being the full-time professional. I don’t think working at a title company would qualify because that’s still your W2 job. However, what if you started a title company, hired one even part-time person to work in that title company, started talking to realtors or other investors and saying, “Hey, when you buy a house, let me do your title work. This is the offer I can give you. This is the service I can give you. This is the price that I can give you that’s better than other people. Bring me your business.”
Even if that business isn’t making you money hand over fist, what if the hours that you put into running it start to qualify you as a full-time real estate professional? Now again, I don’t know the case law on this so I cannot come out and tell you this is all you got to do. Just go do this. I’m not a full-time professional. I’m not a CPA. I would have to run this by my CPA to ask, but these are the kind of questions that I ask. If I’m acquiring properties, if I’m refinancing properties, if I’m doing X or Y in business, would that qualify? When they tell me this would or this wouldn’t, now I know what direction to put most of my time in and the question becomes how do I make that profitable.
What most people do is they say, what’s profitable? How do I go do that? Well, you often paint yourself into a corner where now you’re not a full-time real estate professional. I don’t think you need to jump completely out of your W2 job, but I do think you can start a side business or a couple and start moving in that direction. And as those companies become more profitable, you can start to take more weight off of the W2 foot and put it onto the foot that’s in the 1099 world until eventually you can jump in all the way. Thank you for asking such a great question. I’m glad that our listeners got to hear a little bit about how that works. If you’re listening to this and you love real estate and you don’t love your W2 job, you’ve got more options than just completely quit your job and go full-time into investing or be stuck in a job you hate forever and never get out of it.
There’s a whole spectrum of stuff that you can do and I’m a really good example of someone who lives inside that spectrum. I’ve got tons of different revenue streams where I make money through real estate because there’s so many different ways that you can do it and I’d like to see more of you doing the same thing. So if you’re not happy with your W2 job, but you also wouldn’t be happy being a complete risk filled full-time investor, find a job that is somewhere in the middle like an escrow officer, a title officer, a loan officer, a loan processor, a real estate agent, a buyer’s agent, a showing assistant, a real estate administrative assistant, a contractor, a handyman, a CPA, a bookkeeper. I could go on, but there’s a lot of different people that work within this industry that serve it where you could start to dip your toe and get involved so you could be closer to real estate but not completely dependent on rental income to pay your bills. Paul, let me know if there’s anything I didn’t answer in your question. Please submit a follow up question if that’s the case. And also I would encourage you to post this on the forums on BiggerPockets so other people can weigh in.
All right. Thank you everyone for your questions so far. We would not be able to do this show without you. And in fact, my love and appreciation for you and those that have submitted their questions to biggerpockets.com/david has reminded me that I needed to turn the light green of everything I do with BiggerPockets. By far, I have the hardest time remembering to change the light from green to blue. So if you’re watching this on YouTube, no, it did not just skip to another video. I just remembered to turn the light on. But hopefully this different ambiance captures your attention and keeps you interested as my monotone, baritone, calming voice may be putting you to sleep so you can get more out of this real estate cornucopia of information that we’ve put together for you.
All right, in this segment of this show I like to read some of the comments that we’ve gotten off of our YouTube channel on previous episodes. A lot of these are funny or nice or sometimes they’re even mean and that’s fun to share too. So as you listen to these, please leave a comment for me on YouTube. Let me know what you liked, what you didn’t like, some insightful information that you got out of this or just something clever and humorous that I can read on the next show because it’s always better when we can spice the information up with a little bit of flavor and funny.
First comes from R. “I will unsubscribe if you ever get rid of the Seeing Greene episodes. These are the best ever.” I love that I get to read comments about me that are always positive. And I’m sure as you guys are listening to this, you’re thinking that. Does David just pick the nicest stuff about himself? Well, you’ll never know unless you go to YouTube and read the comments for yourself and leave one for me. R, I don’t know who you are, but I do know that that was a very nice thing to say. So I will try to make sure that you never unsubscribe and we will continue to make Seeing Greene episodes and hopefully make you a lot of money.
The next comes from Pewmeister, whose name alone has already got me chuckling a little bit. “Awesome episode as usual, David. Also, I ordered your book. I’m currently in law enforcement. I’ve gotten into investing. I’ve developed such a passion for real estate. I’m starting the courses to get my realtor license this week. Thanks for all the value that you have brought to the BiggerPockets community.” There’s something about people getting out of law enforcement and into real estate right now. I’m definitely seeing a trend. I might have been the first person to take the Oregon Trail and now everyone’s following me. I’m not sure what it is about these two professions that end up going hand in hand. My buddy Daniel Delrill told me there was some movie and I think Harrison Ford played a homicide detective that was also a realtor on the side. So he’d be on his phone putting deals together when he was at the crime scene. And there was definitely more than one moment where I was doing something very, very similar. And so if anyone knows the name of that movie, please go into the comments on YouTube and post it so that we can get a feel for what it is about Harrison Ford’s character that is drawing so many BiggerPockets members into taking a similar path.
The negative comment comes from Uli Mooli. We are on a role with the names today. “This was great. Any idea for you for new content would be to review other people’s advice to see what you agree and would improve.” Ooh, Uli Mooli. I got to say I like this. You start having me review other people’s advice and I get to critique it and maybe disagree with it and maybe offer a alternative opinion and you might start seeing a little bit of beef popping up in the real estate community. I’m okay with that. I think that’d be fun if we brought some people in and we had me give commentary and what I thought about their advice. I made reaction videos to people. Like Patrick Bet-David is a guy I respect a lot, but he made a video on how you can’t really trust your realtor because usually your realtor is working with the other realtor more than they’re working for you.
And I made a reaction video that described that happens less than 1% of the time that we even know the realtor that we’re dealing with on the other side. That happens at the ultra high end luxury community where a handful of realtors will sell 20 million houses and they all know each other. But to the general person, the realtor you’re working with probably sells three houses a year and they’re working with someone that sells six houses a year. They never cross paths. But I like it. That’s what I’m getting at. I like this idea. So if you would like, Uli Mooli, you can help us by going to biggerPockets.com/david, giving advice that you’ve received about a question you have and asking me what I think about it. Maybe we can start the trend there.
And our last comment comes from Gerald Smith. “I wish I knew of you years ago. I’m 75. Great advice.” Well dang. Thank you Gerald. I really appreciate that. It’s not every day that you hear a 75 year old tell you that you’re giving good advice so I will take that to heart and you made my day. Thank you for that. We love it and we appreciate your engagement so please keep it up. Like, comment and subscribe on YouTube. And also if you’re listening on your podcast app, whichever one it is, take some time to give us a rating and an honest review. We want to get better and stay relevant, so drop us a line. All right, let’s get to another video question.

Hieu Bui:
Hey David, this is Hieu Bui. I’m from Augusta, Georgia and I just want to say I really enjoy your format here. I’m always looking forward to a Seeing Greene episode. So kudos on that. Very good job. So about me, I am a full-time real estate investor now and I currently own about 20 to 30 doors here in Georgia. And because I’m a full-time real estate investor, I don’t have a high taxable income on paper due to write off and depreciation. So for all of my residential properties, one to four unit, I always used a DSCR lender to finance all of my properties. So that’s my wheelhouse. But recently I purchased a seven unit apartment and I know that my lender will not refinance it. I bought it with private money lender. But the DSCR lender would not refinance it because it is not residential. It would be commercial since it’s more than five units.
So my question for you is how do I go about refinance this property with a commercial loan or some other option when I don’t have a high taxable income? What would my option be in that case? And this property would cash flow really nice because, just some rough numbers, the total income will be 5,500 bucks per month and we currently only owe about $400,000 on it for the private money lender and we also bought it at a very good discount. I think we’re going to be at about 65 to 70% ARV after we fix it up. So the worst can happen, we can always sell it if we cannot refinance it. But I’m curious to see what is your experience with refinance a multi-family, which you don’t have any taxable income. So I appreciate it. Thank you. Have a good day.

David:
Well first off Hieu, I’m sorry to hear you got stuck there. If you were using my team, we would’ve told you not to buy a commercial property to try to use a residential DSCR loan. Maybe next time you can talk with your lender before you close on the property. Even if you’re going to refinance it, I’d give that advice to everyone. Don’t buy the property or do the thing and then run to the professional and say, “Help. I screwed up. What do I do?” Go to them before you close. When you’ve got a contractor who’s going to do the work, run it by the agent and say, “What would the ARV be when we’re finished with this?” Or when the property’s in escrow, ask the person, you’re going to refinance it, “What would you need to know about me?” That’s what I do. I don’t ever walk into it and just hope that the person at the end of the day is going to be able to bail me out.
I want to tell them about what I’m doing. And oftentimes they’ll say, “Well it’s not going to work this way but it would work that way,” and I have time to make the adjustment while it’s an escrow. So that’s a little quick tip for everyone out there. Now, there is some good news here. What I hear you saying is you bought a commercial property that cash flows very strong by commercial terms, that has a very solid loan to value ratio. I don’t see why you can’t just get a commercial loan on this commercial property. I might be missing something because you’re saying that your DTI isn’t that solid, your debt’s income ratio, but it usually doesn’t need to be on a commercial loan. They’re probably not even going to look at that. Much like we don’t look at them on DSCR loans. So I’m just not sure why you wouldn’t be able to refinance this into a commercial loan and maybe even pull out more of the equity than you put in like a commercial BRRRR. Those work too.
I’m racking my brain trying to think about why you wouldn’t be able to do that because I’m wondering … Maybe you just didn’t think about it because you don’t get the 30 year fixed rate. That could be the case. You’re probably going to be looking at a 5/1 ARM, a 7/1 ARM, maybe a 10/1 ARM. That’s just how commercial properties work. Double side note, this is why DSCR loans are so amazing and why we do so many of them. Because you don’t get the adjustable terms with the commercial underwriting. You get the residential 30 year fixed rate terms with the commercial underwriting. So it’s really the best of both worlds and this is why I’m buying so many properties right now specifically with this product because I don’t know how long it’s going to last. At a certain point, lenders will pull this off the market.
The only thing I can think about is you don’t like that adjustable rate. But if you’re going to sell the house now, why not refinance it into an adjustable rate mortgage with a fixed rate for five, seven or 10 years and sell it at the end of that period of time. Unless you think that prices are going to go down over the next 10 years. That’s kind of hard for me to see a scenario like that happening with the inflation rate that we have right now. Man, this would be a great one for us to have you back on with a coaching call so I could dive deeper. But yeah, I would just say find a commercial lender and refinance it that way. You could reach out to us. We’re happy to do it for you. Or you could talk to loan officer that you have already and see if he has a connection with a commercial lender. Just finance it that way and move on to the next property. Thanks Hieu.
All right, our next question comes from John Nunguster. John is from Thousand Oaks and has a rental property here in California. Thousand Oaks is in Southern California if you guys didn’t know that. Has one home and is looking to BRRRR in East Texas. There’s so many Californians that are all looking to invest out of state. It’s almost ironic that I wrote a book called Long Distance Real Estate Investing as a Californian who at one point had to do the same thing. “David, I feel like we are kindred spirits. I’m currently employed as a deputy sheriff. I’m also a blue belt in jujitsu.”
All right, let me just stop you right there, John. I’m a … Not only am a white belt man, I’m a clear belt. I haven’t gone to class in over three months. I’ve been traveling, buying properties and super busy with a 1031. So let me not give this fake impression that I’m a jujitsu master. But thank you because I am interested in it. I just haven’t put enough time into it to say I’m good yet. “I’m currently trying to build a portfolio to replace my current W2 income and I’m really feeling a calling towards building a team of law enforcement officers as private money lenders to buy real estate and become financially free. Do you have any tips on this?” Okay, I’m going to answer the first part of your question then get to the second. You need to look up Brian Burke. Brian Burke was a staple on the BiggerPockets platform when I first started getting into it almost 10 years ago now, and he was a law enforcement officer, I believe in the Santa Rosa area. I don’t remember which police department. It doesn’t really matter.
But he left to become a full-time syndicator. I believe he runs Praxis Capital and he’s a very good investor and more importantly a good guy. Brian’s a person I look up to as a mentor. He’s someone that I go to and say, “Hey, tell me what you think about this,” or, “What do you think I should do different?” I really, really respect Brian and I’ve never heard a bad thing said about him by anybody on the platform. So if you guys are hearing Brian’s name for the first time, give him a call and say that David Greene said he’s an awesome dude and you want to follow him and also search for blogs he’s written or any books that he’s written on the BP platform. He’s a great template of how you can do it.
All right, getting to the rest of your question. “Maybe you get this all the time, but I feel like you would be an amazing guy to grab a beer with and rack your brain for an hour or so.” All right, I do get that all the time. Let me just address this right now. For one, I don’t drink. I never have. It’s not like I’m an alcoholic or I have a conviction against it. I just don’t think it’s a very good idea and I have enough vices in my life like food for one, which is a struggle for many of us all the time. But I don’t need to add more vices by getting into drinking. So for all the people that have offered me a drink or said to go grab a beer, just know I was not rejecting you. I was just rejecting that offer because I don’t drink. And thank you for that. As far as racking my brain, this is the best place to do it. That’s why we do these Seeing Greene episodes so that everybody can rack my brain all at one time.
And this now begs the question, what the heck does rack someone’s brain mean? You hear this a lot. It doesn’t make any logical sense. Does anyone know where this phrase rack your brain comes from? Now I’m worried more about that than I am the question. Let’s get back on the topic here. “I have been an avid follower of BiggerPockets for several months now and even read your book on out-of-state investing.” How funny, I mentioned that earlier. “I’m currently reading Brandon’s book on creative financing and I’d like to know if you have any tips for me. And my question is, do you ever meet with the people one-on-one to chat about real estate and mentor a newbie?” Great question here. This is actually something I get asked all the time, probably several times a day. Maybe more. I’ll get a DM or an email or someone saying, “Hey, will you be my mentor?”
So let’s take a minute to break this apart. First off, BiggerPockets itself functions as the best mentor you could ever have. I’m sure you already know that because you know a lot about me. You know that I like jujitsu, you know that I’m a former law enforcement. So clearly you’re already listening to BiggerPockets and anyone hearing this advice, you’re in the same boat. Otherwise you’re going to be hearing it. Just keep in mind that BiggerPockets was formed to be that mentor you never had. To give you a place to go ask questions like the forums. We write books so that you could go read them so that you wouldn’t have to talk to another human being because all their information is put into their book. This podcast was meant to feel like you’re part of a conversation between a real estate investor and another real estate investor, and you get to be the fly on the wall and listen to what they say.
Seeing Greene particularly is something where you can come in to ask questions just like this. So this is already a form of mentorship. Now, there’s another form of mentorship that goes deeper that’s really more like an apprenticeship. An apprenticeship is a situation where someone experienced and knowledgeable in a skill passes down their knowledge and their skills to someone else to develop that person so that they can then go make money. Now, in my opinion, an apprenticeship is the best way under God’s green earth, no pun intended for Seeing Greene, to learn anything. That’s what jujitsu is. You get this instructor who knows a lot that walks you through the techniques and tells you to move your foot here, move your hips this way, grab here instead of there, grab with this part of your hand and not that. There’s all these details that they have learned over years and years and years of doing it. That’s how martial arts are passed down.
It’s done through the apprenticeship model. Now, the apprenticeship model made sense when the person teaching the apprentice was going to get something out of it because the apprentice was then going to work for them. Now, you may have already understood this, John, but I think a lot of people don’t, and that’s why I’m getting into this at a deeper level. In today’s world, you’re not going to learn the martial art from the black belt so that you can then go teach in the school. Most people are not interested in working for the person that they’re teaching. So instead of compensating them with their labor in the future, they compensate them with money right now. This is why I pay 150 bucks a month to belong to the jujitsu gym. This is why people may pay for courses where someone’s going to teach them, hey, here is how you do what I do in the real estate space.
Now, BiggerPockets is this amazing paradise of awesomeness because very few things here cost money. This is why we do it. We’re giving free information because we have such a big reach that the company can still afford to keep the lights on just by the sheer volume of people that are there, the ads that they sell, stuff like that. But if you’re approaching someone and wanting to be a mentor that you don’t know, it’s very rare that someone’s going to say, “Yeah, I was hoping that I could take some time away from managing all the stuff I already have going on to teach a different person that I don’t know.” And so the odds of you getting a mentor from that approach probably aren’t that great. What I would recommend, what I do, what the successful people I know do is they are more clever than that.
So for instance, I’m going to be in Scottsdale hosting retreats where I’m teaching the people how to invest in real estate. That’s a great way to get to know me better. If you go to BP Con and you see me sitting down somewhere and you come sit down and hang out in the conversation, that’s a great way to get to know me better. If you have a friend of a friend and you end up … There’s a couple guys that literally joined my jujitsu gym just because they were like, “If I’m rolling with the guy, I have to be able to ask him questions.” That literally happens is they will come to me and try to talk about real estate in class. Now, I’m not saying I want a bunch of stalkers. That actually can become problematic. I’m giving you examples of how you can use your creative abilities to build a relationship with someone rather than just emailing them and saying, “Will you be my mentor?” And probably not getting a response.
Another way that I’ve seen that people can do really well is they will go make friends with the people that are in my company that I rely on. All right. So guys like Kyle Renke who’s my chief operating officer or Christian Bachelder who runs the One Brokerage with me. Krista Keller, my assistant. These people contact me every day and play a very big role in my life. If you make yourself valuable to them and one of them is like, “Dude, this person’s been super helpful. They sent us this thing, they gave us this connection, they provided us with this resource that I wouldn’t have been able to get this thing done without them.” You make my friends like you, you’re going to make me like you. So if you really, really want a mentor, you need to think about how you can get in their world.
When we interviewed Alex Hormozi, he said he spent … I don’t remember what it was. It was more than $100,000 to talk to Grant Cardone on the phone for an hour. And he did that several times. Now, he didn’t just get the information that Grant Cardone gave him. Alex got a relationship with Grant Cardone that turned into a friendship. I’ve seen people do this with other people like Ed Mylet where they will pay a lot of money to get coaching from that person, but in the process of coaching, they develop a relationship which turns into the mentorship that isn’t the apprenticeship model. So just this word mentor is … It’s used very ambiguously and I’m trying to become more specific. You’ve got an apprenticeship and then you’ve got a relationship and each of them have different paths to get there.
So if that’s what you’re looking for from me or from someone else that’s in this space, you’re going to have to think how do you set yourself apart from other people? I appreciate the offer to get me a beer, but that beer would cost me so much money if I had to take time away from the other stuff that’s going on, it wouldn’t make a ton of sense. Now you show up at BP Con, you donate money to a charity that I really like, you become friends with someone that I know, you end up at an event that I’m at and something comes up. Now you’re in a position where you can start to develop that relationship that I know so many people here are looking for. This is how I got ahead is I joined GoBundance and I met a lot of the people you guys have heard on the podcast.
I met David Osborne and Tim Rhode and Pat Hiban. I met Andrew Cushman, I met Hal Elrod who wrote The Miracle Morning and wrote the endorsement for Long Distance Real Estate Investing, which we mentioned here. And a whole lot more people that I haven’t mentioned. But I didn’t go up to them and say, can you teach me everything? I joined the group they were in, I sat next to them, I went and rode snowmobiles with them and went wakeboarding with them and jet skiing with them and listened to their problems and tried to help them through it and we developed a relationship through that bonding process. So hope that that helps. I see that you’re in Thousand Oaks, so I have a team in Southern California. If you would reach out to them, that would be a great way to get the ball rolling with getting deeper into my world. Thanks for the question.
All right, for those of you who have also been dying to know, our producer for the show, Eric, has done the heavy lifting and has found the meaning to rack your brain, which I am now going to share with you. The meaning is to think very hard to find an answer. If you rack your brain, you strain mentally to recall or to understand something. The rack was a medieval torture device where the victim was tied to the rack by his arms and legs, which were then practically torn from their bodies. It’s not surprising therefore, that rack soon became a verb meaning to cause pain. The word was used whenever something or someone was under particular stress and a huge variety of things were said to be racked. The first recorded use of this being specifically applied to brains is in William Beveridge’s sermon circa 1680. They rack their brains, they hazard their lives for it. Where else are you going to get this much real estate information, this much direct advice on finding a mentor and this much historical knowledge on the meaning of phrases like rack your brain than BiggerPockets? That alone should get us a like and a subscribe from you on YouTube and your favorite podcast app.
All right, our next question comes from Nathan Nye. Like Bill Nye the Science Guy. “Hi, this is Nathan from Michigan. Not an investor yet, but hoping to change that soon after listening to the podcast for around six months. Can’t say enough how much I appreciate BP. Truly life changing. Anyways, very curious how you all at BiggerPockets navigate the topic of validation. Many people, including myself at times, thrive on someone else telling them good job. But whenever I find myself locked in this mindset, the tie to someone else’s opinion feels unhealthy and almost takes control of my process. That said, I find it hard to tell myself you did it even with tasks or projects in my daily work. How do you tell yourself I’m doing very well, I’m proud of this, even if others are leagues ahead? How does this one conversation play out when millions are watching like on the podcast or even when you just know you know about an event happening? Would love to hear how you think about this topic. Thank you, Nathan.”
Wow. We are going deep here. This is a great question and I’m not even quite sure how I’m going to answer this. I should start off by saying you’re not the only person that feels this and I appreciate you having the courage to say it. Most of our listeners, me included, will struggle with wanting validation. In fact, I was just thinking about this the other day because there’s a trait in people that will irritate me and it’s usually some form of pride.
When people think that they’re better than other people, when they act like they’re better than me … In general, when anyone acts prideful it gets under my skin and almost every prideful person is insecure. So what I was thinking is when I see pride, what I typically want to do is try to humble that person. But the process of trying to humble somebody usually will hit on their insecurity and make their pain even worse. And this is the problem with insecurity, which shows up in pride, but it also shows up in the need for validation. Now, we’re all created and designed to need this. When we’re little kids, we need our parents to say good job. It’s like a wiring that we have inside us. At least this is how I look at it. That is made by either intelligent design or evolutionary biology, however, you tend to look at it, to keep you alive.
If your parent doesn’t tell you good job, you don’t know what to do and you won’t do the right things and then you’ll end up dying. In the same way that when your parent says you have to look both ways before you cross the street and if you don’t do it, they yell at you or they spank you. They’re telling you you did not do a good job. And because that is painful to lose their approval, you’re more likely to remember to look both ways before you cross the street and not be dead. The same thing if you eat your vegetables and they tell you very good job. They are training you to do a healthy thing that is hard and against your willpower. Sorry, against your nature, I should say. Against your will, not your willpower. That will serve you well in life so that they can keep you alive.
So this need for validation is tied to your desire to stay alive, and that’s why it’s so powerful. You can’t just get away, get around it. The key is you’ve got to put yourself around the right people so that they’re giving you the right feedback and not leading you down the wrong path, as well as to put yourself in a position where you’re not completely dependent on it because now we’re not little kids and so now this can become a pain. Sometimes when someone tells me good job for something, I’ll spend more time doing it when it’s not in alignment with my goals. Other time I will be making progress with my goals, but I’m not hearing good job. So this is difficult. Here’s a few things I can tell you right off the bat that will help you. Get yourself around other people that are committed to their goals, and it doesn’t have to be real estate.
Get yourself around other people that are committed to staying in the gym. Get yourself around other people that are committed to eating healthier foods. Get yourself around other people that are committed to having better marriages or being better parents or managing their wealth better. The first thing that you can do is when you start telling other people good job for what you did, it will silence the need you have inside yourself to hear it. I don’t know why it works like this, but it’s almost the equivalent of if you’re really hungry but you give someone else food, your hunger can go away and that will help. The other thing is they’re more likely to feed you if they’re being fed. This is just a philosophy I have in life. Don’t go around trying to find someone to be your friend. Go around looking for someone to be a friend to.
Don’t go around saying, “Why won’t anyone love me? Where do I find someone to love me? How do I make someone love me?” Go around and say, “How can I find someone to love? How do I meet other people’s needs?” Because the people that meet everyone else’s needs, the people that are a friend to others, the people that love others by the law of reciprocity will have that turn back to them. To me, that’s what faith is. It’s knowing if you do the right thing that your needs will be met rather than manipulating a situation to try to get your needs met by doing the wrong thing. It’s trusting that if you do the right thing, that things are going to work out for you and then having eyes to see where it did. So when it comes to being locked in this mindset that you talk about, the tie to someone else’s opinion that feels unhealthy and almost takes control of my process, one really helpful way you can get yourself out of that is to go look at what other people are needing, what other people are craving.
How many talented people do you know that are working a job they hate because they don’t have the confidence to get out of it? How many really awesome people do you know that are stuck in an unhealthy relationship that won’t leave it because there’s not anyone telling them that they can do better? How many people do you know that are not happy with their weight, but they’re just too insecure or shy to go running that you can say, “Hey, why don’t I start walking with you every morning? Then let’s start running together. Then let’s go to the gym together.” How many people do you know that are suffering from the same thing that you are suffering from right now, Nathan, that you can be that person to that you’re looking for for someone to be to you? Now, I don’t know exactly how that’s going to work out for you. I just know that it will.
If you focus on putting other people’s needs first and validating them in the way that they need, people will turn around and do it back to you and the universe or God or whatever you believe, intends to smile on that and push blessings your way. I know this was not the tactical advice that you were probably looking for, but I really hope that you would start taking some actions out of faith here and then either DM or email me and let me know if you’ve seen a positive impact from this advice. All right, we have time for one more question.

Seth:
Hey, David. Seth Stevens with Silverback Investments in Cape Girardeau, Missouri. We own a 12 unit apartment building for about a year at this point. It’s third party managed. We’ve been able to raise rents, but overall, the building doesn’t really seem to be doing a lot better than when we first purchased it. So my questions are how long should you give a property manager to turn a property around and what are some determining factors in deciding to switch property management companies? Thanks for taking questions.

David:
Steven, love it. This is a great question. All right, let’s dive into this. First question. I don’t think the right way to approach it is how much time should I give them to turn it around? I like to take almost every problem I have like what you have and turn it into the flow chart. Is it yes or no, if this, then that, right? So the first question I would ask at the very top is, is this something that can be turned around? If the answer is no, switching property management companies isn’t going to help you. If the answer is yes, now you ask the question, how long should I give them to turn it around as well as what progress am I seeing that they’re making? And then when it comes to the progress, now I’d ask the question of like, well, why are they not making progress? I’d work my way down that flow chart.
If it’s a 12 unit property and it’s not in a great area, it might not be the property manager’s fault. Okay. Now just think about your Phil Jackson. You’re the best coach that the NBA has ever seen. I don’t know who the best coach is. That’s debatable. Let’s just say you’re a very good coach and you’re given the worst players in the league to play with. All of your knowledge, all of your skills with people, all of your handling of personalities, all of your brilliant play calling is worthless if the guy on the floor can’t dribble the ball without turning it over or your players can’t shoot and they can’t score. What I’ve found is that the people that perform at the highest levels have to be surrounded by talent. It does not matter how good you are at anything if you’re not surrounded by talent.
Now, your property manager in this case, let’s call the talent, that might be your actual asset. How nice the units look, what kind of area it’s in. Are there other people that are moving into the area? Companies that are driving up wages and making so people can pay higher rents? Or is there a ton of competition and no one really wants to live in this apartment complex? It might not be the coach’s fault the team isn’t winning. Now, if you’re doing everything right and it’s an amazing unit and everybody wants to live there and you’re getting tons of applications and they’re just mismanaging it, yeah, you need to get another company and need to do it right now. There’s no more time to give them to turn it around. My guess is you’re probably not thinking about if you were in their situation, could you do anything different?
So before you assume it’s the property management company, always start with yourself. What kind of an asset did we give him? What could we be expecting him to do? There’s certain problems that I think anyone just with pure effort and having a good intention can fix. For instance, if they’re having plumbers come out to fix trivial issues and charging you $1,000 when they could be calling a handyman to pay 100, they’re being lazy. Get rid of them. If it’s the expenses are just completely out of control, that’s usually something that the property management has some control over. They’re being lazy. Get rid of them. If everyone that’s applying to live there is willing to pay 895 and you want to bump the rents up to 1200 and no one’s willing to pay it, there’s not much you can do. If tenants are constantly breaking their leases and it’s not just one or two, it’s all the time, well, that may be that they’re choosing the wrong tenants, but it also may be they don’t have much tenants to choose from.
Most of the time, if they have a lot of high qualified tenants, they’re going to pick the ones that are less likely to break the lease. So you’d have to ask some questions. I’d be asking when we have a vacancy, how many people apply for it? I would be saying, how much competition do we have from other units in the area and they should know that. If they don’t even know what their competition is, that’s not a good sign. You might want to move on from them. And then the last piece of advice I’d give you is before you go find another company … Because I feel like you’re moving that direction anyways. You’re just looking for some reason not to at this point. Is ask the company what they would do different than what you’re getting right now.
Okay. So let’s say that you had a house for sale and it wasn’t selling. You had a listing that was the very same scenario you’ve got. You’ve got an apartment complex, it’s not renting for enough. If you came to me as your real estate agent and said, “David, my house isn’t selling. What would you do to sell it?” I would tell you. I would be straightforward. And there’s a very good chance that it wouldn’t be the house’s fault, it’d be your fault. A lot of people list their house too high. They save on not wanting to spend for marketing. They let the house smell bad. They don’t want to have to move their stuff out of it so they’ve got outdated furniture or they’ve got moving boxes, they’ve got stuff that stops the house from showing well, they’re not wanting to actually keep the grass cut or keep it in good condition.
And if you came to me and said, “David, why is my house not selling and what would you do different?” I’d tell you what you don’t want to hear. I’d give you the truth. And I would also say, “I’m not going to drop my commission to make this work for you. You’re going to have to put the work into getting your house sold because my job is to get it sold and this is what it’s going to take.” I want a property management company that would say the same thing to me. “Okay, here’s the problem. You haven’t spent the money on the units that you need to. You’re not marketing it in the right places. The units are not in very good shape. The lighting is really poor and the tenants are going to feel scared coming here at night.” They should have objective information readily available to tell you of what they would do different. If they go, “Well, I don’t know. Let’s just get in here and see what we got. We’ll figure it out.” That’s not the person to hire.
You want them to have a plan going in where they can write out to you specifically, this is what we need to do different. These are the 10 steps we’re going to take if you hire us. If they didn’t have a plan in place, I wouldn’t switch to that company. Thank you for the question there though. I’m really sorry this is what you’re going through. I love it as you struggle with this, once you figure out what it was you needed to change, if you would go in the forums, quote the number to this show and tell people, hey, this was my problem and here’s what I figured out how to solve it.
All right, Thank you again everyone for taking the time to send us questions. This is a wrap to this episode of the Seeing Greene Podcast. As always, if you like these shows, please go to YouTube and leave us a comment letting us know what you like about it, why you like it, and what you want to see more of as well as leave us a review to let us know that you love the show. If you’d like to submit a question, please go to biggerpockets.com/david where you can do so there. And lastly, if you’ve got some more time, please consider checking out another BiggerPockets podcast. We’ve got more Seeing Greene, we’ve got more traditional real estate podcasts. We’ve got a whole library of information on BiggerPockets YouTube channel. We’ve got the State of the Market Podcast, The Rookie Podcast, The Money Show, the Business Show, the Investor Podcast, and probably more that I’m not remembering because there’s so many out there. So check out all of the BiggerPockets podcasts and find the one that resonates with you the most. Thank you very much for your attention and the time that we spent together. I will catch you on another.

Ashley:
This is Real Estate Rookie, episode 222.
My name is Ashley Kehr, and I’m here with my co-host Tony Robinson.

Tony:
And welcome to the Real Estate Rookie Podcast, where every week, twice a week, we bring you the inspiration, motivation, and stories you need to hear to kickstart your investing journey.
I want to start off today’s episode by shouting out some folks from the Rookie audience. We got another five star review. This one says, “I’m a small time real estate investor with one property, and I want to get to three to five. This podcast is amazing because they focus on the basics.”
So if you haven’t yet, leave us an honest rating and review on whatever podcast platform it is you’re listening to. The more reviews we get, the more folks we reach. The more folks we reach, the more folks we can help. And that is our ultimate goal.
So, with that out the way, Ashley Kehr, what’s up? What’s new? Tell me how things are.

Ashley:
Well, to be honest, today I’m going to use the Rookie Reply as my own confessional. I’ve had something just weigh me down on my shoulders and I just need to get it off my chest, and hopefully it will help some other people and everyone will realize that I am not perfect and bad things can happen. This bothered me so much, and I feel like I just need to get it out there in case it happens to someone else, that you know you’re not alone in this.
So at one point in time in the past year, I hired somebody to do my payables for the business.

Tony:
A bookkeeper.

Ashley:
Not even a bookkeeper, just paying the bills. So not even entering in any of the data, so just paying the bills. They would go and get my mail from the PO box. They would open the mail, they would scan in the mail, and I’d be able to look at it from there. And then they would write the check. They would bring the checks to my house that they wrote, have me look at them, compare them to the bill, sign them, and then they would make the envelope and mail them out.
So, first, I know you guys are all thinking that, “Well, why don’t you set all your things up on autodraft and automatic withdrawal?” Well, when you invest in small rural towns, sometimes there’s no online system. The only form of payment is walking into the place or mailing a check, unfortunately.
So there was things that would come in … or if a contractor, vendor, or something, something that’s an occasional occurrence, or the property tax bills, even the water bills. For in the small towns, the electric bills, they have their own utility company, and they only will mail out a bill and accept a check payment.
Anyways. So I got a letter in the mail about a month ago, and it said that my property taxes were not paid on one of my properties. In bold print across the top, foreclosure, property tax foreclosure, across … I seriously had a heart attack. At this moment I can’t even recall exactly what it said because all I did was panic inside. And it said: past due, nonpayment. These were due, I mean, like six months ago, that this happened.
And at the same exact date that I got that letter, I got an email from my bank that I have the loan with, saying, “Hey Ashley, just wondering what’s going on? This third-party company we check, to make sure things are paid on a property, said that the property taxes were not paid. What’s going on?”
Immediately, I felt embarrassment. I got sick to my stomach. I felt anger. What happened? So this person just did not do what they were supposed to do. So we went through the scanned documents, things like that. There was property taxes that were scanned in. Never paid. There was some that were never scanned in. Did she not get them? Things like that.
So I had to go through a lot of my accounts and just make sure everything was paid. Go through every property and pull up … And it ended up there was two properties that the property taxes were not paid for. Actually, no, I’m sorry, there was three. So one of them, what happened was that the property taxes were actually added to my next round of property taxes, and they were re-levied, they call it. So it was actually included into that bill. So they ended up being paid.
So what I did, was I went online to pay the property tax bill. And it says that they’re no longer accepting online payments. So I go into the town clerk in the small town and I go to pay the property tax bill. She’s like, “Oh no, I can only accept payments until June 30th.” And I was like, “Okay. How should I pay this?” And she goes, “Well, I don’t know. I’ve never been in this situation.” My embarrassment just overloaded even more. I’m like, “Oh my God.”

Tony:
“I’ve never had any bum landlords be this late on their property taxes.”

Ashley:
I know. And I was just like, “Okay. Yeah. I’m sorry, I’m not sure what to do. I was just asking for some guidance.” And she’s like, “Well, I guess I could Google it for you.” And this clerk is the one that you would write your check out to, to pay your property taxes. I just assumed they would know …

Tony:
Know what to do.

Ashley:
… what to do if someone’s paying late. So my embarrassment was awful. I had to work up the nerve to even go into it. I tried to make Darrell do it, but it would’ve had to wait another day until he was available because I didn’t want to walk in there. So it just got 10 times worse.
But what you ended up having to do was … she’s like, “You’ll have to go downtown Buffalo and you’ll have to pay it to the county now,” or whatever. So I got back in the car, I did my own Googling, and they actually accepted the payment online. So I didn’t even have to go into the clerk’s office, I could have paid it online. It was taken care of.
And then I learned that it’s actually two years of back taxes that you need before they will actually come and take your house and put it up for auction. But that was just a horrible, horrible feeling for me, is having that happen. So my biggest things that I learned, is that if you hire and outsource someone to do something … and I learned this with my property management company too … is that that doesn’t mean that you can forget about it. You need to still stay on top of things.
So that was my biggest takeaway from that. And if a bill is not paid, like your property taxes, it’s not the end of the world. But maybe I need to implement some kind of system, where I have a VA that’s going in and: check, check, check. Okay. All these property taxes are paid. Because if I don’t get a bill for something I don’t know to pay it. I can’t remember all of the property tax bills that should be coming in for my properties.
So if there’s anybody else out there who hired somebody that missed a payment, or maybe just forgot or something and missed a bill, I’m right there with you and felt the embarrassment.

Tony:
Yeah. Well, first, thank you for sharing, Ashley. I appreciate you sharing this super embarrassing story. I’m embarrassed for the both of us. I’m embarrassed that we’re even associated with one another now because I don’t want people to think that I don’t pay my property tax bills.
But, I guess, a couple questions. So, for me, I never have to worry about paying my property tax bills because my property taxes are impounded with my insurance payments for literally every single property. Is that not the case for your properties in New York?

Ashley:
So you have them in escrow?

Tony:
Yeah, all my payments are escrowed. Yeah.

Ashley:
Okay. So yeah, I have a lot of commercial lending on my properties, where they usually don’t require you to escrow your property taxes. So the nice thing about that is my monthly payment is low. Yes, I have to save up to make a payment, but a lot of my commercial loans, they don’t offer it or they don’t require it.

Tony:
Have you called to ask them if they would be able to do that on your behalf?

Ashley:
No, because I don’t know if I would actually want to. I mean, maybe now would be a good example. But I like that I’m just paying my insurance bill once. Because I have had it happen … this has actually happened twice now with a hard money lender … where I paid, at closing, for my insurance upfront, and they took the check and they were going to pay the insurance themselves, just for that one year, with the hard money lender.
I got notices stating that they have no record of the insurance, blah, blah, blah. So I’ve had a lot of issues with that recently. But I’m sure if they wanted to … I do have one commercial loan that has it in escrow, but that’s it.

Tony:
Yeah. For me, like you, there’s too many things going on, I think, for me to be able to keep track of that. So, for me, being able to escrow all that stuff has been super helpful.

Ashley:
Maybe that’s something I need to reevaluate going forward, is make sure that they are all escrowed. Yeah.

Tony:
Yeah. So my second question: did they send any notices before then about the nonpayment, and was this person who was in charge of that just not catching that? How do you think it went that far without it being brought to your attention?

Ashley:
So, actually, they would’ve received the bill a month before I let them go. So there was other things that were happening. So I had let them go, and then somebody else took over. And no, there was no bill received. This was the first notice that we got in the mail. And the bank had found out the same information at the same exact time. Which I thought was weird too.
But also, the next round of taxes for that property is coming up due now. So maybe they sent a notice before they re-levy it onto the next set of taxes for that property? So it’s like the school taxes are all coming up now. But yeah, I don’t know. But we thought that was really strange too, was that this was the first notice of it. And coming up too, is the big county auction for properties that they’ve taken for properties tax.

Tony:
So you’re like, “Oh no.”

Ashley:
I was like, “Oh my god, it’s going to be on the list. My LLC.” Oh my God, I was just sweating. People are probably Google satelliting the property, like, “Oh yeah, we want to bid on this one when it comes up to auction.”

Tony:
But luckily you avoided that.

Ashley:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Tony:
Crisis averted.
So I know you mentioned trust would verify, which I think is a big thing. And for folks, even if you just have one property, if you’re not doing everything yourself, I think there does have to be some kind of checks and balances in place to make sure that the things you’ve delegated to other people are actually getting done.
Just a quick backstory. So, for me, in my old W2 job, I was in a manager level position, so a lot of my information came secondhand from folks who were on my team. And obviously I had to trust them, that they were giving me the right stuff. But a lot of times I would just go back and I would just randomly pick different things that I would double-check, like if they were sending me data on how their shift perform for the last day, I would look at the email they sent me, but then I would just go into the system myself and pull some of that data to see if it all lined up.
So those little spot checks sometimes, I think, help catch some of those issues. And typically, what I’ve found, is that if you have someone that’s a low performing employee, if you find one mistake there’s probably some other mistakes in there as well. So it might be a telltale sign that there’s some other things you might want to dig into.

Ashley:
Yeah. And there’s probably things that are still going to come up from this too, I’m thinking.

Tony:
Yeah.

Ashley:
So we’ll see. But I had to get that off my chest. I had to do a real estate confessional of mistake.

Tony:
Yeah. And like you said, I think it’s helpful for the rookies to hear as well, because they hear our voice, they hear our stories every week. I know there’s this maybe misconception that things just always go right for us.

Ashley:
Yeah.

Tony:
But I shared my story about the Shreveport house that I lost money on. And things like this happen. As you’re building your business, things don’t always go right. So it’s not necessarily about maybe not letting those bad things happen, because sometimes it’s out of your control, but it’s about: how do you respond and how do you take those lessons and put them into your business so you can continue to get better?

Ashley:
And I think those are the people you want to have in your network too, who are open and honest about those things. While I was waiting for my kids to get off the bus today, I was on the phone with my friend Layka, who’s an investor in Seattle, and I was just telling her how some things were going wrong. We just found out this morning we have to put a new well on a property. And just every day there’s new costs, and it’s just like you’re moving money from the good properties to support the bad properties.

Tony:
Totally.

Ashley:
You never seem to have money because you’re always buying stuff.

Tony:
Buying stuff.

Ashley:
She’s like, “Yeah, you really get to enjoy real estate when you actually stop buying things and you just live off your rental income because you’re not putting it towards more properties.”
But she just rattled off all these things that are going wrong with her properties and then things that are going right with some. And it’s like, those are the investors you want to put yourself around, to share the good and the bad.

Tony:
I just want to share one thing that’s gone wrong in our business. So one of our cabins in Tennessee, summer is usually one of the busiest times of the year. Last summer we absolutely crushed it. And our second biggest cabin, there was a small leak, a little pinhole leak, that no one noticed. But we only started to notice because the floor was a little uneven and a floorboard started to pop up.
So our handyman went, he popped up the floorboard, and saw that it had just been leaking for who knows how long. So we had to cut out a big … I don’t know, like eight by eight square. And he replaced the subfloor and then put new flooring down. So this was two weeks ago.
We get a message from our cleaner on the same exact property, a few days ago, that they walk into that same lower level where we just replaced the floor and it’s soaked again. But this time it’s because the bathroom was clogged, the toilet in the bathroom down there was clogged, and literally re-damaged that whole section of floor that we just replaced.
So we had to block the calendar two weeks ago because of that first issue; we have to refund guests. And we have to do it again this week because of the second issue. So things that are totally out of our control. But like you said, it’s all-

Ashley:
And does that hurt getting super host, when you have to cancel people too?

Tony:
Yes, it definitely does. But if you have a cool guest and you just explain to them what happened, it’s like, “Hey, here’s what happened. You can stay if you want to. But just know this little section’s going to be unusable.” And if they cancel on their own, then you’re fine. But if they go to Airbnb and said I canceled on them, then automatically we would lose super host status.

Ashley:
Okay. I think that little tip is worth anyone listening to that episode because that’s great advice. Because my first thing was, wow, you had to cancel all these people. But no, you tell them what’s happening, and then you say, “I’ll give you a full refund if you choose to cancel,” so it’s on them. Ah, that’s a great idea.

Tony:
Yeah.

Ashley:
I mean, hopefully I don’t have any major …

Tony:
Yeah. Fingers crossed you never got to use that one.

Ashley:
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Well, thank you guys so much for listening to my real estate confessional this week. We will be back on Wednesday with another Rookie Reply.
I am Ashley at WealthFromRentals, and he’s Tony at Tony J. Robinson. Don’t forget to check out our YouTube channel, Real Estate Rookie. And we’ll see you guys next time.