Month: March 2022

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In 2017, the Ontario government introduced the Non-Resident Speculation Tax (NRST) as part of an attempt to slow a rapidly growing housing market in southern Ontario. Despite measures, the market has continued upwards even faster in recent years. Now, the government is revising the previously instated tax to not only raise rates but to expand coverage provincewide.

The new measures were announced just a day before they came into effect on March 30, 2022. Previously, the NRST was applied to homes purchases in the Golden Horseshoe region by buyers, both individuals and corporations, who were not Canadian citizens or permanent residents. The tax charged 15% on top of the purchase of a property. Under the new changes, that rate would be increased to 20% and be expanded to apply to sales across the province. According to a press release from the Ontario government, this is intended to “strengthen efforts to deter non-resident investors from speculating on Ontario’s housing market and help make homeownership more attainable for Ontario residents.”

In addition, the government has worked to close loopholes in the tax that previously allowed for tax avoidance in some cases. Foreign speculation has been pointed to by some as a factor driving prices up in Ontario, however, to place the blame entirely on foreign investment would be a shortsighted assertion.

In the press release, the province also indicates that they are working with municipalities to instate a vacant home tax as part of a plan in progress to ease affordability issues for Ontario home buyers. A vacancy tax has already been put in place in the City of Toronto and the City of Ottawa is in the process of preparing a similar tax.

Foreign speculation taxes and vacancy taxes have also been used in other areas across the country, notable in Vancouver as the city faces similar affordability concerns as Toronto. In the coming months, further measures are expected to come from both provincial and federal authorities in an attempt to curb rampant price growth and supply deficiencies. The liberal government made it a campaign promise to ban new foreign ownership outright for up to two years, however, they later backtracked on this promise.

Steve Clark, Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing is quoted in the press release as saying that “there is no silver bullet to solving the housing crisis. Addressing the housing supply crisis is a long-term strategy that requires long-term commitment and coordination with our partners and between all levels of government.”

David:
This is the BiggerPockets podcast, show 590.

Andre:
The moment that I took action over the way that I was thinking, and the way that I was speaking, probably in 24 to 48 hours, man, I noticed just an immediate change. And just the way that I felt, I just didn’t feel that was a black negative cloud hanging over me, walking around every day anymore, you know what I mean? And it’s all me. It’s nothing anybody else is doing around you. Most times, it’s you, and the way that you’re thinking, your surrounding, all of that. And if you’re able to change those things and identify those things, man, you can really expedite your process to get to the next level.

David:
What’s going on, everyone. It’s David Greene, your host of the BiggerPockets, real estate podcast. The show where we teach you how to build wealth through real estate. If you’re looking to have a better life, if you want more freedom, if you want more financial flexibility, if you don’t want to worry about money, if you want to feel like you’re actually making progress then you are in the right place. BiggerPockets is a community of over two million members that are all on that same journey for themselves, trying to improve their lives and their finances through real estate and doing it together.

David:
We bring lots of ways to help you accomplish that. The website has a forum where you can read about tons of questions that we’re asked, and ask your own questions, amazing blog articles. We have an agent finder system to put you in touch with agents in your area that are familiar with real estate investing, and we have the best freaking podcasts in the world when it comes to real estate.

David:
Today, we are going to be talking with a very special speaker, Andre Hines, as well as an amazing asset to your real estate investing journey, my co-host of the show, Henry Washington. Henry, welcome to the show.

Henry:
Hey man. Thank you for having me again. Glad to be back. You know I always love chit chatting it up with you, Mr. David.

David:
Yeah. And you brought some help with you today. One of your friends is who are going to be interviewing. He has an amazing story. Can you tell us a little bit about Andre?

Henry:
Yeah, man. Andre has a super inspiring story, man. It’s really a genuine rags to richest story, right? He talks a lot about coming from nothing, and had every excuse in the world to not be successful, right? And even when he pursued one path and didn’t find success, didn’t let that stop him from finally achieving financial freedom. And so I’m excited for you guys to hear how this young man literally took everything that was formed against him and used it to prosper.

David:
That is a great summary of what this is like. This is one of those shows where you’re probably not going to be able to multitask. You’re not going to be doing other things while this is playing in the background. You’re going to be sucked into Andre’s story, the adversity that he faced, the way that he handled it. He’s very transparent in sharing how he used to think versus what he went through, and how it changed the way he thought. And now what he’s doing with some of this momentum and synergy to build an empire for himself. So it was an awesome time. And especially if you are a first time investor, so when trying to get your first property, or someone who just feels like you’re sucked into the undertow of this current market, and you’re under the ocean doing circles, trying to get your feet underneath you, and you can’t figure out which way is up, this is a show for you.

David:
And for today’s quick tip, check out biggerpockets.com/podcasts. It’s being revamped. So now if you like a show, you can go there and you can find other shows of the same topic listed on that site as well as more thorough show notes. So if you hear a story like this one and you think, “Man, I’d love to hear more inspirational stories,” You can go there and you can have a list of other podcasts that were similar to that one. We are really ramping things up, so we’d love for you guys to check it out and tell us what you think. All right. That’s all I got. Henry, anything you want to add before we bring in Andre?

Henry:
Yeah, man. Absolutely. I just really encourage people to engage with this show, man. It is one of the realest, most raw, uncut conversations we had. And life isn’t always pretty, David, and we are all faced with choices at some point. And we can let life circumstances knock us off our path and take us out. Or we can take literally those life lemons and make lemonades and choose success. No matter your circumstances, Andre’s a real guy. He had some real situations and he turned it into real wealth. And so I encourage people to just take a list and try to put yourself in his shoes. And if you’re really just getting started, just like David said, man, what an inspirational story to hear. Because truly, if this guy can go from nothing and then turn it into wealth in an expensive market, right, even in these expensive times in real estate, then trust me, y’all you can do it too.

David:
Very well said, Henry, look at you, becoming quite the wordsmiths yourself.

Henry:
I appreciate that Mr. David. I’ve learned from the best.

David:
All right, let’s get to Andre.

Henry:
All right, Mr. Andre Hines. Welcome to the show, man.

Andre:
Hey man. Thank you guys for having me. I appreciate it.

Henry:
Hey, man. No worries. Thank you for being here. So you got your start in real estate through some counseling that somebody pointed you in the right direction. But before we get there, why don’t you tell everybody a little bit about your background, how you came up and how that story shaped who you are, and where you are right now?

Andre:
Again, my name is Andre Hines. I am from the South Side, Chicago, the Ida B. Wells Projects. I come from a non-financially literate background. Everything pretty much was government assistant. You know what I mean? When I was a child, my family was hit hard by the drug epidemic in the late ’80s and early 90s, so my mom and dad were affected by that. I ended up being adopted, blessed enough to be into my own family. My aunt raised me in church, and that molded my character and built me, you know what I mean, gave me my foundation of just the [rituality 00:05:55] and everything that I have now. Yeah, man, just coming from that to be where I am now is like night and day compared to, you know what I mean, some of the people that I grew up with, or grew up around or just, you know what I mean, some of my family members. And I’m extremely blessed, man.

Henry:
That’s cool, man. Because a lot of people didn’t grow up with a silver spoon in their mouth, and had to fight just to get where they are. But what I like about your story is you didn’t let any of that stop you from becoming financially free or even pursuing your goals, right? In your previous life, right, you went into even looking at a music career as a way to try to gain some traction. And so, how did what you learned when you started doing music guide you toward starting to understand that you need to be doing something to build wealth?

Andre:
I learned a lot of stuff in the music industry just about ownership, you know what I mean? And I looked up to a lot of guys like Damon Dash, Master P, Jay-Z, you know what I mean, Sean P. Diddy Combs, and they all had their own labels, and they all had clothing brands. They would start liquor companies, all of these different things that stemmed outside of just them having a rap career. And I always wanted to model just my business after that. I just didn’t want to be just in a single lane. I always wanted to be multi-faceted. And I always just felt, growing up because like I said, there was no financial literacy. Sports and entertainment were my only options for me to really attain wealth and just have success because that’s all I would see, and that’s all I really would, you know what I mean, was around.

Andre:
And just being able to really just maneuver the way that I have maneuvered and just really get to a point where I have just starting in the music industry, that experience really taught me, like I say, how to just operate in an ownership space, knowing that it won’t be easy, knowing that I’m not operating with a big major label behind me, you know what I mean? I was selling CDs out of my backpack and out of my trunk, all of those different things. It just really taught me a grind and a hustle, and I never lost that spirit and that energy when it came to real estate, and business, and entrepreneurship.

Henry:
If I hear you right, Andre, what I’m hearing you say is you had a mindset before. And this is really the mindset part of your story that was, I’m not financially literate. I see two roads to success, entertainment or sports. And if I can’t make it happen, well, then there’s no point of trying. I’m probably oversimplifying, but more or less, that’s the perspective. And then when you started your music career and you were not signed to a big label, if you’re signed to a big label, you’re kind of more of a W2 employee, is do what they tell you, “Hey, you go do this and we will take care of the details.” Right?

Andre:
Yeah.

Henry:
When you do it yourself, you are not entrepreneur, which means you’re a business owner. Even if the business is selling CDs out of a trunk, you still have to make the stuff, market the stuff, manufacture the stuff, price the stuff, keep your own books to know what your profit margin is. And that is what opened your mind up to, whoa, there’s actually a lot more possibilities and routes than just the two that I was seeing before.

Andre:
Absolutely. And I wasn’t necessarily successful in that field as far as on a famous or multi-platinum level or anything like that. But as far as, like you said, the mindset that it taught me and the hustle and the grind that it taught me. And it also, it kept me humble because I wasn’t successful. You know what I mean? Rappers tend to have these big egos and these images, that they’re this famous person, and they got all of this money. And really in all actuality, like you said, they’re really an employee. They owe money to the label. They owe money to the car company. They owe money to the mortgage company. They owe money to the jeweler. They owe money to the clothing company. There’s just like, they’re in a bunch of debt. And I was shaping up my life to be in the same way.

Andre:
I had to realize that it wasn’t working for me after a while because I spent maybe 10, 11 years chasing this dream. And sometimes, you don’t necessarily have to give up or quit, but you have to pivot, you know what I mean? And I didn’t give up on my dream of being wealthy because that’s what I was using music for because that’s all I knew. Because again, you find out you’re not going to make it in sports pretty young, you know what I mean?

Henry:
[crosstalk 00:10:02].

Andre:
Once you get to high school, you realize it’s a wrap. Once you’re not starting on the varsity team and there are no colleges coming to see you, that kind of stuff, it gets to you early, like, yeah, so this may not be my path now that I’m seeing what’s going on here. And yeah, I figured that out early. So I just started to learn how to hustle, man, because I just didn’t have a mindset of stock market, real estate, all of that stuff. So I would do little stuff like, man, sell sneakers, go and get a job here and there, just little stuff to make money. And after a while, like I said, I had children, fell behind on my rent for so long. I mean, eviction notices, you name it, just like all the problems that a person could possibly have and just, it was time for me to just really get my [inaudible 00:10:51] together, man.

David:
Well, that’s why I wanted to ask you that question because, so it’s funny that you mentioned sports. That was really where my journey started off as well. I just wanted to be a basketball player. I wasn’t at the time wanting to be wealthy or famous, but I just loved basketball. And I hit a ceiling, that was my athletic ability, right? I was more athletic than most people, but I was not more athletic than division one college athletes, much less professional athlete. Like you said, it becomes very obvious very quickly. It doesn’t matter what you do, you’re not getting past this point with these limitations. But in the world of real estate or maybe entrepreneurship in general, what I tell people is that your athletic ability is your mindset.

David:
And what’s amazing is that there are no natural limitations on it. It’s only what you put on yourself, right? So I just wanted to draw that out of your story and make the connection for our listeners that you had to have your mind opened, and that came through what you would call a failed endeavor. But what you gained in that failure is what opened up the door. So we’re going to talk about now. So I’m going to throw it back to Henry and let you guys keep going into your story. Thank you for that.

Henry:
It’s a perfect transition because you talked about getting your [inaudible 00:11:51] together, you talked about evaluating your situation, and then using that to guide your next steps. You essentially have documented this process that you’ve used to go from where you were to financial freedom now. So talk a little bit about what that is and how this ties into that step one.

Andre:
Yeah. And like you said, step one is the self-evaluation process, which is typically for most people, and for me as well, it’s the hardest part because that’s when your pride and your ego gets the biggest blow, because you got to take that look in the mirror and say, I ain’t going to the NBA. I’m not going to be a multi-platinum rapper. Or even just, even the level of responsibility just to say like, you know what, I’m just not where I’m supposed to be in my life, or where I want to be in my life right now. A lot of people just, like I said, in certain lifestyles they get caught up like with internet lifestyle, and just what’s going on with other entrepreneurs, what’s going on. Like I say, with rappers and ball players and they want to act like they’re living this lifestyle the entire time, you’re not taking care of your children and you’re behind on your bills.

Andre:
Like I said, you’re behind on your car note. Every dollar that you have is essentially on your body with the clothes that you’re wearing, just… you know what I mean? It’s bad, man. You know what I mean?

David:
I never thought about it like that. That’s funny though.

Andre:
Yeah. And when you’re able to have this conversation with yourself and be like, “Yo, I’m out here bad as hell right now. I’m really down bad. I really need to just sit down, reevaluate my situation and just re-plan.” And a lot of it comes with just unlearning a lot of stuff that we’re taught, you know what I mean? And just like school, church and stuff like that, just real traditional stuff that we’re taught a lot of times. And if we can shake that mindset, and just open up our minds, and think outside the box just a little bit, because nothing is wrong with the stuff that we’re taught in school and church. Just a lot of times it’s very limiting. You know what I mean? Especially the older stuff, because I was raised by, like I said, an older church woman, you know what I mean, who was just very traditional.

Andre:
A lot of times she would choose church over sports, and [inaudible 00:13:54] like that. It was like, “Lady, I had the opportunity to go to college. This could be my full ride scholarship here.” And she’s like, “No, we’re going to Bible study today.” Like, “Are you serious?” I would have coaches coming by the house, knocking on the doors and everything, she’s like, “Nope, we’re going to church.” You know what I mean?

Andre:
So certain stuff, man, like I said, we just really don’t get and understand. But for me, that was the first step in just understanding myself and knowing that I had to make a change. And it was taking that look in the mirror and being like, yo, you’re not the person who you say you are. You’re not the person who you think you are. You’re not the person who you’re front out here acting like you are. Like, dude, get it together. And the first step in doing that is having that conversation with yourself. And that’s a step that most people don’t want to take because it’s tough to say, I’m just not that guy, or I’m just not that woman right now.

Henry:
Absolutely, man. And just so people know, when I say you documented this process, you wrote a book, right? What did you call that book, specifically because of this?

Andre:
Renaissances’ 5 Step Guide on Getting Your Sh*t Together.

Henry:
Right. And so first step, self evaluation. Step two, what was next for you?

Andre:
Understanding the power of your mind and your words because typically that first step is brutal. You’re beating yourself down a little bit, you know what I mean? You’re identifying all your weak points. But after you do that, you have to tell yourself, you know what, but that doesn’t have to be who I am for the rest of my life. Now it’s time to make a change. I’m a confident person. I’m a talented person. I can go out here and do whatever I want. I’m able to build wealth. I deserve to build wealth. I deserve to change my life. And the more that you start speaking like this and thinking like this and just… you know what I mean, having these just positive affirmations and speaking them into the universe, the more you’ll get that stuff in return because the more you put it out there, the more you’ll get it back. And that’s just the law of attraction at its best.

Andre:
And that’s how it works because the moment that I took action over the way that I was thinking and the way that I was speaking, probably in 24 to 48 hours, man, I noticed just an immediate change. And just the way that I felt, I just didn’t feel that was a black negative cloud hanging over me, walking around every day anymore. You know what I mean? And it’s all me. It’s nothing anybody else is doing around you. Most times, it’s you, and the way that you’re thinking, your surroundings, all of that. And if you’re able to change those things and identify those things, man, you can really expedite your process to get to the next level.

Henry:
I like that. And I think that a lot of people gloss over mindset steps like this when they’re trying to think about their business or their real estate career. And I like to try to put some practicality behind it for people so that they can understand that this stuff truly does work. I know it sounds like, oh, okay just think about it, and it’ll be, but it’s not that. It’s like, our minds are powerful. And the things that we tell ourselves, that’s why vision boards are powerful for people, right? Like if you put something in front of your face every single day, you’ll start to realize that the actions that you’re taking are going to be moving you towards those goals in small ways, it’s almost like our subconscious takes over and we start moving ourselves in that direction. Now I’m not saying it’s magic, you write it down and you make it happen. But what I am saying is that when you surround yourself with your goals, either visually or taking the action to write them down, your actions follow suit, and sometimes that’s intentional actions, and sometimes it’s even subconscious actions.

Henry:
But so I challenge anybody, like if you have a goal of getting started with real estate investing and you’re not quite sure exactly how you’re going to get it done, take the first step of just writing down every day, I will be a successful real estate investor. I will be a successful real estate investor. Write it down five times every morning. If you do that consistently, what happens is, and we’ve talked about this on other episodes, David, it’s like the red truck theory, right? You buy a red truck and then now all you see is red trucks. Well, that’s because your mind is open to seeing those red trucks. If you tell yourself I am going to be a successful real estate investor every single day and you’re writing that down, you’ll start to see opportunities that you weren’t focusing, your brain wasn’t focused on before, you weren’t open to before. And then you’ll start to act on those. And that’s how mindset really starts to practically take hold in your life.

Andre:
I agree with that wholeheartedly because I’m a prime example of just what you said. You say, just writing it down because even before I was a real estate investor, before I got my first property, before I really knew about real estate investing, I knew that I wanted to be a real estate investor, I just didn’t have the right information to do it and get into the field. I was in a cubicle when I first got my job, I had to step away from the music industry. And once I started getting my stuff together and we’ll get into that, but I just wanted to just piggyback off of what you just said, I wrote down into my cubicle that I would attain over a million dollars worth of real estate assets by January 25th, 2029, which is my birthday. But I eclipsed that number probably 10 years earlier just by writing it down and having it in my face every single day and just believing and knowing that.

Henry:
Let’s put some parameters around that for people. And so you left music, because you said, this isn’t going to get me where I want to be. And even the people that are where I want to be, when you really look at it on paper, they’re not there. Right? And so-

Andre:
Yep.

Henry:
… you then said, “I got to go back to work.” And you went and you got a job. What kind of job did you get?

Andre:
Oh, man, dude was working at a telemarketing company. And I was calling people, putting them in schools that just weren’t accredited. Schools, like you hear about them in the news, like yeah, they just got shut down for education scams. [inaudible 00:19:43] Maybe I shouldn’t be working here.

Henry:
So you were doing telemarketing. How much were you making?

Andre:
Minimum wage age plus a bonus, sales bonuses. You know whenever you get sales, you get an extra little bonus or whatever the case may be. But the thing is, dude, I was killing them, bro. I was like signing people up for these schools. I look back at it, dude, I probably have 1,000 people who are just uncredited degrees right now.

Henry:
So you got a job at a call center. You were making a minimum wage, living in what city?

Andre:
In Chicago.

Henry:
In an expensive city. And you wrote down, you were going to do what?

Andre:
Obtain a million dollars worth of real estate assets.

Henry:
Right? That’s powerful. People need to see that. You had every reason to believe that you couldn’t do that. And you went and you got a job. And as you’re working at this job, you were trying to do the best you can at the job and you were doing well and you decided you were going to buy a million dollars in real estate assets. And most people who are in that situation, that would be so far out of their mindset. But you spent the first time in those two steps in trying to figure out how you were going to get to your goals, right. You had to self-evaluate, and then you had to look at the power of your words and then that leads you to learning about real estate. And so tell us a little bit about how that came to pass. So how do you go from a call center to buying real estate assets?

Andre:
That would lead into step three. Once I knew what I wanted to do, and once I started reading about it, I knew I needed some damn money. All right. All right. So real estate, I can’t do this bro. I started reading a little bit more. I started saving man, every dime that I had. Because at the time I was reading Rich Dad Poor Dad, MONEY Master the Game by Tony Robbins. This is maybe 2010, 2011. And I’m just picking up everything, just digesting information like it’s food, man. I’m just like, I’m hungry for it. So I’m just taking in everything. And those two books were what sparked the most interest in me and really taught me the most and really lit the fire under my ass. And I’m reading that book by Tony Robbins and just really just had me turned up. So I started, like I said, saving every single dollar from work. I started eating noodles for like a year straight.

Henry:
Which for the record is step three. Right?

Andre:
Yep. Yeah. Yeah. That’s what I’m saying. I was going into step three. And that was me understanding my money. And step three, is, are you frugal or are you fraud? Because again, a lot of times as we spoke about in my particular culture and just background, we tend to want to look like we have money more than we actually have money. And it’s a problem and I was one of those guys. So I had to really evaluate, okay, am I frugal? Am I saving money? Or am I actually doing what I’m supposed to do? I’m out here just really being a fraud and looking like I am and acting like I’m financially responsible and just tricking people. And I was, I was being a fraud, you know what I mean? And I had to really evaluate that. So like I said, I started saving money, making sacrifices, not buying Jordans every weekend all of that kind of stuff that was just really taking big chunks of money out of my pocket.

Andre:
And over time, man, maybe after about a year, year and a half, I had saved about 10, $12,000. And I just knew, oh, okay, I’m on something with this. And I need to do something with all this money because I never had this much money in my life just sitting there.

Henry:
But for reference, what were you making yearly?

Andre:
Ooh, maybe after taxes, about $26,000 or something like that. Barely over the poverty line.

Henry:
Right. And so I say that, because I don’t want people to not get the value of what you just said. You saved $10,000 while only making just under 30 that’s almost half your salary.

Andre:
Yeah.

Henry:
Right. Just through self realization and then putting yourself in checking on a budget. That’s amazing.

Andre:
It was hard. Oh, it was real hard, man. Just sitting in the house for, really a year and a half straight really only doing… really just not doing nothing. The whole summer long. You know when Kanye was like, man, imagine being locked in your room for three summers, that’s a different world, bro. You looking outside the window, you seeing everybody having fun. You on Instagram, everybody just says at the concert, Drake concert came to Chicago, oh it was lit. But you have goals and you know what I mean? You understand short term sacrifice for long term. You know what I mean? Greatness. And that’s really what I was on. And it worked out for me because after I did all of that stuff, man, and after I made those sacrifices, my life just took off just when I say on a rocket ship. And I never looked back.

Andre:
So it was just more so anything, man, just understanding that those sacrifices weren’t going to be forever. You know what I mean? It was just, somebody told me, man, sometimes you just got to turn down steak on an empty stomach. You know what I mean? At first it didn’t make sense to me, but then it made sense to me when I was able to have surf and turf buffet for the rest of my life. You know what I mean? So it just was the financial part of everything. And just me understanding my money and understanding what was smart to do with my money and what not to do with my money was just a major step for me.

David:
That’s very similar to my story. I did not do fun stuff when everybody my age was doing fun stuff. And this comes up a lot. So I’ve got a young guy on my loan team. He’s 23 years old. He’s my first hire. He’s crushing right now. He probably has 60 loans in submission right now at 23 years old. And he will say the same thing, “Ah, sometimes I feel like I’m missing out not hanging out with my friends.” I relate to it because I was in that same boat. But I’ll tell you, I don’t have any regret about not going out to a fancy restaurant or not going to a concert now where I am in life, knowing that that would’ve stole a house from me, right. If I had to pick, would you rather go back in time and go on a vacation with friends that you don’t even have anymore because nobody stays friends with these people for 20 years, right? Or have a house that’s going to pay you for the rest of your life. It’s pretty easy decision.

David:
So I just want to encourage the other people that are in this situation. You were Andre that you’re not doing this for nothing. It’s worth it. And then the other part I really like is that you mentioned is now you eat a seafood buffet every night. See when you spend your money on a car or on Jordan’s or something, you get the shoes, they get worn out, you don’t get to wear them anymore, you got to buy new shoes. When you get the house, it buys you a new pair of Jordan’s every month for the rest of your life. And it doesn’t matter, right? And you keep the house. That’s the difference. And when you get the asset, first, it buys the car, it buys the dinners, it buys the shoes, all the things you want are taken care of because you sacrifice early to get it. And it doesn’t stay where you’re just depriving yourself all the time.

David:
And the last point I’ll make is many things in life work this way. So if you think about, if you’re out of shape and you first want to go start running, you can’t run very far, you get maybe a quarter mile and you’re done. So you don’t really burn that many calories. You don’t see a result.

Henry:
Were you watching me workout out this morning?

David:
It seemed like you’d be probably in the gym, Henry. I don’t really see you doing a whole lot of running. I see you pushing some weight. But that’s the same thing, when you first go to lift weights, you’re not very strong. You don’t work out very long before you get tired and you don’t burn many calories. You’re not building muscle. You are conditioning yourself to eventually run four miles where you’re going to burn a lot of calories. And so what I’m saying is it does not suck the whole time like it does when you’re starting. When you first start running, every single step is agony and it’s terrible. And you do it for a long enough time, and like, this isn’t that bad. It might actually become fun because you’ve conditioned yourself. So I just want to throw that in there that while this may sound not appealing, when someone’s like, man, I don’t want to be sitting in my room watching everyone else have fun. It changes, right?

David:
Now Andre, I’m sure you’re going to tell us about some of the ways you’re finding deals. Some of the empowered way that you feel where you’re like, I’m walking around, I don’t have pretend I’m wealthy, I am wealthy. And the confidence that comes from that, where now you recognize all the things that at one point were temptations for you were because you wanted to look a certain way. And now that you don’t need to because you are that person, the temptation just goes away and that’s nice.

Andre:
And the crazy thing is just to take it back a little bit. It was extra hard for me because like I said, I had just come from a lifestyle again, while I was rapping, I was sitting next to Jay Z and Beyonce at basketball games, doing shows with Fat Joe and mind you two of my closest friends played NBA basketball. So I was playing video games with LeBron James, and weddings with Kobe Bryant, just wild that you wouldn’t even believe. And to go from that to having to sit down in a cubicle where the mindsets of the people who I’m sitting around every day just aren’t like mine, just the very, very bottom of just the work level. I said, I’m sitting in a cubicle, calling people, putting them in schools that aren’t accredited. So this was a very, very, very humbling and pride killing experience for me.

Andre:
And for a little while, I went through a little bit of a depression with this. But again, I realized that it was just a short term sacrifice for long term greatness. And as you said, man, I live my life on my own terms, now I buy all the Jordans that I want. I’ve learned about cool, art and dope [inaudible 00:29:03] like that. The ways I can use the money that I make from my investments to make other cool investments. So it’s not like I’m just spending the money now. So now let’s say I want to go buy a pair of Jordans, I can buy a two pair of Jordans. I can buy one to wear and I can buy one to put up and they go up in value like stock. Even if you’re watching this YouTube video, these little art pieces behind me, they’re really dope. They’re by this artist named Brian Donnelly Kaws. I collect his pieces, man. I learned about him, I started collecting his pieces. I’m paying two, 300 bucks for a piece just because I think it’s cool.

Andre:
I start looking this stuff up, man. It’s going up in value by 30 and 40% every year. I bought these two things back here, maybe four years ago for 300 bucks each, right now they’re worth 1,500 each and he’s still alive walking around all good and healthy, man. And God forbid something happens to him, but you understand how this goes. When typically something happens to artists or anything like that and you own a piece of their original work, man, that stuff usually skyrockets and values. I’ve learned so much different cool stuff. I and have been able to put my money in other cool stuff that are investments and not just me wasting my money.

Andre:
So just it’ll pay off man. Like David said, don’t think it’s just you just eat [inaudible 00:30:12] just for no reason. And you just got to do this for no reason. No, man. Over time you’ll be able to live a very, very happy life and just do whatever you want do out here, which is the main, that’s happiness. That’s what happiness is. Is time freedom, going to your kids baseball games when you want to, you know what I mean? Taking a family on vacation. Like Henry said, he’s leaving to go to Hawaii for two weeks. Who’s doing that. You know what I mean? You got to understand, but he had to make some sacrifices to get to that point.

Henry:
Yeah, absolutely right, man. I’m glad that you were able to touch on that for people because as soon as you start talking about sacrifice, people tend to tune out. I like that we’re able to put some color around that. So that’s good man. So you saved this money, right?

Andre:
Yep.

Henry:
You made these sacrifices, you built this nest egg and then how did you go from that nest egg to knowing you needed to buy some real estate with it? What led you to the real estate?

Andre:
That was step number four for me, which like I said, was building a solid foundation and maintaining stability. Because after I started saving money, I also started to understand and learn how to keep the money. Because once you start to get these big lump sums of money, like I said again, I’m speaking just from my personal background, from my culture, what I come from. We tend to want to go buy big ass gold chains, big cars with rims that aren’t worth anything. Just spend our money on a lot of… just ain’t worth nothing and depreciates in value, as soon as we get the receipt for it. You know what I mean? And I just wanted to maintain where I was at and have that solid foundation of just financial literacy.

Andre:
So like I said, I kept educating myself on top of me having that cash, I started to build my credit man. I started to learn about credit. I started learning about how to use credit. I started learning about how to leverage credit and all of these different things. After that, man, it was time for me to go into step number five, which was taking my leap of faith and buying that first property. And once I was ready, I reached out to a mentor of mine, a big sister of mine, her name is [inaudible 00:32:04], she’s a broker in Vegas. I’m like, “Hey, I’m ready to buy a house.” And she was like, “Eh, that sounds good. But you should consider getting a multiunit, and you should consider getting a multiunit with this program called NACA.” And I’m like, “NACA?” And she’s like, “Yeah. It’s a program that I feel like would be best for you because of all of the benefits that they offer.”

Andre:
And I’m like, “Hmm, what are the benefits to this program?” And she goes into telling me everything about this program and I’m just like, “Wow, I just read the same thing in Rich Dad Poor Dad.” So just it really clicked to me just about buying assets and buying cash flowing assets over liability, you know what I mean? All of these different things and it’s just like, a real light bulb just went off in my head when she said this. And yeah, so I took the leap of faith man and I went ahead, I started looking into the program, NACA, N-A-C-A, Neighborhood Assistance Corporations of America.

Henry:
Awesome. So what were some of the benefits to you and then how did you leverage that program to buy a property?

Andre:
So the benefits are for first time home buyers. And the NACA program, first out, they offer the lowest interest rate in the country regardless of what your credit score is. They’re mainly concerned about the debt that you have in collections and your debt to income ratio. In addition to that, they also offer to pay for your attorney, your agent, and most of your fees. The only thing you’re liable to pay for is your… but your inspection costs. They pay for your appraisals as well. Also, they give you the option to buy the interest rate down lower than what it already is. In addition to that, you don’t have to necessarily have substantial savings. What they will allow you to do a lot of times is what’s called payment shock. So they’ll say if you can afford rent, you can afford mortgage.

Andre:
So as long as you can show them that you’re paying your rent on time for a certain amount of time, you can qualify for a property. And if you want to qualify for a property, that’s more than what your rent is you would just have to save the difference between what your mortgage would be and your rent would be for six months.

Andre:
It’s just a really, really powerful program when I heard all of these benefits, man. And also you don’t have a down payment, it’s no money down, which is the biggest benefits of the program. And when I heard all of this stuff, I’m just like, “Are you serious? This can’t be real.” She’s like, “I swear, it’s real.” I’m like, “No, it’s not.” She’s like, “I swear it is.” So I went to the meeting man, everything that she said, they confirmed it. And it was just like, wow. So I went ahead, signed up, met with my mortgage counselor. From there, dude, it was just a mind blowing experience because I walked into the office and I wear a lot of dope sneakers. I collect sneakers. So I had on a pair of Jordans that had just came out. They were really hard to get. And my mortgage council was like, “Oh man, I went through hell trying to get my son those shoes, how’d you get them?”

Andre:
It just really started off like a great conversation between me and him, which just built up into a really great relationship. And he just asked me, what I was trying to do, what my goals were. And he was extremely helpful throughout my process. And he was like, you know what? We’re going to get you set up. He’s like, the fact that you’re looking for a multi-unit is amazing because that’s what I suggest that most people do when they come through these kind of programs, FHA, NACA, three and half percent down, no money down, man. Use it to leverage to get ahead, use it to get you a cash flow asset. Don’t go and buy something that’s going to, you know what I mean? Have you in debt or have you, you know what I mean, paying bills, get something that’s going to pay you monthly or at least take care of your mortgage for you.

Andre:
And the market that I’m in here in Chicago, we have a million multiunit. It’s probably 60, 40 houses to multiunit. So it’s not that hard to find multi units here. And I went out into the market, man, and I got my first property, got a brick four unit in a beautiful Chicago suburb, right outside of the city with amazing amenities, Walmart, churches, bus lines, trains, restaurants in the area and great parks, great school system in the area, swimming pools, all of this kind of stuff that you can find. And I knew about the area because I lived in the area for seven years before I purchased in the area. And I’m like, “Yo, I want to buy in Forest Park.” And I was able to get the property for $360,000, which was well below what it was worth at the time. I believe it appraised out for 390 and that was as is. And that deal was really, really good. And I took advantage of every single benefit that they offer in that deal.

Henry:
Awesome, man. So you went from working in the cubicle, saving $10,000, getting ready to make the leap of faith. You make the leap of faith, you learn about NACA and then you go and you find yourself a multifamily and you buy it. And so tell us a little bit more about that deal. So you bought the property and then did you move into it? What were the rents like? How transitional was that for you?

Andre:
So first off, it wasn’t just that easy. It was a lot of searching and I’m sure there are a lot of first time home buyers that are going to listen to this. I just want to mentally prepare you for what you’re going to be dealing with in the process. And this was, I’m speaking seven years ago. So now today’s market is way more hectic. So this is what you want to expect in today’s market because lot of people have these… Like I say, the internet has everybody, for some reason they think you’re just going to go out and just find this just magical, amazing property. It’s just going to appear right in front of you or you’re going to put in an offer and it’s going to get accepted and it’s just going to go so smooth when it just does not work like that.

Andre:
All right. So you’re going to go out, you know what I mean? [inaudible 00:37:36] and you’re going to start looking for stuff and you’re first off, you’re probably going to start looking for stuff that’s really out of your price range just out the gate because you just don’t know… You know what you can afford, but a lot of times your eyes will trick you into saying that you can afford something that you really can’t have. You know what I mean? Just because it’s beautiful. So you’re going to go out, you’re going to look at all these nice properties and you’re going to try to make these deals and people just aren’t going to want to negotiate their prices. You know what I mean? Their prices, their price, because they have 20 other people that are standing in line waiting to offer them more money than what you’re offering even if you’re offering what they’re asking for.

Andre:
So don’t expect your first offer, second offer all of that kind of stuff to be accepted. So you have to be really diligent and just persistent with this stuff. You got to go out here and really put in a ton of offers and kind of work with sellers. And nowadays you want to try to build relationships. Because in my property, that’s what worked, building a relationship, my agent built a relationship with the other agent and we played that card. In addition to that, you want to run the numbers more than anything. Don’t get caught out with how a place looks. Yeah, a place can be beautiful, but you’ll be upside down on your mortgage if you don’t run the numbers the right way, because you want to get a beautiful place. You know what I mean?

Andre:
So make sure the numbers make sense, man, if you’re not cash flowing, at least make sure that you’ll get to live for free. Meaning that the rents coming from the place they’ll cover most of the mortgage and you get to live in their place for free, not paying anything at all. Pretty much essentially keeping all of the money that you work for, that you make doing other stuff. In addition to that, man, you want to make sure you’re finding a property that is cash flowing a lot of times because a lot of times that’s how you’ll get qualified a lot easier and a lot faster by the bank.

Henry:
So it needs to have tenants in it?

Andre:
Yeah, absolutely. That are already in under leases and it shows that what they’re paying and all of that kind of stuff, it shows the rent roll. And that’ll be a great benefit to you because a lot of people don’t know because what I hear a lot of times is, “Oh man, multi-units are 400, $500,000. I can’t afford those.” But it doesn’t just go based on what you can pay. It goes based on how much the building is already generating as well. So they’ll take 75% of what the building is generating and add it to your income, which will make the property more than affordable most times.

Henry:
Man. That’s awesome. How many offers did you put in on properties before you landed the one you got?

Andre:
Probably five. And on that deal we just kept getting out bid. We kept getting just rejected. And on the last one, even we almost lost that one because what happened was, like I said, we put in five offers previously and I was just tired and frustrated. It had been two months I was looking, and I told my agent, “You know what, man, I want to get us a break. We’re out here every day. We’re not finding anything, nobody likes us.” You know what I’m saying? I’m taking everything personally. I’m like, “They don’t like us man.” So I’m on the MLS, realtor.com or Zillow or something like that. It was maybe 11:00, 12 o’clock at night, one night and this property just pops up, man. It is in my desired neighborhood, it’s a four unit. It has an apartment vacant ready for me to live in, the other three units are cash flowing.

Andre:
I’m like, “Oh my God, Jesus, what did you just do?” And so I called my agent, I started calling his phone recklessly. I probably called him 15 times. And the last time he finally picked up the phone was like, “What the hell man? You know I don’t do business this late.” He was really upset, but I’m like, “I hear you, but check your email though. Please just check your email.” So he was like, “Man, give me a second.” So he looked in his email, he was like, “Oh you right.” He was like, “So I’m going to write this up right now.” He wrote up the offer, sent it back to me. I signed everything over. He was like, “I want to get this over to them tonight. So as soon as they come into their office, it’s the first…” People were still sending faxes and stuff at this time. He’s like, “It’s the first I offer on their fax machine.” You know what I mean?

Andre:
It worked, they came into the office, they saw it and they were like, you know what, we accept the offer. But the only thing was the wife was the one that was home and she accepted the offer and I got excited, right. So I had a seminar to go to later that day it was, was a Rich Dad Poor Dad seminar. So I’m like, “Oh man, I’m lit. I just got my offer accepted. I’m going to this seminar.” You know how they pump you up at the seminar. So I’m just like, “Ah, yeah, I’m about to be rich as hell.” So as I’m doing all of this, I’m excited. My phone is just ringing, ringing, ringing, ringing, ringing. And I’m not answering because I’m just gassed up at this seminar. So I go out and I check the voicemail and it’s my agent. He’s like, “Man, give me a call back as soon as you can.”

Andre:
So I give him a call back. He was like, “Man, you know the offer that we put in earlier, it got knocked out.” I’m like, “Knocked out? What you mean? I thought we got accepted.” He’s like, “Man, the husband was at work. And as he was on his way home to sign the contract, another offer came in and it was all cash.” I’m like, “What?” He was like, “Yeah. So that knocks us out. It’s not our property. We don’t have it under contract.” I’m like, “Are you serious?” So my heart drops into my stomach at this point. Mind you, because I just went from here all the way back down to here. I’m on a thousand. So it’s just, oh my God what is going on?

Andre:
At the end of the day, what happened was they came in with a cash offer, the husband didn’t sign the contract. So like you said, it was just that offer was really null and void. But they didn’t just say, “We’re not going to take your offer.” They was like, “Hey guys, this is what we’ll do. We’ll give you everybody till the morning. You are the last two offers that we’re going to look at, come with your highest and best offer first thing in the morning.”

Andre:
So that’s what we did. Luckily for me the cash buyers, they came with the same offer. They’re like, “We’re offering cash, we’re going to stick to our guns. This is what it is.” And I offered an extra 15 or 20,000 I believe it was on top of my agent. Like I say, playing a relationship and the emotional card. He reached out to the agent. He’s like, “My guy’s been living in this neighborhood for the past seven, eight years, his kids love the parks, they love the school systems. They really, really don’t want to leave. And these guys are just investors, they’re probably just going to come over here and knock the building down.” And these people had an emotional attachment to their property. You know what I mean? So they’re like, “Ah man, you’re right. Let us just sell it to a nice family. Who’s going to take care of the place. We’re getting extra money.”

Andre:
And that emotion, you know what I mean, that relationship card, it played out in our favor. We got the offer accepted man, everything was cool. I was able to get the property. Like I say, with no money down, I was able to buy the interest rate down to two and a half percent from three and a half percent because I got a $10,000 sellers concession. And I used that money for that. I was able to keep all of my money. In addition to that, I walked away from the closing table with the $5,000 check because I didn’t need all of the money that they gave me to buy the interest rate down. So I essentially walked away with the building that was paying me cash flow and I didn’t spend anything on it. All I had to do was turn in the proper documents for a few months, let them, you know what I mean, check my info, go through my bank accounts, this typical home buying process. And they were like, “You know what, hey, we trust you enough. Take this building and keep all your money and take $5,000 with it.”

Andre:
On top of that, the day that I closed, I walked into the property, it was the end of the month, I got checks from all three of my tenants because it was like I said, the end of the month, it was time to pay the rent. And you know, when you close that first month, you don’t have a mortgage so that was all my money. So I essentially went from worth nothing to owning this four unit property where I lived for free $22,000 cash. And I got my check from work that same day. It was the most amazing feeling in the whole [inaudible 00:44:57] world.

David:
So now everyone listening to this is saying, “Okay, hear that, honey. I want one of those.” They’re calling their agent and they’re saying, “Hey, find me that deal.” Right? And so what I want to ask you is obviously you would do that over and over and over if you could. It’s hard to do that. It’s worth it, which is why we’re talking about it but it is not easy. It’s just like the workout analogy we gave earlier. And it’s still for me even as much real estate as I’ve bought, there are emotional spikes. You get excited, you get crushed, you get excited, you get crushed. And that happens too many times and most people tap out. They just say, I don’t want to do it anymore, right. I see this as the agent trying to protect the client from that. And then I get it myself when I start to get excited and then, oh, turns out something changes, right?

David:
So what advice do you have for the people that are not accustomed to this entrepreneurial bipolarism that the three of us have just embraced from the things that we’ve been through, where we expect these big highs and lows so that they stay in the game and they don’t miss out on this awesome deal when it finally happen.

Andre:
Man, just a simple one liner, man, it gets greater later. As long as you understand that. And as long as you can stick it out and know that the reward later down the line is going to be just way bigger than what you imagined, because I just never imagined that from that point of buying that first property, I’ll be here where I am, where I’m walking around, doing public speaking. I have an apparel line, I have a book, we’re hosting our own seminars. I’m investing in the stock market. I’m teaching people, mentoring people, just all of these different cool things that set me free from the work system and allowed me to start helping people and just pouring into the world on a greater level and on a bigger scale man. I just wouldn’t have thought that, but the fact that I made those sacrifices and I understood that even in the down times that I would be okay, just as long as I stick this out, it always comes out better than what you think it will.

Henry:
Part of that story that I love is, that you made the sacrifices, you saved the money, because your intent was to have to use that money to start building your real estate assets. And you didn’t have to because you found this amazing vehicle, but had you not went through that sacrifice and made those mindset shifts, right? When you come into money like that, you might have spent it differently, right? You might have blown that $10,000 on something else. And so I don’t want people to hear, oh, he saved that money, he didn’t have to. No, the discipline it took for him to save that money set him up to be able to continue to be successful once he was able to acquire that asset, right?

Andre:
Absolutely.

Henry:
That’s just an amazing story.

Andre:
And I did have to save the money. I didn’t have to use it. I had to save it. They want to see that you’re responsible that you’re able to save money, the same process that you would have to go through, through any other lender, whether it be Conventional, FHA, whoever it’s the same thing. They want to see that you’re saving your money. They want bank statements. They want to check stubs every two weeks, they want all of those documents to show that you’re doing what you’re supposed to do. And you’re a responsible human being before they release a 300, 400, $5,000 property into your name with no collateral. You know what I mean. Because essentially that’s what they’re doing. They’re just like, we’re trusting you to take care of your business and do what you say you’re going to do. And we get absolutely nothing for this, so hey, you better do right.

Henry:
And one thing before we move on to the next segment of the show, I want you to share with people is now you’ve found a way to even make more cash flow on the asset that’s already paying you cash flow. And so just give them a little teaser on how you’re additionally monetizing that asset right now.

Andre:
Yeah, man, in addition to like I say, just getting rents and everything, man. They got a lot of cool stuff going on out here with these apps, Airbnb, Vrbo. And I found this thing called Peerspace where I get to rent out my property, man to people who want shoot movies, music videos, photos, and things like that. And for the past six months, man, my house has just been like a movie studio it seems like man, because I got people coming in doing everything and it’s just insane. It pays a pretty penny. I’m really happy that I found it because it’s essentially been like a new ATM for me, man. Anytime I need some extra cash, I just go to Peerspace and I can make three, four, $500, three, four hours easily. And the cool thing about it is, it’s you don’t have to own the property to do it. And on top of that, you don’t have people staying overnight at your home that come in for a few hours and you make money just like you would in the Airbnb without people having to stay.

Andre:
I’m putting out a course on it soon to show people how to do it and how to really maximize it. So you guys check that out when it does come out, turn on your notifications on my Instagram, Facebook and YouTube. And you’ll be able to get that

Henry:
Man. Yeah. I mean it’s super. You put me onto it. I didn’t know it was a thing until you told me about it. And now we’re looking at putting some of our Airbnbs also on Peerspace, because it’s essentially, you can just rent a furnished space to somebody who may just want to use it for a couple of hours to do just like you said, shoot a video. Maybe even just host a quick event where they have a meeting or something like that. And so if you’ve got a furnished space, it could be your space. It could be an Airbnb. I think it’s just a really cool way to continue to monetize.

Andre:
Yeah. Families host Thanksgiving dinner parties at your space. Maybe they don’t have a big kitchen, and they’ll come and rent out the space. It’s just used for a lot of different cool reasons, and it’s a very, very short term rental that like I said, you can maximize the profits on it without having to deal with people for as long as an amount of time.

David:
Can I just say something from a overall perspective of, the thought just went through my head? As technology like Airbnb, Turo, Peerspace starts to become more prevalent where it is easy to go find something to use that you used to have to own if you wanted to use it, owning these assets becomes even more valuable. So if it’s like, if you’re the rapper who can’t afford the Lamborghini and you can go rent the Lamborghini, well, the guy who owns the Lamborghini has a more valuable asset because it’s not just him driving it, it’s the rapper who wants to rent it for the video. But then when Turo comes out and anybody can rent a Lamborghini whenever, right now, having a Lamborghini actually becomes a legit business because it’s so easy for people to find you. Unique properties, really nice spaces. These type of assets will only become more valuable as it becomes easier to market them with these technologies like we’re talking about right now, Andre.

David:
So I just wanted to highlight that’s one of the reason you see the price of certain things that isn’t going down, it keeps going up it’s because technology is making it easier to make it cash flow.

Andre:
Yep. And even just to add to that, like how I was just telling you guys, I used my cashflow to buy these art pieces, and they go up in value. So the art pieces are one of the big attractions that draws people to my Peerspace, so they’re even making me more money than going up in value, you know what I mean? It’s just like, man, it’s just one big circle of just money coming in, you know what I mean? When you do this stuff the right way, man, it’s insane. But again, it all starts with mindset and doing that first deal.

David:
Yeah. I think that’s great. One of the points that you mentioned there, Andre was what I call synergy. So once you start to get momentum, which is another concept. I know everybody always wants to hear, well, how do I just buy the house? Like you said, just what website do I go to, to just get a house and write an offer and have it be easy? And they don’t want to go through the grind, but that’s why these deals are available because people don’t want to put the grind in to get it. And then when you get it, it tends to be where they all play off each other. What you’re describing is, I make money off of art, then I teach people how to buy art, then that brings them to my Peerspace. And then I make money off of renting out my property. Now I have more money coming in, so I have more for the down payment for the next property. Then I get better at buying properties. And then agent said it to me before other people. And then the contractor calls me back first and gives me a better price.

David:
Everything gets better as you build this momentum. And so many people at the beginning of the journey are sensing, well, it I must be nice. Wish I could be Andre and I could have what he has going on, but you built momentum. You were slinging CDs out of the back of your car, right?

Andre:
Yeah.

David:
You were looking at everyone around you that was having the success you wanted and being tortured by that buffet that you felt like, I can’t get a seat in that buffet. I’m all around it, I could smell it, but I can’t eat it. Right? You put in the grind, and now that’s why it’s catching up to you. You look like you want to comment on that.

Andre:
You just see hit the nail directly on the head. Like I said, I was around guys who were in the NBA, winning NBA championships like, “God, when is it going to be my turn? You have me here, you have me around this, what are you trying to show me?” Something has to come from this. Like, what the hell is going on? Because you can’t just be dangling this over my head, and not really letting me have it, you know what I mean? And then, like I say, when I had to divert back and start the whole nine to five process all over again, I’m like, “Oh my God.” Me and God were really into it at that point, it was just like, “Dude, I’m about to come up there and we’re going to fight because you’re really playing with my life.”

Andre:
Like you said, David, there comes a time when you start to just be able to breathe a little bit more and you can see the light, and you get the ball rolling. And then you can just really pick up pace. And it’s just like, aw, man. Yes. And it comes a point where you’re just not in survival mode anymore. Man, for a long time, I was in survival mode, just really trying to figure out how I was going to eat, how I was going to pay my bills. Scraping, trying to figure out how I would get my children the things that they need. And that mind frame doesn’t allow you to think in abundance. It has you thinking in, okay, I need to do this right now in order for me to eat today. It doesn’t allow you to think generational wealth for the future because you’re hungry right now, your kids need stuff right now. You know what I mean? You don’t have the luxury of thinking for the future.

Andre:
I think once you get past that survival mode and that mindset changes and you have the air to breathe, and to be able to save a dollar, to save two dollars. Most people, they aren’t even in a position to save 50 cent, two dollars out of their check. Unfortunately that’s just a lot of people’s circumstance. But when you’re able to start doing that, man, it shows you that, yo, this is possible. And the moment that you see this is possible, growth becomes addictive. It’s the most addictive feeling in the world. Doing better, feeling better, it’s a high that you just never want to come down from it. Once you taste it and once you get it, just a little bit of it, you want to keep going hard or keep going after it, man.

Andre:
And I understand Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant’s drive, they just never got enough of the success. No matter how many rings they got, no matter how many Olympic gold medals they got, there’s just a high that comes with that, just an amazing feeling when you… you know what I mean, you reach your goals and you start making progress, man. And it’s really almost an indescribable feeling. It’s just your fort.

David:
I love that you shared that because I think the majority of people are trying to figure out, how do I get to that point? Because they’re just eating that frog every day, and they’re not tasting what it can be like on the other side. I have this analogy that I describe what it’s like when you’re trying to have success as a real estate agent, but applies to investing too. Really, probably anything in life. It feels in the beginning, like you’re pushing this huge boulder up a hill. And to just get one inch takes so much effort, your calves are screaming, you’re pouring sweat. Everything’s burning. You’re asking yourself all the time, is it worth it? Should I just let this rock go and let it roll down and give up everything I did because it’s not getting easier? And the boulder blocks your view of where you’re trying to get to. You don’t know when you’re getting to the top of the hill. It could be 10 years from now. It could be 10 minutes, there’s no way to know.

David:
And you just push, and push, and push, and you listen to this stuff and it gives you encouragement to keep going. And you wonder, is God with me? Is the universe with me? It’s like, is it angry at me because it’s not easier? But what’s happening as you’re pushing is your muscles are being built, that is going to prepare you for when you actually get the success. And at certain point you crest that hill, and now it’s a flat plateau. So it’s not as hard to push the rock, but you still got to push. It’s not just happening on its own. It just isn’t miserable like it was. You start building some momentum.

David:
And at a certain point you come to the other side of the hill, the rock starts going down. And then wealth starts coming at you so fast, opportunities start coming at you so fast. The deals start flowing your way that you can’t even keep up with them. So you’re running as fast as you can keep up with that rock that you used to be pushing, and that’s where you get to decide what you really want your life to look like. And the problem is you don’t get to start going downhill. Everyone’s journey starts going uphill and that’s why nobody really follows it. But I really appreciate you sharing some of the details of what your story was like, Andre. For the listeners who are hearing this and they know what they want is to be chasing a rock at some point in their life with an abundance of things they want but right now, they’re just grinding. I think you needed to be in your room, looking outside, everybody else playing for a couple years because that’s when you were being prepared, that was your uphill battle, right?

David:
That’s when you were being prepared to handle what you have right now, instead of immediately getting your first deal, selling it, making $80,000 profit and buying a room full of toys. Right? And now you got to start back over. That rock went all the way down to the bottom, you got to start at the top. I really appreciate that. We’re going to move on to the last segment of our show. It is the world famous.

Speaker 4:
Famous four.

David:
This is the segment of the show where we ask every guest the same four questions and we are going to alternatively throw them back at you. The first question is about a book. What is your favorite real estate book?

Andre:
It would probably be like I say a combination, and I don’t know if they’re necessarily real estate books. They’re just mindset and financial literacy books, but they do cover real estate. Like I said, Rich Dad Poor Dad, and MONEY Master the Game. They really did it for me. They really put a lot into perspective for me. MONEY Master the Game taught me a lot. And I just want to say Rich Dad Poor Dad, just the Rich Dad Poor Dad education because there’s a plethora of books that come with just that education. And I read them all. So I started with Rich Dad Poor Dad, which was the mindset shift. And I started going into the cash flow quadrants, guide to investing that teaches you about all of the different ways to invest in real estate, the tax sales. You know what I mean? The REITs, all of these different things. And the same thing with MONEY Master the Game, I just learned money in general with that book. That book just really opened my mind up to investing. Not just real estate, but just investing in general.

Andre:
And it also just expanding my mind, like I say, to all of the different ways that I can invest in real estate and not just buying, you know what I mean, residential property, just… you know what I mean, learning about commercial properties, learning about investing in real estate through the stock market, learning about investing through real estate through just group economics, just through funds, all of these different things that it would talk about. And it just really, really blew my mind. So those two would probably be two favorites.

Henry:
Well, good, you’re making my job easy because the second question was what is your favorite business book? But sounds like MONEY Master the Game was probably what that was for you. So we’ll jump to question number three, which is what are your hobbies?

Andre:
Man, I like creating content, bro. I love creating content just based around my business and my brand. So I have a series called The Landlord Life, where I essentially bring people in on all of just the jobs and stuff that I do, and the problems that I’m having as a landlord. Because again, I see the internet tend to make being a landlord just being involved in real estate.

Henry:
Passive.

Andre:
Yeah, they make it just so glorified, and so glitzy and glamorous. So with this series, I just really tell people the truth and let people in like, yo, I just had a $30,000 plumbing issue. My roof just caved in, all of these different things. Like, yo, I’m tired of paying a plumber, so I’m going to go to Home Depot today and I’m going to buy me a rodder, and I’m going to rod the toilet and the drains myself. And I’m giving people a real inside look at this stuff, I’m documenting, and I’m videoing it. And at this point, I have about three seasons worth of content with that over 40 episodes. Henry’s actually guest on my series in Landlord Life. So y’all, check him out on season three. I believe it’s episode two or three. He’s on that one.

Andre:
And yeah, man, just really trying to learn and grow, and build my businesses, networking with guys like you, you know what I mean? Now, starting to come to events like the BiggerPockets Conference, things like that. I spend a lot of time where I’m doing a lot of investing in myself. That’s how I like hanging out, and just the things I like to do as far as hobbies now.

David:
Awesome. Okay. This is the money question, in my opinion. What do you think sets apart successful investors from those who give up, fail, or never do get started?

Andre:
I think that’s it, they don’t ever fail, give up and they get started. You know what I mean? I think that’s the answer, and that’s in the question. People like myself, I never let my circumstances stop me. I never let things that I’ve gone through, any of the hurdles, just… you know what I mean, any of the hard times really hinder me from achieving whatever goals that I wanted to achieve. Yeah, they might have slowed me down. Yeah, I might have had to take a break and maybe I had to pivot, reevaluate some things, but the thing is like, we just don’t give up. I think that’s the main thing that separates any winner from anybody that’s not successful. We don’t give up. Keep going, and we push through until we get the results that we want.

Henry:
Awesome. I love it, man. So tell us where people can find out more about you.

Andre:
Across all social media. I’m at Renaissance 125, R-E-N-A-I-S-S-A-N-C-E 125. I’m sure that’s going to be a hard spell for a lot of people, so I have to spell that out sometimes.

Henry:
Dude, that is one of those words for me. Everybody has that word that they can’t. No matter how many times they type it, they can’t spell it right? That’s the one, I got to Google it every time.

Andre:
Yeah. So that’s me across all platforms, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, that’s where. And on a lot of different podcasts, you can find me on a BiggerPockets podcast, and a lot of different podcasts across the country. I’ve been doing a lot of speaking, and I’m just doing a lot of events and stuff like that now. Also, my website is www.therenaissanceu.com. I also have courses. I have a navigating NACA course where I teach the process, and the tools, and all of the stuff that I use to make it through the NACA program successfully. How I evaluated my deals through NACA, all of that stuff.

Andre:
I also have an introduction to real estate course that teaches people all of the different ways to go out and attain real estate. How to evaluate different neighborhoods, how to understand when the market’s going up or down. Just understand when is a good deal or a bad deal, a lot of different things. It’s over 30 video modules, over four hours worth content. Again, I have my merch, mindset matters where I’m just helping spread awareness about just mindset. It’s not about your circumstances, it’s more so about your mindset, man. And also have my book, man, Renaissance is Five Step Guide on Getting Your Sh*t Together, which is like I say, the blueprint to my life and how I really got on this journey and really got my life together. Just looking to do a lot more speaking, and a lot more helping, and a lot more mentoring, man. And I appreciate you guys for having me on, and allowing me to, you know what I mean, tell my story, get my word out there, and just tell people about my brand.

Henry:
Thank you, Mr. Andre.

David:
One of my favorite parts about your story is that if you wouldn’t have had all that pain, and frustration and carrot being dangled in front of you for so long, you literally wouldn’t have a story to put in a book that people would want to read. You wouldn’t have anything to say in a podcast like this. So I’m looking back and it always makes sense, right, when you’re looking back at why God brought you through what he did, you’re like, “Oh, I get it now.” At the time, like you said, you wanted to fight a lot of the time. Like, why are you doing this to me? Why? But it does make sense. So for everybody in that same situation, hang on, keep doing your best, keep pushing that boulder. It’s going to get better.

David:
Thank you, Andre. Henry, where can people find out more about you?

Henry:
You can find me on Instagram. I’m @thehenrywashington on Instagram.

David:
It’s the, and not the… It’s not like The Ohio State University?

Henry:
Yeah. I mean, I just, I try to play it down a little bit, David. I don’t want people… I’m not…

David:
You don’t want to just completely overwhelm people with a splendor of who Henry Washington is. Very humble. All right. Well thank you. This is David Greene. For Henry, never met a boulder he couldn’t push, Washington. Signing off.

 

“Anyone may so arrange his affairs that his taxes shall be as low as possible; he is not bound to choose that pattern which will best pay the Treasury; there is not even a patriotic duty to increase one’s taxes.” – Gregory v. Helvering, 69 F.2d 809, 810 (2d Cir. 1934)

I bet it is no surprise that your tax bill is one of the largest expenses you pay, often more significant than your housing and healthcare expenses. If you have spent any measured amount of time on BiggerPockets, you probably have a high-level understanding that investing in real estate could help you offset some of your tax burdens.

For example, depreciation could help you shelter passive income (and possibly your active income) from your rentals. Using a 1031 exchange when you sell a property could help you defer your depreciation recapture and tax on capital gains. You could remove equity from your rentals tax-free through a refinance and invest in more property.

However, most investors who enter the real estate arena know little about strategically reducing their tax bills. If you’re like me, we grew up being trained to pay taxes. Yes, trained.

Do you think I’m kidding?

I know for me, I was raised to go to school, get a great job, buy a house, get married, start a family, and contribute to my 401(k).

With this “plan”, the only chance of reducing my tax burden was to take a standard deduction, deduct my mortgage interest (if I could), get a tax credit for my kid, defer my income to retirement, and hope the tax rate would be low by the time my career came to a close and I had to pull from my retirement fund.

Somehow, with all of this, I still would wind up paying thousands of dollars in taxes.

It turns out that hope is not a strategy.

How the best in real estate approach taxes

I’m not a CPA, accountant, or tax guru. As with any advice, please consult a qualified tax strategist to understand how the information I’m about to share with you can apply to your unique situation.

What I’ve learned working with tax strategists and studying the wealthy is that there are better ways to approach reducing your tax bill. One of my favorite books on the subject is “Tax-Free Wealth“ by Tom Wheelright.

Overall, I have two critical takeaways from studying taxes.

First, there is a clear “order of operations” you must follow to maximize your tax savings. The traditional narrative I grew up with is not the correct strategy if you’re trying to reduce your tax bill significantly.

Second, the U.S. tax code is actually a treasure map that tells us where to invest our dollars. Real estate and business are two spaces where the IRS wants the private sector to solve problems. As a result, investors get the best tax breaks.

Wealthy individuals know how to combine a clear step-by-step strategy with the tax code’s “treasure map” to reduce their tax burden significantly. Why couldn’t you do the same?

Let’s talk about how you can.

Step 1: Take deductions (including depreciation)

Investing in a business (even if you have just one rental) allows you to take more deductions. Ordinary tax-deductible expenses include:

• Interest
• Depreciation
• Taxes
• Insurance
• Repairs and Maintenance
• Property Management Fees
• Utilities (Oil, Gas, Electric, Water, Phone, etc.)
• HOA Fees
• Professional Fees
• Snow Removal/Landscaping
• Travel Expenses
• Supplies
• Leasing Commissions
• Advertising/Marketing
• Business Mileage
• Education
• Bank Fees
• Employees & Independent Contractors
• Home Office Expenses
• Business Meals

The most significant deduction, which is borderline magical, is depreciation. The IRS understands that tangible assets (such as real estate) will break down over time. At some point, the carpet, cabinets, and HVAC will need to be replaced. In their eyes, it would be best if you, as an investor, keep the asset in good working order. Therefore, the gift of depreciation is awarded to help us offset costs and reinvest back into the property. You could also use passive depreciation to shelter passive income and keep it tax-free. 

Step 2: Focus on building passive income

There are two types of income: active and passive. If you want to enjoy lower taxes (and financial freedom), then you should focus on building passive income.

The IRS classifies employees or self-employed persons as active income earners, which get taxed at a higher rate. Business and investment income, on the other hand, is generally considered passive income and is usually taxed at a lower rate. It’s important to note that the number of hours you spend on any given activity doesn’t factor into the equation. Instead, it’s purely based on what the IRS determines.

For example, I have real estate notes that I spend no time managing, but it’s considered active income and taxed at ordinary income rates. Yet, my rental properties and partnerships take more time to manage and earn a good share of income but still get taxed at a lower rate because of the way the IRS classifies the income.

The big idea is that those who earn income through their own business or earn from a company they invested in will pay the lowest taxes. For more information on this, I suggest reading “The Cashflow Quadrant“ by Robert Kiyosaki.

Step 3: Lower your tax bracket through creative employment

Now that you have steps one and two, it’s time to partner with your tax strategist to look for ways to shift your income to lower tax brackets. You can do this by employing your dependents if you have any. 

Yes, I really mean to hire your kids if you have extra work that they can cover for you. It’s legal.

If your child is under 18, they can work for you in your real estate business and earn up to their standard deduction (currently $12,950) before they have to pay taxes on income.

Just think, you could have your 16-year-old file paperwork, clean the office, keep the books, and maybe manage your social media. With what you pay them, they can use those funds for their expenses, save for college, start a Roth IRA, or invest alongside you.

The same strategy could apply to other dependents you support.

However, you have to be careful. The IRS is fully aware of this tax loophole and is purposely looking for anyone mischievously taking advantage of it. Ensure that whatever your dependent is hired for, they are actually doing their job. You can’t just place them on the payroll and not have them do anything. Otherwise, the IRS will call it out and disqualify the tax break.

Partner with your tax strategist to craft an accurate job description, pay scale, and maintain proper documentation before hiring any dependents.

Step 4: Reduce income through tax credits

There are a number of different tax credits you may qualify for. Speak with your tax strategist for a personalized look into your situation.

Credits are a dollar-for-dollar reduction of income. Some credits may apply to your personal tax situation, examples being the saver’s credit or child tax credits.

There are also credits that may apply to your business (energy credits, water credits, tax abatements, and more). Credits are another way the IRS incentivizes behavior, so be sure to know what you qualify for.

Step 5: Defer income to lower your tax bracket this year

If you still want to reduce your taxable income after moving through the first four steps, then you should consider deferring income. This means you can push aside part of your income to be reported towards next year’s taxes or later. This is helpful when you need to reduce your reported income just enough to be placed into a lower tax bracket.

It’s worthwhile to note that if you are still working a W-2 job, it may be beneficial for you to fund your retirement accounts to maximize employer matches and pensions.

If you choose to fund your retirement accounts, be sure to explore contributing to self-directed IRA accounts (SDIRAs) or other qualified retirement plans that are in your control. With these types of accounts, you have more options to invest in alternative assets like real estate while maximizing the tax code. For example, through an SDIRA, you can invest in:

• Real estate lending
• Fix and flips
• Buy and hold rentals
• Syndications and funds

Ask your tax strategist to create a model to see if funding these accounts will genuinely help your overall situation.

Closing thoughts

“In this world, nothing is certain but death and taxes.” – Benjamin Franklin

Taxes are among the most significant expenses eroding your wealth, along with investment fees and debt. Just imagine how much you could boost your investing journey by generating an additional $10,000, $20,000, or $50,000 in tax savings to reinvest.

Like most things in life, success leaves clues. Following the examples set by the brightest and most successful in our industry is a great way to achieve your own success. It’s in your best interest to sit down with a qualified tax strategist to see how you can implement the above strategies and start reaping the benefits.

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Ashley:
This is Real Estate Rookie, episode 169er.

Stacey:
It’s a very inflated market right now. I have been recommending to people, look back in the rents, see what the rents were demanding before all this inflation hit. Does that market rent still support the cash flow?

Ashley:
My name is Ashley Kehr and I am here on my couch, finally had my surgery, and I am here with my co-host, Tony Robinson of course, sitting in his nice office, beautiful glow in the background. Then there’s me, just slumming it on my couch in sweatpants.

Tony:
There you go. Hey, people still love you for it, Ash. Don’t worry. We’ll give you a break since you’re now, is the ACL gone, or is it just, they repaired it?

Ashley:
I get it repaired.

Tony:
Okay. All right. You still have it.

Ashley:
Yeah.

Tony:
Okay.

Ashley:
They took a piece off of my kneecap. I don’t remember what it’s called, even though they told me 50 times, took a piece of that ligament or tendon, and then put it to my ACL-

Tony:
Into your ACL.

Ashley:
… and attached it.

Tony:
Now, you got no kneecaps.

Ashley:
[inaudible 00:01:11] that medical terms.

Tony:
I’m going to start calling you no kneecap Ashley. Yeah, no kneecap Kehr.

Ashley:
Then I tore my MCL too, but that I guess repaired itself-

Tony:
That healed on its own.

Ashley:
… and strong enough. That was good. They didn’t have to actually touch that when they went into surgery. Hopefully, I’m finally on the mend. We have the BiggerPockets Rookie Weekend coming up. It’s still undetermined if I will be on crutches-

Tony:
On crutches.

Ashley:
… if I will have a brace on, or if I will be running and nose diving into the crowd of people. We don’t know yet.

Tony:
[crosstalk 00:01:46] on stage, we’ll see. We’ll see what happens.

Ashley:
Okay.

Tony:
We’re not here to talk about kneecaps today, right? We’re here to talk about some real estate. I guess first, outside of your knee surgery, Ash, what’s new with you?

Ashley:
I’m actually closing on a property tomorrow that, been working on for a while. They had a right of first refusal on the property, and it just took a long time to get the person that had right of first refusal to back off, and went through litigation and everything. Finally, closing that on property tomorrow. Super excited about that. It’s 30 acres, two cabins, and one of the cabins is going to be turned into my office, actually. Hopefully, I’m going to put a little podcast studio in there.

Tony:
There you go.

Ashley:
So I can look more professional like Tony, instead of being on my couch or in my closet.

Tony:
There you go. No, that’s exciting. I know you’ve been working on that deal for a while, so I’m happy to see you cross the finish line finally.

Ashley:
Yeah. Thank you. What about you? What’s new with you?

Tony:
Yeah, we actually, we’ve been hiring some folks recently. We’re just hired an event and sales coordinator to help us with some of our in-person events that we’re doing for the short-term rental stuff. We’re actually looking to potentially hire a project manager to help us with our flips as well. Team’s slowly but steadily growing. Now, we have a little bit more time to actually run the business and not run around like chickens with our heads cut off.
For those of you that are listening, if you guys want to get notified, whenever I’m looking for some help, just follow me on Instagram at tonyjrobinson. I usually post jobs there, but outside of that, I think we’re getting pretty close to hopefully closing on this 24-unit cabin resort that’s in the lake town here. We’ve been going back and forth with the seller for a couple of weeks.
I just talked to the broker yesterday. He gave me some terms that the seller would agree to. I just need to run them through my underwriting model. I did that last night, and I think the numbers still check out. I got to give him a call today and see if we can actually close it. I’m scared, because the purchase price, it’s 7.75 million. I’ve never purchased anything that expensive before. Even though they’re just a bunch of cabins, right, they’re a bunch of properties that we’ll turn into short-term rentals.
I know how to do that, but just the idea of buying that many at one time is giving me some … There’s some fear I got to work through, but I’m trying to not let it stop me.

Ashley:
You have to look at it as ratio. Okay, what’s the revenue that’s coming in, compared to the purchase price? You’re just doing that at a bigger scale than if you were to buy a house in the Smokey Mountains that brought in this much revenue. What’s your biggest fear? What’s the worst-case scenario? You can’t pay the mortgage payment, probably. You can’t afford to have the property, because it’s your biggest purchase. If you have so much revenue coming in, you have those 28 cabins, okay, maybe two, three aren’t rented, you’re still going to be able to afford a large chunk, more of that mortgage payment.
I think that’s something that helped me a lot with that limited mindset of going from $100,000 houses to, okay, let’s take down million dollar campgrounds now, was that you look at the revenue streams and look at the ratio to it. If the numbers are good, and the numbers make sense, it would take a lot of revenue loss for you not to be able to afford the property taxes, afford the mortgage payment, things that. You’re just adding a couple zeros.

Tony:
Just adding a couple zeros. Yeah. If I tried to buy each one of those cabins separately, they would cost me way more than 7.7 million. The property’s actually composed of, I think three different parcels. Even worst-case scenario, I could split them up into separate parcels and probably sell them off for more than what I bought them for on day one. We’ll see where it goes. I’ll keep you guys posted.

Ashley:
And, just more time assuming, buying each one step early.

Tony:
Totally.

Ashley:
Oh my gosh. Yes.

Tony:
Totally. We’ll see where it goes.

Ashley:
Good luck with that and keep us all updated.

Tony:
Yeah. Today, we have Stacey Stegenga on the podcast, and whenever there’s a tricky last name, I don’t know if you guys have noticed, I’m the one that has it, because Ashley refuses to fumble those names on the podcast. Stacey Stegenga is our guest today, and she’s got a really cool story. She spent almost two decades in the military. She’s been to 33 countries, so very well-traveled. She started investing in Denver, and she’s scaled her portfolio pretty quickly in the last year and a half.

Ashley:
Yeah. She actually did out-of-state investing. She settled on Tampa, and I was actually just there, and Tony, I have to tell you, it was the most amazing weather ever. You know me, up in Buffalo, I’ve been freezing. I was at a wedding, and I sat outside. I was the only person sitting in the sun, because everybody else was in shade, because it was 80 degrees. I just felt like the sun-

Tony:
You needed the sun.

Ashley:
… was warming my soul. She gives great information on how she became confident enough, and the steps she took to become an out-of-state investor, and buying these properties sight unseen, and continuing to build her portfolio, and how she was able to scale quickly. That’s one thing we ask her is okay, you go from, I think it was a six-month time period from one property to the next. She even admits, okay, I closed on the first deal and I was like, that was great, but I’ll probably never be able to do it again. How quickly her mindset changed, and the steps she took to actually get the next deal done.

Tony:
Really quick. I think my favorite part, Ash, of this episode, I want to make sure that the listeners listen for this part, is how she talks about building her network, and how it cost her $0 out of pocket, and how she was able to find the money she needed to raise the capital for her next deal. Just make sure you guys listen for that part, because it’s a big, big lesson for the rookies.

Ashley:
With that, let’s bring Stacey onto the show.
Stacey, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for joining us today. Can you start off with telling everyone a little bit about yourself and how you got started in real estate?

Stacey:
Yeah, absolutely. I am a nurse, and actually before that, I was active duty in the Air Force. I traveled around the world. I left home at 17, and was gone for almost 15 years straight. I became a nurse in 2011 and settled down in Tampa, and it was a great first learning experience, because I started in the ER, but because of the patient ratios down there and how hard nurses work, the pay is lower for the hard work that they do with their sick patients.
I started travel nursing, and then flight nursing. I landed up in Denver, which is where my family lives, and that’s where the real estate comes into play. It’s a really interesting story from there. Moving to Denver caused me to have my income cut in half by 50, actually 50%. It was through that pain that I found real estate investing.

Tony:
Stacey, really quick, before we keep going, what is flight nursing? I’ve never heard of that before. Are you on an airplane administering health to people, or what …

Stacey:
You are. Yeah. I did my flight nursing through the Air Force, actually. I’ve been in the military, it’ll be 18 years in July. I was flying all the branches, Navy, Coast Guard, Army, Marines, and Air Force. It’s anybody that gets hurt doing anything, and they need to either go to a higher level of care, they need to come home from deployed locations, they need surgery, burns, all of those things. I was just transporting military patients all across the US.

Tony:
Wow. What a job. How many countries have you been to? Sounds you’ve been all over the place. Because we were talking before we started recording, you mentioned Netherlands and some other places. You seem well-traveled.

Stacey:
Yeah. I was very lucky to live overseas for four years straight. During that time, I really took advantage of that opportunity. I’ve been to 33 countries now.

Tony:
33? Wow.

Stacey:
COVID slowed me down. I was on a roll. I’m excited to get back out there later this year. Maybe even in a month or two.

Tony:
All right. Really quick, before we keep going. Out of all the 33 you’ve been to, what’s the number one?

Stacey:
That’s so hard to answer. Italy is my favorite, but it’s because I lived there for two years, and it was the culture. For visiting purposes, Iceland, for sure. It’s a gorgeous country. They have so many different types of terrain.

Tony:
Okay, beautiful. I’m actually going to Italy for the first time this summer. I’ll have to pick your brain a little bit, so I know where to go.

Stacey:
Yeah. You’re going to love it. It’s a great country.

Tony:
What about Buffalo? Isn’t Buffalo on your top list of places to go to?

Stacey:
I can’t say that it is. Maybe For a football game. I see what you guys do to tables there. I need to experience that.

Ashley:
We have Niagara Falls too.

Stacey:
I have flown over Niagara Falls. I do have that.

Ashley:
Yeah. Even though the Canadian side of Niagara Falls is actually nicer, than the …

Stacey:
Yes.

Ashley:
Stacey, first of all, thank you for your service.

Stacey:
Thank you.

Ashley:
Once you had this epiphany that you fell into real estate, what were some of the things you did to actually educate yourself on becoming a real estate investor, or did you just happen to fall into it?

Stacey:
No. It was totally by chance, actually. I had very mediocre financial, budgeting skills and whatnot. When I moved to Denver and I experienced that 50% income cut, I just knew that what I was doing wasn’t sustainable. I actually, not the most intelligent move, but I was actually looking to buy a house, so that I could rent and basically house hack, I didn’t know at the time that that’s what it was.
The interesting part is that, the agent I was working with at the time had just randomly mentioned this book by Scott Trench one day, when we were out viewing properties. I was like, oh, that sounds interesting. I pick it up. I listen to it on Audible twice, back to back, because instantly, it changed, so many light bulbs were going off. Then, I bought the book, and then highlighted, took all these notes, and I literally created a blueprint for myself, purely off of Scott’s book, Set for Life.

Tony:
You read Set for Life, right, Stacey? I think a lot of people, for me, it was Rich Dad, Poor Dad, for other people, it’s different books, right? Everyone has that book that makes that light bulb go off. I think for a lot of people, that’s where they stop. They get all juice up, they get all this motivation. They’re like, “Man, I love the idea of investing in real estate,” but then they just spin their wheels. What was the action that you took after you read the book that propelled you into the success you’ve had so far?

Stacey:
Yeah. I’ll say that the motivation was there, just because at the time, I was 33 when I experienced that income cut. I think it was a little bit more painful, because I was so established in my life. Because I was starting to gain financial intelligence, from the book I had gone down the typical rabbit hole, BiggerPockets Podcast. The things that were most important that stuck out to me in the book, was the fact that Scott really advocated that a dollar saved is better than a dollar earned.
That specifically changed my entire life, because nurses are very hard workers, and we way too easily sell our souls for overtime. We are constantly doing that. I had been just grinding, thinking more overtime, more work was always the answer. That’s where Scott’s book was like, no, just save.
It’s where budgeting came into my life, and it’s where frugality, just learning those elements. Some other big parts of the book was that, it talks to about, focus on your biggest expenses. For me, that was housing, and it was food expenses, because eating out, brunch is a lifestyle in Denver. Just those types of things.
At 33 years old, I had never in my adult life, since 17, had a roommate. I moved into a house hack here in Denver. I cut my expenses tremendously with that. Then, the second one was just food prepping, grocery shopping, not going out to eat. Those two things allowed me to save the 25K that Scott calls the runway in his book.

Ashley:
Stacey, I’m such a big fan of setting a strong foundation for your personal finances before getting into real estate, or making sure that your personal finances are in order, along with your business. I think that’s great that you really took that approach. Myself personally, I love personal finance books. I’ll read those any day. I love them more than even real estate books.
That’s awesome. Then, for anyone who hasn’t read it, Set for Life, highly recommend it, by Scott Trench. That is a great gift to give people, especially graduating college or high school too, for readers, you can find that in the BiggerPockets bookstore. Stacey, before we go any further, can you just give us an overview right now, what your portfolio looks like?

Stacey:
Yeah. Currently, I three duplexes. They’re all in Tampa. Then, I just got under contract a few weeks ago on a single-family home that I’m going to turn into a mid-term rental.

Ashley:
Can you explain, because we really haven’t talked about this a lot on the show, what a mid-term rental is?

Stacey:
Yeah. Absolutely. In between a long-term, and then a short-term with the Airbnb. I’m very lucky that I was a travel nurse. I really know what to go for and the things that they’re looking for. I obviously want to take good care of the travel nurses in the community. The mid-term is just focusing on, I specifically prefer the healthcare side of things, but there are traveling executives, people that need the one-month length of stay, but it’s basically anywhere 30 days and more. That does help for cities that have laws against short-term rentals, it opens more doors.

Tony:
Stacey, I want to go back. First, I love the idea of the mid-term rentals. I have some friends that only do mid-term, and they absolutely crush it. That’s the beautiful thing about real estate, is you can take the same property in so many different directions.
I want to go back really quickly though, because I don’t want to gloss over this. You said that you sacrificed in your personal life, because you had never had a roommate before, and you made the decision to say, hey, I’m going to sacrifice this comfort that I’ve had in my life as an adult, I’m going to get a roommate. You said through that process, you were able to save up $25,000.
That is the part that I don’t want people to miss, because a lot of people talk about, okay, here’s the thing that I want to do, or here’s the thing that I want to achieve, or here’s the person that I want to become. When you sit down and you show them the hard work that’s required to get there, they’re like, “No, that’s too much. I don’t want to do that.”
It’s easy to look at you now and say, oh, Stacey’s got six unit, three duplexes, this mid-term rental, and gloss over the fact that you did the hard work of sacrificing your personal life. For the rookies that are listening, if you’re having some difficulty kickstarting your real estate investing career, you have to ask yourself if you’re making the sacrifices that are necessary to actually get you there. Kudos you Stacey for making that decision.

Stacey:
I won’t lie. It was not easy, especially because like I said, at 33, you’re an established adult. You’re like, I don’t want roommates, and to never had them, I wasn’t in college with the house full of people. I moved into a house hack with four roommates. I was the fifth. It was a house full of people, for sure. It ended up being phenomenal. I highly encourage it. Yeah, it really paved the way for me. It’s what set that foundation to my success.

Ashley:
Stacey, let’s talk about that first deal. Once you’ve decided you’re jumping in, what does that look, and run us through that deal?

Stacey:
Yeah. I will pay note to this really quick. It’s perfect timing that I had read Scott’s book in November 2018. I had saved that runway over one year. The timing of all of this is, it’s COVID. It’s literally January 2020, I’m ready to execute. I’m a nurse. I had a job at the time, and I got furloughed. I work in a procedural area at the time, where we work on people’s hearts. We had all the PPE, and I was actually ready to execute.
Then, I got furloughed, which is a different way of saying basically laid off. I had a lot of emotional rollercoaster ride through the next few months, because I have all the critical care experience that they needed. It’s just, the census was low here. It was just a very stressful time. I just took it as an opportunity to keep saving. I didn’t quit, and especially keep educating myself.
That did delay me eight months. I didn’t end up closing, or actually 10 months, because I closed on my first property in October of 2020. Then, to go into further detail about that, I found it on the MLS. I had been analyzing numbers so aggressively for Tampa, I immediately knew just looking at it, that it would cash flow. I just sent it right away to my agent and was like, offer on this property.

Tony:
Stacey, I want to pause there really quickly because, you were living in Denver at the time, but you decided to invest in Tampa. Walk us through that decision. Why Tampa, why not Denver or some other places closer?

Stacey:
It was one of the conclusions that I came to from mentorship, actually. I joined a military mastermind for real estate called The War Room, and I had talked to other investors in there, and I was telling them that I wanted a house hack in Denver, and they just helped me see essentially that my goals were cash flow, not to just remove my living expense. Because I was just so focused on that, because it’s the most expensive thing in Denver.
They were like, “But you want freedom from nursing, or you want freedom from one income, so if you get furloughed again, you’re not dependent on it.” They mentored me into seeing that. That’s ultimately what made me choose out of state. My money just went further. Then, I specifically chose Tampa, because that was the first ER that I worked in. I was very familiar with the city.

Tony:
A lot of new investors get really hung up on choosing their market, and they do … I did this myself too. Literally, if you go back, for all of you that’re seeing, if you go back in the Rookie Facebook group, I posted in there, the analysis that I did when I was initially looking for a market. I looked at so many different data points. I was looking at median home price, average income number, average school rating, crime, walk score, all these different data pieces.
I think to an extent, those things are good to look at. If you’re just trying to get that first deal, I’m not sure that that deep level of analysis needs to go into it. Were you looking at any of those things, or were you like, hey, this is a market that I know, I feel comfortable here, let’s go and make it happen?

Stacey:
No, not at all. I had done some of that analysis, just definitely not that in depth. What was important to me was the numbers work. I was well on my way of establishing great relationships in Tampa. It was just becoming easy. Deals were being sent to me. Things were making sense. Having the connection of the people I was meeting, and it was all virtually through BiggerPockets, that was the value for me, in choosing … That’s applicable to any network or any city. You can choose any market. You just got to build the team.

Ashley:
Stacey, did you ever go and look at this property before you purchased it?

Stacey:
I did not. All my properties were sight unseen. I think the first time I saw them was over a year after closing.

Ashley:
You have a property management company that is handling these, or are you doing it remotely?

Stacey:
Yeah, no, that’s definitely my favorite part about real estate investing, is the property managers that make it passive. I found my property manager on BiggerPockets. It’s the Out Fast Property Management brokerage, and they do agents in all of lending, all of the things now. Yeah, they were just phenomenal. I connected with them, and they take great care of me and my properties. Huge fan.

Tony:
Stacey, you go out there, you build this team. I think the question comes up often to you about, can I buy a sight unseen? I bought my first five properties, I think, without seeing any of them in person first. The way that I always look at it is, if I’m sending an agent out there to look at it, if I’m having a property inspection done, and I’m sending potentially maybe a general contractor to go look at it, if I’ve never done a deal before, how much value am I going to provide in addition to what those three professionals can give?
I think your point about building the team first is so, so crucial, so, so critical.

Ashley:
Yeah. I think where people get themselves in trouble is that, maybe they’re buying it off-market, and they’re buying direct from the seller, and the seller is telling them something, and then they go to closing. Then, when they actually close on the property, not a reputable turnkey company that’s shady and you’re buying it directly from them. If you get that third party, whether it’s an agent, a property manager who is working for you, with you, then you have that set of eyes and that person with experience to walk the property for you, and be the eyes on the ground.
Especially with technology, you can FaceTime going through a property. Video is sent to you. There’s just so many different ways to get information, and to actually see a property virtually, without actually having to go there.
Stacey, one thing I’m curious about is what is the timeframe? You close down the first property in October 2020, and then, what is the time frame of you accumulating your other properties? The biggest question we always have is, how were you able to accumulate that many properties in that certain amount of time?

Stacey:
Yeah, absolutely. I got the second property in May of 2021, and it’s funny, because after my first property, I literally closed, and the first thought was, that’s so cool, I’m never going to be able to do that again. I get the struggle, but I just immediately went back into saving. Then, the biggest thing for my down payment, because I did traditional, I found the second one on the MLS too, which I will talk about later, but I did conventional lending with another 25% down.
Part of that was, because I became more risk tolerant. I had a massive emergency fund saved up at that time. I reduced that a little bit. That was also MLS and conventional lending. Then, my third one, it’s so interesting, having bought all of my properties off of the MLS, I was discrediting my success as an investor, and I was just gunning to get something off market, so that I could say that I did that. I had done my very first skip trace, and I was planning my attack. Do you know, the duplex next to my very first purchase goes up for sale on the MLS?
That was the one that I was most interested in, because they’re right next to each other. They’re the same construction build, everything matches. That’s where things get interesting, because I actually ended up buying it cash, to beat out the overpriced offers on the MLS.

Ashley:
Stacey, I definitely want to get into how you bought that property in cash, but first, can you explain what skip tracing is?

Stacey:
Yeah. It’s just running a list or a report that gives you the list of all property owners in the area. You can search different factors. The property types, years built, years owned, delinquent tax records, things of that nature, age of the person that owns the property. It’s just depending on how you want to target your off-market strategy, it’s very helpful.

Ashley:
PropStream is a software that does that. What software did you use for that, Stacey? Just in case somebody wants to try it.

Stacey:
I think I used DirectSkip. To be honest, it was a Black Friday sale of super cheap … The frugality is still there. You can’t take it out of me.

Ashley:
No, that’s a great idea. Black Friday sales are a real estate investor’s …

Stacey:
Yes.

Ashley:
There’s always some memes that people joke about getting a house on Black Friday sale, but using the tools and software, that’s a great idea to check out those sales on Black Friday. Tony, what about you? Is there any skip tracing software you’ve ever used?

Tony:
Pretty much just PropStream. I think that’s the only one that reviews. I know, I think BatchLeads is another popular one. I’ve heard some folks use that one. Yeah, mostly PropStream.

Ashley:
Okay. Stacey, you find this other property right next to your current property, and you are able to offer that in cash. How did you make that happen?

Stacey:
First, just to be clear, the reason that I had to offer in cash, or I felt that I had to, was because I bought my first duplex for 165,000, and this one was already listed for 270. That’s how much the Tampa market had appreciated in just over a year. My first thought as an investor is, is this appreciation real? Is it going to be permanent? Just asking those types of questions, are the market rents going to continue to sustain this? Which are important questions that I think any investor should ask themselves.
I still felt that the 270 was over what the market was demanding at the time. I looked at the other comps, and I just felt offering 240, 245 was going to be my limit. It cash flowed. It made sense at 270. I just didn’t feel right paying that.
I knew I’d be more competitive with a cash offer, and I would beat out all the other way over asking conventionals. That’s the way that I went. I did cash, because … I’m sorry, I did cash with partnerships. I do event directing for a local group here in Denver called Rocky Mountain Women Invest. I started doing that just as a way to give back to my community, so that I could empower other women to become investors as well.
Through that, in just giving freely and expecting nothing in return, I built a really strong relationship, the founder of the group, and she is an exec, and manages a sales team, a global sales team. She had a lot of extra money saved up, ready to execute. She didn’t know how. I sent her a text. I never thought that would ever happen, but I just casually asked her, “Hey, could I borrow 100K?” She was like, yes, because she trusted me at that point. That’s how I was able to execute that deal.

Tony:
Stacey, two things I want to comment on. First, I want to talk about the all-cash offer. I’m glad you brought that up, because as we send more deals and some get accepted, some get rejected, I’m starting to learn and understand that sellers have different motivations. For some sellers, it’s just the overall price. They’re like, “I don’t care if you’re using grandma’s savings, I don’t care if you’re using a VA loan, I don’t care if you’re using an FHA conventional, I just want the most amount of money from my property.”
That’s what’s important to some sellers. Other sellers, what’s most important to them is speed. They’re like, “Hey, I don’t really care what you pay me, but I need to be out by next Friday. If you can get me out by next Friday, then the property’s yours.” Then, there are other sellers that value, I would say maybe convenience or certainty, maybe. On the convenience side, it’s like, hey, I can leave all my junk in the house. I don’t have to worry about how I’m going to empty out this house that I’ve lived in for 30 years, when I only need these four boxes.
Then, some people like the certainty of closing, where they don’t have to worry about an appraisal or different contingencies, and an all-cash offer can satisfy that. I love that you found out what the motivation was of that seller, and you were able to use that to your advantage, to get that deal done. That’s a big lesson, I think for the rookies that are listening. I just wanted to point out that it’s not always the all-cash offer that wins, because I have offered all-cash on some properties, and I still get beat out. It depends on what that seller wants

Stacey:
To your point, it was the quick close that he was most interested in. It was the combination of the two, the cash offer, and then-

Tony:
Cash and closing quickly.

Stacey:
Yes, exactly.

Tony:
The second thing that you mentioned, Stacey, that I thought was just really, really good was, you partnered with someone to get the cash that you needed for this deal. I know that there are a lot of people who are listening that are saying, I don’t have cash, and I don’t have a network of people that have cash. A lot of people are going to start in that position. Let me ask you, Stacey. You said that you volunteer to get involved with this network of other women investors. How much money did that cost you?

Stacey:
Nothing. Just time.

Tony:
Nothing. Just time.

Stacey:
Time is valuable, but it did not cost me any actual money. Yes.

Tony:
Through your relationships, you were able to find an individual who had the capital to completely fund your deal.

Stacey:
Yes.

Tony:
That is the lesson that I think a lot of people miss is that, it doesn’t matter what your network looks today. It doesn’t matter who you know today. It doesn’t matter if no one in your immediate circle has the financial resources, because you can always go out and expand your network. There is no limit to the number of people that you can go out there and meet and shake hands with and get to know. The important thing is, the more people that know you, that like you and trust you, the easier it becomes for you to raise the funds that you need to get your deals done.
It was time, that’s all you needed, right?

Stacey:
I will say, I’ll even highlight a few more things about that. Being a nurse, I have access to all these physicians and high-net-worth individuals in healthcare. I was stuck on an identity that, I’m a nurse, I can’t ask them for money, or they wouldn’t trust me, they wouldn’t think that I have enough skill with this yet. I even had the network where I could’ve really tried to tap into that.
It’s even more beautiful that it happened so organically, because, Marge is the group founder’s name. I think the thing that she appreciated most about our dynamic is that, I offered my hard work, and I was so confident in my own skill, and I was giving without expecting in return. Really, our partnership and friendship relationship got to develop organically in the sense that, I wasn’t expecting her to mentor me and ensure my success.
I came to her with the confidence and the skill in myself, and then just gave freely. Never once had we discussed me using her private money or anything of that sort. It was just purely organic. I definitely recommend to people to continue to meet, go out there and network, because you never know where the relationship can go.

Ashley:
I can relate to that so much, Stacey, as to building that organic friendship first, before you start even talking business. Maybe, yeah, of course you’re talking real estate, because that’s all of us real estate investors talk about, nothing else. Instead of asking for favors or that you want to be mentored, or how can they help you, just building that friendship.
I think about Tyler Madden, who we’ve had on the show, who’s going to be coming on again shortly, him and I have become great friends. It was because he actually built a friendship with me, just talking about things he knew I enjoyed. That is what his specialty is, is getting to know people and bringing some light out into them, by talking about things they’re interested in, and making them become best friends with him.

Stacey:
Yeah.

Ashley:
I think that makes it so much more genuine, when you build that friendship first with somebody, before you’re asking or trying to receive something in return, or even trying to give them anything. If you’re pushing something onto someone, it’s like, I can do this for you, I can do this for you, you still should build that friendship first, before you’re even trying to push, giving them something, which is thoughtful, it’s great, but just building that casual friendship, I think really sets that foundation, and it’s so much better for you to eventually work together, or mentor, or whatever that is.

Stacey:
Absolutely. I do think the golden nugget that everybody’s missing is learning from other people’s stories. Somewhere along the way, I feel like in our community, people became obsessed of, my mentor is supposed to answer all of these questions for me, but I prefer to learn from people from their mistakes. That’s where the value is. That’s where you’re going to save hundreds of thousands of dollars, is by learning from other people’s stories and mistakes.
I always encourage people, instead of going out there and just asking a bunch of questions, go and ask somebody about themselves, let them talk about themselves, and learn from that value. That’s where the gold is, for me.

Ashley:
People to talk about themselves, too.

Stacey:
Yes, that does make it easy. Yes.

Ashley:
It’s something your knowledge … People are confident and like to enjoy talking about things that they know a lot about, and they feel confident talking about it. A lot of people know a lot about themselves.

Stacey:
Yes, absolutely.

Ashley:
Okay. Stacey, let’s talk about the mid-term rental now. What made you decide to go into this? You said that you have the nursing background of being a traveling nurse, staying in these kind of units. What did that transition look like from purchasing your duplexes, to now putting together this property?

Stacey:
I take partnerships so seriously that I just wasn’t sure, as I continue to scale, that I was ready to partner with someone, and because I had three small multi-families under my belt, I did the math of what I would need to be able to choose to work. I do continue to hope to be a nurse, but just having that flexibility to choose working in an environment that I love, things like that.
I came up with a number and then reverse engineered it. I was like, oh, I need 33 doors this year to be able to achieve what I want, that freedom. I was instantly so intimidated by that goal, because I was like, 33 doors, who am I? I’m a nurse. I grew up in a small country town. Anyways, it was very intimidating, but I also was like, I don’t want to have to manage that many different properties. I wasn’t sure yet about getting that many doors in one single property.
Long story short, because I know about mid-term rentals, and I know it’d be one roof, easy for me to manage, and obviously, the community of nurses, that’s why I decided to go that way. I ended up finding a house that’s perfect. It has a gorgeous mother-in-law suite. The entire house was flipped, the numbers make sense. That’s what steered me into a new direction.

Tony:
There’s so many different ways that you can go with real estate, like you said earlier. You said you’re supposed to close on this when?

Stacey:
April 13th. It’ll be my first in-person closing. Yeah.

Tony:
Okay. All right. Beautiful. Good luck to you on that, Stacey.

Stacey:
Thank you.

Tony:
I’m sure it’ll go well for you.

Stacey:
Yes. I’m so excited.

Tony:
I know we’re moving along, but I just want to pick one deal where we can just really quickly break down the numbers to share with the audience, how it’s worked out. Do you have a deal in mind that we can use for our rookie deal review?

Stacey:
Yes, I do.

Tony:
Okay, awesome. I’m just going to hit you with some rapid fire questions, and then we’ll do a bit of a deep dive afterwards. Okay?

Stacey:
Okay. Perfect.

Tony:
First, tell us what market was this property in?

Stacey:
It’s in Tampa.

Tony:
What was the property type? Single family, duplex. Duplex, I think is the answer.

Stacey:
This was the duplex. Yes.

Tony:
All right. What did you purchase this one for? What was the purchase price?

Stacey:
I paid 180.

Tony:
Do you recall what your down payment closing costs were? Ballpark.

Stacey:
The 55, 50 something in that range. 25% down.

Tony:
Awesome. Let’s talk through the story a little bit. How did you find this deal? Then, how did you fund this deal?

Stacey:
This one is extremely interesting, which is why I wanted to talk about it. It was an extended MLS listing. I was actually deployed for the Air Force in South Carolina, supporting COVID, and like any good real estate investor, I was just perusing Zillow. I saw this listing that had been posted for six months. It had one photo that looked it was taken on a flip phone. I was like, what is happening here? They cannot seriously want to sell this property.
I sent it to I agent. I was like, can we find out what’s going on with this? He did. We quickly learned that the seller was very difficult. He wouldn’t actually let us see the property until we had offered. I offered on the property at asking, at that time. Then, I did.
Because he wouldn’t let us see it, and we didn’t know the inside condition, he had it listed for 195. At that point, I was just like, what’s the source that can happen? I’ll lose my inspection money. To your point, you had said that earlier. I felt the same way. We did that, but long story short, the tenants didn’t have leases. He was very hesitant to do estoppel agreements to prove that there was no leases. They were paying $500, market rent was closer to 950 or 1000 when I bought the property.

Tony:
Oh.

Stacey:
Yes. Just a lot of discrepancies and issues. I don’t know where my confidence came from, but I was like, let’s do it. What’s the worst that’s going to happen? I will say, the biggest shocker about the property was that, I was almost at closing and we had negotiated down the price for the interior condition. There’s just a ton of deferred maintenance.
I got him down to 180, and it had already appraised for 195. I was feeling really good about that. That’s when I found out that there was a vacant property next door, because I was vetting two different property managers. That’s ultimately how I ended up choosing the property manager that I hired, because the one that I was vetting was like, “This is the worst decision, it being vacant, you’re never going to be able to rent this. The city owns it. It’s never going to sell. It’s never going to flip, dadada.”
I called the other property manager, and he’s like, “Oh, no problem, we’ll rent it.” He was so nonchalant, so confident. I was like, this is my guy. I hire him. Literally within months, they flipped the entire duplex. That’s now redone, brand new, luxury finishes. Then, on the other side of that is a brand-new build, luxury single family home. Now, I’m the one holding up the neighborhood, when I thought I was going to be the trail blazer, flipping the neighborhood. That was a very pleasant surprise.

Tony:
What did you end up spending on the rehab?

Stacey:
I actually haven’t even updated it. I inherited those tenants-

Tony:
Oh, gotcha okay.

Stacey:
… and they stayed. Yeah, they stayed. When I closed, I went to them and I offered, I was like, I know there’s a ton of deferred maintenance, I’m happy to fix whatever you want, write me a list, but I’m going to increase this to … It was still below market, but it was a significant raise, compared to the 500 they were paying. We did some updates for them, but nothing … Their kitchens need to be completely redone. I am going to be in the process of doing that here shortly.

Tony:
Gotcha. Okay. Let’s talk through the final numbers then, Stacey. What are both sides currently renting out for?

Stacey:
Yeah. We currently have them both rented for 1000 on each side.

Tony:
Then, what’s your mortgage payment on that?

Stacey:
I did do a cash-out refi on this. It’s currently, I think the new one is 994, if I’m not mistaken. Instead of mixing them, I was like, let’s just do the pre. Before the cash-out refi, my mortgage was 884.

Tony:
Now, afterwards, you’re at just under $1000?

Stacey:
Correct, yes.

Tony:
You’re pulling down 2000 a month in rent.

Stacey:
Yes.

Tony:
Wow. Okay. Then, your property manager, how much are they charging?

Stacey:
I do a 9%. He does eight, but because of some other random fees, I just do nine for conservative budgeting.

Ashley:
How much cash did you end up leaving in the deal after you refinanced out? Or, did you pull it all out?

Stacey:
That was one of the discrepancies. I ended up pulling out, I think there’s 18K that’s still left in the deal. I could, because of the market appreciation, do it again and still not pay any money for the refinance, and with the market rent, it would still support it. I’m going to keep that in my back pocket for another rainy day, and just do the updates and drive the rent to the max cash flow for right now.

Ashley:
Yeah. I think that’s such a important value to hit is that, you don’t always have to pull everything out. It’s great to leave some money into a deal. Then, you just have more equity in the property. If you do need to tap into that equity, like you said, you can go and refinance again, and pull it out. Even leaving that 18,000, I’m sure, I can’t do math in my head as fast as Tony, but I’m sure your cash-on-cash return is great after-

Tony:
33%. About 33%.

Ashley:
… cash flowing 600 a month.

Stacey:
Yeah.

Ashley:
What is it?

Tony:
33%.

Ashley:
33%.

Stacey:
He made that up.

Tony:
Stacey, congratulations. That is a really, really solid deal.

Stacey:
Thank you.

Tony:
I’m sure super instructional for all of the rookies that are listening. Yeah.

Stacey:
Yeah. The moral of the story is, don’t be afraid of properties that are vacant next door. Good things can happen. Just do your due diligence.

Ashley:
Stacey, I’m going to take us to our rookie request line now. Anyone can call in at 1-888-5-ROOKIE, and leave us a voicemail, and we might play it on the show for our guests to answer.

Lauren:
Hey guys, Lauren from Asheville here with a quick question. My husband and I are hoping to get our first short-term rental in the next month or so. We’ve noticed as we run our numbers and look over comparables, that a lot of properties with short-term rental potential are overpriced in this current market. We have heard from other investors, they will often pay more for a property with good cash flow.
My question for you guys is, how much more will you pay for a property with good cash flow? Thanks so much for the advice. I love your show.

Stacey:
I’m so risk adverse enough that my first question is, will it cash as a long-term rental? What’s plan B? Because if you’re buying that property and it only cash flows as a short-term rental, that’s an immediate no, for me. I know that some other people are more comfortable with that. That’s a no for me.
Then, my other question is, it’s a very inflated market right now. I have been recommending to people, look back in the rents, see what the rents were demanding before all this inflation hit. Does that market rent still support the cash flow? If it does, then close. If those two things don’t happen, the risk is not worth it for me, personally.

Ashley:
I agree with Stacey on the exit strategies, that you should have multiple exit strategies, because if you are paying a high price, but if your property is not going to appraise for what you’re purchasing for, especially if you’re going to use a mortgage for it, then you’re going to have to fill that gap and cover that difference, if it’s not going to appraise for that, or you don’t want to buy the property in all-cash, and later want to go and refinance, but it doesn’t appraise for how much you want to pull out of the property.
I think looking at what the property is actually valued at, and your cash flow, if you are going to make a lot of cash flow, the property can be worth overpaying for. I think it’s really what you consider overpay. I think that’s different to a lot of people, is overpaying mean, that’s different than what the market is at right now, or is that because of appreciation, what the property’s going to be worth? You’re going to pay a little bit more, because you know it’s going to appreciate more.
I think that’s the biggest thing is, what does overpaying even mean? For me personally, it would be that, buying my buy-and-hold properties, overpaying would mean that the property does not cash flow for me. That would be overpaying for me. Tony, I’m interested to hear your thoughts, especially since you’re in the short-term rental market.

Tony:
I’ll echo a lot of what you said, Ashley, is that, I think Lauren is confusing, and I don’t mean this to take a dig at you, Lauren, but I think there’s a difference between expensive and overpriced. Overpriced is a function of the return. Something is only overpriced, once my return becomes negatively impacted.
A property doesn’t necessarily become overpriced because I’m paying over asking. That just means that I’m paying over asking. If I’m able, and this is the example that always use, someone could come in, maybe you have some out-of-town agent that doesn’t know the local market, and they think their property’s worth half a million, but it’s really worth 750, so they come in and price it at half a million. Then, all these investors come in, knowing that it’s underpriced.
Now you’re bidding $200,000 over asking. Is it overpriced at that point? No, it’s not. It just means that it wasn’t priced the right way to begin with. Or, on the flip side, say that they do list it at 500, but you know that based on your underwriting, you can still buy it at 650 and get a 15% cash-on-cash return. Is it overpriced? It maybe, maybe not. It all depends on if a 15% cash-on-cash is good to you.
Lauren, I make my decisions, much like Ashley said, based on the return that I get from that purchase price. I’m not as concerned about the difference between the purchase price and the asking price. I think the appraisal gap is a good thing to call out. If there is an appraisal gap there, you should that into your calculations, to make sure you still get the return that you want. Again, the term overpriced should be based on the return, and not necessarily what they’re asking for the property.

Ashley:
Especially if you’re going to be holding this property for a long time, you’re not going to be that concerned about comparables, unless you need to get an appraisal on it, to refinance the property, because if you’re not going to sell it, what does it matter what the property’s value is, what the price point is of it? If you are intending to flip the property, or sell it within a short period of time, then yeah, maybe you should be concerned with paying more for it, in case the market does dip a little bit. If you’re going to hold it, then I think that that’s less of an issue for you too.
Stacey, we’re going to do the rookie exam now. This is one of our newer segments here, where we have three questions, and either you pass or you fail, and your episode does not air.

Stacey:
Oh my goodness. No pressure.

Ashley:
Okay. Question number one, what is one actionable thing rookies should do after listening to this episode?

Stacey:
I would say they should go out and meet at least three people at local meetups, and learn from their story. Don’t ask questions, unless it pertains to their story.

Tony:
All right. Second question. What is one tool, software, app, or system that you use in your business?

Stacey:
I look at AppFolio a lot.

Ashley:
I’m very jealous. My property management company doesn’t use AppFolio. It doesn’t connect. Yeah, that is such a nice feature to have those two interlink.

Stacey:
Yes. It’s so great to see all of your properties. It’s a really good software tool for overarching overview of all of your properties.

Ashley:
The last question is, where do you plan on being in five years?

Stacey:
Oh, good question. Staying in Denver is something that I’ve been so passionate about, because my family is here, and because I initially thought it was going to be impossible for me to stay here and live a comfortable life. Because of that, and because my family is still here, I would say six months here, and six months in San Diego, is the life I want to be living in five years.

Ashley:
Thank you so much for sharing with us. You did pass, so your episode will air.

Stacey:
Yes, perfect.

Ashley:
Stacey, can you let everybody know where they can find out some more information about you, and possibly reach out to you?

Stacey:
Yeah. The first and most important thing is that I am going to be volunteering at the Rookie Bootcamp Weekend live in Denver, at the in-person event. I would love to connect and meet as many people in this community as possible. Please find me there. Then, outside of that, my Instagram would be the best place.

Ashley:
Stacey. I can’t wait to meet you there.

Stacey:
Yes, I’m so excited.

Tony:
All right. Before we close out, I just want to highlight this week’s rookie rock star. Again, if you want to get highlighted on the show, get active in the Real Estate Rookie Facebook group, or in the BiggerPockets forums, then we might highlight your story on the show. Today’s rookie rock star-

Ashley:
It is a new mom and real estate investor who just closed on her first investment property. If that’s you, you are a rookie rock star this week.

Tony:
Yeah, this new mom and new investor purchased a property for $116,000. Spent another 35K on the rehab. For all you math nerds, she’s all in at $141,000. Okay, you guys weren’t moving fast enough. The ARV was $180,000. Seems like a really solid first deal, and new mom and real estate investor, wish you the best of luck in knocking out the park on the next one.

Ashley:
Okay. Stacey, thank you so much for joining us. We really enjoyed having you on the show, and having you share your journey with us. We can’t wait to meet you at Rookie Weekend. Maybe this’ll even air after Rookie Weekend, or [crosstalk 00:49:43] before.

Stacey:
He moved it up. Yeah.

Ashley:
It’ll be before. Okay.

Stacey:
Very exciting. Yes.

Ashley:
Good. Everyone will hear your story, and then will get to meet you at Rookie Weekend. Yay.

Stacey:
Yes, I’m looking forward to it.

Ashley:
Okay. Yeah. Awesome.
I’m Ashley at wealthfromrentals, and he’s Tony at tonyjrobinson, and make sure to check out the Real Estate, Rookie Facebook, and also our YouTube channel. We will see you guys next time.

 

Have you been to Texas lately? I was there last month, and you should really know what’s happening in the real estate world there.  

Texas radio shows and billboards are covered with ads for real estate investments. But it’s not what you might expect. 

These are not ads to find investors. These are ads to find and train syndicators. 

The rise of amatuer real estate syndicators

Multiple competing programs have trained tens of thousands of “regular people” to become real estate syndicators and there’s nothing wrong with that.

I’m all for it, in fact! I’m thrilled that these opportunities exist. We all started in a similar place, after all.

However, I’ll admit that I’m nervous about it.

I’m nervous because some of these new syndicators are raising hundreds of millions of dollars from investors all over the United States, then reselling their deals to the next trainee for substantial profits within 18-30 months. 

The problem with that? Most of these real estate syndicators haven’t tasted the bitter gall of a downturn. Their inexperience has led them to make broad statements like:

• “It’s different this time.”
• “Rent prices will always increase.”
• “Everyone needs a place to live.”
• “They’re not making any more land.”

That’s the same sort of presumptuous language I heard leading up to 2008. No, I’m not predicting a repeat of 2008’s financial crisis, but I am warning that hubris often leads to disaster. 

A broker told me recently that he routinely markets deals where multiple students from the same program bid against each other. The property winds up selling 20% higher than the original asking price.

Then, they rinse and repeat, selling to the next person for even more. 

It sounds great and all, but did you ever play musical chairs as a kid? At some point, the music stops. What happens then?

My message: In a world where amateurs and experts profit equally, it’s hard to know who the experts really are.

If you passively invest in syndicated deals and trust the operator with your hard-earned money, I’m guessing that you want to partner with operators who are true experts. 

Experts who:

• Have been in the real estate business for a long time.
• Know how to spot intrinsic value and extract it on behalf of their investors.
• Acquire off-market deals that brokers and successful amateurs will never see.
• They’re better operators than promoters—which is why you haven’t heard of most of them.

True expertise in action

My firm and I just invested with a true expert. He’s closing on a self-storage conversion deal in an underserved market near Boston. This is a highly visible property on a main road in a booming area. Its been operating as a shopping center for decades, but as its retail sales have declined, so has its profitability.

This real estate syndicator has a long and successful history in self-storage. The principals assembled and sold a portfolio of 27 storage assets to an institutional investor for over $100 million several years ago. As a result of their relationships in the market, they had access to this deal before it went public. 

Here’s why we love this deal. The conversion and operation of this property as a self-storage facility conservatively project internal rates of return (IRR) well over 20%. But that’s just for the storage business. The property also includes a number of other valuable opportunities that will significantly increase returns. 

For example: 

• The property has several acres of valuable riverfront that can be developed as pricey riverfront condos or multifamily units.
• The parking area can be sold off as multiple outparcels to restaurant or multifamily developers.
• Some of the existing retail sections can be rehabbed to raise income and value. 

Below is a map of the property:

Remember, all of these opportunities exist on top of the projected 20%+ IRR from storage. And, because these three opportunities have essentially no cost basis, their risk is low and the return potential is relatively high. 

We didn’t find this amazing deal through a radio ad, a billboard, or a widely promoted website. Of course, it’s possible to find great investment opportunities that way. But we’ve found that many of the best deals are not available to the general public. These deals are found from building meaningful relationships with experienced professionals. 

So, how do we find and vet these “experienced professionals”, anyway?

I’m glad you asked. Brian Burke is an experienced pro. He’s been investing in real estate for over 30 years. He’s managed over 750 residential deals and over 3,000 multi-family doors. 

Brian, like me, was concerned about the rush to the top in this explosive market. He partnered with BiggerPockets Publishing to release a book for passive investors who want to do their due diligence on syndicated operators and deals. It’s aptly titled “The Hands-Off Investor” and I highly recommend reading it. 

Finding experienced pros can be as easy as utilizing BiggerPockets’ massive community. You should also check out real estate syndicator reviews and community forums online. This is a bit more challenging than checking out restaurants on Yelp, but there are plenty of great resources out there to get you started. 

You can use Google, too. Find a company and look up their leadership team on Google followed by words such as “scam, SEC violation, crime,”. You might be surprised by some of the results you find. Whenever I invest, I go as far as purchasing detailed background and criminal checks.

Another example of a true real estate pro is Jim Pfeifer, who has been investing in syndications for years. He created a community called Left Field Investors to review and recommend syndicated passive investments. Their goal is to help investors create financial freedom through finding the right syndicators and investments. 

Additionally, Ian Ippolito has a great passive investor forum as well. Ian sold his tech firm and started looking for real estate investments nearly a decade ago. He recognized the lack of democratized platforms dedicated to honest conversations between crowdfunding investors, so he created The Real Estate Crowdfunding Review. While focused on crowdfunding, his forum is not limited to crowdfunded deals. There are plenty of reviews on all types of real estate syndicators and opportunities.

Final thoughts on experts and amateurs

I want to be clear, there is no shame in being an amateur. BiggerPockets is a powerful gathering place for investors of all types, backgrounds, and experience levels to share ideas and grow together. 

But, I also want to emphasize that the real estate game may be harder than it looks right now. Sure, it might have been relatively easy to make significant returns from our active and passive deals over the past 12 years. The rising tide has truly lifted all boats. 

But if something can’t go on forever, it will eventually end (not my witty line, but I’m happy to use it). Trees don’t grow forever. Musical chairs is fun, but the music will eventually yield to silence. You get the idea. 

If you’re growing in your role as an active real estate investor or commercial syndicator, keep up the great work! Continue learning, building your team, talents, technology, and track record. 

But please don’t mistake the wonderful rising market we’ve all enjoyed as a sign that you can’t make a bad deal. Use this time to learn with the wind at your back, but be constantly aware that the wind could shift on a dime. 

Be prepared for that day. Make sure you’ve structured your investments to weather the storm. Don’t overpay for deals and please don’t take investor capital if you do. 

If you’re a passive investor, I’d advise that you look carefully at every syndicator you plan to invest with. Check out their team and track record. Ask them hard questions. 

Try to determine if this is the type of person you would want to be in trouble with for a decade if the market goes south. Even if things run smoothly, the character of your business partners is of utmost importance. 

A great real estate syndicator can turn a mediocre deal into a winner. A lousy one can ruin the very best.

There will come a day when it’s easy to see the difference between experts and successful amateurs. Until then, I urge you to cut through the noise and partner with expert operators who provide downside protection and upside profits throughout all market conditions.  

What about you? Have you had a hard time distinguishing experts from successful amateurs? What are you doing to protect yourself from the eventual downturn that impacts every investor at some point? 

RESCON pleased with roll-out of Toronto’s Concept 2 Keys initiative

To tackle the housing crisis and get projects to market quicker, we must reduce red tape and streamline the development approvals process.

That’s why the Residential Construction Council of Ontario (RESCON) is excited that substantial progress is being made on Concept 2 Keys (C2K), an initiative at the City of Toronto to dramatically overhaul how it handles and reviews development applications, something that will ultimately benefit builders and buyers of homes.

We are equally pleased that city council recognized the need for more staff both for C2K and the planning department. Council recently approved 16 new permanent staff positions. Of those, seven are earmarked for the planning department and two will be in the city manager’s office specifically for the C2K initiative.

Four of the positions are in engineering and construction services, two are in transportation services, and one is in parks, forestry and recreation.

RESCON was concerned that the planning department would be stretched with the added workload of doing mandatory pre-application consultations with developers before a project is started. However, it appears that the concerns are being heard. The new hires should alleviate some of the added burden.

Meanwhile, city council also directed the chief of staff and city manager’s office to continue rolling out the C2K initiative and the operating model across the remainder of the city by the end of 2022. Importantly, Deputy Mayor Ana Bailão made an amendment to an original motion to ensure that will happen.

This is certainly a welcome step in the right direction, ensuring the city will keep the ball rolling on this vital initiative.

C2K is radically transforming how planning and development applications are reviewed by modernizing organizational structures, processes and technology. It will make the approvals system more efficient and enable builders to deliver housing at a faster pace while reducing costs which can be passed on to buyers.

The initiative was started in 2020. Purpose is to accelerate the development review process and improve the experience of applicants as well as city staff. In a nutshell, it is aimed at removing some of the obstacles that slow down the approvals process and making the system more efficient with shorter turnaround times.

C2K is being done in phases to enable city staff to test drive and refine the system at each step along the way.

Scalability of the system is presently being tested in the Etobicoke-York area and entails figuring out how to improve workflows and streamline the application process by implementing an online submission tool to be integrated with the city’s existing technology. In time, the initiative will be rolled out to other areas.

C2K will significantly improve communication and collaboration between development applicants and city staff. Co-ordinators will provide progress updates on applications and resolve minor issues while other managers will be able to escalate issues for resolution. Review teams will keep applications moving.

Technology will also be enhanced to make the application submission process more convenient and transparent for applicants and easier and less time-consuming for city staff to process, manage and prioritize.

We’re pleased with the progress that the office has made to improve the processes, technology and customer experience. The interdivisional team-based model introduced by C2K is making a significant positive difference. Increasing efficiencies is crucial, as the entire province is in the midst of a housing crisis.

We commend city staff for working with the development industry to streamline the planning and development application and approvals process, improve customer service, accountability and transparency.

This, combined with further reforms to the zoning and site plan approvals, will eventually have a dramatically positive impact on increasing housing supply. As the C2K program is rolled out, and more staff are brought on board for both C2K and the planning department, thanks to the recent decision of Toronto city council, we are hopeful that progress will continue.

Richard Lyall is president of the Residential Construction Council of Ontario (RESCON). He has represented the building industry in Ontario since 1991. Contact him at [email protected].