Brandon:
This is the BiggerPockets podcast, show 509.

Manny:
But I tell people, I said grind now so you can shine later, spending the fruits of your investments. So believe it or not, that power of compounding, taking that one first house I bought, flipped it, bought two more homes and then that first shopping center, I 1031 exchanged the Whittier property into another one, office building, and then a high rise, and then multiple high rises in a portfolio I bought as a group. So I didn’t buy a Ferrari.

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Brandon:
What’s going on everyone? It’s Brandon Turner, host of the BiggerPockets podcast here with my cohost, Mr. David Greene. David man, I didn’t have a good nickname for you today, but what’s up? How you doing?

David:
I’m doing pretty good. The northern California and the southern California markets are softening up a little bit. I think a lot of the buyers that were competing over the houses just got frustrated and backed out, so we’re actually able to put people in contract again. I don’t know if I mentioned, but I’m looking for another house for myself to house hack, maybe a couple of them. So for those people that were like, “Hey, I really want to get a house but it’s too hot,” some of that is shifting. The buyer psychology is, it’s like in Gladiator, remember they talked about the mob? They’ll be with you, and then they’ll be against you, it happens very quickly. It’s fleeting.

Brandon:
Fleeting. Well, good luck man. You deserve something great.

David:
Thank you.

Brandon:
Speaking of something great… you like that transition? Today’s episode is with Manny Khoshbin. So if you guys don’t know Manny, huge Instagram account. You can find him at @MannyKhoshbin, K-H-O-S-H-B-I-N. So Manny, and he has 2.2 million followers over there on Instagram, and for good reasons. Got an amazing account. But here’s a cool thing about Manny. Manny has been investing in real estate for 20 some years, almost 30 years. Very, very successful, bought almost a billion dollars worth of real estate. Does most of it, or really almost all of it with his own money, so it’s not like syndicating. He just has snowballed wealth to a massive level. And he does a lot of what’s called value adds.
So the first half of the show, it’s really about his story today. You’re going to hear about his story, about being homeless, working at Kmart I think he said before we were recording. He was making $3 an hour at Kmart. And that to where he is today, buying some incredible real estate, some huge deals, and some really amazing cars. We talk a little bit about the car thing today as well, which you’ll see on his Instagram. It’s not quite what you might think. I was actually pretty surprised at his kind of logic behind it, now I’m like, “I’m going to go buy some cool cars.”
So you’ll hear about that and more coming up. Also make sure you listen towards the end of the interview. He lays out a bunch of tips for adding value to real estate, how to dramatically make the price go up, especially when it comes to bigger deals but really any real estate. That concept and some of the tips he gives there are going to make some people listening to this show millions of dollars over their career, so listen for that and more all coming up. But first, let’s get to today’s quick tip.

David:
Today’s quick tip is, avoid the temptation of wanting to just carbon copy somebody else’s success. It’s so easy to say, “How did you do it? Okay, control-C, control-V, now I’ve done it.” The problem is, nothing in life actually works that way. In today’s episode, Manny-

Brandon:
It’s command on a Mac, it’s command-C, command-V. That’s why it doesn’t work that way. It’s a joke.

David:
I do use a Mac, I just don’t like being labeled as a Mac.

Brandon:
Okay, yeah.

David:
What was that really funny joke you had? I’m a millennial, we don’t like labels? I think that’s just still such a hilarious joke.

Brandon:
Yeah, I don’t think that was supposed to be a joke. I think I was saying that legit. Anyway, keep going.

David:
Well it was funny to me. Today’s guest, Manny, describes how his deep understanding of the fundamentals of real estate, not esoteric rocket science level stuff, really basic simple things that he has mastered at a high level, allows him to find ways to make properties work that somebody would miss if they were just looking for command-C. It doesn’t work, Brandon. You’ve got to say control-C, control-V.

Brandon:
I don’t know, command… yeah, control-C does flow, but then it’s just wrong. I mean, if you’re okay being wrong David, that’s okay if you’re okay with that, but how you do anything is how you do everything. Keep going.

David:
I don’t know if it’s politically correct to talk about commanding. We should probably… I guess controlling is just as bad. All right, this quick tip has gone completely off the rails.

Brandon:
Remember it was open Apple? It was like open Apple C, open Apple V, so they changed it to command on my little Apple keyboard now.

David:
I don’t remember that, but there is an Oregon Trail reference later in this show that would probably work well with your open Apple for that age demographic. So quick tip summed up, don’t look for ways to copy someone else’s success. Instead, focus on mastering the thing you’re getting into, and then the ways that you’ll be successful will make themselves known to you.

Brandon:
Yeah, it’s like that quote from… I think everyone has said this, but success leaves clues, right? Success isn’t a follow this, step by step in a cookbook. It’s not a cookbook, right? But there’s a lot of clues out there, and a lot of really good ingredients that then you can learn to be a great chef. So how’s that for an analogy, man? Look at that. I’m taking over your analogy role.

David:
You would drop your mic, but it’s got an arm, so it just hangs there.

Brandon:
I could push it down, just like that. That’s the new thing. Instead of dropping mics, it’s smashing mics. All right, and with that said, I think it’s time to get into our episode today with Manny Khoshbin. You guys are going to love this show. I loved it. I think he’s a fantastic guy doing some really big stuff in real estate. Very smart, very driven, and y’all are going to hear more from Manny right now. Anything you want to add before we jump in, David?

David:
No, let’s get to it.

Brandon:
Manny, welcome to the BiggerPockets podcast. Man, it’s an honor to have you here.

Manny:
Thank you, likewise.

Brandon:
Thanks. So let’s dive into your story a little bit. I know you’ve got kind of a crazy, long entrepreneurial journey, and then we’ll get from that into real estate. So where does this all begin?

Manny:
Oh my God, this is going to take a couple of hours. But I’ll shorten it. I’m from Iran originally, and back 30 years ago there was the Iran/Iraq war, and when you reach age 14, you’re automatically drafted into the army. And my dad had seven brothers, and four of them got crippled from being injured in the war. So two weeks before my 14th birthday, my dad decided to bolt, and didn’t want me to get pulled into the army. And that was a very sudden decision on his part, with four kids in short order, jumping ship from one country to another. It takes a lot of balls and a lot of guts. And at the time, I didn’t realize what he was doing. But we arrived in US in 1985 with a little over $2,000, and my dad was promised a job at a gas station pumping full service gas. When we arrived here, that job had gone away, and that puts us on a very bad spot.
So we were pretty much homeless. Now, my dad was educated. He was a CPA by trade, and he was able to get a job but it took couple of months before that. A couple of months, we had to live in a car. It was very hard times. Six people in a 1972 Datsun station wagon. And I turned all that guilt, I had a lot of guilt because everybody was suffering because of me. So I turned that into motivation. Now, mind you I didn’t speak a word of English. I didn’t know anybody. I didn’t have no money, and I didn’t know my way around. It’s a new place, right? So it was a lot of obstacles I had to overcome.
But my first job, every time I took the trash out to the dumpster, I noticed people leave stuff outside the dumpster. I’m like, “Hey, this a nice chair. It’s not broken.” Or a toaster, or a black and white TV or what have you. So I would haul those back to my apartment patio, and then after a while I realized, hey, we’ve got to have a place to sell these. Across from our apartment, there was Orange Cross College. They had a swap meet every weekend, so me and my brother hauled those across the street and got a couple of spots, and that was my first business for two years. And yeah, until 16, I was able to legally work, and I applied at Kmart as a clerk, and mopping the floors, collecting shopping carts. And I got promoted within the two years I was there three times. At the end of the day, I knew that’s not where I want to stop, and it’s a stepping stone. So I was always getting the Sunday paper, looking for employment opportunities.
I found a company that sold nuts and candies door to door, it was a multilevel marketing. I applied for it. Within three months, I was one of the top salespeople. So one day, I’m at Price Club. Back then it wasn’t Costco, it was Price Club. And I did the quick math on the cashews and jelly beans and jujubes. I’m like, “Wait, I’m at this company selling eight ounce bags to me at $3, and if I buy a whole pound it’s a $1.50, so I can save 70% on the cost.” So I went into business by my own. I already had my customers, so I started my own business, UWP, Unlimited Wholesale Product. I was 18, a little over 18 years old. Had to have my dad cosign for a small office for me, and I went to payphones and put, “Earn $100 a week, tear out my phone number.” And I got four employees. Within six month, I was making $4,000 a month. To me, that was the American dream, being 18.
After that, I got caught by health department, and I didn’t know I needed a health permit. I didn’t know I need a health permit. Every time you repackage food for resale purposes, you have to have a permit, and I didn’t know that. And they shut me down. I had 20 some thousand dollars saved, and my dad’s buddy says, “Why don’t you buy a gas station? You could buy at 90%, get a 90% SBA financing and buy a gas station.” And a lot of the gas stations back then were mechanical pumps. They were going through the modernization to digital. And once the oil company picked your location to convert, it would skyrocket the value, right? Triple, three, 4X.
And the guy that was a broker selling the gas station goes, “This Mobil gas station off the Crenshaw Boulevard,” now 405, “I have a very good feeling Mobil oil company’s going to pick it next.” So we made an offer, we’re in escrow, 90 day escrow for $170,000 or so for the gas station. I went to Mobil’s school, learned how to measure the tanks, run the snack bar, so I became a Mobil dealer. Cost me $3,500. Then the loan guy turned out to be a fraud. Told me to go to Palace [Verdes 00:10:26] Bank, open a savings password account with $20,000 and put his name on it so he can access for appraisal, all these other fees. Within three months, there was no money left in my account. He had written processing fees to himself, and he ended up going jail later on. But anyhow, I lost all my money. And at that point I’m like, “All right.” I called Winston Tire manager, one of the shops in Montebello California that used to buy a lot of nuts from me. Ruben [Pedilla 00:10:57]. Hopefully he’s still alive, great guy.
And I said, “Ruben, I’m back to square one, I have no money, and I need a job.” He goes, “Come on down.” He hired me as an assistant manager. While working there, every time I see a Porsche, Mercedes, I always ask them, “Hey, what do you do? What do you do for a living?” And nine out of 10 times, it was either a loan company or a real estate company. Occasionally you had a doctor. Occasionally you had a doctor or an attorney, but for the most part it was real estate related. So I’m like, “You know what? I’ve got to get into real estate.”
This one guy that had a 911 Cabriolet, he said he owns a mortgage company. I said, “Hey, I would love to [inaudible 00:11:33].” He goes, “I love your energy. I’ll hire you as a loan officer.” So I worked for him for a few months. I learned the ropes, and within six month, I was like his best processor. But I wanted to go ahead and work for myself, right? I wanted to make a lot more money. So I found a broker to partner up with, and I opened my own mortgage company. And this was 1993? ’92, ’93.
And we got lucky. I got auction.com, back then was REDC, Real Estate Resolution Disposition Trust, something like that, and I became their primary lender. So this is mid-90s. There was a big recession in Orange County in real estate. A lot of overbuilt new projects in housing, and they wanted to auction these off, right? So they would give me one of the condos out of like a six unit complex. I would set up my loan officers, and every bidder had to come to my unit and get preapproved before they get a number to go out and bid on the auction.
So we did $300,000 in one year, and that was huge for me. This is 1994. And then after that, we start doing a lot of refinances, run full page ads. Anyway, long story short, I made pretty good money for a couple of years, and then rates went up in ’94. Greenspan increased the rates 50 basis point in one FOMC meeting, and we were like, “Whoa. We just lost 60 [refis 00:12:52],” because we didn’t pre-lock in until we get ready for loan docs to get more rebate, right? Long story short, I had about $150,000 saved. My partner the broker also had some savings. He goes, “Why don’t we go into discount store? Everyone’s doing 99 cent only, why don’t we do 79 cents plus?” So we took a 10,000 square feet in Santa Ana and opened a discount store. It was doing fantastic and we opened a second location.
We were going to do 10 of them and go public. We had all these big vision, and then a discount supermarket opened right next to us. Food 4 Less opened literally right next door, right next door, within 30 feet away from our store. On their grand opening, our sales dropped 50% and it continued. It continued. Within a year, we were upside down. We were not only making a $30,000 a month we were making, we were losing $15,000 a month. And my partner says, “You know what? I don’t want to put any more work into this. If you want you can take it over.” So I cut him a $15,000 check, I bought his 50% share out, and then I had to get to work. I told my parents, they were in Oregon at the time, I said, “You need to come down.” So I had 11 employees. I laid off a few, I had my parents help me out. And I got the sales back up, and then I sold it.
During this whole time while I was selling it, we had a buyer in escrow that defaulted on the purchase, citing my landlord is not fair, didn’t give me good favorable lease terms, so we end up in court, while I’m standing with my landlord for our case to be heard. My landlord back mind you back then, Mr. Dave Williams, he was worth six to seven hundred million dollars probably back then. Very, very prominent, yeah. He came in the ’50s and start buying commercial real estate, and kept reinvesting, reinvesting. Long story short he told me, “Manny, you’ve been my tenant for five years. I love your energy. You put in 200% a day. But why you are slaving away? Why don’t you put this energy into real estate like I did? I came in the ’50s, I started with one small property.” And I’m like, “Well, you need money. As you know, I don’t have any money right now.” And he goes, “Well once you sell your supermarket, come and see me.”
So that’s how things worked out. Again, when I sold the supermarket finally, I dabbled with the stock market a bit. All my buddies were making money, and I owed $200,000 on my credit cards, and I got $185,000 net from escrow, so I was [inaudible 00:15:15] negative net worth. And I’m like, “All right, I busted my butt. I’m not paying off my credit cards and still going to owe 15 grand after.” So I opened a E-Trade account. I bought AOL, E-Trade, [inaudible 00:15:27] Communication, all these stocks are exploding three for one at every earning announcement, and I more than doubled my money. I think close to tripled by September 1999. And I said, “Okay, enough is enough. This is too good to be true. I’m going to pay off my credit card and go ahead, call Mr. Williams and get started with real estate.”
So I left $85,000 in my E-Trade. I said, “Hey, if I can do 185 to this much, I can do the same thing with $85,000, right?” So I called Mr. Williams. He set me up with his top broker and sold me a shopping center in Whittier. I put $200,000 cash down, and he basically taught me, you want to buy real estate? You can add value. You want to buy real estate that’s good location. So a lot of the strategies I use now, it was basically what his broker taught me back then.
And long story short, that was the journey of my real estate investment. I’ve probably done close to a billion dollars in real estate. I’ve never added it up, but now my average deal size is between $20 to $40 million. I’ve got two deals in escrow now, one for $41 million, and then the one I’m buying for my headquarters, $22 million for myself to occupy. And it’s been a fantastic journey. I’ve made a lot of mistakes. I lost $5 million on one deal, single tenant. So I’ve learned a lot of mistakes, and I don’t want other young investors that are getting to the business to make those mistakes. That’s why I have my program. And I love passing on the torch, and I enjoy hunting for the right deal. Something I can add value, transform the property like the one I’m going to buy and headquarter for Khoshbin Company.
And in a nutshell, that’s really my journey. It’s been fantastic. I retired my parents 20 some years ago, bought them a ranch. I just bought them a really nice house at Orange Park Acres. And I feel like they took the risk to bring me here, and now I owe it to them. And in a nutshell, I left a lot of things out. I’ve done a lot of other businesses, too. I started a mechanic, auto mechanic business door to door. Changing people’s oil, brake pads, calipers, engine overhaul.

Brandon:
In college I was going to do a mobile oil change business, and I didn’t.

Manny:
Yeah. And I’ve always had… one of the secrets I want to say to staying afloat and ahead of everybody else was I always had a side hustle, too. I used to get up super early, and go to 7-Eleven, pick up the Auto Trader. It used to come out every Thursday, so I would go up to it in the morning. So as soon as I would find out what’s their first drop, which 7-Eleven is their first drop on their distribution. And then I would get in my car with a flashlight, boom, boom, boom. Find deals that are priced lower. And back then I was buying a lot of Honda Accords and pickup trucks, things like that. Toyota MR2s, and I used to buy those, do a massive detail on it, and then just put it back on Auto Trader and sell it, make a few hundred bucks. So I always had a side hustle. The whole thing is don’t just stand around for an opportunity. There is opportunity, just do what’s in front of you until something better comes.

Brandon:
That’s so good. Man, there’s about a million things I want to unpack in here. Why don’t we start, I want to know why did you go into… I mean, you started with commercial real estate, the big stuff. Let’s go into the real estate specifically. You started with a shopping center. Most people that I know start with a house, right? Or maybe they buy a duplex if they’re really crazy. But you just jumped into the big game, and it sounds like that’s basically what you’ve been playing ever since is the commercial real estate game. So why is that, and do you recommend that for other people? Should people start small, or can they jump in at that level?

Manny:
Well, let me backtrack. My first property actually was a single family home. It was 1996, yeah. So when I had the supermarket, ’96 I bought a house, it was bank owned, for $142,000. I only used $1,800 to buy it, I used FHA financing and I had the bank credit me 3% for nonrecurring closing costs and all that good stuff. And then I rented it out, a year later sold it for $80,000 more, and I did 1031 exchange, I bought two other homes. But my big money has always been commercial real estate. From the first shopping center in Whittier, then I did another one a couple of years later. I made a million bucks on a single flip.
But I didn’t have that much money to begin with. I’ve had my ups and downs as you know. I’ve been close to broke twice in my past 35 years. And what I recommend people to do, housing’s the easiest way to start investing in real estate, right? And the best way to buy it, you buy a property you can add value and it’s selling at a discount. And of course, it has to check off a few other boxes, right? Location, density. And there’s a lot I teach in my courses. But no, I started with a single family home. It was my first property.

Brandon:
All right. And so now you by these large deals today. I want to go to the end of your story, and then maybe we’ll fill in. When you’re talking buying a $40 million property, are you syndicating that where you’re raising money from a bunch of different investors and they all pool money to buy it and you’re leading it? Or are you just buying it, is that just your company, you put the money in? How does that function today?

Manny:
Yeah, so I’ve never syndicated, but this particular property I am dabbling a bit to maybe raise 20% from my members. A lot of the members in the group, they’re always asking me, “Okay, the good deals are out of reach for us. But can we put a little bit with you to co-invest?” So I opened it only to my group, only because they demanded and asked me so many times. Not that because I need the money. But the previous deal I sold for $41 million a year and a half ago, that was Khoshbin’s Landing, that I bought for 27 and sold for 41. So all of it has been my money up to now, and I still don’t have any partners as of right now, to answer your question. It’s all my money.

Brandon:
Yeah, that’s phenomenal. I mean, we have people on the show, and I even talk about, I buy a $40 million or $50 million property, but they’re all syndicated. It’s not like I own it, I own a very small piece of a very large business that buys it. But I’m always so impressed to talk to guys who are like, “No, I just buy this.” And you didn’t start out buying a $40 million property, right? That first deal was significantly cheaper, but it kind of snowballs, right? Over the course of the last 20 years, you’ve snowballed it into this machine that you can buy a lot of cool stuff.

Manny:
Yeah. Honestly, real estate’s the best asset class to build wealth if you know what you’re doing and you’re patient. And just like anything else, it’s cyclical. And I like to say I’m a cyclical investor. I double, triple down in recessions, throughout the recovery and expansion in the economy cycle. I try to scale as much as I can. I love leverage. Leverage could be your best friend, and it could be your worst, worst enemy. Depends when you’re leveraging and what you’re leveraging on, right? So I’ve learned, I’ve been through many recessions, but that real estate’s the best asset class. Gives you the tax write off, you can pull out money, tap into your equity tax free, cash out [refi 00:22:14]. And when you sell it, you can kick the can down the road on capital gain taxes. And there’s a lot more to it. Doing acceleration on depreciation, which is cost segregation, a lot of things I teach in my program.

Brandon:
Yeah, the cost segregation stuff has been a game changer for me. All right, so let’s, I want to do a few questions that are maybe questions that our audience is wondering, from somebody who’s been a seasoned veteran of the real estate world for 20 years. First one, you’ve been through ups and downs in the market. Where are we right now? Where do you think we’re headed? What are you betting on right now?

Manny:
Well depends what I guess real estate category. Office is in depression. There is so much sub leased space. Industrial and distribution centers are gangbusters, because eCommerce. Housing’s hot because lack of inventory and lower rates, and that’s going to change eventual. And that retail, big box retailers in depression, small mama and pop community centers, gangbusters. They’re huge, because they have eCommerce resistance type of tenants. Your optometrists, chiropractors, 7-Eleven, dry cleaners. So it all depends.
But in terms of economy in general, I mean, it’s all artificial economy. It’s a bought economy. I mean, people are spending money that taxpayers have to pay back. It is not generated. It’s not a healthy economy. So once the music stops, it’s not going to be pretty. At some point, I think our debt to GDP is like 130% now, which it’s never been this high. But the rates are low, and real estate’s one of the most leveraged assets in the world, and it does well when yields are low. And I think they’re going to be forced to keep it low for a while, because if the interest payment’s going to skyrocket if it goes up. So I am bullish on real estate, but some different sectors, not overall. I wouldn’t say jump out and buy a house.

Brandon:
I love that you brought that up, because people oftentimes will just say, “What’s real estate doing? How is the real estate market?” But the fact is, a seasoned person understands there is no such thing as the real estate market. It’s different sectors. There’s things, like you said, there’s retail, there’s office. So what are you focused on, what have you been the last few years focused on buying? What’s your portfolio like? Is it retail, is it the smaller shopping centers, is it malls? What are you buying?

Manny:
Yeah, well I’m by nature, I’m a contrarian investor. I buy things that people don’t like, it’s not sexy. Right now it’s office. Both properties I have in escrow, the $41 million is all office, and the $22 million is all office, general office. But I am buying a small little shopping center. One of my members brought it to me, says, “Hey, I can’t buy it, pull it off by myself. Do you want to go 50/50?” I’m like, “Sure.” That’s one unique because there’s CVS as a tenant that pays $258,000 a year triple net. And as you know CVS, Rite Aid, those trade as a single tenant. They’re credited, they trade at a much lower cap. So we bought that at a nine cap at 56% occupancy. We’re going to subdivide it, sell the CVS which will make us what we paid for the entire property plus a million bucks profit, and then we’ve got 40 thousand square feet free. So there’s a lot of ways to add value to a property, or actually create value by subdividing property for example that has a [inaudible 00:25:29] tenant.
And then also, there is properties where there is cell tower income. I teach my program how you can actually sell the roof easement. I just did one on a building in Arizona I bought six months ago. Bought it for 4.3, and I sold the roof for $827,000 cash for a 50 year easement. Yeah. And then I sold the building, it’s in escrow as we speak, for $5.6 million. So I made a $2 million profit by doing that. So there’s a lot of ways to skin the cat.

Brandon:
Yeah, that’s cool. And I’m assuming just the longer you’re in real estate, the more that you think of these things. You hear some guy talking about cellphone towers, you’re like, “Wait, that’s a thing?” Then you dig into that, and all of a sudden that becomes an opportunity.

Manny:
Absolutely.

Brandon:
Yeah, that’s cool. All right, and then let’s go to some new investors that are listening right now. They’re just getting started. They’re where you were 25 years ago. What advice do you give to people who are brand new in real estate, they’re saying, “I just want to get rich. I just want to get financial freedom. I want to get started. What do I do?”

Manny:
Well, it depends if you have money or you don’t have money. Get educated, and study the stock market, and you want to invest in. Because even if you don’t have money and you network with other investors, get licensed obviously, power up. I tell everybody always get licensed. For a few hundred bucks, it’s amazing how much we learn. Getting licensed, just learn the real estate principles. And then once you have studied the market, work your [inaudible 00:26:47] off, going out, doing your research. When you find a property that’s well positioned on the pricing and also is mismanaged, you can go ahead, share that with your network and you ring a deal, take some profit, 80/20, 30/70, whatever it is, and get started that way. That’s what I would recommend.
There is a lot of opportunities in real estate if you learn the game, and you learn how you can add value to real estate, and you just go and find those opportunities. And there is so much liquidity in the market, especially people that want to put money in real estate. Opportunities are enormous, you just got to do your homework, learn the market, and find those opportunities. If you have the money yourself, pull it off. If you don’t, you can partner up and bring your equity partner with some other investors.

Brandon:
Yeah. That concept is so important that people are like, “I can’t get in real estate because I don’t have any money.” I’m like, there’s a lot of people out there today that have money that don’t have the time, or the hustle, or the knowledge, or the drive to go out and find those deals. So bring in an equity partner.

Manny:
Yeah. Well look what happened with, I mean, my student, he learned the game from me, and then he found a property and then I partnered up with him, so I became his equity partner.

Brandon:
Let’s talk about finding deals. In the commercial space, as you’re trying to buy these big properties like the two offices that you have under right now, how are you finding them?

Manny:
Yeah, so one of them was, yeah one of them was publicly listed by CB Richard Ellis, the $22 million deal. And then the $41 million deal I’m in escrow, that was just through my network of brokers. It’s the same broker that got me Khoshbin’s Landing for $28 million four years ago. So when I’m running low on deal flow, I pick up the phone and call the top brokers I’ve dealt with in the past 10, 20 years, and I tell them, “Hey, Bryan. I’m running low on deal flow. Which one of your properties in you guy’s portfolio with your leasing department, you have a landlord that’s not throwing tenant improvement money or is mismanaging the property?” And he says, “Hey, I have the perfect location for you. So and so owns it for 15 years. He’s out of money, he’s having problems. The tenants are leaving, the roof’s leaking,” and that’s how the property came about.
But typically, I get about 30 to 40 deals emailed to me, because I’m on their email list, email blast. And most of these big brokerage houses, they get a listing, they don’t want to put it on a public. They want to double end it, so for 30 days, they’ll send it within their network of principles and buyers, investors, and then if they can’t get a deal done, then they go ahead and put it on Coast or LoopNet, or their local MLS right? As you get more years under your belt, it gets much easier. People, you build that credibility, they know you close, you’re not going to ask for a fee. They double end it. You’re an easy buyer, and I like to say I’ve earned that in the past 30 years. So I get a lot of deals that way.

David:
You mentioned that you’ve been in the real estate game for over 30 years now, and it’s really impressive. And it’s something I love when we get to talk to a guest that’s seen more than one market cycle. So I’ll admit, I host the podcast, but I got in at the last crash. So I’ve really only seen the elevator go up. I watched it go down, but I’ve only rode it on the way up. And I really like to get insight from people that actually experience what it was like when the elevator crashed, and you had to feel that fear of, “Am I going to die? Where’s this going to stop,” and the insight that comes out of that.
Would you mind sharing maybe some of the things you’ve learned about the right way to invest with the ups and downs you’ve seen? And then what I’d really like to get is for you to elaborate a little more on when you mentioned the economy we’re in isn’t real I think is what you said. A lot of it is based on created wealth that we’re just… debt is really fueling this entire thing. If you could just speak a little bit about how that works in a general sense, and then how you use that information as a contrarian investor to make good decisions.

Manny:
Sure. Well you know, I started my mortgage company in ’92. I didn’t buy my first property until ’96, so when I say 30 years, when you have a mortgage company, as you know, you look at your 1003 application, loan application, and you run into a lot of people that have real estate portfolios. So you have to analyze it, see if they qualify based on their income, all that stuff. But I’ve seen recession from mid-90s, and then early 2000, the dotcom. We had another recession. And then again, 2008, we had another recession. So as I’ve seen these cycles come and go, I’ve noticed if you have a credit tenant, you’re probably going to weather the storm. If you don’t have a credit tenant and you have a small mom and pop office building, you’re probably going to be in trouble.
So in 2007, I had a $130 million portfolio, and millions worth of high rises in Houston. I sold it in July 2007. And everybody says, “What are you doing? Everything’s going gangbusters. You’re making crazy money on these buildings [inaudible 00:31:50].” Like, “Yeah, but I had a pretty good run, and we’re pretty much due for a recession.” So I sold those and I started buying… I got million square feet, and I bought a million square feet worth of Food Lion centers in North Carolina, which is a pretty big grocery chain, and I bought 700,000 square feet of multi-tenant, mostly credit industrial distribution warehouses in Houston. And that was Continental Airlines, FedEx, Halliburton, these were my tenants.
And guess what? I had barely any defaults throughout 2008, and I had that $300,000 a month cashflow coming in, while everybody else was letting go of their office buildings. And I ended up buying five out of the eight buildings I sold, I actually ended up buying those back from mortgage servicers in three years after I sold them. So 2011, 2010, I bought five of those high rises back from [L&R 00:32:47] Mortgage Servicers.

Brandon:
People listening to this right now, you sold a massive portfolio in ’07, so I’m sure some people in the audience are thinking, “Wow, he got super lucky.” Other people are like, “Wow, he’s super smart.” How do you balance that? Did you see it, you knew something was coming? Or do you think you got more lucky, or where do you fall on that luck versus skill in that regard?

Manny:
Well I hate to say I used a lot of common sense, but when I was selling my buildings, I had people offer me from Florida and New York crazy prices on my property without even seeing it. And all 1031 exchange money, right? I’m like, okay, this is getting way out of hand. When you see that kind of activity in real estate, you’re like all right, it’s too good to be true, just like 1999 when I sold my portfolio of stocks because it was too good to be true. But overall, luck obviously has something to do with it, but I think timing is important. When you know things will go parabolic, you know things will have a counter-direction, right? And I don’t know, I mean, I like to think some has luck, but mostly just use common sense. If it’s too good to be true, you may want to take some chips off the table.

David:
I remember when I was listening to this podcast before I was hosting it, and Josh Sorkin was talking about a time when he saw a police officer was buying a million dollar house, and this was like 15 years ago, right? This wasn’t a million dollar house now, maybe a police officer could buy it. That would be a $2 million house now. And he just recognized school teachers are buying $800,000 houses, cops are buying million dollar homes, this does not make sense. And like you’re saying Manny, it’s the slightest bit of common sense, when you just ask how? How do they do it? And someone says oh, well they got an adjustable rate mortgage with negative amortization, and all these bells and whistles thrown on, to force it to work. You’re like, “Oh.” Right?
If you saw a car that was running that way, right? Like it’s, “They took an engine out of a lawnmower and they threw it into a Honda Civic, but they added a turbo buster here, and they added some NOS there,” you might be able to make it go forward for a period of time, but that car is not going to continue running. And I think a lot of people get themselves in trouble trying to outsmart the system. They’re looking for some special algorithm that will tell them when the market’s going to change, when the answer might be right in front of their faces. Is that the common sense that you’re sort of describing?

Manny:
Yes, absolutely. And homes for example right now, single family home, to get a deal you’ve got to pay over in most markets, and chances are when rates eventually go up, your value’s going to go down. I mean, it’s just natural economics, what happens with cost of money. So we know rates being low for 40, 50 years, and eventually things have to change. We’re not going to go negative like Japan, I hope not. So with that said, use common sense. If you find a building, a home that you can buy that’s a foreclosure, short sell, that’s a different story. But I’m talking about a regular listing, they’re asking over appraised value, and now you’ve got to chase it. So that’s the thing, that’s that speculation, and a lot of people don’t know the difference between speculating and investing.

David:
Another thing that’s come up a lot in your story that I’ve noticed when you were describing kind of your… what’s it called when you’re hearing how a superhero was formed? The origin story, when you’re telling your origin story. Was this fact that cars played a role in it, right? You noticed other people with nice cars, and you saw these cars. And I see in the background, you’ve got cars there. Is there a special relationship that you have between nice cars and motivation?

Manny:
Oh, yeah. I love investing in these cars for several factors. One, I’m passionate about the history of some of these brands like Bugatti, McLaren, Mercedes. Second, I’ve noticed a lot of wealthy people do have art and exotic cars, collectible cars in their portfolio as an investment, and I’ve actually made money on some of these cars. I mean, on one car alone I made $1.9 million after five months of owning it. I sold it for $1.9 million profit. I have several cars here that I’ve been offered a few million over what I paid for. But I use them more as passion driven investing, but at the end of the day, they’re still an investment for me. There are a lot of cars I could buy that I know I’ll lose money on, and I don’t dare to buy.

Brandon:
Yeah. That’s funny. I see your Instagram, and you have a massive Instagram. And you post a lot of videos and pictures, it’s phenomenal. It’s one of my favorite accounts out there, if not my favorite. You’re always posting, yeah, you do a really good job, but you’re sharing real estate advice, and then you’re sharing these car things. And I always just thought the cars were just kind of like, hey, you’ve got a lot of money so you buy some cars. But I’m totally seeing you in a new light now. You’re like, “This is a passion driven investment,” and I love that concept. Because you can have cool stuff and then know that you could eventually then make, at least make your money back. If not some, why not enjoy it while you have it? It’s not a liability in other words. You’re buying assets still that the majority of the majority of the world would only dream of having. That’s super cool.

Manny:
Thank you. Yeah absolutely. A lot of young investors, the minute they get their big fat check commission, they love to run over to the Ferrari or Lamborghini dealer and put that down, and finance their dreamiest sports car. But I tell people, I said grind now so you can shine later, spending the fruits of your investments. So believe it or not, that power of compounding, taking that one first house I bought, flipped it, bought two more homes and then that first shopping center, I 1031 exchanged the Whittier property into another one, office building, and then a high rise, and then multiple high rises in a portfolio I bought as a group. So I didn’t buy a Ferrari until 2005, when I was worth well over 30, $40 million back then. And people would say, “Oh, how come you don’t have a Ferrari or a Lamborghini?” Because I was reinvesting my money. And that’s a lot of the investors’ mistake is they, instead of reinvesting their big chunk of income they make early on, they go ahead and splurge. And that’s very common and so hard to resist I know.

Brandon:
Yeah, it is hard. Especially when you see the social media of all these people with the awesome stuff, and cool houses, cool cars, and you’re like, “Oh, I want that.” But you didn’t do that, like you said, you didn’t do that right away. You waited until you built up that business.

David:
And that’s why we bring it up. Because a lot of people see that and they think, “Oh, if I buy a house, I can buy a Ferrari,” and that’s as far as they think. They don’t think, “I have to master real estate and become excellent.” I heard Dave Ramsey telling a story about Jay-Z spending $250,000 in one night on basically bottle service at a club, and he took a lot of heat for spending this much money on something that was frivolous. And Dave Ramsey was saying, “Do you understand that Jay-Z spending $250,000 in one night is like you spending $25 in one night?” Right? You’re not paying the same game as him, so you can’t judge him by the same rules. And I thought that was a really, really good point, that there is a point you can hit where this isn’t actually threatening your business anymore. And I was actually curious in a way Manny, if it’s in a way motivating your business. If this is one of the things you do to keep yourself motivated once you’ve hit financial freedom and you don’t need more money or more success.

Manny:
Well it’s not the money anymore for me. It’s the hunt for the deal. I love taking a property, transforming it. It kind of becomes art after a while. I don’t buy a property that I can’t add value or transform, because at that point I’m just parking my money in real estate. Yeah, you’re going to make money, but it’s not my passion. It doesn’t drive me. I don’t know, I think it’s another business you can do in this country that you have the leverage options, and also the different economies in different states that you can 1031 into. I mean, to me it’s like, I don’t know. I’m in love with real estate, sorry.

David:
You almost sound like a really successful coach, like Mike Krzyzewski at Duke, who said, “I’m retired. I don’t need to coach,” but he just gets joy out of coaching AAU kids and helping turn this kid into the best version of themselves.

Manny:
Yeah, I do. Yeah.

Brandon:
So you mentioned the value add piece. I want to hit on that real quick. What kind of things do you do when you buy a property? What are some of your favorite things to do to add value to a property?

Manny:
Number one, remeasure your building. Most commercial buildings, the [inaudible 00:41:02] standard changes every few years. I picked up 4,000 square feet just by remeasuring my building on the water at Khoshbin’s Landing. 4,000 feet at $1,500 a foot, that’s $6 million in value, and it costs you six to 10 thousand, depending on how big the property is for them to get remeasured. That’s one. Two, I look at different common areas where I can convert into rentable space. For example, I put a cigar lounge on the third floor at Khoshbin’s Landing. That was a huge patio the tenants didn’t use, so I just [inaudible 00:41:38] converted to Cubana Room. Pay $10,000 a month rent at 4% cap, that’s extra three, $4 million on the resale.
Other things is conversion of lease types, if somebody’s on a gross lease and you can go ahead and come around to triple net lease or modified gross at renewal, that’s huge. Because when you sell a property for much higher, the property tax gets reset, that gets passed onto the tenant and the buyer is not going to ding you for the excess property tax and deduct it from the net operating income. There’s a lot, but those are some of the main ones. Changing tenant type, taking a restaurant that’s mom and pop and put a restaurant that’s credit, either a public company or regional, national restaurant chain. Boom, you double, at least double your value, because a mom and pop you’re not going to get probably less than a seven cap, and a national restaurant chain you’re probably going to get four cap. So things of that nature, but those are just a few.

Brandon:
Wow, that’s really good. Yeah, really good stuff there. Because again, I love this idea of value add. Of you buy the property, like you said, you can park money in real estate if you really want to. You’ll make some money. But if you want to grow fast, if you want to be aggressive or if you want to build that wealth quickly, that value add is where it’s at. And where it’s at is the more you get into this and the more you start thinking, “How do I make this better? How do I change this?” Most people in life and business accept what they’re given. “Oh, they said it was a duplex. Okay, that’s what it is,” right? “They said it’s three bedroom. They said it was a 10,000 square foot property.” They’re not thinking, how do I drive more value out of this? How do I bring that out? And that mentality I just see in you, from the time you came to America until now is, “I’m going to figure out a way to make it through.” That’s cool, kind of ties that all together.”

David:
I would also, let’s highlight too before we move on, Manny, you’re not just saying, “Hey, buy real estate. Just buy it. Find a partner and buy it.” What you’re actually talking about is at a deep level, understanding how real estate is valued and how it works. You’ve mentioned if it’s used for this purpose you might get a four cap, but at this purpose you might get a nine cap. You can double the value of the property just by repurposing it. That shows a pretty significant level of understanding with what makes real estate worth what it’s worth. You’re not just advocating, “Get out there. Just buy something.”
You’re actually talking about understanding it at a deep level and developing a mastery of it, and when you hit that, it does become almost effortless like you’re saying, right? You don’t sound scared about deals anymore. It’s exciting. You have a lot of confidence that I can take this and turn it into more, and then you can do things like buy the cars that you like or whatever other passions that you have and real estate sort of funds. So that would be what I would hope everyone would take from this, is if you pour into mastering this, it will pay you back more than you ever put into it.

Manny:
Absolutely, you hit it right on the nail.

Brandon:
Cool man. Well last question before we get to the famous four, so it’s like the last question before the final four, which is before the final one, is you mentioned just briefly over there that you lost $5 million on a property. Can you explain that? That’s a lot of money to lose. I can’t let you just gloss over that one, we’ve got to touch on that.

Manny:
Yeah. This was a single tenant building in Clear Lake NASA. A subsidiary of Boeing occupied, USA, United Space Alliance. They had a lot of communication with Discovery shuttle, they put millions and millions in fiber into the building so I’m guessing they’re not going anywhere. They had four years left with two five year option, and when I did my tenant interview, the CEO says, “Hey, the only way we would not renew, exercise our five year renewal, is if we lose the contract with NASA.” Which it’s almost impossible, nobody else is going to be able to fulfill that.
What happened? Elon Musk happened. SpaceX got the contract, and I got a FedEx notification with one page in there that said, “We’re moving out of the building and we’re not going to renew.” And I bought that building for $17 million. I put $5 million down, and I had own brother, sister, some of family friends, they wanted to invest with me. That was one building I put their money in there that we lost, and that was very painful. I didn’t care losing two and a half million of my own money, because I know I can make more, and my net worth was pretty good at the time. It didn’t really ding me. But it just still hurts, two and a half million dollars to lose.
Anyway, so that’s one of my painful lesson I learned. It doesn’t matter how good of a credit that tenant is. It could be US government. If it’s single tenant, you’re putting all your eggs in one basket. So I don’t buy any single tenant buildings no matter what. I don’t buy any building that a single tenant occupies more than 20% of the rent roll. That’s one of my rules, diversify.

Brandon:
I love that you said that, because yeah, I’ve seen investors and I’ve talked to investors who, they will buy a large single tenant property. And they go, “Yeah, those people never leave. They’re a great company, they’ll be there for years.” And I’m still like, I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t do it, that freaks me out. I need that diversification.

Manny:
Trends change. Even Rite Aid, I’m seeing a lot of Rite Aid, Walgreens coming to market, and I’ve never seen this much triple net single tenant coming to market. And then guess what? Amazon’s going after pharmacy. They may buy Target that has pharmacy, so it’s on the chopping block. And consumer behavior changes, and if that happens, look. If you’ve got all your money into 10 Walgreens, and guess what, if 10 years from now if Walgreens not in business, you’ve just lost all your money. And the dirt is worth whatever the dirt is worth, but you’re paying a huge premium for that credit tenant. And if that credit tenant is not here, you’re going to be in bad shape.

Brandon:
Yeah, that’s fascinating. I never thought about Walgreens or CVS being in trouble, but when I think about it, nobody ever thought Blockbuster was in trouble either. When you can press a button on your phone and your medicine’s delivered six hours later, and you can have a virtual call with a pharmacist, why do you go to Walgreens? Yeah, that’s fascinating.

David:
This actually supports though what we were saying earlier, because that fact right there could scare some people so they never buy. “I just don’t know, too many things could happen, I don’t know,” right? But what happens is, when CVS goes out of business or whatever and you’re left with all this space, you need to get your Manny on. You need to Khoshbin this thing and ask, how could I better use this space, right? Is this something I could turn into residential living and get it rezoned? Is this something I can rent out as office, or warehouse space, or storage or something? To me, that’s how real estate is meant to be done, is you’re always asking that question, is what’s the highest and best value of what this space is, and how could it be repurposed?
And if it wasn’t for that, I would also be too scared to ever take action. It’s just paralyzing when you think about, what happens if? But as long as you’ve got that, well, if we come out there, like Peyton Manning sees the defense, and the coach called a running play and he sees that it’s stacked with linebackers, he’s got the confidence to call a pass play. That’s all that we’re really describing here, is if you understand the fundamentals of how this works, you won’t have to operate in that fear.

Manny:
Yeah. As long as you’re buying the right location and the density’s there, you can always find a better use for that property. You’ve got to buy in the right demographic. Population’s increasing. That’s why I like Arizona. I love Texas. These are business friendly states that’s always having increasing population year over year.

David:
You know what else they all have in common? Tennessee, Florida, Texas, Arizona, Idaho, the states that are doing well? Californians are moving there.

Manny:
Yeah. Absolutely, yeah.

David:
Bringing all their money with them.

Manny:
Yeah.

Brandon:
Yeah. I was just having dinner last night with a guy from Boise, and he’s like, “Yeah, property values have doubled in the last couple years.” It’s just nuts. So yeah, he was like, “It’s all Californians. It’s all your guys’ fault.”

David:
All the people in Idaho are saying, “Our values doubled,” and all the people in California are saying, “My house is half as expensive,” as they move there.

Brandon:
All right, well let’s get onto the last segment of this show, and that is our…

Speaker 5:
(singing).

Brandon:
This is the part of the show where we ask the same four questions every week to every guest, and Manny, we’re going to throw them at you real quick. Number one, is there a real estate related book that has made a big impact on your life? What’s a favorite real estate related book?

Manny:
Well, I hate to tell you, but Art of the Deal by Donald Trump. I like that, because I just liked how he took a property that was basically run down and nobody wanted it and turned it into a massive development and made money. And Art of Deal is basically negotiating how to make a deal, [inaudible 00:50:03] everybody says, “City is not ever going to give an approval for this,” he made it happen. So just the challenge he took on a property and turned it into a massive success. That was an eye opener. But more than anything, my landlord Mr. Williams was a very big inspiration for me, getting into commercial real estate. Seeing his wealth he’s accumulated over the years, buying commercial real estate. But the only book I’ve read in real estate, I hate to tell you, it was The Art of the Deal many, many years ago.

Brandon:
All right.

David:
All right, next question. What is your favorite business book?

Manny:
You’re not going to believe this, but I’m not a big bookworm. I don’t read much. Everything I’ve learned has been out in the field, either through transaction or actually watching, doing a lot of research online, reading a lot of news. But there is no specific book I would say that comes to mind.

David:
Well, maybe we’ll write one someday. Maybe you’ve got a book in you.

Manny:
Now I’ve written two books.

David:
So let’s hear about those.

Manny:
Yeah, so I have Contrarian PlayBook in 2011, 10 years ago. I self published it. It did great. To this day, I still get great residual. It’s sold on Amazon. That is basically the basic principles of my strategies as a contrarian. How to buy, when to buy, timing the market and things of that nature. And basically it tells a little bit about my journey, but not a whole lot. And a lot of people read that book. They loved the business part of it, but they said, “We want to know more about you personally,” so I wrote my second book, Driven, a few years ago. And Entrepreneur Magazine actually reached out to me, says, “Hey, we want to write your book. We’ll pay for the ghostwriter, all that stuff.” I’m like, “Okay.” And we did that, and that’s, Driven is more focused on my biography and my journey. Has a lot of pictures of my kids, and past and present.

David:
I like the car theme too with that, Driven. It’s a good name. You had a smart marketer there.

Manny:
Yeah. I mean, you have to have the drive in you, otherwise you’re not going to go anywhere in life.

David:
All right, next question. What are some of your hobbies?

Manny:
Well, you see these beautiful cars behind me? Well, exercise. Exercising, I love fishing, driving cars. Those are I would say my top three that I love. And then obviously hunting for real estate. Believe it or not, I still hop on internet and start searching for properties when I have the downtime, kids go to bed. I just love it. Finding that diamond in the rough.

David:
What it reminds me of, especially for someone Manny at your level who still likes it, if you guys ever played that computer game when we were kids, The Oregon Trail, to me, the funnest part of it was when you’d go hunting, right? You’d go out there and try to shoot a buffalo, right? So I would just always want to hunt, but then I’d end up with 9,000 pounds of meat, and I could only take back like 20 pounds of it to the camp, right? That’s what it gets like when you’re hunting deals, when you have all these ideas. You’re like, “I want to take down this one, and I would do this.” But then you realize, I don’t have the bandwidth to actually execute on 90% of this. It’s that same feeling from The Oregon Trail.

Brandon:
That’s funny. All right, my last question of the day. Manny, if you had to really boil it down, what do you think separates successful people from those who give up, fail, or never get started?

Manny:
I would say successful people have one thing in common, right? They don’t look at failure as a failure. They look at it as a lesson, and they move up. And to me, I’ve had many failures, but I don’t think it was failure. Those were lessons I learned along, and I took that and I improved myself. So failures are self improvement. It’s how you look at it. So my mental state of mentality is, anything that happens to me is for a reason, and there is something bigger and better waiting for me. And with that, you never look at anything negative.

Brandon:
That’s really good man, really good.

David:
Last question of the day, Manny. Where can people find out more about you?

Manny:
Oh, mannykhoshbin.com, and we have a couple of links for the Contrarian Academy on my various programs, but mannykhoshbin.com, just my name, dotcom. And also if they want to follow me on Instagram, I do share basically everything on Instagram. I love to share my story often, and also some of the things I do with real estate on there to inspire others that, hey, American dream is well, and can happen.
And a lot of people say, “Oh, it was easy back then, but it’s so hard to do it now.” It’s the opposite. Right now it’s so much easier to do anything in life, because you can network. You can access, you have access to everything. Back then, you had to fly out to look at a property in Houston. Now I get on internet and I do Google Earth, I check around. A lot of them has virtual tours. It’s so much easier to make money now than 30 years ago, so if you power up, yeah. You power up, you get knowledgeable, and you start networking, I mean, anybody can be a multimillionaire in time if you commit to it and have a never give up mentality.

Brandon:
Love it. I love it, man. Well thank you so much. This has been phenomenal. I love hearing your story and all the lessons you can share. Can’t wait to see where you head in the future as well, so you’re killing it.

Manny:
Thank you so much. Thank you David, thank you Brandon. Pleasure.

Brandon:
And that was our show with many Khoshbin. That was awesome, that was awesome. Especially, I loved that value add piece at the end there. I loved the whole thing, but I loved that tangible, “Here’s some things that will make you millions of dollars.” It was like oh, that’s great. Yeah, phenomenal.

David:
Yeah, I also love that he has a 30 year plus perspective on real estate. He’s gone through different market cycles, he’s seen what worked at different times. He’s got a very well rounded and mature perspective on wealth building, and you don’t find a lot of people that have been investing that long that are still willing to come on a podcast and share what they know.

Brandon:
Yeah. Yeah, I know. That was very cool. One thing he brought up, and I didn’t want to say it during the show because I know we had limited time with Manny today, but I’ll say it now. When we talked about the car thing, how he buys these really just amazing cars. You guys have got to check out his Instagram for the cars, but just amazing cars. And he said it’s like a passion project investment or whatever, a passion investment. In other words, he’s not buying them to lose money. They are assets, like we talked about. Well I had a similar conversation. I was on the North Shore of Oahu a few days ago, having dinner on this amazing property that was right on the beach in front of where all the surfers go, right by a pipeline. And it was just this stupid nice property. And somebody that was there said something like, “Oh man, it would be so cool to own one of these.” And you know what I said? I said, “Oh yeah, I’m going to own one of these someday.”
And I didn’t say that from a bragging thing. It’s just the fact that I’m in real estate, and I have a passion for nice properties. So the same way Manny buys cars knowing he can sell them again for later, I was like, “Yeah, of course I’m going to own a $30 million beachfront mansion, because I’ll sell it for 40 later on.” So it’s not a liability, it’s not just some rich guy trying to buy a fancy house to show off. I’ll buy it and then I’ll sell it for more. It’s not even a question in my mind that I’m going to own one of those. Same thing with this, it’s real estate and fancy cars. Unlike, you go buy a 2021, I don’t know, Tesla, that thing’s going to be worth significantly less five years from now. But either older cars, or really fancy cars, or artwork, or houses, stuff like that, yeah. There could be some fun stuff in there.

David:
Cars go out of style, clothes go out of style, computers go out of style, but real estate never goes out of style.

Brandon:
You can put that on your tombstone. Here lies David, he went out of style. All right.

David:
My grave site won’t go out of style, because it’s real estate.

Brandon:
Yeah, you can resell that thing later. This is horrible. All right, let’s get out of here man. Appreciate you and everything you do for the BiggerPockets community, so thanks man.

David:
Awesome man, thank you. This is David-

Brandon:
Wait, hold on. What day does this episode come out?

David:
Mid-September.

Brandon:
So okay, mid-September, which means BPCON’s coming up next month. So if tickets have not sold out yet, which I don’t know, we’re recording this early. But you can check by going to bpcon2021.com, and if they are sold out, check back, and you never know. We might release more tickets, or maybe there’ll be a digital version, or at least you’ll know to sign up for next year’s conference, because they sell out quick here at BP world. With that said, David, get us out here.

David:
This is David Greene, for Brandon “What do you want on your tombstone” Turner, signing off.

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