Real Estate Development With Darcy Marler

The REI Diamonds Show - Daniel Breslin | Darcy Marler | Real Estate

 

Guest: Darcy Marler is a seasoned real estate investor and developer with over two decades of experience in flipping houses, rental properties, land development, and new construction. From an MIT graduate to a successful real estate entrepreneur, Darcy’s journey has been marked by valuable lessons and insights. Passionate about transforming raw land into subdivided lots ready for construction, Darcy specializes in building and flipping houses, duplexes, and small multifamily properties.

 

Big Idea: In this episode, Darcy Marler delves into the transition from fixing and flipping houses to land development and new construction, stressing the need to align real estate strategies with personal preferences. He outlines risk mitigation and profit maximization strategies, emphasizing the substantial benefits of new construction, including higher returns, better tenants, and efficient management. Darcy highlights advantages such as ease of financing and incentives for developers addressing the housing crisis. He underscores opportunities for smaller investors in smaller-scale projects like multifamily units or residential development. Understanding market demand, leveraging financing, and exploring exit strategies are key takeaways for maximizing returns in real estate development.

This episode of The REI Diamonds Show is sponsored by the Deal Machine. This software enables real estate investors to develop a reliable & low-cost source of off-market deals. For a limited time, you get free access here.

This episode is also sponsored by Lending Home. Lending Home offers reliable & low-cost fix & flip loans with interest rates as low as 9.25%. Buy & hold loans offered even lower. Get a FREE iPad when you close your first deal by registering here now.

 

Resources mentioned in this episode:

Hutton Radway

 

Darcy Marler & I Discuss Real Estate Development:

  • Budgeting and Risk Management in New Construction (3:31)
  • Philosophies on Holding vs. Selling Properties (10:02)
  • Pre-Selling Land vs. Building Spec Homes (15:54)
  • Identifying Potential Land for Development & Subdividing (18:21)
  • Evaluating Opportunities in Aging Neighborhoods (23:16)
  • Benefits of New Construction for Rental Properties (36:38)
  • Importance of Demographics and Location in Real Estate Investment (45:36)
  • The Significance of Partnerships and Operational Support in Real Estate Ventures (49:48)

 

Relevant Episodes: (200+ Content-Packed Interviews in Total)

Watch the episode here

 

Listen to the podcast here

 

Real Estate Development With Darcy Marler

Darcy Marler, welcome to the REI Diamonds Show. How are you?

I am doing very well. Thanks for having me on. I appreciate it. This is great.

I was excited by the topic. I think our audience will be equally as excited. Most of us are probably fixing and flipping houses. We are interested in buying and selling real estate. We would improve said real estate to get to that profit. I think that our discussion around land and development, and making that transition will be a very much well-received topic by the audience and by myself. Darcy, would you mind giving us the background and the career evolution to get where you’re at now?

I was an actual IT guy way back in the day, about 23 years ago. I got tired of that, so I wanted to get into real estate. I started flipping and doing long-term rentals, and that led to some land development and new construction. I’ve done all the strategies. I had close to 1,000 tenants and 240 renovated units and written a couple of books. I’m now doing a bit of everything. I keep coming back to new. I like new. I like being creative. I like knocking stuff down instead of fixing it up now. That’s where I’m at now.

 

The REI Diamonds Show - Daniel Breslin | Darcy Marler | Real Estate
 

Biggest Lessons From Early Development Deals

Why don’t we start with an example then? This could be your first development deal, or you can not do that one if that one’s not maybe the biggest lesson. Maybe you could pick one that came with a big lesson that helps us expand our vision from single-family fix-and-flip or buying duplexes that exist to ground-up new construction.

The first one is perfect. I had this 1950s bungalow. I was going to flip it. The person next to me passed away, so I bought that as well. I said I’ve always wanted to build. What does that look like? I moved both of the old houses off. I didn’t even demolish them. I sold them. They got moved off. I split those two lots into four.

I made sure all four lots were serviced, and then I built four new homes. I loved it. It was exactly what I wanted. The big thing that I’m all about, too, is matching your personality to your strategy. If you’re not enjoying what you’re doing, what’s a better fit? I love the creativity. I love the pride of watching the stuff come out of the ground. I think it’s awesome.

 

Match your personality to your strategy. If you’re not enjoying what you’re doing, what’s a better fit?

 

You say it so calmly now, and I have friends who are developers bringing stuff out of the ground. Some of them are calm, others maybe not so much. How do I say it? I feel like some of the developers have this innate riverboat gambler mentality. I feel like it’s hard to, at least for me, because I’ve never brought something out of the ground where I was a sponsor. I’m a partner in the fourteen developments for self-storage, but I’m not the guy who’s budgeting that. I am a money guy.

Budgeting And Risk Management In New Construction

I don’t have the emotional barrier. Personally, I do have an emotional barrier. I could do a $150,000 flip, get architects, the whole thing. We can get that done, no problem. I have this mental block of getting past dirt. Is it going to be $400,000? Is it going to be $500,000? Is it going to be $600,000 to build said property? Am I going to be able to sell it otherwise? It feels like a humongous risk to put the shovel in the ground when I’m not clear on that budget on the front end. Maybe we could pull on the thread of the first deal. You’ve got four houses coming out of the ground. How did you budget for that new construction, or did you take a riverboat gamble?

They say God protects the naive and the stupid, so I’m not sure which one I was. Let me go at it a little bit another way. As flippers, we have to finish. You can’t half finish a flip and expect to sell it for any profit. In this world, let’s say every building, whether it’s residential or commercial, whatever, starts with grass and ends with a building. There are all these things that have to get done. We don’t have to do the whole thing. There are three parts. There’s the permitting, entitlement kind of thing. There’s the pipe in the ground, getting the infrastructure in, and then there’s the physical build. You don’t have to do the whole thing. You can pick one of those pieces.

I did the whole thing with that story I told you, but once I had the four units or four lots separated with four different sets of pipe in the ground, I could have sold four serviced lots. There are a lot more entry and exit points in this world that don’t exist maybe in the flip and rental world, and that can take some of the scariness out of it because I’ve got a clear exit point. Let’s say I’m going to go, and I’m going to do the whole thing, and then the economy changes, and interest rates go crazy, and costs go crazy.

There are multiple exits. I can sell it to a builder because his internal costs are less than mine would be, so maybe it doesn’t pencil out for me anymore to finish that final product, but it still makes sense for the builder. I can sell it and make a lift from changing zoning and density and usage, or whatever, or putting some pipe in the ground, knocking down the old house. There are lots of exit points, which may help you feel better and help mitigate the risk along the way.

Even when we flip houses, we’re throwing darts at the number. I think it’s $60,000. It ends up being $82,000. That’s okay. We sold it, and we got a little luck in the market, and maybe we made the profit we targeted, or maybe more. Usually, my exit price, Darcy, on the product, a house, whatever, I’m going to go low. If I think I can get $525,000 with luck, maybe I’m building a deal on $485,000 or $500,000. Maybe I’m so conservative that it sells for $550,000 when it’s all said and done. We did a little nicer job. We got lucky, the spring market, the market moved, etc.

On the front end, we’re throwing a dart at that renovation budget still. I’m not price per square foot, making sure the electrical is $8,000 versus $11,000. We roughly know it’s going to be $8,000 to $10,000. We’re using $10,000 when we come up with the budget. Did you have any exact budget for these four houses when you were building?

It is because I’ve done a bunch of flips in my day too, and the worst thing is you don’t want to go into the wall because you don’t know what scary things are behind the wall. Here, we’re going to tear down that old house anyway, so we don’t care. It’s a lot easier to get a fixed budget to do this job, this is going to cost me this much because it’s brand new out of the gate. With the four houses, I went to an actual quantity surveyor because I was my onsite supervisor guy, even though I’d never built a house before. I wouldn’t necessarily recommend that. Here’s the budget, and then you’re out there getting quotes.

 

The worst thing in flipping is going into a wall because you never know what scary things are behind it.

 

Here’s what it costs to tear down the house, or in my case, move them off. Here’s what it’s going to cost me to bring the utility lines in from the street, from the city. Here’s what it’s going to cost to frame. Here’s what it’s going to cost to throw the HVAC system in. It’s a lot easier to get cleaner quotes on that than I found with the flipping world.

You were committed at that point. You did. You already owned the dirt. You knew you were going to do it. At that point, it was bidding out the job efficiently versus underwriting the deal on the front end to figure out if that one works. You’re not going to call and get 15 or 20 quotes together before you make your offer. You have to have some gut feeling for how much each is going to cost to build.

In that case, my fallback position was it’s too hard, it costs too much, whatever. I’ll flip both these houses now. I had that luxury. Even if I hadn’t bought the houses yet, let’s say I was looking at a house that I think is a better teardown than it is a renovation, the great thing about it is it’s linear. Things have to be done in the order. You can’t put on the roof before you put on the walls. Utility pipes have to go in.

It’s linear, and that makes it like a to-do list. Psychologically, it can be all intimidating for us that this is hard, but it’s one step at a time. You get the quotes. I can call a couple of demolition companies, what’s it going to cost to tear down that old house? Perfect. Check. Call the city, what’s it going to cost to hook up to the city waterline? Check. It allows us to move through and make that whole process simpler for us but also less intimidating. It’s not throwing darts, as you say.

Got you. I have friends who, we’re talking $20 million profits, and I feel like they threw darts on what they were going to put in the property, and it worked out for them. At some level, all of us in real estate are throwing darts at some point and taking a risk. That’s what risk’s all about, in a sense. You do have to take a little bit of a gamble. Hopefully, we’ll be educated. On the four-lot package, what was the total duration from the purchase of that first house to the sale of the final fourth house? I assume you sold them, not rented them?

I sold them. I prefer to sell instead of keep stuff. The actual knocking down of the first house to finishing the fourth was about ten months. I was in and out within ten months.

Built the fourth house in ten months and then sold maybe 4 or 5 months later, settlement?

I had them all pre-sold. The whole thing, let’s say, was permitting and all that. Let’s call it sixteen months from cradle to grave.

Philosophies On Holding Vs. Selling Properties

That’s pretty quick. You’ve mentioned two philosophical things that I want to highlight for readers. We get, a lot of times, a buy and hold everything forever philosophy, and then we get an everything is for sale. I’m more of the everything is for sale kind of guy. We did 331 deals last year. All of them are sold and gone already, and I do hold a handful of rentals in my portfolio, but they’re a savings account.

In that aspect, I’d be lying if I said I’m a buy-and-hold forever. I try to be more of a buy-and-hold forever with my portfolio. I don’t know why. I think it’s more work for me to try to slice and get out of them versus keep renting them out, and the management company handles it. Why is it that you prefer the sell everything versus the buy and hold forever?

I get bored easily. The other thing too that 23 years has taught me is no strategy works all the time, everywhere in every economy. Stuff changes, as we’ve seen in the last few years. I don’t like the concept of, “I’m going to get in bed with a JV partner and own this apartment building for twelve years.” I barely know the guy, and I don’t know what’s going to happen in twelve years, and all of a sudden, I bought it at a 1.9% interest rate, and now I refinance and my mortgage payment is three times what it was. I don’t like that. I’ve got Darcy-isms, and in and out quick is one of my favorite ones.

 

No strategy works all the time, everywhere, and in every economy. Things change, as we’ve seen in the last few years.

 

As I said, those are the three parts of development I would recommend picking one, do the entitlement bid, get the lift from changing zoning density and sell, or buy land in this state, put the pipe in the ground and sell service lines, or buy land that’s already serviced and build the fourplex or tenplex, whatever you’re going to build, so that you can get in and out quick. This is because rising interest rates are a big deal. If you’re going to hold something over twelve years if you’re in and out in sixteen months, it’s a factor, but it’s not anywhere near as big a factor as if you’re holding it long-term. I find these strategies are a lot more recession-proof to get in and out quickly.

I got into real estate in 2006. I was 26 years old. The market was at its height through 2003, 2004, 2005. I knew that, like my parents’ house, I think they paid $89,000 for it, and houses on the block were selling for $150,000 to $185,000 or something like that. It was a long time later. We bought it in 1987. To me, real estate prices didn’t feel like they should move that fast. When I got in, in 2006, everything was inflated beyond where it should be. You got to get out as quick as you possibly can.

We started flipping and doing those kinds of things, and it turned out the market did go down from 2006 to 2013 when it bottomed out, various different places and points in the timeline around the country, I’m sure. We’ve been on a pretty good appreciation run. I don’t know if it’s because I got in as the bubble was bursting last time, or maybe the Darcy-ism and the sell everything quick is the right methodology. Where I’m going with it is that real estate has always felt like a game of hot potato to me. I’m flipping a house, and that thing is hot. I’m losing sleep.

The construction is going on. “Can we get it done faster? Can you guys work on Saturday? How about Sunday afternoon?” I’m exaggerating a little bit with my pressure on the contractors. I want to be out of that house as soon as I possibly can. It’s a hot potato. I got to pass it on to the next. If someone’s going to live there, it’s not a hot potato for them. That’s going to be their home and their location for a very long period of time. I’m on board with the Darcy-ism of selling it quickly.

I’m 57. I bought my first personal residence when I was twenty, in 1987, and I paid 12.5% interest. I thought I was getting a deal because three years before, it was 16%, 18%, 20%. I thought this was awesome. It’s a perspective.

Pre-Selling Land Vs. Building Spec Homes

You’re right about that. The other philosophical thing you touched on here, which I don’t even know if it’s a Darcyism or not, is pre-selling the houses. I had Brandon Cobb, a friend of mine, on the show, I think I’ve had him on twice now, and his original philosophy around pre-selling versus finishing it and selling it was that he wanted to pre-sell. That jammed him up during the inflationary period because he had already sold and locked in some prices, so he got into a little bit of a jam. He flipped to the other side of that philosophy, which is, “I’m not pre-selling anything because I want to make sure I can continue to ride the market.” That probably was a good strategy for the last 38 months, give or take.

We’re now in probably a little bit of a different market. It would be worth noting that Brandon then moved on to the thing you mentioned before. You’ve got these three components, permits and entitlements, adding new utilities, selling finished lots, or building vertically and coming out of the ground. Brandon had mentioned now, on that second episode, that he’s more partial to running numbers 1 and 2, buying the land, getting the permits, putting in the infrastructure, and then selling those lots, sometimes in an entire package to the end builder. Did you go back and forth? Do you sometimes pre-sell and sometimes not pre-sell? Where’s the Darcyism in that, if any?

A couple of things. I tend to not like the pre-selling of the final house to the end people that are going to live there because then they’re picking colors, and they’re painting my ass as I’m trying to build this. You are better off building spec in that sense. At least you’re not fighting the owners, “I want to move that wall.” It’s too late. I already got the building permit, the wall has to be there. I’m doing a land development deal in Houston. The goal is to pre-sell the final finished service lots. I’m not going to build the houses. I’m going to create service lots to sell to the builders before you’re even in the ground.

That gives you security in terms of, “Here’s the end price, and here’s the dates.” They’re going to take blocks of so many every three months. That makes your lenders happy and makes everybody happy. It goes back to your personality, what are you more comfortable with? I like the security, maybe, of having the final number there. In that scenario you talked about, I got my butt kicked in the 2008 recession doing a 36-unit development where I was doing the land and the builds of the houses. Pre-sold probably twenty of them, so two-thirds. The recession hit, and I was scrambling. There was a massive boom before that. You’re seeing run-ups of both costs and revenue. It was a roller coaster. In and out quickly.

Analyzing Houston’s Real Estate Market

I vaguely remember the 2008 inflation at the gas pump. We were complaining about the price of copper, but I didn’t have the scale in my career at that point, from 2006 to 2008, where I was affected by it like we were this time around, doing a higher volume of deals. History repeats itself. Pre-selling the land is a smart idea. We have a project that we have an LOI for. I think it’s 16 to 20 townhomes, and we have a rezone clause in there, and that would be pre-sold to them before we have to enter this rezoning. That might be an ideal scenario. How big is that in Houston? Could we pull apart that example a little bit?

What I did there is, it’s still in the works, rather than buy the land and then try to raise the money, I went the other way. I did what’s called a blind pool, or a blind raise, and I raised some money. I’m now on the hunt for the land. Again, 23 years of experience. I’ve built close to 50 houses, duplexes, and small multifamily. I’m okay with it. I like it, but I don’t love it. I love the dirt bit.

I’m going to focus on what I like. We’re looking for 20 to 50 acres of land that we’ll subdivide into smaller lots, whether it’s city lots, half-acre lots, or larger, and then we’ll get the builder set up. The way that works is you’re typically looking at a 15% deposit of the final agreed-upon end sale price once they’ve done their due diligence.

At the time when all the drawings are done, and the permits are in, they know that this is going ahead. That’s a great way of also getting funding as you’re going through. I now have to have that much less financing with my construction loan. That now saves a ton of money in interest costs and whatever. That’s another benefit of maybe figuring out the end piece before you’re throwing darts at the wall.

Will you take that 20 to 50-acre parcel through the utilities and sell finished lots there?

Yeah. Piping in the ground, the internal road, sidewalk, subdivision, the light poles, the fire hydrant over there, and then selling it to one or more builders.

Have you successfully got a couple of those closed so far?

Not this one, but over the past 23 years, I’ve certainly done that. As I said, when I was first starting out, I had to do the whole thing. You’ve got to do the whole thing. It’s like flipping, but after a while, pick the bit you like and do that bit.

A hundred percent. We’re flipping houses. Chicago is a great market. Philly is a great market. Atlanta is a great market. There are great markets all over the country, and there’s a need for what we do. In Philadelphia, there are a lot of products available where I’m not necessarily flipping in the lowest-end areas, let’s say, in the Philadelphia region, there in the city. I would guess you have investors who are making $30,000 to $40,000, maybe $50,000 in profit if the contractor guy’s in there offsetting his labor costs. There’s probably some higher-end stuff, and they’re making more money there as well.

In Atlanta, the renovations are significantly lower cost. In the Philadelphia market, we’re talking about 1900s to 1920s products that are going to need $40,000 to $80,000, depending on if the guy’s doing the work, to make the $30,000 to $40,000 to $50,000. In Atlanta, the product is newer. An older product is built in the ’50s or the ’60s in Atlanta, and then you have a lot coming up through the ’70s, ’80s, ’90s. Maybe you put $20,000 or $25,000 in there for your average flip, and then your upside is probably $40,000 to $50,000, give or take. The South Side of Chicago is interesting.

It’s always been an interesting market to me because we have so many products where you’re going to spend $80,000, $90,000, or $100,000 in renovations. When I first moved from Philly to Chicago, I was shocked when they were telling me how much, “We got to spend $100,000?” Back then, it was $80,000. It’s now $100,000 or $110,000, something like that, to renovate these bungalows. The upside there is it’s $70,000 or $80,000. There’s so much product and inventory.

Best Entry Points For Real Estate Developers

I don’t know how long that’s going to last but to flip houses on the South Side, you’re going to have challenging neighborhoods and a certain contractor, and some contractors are not going to be willing to go down and work in these areas. The product is there, and there’s a volume of deals available to flip houses in the city of Chicago. It’s a great market. I’m curious. We’re in 2024. The interest rates are high.

If you were talking to one of those investors in any one of those three markets, who is making those kinds of spreads, what would be your advice to them as far as here’s what might work for you to consider going into the development space? Would it be ground-up new construction? Would it be fine multis? Would it be skip right ahead to the land development? Where would be the best transition for that flipper to proceed into development as a career?

If life is working well for you and the numbers are working, then fine. I’m more talking to the person who’s not happy with their rentals or their flips or whatever. This isn’t what I signed up for, sorry. A couple of quick facts here. The average lifespan of a wooden structure in North America is 70 years. Brick is 90. That puts us in 1954 and 1934. Anything 1970 and newer, keep that. That’s a flip for sure.

Of the ’40s and older, tear it down. Why are we keeping those? Obvious exceptions for the historically or architecturally valuable, but that’s a small percentage. Most old crap is old crap. The ’50s and ’60s is your call, what you want to do. For the most part, the problem with what we’ve been taught over the last 40 years in real estate education is we’re taught to fix up something. That’s all we know. Fix up an old building, keep it as a rental, flip it, Airbnb it, rent, and whatever. We need a building.

Sometimes you’re sitting there as a flipper and you go to that 1910 and say, “I can’t, I don’t know, this is too far gone. I don’t know what to do with this,” and off you go to the next one. As the inventory starts to age, we’re always taught the values in the building, and to create value, you have to add value to the building. As the inventory ages, the value more and more is in the land. Can you bring out the value of the land?

 

We’ve always thought that the value is in the building, but as the inventory ages, the value is in the land.

 

For example, most of your readers probably, as they’re flippers, if they come up with a vacant lot, they don’t know what to do. If they come up with a 1910 piece of crap that is a teardown, they can’t deal with that either, so off they go. If you tear down the 1910 piece of crap, now you’ve got a vacant lot. What can we do with a vacant lot? That’s part of an educational process to learn.

What’s great about that is that now that separates you from almost all the rest of the competition that ever read a real estate investing book, took a course, or listened to a podcast. We’re all looking for the same product. If you know how to deal with vacant lots and old crap, that sets you apart because most investors don’t know what to do with that. That would probably be the, as you’re dealing, like I said, in Chicago and Philly and some of these, Baltimore, some of these old places, it’s got a lot of that old product.

Let’s stop fixing it up. I used to be the fix-it-up guy. I’m now a tear-it-down guy. Let’s tear it down. What you come back with, instead of one-for-one, because with a flip, typically, we fix it up, we had one unit before, we got one after. If we did do tear down before, we tore down the old house and built one nice house. Let’s come back with a duplex, fourplex, or a sixplex. Let’s help the housing crisis. Let’s help the missing middle that we’re talking about all the time with a nicer, newer product.

Let’s revitalize. Let’s stop the urban sprawl as we’re heading out and spending all that money as taxpayers, on new roads, new schools, and hospitals. Let’s come back in and revitalize some of these older inner-city neighborhoods with some new products. It is because everybody likes new. Nobody likes to live in that 1930s burr. Let’s come back with the new stuff that people want.

We notice in these areas, South Side Chicago, a lot of the areas in Philadelphia, Atlanta, it’s a night and day difference in Atlanta by the West End and the Beltline area. They put a walking trail in the railroad loop going around Atlanta. It’s been a project going on for a long time. It’s a great example of bringing the area back to life. When we started in 2016 in Atlanta, you’d walk around and maybe there was one occupied house on the entire block.

Maybe now there’s 1 or 2 vacancies, and maybe there’s a handful of them that are in decrepit shape, and everything else like brand-new renovations. They weren’t necessarily tearing those down, but I think what we’re seeing is a lot of these challenged areas are benefiting from the housing shortage, and they’re seeing the investment, and there’s no other options. People are willing to move there, willing to buy there, willing to own there.

Site Selection Criteria For New Construction

The question is about the new construction. If I’m looking at this 1910 house in the neighborhood, Darcy, and this is what we run into a lot of times in the area, there are no other comps for new construction in this town, in the school district, or the zip code. Is that an automatic pass? Should I be now looking for neighborhoods that do have some new construction, or is there a case to be made for being somewhat visionary and providing somewhat of this unique product and a build-it-they-will-come mentality? Fill me in on a site selection or the site pass criteria.

I like the precedent. I use the analogy in World War I, it’s nobody wanted to be the first guy going over the hill. Make sure some other people have done it. You come into a neighborhood, and what we’re looking for, like I said, because of the age of the houses, I specifically target neighborhoods that are 1960s and older. That was the outskirts of town in 1940. Those are what I’m looking for. I want precedent there. It is because there’s typically a NIMBY, not in my backyard, installation. In some of these older neighborhoods, people bought this house 30 years ago for $40,000 or $50,000. This is a retirement. They’re scared.

I want somebody else to have fought that fight with both city hall and with the local community so that they’re allowing their whole house to come down and a duplex to come up, or maybe some triplex or fourplex scenario. That’s what I’m looking for. In the other situation, where there isn’t precedent, try to stick to the borders, stick to the main roads, the high-traffic arteries kind of thing. It is because the city will usually almost always approve permits for higher zoning, and higher density, on the main traffic.

The neighborhood community group could care less. They care more about what’s inside. It’s almost like a wedge. That’s how you get there. We’re going to build something new on the main street. It’s harder for the neighborhood to block, or the city to block, if you bought the house right next door. You got approval. How come I can’t get it? It wedges itself in there. It’s two ways to look at that, but you never want to be the first guy over the hill, that’s for sure.

In the small development space, meaning 1 to 4 units, buying a single-family house, tearing it down, is the competitive advantage, or the edge, finding a single-family where 2, 3, or 4 units can be built on the lot? Is that part of the strategy?

Yeah, because I think most people with land development, new construction, they have it in their head that’s for the big companies on the outskirts of town. They’re going to buy 400 acres and put up a thousand homes. As smaller investors, we can get into this world too, by focusing on that one old house on the city block, the 50-foot frontage city, regular city lot.

The other thing, too, is that I think it’s a mistake to assume that most people who want new, that they want a new 2024 build, only want to live in the suburbs. Lots of people want to come back to where there are high walkability scores, where there’s existing infrastructure, and where there are mature trees. Lots of people like that inner city vibe.

There isn’t the product, as you said, like most of the stuff, because all we’ve been taught, is how to fix stuff up. If we knew what to do with the old stuff and the vacant lots, I think we, as smaller investors, there’s a real opportunity for us to come in, and then we’re not competing against the deep-pocket developers in the outside of town.

Navigating Development Without Sales Comparable

It’s logical. I have two friends working on a similar strategy. They would get areas in the Philadelphia market where these lots are practically free. It’s a thousand bucks, $2,000, or $5,000, or $10,000, you’re getting a lot. They would rezone that lot, I believe, to build either two, I guess it would be three-flat, so triplex, maybe a quad on there. They would build them, and there were zero comps for new construction. There’s not a lot of that 2, 3, 4-unit product in the city of Philadelphia. There’s enough, there’s duplexes that are around, but they’re not like they are in Chicago, New York City, Boston, cities like that. It is because he had no other sales comparables, he would simply rent them all out, Section 8 program, and then refinance based on the income.

He’d built himself this wonderful portfolio of buy, build, rent, refinance, and recycle the cash. He’s now got all this wonderful product that he built that has low maintenance, that’s probably got a long lifespan ahead of him. That was how he was able to get around not having comparables. It is because he’s doing that, there’s zero competition because he’s not selling them once he’s done. No comparable sales are popping up. Everyone else wants to fly in and capitalize and drive the land values up. I have another friend who does magnificent design. I ask myself, or I observe, some visionary developers win on design.

At some of the highest levels, they’re taking risks with money that’s not theirs, family office money, and they’re building these trophy projects, and they work out. I don’t know how long they work out because we’re seeing some of these trophy-project-type things cycle back through the system and foreclosure as we speak, some of the multifamily stuff across the country. His strategy was like it’s a neighborhood where there are million-dollar homes, stuff is probably selling for $600,000, $700,000, or $800,000, and maybe the new construction is selling for above a million. Maybe he’s putting a second story on something and using the existing foundation.

Sometimes he’s building completely brand new. It’s an amazing product. It seems like there’s no price too high for someone’s willingness to pay. There’s some limit on it, but there’s not a lot they can compare it to because it’s such a magnificent product. Whereabouts would you fall on that spectrum of design versus functionality? The four units I was talking about are probably, that’s builder’s grade, the cheapest thing we can do. You have bedrooms, bathrooms, closets, a kitchen, not much else. On the high end of the design spectrum, you have floor-to-ceiling glass windows and a magnificent and stunning property when you pull up. Whereabouts would you fall on that scale, and where would you maybe advise somebody to get in the game?

There’s always the opportunity, and it depends on the neighborhood. If it’s a nice neighborhood, maybe the opportunity is to knock down an old house and build a nice house in its place. There’s certainly a market and profit to be made there. Probably most of your readers are at the smaller investor level. What’s great again about getting into this is, as I said, we knock down the old house and let’s say build a fourplex. The exit strategies could be, I build it, I refinance it, I rent it up, I refinance it, or I keep it in my own portfolio.

Option two is, I sell the fourplex to another investor that wants multifamily. As we said, there’s a ton of competition for everybody looking for multifamily. One of our real estate investing brethren is going to buy that as an investment. We could also turn that into four condos and sell them as four individual condos in certain places where you’ve got basements, so maybe it’s a two-story duplex up and then two down. That’s your fourplex.

You can sell one half to one young couple that lives there and then has a mortgage helper in the basement, and then there are other exit strategies. As we said, if the cost got too high during the builds, you can sell it out at the various stages up till there. It’s those multiple strategies that I like, for the smaller regular-size investor to hedge their bets as they’re going in. You can run the numbers, sold as a building, sold as condos, kept in my own portfolio, what do these numbers look like?

You can make those decisions before you even go on the ground. The other thing, too, in a lot of places now, because there’s this housing crisis, all three levels of government, there’s incentives for a lot of time to incentivize a multifamily build. Anything over typically five units, government rebates, incentives, better tax or better mortgage rates, and higher loan-to-cost on the build, you’re able to get some of these opportunities as well that aren’t available in a typical flip or rental world.

Have you ever done any projects where you’ve got a government subsidy or some kind of alternative financing? It sounds like a lot of paperwork and a lot of, I don’t know how to get that.

Typically, what happens is it’s on the final build. Let’s say land development, it’s not necessarily there. You have to physically build the final one, but you can get up to a 95% loan instead of a 75% loan. It’s 95% loan to cost. Those are available. Typically, you can port those into a 40 or 50-year mortgage. I understand most of your audience is flippers, but if you’re looking for rentals, and you want to be a landlord to build this, there are a ton of benefits to having a new rental portfolio, a better class of tenants, and they qualify easier.

They’re willing to pay more. The building’s brand new. Your maintenance budget is next to nothing because of all of that. Your management is much less and a lot easier to manage. They’re easier to insure. A lot of these 1910 things, you can’t insure them anymore, asbestos and the aluminum wiring and all this stuff. They’re easier to mortgage too because we’ve got to scrape to get a fifteen-year lifespan expectancy out of this building.

A new build is going to last a long time. So much easier to insure, much easier to lend. Throw that all in. It’s easier for governments to get behind that as well. It could be a local, a municipal thing, here in this town, we’re looking for housing for lower-income or seniors. It could be a statewide thing. It could be a federal thing. It could be tax rebates, incentives, cheaper loans, these kinds of things that incentivize us because we’re trying to get rid of the housing crisis here. It’s a big deal. Lots of things are available for us.

You’re right about that. The products I own are also old, all brick. I think I have one that was built late 1800s that might be stick-built. I’m replacing wooden footers under this part of the foundation and probably wish I didn’t buy it. I think I’m okay still in the profit zone, and maybe I should sell it. The allure of owning a product that would even have been built in 2010-plus, as an investor, I wish that all of my products in the portfolio were that newer product, but I could never get the numbers to work out with the low cap rates that they trade for.

If I’m looking at a 2, 3, or 4-unit property, I’m fighting with the house hacker. That is a red-hot market. It’s a 2, 3, 4-unit building house hacker, meaning someone’s going to live in one unit and rent the others out to offset the mortgage. They can pay more than the investor can pay. It’s a good thing. A lot of them are getting FHA financing and starting off their careers with the right move.

Balancing Design Vs. Functionality In Development

I wish I would have done that myself. If I’m going to build a four-unit, and maybe it’s not me who does have contractors, maybe it’s somebody who you alluded to a little earlier in the show, Darcy, where they tried a few flips, maybe they broke even, lost a little money on it. It’s not working out how they want to.

How would you advise an investor at that experience level? Let’s say they’re going to build that three-unit triplex somewhere. How would you advise them when we get to the construction phase to bring that out of the ground? Are we talking about finding the right GC? Are we having them go down and look at the permits pulled? What’s going to be the 1, 2, 3 step action item for them to find the right construction partner to build that out?

I was the onsite supervisor guy. I was the project manager of my own property all the time, and I would not recommend that. Let’s back up a step, and think of ourselves as investors. We got to learn some new stuff. What is the highest and best use? What is zoning? What is density? As I said, we’ve been taught the values in the building. The value is more and more in the land. How do we increase the value of land? There’s some new stuff that we need to learn.

Geography is important because there are certain places, certain municipalities, where they’ll approve your application for a zoning change in two months, in other places takes two years. Where we invest is important. Specifically, to that fourplex, what’s different about the pricing there, if you think about it, again, we’re used to one unit for one unit. We’re not adding, that’s new to us here. The cost of the lot, the old house, or the vacant lot doesn’t change whether you’re building one new unit or ten. You can split that cost amongst the new units.

In general, ten units is better than eight, which is better than six, which is better than four. A way to increase land is to have more units. The other thing too is certain things like your architectural costs. For your architect to sit there and design a duplex, he’s not going to charge you twice as much to design the fourplex. Some of the costs aren’t split. Some of the costs change, but not on a prorated basis based on the number of units.

So far, part of my action item is I probably should consider building 6, 8, or 10 at a time versus 2, 3, or 4 because I’m getting a little more cost benefit. Am I hearing that right?

Yes. How do you do that? We have to understand zoning and density and how that works. I now find this 1910 teardown, it’s on a 50-foot lot, and the zoning is a single-family home. What is realistic for how many maximum units I can get on there? Let’s say the house next door to me is a 1910 teardown too, going for the vacant lot, going for $1,000. Before I ignored that because I didn’t know what to do with it as a normal flipper, if now I got 2, now I got 100 feet of frontage, how many units can I put on that? Your costs go down based on that.

Builders are more apt to be interested in you because now you’ve got more land downtown. In most cities, it’s hard to find large continuous areas of land, not outside of town. You’re coming in. If you can learn about land assembly and we can figure out if I put 2 together, now I got 50 feet of frontage, maybe the play again in the entitlement world is to split that up into four 25-foot lots, sell that, three 33s, or maybe you put pipe in the ground and those, and now you sell serviced lots. Maybe you go through and you amalgamate those 2 lots and you put a little mini apartment building together, or you do some townhouses. We have lots of options. I love options.

I love more tools in the toolbox instead of flips, rentals, and Airbnb rentals, and that’s all wholesaling. Let’s learn different ways to separate us from the competition so that we’re all not just fighting for the same thing and dealing with it the same way. In general, at some point, we’re going to be the investor, we’re going to find the deals, put the deals together, but then you hand it off to your team, your architect, your civil engineer, planner, they’re going to do the back and forth with the city. If you stay there with the paperwork and the entitlement world, perfect. If you’re going to do work on-site, hire builders, project managers, general contractors, whatever works in whatever situation. I think you’ve got more value as an investor trying to find the next one.

It sounds like you might be advising me not to buy the building and get the project to a point, and then skip the construction risk. Maybe it sounds like your heart might be more in the dirt aspect.

It depends. I think of it this way, if I’m doing paperwork only, I’ve got like three tradespeople. I’ve got a lawyer, I’ve got a civil engineer, and I have a surveyor. If I’m putting a pipe in the ground, maybe 12 or 15, it takes 50 trades, material suppliers, and people that are involved to build a house. It’s not that far off to do flips and the BRRRR strategy. There’s a lot of churn. When you’re doing flips, one of the bad things about flips, as I found out, was that all these different tradespeople are making money, and hopefully, there’s some at the end for you too. Lots of churn.

The more you do, the more risk there is in terms of time, but also more and more people sticking their hand out. That’s why I say if you’re going to build, perfect, nothing wrong with that, but try not to do the whole thing. Buy the land that’s already serviced, and properly permitted. You can start building, I can knock down that old house. If the old house is empty, I can knock it down tomorrow and go ahead. In and out quickly. That’s some of the things that 23 years have taught me.

Importance Of Demographics And Location In Real Estate Investment

My final question before we get to our wrap-up here, number one, what is the market that you invest in now and why? Number two, what would be your next second and third choice markets? Maybe you’re already there. Maybe those would be ones you would consider.

Because we’re adding units, as I said, in the past flips, rentals, it’s one for one. In this world, we’re adding units. We’ve got to make sure we’re where people want to be. Demographics play a larger role. I pay a lot of attention to domestic migration, not necessarily foreign immigration, but how people are moving around the states, and they’re moving from the Californias, the New Yorks, the Chicagos, and Bostons down towards Texas, the Floridas, the Carolinas, the Nevadas kind of thing.

Make sure you’re in the right area statewide, lower taxes, no state tax in those places, a real quick turnaround time usually for permits, and a lower cost to build in a lot of these states because of the cheaper labor down South. That’s the thing. I like Texas, for example. One of the things I don’t like is the up and down and up and down. I like consistency. The population in Texas is supposed to double by 2050. I like that. That’s as a developer. You pick Texas, there are now 3 or 4 major cities. I like Houston for a bunch of reasons.

I know it best, for one thing. There are pros and cons to every strategy. The downside of maybe development is you’ve got to do some upfront thinking and planning first because we’re adding units. We’ve got to make sure that people are going to buy or rent our units when we’re done. We can’t assume that in my town it’s a great place to be, because maybe my town sucks. Maybe my town’s anti-development, they don’t want me there. The permits and fees are huge. It’s going to take me two years to get stuff. We’ve got to be able to do that upfront homework first to make sure we’re in a great place.

 

Development requires upfront thinking and planning. You can’t just assume people will want to buy or rent your units.

 

Makes sense. Is Houston your home market? Is that where you live?

No. In the late ’90s, I was a computer guy, and I lived and worked in South America, Venezuela, Mexico, Colombia, and Brazil. My client was in Houston. I made a bazillion trips back and forth to Houston. I’ve seen the growth. When I was there in 2001, let’s say for IT, they had the one-ring road, and they were three-quarters done the second. I come back in 2022, I’ve been there about three or four times in the last two years, they’ve done the second ring road, and they’re now 90% done with the third. Consistency of growth is what I’m looking for as a developer because I’m adding units.

Recommended Books And Podcasts For Investors

Makes sense. Last couple of questions here as we wrap up. Darcy, do you have any books or shows or other YouTube videos, or anything inspirational that you might share with the readers?

I do a YouTube video every week. It’s my name, Darcy Marler Channel, and then I’ve written four books. I got my first book given to me in real estate when I was fifteen, so over 40 years ago. I’ve watched Real Estate Education. Again, flips, rentals first. I wanted to be different. Nobody’s talking about this other stuff. As you can tell, I’m passionate about this development stuff. Every week, I put out a video related to this world, and then I’ve written four books on real estate that are different. I love this. I’m passionate about it.

Wisdom For Aspiring Real Estate Developers

You go back to 2001, you’re in IT, and knowing everything now, what would be the crown jewel of wisdom you would share with yourself back in 2001 when you were visiting Houston and it was not quite as grown up as it is now?

Match your personality to your strategy. I think, like I said, we get into real estate investing, and all there is, am I going to be a landlord? Am I going to be a flipper? Wholesale, Airbnb, whatever. Make sure that matches your personality. Maybe you don’t like tenants. Maybe you don’t like dealing with nasty flips. Part of the bad side about flips is you’re always on the conveyor belt, trying to find the next deal. You’re always on the hunt because you’ve got to keep your trades busy. Does that match your personality? Are you staying up late at night, worrying about it not getting done quickly enough?

 

A disadvantage of flipping is being constantly on the conveyor belt, searching for the next deal. You’re always hunting to keep your trades busy.

 

We’re told that property management’s the answer, it’s hands-off. No, it’s not. Rentals aren’t. Learn both the pros and the cons of all the strategies first, and then pick one that aligns better with your own, what you like, what you don’t like, and your strengths and weaknesses. Try to get an operational partner. I was the lone wolf guy forever. I see a real benefit to having someone strong where you’re weak and vice versa. Anyway, some general advice there.

Do you have some other contact information or websites you’d like to share with the readers?

I’ve got a Linktree. A Linktree is an app that lets you put everything, the YouTube or Amazon and all that stuff. It’s Linktr.ee/DarcyMarler. You can find me there and go down the rabbit hole about development and new construction, land assembly, upzoning, entitlement, and all that kind of stuff.

The Kindest Gesture Ever Received

My final question is what is the kindest thing anyone has ever done for you?

I was sitting there in Venezuela one time, and I had to pay an exit tax to get out of the airport. It was a long line. I’d already gone to the front. I didn’t have the right number of pesos or deliveries. The guy behind me paid on my behalf. I paid it forward, and I paid it forward a little bit later, but that was cool. I liked that.

What was the thought you had in your mind when you realized at the front of the line that you didn’t have the right change or whatever it was? What was the thought that crossed your mind?

I’d miscalculated. I had some, but not enough. I was like, “Christ, now I’m going to have to go to the ATM and get something. I’m going to have to go to the back of the line. I’m going to miss my flight anyway.” The guy behind me is an angel. Saved my life.

I like it. I got a couple of pages of notes. I had a blast recording the episode, and I appreciate you coming to the show.

I had a blast too. I love this stuff. Nobody else has talked to me about development. Let’s change that and let’s bring some new stuff to the world.

The REI Diamond Show is sponsored by Diamond Equity Investments, a private equity firm focused on buying and selling residential and commercial property throughout the United States. If you are an accredited investor seeking double-digit returns, you can sign up to review Diamond Equity’s passive investment opportunities at www.FundRehabDeals.com. If you’re an investor who is seeking deals that you can buy, fix, and flip, please go to www.DealsWithROI.com.

 

Important Links

 

Relevant Episodes

 

 

Inside the Self-Storage Industry with Jacob Vanderslice of Van West Partners

 

Inside the Self-Storage Industry with Jacob Vanderslice of Van West Partners

 

Guest: Jacob Vanderslice is a real estate investor and entrepreneur with over 15 years of experience in the industry. He is the founder of Van West Partners, a real estate investment firm that specializes in self-storage facilities. Jacob has an extensive background in residential fix and flips, multifamily, adaptive reuse retail, and town-owned development, but his passion lies in the self-storage business. Jacob explains the reasoning behind his shift towards storage, the company’s investment philosophy, and how they create value in their facilities.

 

Big Idea:  Real estate investor and entrepreneur Jacob Vanderslice shares his expertise in self-storage investment. Jacob discusses his journey in real estate investing and how his company, Van West Partners, moved from single-family rentals to self-storage investments. He emphasizes the importance of creating value through income streams and optimizing unit mix for maximum revenue. Jacob also talks about his investment philosophy, which centers around value-add investments in growing markets.

 

 

    

 

Daniel: Okay, nice. Yeah, I’m in Chicago. As listeners probably know. Figure maybe we’ll start with the evolution or the reader’s digest version. Maybe a little bit about who Jacob is, but then also VanWest and kind of how your personal career and your business model evolved to the point where they’re at today in 2022.

Jacob: Certainly. Well, it’s all been accidental and I guess unintentional to a degree like most things are. We started investing real estate full-time in about 2006, and we cut our teeth doing lots and lots of residential fix and flips. We did a bunch of rentals. We did buy, fix and sell deals. We did almost probably 1200 of them over a fairly long period. We really started in 06 and kind of kept going in that business until about we had some overlap, but kind of started to quiet it down in about 19 as deal flow constricted and returns kind of went down. So that’s how we cut our teeth. Just buying residential homes at the auctions and fixing them up, making them better, and either running them out or selling them. We’ve also done a fair amount of multi-family adaptive reuse, retail, some for-sale townhome development, and we got in the storage business in 2015. And we looked at storage for a while, and we like the fact that it’s historically downside protected.

It’s got durable recurring revenue streams. It’s scalable, repeatable, defensible. So we researched it for a while and we kind of jumped in head first on our first deal. We did a ground-up development project here in Denver, and then we did a few other development projects locally, and then we opened up the Milwaukee market starting in about 2016 just north of you. We did a handful of deals out there. And over time, I mentioned accidental earlier. Over time, I just kind of evolved to becoming our main line of business. The residential business is great. Fixed and Flips is a great business. But one of the things we didn’t like about it is it was I guess overly transactional, meaning you’re buying, selling over and over and over again. And to make money, you constantly have to be buying a deal, making it better than selling it. And we wanted to shift to a business that was more cash flow focused versus a quick reversion focused. And that’s why we landed on storage. And through today, we’ve got 38 storage facilities, about 275 million in asset center management all over the country, Midwest, southeast, south, got some stuff in Denver, and we’re buying more and we’re building more.

 

This Episode of The REI Diamonds Show is Sponsored by the Deal Machine. This Software Enables Real Estate Investors to Develop a Reliable & Low Cost Source of Off Market Deals. For a Limited Time, You Get Free Access at http://REIDealMachine.com/

 

This Episode is Also Sponsored by the Lending Home. Lending Home Offers Reliable & Low Cost Fix & Flip Loans with Interest Rates as Low as 9.25%.  Buy & Hold Loans Offered Even Lower.  Get a FREE IPad when you Close Your First Deal by Registering Now at  http://REILineOfCredit.com

 

Resources mentioned in this episode:

www.VanWestPartners.com

 

For Access to Real Estate Deals You Can Buy & Sell for Profit:

https://AccessOffMarketDeals.com/podcast/

 

Jacob Vanderslice & I Discuss the Self-Storage Industry:

  • The evolution of Van West Partners’ investment strategy

  • The state of the US real estate market and the impact of COVID-19

  • The role of technology in the real estate industry

  • The potential impact of government policies on the market

  • The outlook for the real estate market in the near future


    

Relevant Episodes: (There are 219 Content Packed Interviews in Total)

 

The transcript of this episode can be found here.
Transcripts of all episodes can be found here.

Maximizing Asset Protection and Tax Savings with Scott Royal Smith

 

Maximizing Asset Protection and Tax Savings with Scott Royal Smith

 

Guest: Scott Royal Smith is a real estate investor, attorney, and founder of Royal Legal Solutions. He shares his background in real estate and law, and how he scaled his wealth through strategic planning and asset protection. He believes in educating people and forming relationships to help them leverage their assets to build wealth.

 

Big Idea: Scott Royal Smith shares his expertise on cost-effective legal structures for real estate investing and tax strategies for asset protection. He presents a practical system involving creating a series of LLCs and a Land Trust to hold assets, which provides effective asset protection and can help minimize maintenance costs. Scott’s insights offer valuable perspectives on how to reduce risk, minimize costs, and ultimately build wealth in real estate investing.

 

 

    

 

Dan: Nice. Scott, so for listeners, would you mind giving us maybe the reader’s digest version of the evolution of your business real estate and law career and then sort of what the business model is today?

Scott: Yeah and so my company is Royal legal Solutions but I got started in real estate when I was in law school. I bought a commercial property and auto repair and transmission repair shop for the back taxes. And I end up flipping the business in the building upon graduating to graduate from law school without any debt. And I thought that was going to be a hotshot litigation attorney. So I took a job suing insurance companies in a law firm. Turns out insurance company’s business model is collecting premiums and denying coverage, especially when things get expensive. And then that’s what attorneys does, they sue them whenever they do that. So, get first-hand experience about how does the whole game of insurance really work and how it’s important for us to have insurance, but also have additional protection in place.

But the whole time while I was working as an attorney there, I continued by real estate and I scaled my own real estate portfolio until I was making more money doing real estate and I was being an attorney. It took me about like a year and a half. I wasn’t sleeping a whole lot at those times in my life, and I didn’t need a lot of money, right? I wasn’t married, didn’t have kids and I was like, hey man, I’ve hit it. I’ve hit my financial freedom. I was like I’m golden, but then I ran into the problem and I think a lot of people run into which is like wait shouldn’t I be structuring this inside of like LLCs and should I be using any of trust to hold my assets and my company’s anonymously? And what should I be doing with all of my taxes and my estate planning, and my insurance? And why do I want to be doing all that? How’s that all suppose to work?

So, I did what everybody does and I was like, well, I’ll try to read the books and I’ll try to contact professionals. And so I did all of that, and I realized that nobody really have a complete system we’d put together. So I had to put one together for my own. So I built my own team of people because I was like, well, I want, I had the financial freedom but I wanted the time freedom. And the only way I can get there is if I built a team. If I studied for myself to understand how to do it for myself and then built a team of people that do it for me on basically managing my wealth for me.

It was great, I finally had everything that I wanted and I was traveling a ton and living a great life. And as I came back in living inside the states, a lot of my friends real estate Investors and asked me like hey man, how are you doing? What is he doing? How are you living this lifestyle? What is going on right now? And it’s like, well, here’s what I built. And this is how it all works. And they’re like, well, can I get in on that? Can you take on more people and help me build this thing? So I was just kind of helping people out, getting them into the things that I’d figured out for myself. And eventually when I was like, hey, you should go in this BiggerPockets podcast and go just share with people about asset protection. It’s one part of whether it’s some of the stuff you know. And I didn’t think anything was going to come of it. So I gave up my personal email and phone number into it.

And what happened was I was getting 30 to 40 phone calls a week from investors all over the country. They were like, hey man, I really need help on asset protection and how all these other pieces are supposed to put together. So then that’s where I realized that whatever you want to call, that higher power in life was really tapping me on the shoulder and says, hey, this isn’t all about just hanging out on the beaches and have a good time. You need to be of service to other people, help them be able to walk the path that you’ve walked and get them to that place of being secure and having the true freedom and protection in place for keeping what they’ve work so hard to be able to build. And that’s Royal legal Solutions is now turning and I, we serve all 50 states, we have over 2,000 clients that we’ve helped that are Real Estate Investors and we have about 30 people of attorneys, CPAs, paralegals and support staff.

 

This Episode is Also Sponsored by the Lending Home. Lending Home Offers Reliable & Low Cost Fix & Flip Loans with Interest Rates as Low as 9.25%.  Buy & Hold Loans Offered Even Lower.  Get a FREE IPad when you Close Your First Deal by Registering Now at  http://REILineOfCredit.com

 

Resources mentioned in this episode:

https://RoyalLegalSolutions.com/

 

For Access to Real Estate Deals You Can Buy & Sell for Profit:

https://AccessOffMarketDeals.com/podcast/

 

Scott & I Discuss:

  • Leveraging LLCs for asset protection

  • Land Trusts to hold assets

  • Private Foundations for tax savings

  • Strategic planning for building net worth


    

Relevant Episodes: (There are 220 Content Packed Interviews in Total)

 

The transcript of this episode can be found here.
Transcripts of all episodes can be found here.

The Future of Commercial Real Estate Investing in Major Cities with James Nelson

 

The Future of Commercial Real Estate Investing in Major Cities with James Nelson

 

Guest: James Nelson is an industry expert in commercial real estate with over 20 years of experience. He is a Principal and Head of Tri-State Investment Sales at Avison Young, one of the world’s fastest-growing commercial real estate services firms.

 

Big Idea: In this podcast, James Nelson shares valuable insights into investing in commercial real estate in major cities like New York and Chicago. He discusses the challenges and benefits of doing business in these cities, the importance of thorough due diligence, and the potential for value-add opportunities in “tired” assets. Nelson also emphasizes the significance of location in real estate investing and provides guidance on navigating current challenges in the industry, such as the shift towards e-commerce and the need for more flexible office spaces.

 

 

    

 

Dan: So I was going to make a little bit of a perception of the New York real estate market from around the country, right? Oh, it’s overpriced, it’s outrageous. The price of land in Manhattan and those kind of things that we all hear around the country, it’s like, who could ever buy anything in New York, anywhere in the city and be successful at the way the prices are? So that was growing up in Philadelphia, James, so that’s my perception, right? We would get the New York buyers who would come down and see Philadelphia as just like discount bargain just pay cash for it. Who needs a mortgage kind of a market. Well, when I got to Chicago, Chicago had a similar, very priced out type of feel to it coming from Philadelphia. And long behold, it does work and you can’t make money.

Sometimes those high price points offer things like high commissions and high profit spreads and 8,9,10%, or even 3 or 4% appreciation on a larger number is larger numbers at the end of the day as well. So I’ve gotten more comfortable with the higher price points myself personally. And I’m curious, as we kind of get into today’s show, I imagine cut your teeth in the New York market, and it’s a high price point market we all know that. I’m excited to kind of hear today’s show with that frame, if you will.

James: Sure, yeah. New York certainly is a place to live. It is very expensive. So a studio apartment here is $3,000 a month. The median apartment sells for, I think it’s 1,000,00.

Dan: Wow.

James: So yes, it is certainly expensive. When you’re looking to buy here on the commercial side yes, the barriers of entry are high because there is global demand looking to purchase properties here in New York, when we talk commercial, I’m talking multi-family with five or more units. I’m talking retail, office development, industrial, and there’s only about in Manhattan about five or 600 of those sales that happen a year. So there’s always this supply demand imbalance. And so the New York terms here are very challenging, especially for kind of the first time investor because most of our deals are signed with a 10% hard deposit due diligence done prior to contract signing. So that’s pretty daunting to jump in and have to put in hard money day one, really tough when you’re buyer, but when you’re looking to turn around and sell again, the market is liquid. So there are challenges to break into this, but once you’ve been able to secure an investment, if your business plan is to resell, you’re going to have a much easier time exiting when the time is right.

 

This Episode is Also Sponsored by the Lending Home. Lending Home Offers Reliable & Low Cost Fix & Flip Loans with Interest Rates as Low as 9.25%.  Buy & Hold Loans Offered Even Lower.  Get a FREE IPad when you Close Your First Deal by Registering Now at  http://REILineOfCredit.com

 

Resources mentioned in this episode:

https://JamesNelson.com/

 

For Access to Real Estate Deals You Can Buy & Sell for Profit:

https://AccessOffMarketDeals.com/podcast/

 

James & I Discuss:

  • The challenges and benefits of investing in commercial real estate in major cities

  • The importance of thorough due diligence in real estate investing

  • The potential for value-add opportunities in “tired” assets

  • The significance of location in real estate investing

  • Navigating current challenges in the industry, such as the shift towards e-commerce and the need for more flexible office spaces


    

Relevant Episodes: (There are 218 Content Packed Interviews in Total)

 

The transcript of this episode can be found here.
Transcripts of all episodes can be found here.

Revolutionizing the Apartment Industry: Mike Kaeding on Disruption, Inclusive Investing and Company Culture

 

Revolutionizing the Apartment Industry: Mike Kaeding on Disruption, Inclusive Investing and Company Culture

 

Guest: Mike Kaeding is the CEO of Norhart, a company designing, building, and renting apartments. Mike and his team are transforming the way apartments are built and managed, incorporating technologies and efficiencies from other industries. After his father’s passing, Mike took the reins of the family business and found success by changing the way construction is done, hiring the best talent and solving chronic construction inefficiencies. Through this process, he has been able to provide cost-effective projects to solve America’s housing shortage and improve the way we all live.

 

Big Idea: Mike Kaeding, CEO of Norhart, is revolutionizing the construction industry by creating an attractive company culture, solving chronic construction inefficiencies, and integrating traditionally unaffiliated trades to achieve higher quality, more cost-effective projects. His mission is to solve America’s housing shortage by transforming the way apartments are built and managed, ultimately improving the way we all live. Inclusive RE Investing is one way that Norhart is paving the way for the future of construction disruption.

 

 

    

Dan: Mike, I did the research, the listeners did not, before today’s episode, do you want to kind of give the brief Reader’s Digest version of your business model and maybe how it evolved to that point in some of your story about how you got there?

Mike: Yeah, I would be happy to do so. At a high level, we design, build and rent apartments, but we’re really focused on solving the cost of housing. And we’re doing that by transforming the way construction is done. We’re already achieving about a 20 to 30% reduction in construction costs, and we believe we can achieve a 50% reduction. But imagine what that means. It means someday your rent could be half or your mortgage payment could be half. And that’s the kind of impact that we want to make. We want to solve America’s housing affordability crisis. Now didn’t always start out that way, we were very small. My parents started the business. They built just small eight unit apartment buildings at the time. In fact, I can remember family outings where we drove off to the local hardware store about a half an hour away.

My brother and I, my mom and dad, we each fill up two carts full of supplies, then filled it at my dad’s trailer as we’re driving down the highway to go work on our building a little bit more. So summers, we’re often working on these small buildings with my family, winter season we’d be in school. So it was very much ingrained in my life and then went after college. But I wanted nothing to do with the family business. It was very small, but I wanted nothing to do with it. And the reason is, deep down, I didn’t want people to think it was given to me. So I really wrestled with my own ego on that and eventually realized that really what I wanted to do was try to make some kind of meaningful, positive impact on the world.

And I started to see that I could take this small business and grow it in something larger, but we can have a wider impact in the world. And so I jumped in with my dad and my dad and I doubled the size of the company in the first few years. And then overnight he passed away. And so at this stage it was horrible. It was a horrible experience. And this stage ended up taking over the company entirely. And since then, we’ve just started to make changes. And now looking back, that was sort of the magic because we didn’t know what we were doing and there’s a lot of pain in that. But we also didn’t know the way things were supposed to be done and we can start changing the way things were done as a result. And we started to have some decent impact. And today we’re at about a 200 million valuation and producing about 500 units a year. And we’ve been doubling in size almost every year.

 

This Episode is Also Sponsored by the Lending Home. Lending Home Offers Reliable & Low Cost Fix & Flip Loans with Interest Rates as Low as 9.25%.  Buy & Hold Loans Offered Even Lower.  Get a FREE IPad when you Close Your First Deal by Registering Now at  http://REILineOfCredit.com

 

Resources mentioned in this episode:

https://www.Norhart.com/invest/

 

For Access to Real Estate Deals You Can Buy & Sell for Profit:

https://AccessOffMarketDeals.com/podcast/

 

Mike & I Discuss:

  • Company Culture & Construction Disruption: How Norhart’s Unique Culture Revolutionized Construction

  • Housing Shortage: Solving America’s Growing Housing Crisis

  • Overcoming Leadership Challenges

  • Integrating Traditionally Unaffiliated Trades


    

Relevant Episodes: (There are 217 Content Packed Interviews in Total)

 

The transcript of this episode can be found here.
Transcripts of all episodes can be found here.

Dani Beit-or: Leveraging Repetition and Reinforcement in Real Estate Investments

 

Dani Beit-or: Leveraging Repetition and Reinforcement in Real Estate Investments

 

Guest: Dani is a 20-year real estate investing veteran with extensive experience in the US market. He has collaborated on nearly 5,000 transactions since 2004 and has helped hundreds of investors cultivate robust property portfolios across a variety of metropolitan areas. Dani’s investment strategies have been refined from his experience during the 2008 market downturn, and he now leverages his expertise to help investors at all levels, from novices to seasoned professionals, optimize their real estate investments.

 

Big Idea: Dani Beit-or shares his 20+ years of experience as a real estate investor. He discusses the need to have each property standalone and pay its own expenses, the power of repetition and reinforcement and the kindness of those in the real estate industry in helping one another. Additionally, Dani explains how he uses his real estate investments as a 401K. This podcast is an invaluable source of advice for anyone looking to venture into real estate investing.

 

 

    

Dan: Cool. So I’m here in Chicago, listeners know I’m back from Florida, spent the winter there. It was pretty cool. I wish I was still there because it’s not quite done being winter in Chicago yet. But one of the things most of the listeners probably know, I think we were talking about before the show started, so I buy, sell. Buy, fixi and sell, I own rentals, and I do that in Philadelphia, originally. I moved to Chicago in 2015, so I could be near my daughter who was heading into late middle school at the time. So I was like, oh, it’s now or never. She’s back in Philly now at college. I’m still in Chicago. That’s how I ended up in Chicago. And then I met someone who we opened up the Atlanta market and we did a lot around the country.

And I say all that as kind of a setup, Dani. I never would’ve probably left my backyard in Philadelphia because flipping houses, making money. I know the market, the brand, people know me, they’re bringing me deals, my contractors are there, my money partners are there. And I was afraid that when I left, the whole thing would crumble when we would go away now. And I was okay with that if that happened when I got to Chicago, but grace of God, the business grew and things continued in all three areas. So that was my catalyst for looking around the United States at other real estate markets. And we’re now eight years later and I feel like the thing that’s most exciting to me right now is market selection and paying attention to the nuances of this huge variety of markets throughout the United States.

I guess I need the challenge of having to underwrite new markets. But I think it was really cool because I was able to see a market like Atlanta. Seeing like, let’s say 8% to 10% or 12% appreciation for several years. And then a market like Chicago, which maybe it had 3% or 4% and probably a 10% bump during COVID or something like that and there’s opportunities in each of those markets. But I would imagine for buy and hold investors, and I’ll allow you to encapsulate your business model here in a moment, but for buy and hold investors, I’m getting in getting out in a 12-month period or less. So it doesn’t matter how much the appreciation is unless it’s significantly negative one year. But to a buy-and-hold passive investor probably has another career or has a lot of rental properties. That appreciation component’s going to significantly drive or hinder the total IRR. So with that setup, I’ll pass it to allow you to describe what you do in the evolution of your business model.

 

This Episode is Also Sponsored by the Lending Home. Lending Home Offers Reliable & Low Cost Fix & Flip Loans with Interest Rates as Low as 9.25%.  Buy & Hold Loans Offered Even Lower.  Get a FREE IPad when you Close Your First Deal by Registering Now at  http://REILineOfCredit.com

 

Resources mentioned in this episode:

https://SimplyDoIt.net/

 

For Access to Real Estate Deals You Can Buy & Sell for Profit:

https://AccessOffMarketDeals.com/podcast/

 

Dani & I Discuss:

  • Making each property standalone and pay its own expenses

  • The power of repetition and reinforcement

  • Using real estate investments as a 401K

  • Selecting the Best Markets to Invest-No Matter Where You Live


    

Relevant Episodes: (There are 216 Content Packed Interviews in Total)

 

The transcript of this episode can be found here.
Transcripts of all episodes can be found here.

The Power of Self-Belief with Ben Reinberg

 

The Power of Self-Belief with Ben Reinberg

 

Guest: Ben Reinberg started building his commercial real estate empire at 24 years old with nothing but shoe leather and a lot of hustle. Today he owns over $500 million dollars in assets across the country and shares his wealth-building, commercial real estate investing, self-improvement and leadership insights and knowledge with his audience around the world.

 

Big Idea: Ben Reinberg talks about his journey from Chicago to California, his successful career in real estate, launching his personal brand and podcast, and the business model of Alliance, his company. He emphasizes the importance of becoming the best version of oneself, investing in oneself, having confidence in oneself, and having mentors. He shares his advice on how to develop the ability to create, the importance of mental and physical health, and his two recommended books that have had a major impact on his life. Ben also shares his advice to those starting out in commercial real estate, and how his podcast is an opportunity for him to give back and add value to listeners.

 

 

    

Dan Breslin: All right, Ben, welcome to the REI Diamond Show. How are you doing?

Ben Reinberg: Good. Thank you for having me, Dan. I really appreciate it. It’s a pleasure to be here today and we’re starting to get some great weather in Southern California, so I’m very grateful for that. But everything else is good and appreciate you having me on your show.

Dan: Yeah, for sure. For context, for the listeners, I think we were talking about you leaving Chicago and me moving to Chicago from another state. What was it that drove you to go to California? Was it the weather of the environment, or something else?

Ben: It was part of it. Part of Chicago, my heart is always in Chicago and I am a Chicago kid. I lived there for 52 years and I was actually commuting back and forth from California to Chicago for a year and a half.

Dan: Oh, wow.

Ben: My kids, I have two kids in college at USC, one just graduated and my daughter’s at Dana Hills High School as well, and then my spouse is here as well. What I realized was I had a choice. When we first looked at where to move, I wanted to move to Texas or Florida on the other side. My family said, “Well, everyone’s out here.” My wife’s family was out here too, so it just made a lot of sense to move to California. The climate in Chicago, the rules and ordinances, and the way they handled the pandemic to the amount of violence in Chicago now, where I’ve walked the streets of Michigan Avenue for years and I see security guards, armed security guards, three four of them in a store up and down Michigan Avenue.

I just realized that this is not the place where I was born and raised and grew my business and it was time to make a change. I’m sad to say that it breaks my heart to say that. Chicago is near and dear, and I go back because my headquarters for my company Alliance is in Chicago so I go back. It’s a treat for me to go back, but I don’t miss it like I thought I would. It’s interesting how my mindset has changed. I really gravitated to California. I live in the Orange County area. I love it. The networking’s great. The people are wonderful here. The people in Chicago are wonderful too, don’t get me wrong. But it made a lot of sense to come out here, especially with launching my personal brand, which is growing rapidly.

My podcast is growing rapidly and it made a lot of sense as I get older I’ve been in this business, Dan, for over 28 years, and it just gets to a point where I was waking up and it was gray and dark when I woke up and it was gray and dark when I went home from the office in Chicago. I missed the food, I missed the people. I definitely missed my sports teams. But at the end of the day, it was a really healthy change for me to be in California. So I’m very grateful to be here.

 

This Episode is Also Sponsored by the Lending Home. Lending Home Offers Reliable & Low Cost Fix & Flip Loans with Interest Rates as Low as 9.25%.  Buy & Hold Loans Offered Even Lower.  Get a FREE IPad when you Close Your First Deal by Registering Now at  http://REILineOfCredit.com

 

Resources mentioned in this episode:

https://AllianceCGC.com

 

For Access to Real Estate Deals You Can Buy & Sell for Profit:

https://AccessOffMarketDeals.com/podcast/

 

Ben & I Discuss:

  • The Value of Self-Belief in Investing

  • Importance of Mental and Physical Health

  • The Significance of Mentorship


    

Relevant Episodes: (There are 215 Content Packed Interviews in Total)

 

The transcript of this episode can be found here.
Transcripts of all episodes can be found here.

Dave Wolcott: Helping Entrepreneurs Protect and Multiply Their Wealth Through the Pantheon Holistic Wealth Strategy

 

Dave Wolcott: Helping Entrepreneurs Protect and Multiply Their Wealth Through the Pantheon Holistic Wealth Strategy

 

Guest:  Dave Wolcott is the Founder and CEO of Pantheon Investments.  After serving the country as a Captain in the Marine Corps, Dave and his wife hit the baby lottery-having triplets.  This inspired Dave to challenge the traditional financial planning advice of Wall Street.   Over the past 20 years Dave has founded several business, invested in alternative assets and created The Pantheon Holistic Wealth Strategy: the playbook to becoming ultra wealthy and having freedom of time, money & relationship.

 

Big Idea: Dave & I discuss building wealth by passively investing in superior real estate and alternative assets that provide predictable cash flow, tax efficiency, and upside potential as a reliable alternative to the volatility of the stock market.

 

 

    

Dan Breslin: Today’s guest, Dave Wolcott, is the founder and CEO of Pantheon Investments. After serving the country as a captain in the Marine Corps, Dave and his wife hit the baby lottery having triplets. This inspired Dave to challenge the traditional financial planning advice of Wall Street. Over the past twenty years, Dave has founded several businesses and invested in alternative assets while also creating the Pantheon Holistic Wealth Strategy, the playbook, to becoming ultra-wealthy and having freedom of time money and relationship.

Today, Dave and I discussed building wealth by passively investing in superior real estate and alternative assets that provide predictable cash flow, tax efficiency, and upside potential as a reliable alternative to the volatility of the stock market. Two areas of focus today are oil and gas investing which can generate humongous year 1 tax write-offs and the infinite banking strategy which you may or may not have heard of which is the method of recycling your investment dollar to make it work, at least, twice for every deployment.

 

Dave: Dan, we quadrupled the size of our family. If you could just imagine that. I know you have kids. You just think about what that does to you.

The first thing I did was have a drink. The second thing I did was go and see my financial advisor and said like, “Hey, how am I going to do this? How am I going to really provide for my family, create this financial security that I really need to?” You just move the goalpost 1 mile down the field. It was at that point in time that it really dawned on me that the top 1% were not building their wealth [inaudible], alternative investments, different things.

I launched down this kind of obsessive path to figure out how the top 1% are building their wealth. I started investing in alternative assets, everything from oil and gas to raw land to office space to retail, multifamily. You name it. I also became a business owner. I created a tech consulting company which I took full cycle and exited. Running a business, I learned a lot of things including taxes and creating a proper tax strategy.

Fast forward twenty years, I wrote my book called the Holistic Wealth Strategy which is really an encapsulation of my learnings over the past twenty years to try to really create this comprehensive system of how can you build your wealth outside of Wall Street and investing directly in Main Street and having this comprehensive system that truly can multiply your wealth as well as protect it?

This Episode of The REI Diamonds Show is Sponsored by the Deal Machine. This Software Enables Real Estate Investors to Develop a Reliable & Low Cost Source of Off Market Deals. For a Limited Time, You Get Free Access at http://REIDealMachine.com/

 

This Episode is Also Sponsored by the Lending Home. Lending Home Offers Reliable & Low Cost Fix & Flip Loans with Interest Rates as Low as 9.25%.  Buy & Hold Loans Offered Even Lower.  Get a FREE IPad when you Close Your First Deal by Registering Now at  http://REILineOfCredit.com

 

Resources mentioned in this episode:

https://PantheonInvest.com/

 

For Access to Real Estate Deals You Can Buy & Sell for Profit:

https://AccessOffMarketDeals.com/podcast/

 

Dave & I Discuss:

  • Achieving exponential wealth with the Holistic Wealth Strategy a 5 Phase Approach 

  •  How to offset Active income with oil & gas investing 

  • Creating a tax-efficient liquidity foundation with infinite banking 

  • Take back control by exiting your 401k 

  • Repositioning assets for maximum velocity and downside protection 

  • Creating a vision to achieve freedom of money, purpose, time, and relationship


    

Relevant Episodes: (There are 214 Content Packed Interviews in Total)

 

The transcript of this episode can be found here.
Transcripts of all episodes can be found here.

Tom Dunkel: Strategies to Build Wealth Through Alternative Assets

 

Tom Dunkel: Strategies to Build Wealth Through Alternative Assets

 

Guest:  Tom Dunkel is an experienced entrepreneur and corporate finance leader who specializes in value-add self-storage investments, distressed mortgage note investing/dealing, private lending, and private investing in multi-family and self-storage properties.

 

Big Idea: Tom Dunkel is an experienced alternative asset investor who has completed over $40MM of transactions in fragmented, dislocated markets such as distressed debt and self-storage. He has over 25 years of real estate and investing experience, including $1.2B of middle-market M&A and financing transaction experience. Tom is passionate about helping alternative investors build wealth while improving communities through disciplined real estate investment initiatives.

 

 

    

Dan Breslin: Tom is an experienced entrepreneur and corporate finance leader who specializes in value add self-storage investments, distressed mortgage note investing in dealing private lending, and private investing in multi-family and self-storage properties. Today, Tom and I are going to discuss this $40 million plus of transactions in fragmented dislocated markets, such as distressed debt and self-storage. Tom also has over 25 years of real estate experience and investing experience, including $1.2 billion of middle market M&A and financing transaction experience.

We’re going to discuss the internetization. Yes, I made that word up. The internetization of real estate as a trend, especially pertaining to the self-storage real estate industry. We’re also going to touch on market selection and of course generating high passive returns. Let’s begin. Hi, welcome to the REI Diamond Show Tom, how you doing today?

Tom: Doing great, Dan. It’s great to be with you. It’s been a long time.

Dan: Yeah, for sure, so for listeners, Tom and I go back to the early days, probably 2006, when we were both dipping our foot into the Philadelphia Regional Real Estate Networking meetings.

Tom: That’s right.

Dan: What a path since then, right Tom?

Tom: I know, man. It’s been quite a wild ride, but I wouldn’t change it for the world. I know about you. It’s been a lot of fun.

 

This Episode of The REI Diamonds Show is Sponsored by the Deal Machine. This Software Enables Real Estate Investors to Develop a Reliable & Low Cost Source of Off Market Deals. For a Limited Time, You Get Free Access at http://REIDealMachine.com/

 

This Episode is Also Sponsored by the Lending Home. Lending Home Offers Reliable & Low Cost Fix & Flip Loans with Interest Rates as Low as 9.25%.  Buy & Hold Loans Offered Even Lower.  Get a FREE IPad when you Close Your First Deal by Registering Now at  http://REILineOfCredit.com

 

Resources mentioned in this episode:

www.BelroseStorageGroup.com

 

For Access to Real Estate Deals You Can Buy & Sell for Profit:

https://AccessOffMarketDeals.com/podcast/

 

Tom & I Discuss Real Estate Development:

  • Pitfalls for High-net-worth Investors and How to Avoid Them

  • What are the Hidden Risks for Self-Storage Investors

  • Why should I Consider Participating in an Equity Syndication


    

Relevant Episodes: (There are 213 Content Packed Interviews in Total)

 

The transcript of this episode can be found here.
Transcripts of all episodes can be found here.

Real Estate Development with Karl Krauskopf

 

Real Estate Development with Karl Krauskopf

 

Guest: Karl Krauskopf is a multi family real estate investor and developer based in Seattle, Washington. He is the managing partner of Auroras Investment Group.

Big Idea: Real Estate development, specifically the entitlement process can produce large gains without the risk of construction. Flipping houses is a great place to start in real estate, but can be challenging to scale. This is why many real estate developers progress to development of land and larger projects after finding success in single family homes.

 

 

    

 

Dan Breslin: Welcome to the REI Diamond Show. I’m your host, Dan Breslin, and this is episode 209 on real estate development with Karl Krauskopf. Karl is a multi-family real estate investor and developer based in Seattle, Washington. He is the managing partner of Aurora’s Investment Group. Real estate development, specifically the entitlement process, can produce large gains without the risk of construction. Flipping houses is a great place to start in real estate, but it can be challenging to scale, which is why many real estate developers progress to the development of land and larger projects after finding success in single family homes. On this episode, Karl and I discussed this as his recent or past transition to larger deals and the same transition that I am currently going through myself.

Karl: Sure. Happily. So, how I got into real estate was probably a little bit different from most folks. I got into real estate. That was 10 years back, I was a veteran and working in the healthcare industry. I was a director of corporate strategy and business development. So, that is where my passion lies, which is really around growth partnerships. How do we basically, how do we grow an entity of business?

And what ended up coming to fruition and what bore the real estate endeavour was my wife and I going into a conversation about wanting to start a family, wanting to have a kid, and what better way to start a side business, which would become my future business, is having a kid. So, spent about six months during my wife’s being pregnant, self-educating myself, really learning how to maximise my income, as well as getting into diversifying my income by adding additional streams of revenue. Decided it was time to take the first leap, which was buying a duplex, a remote duplex across the state from me, and with full intentions of rehabbing, refinancing it, and repeating it. Come to find out that I was not the right asset for that. And now I just spent about $75,000, the majority of my at that time, disposable income in putting it, parking it into a duplex that had no direct path for the refinance. So, I started sweating. I was nervous, didn’t know what to do. We were about to have a baby. So I figured what’s the best next step? Well, the best next step, apparently at the time was to flip a massive home. My first flip ever, it was a hoarder home too. Fantastic idea, right? No, it was awesome. I believe it was four dumpsters’ worth, 440-yard dumpsters’ worth, of junk that we took out of this home. All this direct to say back is, I’m working a 40, 50 hour a week job as well as we just had our newborn, and apparently I’m a glutton for punishment.

 

This Episode of The REI Diamonds Show is Sponsored by the Deal Machine. This Software Enables Real Estate Investors to Develop a Reliable & Low Cost Source of Off Market Deals. For a Limited Time, You Get Free Access at http://REIDealMachine.com/

 

This Episode is Also Sponsored by the Lending Home. Lending Home Offers Reliable & Low Cost Fix & Flip Loans with Interest Rates as Low as 9.25%.  Buy & Hold Loans Offered Even Lower.  Get a FREE IPad when you Close Your First Deal by Registering Now at  http://REILineOfCredit.com

 

Resources mentioned in this episode:

www.AurorasInvestmentGroup.com/

 

For Access to Real Estate Deals You Can Buy & Sell for Profit:

https://AccessOffMarketDeals.com/podcast/

 

Karl & I Discuss Real Estate Development:

  • Entitlement Process-Real Estate Development

  • Finding Mentors doing Larger Deals

  • “Covered Land” play-teardown deals

  • The Microsoft Real Estate Market-Seattle, Washington


    

Relevant Episodes: (There are 209 Content Packed Interviews in Total)

 

The transcript of this episode can be found here.
Transcripts of all episodes can be found here.