Latest / Real Investor Radio Podcast / Ep 53 | Adapting and Thriving: Real Estate Insights with Tarry Summers
Transcript
- Craig Fuhr (00:12) Hey, welcome back everyone to Real Investor Radio. I'm Craig Fuhr joined again by my good friend, Jack Bevere. Jack, it is an exciting day. You just, you just hit me with a teams this morning that blew my mind on some new lending products that we're doing here at Dominion. And I'll be getting out to a bunch of folks today regarding that very exciting stuff. So how you doing, man? Upper you're up early and that big brain of yours is working overtime. Jack BeVier (00:13) Alright. So... I'm doing great. Yes. Yeah, man, we had a lot of stuff going on things were very busy. I'm excited We got a big push between now and the end of the year We've redesigned a whole bunch of things in the lending company and the real estate side of things is going pretty well actually So I don't know. I'm a lot more optimistic than I was six months ago. I'll tell you that much. So that's more fun Craig Fuhr (01:00) What's going on in the real estate company that's exciting for you? Jack BeVier (01:04) just like we haven't seen haven't seen values soften that much. And so we're making money on the stuff that we're flipping. We're you know, there's like threats of interest rates coming down. So I guess, you know, I'm just kind of optimistic that, you know, if the inflation report came out yesterday, we're recording this on May 16. An inflation report came out yesterday that was, you know, not great, but at least not up. Craig Fuhr (01:14) Mm -hmm. Tarry Summers (01:19) Thanks for watching! Jack BeVier (01:31) And so at least, you know, it may be like a long glide path down in my opinion. I still am not a believer in rate cuts this year, but, you know, but at least, you know, we're seeing some progress in the right direction of inflation eventually coming down, which should mean that eventually we'll see mortgage rates coming down too. And so I'm still, you know, excited to be adding real estate to our portfolio. Tarry Summers (01:32) Thanks. Jack BeVier (01:57) And then in the meantime, you know, we're making money on the flips that we're doing. So having a good time. Craig Fuhr (02:03) Well, it is an interesting time indeed. I just paid $7 this morning at Starbucks for my coffee, Jack. And I noticed that yesterday they just took coffee out of the CPI index, I guess because coffee is rising at such an insane rate right now. They didn't want to let us know that coffee was, you know, just take that out, take housing out, take energy out, everything. Everything else is easy after that, right? So we got a cool guest on today, Jack. Tarry Summers (02:09) you Jack BeVier (02:25) Take energy out. Craig Fuhr (02:31) By the way, I think we are 51 episodes into this thing, Jack. Who would have ever thought? Jack BeVier (02:36) Yeah, it's crazy, man. It's flying fast and having a good time and having a really, really good time. The thing that I didn't really like appreciate about this is how it would kind of like force us to reconnect with guys who I'd like love speaking to and like really enjoy the conversations and just give us an opportunity to to talk for a long time about stuff and dig deep into into what how they you know how they got to where their businesses are and the challenges that they're seeing right now. And that's just always very like both like rewarding and fun and helps me in in our business. So crazy that we've done 51 of these things and we're not slowing down. So keep doing it. Craig Fuhr (03:12) No one loves talking shop more than Jack Bavir. No one. You've told me that so many times. So go ahead and introduce our guests today and let's jump in. Jack BeVier (03:15) Thank you. Yes. So speaking of which we got Tarry summers on today. I've had the great pleasure of hanging out with Tarry in the the mastermind real investor roundtable that we we put together. And Tarry's out of the Columbus market. Super interesting dude does stuff very frankly, very differently than how I approach a lot of parts of the business, frankly, because he's a much different personality, much more charismatic, much more handsome than I am. And so he's got a whole different set of tools that Tarry Summers (03:28) . Jack I that's probably the best intro I've ever gotten and I will take it. I will take it man. I don't know great work, man. Great work Love it Jack BeVier (03:49) that he uses to set up his shop. And so I just really enjoy, really enjoy listening to how he's built his business. So Terry, thanks a lot for joining us today, man. It's great to see you. Craig Fuhr (04:06) That's why I threw it over to Jack. Tarry Summers (04:12) Thanks for having me guys, I appreciate it. Craig Fuhr (04:12) Such pros. Man, welcome to the show. Yeah, it's great to have you. I was just checking out your LinkedIn last night and you are quite the serial entrepreneur, my friend, you know, from real estate to to owning gyms. You were in your speaker. You you we've got to jump into the brewery that you started at some point, maybe spend a minute and a half talking about that. But you got your hand in a lot of things, man. Tarry Summers (04:23) man! Yeah, man. I used to be that guy that wanted to have his hands in all these different things. And I was great at none of them besides single family real estate in blue collar neighborhoods. That was like I bought the same house over and over and over. We're successful doing that. And I'm like, yeah, let's start a brewery. I got four college buddies. They like drinking beer. I love craft beer. This sounds like a great idea. And I'm like, I'm a fitness guy. I want to get back into fitness and own some gyms. That sounds pretty cool. Craig Fuhr (05:02) It's easy. Tarry Summers (05:07) I failed at two of those. The brewery was a massive failure. Yeah, I lost a lot of money, man. Had I not invested in real estate and had the equity build up, I probably would have went bankrupt from the brewery or the two other gyms. But we've got one gym that survived. It's actually doing extremely well now. But yeah. Craig Fuhr (05:25) So. So in Baltimore, we have these old firehouses and they're beautiful buildings in generally, you know, like there used to be the one fire truck that could pull in or maybe the two that would pull in right in front of one another. So they're very narrow and very long. And Jack, at some point you and Fred bought one of those, didn't you? And and operated out of it for a while. And then didn't you sell the building at some point or you leased it to a to a folks to a father, son team who wanted to do a brewery? Jack BeVier (05:57) Yeah, Tarry, maybe a similar story. So we bought this about this firehouse spread about this firehouse way back in the day. Gorgeous building, just like beautiful, like piece of history, like, you know, really nice, well maintained firehouse. And it was being used by I think it was an architecture firm that was occupying at the time we bought it. And then we tried to lease it forever and struggled with it. And then we were like, hey, you know what, let's start a real estate brokerage and lease it. Craig Fuhr (06:04) Beautiful. Jack BeVier (06:27) to the real estate brokerage, try to get a title company in there too. And then it was two blocks down the street from our office. So we'll just go down there for closings and like hang out with the real estate agents and you know, like create this whole little ecosystem, right? And so we did that for a while and worked with a couple of our EO agents as like partners in that real estate brokerage. And but it was like we own the building. So the bit and the business and we own the piece of the business and the business would was leasing the building and. after a number of years that like, you know, it just, you know, wasn't, wasn't working out. Like there wasn't, you guess what? There wasn't a whole lot of money in brokerage also competing with like the nationals. that idea like, you know, fizzled out. and then, so we leased it, we put it up for lease again and a restaurant, we got a restaurant going there, actually a small brewery, just like family run brewery. And, they made a go of it for five years or so. and then I think of eventually COVID. put the final nail in that coffin. And we, I'm sorry, we sold it, sorry, we sold it to that restaurant. And so that restaurant bought the building from us and we would just go down there and I would go to the bar as often as I could to drink beer and just try to support this situation. But COVID kind of put a nail in that final nail in that coffin. But yeah, man, and then after that experience, I think we sold the building and got our money back basically. And I was ecstatic. And I was like, you know what? Tarry Summers (07:40) Hahaha! Craig Fuhr (07:42) Yeah. Tarry Summers (07:43) Keep a pain. Jack BeVier (07:55) I'm a residential real estate investor. I don't know how I'm doing on the commercial side. It shows right like clearly we've just fumbled through this and then like tripped and felt falling our way into like not not losing money somehow. But yeah, man. So like the commercial side of things is always I've tried it and failed and tried it and failed and just gone back to Rezzy. Tarry Summers (08:16) Yeah, like for me, man, I mean, we leased this space. It was because breweries are typically in downtown revitalization neighborhoods. It's got to be in that cool, hipster little area. And we tried to be like the NFL craft breweries. We were trying to go out to the suburbs, had like all this like very how do I put it? Because most breweries, it's like that element of cool. It's like it's obscure. It's weird. Craig Fuhr (08:41) Yeah, yeah. Sort of industrial and esoteric. Yeah. Tarry Summers (08:44) And that's what kind of makes it, it gives it that element of cool, I guess. And for us, we, yeah, man. And for us, you know, we were trying to do the complete opposite and be like the mainstream thing. And because of that, that definitely, that was like mistake number one, because people don't want to drink craft beer that's mainstream. You want to drink the weird, obscure, you know, stuff that you're never going to get. Gosh, I could, I could, I could give a number of excuses why it didn't work. Ultimately it falls on my shoulders. But the day we actually opened was February 15th of 2015. And yeah, the building that came out in Columbus Business First that day that the building, the whole complex was in foreclosure. We're talking a $300 million complex in foreclosure, we're the anchor tenant. So naturally things are in foreclosure. People don't really show up. Also who was running our kitchen was the Southern Restaurant. in that complex. Well, the owners of the building were 51 % owners in that restaurant. They shut that restaurant down. So we had no food the day that we opened. And I'm like, you got to be kidding me. And we had to go through like the court appointed a receiver. We had to go through the property management company, the bank that was out of Europe, and we had to get nine different signatures to do anything. So we survived for like a year without any food out the suburbs in a very family friendly area. And just drowned in debt. But we had to keep paying rent. We had keep making loan payments. Yeah, it was not a good time. It was not fun. Craig Fuhr (10:13) Yeah. Well, let's jump into real estate and we'll get out of beer until five o 'clock this afternoon, Jack. And let's let's talk some real estate. Let's talk about what you're doing with Jack. Remarkably, the house behind him looks like every single house in Parkville, Maryland, another sort of blue collar place where I know we've we cut our teeth and in rehabbing. And so yeah, man, jump in. Jack, where do you want to go? Tarry Summers (10:45) Yeah. Jack BeVier (10:45) Yeah, what's what? Go ahead, Tarry, go ahead. Tarry Summers (10:48) No, I was going to say where I live, it's literally like two minutes away from downtown and it's in this little school district. It's like an A plus school district. There's like 15 kids per class, but you're downtown in like two minutes. And so you don't get a lot of house around here, but like you pay for it. You pay a premium for location. But I don't know. I like it around here. It's fun. We can walk anywhere we want to go. Jack BeVier (11:12) What kind of houses are you buying? Yeah, what kind of houses are you buying in Columbus? Like what's your prototypical stuff that you like to buy? What price point? What are the rents? What are the bed baths? Square footage? Your bill? All that stuff. Tarry Summers (11:17) So. Yeah, for sure. So our buy box is over 675 square feet. We want at least two bedrooms, three if we can get it. Typically the house is built after World War II. I like post -World War II construction, not the old stuff. We do no well in septic in our buy box. We don't, if it's, I always say built in the neighborhood, buy a builder. Because then you, like if you have that, you kind of get yourself out of these hodgepodge houses that, you know. Joe built back in the 50s has been built on to 74 different times. But for us, man, like we have a lot of like those three bed, one bath ranches. We have a lot of that 1970s built stuff, which you can still go to Home Depot, get all your doors, all that types of stuff. But I'm a huge proponent of buying trophy properties every once in a while because those things appreciate way more than the other stuff. So when cash is heavy. Craig Fuhr (11:52) Sure. Tarry Summers (12:17) Like go buy a couple of trophy properties, hang onto them for three or four years, and that way when you sell them off, there's always those quick pops of a couple hundred grand, just as long as you can hang on. So I'm not the guy that's like, hey, this is everything that we do, because I think you need to splice in some of those appreciation properties to be able to keep the train going. Craig Fuhr (12:36) Man, how's your, I'm sorry, Jack, how's your philosophy changed? So when did you, when did you do your first real estate investment deal? You remember what year that was? Jack BeVier (12:36) So what is, go ahead. Tarry Summers (12:44) Gosh, yeah, June of 2010, I bought a FHA house hack, put like five G's down. I saved up another four to do the rehab and I was doing all the rehab myself. It was my girlfriend and a couple buddies that were living in the property helping me pay the mortgage. And that was, yeah, like, yeah, that was, holy smokes, 14 years ago. So I'm old. But then I realized you can't. I realized you couldn't put like three and a half percent down on every house and you had to put 20 % down with a community bank. And that was like, like, man, thought I found the wealth code, but I didn't like you have to actually come up with cash to buy these things. but yeah, I just, I did. Once I figured out you could pull out your money tax free and still keep the asset. Your payment doesn't really change a whole hell of a lot. You know, if you're paying four or 5%, it was like, it was like light bulb went off. Like, dude, how many things, how many of these things can I buy? Craig Fuhr (13:41) Yeah. So talk about that. Like, you know, I think there's a lot of people, Jack and I, you know, fancy the podcast is this isn't a how to, right? We, we, we like to talk to guys like you who are advanced in the game and really go into advanced topics. But what I love talking about is talking to the person who's listening, who is at that like 25 houses, you know, they're still trying to kind of put, put their whole sort of buying philosophy together, still trying to figure out the capital game and you know, Tarry Summers (14:06) this. Craig Fuhr (14:10) Did you always have this sort of philosophy back then where we have a beltway that goes around around Baltimore City? It's just a circle, you know, and I've always said that if you're just inside or just outside that circle, you're going to be in a great, venerable, blue collar neighborhood, great first time starter houses. You know, you're not way out in the burbs, but you're in safe, good school neighborhoods. Is that is that sort of always been your philosophy or is that evolved over time? Jack BeVier (14:20) Thank you. Tarry Summers (14:38) Yeah, for sure. It definitely evolves when those things get too expensive. You have to cut. You have to pivot. So for me, I always I thought path of progress. So it used to be school district. You know, I wanted to be there's a couple of school districts. I'm like, I only buy in the school district. The one thing I've learned over time, though, is just because I think it's a good school district doesn't mean it's a good school district. Typically where people grow up, they kind of want to stay, whether it's their kids or and it's just this this just happened. I process this probably. five or six years ago, but you know, just because you think it's a bad area. Well, that person needs to drop their kids off at their grandma's house or their mom's house to be able to go to work. And they kind of want to stay around there. So, you know, different locations mean different things to different people. And it doesn't mean that every area is a bad neighborhood. Like, you know, the other thing I look for too is like cranes. I want to be in a residential neighborhood where I can physically see the cranes because I know that it's coming right. Like, I mean, you look for little signs like I don't want to be the first person to kind of. go into a neighborhood, I want to see that first two or three house flips. As soon as I see those pink doors or those gentrification numbers going up, I'm going all in on that neighborhood. Jack BeVier (15:46) What kind of stuff do you like to, like what are the numbers today in Columbus? Like what are you buying houses for? What do you consider like the sweet spot for like just a solid median rental deal? Tarry Summers (15:59) Yeah, so we put to a contract yesterday, property on Fairwood Avenue for anyone listening that is from Columbus. We're buying it for $135 ,000. It was from an older landlord. The older landlords typically replace furnaces, roofs, all the mechanical stuff. Mechanically sound, we'll probably throw 15 grand into it. We'll rent it for $1 ,700 a month. I know that property is worth $200. It's not a home run deal, but it's a I think it's a path of progress. I think that deal in three years would be worth 250. So if we're buying it for 135 in three years, it's, you know, we're basically doubling our money. I think that's a great deal. Another one we bought for 98 ,000, we'll put another 40 grand into it. It'll be worth 200 ,000. The rent on that will probably be 1600 and that's a three bedroom one bath. So I'm still finding deals that can go to owner occupants or can go as rentals. And I'm still trying to play the cashflow game. But one of the things with Columbus is, you know, we used to be this massive cashflow market and we're just not anymore. We're, we're turning into a flip, a flip market because Columbus has kind of cannibalized all these other cities. You know, your limas, Toledo's, all these small manufacturing towns are dying. And where are these kids going to go? They want to come to Columbus because you've got Ohio state here. You've got the Intel plant. You've got nationwide Wendy's, all these major corporations. So we have. Craig Fuhr (17:04) just not at one point. Tarry Summers (17:26) a ton of jobs and it's cool, vibrant, hip city. So yeah, that's kind of my sweet spot. Jack BeVier (17:38) So what did numbers look like pre -COVID? Where were you in 2018? Was it a heavier cash flow market? What did... Tarry Summers (17:43) Yeah, shit. pre -COVID, we were buying gills. Yeah, pre -COVID, we were buying deals for probably 60 to 90 grand, putting probably 20 to 30 into them and they would appraise that in about a buck 50. But we've had this massive run up ever since COVID. Right around 1100, 1100, 1200. Jack BeVier (18:00) and what with the rents. What were the rents on those? Okay. So you've seen a run up in both rents and values. You've gotten it on both sides for the stuff that you kept in the portfolio. Tarry Summers (18:16) For sure, for sure. I think the biggest issue that I'm having is that my values are going up way faster than the rents. So it's making much more sense to sell stuff than hang on to it. Case in point, I bought a duplex, a path of progress. I owned a bunch of houses on this one street on South Champion Avenue here in Columbus. And it was a duplex, which I'm not a huge fan of duplexes because you still got to cut the grass and do all the crap that you got to do with apartments with, you know. control all that junk but so I held on to it bought it for seventy thousand put forty thousand into it it appraised out at the time I think like 160 and this is to 2020 that deal today we're gonna sell off for 375 thousand Craig Fuhr (18:46) So I held on to it. Tarry Summers (18:59) So it makes no sense to get $1 ,200 a month per side when you can sell for $375. Jack BeVier (18:59) So how many of you? Craig Fuhr (19:00) So it makes no sense to get $400. It makes no sense to get $400 from a dollar bill. Jack BeVier (19:06) Yeah, yeah, interest rates aside, just like just the cash on cash is just not that not that great anymore. So if you started to do that, if you started to sell off like you started to sell off the rental portfolio and like shift your pipeline more towards retail than rental. Tarry Summers (19:21) No, man. I mean, I'm just I'm a residential guy like the commercial side I like even my gym building I like seeing the vision and trying to take something that I'm just I'm not good at that like if there's a repeatable process which the residential business is I'm good at that part but Yeah, like for me man, like I'm investing in the stock market and then I have two buddies that actually started a small hedge fund here ironically, it was a One of the guys was my old college roommate, so I'm pretty stoked for him. But it's getting, you know, annualized, you know, 16 to 18 % and has with the exception of two years ago. So for me, it's like, OK, where can I get the most amount of return at all times? And so if I'm taking money and then let's say like that deal on South Champion, you know, we'll pull out 250 grand out of that deal. I want to put it into a vehicle that's going to earn a high rate of return, but then be able to have liquidity and borrow back out of six. Craig Fuhr (19:51) So for me, it's like, okay, where can I get the most amount of return at all times? So if I'm taking money, and then say like, you know, I want to be able to earn a high rate of return, but then be able to have liquidity and borrow back out of six years. Tarry Summers (20:19) six and a half percent and then buy more real estate. So I feel like I'm kind of trading right now and just making sure that I'm super liquid, making sure that I'm not getting too concentrated either in real estate or liquidity, if that makes sense. I feel like I'm just trading real estate at this point. Jack BeVier (20:38) So you're mixing like your real estate, the money you're making in real estate, putting it into other stuff besides real estate as well. Tarry Summers (20:45) Yeah, for sure. Like I've never been a stock market guy or, you know, real estate people are typically like anti -market. But once I understood it and understood liquidity, banks, you know, banks look at that type of stuff. You can act quickly. You can go into a bank and write, basically write your own check if you're liquid. That was like, that was kind of a game changing moment about three or four years ago for me. I'm like, dude, I don't have to like. I don't have to keep all this money in here on the 31st and then print off my bank statements, then liquidate on the 1st. Just that whole game you gotta play to continue to get financing. Once I realized that once you have cash, that you don't have to do that, it just makes so much easier. Craig Fuhr (21:15) I got a call this morning on the 31st and I put off my bank statements and took the day off on the 1st. It's that whole game you gotta play to get the money. I'm not saying that I don't like but once you got cash, you gotta have the feedbacks. Jack BeVier (21:28) You're like, you're well, it was a high cash flow market. And like, I would say that prior to 2017, like the institutions weren't even in Ohio yet. Now, obviously, like 2018 plus, like they went there and you've got now some like major institutions buying, buying all over Ohio at this point. But like, how did you make that transition from house hacking with some buddies, you know, putting three and a half percent down to Do you have a job at the time or was that what you were doing? Like, and like talking about like that transition, like how'd you, how'd you take it from just like your first deal into like your full -time job? Tarry Summers (21:59) Yeah, so I - So I was working in the fitness industry at the time and in like the personal and basically the song personal training and when you sell personal training, you got to be there at 5 a You got to be there late at night, but you had the middle of the day to kind of work out or go run your errands or whatever. I was making good money. Like great sales job. I was making good money. I was just there all the time. And so when I bought that first piece of real estate and realized like I could probably like it. Craig Fuhr (22:05) So I was working in the fitness industry at the time and basically self -personal training. You gotta be there at 5 a You gotta be there late at night. You had the middle of the day. Work out or whatever. Making good money. A sales job. Making good money. I was just there all the time. So when I bought that first piece of real estate, I realized that I could have a big pool of things. My thing was better than that. Well, if I didn't have enough $400 in my checks, that's a great amount. And most people don't have the money to spend it on. Tarry Summers (22:34) My thing was 10 grand a month. I'm like, well, if I can collect enough $400 a month checks, like that's 10 grand a month. And like most people, that's kind of the number 10 grand a month. Like, dude, if I can just get like 25 of these houses, man, I'm gonna be set forever. Not thinking about like capex and all this other stuff. But for me, it was like, it was, I almost gamified it. I'm like, dude, every 15 or 20 grand I can save up, I know that that's a down payment on a rental property. It's gonna spit out four to $500 a month cash flow. And for four years, I just gamified it. I bought that first house. The next three I bought with 20 % down and kind of figured out the rehab. I did another, I did a cash out refi to then buy another one. My seventh deal, I discovered hard money of guys that I think it was called Autumnwood. And I'm like, Holy smokes, I put 10 % down and they found the rehab. That was like a game changer. And then I found a community bank that was doing a 100 % financing they did 100 % financing on three deals. So that was that was a little cheat code there. But I literally went through the phone book like actual yellow pages and just called every local bank that I've never heard of. And finally found this one out of Asheville, Ohio, man. And they're like, Yeah, you know, we'll go ahead and we'll fund the purchase and we'll fund the rehab like, holy smokes. We can go up to I think they did they could do $300 ,000 worth of deals with one. Craig Fuhr (23:55) We got you. Yep. Tarry Summers (23:56) So for me it was like, it was like a, I don't know, just gamified it man. And then, then after that, once I got, I had 16 when I left my fitness job. And then I realized that that wasn't going to cut it for life. So I left that fitness job. I went to Chase Bank, which is like the most dependable W2 job you can get. Cause I wanted to continue to get financed for rental properties. But you know, headset, cubicle, you know, 10 hours a day just wasn't for me. Craig Fuhr (24:25) And I was there, it just wasn't for me. And I needed it, so I ended up doing that. It's 16 years, 16 years family built, five months. Tarry Summers (24:27) and I hated it. So I ended up doing that. I did 16 deals, 16 single family deals, a triplex and got all this stuff in contract and got like three different local community banks to finance them all. And then I closed on all of them on that Wednesday and Thursday and left my job on that Friday. And that was April 12th, 2013 at 1206 PM. It's a great day. Great day. I drank a lot. I drank a lot of craft beer that weekend. Craig Fuhr (24:42) Chuck. Jack BeVier (24:48) Thank you. Craig Fuhr (24:53) shot and you became a house collector overnight. So then, so then, were these all like turnkeys or all of these required rehab to stabilize? Jack BeVier (24:53) I'm not Tarry Summers (25:02) No. There was a couple that like legacy tenants that I was able to write out. There was a couple that were turnkey, but for the most part, these were, you know, rehabs. You had to go in and, but I was always a cosmetic rehab guy. I never wanted to do big heavy lift rehabs. I mean, you got to think the people that I knew, these are my buddies that's helping me paint and. do maintenance and all that stuff. So anything that was basically above their pay grade, I knew I couldn't buy that house because I didn't have the crews of know -how or the people and the resources to do them. So anything that was just heavy, heavy cosmetic, that's what I focused on. And even today, I mean, you hear it all the time, investors want cosmetic rehabs because they're just so easy to do. You can get in and out in 30, 45 days. Jack BeVier (25:50) So when did you, did you, you always add into the rental portfolio? You're not really flipping at this time. You doing any wholesaling yet? And how are you finding, by the way, how are you finding deals? Or was it just like, hey, it's Columbus in 2014, you could find deals, you know? Go in the MLS. Tarry Summers (26:03) Yeah, back then, yes, you could. But yeah, it was a lot of wholesalers, realtors. One of the things I used to do is I would just call five realtors a day between owning the brewery and the gym and all these other things I had my hands in. I'm like, if I just call five realtors a day, they'll go and find me the deal. So I was always looking for the hungry realtors. You don't want to go to the best realtor. You want to find the realtors that need to make a paycheck. They're going to go out and work harder. So I would just make a habit to call five realtors a day. And even today, you know, we have a couple of different ways that we're finding deals. I mean, wholesalers we have, we keep track of every deal that comes through any email or Facebook. And then we ask one question, we ask, when does this need to close by? Then we go back and we look at those dates. So it needs to close by, say, May 31st. Well, a week before that, we're saying, hey, is this deal still available? If it's available, we know that the wholesalers under the gun, we're going to be able to negotiate that purchase price. Jack BeVier (26:38) Thank you. Tarry Summers (27:01) So we're tracking those that way. We do a 25, what I call 25 to one strategy. So every 25 deals that we throw out with it, or every 25 offers that we throw on the MLS, we want to try to get one accepted. And that still works. You find someone, you're either first or you're last to the deal. And if something's been sitting for say 50 days and they're just done with it, sometimes they take your offer. So we do that. I did it about four years ago, we had, the in -house marketing, we had six acquisition guys, running data, running ads, doing direct mail, doing cold calling, all that stuff. I mean, it was fun, but the overhead that we had at that time, I don't know, I'm just in a different place now where I don't want to have extreme overhead and then have to worry about, are we going to take this deal down or are we going to have to wholesale this? Craig Fuhr (27:56) things have been down and even have to wholesale this. Your team members get pissed because they're all making like getting free ground on the deal instead of making a quarter grand amount of money. Tarry Summers (27:59) having your team members get pissed because they're only making, they're only getting three grand on a deal instead of you flipping it and making, you know, 40 grand and then getting five. Just, I don't know, I'm trying to like remove complexity from this business. And when I go back and look at it, when I first got into it, there was a couple of things that I did well. I made relationships with the connectors, had them go out, source the deals, make those relationships, keep those relationships good. And. Jack BeVier (28:12) Thank you. Craig Fuhr (28:13) And when I go back and look at it, I knew that it was a couple of things. I knew that they had a with the connections. I then go out and source the news, make those relationships, relationships with them, and talk to them about what they're doing, the same things that they're doing. Jack, talk about that philosophy because I've always had sort of a similar mentality as Tarry's that never really had any employees when I was doing my flips. Tarry Summers (28:26) throughout this evolution, it's like I'm doing the same things that I did 10 years ago. It's just. Jack BeVier (28:33) It's not what I thought it was. It's what I was thinking. I don't know what I thinking. I was just saying, I think it's probably easier to say that. Now I'm not. I was doing life and life. I'm trying to think of life. I'm not. I'm trying think of life. I'm I'm trying to of life. I'm not. I'm I'm not. I'm trying to think of life. I'm not. I'm trying to think of life. I'm not. I'm trying to think of life. I'm not. I'm trying to think of life. I'm not. I'm trying to think of life. I'm not. I'm trying to think of life. I'm not. I'm trying to think of life. I'm not. I'm trying to think of life. I'm not. I'm trying to think of life. I'm not. I'm trying to think of life. I'm not. I'm trying to Craig Fuhr (28:43) had reliable contractors, fair access to capital that I needed, and never really wanted to grow the machine that had to be fed. I didn't want to have to do three deals a month to pay for the machine. And then everything after that was okay. But Dominion, you and Fred have obviously developed a platform where you have quite a few employees on the property side. And so just talk about that philosophy switch, Jack. Jack BeVier (29:08) Yeah, yeah, I think that I think that I don't think the one's better than the other by a long shot, right? Like it does not like we did not you do not grow. And I definitely think there's like a mentality or an assumption that like, once I get to that level, then I'll be happy or then I need to get that level and then I'll be happy. But like your quality of life does not improve. Craig Fuhr (29:13) you know, the difference there. Right? Right, right. Jack BeVier (29:37) as you scale. It's just that you just trade one set of problems for a different set of problems for a different set of problems. And like, frankly, like, but frankly, that's kind of the reason that we do that is because I just got we just get bored, right? Like Fred and I just get bored at a certain level. And then we're like, let's go try to do with this, you know, let's go try to do a multifamily. All right, like, I'm doing a we have 800 properties, like I'm doing a we're doing a 45 unit in West downtown Baltimore, a 14 unit. federal tax credit and historic preservation deal that we've, cause we've never done it before, right? Like, are those 14 units gonna like change my life? Absolutely not. But like, but I've never done a federal historic tax credit deal. So I want to go do one. We're doing a multifamily new construction deal, cause I've never done one before. And that's kind of like, that's kind of it. Like that's, you know, cause I wanted a new set of problems to work on. So I, you know, I think that, yeah, I certainly don't think that like, anyone's lifestyle changes once they get to a certain once they get to a certain scale or whatever, right? It's just it's just which problem you just choose your choose the problems that you want, like, you know, which which set of problems do you want to deal with every day? Craig Fuhr (30:48) That might be Jack, one of the most incredible takes that I think we've ever had on the podcast that I think there's so many people. We talked to guys, almost every guy that we've talked to who's a property owner investor on the podcast is a guy who owns a few hundred properties plus. And there seems to be this prevailing philosophy amongst maybe the listeners that if I get to 250, you know, my life is so much better. My quality of life is better. You know, I've got, I got people who, you know, personnel working for me now that is handling the acquisition and the disposition. And I've got, you know, a real marketing budget, but I think your take is, is, is one of the most truthful Jack that I, that I think I've ever heard, in terms of that philosophy. Jack BeVier (31:36) One of the things that you mentioned that really kind of struck home with me was that, and resonated with me, was that the way that you built the business early on was I called five realtors a day. You know, like just every day. And you're, you know, you're an extroverted, charismatic guy. So I'm sure that like, that worked, that works well for you, right? Like, but like that strategy of connecting with people and building your network is important, but that's, but it's not that you're extroverted. that made you in charismatic and made you successful. It's that you did, it was the consistency of it that you called five realtors every day and you did that in and out, you know, every day. And then over the course of time, that effort compounds and that, you know, that the snowball just gets bigger and bigger, but the snowball doesn't get bigger unless you keep rolling it every single day, right? Like, did you, does that ring true to you? Tarry Summers (32:25) Yeah. You. Yeah, go ahead. Jack BeVier (32:29) Is that something that you, does that ring true to you? Is that like, you know, feel like part of the way that you built the machine early on? Tarry Summers (32:38) Yeah, man, so like... I feel like in this business, if you're going to continue on, people have to know you all the time. If people know that you're buying and they know that you're legit and you're doing business and you're keeping the snowball rolling, as you say, you're going to continue to get more business. It's momentum. Momentum is a real thing. Momentum with relationships, with people knowing what you're doing out in the market. But if you go out to a dinner or something like that and there's a bunch of realtors there or wholesalers, real estate investors, Craig Fuhr (32:43) If you're going to continue on, people have to know you all the time. People know that you're fine. They know that you're legit, you're in the business, you're snowball rolling, for example. You're going to continue to get more business. You're going to continue to build better relationships with people knowing that you're going out in the market. If you go out to a dinner or something like that, and there's a bunch of dealers there, wholesalers, dealers, investors, and you haven't done a deal in the last six months, you're going to be able to do that. Tarry Summers (33:09) and you haven't done a deal in the last six months, you're non -existent. So you have to continue to be relevant. And that's why social media is so powerful. I do content creation two hours a week, every Wednesday from two to four. And I don't even know what the hell goes on social media, but people scroll and they look at it, and it continues to make you at least relevant. So that way when deals pop up or conversations are had, you're the first one they think of. And... Craig Fuhr (33:22) and it continues to make these relevance so that way we can pop up with conversations or have like, they're the first one they think of. Tarry Summers (33:38) Yeah, I mean, it's so simple, man. It's just building relationships, keep making, keeping and maintaining those relationships and just putting it out there. What you need. Like I put out an email yesterday, Jack. I said, I'm looking for deals. Please send to me dot dot dot. And it's amazing. We've got like 16 responses. Hey, man, I haven't talked to you forever. Here's some deals I got. It's just simple, dude. Just put it out there what you're looking for. So so easy. Craig Fuhr (33:38) Now who like So who would that email go out to in this case? Tarry Summers (34:09) So that email will go out to all the realtor contacts. We have wholesaler, real estate investors, regular people. I'm sending that to 15 ,000 people. And it could be people in Arkansas that might have a wholesale business. We've bought deals from wholesalers all across the country, but they wholesale in Columbus, Ohio, because it's a hot market. So yeah, everybody. Jack BeVier (34:32) Yeah, I feel like that. Like I drive that there's a misconception, I think, amongst a lot of folks that with your marketing, you're going to convince someone to sell, right? Like I'm going to send a letter or a postcard or I'm going to cold call somebody and I'm going to and I'm going to get them on the phone. And then my salesperson is going to get them to sell the house to me because I'm going to provide a value proposition to them that is compelling and charismatic. And that frankly, it misses the point entirely. Like that is not what that's not what works. You're not going to convince someone to do anything. You just want to be in front of them when they come to the conclusion that they need to go now take action. So it's so the consistency is like what wins that right? It's and people burn out and after the first within the first six months of of of sending direct mail or within the first year of doing television or whatever, you know, or first year of doing social media because they're like, I'm not getting anything out of it like. Tarry Summers (35:11) when they want to make the decision. Craig Fuhr (35:13) 100%. Tarry Summers (35:14) it's Jack BeVier (35:30) They must not like me. I must not be good at this. I don't know. Self doubt comes in. You get lazy because you're just tired of working for free and just stop. And, you know, 90 % of the curve stops before they've earned real estate in people's brains. Right. And like the consistency of just keeping that up doesn't matter if it's good or bad or whatever. Right. Like the yellow postcards fucking suck. Right. Like they they're not they're not good marketing pieces. They but they Tarry Summers (35:47) Mm -hmm. They're not. Jack BeVier (35:58) you just remember them and so they don't doesn't need to be great copy, you know, in order to be consistency will, you know, is going to is going to win over, you know, you know, fancy content like every day, you know. And the fact that you even like think about it that way still right, like we podcast on Wednesday between two and four p You know, like that's like, and that's that's when we do that. And if you just stick to that, right, like it starts to pay dividends over time. but over a long period of time. Tarry Summers (36:29) Dude, it's like your career in real estate investing goes like this, right? Because especially if you're buying rentals, because you're always going to be broke, right? And it goes like this, it goes like this. And then eventually, like, your Rolodex gets so massive, you know, compound interest starts working in your favor. And then it like, and then you're just like, holy smokes, and you have a month where all this cash rolls in and cash flow, you have no problems, you've got deals flowing in and you just start to go like this. But like you have to weather that time. And for me, it was, I mean, Craig Fuhr (36:46) Yeah. Tarry Summers (37:00) 11 years before I really started to hit that, you know, that kind of upward or parabolic, I guess, were like, I felt like it was easy. So I mean, people that bitch after three years, like, dude, you can't bitch. So that's for a while. Jack BeVier (37:09) Yeah. Yeah. Craig Fuhr (37:11) You - You know what's funny, Tarry? You're a f— Jack BeVier (37:16) Yeah, after 10. Yeah, don't get. Yeah, if you give you give up in the first 10, you got the wrong game in the first place, you know. Craig Fuhr (37:22) Tarry, you're a fitness guy. I mean, you don't roll into the gym, you know, day one and start to see results and you don't see them after a month and you probably don't even see them after three. But, you know, after six, you look in the mirror one day and you're like, holy shit, my shoulders look better. My chest is getting bigger. I know I'm stronger. I can walk up steps now. I can skip steps. And I think that to your point, Jack, I think you and Fred have always been sort of models of consistency and discipline. And Tarry, it's one of the things that I have found with, I've met investors all over the country and I'm gonna start a network of realtors, they say. And for most people, it's not easy to pick up a phone and just start having a conversation with a stranger, just like if you go to a conference, it's not easy to just walk up to a group of people and say, hey, I'm a loan officer for Dominion, send me some deals. And what I find is that, they're, There are a million investors out there who say they're going to start a network of realtors and they make three calls. The three realtors set them up with a stupid search on the MLS and they it's all crap deals that you could have found yourself. But then you find that one. And what I what I love about what you're saying here is that I called five a day. Five of them maybe didn't work out, but that six one was fricking awesome. You know, and we spoke. Jack, remember our conversation with Austin Carow where he talked about. They were going to make like 10 ,000 calls, 10 ,000 connects in a month. And so that was his jumpstart as a realtor before he became an investor. And it was exponential, pretty grueling. But that one month of making 1 ,000 contacts a month, 10 people on a team making 10 ,000, jumpstarted his entire real estate investment career, or his realtor career. So yeah. Jack BeVier (38:48) Yeah, that was his jumpstart. Yeah. Tarry Summers (39:10) Dude, I love that. And eventually you find like you're 20 or you're 25. And there's that core group of people. And even if you only do a couple deals a year with those 20, that's over a hundred deals a year, man. You know, that's, I mean, that's cooking. I don't care who you are. That's cooking. So yeah. And then you just, you figure out your vibe, whether they say your vibe attracts your tribe. I mean, you'll find the right people that, you know, want to do business with you. They want, they want to send you that deal first. But you gotta go out there and make your contacts. Jack BeVier (39:42) The one other thing you mentioned that made me think about this is you mentioned that you're the 25 to one that you're making. You guys are still making offers on MLS properties with the goal of making 25 offers, getting one you're either first in or the first one to the deal of the last one to the deal after everyone's let you know, passed it over and given up on it. But that. Tarry Summers (39:59) Ricky Bobby, baby, you're the first to your last. Shake and bake. Shake and bake. Craig Fuhr (40:03) Shake and bake, baby, shake and bake. Jack BeVier (40:05) I'm wondering, I'm wondering like, because you know, just what like watching stats nationwide listings are like, listening inventory is creeping up, right? Because because interest rates are still high. So despite those low, low, relatively low supply environment that we are still in, on a relative basis, listings are starting to creep up. And the thing that I'm seeing is that the good shit goes right away. right? Like if it's if it's right down the middle, it's renovated. Well, it's a three to there's nothing fucked up about it. Like that shit's gone. And that's still multiple offer situation. But if there's anything scratch and dent about it, the buyer or like a little off about it or the street, it's on a double yellow, like whatever, you know, like the buyer just doesn't want it right, because nothing's affordable right now. And so like, if they're gonna make a, you know, a stretched unaffordable or like stretched business decision right now to borrow money at these rates and like and buy a house at these still high prices. They want what they want. And if it's not perfect, they don't want it. And so I think like my sense is that inventory this like kind of scratch, I'll call it scratching dead inventory is building up on the market. And hey, that stuff sometimes makes great, you know, great rental properties, right. And so I'm wondering if that like that build up in inventory right now is that that trend is continuing. And the MLS may start to be a place where it's, you know, where we haven't been talking about that, you know, for five years, but may start to be a source of deals once again, as that that's as those like inventory levels of like stuff, it's a little messed up, get to, you know, critical levels or, you appropriate levels. Tarry Summers (41:35) Mm -hmm. Here's what I'm seeing it talking about scratching that you know who's causing the scratching dent inventory to go up his core flippers and like you know because every like the information is out there everyone wants to go and be a house flipper and Like there's so many of these properties you look at them They're like two gray walls were out like two years ago, and then you look at the floor. You're like dude. It's peel and stick like Spend extra money and do hardwood like if you're not separating yourself from other properties like that That's one of the things I personally do like For instance, we put flags on the front of our property. It's a $50 thing. You put a flag here, it's got the state of Ohio and then the city of Columbus flag. It's cool, kind of hip, it's 50 bucks. No one else does it, but like it's something that separates our properties. Paint your front door pink, or paint it a light blue color. Just do stuff that's gonna separate your property. It doesn't have to be something extravagant, but everything's looking the same and you have to start, there's competition. You got to start separating yourself. But I think there's going to, I think there's, yeah, I like that. Yeah. I think you're going to start seeing that continuous buildup of I'll call it this poor flipping. Craig Fuhr (42:45) I call it the sizzle with the steak. Jack BeVier (42:56) Tarry, hey, I want jump into the stuff that you guys are doing on the social media side, on the group that you've put together. You've done a ton of cool shit to build your network and create your tribe. Craig, let's cut this episode here and hop into that on the next episode. Craig Fuhr (43:19) All right. That's a good tease, Jack. We're getting we're starting to be real pros at this. This podcast thing, Tarry. I hope you're noticing. So we'll wrap it up with Tarry Summers of Ohio Home, serial entrepreneur and an all around great speaker. Super charismatic guy. Tarry, thank you for this one. We'll come back for the next one. This is Real Investor Radio. We'll see you on the next episode.