Latest / REL Freedom Podcast / Adit Shah - Navy Veteran & Real Estate Entrepreneur Living In Columbia

Transcript

Adit Shah - Navy Veteran & Real Estate Entrepreneur Living In Columbia · REL Freedom Podcast

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: So when it came time for me to start doing my own deals, I wasn't scared to take on the non-paying tenants, the squatters, the mold, the code violations, because I already dealt with it on his dime and his time.
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: So when it came time for me to do it I already knew what I was doing and to answer your question like kind of, how I started doing my own deals was basically the VA loan and you know you can in anyone who's not a veteran, you can kind of parallel that to a low down payment owner occupied loan and I leveraged that into two six figure exits.
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: Welcome to the Real Freedom Show, where we inspire you to pursue your passion to gain time and financial freedom through opportunities in real estate.
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: I'm your host, mike Swenson.
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: Let's get some real freedom together.
• 0:42
  Speaker 2: ["real Freedom"].
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: Hello everybody, welcome to another episode of Real Freedom Real Estate Leverage Freedom.
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: We're talking about building time and financial freedom and, in this case, location freedom, through opportunities in real estate, and so today's guest is coming to you.
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: Live from Columbia in South America, and I think it just speaks to the amazing opportunities of what you can do in real estate, that you really can do what you want where you want, how you want, and so Adit is definitely example of that.
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: A little bit more about Adit Navy Veteran, and I think that that just speaks through who he is and who he wants to serve.
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: Spent a lot of time in San Diego and serving the military community there and obviously I also pursuing real estate there, and then also does private equity pairing with operators, and so we'll dig into that as well but has achieved financial freedom and forced himself location freedom by moving down to Columbia.
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: So excited to have you, adit, and to be able to share your story.
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: Hey, thanks so much, mike.
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: Excited to be here.
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: Tell us a little bit about your background, how you got into real estate, and we'll go from there.
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: One of the most unconventional real estate stories.
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: So I was a bosom mate in the Navy and for anyone who doesn't know what that is, it's like the equivalent of a grunt in any other branch.
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: So it's kind of where all of the people with criminal records or low test scores or people who got rejected from other programs end up in that community.
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: So that was me.
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: Ended up flying with it, did all right in the Navy, got out and got promoted four times in six years.
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: So did okay, got out of the military with a ton of life lessons, a ton of work ethic lessons and a big interest in real estate.
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: So I got.
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: Before I got out of the military, I purchased a condo and I was house hacking so I was renting out one of.
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: It was a two bedroom condo.
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: I was renting out one of the rooms and my roommate was paying most of my expense.
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: So what I would have been paying normally to rent a room would have been like $1,000, $1,200.
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: In college area San Diego, I was paying like 6, 700 bucks and I was like, dude, this real estate thing is cool.
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: So I started going to the meetups, got in bigger pockets like everyone else does.
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: Youtube university, got super obsessed, but I got kind of crazy man.
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: And then what I did was I took my resume and cover letter, which I had no experience right.
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: Remember, worst job in the Navy just got out.
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: I joined when I was 18.
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: So that tells you about my work experience.
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: But I did know how to fix things.
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: I was a handyman and had a little handyman side hustle in the Navy and I went to every single syndicator, developer, flipper, wholesaler in San Diego and said hey, man, I'm a handyman, I can also run teams.
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: I supervised like 30 sailors in the Navy.
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: If you need help with anything, I'd love to come work for you for free.
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: Everyone told me you know no, everyone's like no, man, that's not strange.
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: What is this guy trying to do?
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: But this one guy finally took me up.
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: He said yeah, you know what?
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: And this was like.
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: After I texted him like six, seven times, I skipped, traced him, man.
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: So I got his phone number from the public records and I was harassing this guy and he's like yeah, you know what, just come to the job site and I started off carrying boxes for this guy.
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: Then I became the handyman in his rentals, worked for him for free for a year, got a paid position as a property and project manager.
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: This guy was a developer, so I was managing all his development projects, managing all his properties, worked for him for two years.
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: In the meantime I started doing my own deals and just took off from there, man, and so that was kind of my start in real estate was working for free for a developer.
• 4:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's crazy that you got turned down that many times working offering to work for free.
• 4:16
  Speaker 2: You think somebody would have taken you up on that.
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely.
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: I think what I learned was actually you need to know, like, what you have to offer and kind of just do it for him, because when people need mental, you know it takes mental bandwidth to figure out.
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: How can this person help me, you know.
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: So if you can kind of go ahead and figure out your value proposition and just solve the problem before even trying to offer it, then you'd get more luck than I did so yeah.
• 4:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, because they probably see it as it's free, but at the same time I have to take my time to train you and all that and so my time is, you know, worth something and so they're seeing like okay, versus having somebody that could just kind of plug in place.
• 4:53
  Speaker 2: So talk about a little bit how you built and grew and kind of got to that spot when you be leaned into, where, where you wanted to go, your area of specialty or your niche.
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely man.
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: So working for that developer was a big property management heavy experience, and I'm a big, I'm a big, big advocate of this and you obviously they're very passive ways to invest in real estate syndications, reets, things like that.
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: If that's what you're going for you maybe you're working professional, you just want to put the money away, get a return, then that's absolutely the way to go.
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: But if you're somebody like me who wanted to actively build a real estate business, you must have property management experience and that is actually the foundation of being a successful real estate investor is Property management experience.
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: So I went in day one managing 50 tenants, you know so all of the problems of that 10 years of my mentors experience I got on day one.
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: So when it came time for me to start doing my own deals, I wasn't scared to take on the non-paying tenants, the squatters, the mold, the cold code violations, because I already dealt with it on his Dime and his time right.
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: So when it came time for me to do, I knew what I was doing and To answer your question like kind of how I started doing my own deals Was basically the VA loan and you know you can in anyone who's not a veteran.
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: You can kind of Parallel that to a low down payment owner occupied loan and I leveraged that into two, six figure exits and kind of took that bank role into private equity and doing my own development deals.
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: That's awesome.
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: So talk about that transition going into private equity.
• 6:24
  Speaker 2: What was it about that?
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: That was exciting to you and how did that grow?
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: so, to give you the context, starting with the owner occupied loan, right, and I know there's everyone who's listening has been through this you're like, okay, I got the FHA loan, I did the VA loan, I did it once or twice, but it's like where do I go from here?
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: You know I don't have Half a million bucks to put down on every every 1.5 million dollar purchase.
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: If I want to scale, I need to bring, I need to start raising capital, or I need to start raising debt, or you know Whether that's debt or equity.
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: And I realized that right.
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: So I had all this money, but I knew that I could.
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: You know, as big as I was dreaming, I could only do one deal With that money.
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: But I, what I realized is, if I bring people together and I pair that with experience, like in a very credible Operator, then I can go do a hundred deals.
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: And it's interesting because so I met this guy named Octavia Moda.
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: He's my business partner and we had we're both in a similar situation.
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: We had just liquidated our residential portfolios back in 2021, when it was a great time to liquidate.
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: We had both had a bank role that we needed to deploy and we started making offers on multifamily, on mobile home parks, on Self-storage facilities, trying to get these deals, but it was just at the time so saturated and people were overbidding.
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: You know, I have a very conservative investment strategy, very, very conservative investment strategy, and Because of that I wasn't able to compete with these guys.
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: So by design, I landed in hotels, and the reason for that is because Hotels were majorly on sale and they still are to an extent because COVID caused a premature bottom.
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: So we took that bank role, paired it with raising a bunch of capital, founded tempest 22, which is a private equity company.
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: In our first nine months we bought 18 million dollars in assets all hotels and in our first year we raised five million bucks in private equity.
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: So that's the power of private equity man you, you start syndicating, you start raising capital and sky is the limit.
• 8:22
  Speaker 2: You mentioned wanting to pair with good operators, but then to going and finding that, that money.
• 8:28
  Speaker 2: Are these people that had experience, that have invested in other deals and maybe Haven't invested in hotels, and you're convincing them?
• 8:35
  Speaker 2: Here's why hotels is maybe a better spot for your money right now.
• 8:38
  Speaker 2: Are these folks that were newer investors and this was maybe their their first or second deal, but they obviously had capital as an accredited investor?
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: so both.
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: So a lot of the warm network were for first-time investors, right.
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: And then a lot of the the seasoned guys were hey, we're gonna convince you that hotels are a better investment.
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: And Everyone knows what was happening.
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: In 2021, people were buying two, three million dollar apartment buildings that were appraising for 1.8.
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: You know, they were praising two hundred thousand dollars below asking but they were overbidding because the interest rate was was allowing them to do that.
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: They were walking into cash flow on day one on adjustable rates.
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: And that's against my personal investment philosophy.
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: And the reason that I haven't scaled as big as I maybe I could have or wanted to, is because we are very, very selective with our deals.
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: If we are, if we're gonna do something, we're gonna walk in with massive equity on day one, or we're not gonna do it.
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: Um, you, and that's in hotels or development.
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: So it was kind of convincing that investor, experienced investor avatar like, hey, man, you're putting your stuff into multifamily.
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: That cash flow is guaranteed for three years until the rate adjusts, but it's a seven-year project.
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: You know, with us, you're walking in with equity on day one.
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: I'm buying a hotel for 4.4.
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: It's appraising for six.
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: I'm buying a hotel for three.
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: It's appraising for 3.75 kind of thing.
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: So I was able to kind of use that and leverage it into making people see like hey, actually this kind of makes sense.
• 10:03
  Speaker 2: So and what type of exposure do you had to hotels before, to where you felt comfortable?
• 10:08
  Speaker 2: You know kind of running the numbers.
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: Zero exposure to hotels.
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: Before this Zero exposure and my kind of real estate journey has been just aligning myself with the right people.
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: Right, and I was able to align myself with someone who's done it for 25 years and because of that, on day one I got the 25 years worth of School of Hard Knocks Real trench-level knowledge is what I call it in hotels.
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: Same thing as I did with development Day one 10 years worth of experience, just aligning myself with the right people.
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: That's what kind of made me comfortable going into hotels.
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: You know it behaves just like any commercial asset, except it's kind of business heavy, whereas commercial assets are very real estate heavy.
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: So it was just the understanding a little bit of those nuances that allowed me to confidently underwrite and vet those deals.
• 10:58
  Speaker 2: You're partnering with great operators.
• 10:59
  Speaker 2: Talk about that process Like what are you looking for?
• 11:02
  Speaker 2: As you're recommending you know these deals, or as you're working with investors, assuring them that their money's in capable hands.
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah, totally.
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: So some things that we look for in private when we're pairing operators with private equity is one, a strong personal track record before they started raising money.
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: So we've never actually raised for someone who's already raised private equity.
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: Everything that they've built to that point has been with personal capital Maybe friends and family, that's okay, but no syndications.
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: Number two we're looking at like a decade or more of experience in that asset class.
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: For example, our hotel operator had 25 years, so management experience had already bought and sold a ton of experience sorry, bought and sold a bunch of hotels.
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: He had gone to Cornell to hospitality, graduate second generation hotelier, that kind of thing, right.
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: Same thing in software, and when we did a software raise it was decade plus of experience.
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: These guys had already multiple successful exits.
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: All the private equity that they raised was from friends and family.
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: They had not syndicated and additionally they had a strong personal capital contribution right.
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: So between the two of them they had already invested 3 million bucks of their personal capital before they took a dime from investors.
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: Same thing on the hotel side he was personally guaranteeing all the debt.
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: So we're looking at for people who are putting their neck on the guillotine along with the investors with a strong track record.
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: So that's kind of the criteria in a nutshell.
• 12:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's one of those you know talking about people that have had 10 years plus experience.
• 12:43
  Speaker 2: It's kind of like you know you're looking for strong people, but how does somebody get experience?
• 12:49
  Speaker 2: You know, they've kind of got to figure it out on their own.
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: So if you're somebody looking to syndicate and you want somebody like you to come alongside, you've got to kind of cut your teeth on your own, build up your resume and your experience before somebody like you is going to say, yeah, this is somebody that's kind of seen the ups and the downs, have worked through challenges, and somebody that we trust with our money.
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah, mike, you absolutely nailed it, man.
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: And then, for those of those people who are listening, they're like man, I have 10 years to go learn about hotels and then try to get paired with private equity.
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: Just align yourself with someone who does right, like, for example we have guys you know, and we're really strong in the veteran community.
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: I'm super big on doing every one of my business partners as a veteran, except for one of them.
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: All of them are veterans, right, and what we do is like hey, guys, you want to get into syndication, you want to get into da, da, da, da, da, da.
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: Come align yourself with us.
• 13:40
  Speaker 2: You have an investor base.
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: Everyone has a million bucks on their warm network.
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: If you're in real estate, you know at least, and we'll help you vet the deal.
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: You vet it yourself right.
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: You become confident, you believe in the product you're selling and you do a syndication or two with us and then you go off and do it on your own because you have the experience.
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: Now right, you align yourself with your own operator.
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: You keep 100% of your general partnership, but maybe you come do one or two with us first and then you go off and do it on your own.
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: So you don't actually need to wait the 10 years if you vet and align yourself with someone who already has that experience.
• 14:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's something that is really important for people to understand, because I, you know, I think about a lot of people that are looking to get their start in real estate investing and they think they've got to start by being a flipper right or something like that.
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: It kind of feels like maybe that's the entry point, or house hack themselves.
• 14:32
  Speaker 2: There's a lot you can learn.
• 14:33
  Speaker 2: You chose to house hack kind of as a beginning basis to continue to grow on.
• 14:37
  Speaker 2: I did some of those projects myself.
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: But I think understanding, like you said, kind of the common theme here for you is go find people that are doing it and have experience and align with them.
• 14:46
  Speaker 2: Take advantage of the experience that they have and learn quickly, versus feeling like you've got to go at this yourself and figure it out and go through your own life lessons and your own school of hard knocks.
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: Just partner with people that are already in that space and successful.
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, mike, absolutely, man.
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: That's really the key to success, I think, in real estate.
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: Because we are a high barrier to entry business, it is not easy to get started in real estate.
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: It is not easy to do a real estate deal when you have had zero experience.
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: But anything can be easy, any business can be easy if you align yourself with the right people.
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: As you had mentioned about partnering with people's military experience veterans.
• 15:25
  Speaker 2: Talk a little bit about Housebender, your other company that you have.
• 15:28
  Speaker 2: What you're doing there.
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: So Housebender is my passion project in my baby.
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: So Housebender is a infill development company.
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: So when I say, when I talk about hotels, I'm like, yeah, and then I went and did the hotel thing because hotel was like kind of side quest in this life video game.
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: My purpose in this world was to build housing.
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: Man, that is what I'm extremely passionate about, that is what I'm extremely trench level expert about.
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: And Housebender is an urban infill development company.
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: We focus on building median price point or below median price point homes for rent and we focus on medium density housing.
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: So what does that mean?
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: That means, number one, if you're renting one of my homes, you're getting a deal.
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: You're going to be paying less or equal to the median price point.
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: Number two, you're going to get to the amenities of above the median price point.
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: And number three, you're going to live not sharing walls usually You'll share one wall but medium density.
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: So you're not no high rises, no, extremely dense, no parking, no washer, dryer and unit.
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: Cram all the units you can into a building.
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: No, you know, I built things with small yards, I'll build things with parking.
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: Everything has washer, dryer and unit.
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: And it's really for two customer avatars.
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: Number one is the single E5 with BAH or the military couple and family and number two is the blue collar family.
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: So I focus around the military base and I focus in the blue collar family areas and basically I'm creating the housing product that I needed when I was a single E5 in San Diego, trying to make it, trying to pay this crazy rent, because the rent in San Diego is nuts and even though BAH goes up every year, it's really hard as a single E5 to be able to afford that.
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: And there's a financial literacy aspect of that where don't spend your whole housing allowance on rent, save some of that.
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: I can't do that with my housing products.
• 17:24
  Speaker 2: Talk about kind of the financials behind it or you know, because I'm hearing serving middle or below income families getting above average income amenities.
• 17:33
  Speaker 2: How does that work on a financing standpoint to be able to make that work and be profitable?
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: I think people have this misconception where high rents equals high income.
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: It's just not the case, man.
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: If you're buying right, you can make a ton of money right.
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: So I'm buying these things 50 to 70 cents on the dollar number one.
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: I'm buying right number two right now.
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: So, like my most recent debt, my most recent deal, I'm not using debt because debt is killing the deal.
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: So I'm using all equity and I'm eight.
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: Because of that, I'm able to not be not have to go to the luxury category.
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: Now, nothing against luxury home builders.
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: There are some friends of mine who build luxury products and they crush it.
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: They make so much money.
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: But I have a philosophy that everyone is always going to need a housing product at the median or below the median price point for rent, and my housing product is going to be the least vulnerable to market cycles.
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: So in the interim, from a financial standpoint, if I'm not making as strong as a return as maybe some of the higher end I know, over the long term, over the 10, 15, 20 years, my average return will be higher.
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: And the number two coupled with buying right.
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: I just buy these things for dirt cheap and I build for dirt cheap.
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: So my basis and from a financial standpoint, is very low.
• 18:56
  Speaker 2: And talk about being able to build for dirt cheap.
• 18:59
  Speaker 2: What does that look like?
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so like, while everyone in San Diego might be building for 275 300 dollars a square foot, I get it done for 200.
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: And the reason for that is because I've built really deep, strong relationships with the right people.
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: I pay people on time, I pay people well, I pay bonuses, but because of that, people have always given me good deals and also I was in the trenches with these guys when I was working for that developer, you know.
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: So they saw me grow up and I've been able to kind of lock in special pricing with them.
• 19:32
  Speaker 2: Being able to serve people, like I think that's the cool thing is, is you're able to make money as an entrepreneur and you're also able to provide people with great jobs and Serve a part of the population that has a great need.
• 19:45
  Speaker 2: And so you know You're really checking multiple box boxes here that it's not just about building wealth, but you're still finding a way to build wealth, do a good job and serve people and and kind of fill that need in society.
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: A lot of people forget that that real estate housing is a human necessity.
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: You are no different than someone who sells food, someone who sells water.
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: It is a human necessity.
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: People need housing to survive and I think we lose sight of that as real estate investors Time and time again.
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: We're just so focused on the spreadsheets, we're so focused on the returns, we're so focused on the checks and in that we lose sight that we are.
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: We are housing providers, we are a necessity provider and that needs to be taken very sacred, lee.
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: That needs to be taken Very seriously and I do take it very seriously, right?
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: So if I can give, if I can match a person with the housing product and sacrifice a little bit of my return, I don't care because I'm playing this game for 20, 30, 50 years.
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: I don't care about the next five to ten, because over the next 20, 30, 50 years, I'm always gonna have a higher return than the people who are worrying about the next one to five.
• 20:53
  Speaker 2: So I work as a realtor, you know, helping investors buy Properties.
• 20:57
  Speaker 2: But I hear you know a lot of times you know you, you date your, your agent, but you marry your property manager and so you've got, you know a great, a lot of experience with property management and building great Relationships there.
• 21:09
  Speaker 2: And I assume too for these, for these properties that you're building, doing a really solid job managing these properties for, for people, because I know there's a lot of nightmare property management companies out there.
• 21:19
  Speaker 2: So if you can also care for them through that management process, that's another way to be able to serve them, keep them happy and want them to stick around absolutely, man, and you know Property management is a nightmare business, like you.
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: Like you kind of said, man, it is not.
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: It is not an easy business but when done correctly, it serves you immensely, right?
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: So we're number one we're giving people good deals so they're incentivized to stay and take care of the property.
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: Number two we're heavily screening tenants.
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: Right, I'll take the guy with the criminal record if he's got a good personality and people are like dude, what?
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: No, yeah, like every single tenant and you know at scale it gets difficult.
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: But we've got a system where we do open houses and we look at people face-to-face and we look at how they have chemistry with the home, right, so if someone comes to an open house, they they come, they look at the property, you can see in people's eyes, you can feel their energy, right, it's something that's really hard, has been hard for me to train, but we're getting good at kind of iterating this process of how we place and screen tenants.
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: And number two, I mean the military guys.
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: They have just been phenomenal, man, like we take us military folks, we take care of our places.
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they young guys, they like to party, they like to drink, but you know, at the end of the day, most of those guys in the Navy are gone all the time and they'll take good care of your property.
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: And but yeah, property management man has been Absolutely a game changer, and this is something that I have been preaching lately, and a lot of people give me a lot of problems For saying this, but I think that it's unnatural to sell real estate, to build a real estate to sell.
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: I believe that real estate as an asset class Was created to hold.
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: The nature of real estate is to be held right.
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: So you need to get good at property management.
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: You need to be able to hold these assets long term.
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: We are penalized for selling real estate the cut, the, the IRS kills us with taxes when we sell, but when we hold real estate, we get paid.
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: The four ways of real estate the cash flow, the depreciation, the debt paydown, the appreciation all four of those things can only be realized by holding an asset.
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: That's why I only hold.
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: You know, would I build something to sell if it's a norm?
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: No brainer maybe, but I think this whole short-term Big flip, big money immediately mentality kills a lot of people and the reason people go to that mentality is number one, it's quick money, and number two, they're scared to manage.
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: Don't be scared to manage, just figure it out.
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: It's like anything else, you can get good at anything.
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: Do what's hard, it's hard to manage, it's hard to hold, but it, that's what pays you, that's what rewards you greatly.
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: It rewards you a lot greater than just selling short-term Mm-hmm.
• 23:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, now we've got a couple minutes left and I'd love to hear a little bit about, you know, your journey to Columbia, because that's something that a lot of people dream of and can't necessarily take advantage of.
• 24:07
  Speaker 2: So talk about you know putting yourself into that that location freedom spot and how you're able to do that.
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah, totally, mike.
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: So I came down to Columbia originally August 2022.
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: I stayed for a month and during that time, like phones ringing all the time property management, headaches, nightmares, property, this, that because my role in my business was so much in the trenches, at the job site, you know, making things happen and I believe those an essential part of my growth as a real estate developer to be able to have been in those trenches, because now, when I talk to investors, my confidence shows because there's no part of a project that I have not touched.
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: Behind the walls, in front of the walls, everything.
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: I've seen it from the ground up.
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: I've seen things go wrong.
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: I've seen things go right.
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: I needed that.
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: But what I realized is like, dude, this is a ball and chain.
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: You know, I want to travel.
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: What am?
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: Why did I do this real estate thing?
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: I do this real estate thing because I want to travel.
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: I don't want a normal job, I want to pick my hours, I want to pick my location, boom location.
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: Not doing that, I want to do that in this role.
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: So I challenged myself to change that and I kind of automated the property management.
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: I automated the construction management.
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: Obviously, I still have a big input in that, but from afar.
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: That process is no longer dependent on me being physically present.
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: And so I came to Columbia here and kind of just was so frustrated on vacation.
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: You know, kind of it was kind of a working vacation, but it's like, dude, I'm so stressed out, I can't enjoy it.
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: And so I went back and I said, you know what, I'm going to figure this out, and the only way to figure anything out is to just jump in.
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: So I jumped right in December, I packed up my stuff and I moved here and have been forced to build the parachute on the way down, and the parachute has finally been built and I'm living the life of my dreams.
• 25:54
  Speaker 2: That's awesome.
• 25:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's cool to hear it.
• 25:56
  Speaker 2: I like that.
• 25:57
  Speaker 2: You put yourself in those shoes where you had to figure it out, versus planning to plan and then thinking about planning and then thinking about how you're going to plan in the future Right, and then you just hold so many people up and you just you just jump in and do it.
• 26:09
  Speaker 2: So that's awesome to hear.
• 26:10
  Speaker 2: Real estate agents.
• 26:11
  Speaker 2: Are you tired of letting the busyness of your real estate business get in the way of your real estate investing goals and your financial future?
• 26:17
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• 26:22
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• 26:31
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• 26:41
  Speaker 2: So go to realfreedomcom.
• 26:42
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• 26:44
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• 26:45
  Speaker 2: We're so excited to be able to help you.
• 26:47
  Speaker 2: I've priced it super low so price can't get in the way but did want to have some skin in the game for you to help with that accountability.
• 26:54
  Speaker 2: So go check it out.
• 26:55
  Speaker 2: Realfreedomcom.
• 26:56
  Speaker 2: Click on the store.
• 26:57
  Speaker 2: We're excited to connect with you and excited for you to connect with your tribe of real estate agents investing, trying to build their financial freedom.
• 27:04
  Speaker 2: What's the future look like?
• 27:05
  Speaker 2: Where do you think you're going to be spending your time here over the next three to five years?
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: So my next three to five years, mike, is going to be very, very infill development heavy.
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: I want to revolutionize housing.
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: You know, san Diego County is kind of my nest, but I want to bring a housing product to San Diego that's unlike anything at a price point that's unlike anything.
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: The reason for that is because I just want to be the guy that I needed when I was in the military, finding housing, you know.
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: And that's kind of where my next three to five years are being focused.
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: In the process of doing that right, in the process of me building my passion for housing, I've also created an opportunity for investors to come realize the financial rewards of that.
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: So it's a win-win.
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: Me, man, I'll do this for free.
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: I seriously will.
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: Like I've made enough money in my life, you know, obviously everyone needs money to pay the bills and stuff like that.
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: But I'm at a point where I'm getting paid enough from other things and investments to where I don't really need to be so profit driven.
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: But this investment vehicle is just number one, the financial returns are crazy.
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: They're perfect for creating an investment vehicle.
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: And number two, it's very secure.
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: It's backed by housing in a place where housing is very, very scarce.
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: We're in a huge housing shortage in San Diego, so that's my next three to five years.
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: Mike is just scaling house.
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: Bender is building housing, giving back to the community and bringing investors along for the ride.
• 28:40
  Speaker 2: Awesome.
• 28:40
  Speaker 2: Well, thank you so much for coming on For people that want to get to know you better, reach out to you and learn more.
• 28:45
  Speaker 2: How can they do that?
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely.
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: Please reach out to me on Instagram.
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: My Instagram is at Housebender B-E-N-D-E-R.
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: And then you could feel free to hit me up on LinkedIn.
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: I'm pretty active on both and if you are at a point in your real estate journey, if my story has resonated with you, if you feel like you can get value by talking to me, shoot me a DM.
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: I am in a have a goal for doing 130 minute one on once in 2024.
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: So I will absolutely give you 30 minutes and help you solve a real estate problem.
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: And if you're a veteran or military associated military family, definitely give me a chat.
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: If you feel like I can serve you, I would more than happy to help out.
• 29:28
  Speaker 2: It's been great hearing your story and thank you so much for sharing it.
• 29:30
  Speaker 2: I'm excited to see where you go.
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: Thanks for having me, Mike.
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: Have a great week.