The Everyday Millionaire Show
The Everyday Millionaire Show
Mastering Real Estate: Insights and Strategies with Ginger Faith (Full Podcast)
Discover the secrets to thriving in today's real estate market with Ginger Faith, a seasoned investor and broker from the San Francisco Bay Area. Inspired by Tony Robbins and Robert Allen, Ginger shares her impressive journey from launching a successful business in her twenties to navigating the high-stakes world of Silicon Valley real estate. Learn her strategies for maintaining low expenses, reinvesting income, and overcoming the challenges of bidding wars and fluctuating commission structures.
Ginger's hard-earned lessons and real-world experiences highlight both the rewards and risks of real estate investing. Whether you're an experienced investor or just starting out, Ginger's story and insights will equip you with the knowledge and inspiration to achieve financial success through real estate.
Welcome to the Everyday Millionaire Show with Ryan Greenberg and Nick Kalfas. All right guys. Welcome back to another episode of the Everyday Millionaire Show. We are here with Ginger Faith. How are you doing, ginger?
Speaker 2:Doing great guys. Thanks for having me on the show today.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, I'm Ryan. This is Nick, by the way. I don't think we even said that to Kevin, so he probably didn't know who was who. But this is Nick and I'm Ryan. So thanks for coming on. Where are you coming from?
Speaker 2:San Francisco Bay Area, Silicon Valley.
Speaker 1:Oh goodness, that's expensive. We talk about real estate today.
Speaker 2:It is expensive here. Yes, Awesome.
Speaker 1:So what? Just we kind of read through your bio and stuff. So what? When did you get started in real estate and how did that? You know how did it start?
Speaker 2:It started with a book, two books actually. One of them was Tony Robbins Unlimited Power. And basically Tony Robbins told me and back in 1991, I could do anything if I put my mind to it and had the right attitude and for some reason I believed him. And then the second book was Nothing Down by Robert Allen, which was a really big book back in the 80s and 90s and he was like one of the original explorers in teaching people how to invest in real estate. So I read it and he had a proposition. He said if you buy one rental per year for 10 years, then you start systematically paying off the mortgages. You'll retire. That'll be your retirement plan. And so I said well, that's great. What if I buy a six family house? Would that accelerate it? And that's what I did. And I was really young and more stupid, more more uh brawn than brains, more you know, more guts than brains. But that's okay, that's how I started.
Speaker 1:How old are you when you started buying real estate?
Speaker 2:My early twenties like 23.
Speaker 1:So Nick and I were both in our mid twenties20s, I'll say, when we started buying real estate and a lot of people asked us a lot of people still ask us you know, how did you get started? How did you get the money to buy it? And we're buying a lot cheaper real estate than you're buying, I'm sure, in San Francisco. So how did you get enough money to start purchasing real estate? Did you borrow it? Did you inherit it? How did that happen?
Speaker 2:Well, I didn't borrow it. Well, I got a bank loan, of course, right, but I had to have the down payment. And so I actually started a business. And it was like in 1992, I started the business and I had a goal I wanted a full-time income on a part-time job because I was volunteering for my church full-time, and so I wanted to do because I was volunteering for my church full-time, and so I wanted to do that. So I ended up getting this business where I worked 20 hours a week and I made over six figures back in 1992, which really was a lot of money back then and it was super fun, it was an awesome business and it was just, it was fantastic. And so I started getting all this money and I didn't know what to do with it.
Speaker 1:And you know, you can only buy so many pairs of shoes.
Speaker 2:You can only buy so many pairs of shoes, right? So I kept my expenses low and then I bought. I just got the money down. I just kept saving, saving, saving until I got the money down for a distressed Victorian house 7,000 square foot, six units. But this was back before YouTube, before BiggerPockets. It sounds like nobody was doing this, and definitely not anybody that I knew. So today it's a little bit more chic. You've got all these TV shows right. Back then you had nothing like nobody was doing this, so it was really, really odd. Everybody thought it was really strange for doing this. But that's how I got started. I just worked and I do recommend that anybody starts a small business and start an intelligent small business, or buy a business that might be in distress and somebody wants to get rid of it. I'm a big believer in the two-pronged strategy income from business, income from investments. I think that's. If you can just nail that down, you got it.
Speaker 3:So what are you focusing on now? We read your bio and you said that you're a real estate investor and you're also a broker as well.
Speaker 2:Right, right. So my day job is I'm a broker and right now I have this. I feel like I just won the lottery, because I got a buyer to actually get an accepted offer in a super hot area of Silicon Valley.
Speaker 3:We got beat out five times and I did an amazing video on how to win the bidding war, so I felt like a total duck. What are the average purchase prices in the areas that you're selling?
Speaker 2:homes in 1.4 to 2.5. Okay, probably, yeah, yeah, yeah I mean so it depends on which direction you go, right, so if you go where I'm at, you go towards Facebook. It goes up with every mile. If you go towards Sacramento in the other direction, which is an hour and a half away from me, I own a real estate brokerage as well here, and a title company and a couple other businesses property management and a building company, but the brokerage.
Speaker 1:Now we're going through a lot of kind of changes and with the whole you know NAR thing, what are people starting to do? Are they changing commissions out there, or what are your typical commissions that you're getting on both the buy and the sell side right now, and how do you see that changing?
Speaker 2:Honestly. So I have a really strong opinion about what happened If you dig into that NER lawsuit. Basically it was a very greedy, hungry lawyer who was an ambulance chaser who decided he could win big by sabotaging something that was not even a problem. The biggest issue is that buyers are at a deficit. In Silicon Valley, they're already having a hard time. Who can come up with $300,000, $400,000 for a down payment, right? And so they're already challenged. So on top of that and on top of closing costs, now we're saying oh, the seller's not going to pay. The seller, who's got a ton of equity, is not going to pay for the, the buyers uh, the buyers fee, uh, agents fee, and that's. It's pretty ridiculous. So what's really happening in real life is everything's open to negotiation. Everybody wants to make it work okay. So you got a seller they want to sell their house. You got a buyer they want to buy the house. You have the agents they want their commission.
Speaker 2:Let's talk yeah and so right now, what we're having is we're just giving a ton more paperwork and and so we have to have a buyer's agent agreement, which we should have all had to begin with anyway, because it's kind of ridiculous that you would. You know these agents who go out and they show open house it. I mean, they go with buyers to open houses and show them houses and they don't have an agreement. That's kind of insane. Anyway, that's just you have to have an agreement before you start wasting your time. So that's required now and it never was required, which is kind of crazy. And then, other than that, there's certain paperwork that the California Association of Realtors is having us add on to our documentation, where basically it's going to be the same thing. We can negotiate, anybody can negotiate, the seller can negotiate, but it's like do you want the buyer or not? The buyer has X amount of dollars, you're getting a ton of equity, let's make it work.
Speaker 2:So, ultimately, that was much ado about nothing. That was about lining the pockets of a greedy lawyer. Basically, he just staged a bunch of mock trials, one after another after another, until he got the jury to feel emotionally like oh my God, these brokers are terrible, these agents are terrible. The average pay for a real estate agent in the country is less than $50,000 a year. In the Silicon Valley it's $84,000 a year. So to say that we're being greedy, for just you know, all of the work that we do is kind of insane.
Speaker 1:But I do think that and maybe it's different in California, but here we have so many agents that are basically doing nothing or they're part-time agents or they sell one house a year or something like that. So that's kind of I feel like skewing the numbers a little bit because, like all the killer agents that we know and work with are selling, you know, 20 plus million dollars a year. They're doing just fine. But then the bottom, the bottom 90% of agents because there's like thousands and thousands of agents here they're not, but most of them probably have another job anyway and they're not really really focusing, focusing on real estate Like we have part-time agents that work for our brokerage, that are also just mortgage brokers, that got the real estate license because they wanted to have kind of that, both thing, but they're not out there really, you know, selling $20 million for the real estate.
Speaker 1:So I feel like what's my opinion a little bit is that it's going to wean out some of those people that are like just a buyer's agent for one or two people a year. And hopefully what I thought would be a positive thing is more in-house transactions, so the buyer and seller come in, just like a dual agency type of situation where it's under our listing. The buyer can go on Zillow anybody can go on Zillow and find a house and then they come directly to the listing agent and instead of the seller having to pay 6%, they can pay the listing agent 3.5% to just handle both sides of that transaction.
Speaker 2:That can work. That can work. The reason why buyers and agencies came up in the 90s to begin with were that they were underrepresented and underprotected and oftentimes these huge investment and sellers were taking advantage of them and their ignorance. So if it can be transactional um that I understand what you're saying. I don't think it's a bad idea. I've done dual agency from time to time. I have no issues with it. Um, it's really just a matter of is are both parties being protected? And then that's where it can get dicey, because, you know, not everybody is like you know, you or I, where you just you're very you walk the line of being fair to both parties, right? Not everybody's that way.
Speaker 1:So yeah, I guess that. I guess that was the way I was thinking of it too, and I don't know how the closings work with you guys out in California, but like we have a title company where there's a title attorney, okay, so yeah, I guess that could you know. I think every title company that we have here has an attorney attached to those documents that's responsible for making sure that the I's are dotted and the T's are crossed fair in both directions.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. Well, it's supposed to be that way. It's supposed to be that way here too, Right? And I would say that there are a lot of good agents out there who want to do right by their clients. It's not about that. It's just a matter of just trying to protect both sides. That's the reason why the buyers came up to begin with.
Speaker 3:Right, so let's talk about the better stuff. That's the reason why the buyers came up to begin with, right? So?
Speaker 2:let's talk about the better stuff real estate investing now.
Speaker 3:So are you?
Speaker 2:investing in your market that you're living now, or are you investing in different areas with maybe lower price points? Yeah, so the only thing I do in my area are luxury flips. That's the only thing that makes money around here. So we buy a lot of land in a super affluent area and then we build a luxury home and then we sell it. So that makes sense in our area. If you're really tight with your numbers, you can do regular flips. You know, if you're a contractor, if you've got a really good team, you can do that. So that's possible. But with the increase of you know, with costs have gone out of control, it's more difficult because even garbage properties are going for a premium around here. So it's a little bit more challenging to do that. So that's what I'm doing around here Out of my area. I'm right now in the process of liquidating some of my rentals my residential rentals and I'm focusing more on commercial.
Speaker 3:So that's the direction I'm going into, right now, can you go over what a deal looks like for I guess, as far as the timeline on the lots that you're buying and you're building and how much you're putting into it, how much you're paying for the lots, how much your rehab costs and then what your sales price is?
Speaker 2:Well, the number number one, number number number one most important thing is to have a fabulous team, and you got to get people that you trust. You know you can bond a contractor. It's not a bad idea to bond a contractor if you're working with a contractor that you've never worked with before, but it's also important to have your own. Like I have a template where I can create a scope of work, every single detail, from nuts and bolts, and you know, every little detail of flooring, refrigerators, rebar, concrete. What is everything going to cost for a project. So, when you get involved with a project and you have a team that you trust, that can, that will, are efficient and they'll they'll work steady for you, and you need a good project manager, um, so to say, how much it really depends on the location you know.
Speaker 2:So, going back to square one, right? So if you're in where we call it atherton, which is super high end, or hillsborough, super high end, and you find a, a piece of scrap property right now, um, my partner just bought a piece of land, raw land, in saratoga. The raw land was one acre. He's going to subdivide it too. And, um, cause he's a, he's a, he's a builder, and so subdividing into two, uh lots, but half an acre a piece roughly, and so the number.
Speaker 2:But it was one acre of land for $3.2 million, and he got a bargain because I was trying to negotiate with one on the same street for 3.7 and the seller was giving me a hard time, so you know. So that one ended up selling for 3.525 cash and I was trying to get um a bank loan for that one, because having two projects on at the same time was a little steep for me. So, um, yeah, so, but it's going to cost around 1.5 per building to build, and then the arv, after repair value of those particular units are going to be in the realm of eight to nine million a piece so that those numbers are but God carrying costs on those must be just insane.
Speaker 1:So the timeline really is important, right? So what kind of timeline with city regulations permitting engineering? What kind of timeline do you guys you know work with over there for a build like that?
Speaker 2:You know that that's a very good question and there's two parts to that answer. The first answer to that question is you have to always, always be looking at an angle to save money. So, for example, we went to the seller and said example, we went to the seller and said, hey, while we're drawing up our plans and talking to the city and getting permits, would you extend the escrow for another 90 days? And they said, yes, three free months, right. So we're getting all this stuff done in three free months. So that's like winning the lottery. Getting three free months right's like. That's like a like, you know, winning the lottery. Getting three free months Right, but typically it's six months for plans, right, and then to break ground. So it's a total of about 18 months to two. 18 to 20 months is like a normal, you know, a normal turn for something like that If you've got a good team and you're really on top of it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so what? What teammates do you have as part of your organization that help? You know? Obviously you have a builder. What other parts of the puzzle do you have and recommend people look for when they're looking for a team?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a that's a great question. So, general contractor, structural engineer, architect, you need workers, you need general, you need subcontractors. Does the general contractor have subcontractors or can you negotiate to get your own subcontractors? How will the workflow be impacted if you get your own in? Will the workflow be impacted if you get your own in? So you have this. The general usually will have an HVAC guy, a sprinkler guy, just you know, day labor, they'll have an electrician, they'll have a plumber, like all of those people. So I have, I have them, my contractor has them. Who's available? How do we coordinate? Who has the better pricing, all of that? So I mean those are some of the important pieces of the puzzle and of course, it's really nice to get a good relationship with the city, always be pleasant. You know help them to move along your projects and you know cooperate with you and so, yeah, I would say that's pretty for the building part.
Speaker 2:Now you know there are other aspects. I've got airbnbs, so I've got cleaning people. I've got, you know, redundant handymen. So if one isn't available, another's available, right, so you have those people are available. So, basically, you know you can use thumbtack, you can use um. You know you can use Thumbtack, you can use Craigslist, you can use referrals to find quality people. I think the most important thing is to have top notch quality with every single thing you do, every component of your business. I know you guys know that, like I, have no tolerance for people who are not going to give it their best. It's just like they just have no tolerance for that. I used to, and it just made everything more uncomfortable and waste time and money. And so those are. Those are some of the contractors that I have at the top of my head.
Speaker 3:So, excuse me, are all the builds unique in their own way, um, with these more expensive houses out there, or do you kind of build pretty much the same type of style of house when building your flips?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so, um, they're not all the same. They have to. They have to go with the neighborhood and the topography, but they also have to go with what is in trend Now. Hgtv has really, really changed the landscape of what people like, and so, basically, whatever HGTV says, we do, because that's what people will pay the top dollar for, it's what they tell us. So, whatever is fashionable right now, that's what drives the dollars up, and as a builder, you have really no room for error. You can't be putting, you know, a Mediterranean style house in an area where you know craftsmen are regular there, and then the Mediterranean style isn't really in vogue right now. People don't want that. So a person can build their own Mediterranean, for example, California Mediterranean is one of my favorite style homes absolutely gorgeous, stunning. Build that for yourself right, or buy an older one. But for us we have to go with what the trends are right now.
Speaker 3:But does the architect not only give you what the house will look like on like a piece of paper, but will they actually give you like a live visual of like what it will look like, just because that home value is like it's such a higher price point, whereas I never built a home personally, but I would imagine that you know, would imagine that somewhere around where we live or we're around Baltimore, it's a lot easier to just have them on a piece of paper versus selling a multimillion dollar house. I would want to see that visual live before I even attempt to build that.
Speaker 2:Yes, you can get 3D renderings. You can get a full scale walkthrough. Yeah, you can get as detailed renderings you can get a full-scale walkthrough. Yeah, you can get as detailed as you want to. It's all available now.
Speaker 1:And are you trying to, I imagine, pre-sell these houses before they're actually finished?
Speaker 2:No.
Speaker 2:No, you're not, so you're going to market Like some do, some do, and you know the builders that do that have a model home, and those are the big guys. So the bigger, medium, medium, medium to big, right, and I'm not big, I'm not big, I'm not medium, I'm small potatoes. So I have one house, but it's fine for me, right, one house. But if you've got a model house, then somebody can look through it and say, and then you say, okay, well, you can pick out your cabinets, you can pick out your flooring, you can.
Speaker 2:But what happens is when they see my house and they, they're going to see sticks and they're going to, they're going to be like you know, and they're going to be, you know, oh, I love this purple paint, and you know, and this, and, and they may or may, they may not have, um, a good, a good eye for what will look nice afterward, and they might not be secure enough to do that. So what ends up happening in my experience is that, um, they, they, they end up low balling you, you know, because they, they don't see what's going to happen, and so it ends up being a complete waste. For me it's been a complete waste of time. I've tried it, because you have to try things right, but it's. But when they walk in and now it's staged, it's finished, you've got grass, it's. You know everything is like perfect. You know you can eat off the floor and now people are dropping. You know jaws are dropping and they're like, you know writing up the text. So that's what I want, that's what we really need nice.
Speaker 1:So I see here that you were featured on HDTV for some of your flips. Is that right?
Speaker 2:My house, my houses were, I was not.
Speaker 2:My houses were. So one was a flip and it was gorgeous and it was dummy down by house hunters because it was too nice in comparison to the other ones they were hunting for. And my stager like freaked out because they they took some of her stuff out and they dummied it down a little bit and uh, but that was a beautiful flip and a gorgeous neighborhood. Um, right across the street from my house was like a george house, it was just amazing. And then another one it was a remodel for a client.
Speaker 2:It was two acres here in Livermore, california, which was farm country right near the city, huge, fabulous piece of property, and she wanted me to sell it but she wanted to get top dollar. So we renovated it first and then in that case it was um. Hgtv liked the property and the um, the, the buyers, had a very unique story. It was right in the middle of the fires and covid and the both of the um buyers were fire firefighters and and so they loved the story and they loved the house and it was a farm house in an amazing area. It was absolutely stunning when we were done with it and so the houses were featured.
Speaker 1:So I thought that was pretty how much do firefighters make out there?
Speaker 2:you know what I don't know? I have a very one of my best friends is a volunteer firefighter and he's so proud. He's one of the smartest businessmen I know. He owns a ton of real estate businesses and his passion is firefighting and he brags that he makes $7 an hour as a volunteer firefighter. So is that?
Speaker 1:mostly volunteer Cause, because in my head I'm like okay, two million dollar house, even 1.4 million dollar house for two firemen I mean here I would imagine they're probably making maybe low six figures would would be pretty hard to buy a two million dollar house on yeah, well, that particular one went for 1.7, I believe, so it still wasn't cheap, right, but they got a pretty good deal on it.
Speaker 2:Um, I don't know what they made. I know that they had a house that they sold so they might have had some equity to put down, you know, but there's at least making, probably around here. They're probably making at least six figures around here, something like, but you get two of them and if they're, you know, frugal plus they have a house to put down. You know some money to put down for another house. Yeah, yeah, so anyway, yeah.
Speaker 3:What are some of the biggest lessons you've learned in your 30 years of investing?
Speaker 2:Oh no, screen your tenants to um, uh, to, with how shall I say it screen?
Speaker 1:your tenants um ferociously. Some tenants tenant issues. Is that where this is coming from?
Speaker 2:I had one. All you need is one. Pacific Heights. Did you ever hear of the movie Pacific Heights?
Speaker 1:No.
Speaker 2:Well, you're, you're real estate investors. It's a classic movie with Michael Keaton. You need to watch it. There needs to be a popcorn night. Okay, you need to do this. It's very important.
Speaker 2:Pacific Heights was a very interesting story and I basically had my own version of Pacific Heights and so I had the tenant from hell and it was an extraordinary story and it forever changed the way I thought about. I mean, I've actually asked a tenant, a potential tenant, to give me a police report. Always do background checks. I take it very, very seriously. It's because there are people out there who are professional tenants. They may know more about the law than you do as a landlord and you know, literally, there are people that I know who have met multiples of what I have, who haven't had that bad tenant experience. So, yeah, so I have great tenants now I have very great tenants, and if they just breathe or look at me wrong, I don't, I don't accept them. So you know. Um, so that's I say that was my probably my number one uh lesson. My number two lesson is to be a very good underwriter. Um, with your money. Um, because there are people out there.
Speaker 2:California is rife with scammers. There was a guy who just recently got some jail time. I'm happy to hear that he was a flip it to win it. He was a TV show host and he was scamming people out of their money. And I have encountered several of these people in my REI meetups. I know I actually have a class on how to avoid scams, but there's so many of them but it's important to be aware Don't be lazy with your money.
Speaker 2:When you think about what happened with Bernie Madoff and the different people, a lot of people just they trust. You know they don't do the trust, but verify. They just trust they write the check. They don't do the trust, but verify, they just trust they write the check. And there's so many ways that can happen. I've seen it happen. People are the speakers, the teachers, they set up their group leaders with these REI meetup groups or they're on TV and people trust them because they keep seeing them everywhere and they don't realize that they either are scammers or they'll take advantage of people or they'll be reckless or lazy with other people's money.
Speaker 2:So, being a really great underwriter, when we apply for a bank loan, the banks do not trust us at all. Right, so I'm a mortgage broker and I've processed over 500 loans. Right, what do they want? They want to see your credit. If you've had one credit late, they want to know why. And you have to write up a letter explaining why. Right, if you have, they want to see your income.
Speaker 2:They call your, your, um, your, uh, hr department over and over again. Uh, you know, making sure, do you still work there the day before the closing? Do you still work there? They have a ton of paperwork. You just keep giving them paperwork, paperwork. Why? Because they're underwriting you, they're underwriting the house. They want to make sure that their money is returned to them.
Speaker 2:And with private money, people who invest, they're lazy. They just say, oh, that guy's got a good story, here's a check, hand it off and then, and then they get scammed. So, um, being a really great underwriter and and basically these both lessons have to do with not trusting anything, and you can't in this industry. Um, and nobody tells you that. Uh, in, you know it's like, oh, it's all you know. Uh, oh, you're going to make money doing you know it's like, oh, it's all you know. Oh, you can make money doing. You know, do this, do that, and it's always rosy, but it's not rosy. This is hard work and your money does need to be protected. And if you're blessed to be a custodian of somebody else's money, you really need to work harder to protect that money to protect that money.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we were talking, I guess before we went live, about Nick and I were saying, like you know, the money in real estate when everybody pitches, oh, it's passive income, it's passive income and in most cases it's not actually passive income unless you have a lot of money to dump into something that maybe is passive for you. But when you're building a real estate business or building a portfolio, like Nick has and I have you need to be actively working in that portfolio every single day to manage it, to grow it, to manage the rehabs, the turnovers, the evictions, whatever it is. That's not passive at all. So a lot of the people are out there talking about how passive it is. And maybe if you have a hundred grand and you're an accredited investor, you want to put it into a fund. Sure, that's passive, but buying and selling real estate is not a passive game at all.
Speaker 2:Correct, that's right. Yeah, well said.
Speaker 1:Going back in the beginning of this episode, and it's something that I talk to people a lot about. You said about the two-prong theory and having a business an active business that makes money. And Nick started with a landscaping company and that's how he started buying real estate. And I started by buying. I had a job at one point, but I was building businesses around real estate, so I became a general contractor and home builder.
Speaker 1:I became a property manager for other investors and when people, you know, when people say like, oh my God, you're making so much money in real estate, I'm like my businesses make more money than the real estate makes, and if you have the money coming in from the business and you spend it on real estate, then you're you're really kind of get your cake and eat it too, or however you want to say that right.
Speaker 2:No, that's exactly right.
Speaker 1:But for the people that are out there listening saying like I want to quit my job tomorrow and just invest in real estate, that's really really, really hard to do so and you're going to be at in like the 1% of real estate investors that can just quit their job with not a ton of money. You know it's different if you have a bunch of money, I think in my opinion but if you're just like starting out and you want to be a real estate investor, you need to, like, keep your job or increase your active income first and then start investing in real estate and do it simultaneously, and that's really how you grow. It's not just quit your job and become a social media influencer and real estate investor. That's not. It's not how it works.
Speaker 2:Right, that's exactly right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so. So what? In your bio here it says how to compress time and retire in three years. When you say that, why aren't you retired? Because I know, for me I don't, can't imagine. And it's not about money, it's about what would you do if you retire Right for me, like it's, like I think I would just kind of start dying at that point, like what? When you say that, what, um, what do you mean by that?
Speaker 2:Well, um, first of all, it can be done, and that's why I say it, because it can be done, and it gets people to think like, ooh, what does that mean? Right, so it can be done. Um, but I also always say don't retire, there are better things to do, right? So I always say that too. But I do want people to think of that because it's more about control. It's about having control of your life and having options. So I have a joke I started off with um in real estate back when I was mentioning in the nineties, and a really good friend of mine, um, has been just a rock star in real estate and he was one of my, one of my best friends back in the day.
Speaker 2:I started off in Boston area and he's like I'm going to retire when I'm 30. And then he kept. He was 30 and I'm like hey, have you retired yet? Nah, I'm bored, you know, I'm going to retire, retire when I'm 45. Right, and now he's, he's in his fifties and he's like oh, I can't retire. I'm going to take the summer off, though. So I. So I texted him a couple of weeks ago and I said I'm going to, I'm going to call you, and if you're not hanging out at the beach or, you know, at the pool with your grandkids, then I'm going to, I'm going to, you know, I'm going to slap you Right Because you know if you have another deal going on.
Speaker 2:But it's just the creative energy, the mind, you know, we, we, we love to create, we love to learn and grow, and, and, and, you know, and and and test ourselves. Um, but, uh, there are many people who don't love their jobs. And so, for the people who don't love their jobs, uh, and they want to own real estate and they want to retire in three years, it can be done, because I do have friends who have done it, and I didn't even think of it as an option, I just thought of it as just, oh, you, just, I just keep going and going, and going. And then I had a few friends of mine who had no experience in real estate at all coming to me for advice and then, within three years, they cashed out with multiple seven figures and they retired. Now they took time off because, of course, the bug got them again. And now they're going, you know, looking for another deal, but they took about two and a half years off, and and basically, when I say how to do this, it's really about specialized knowledge and forced using, forced appreciation in a large scale.
Speaker 2:So if you can learn when I say specialized, if you understand right now, there's a tremendous opportunity in the distress of the commercial assets right now.
Speaker 2:If you can learn, for example, um, how to invest in specific types of commercial properties um, very, very diligently you can because it's a larger scale you can literally make enough money to retire in a couple of years, because what you could do with the money after that is you can learn to become a really great underwriter and take the cash and start working with other developers who are more active and become that passive money.
Speaker 2:So let's say, just say you flip a multi-unit apartment building and you end up with two million bucks Right now, if you've been smart enough to be collaborating with other people who have other deals going on and you know that they're really tight operators and they're very high, high integrity, and you get attorneys involved so that you know you're protected, and then you give a little bit to this operator a couple hundred thousand, a hundred thousand, you get here here. Here you can literally retire by just being a great underwriter and then investing that money and get other people who are having active businesses in real estate making the money for you, and then it's a win-win. You're basically doing what the banks have been doing for centuries. You become the bank, but you have to be a great underwriter, like the banks are, or you're going to hurt yourself very, very much and you're going to lose your money.
Speaker 3:You mentioned that you were going to start selling some of your single family investment properties to start investing in multifamily, she said commercial?
Speaker 1:Do you mean multifamily or do you mean true commercial, commercial, industrial?
Speaker 2:office. Yeah, I've had multifamily. I'm not opposed to multifamily, but right now my target is not multifamily.
Speaker 3:So what kind of commercial space are you going to be focusing on?
Speaker 2:Shopping, shopping, retail, retail. Yeah, I have some friends who've done extremely well. They had no experience at all and you know, I was just with her the other day at her her retail shopping center is doing extremely well. We took a tour a bit and I had I brought one of my contractors over there to give her a bit on some, some of the vacant space, you know, and so, um, yeah, yeah, so I figure, for all of the, the, the time and money and headaches, if I can learn, you know this another level I can trade up basically, but it's, it is.
Speaker 2:I'll be straight up with you, it's not for the faint of heart. If you're really great with math and negotiations and people and you get the right training, it's something that people should think about doing, but it's not for everybody. It's easier for someone to start off in the residential because it's something we can. Most of us can wrap our head around. If we we have an apartment, we know what it's like to live in a house, but, but commercial is like a different animal altogether. It's been really, really excellent. Um, I'm learning a lot and I'm hanging around some incredible operators, um, learning a ton and um. So I expect by the end of the year I'll have a retail shopping center of some sort.
Speaker 3:Is that something that you're going to be partnering up with other people? Because I know when a lot of people talk about the bigger multifamily deals, it's like so many different hands in the pot and there's.
Speaker 1:The syndication. Essentially. Is that what you're doing? Yeah, I'll be working with.
Speaker 2:I have a syndication. Yeah, actually, is that what you're doing? Yeah, I'll be working with my. I have a syndication attorney is one of my best friends, so we'll be working that out. I also, as a mortgage broker and processing over 500 loans, I know which of my clients have money on the sidelines that they would like to invest if they knew where to invest them. And I have a list of people who said, hey, let me know when you have something Right. So it's my job to to make sure that the underwriting is really, really solid and that these people are going to have nice passive income, you know, for years to come. That's, that's my objective.
Speaker 1:Awesome. Well, how can our listeners find you on social media, on YouTube? Where are you at? So they can you know they can come find you.
Speaker 2:The easiest way is my name is Ginger Crystal Faith and I'm probably one of the only people with that name, so I'm all over social media and I have a YouTube channel and that would be the easiest way. I've got you know two websites. One of them is womenswealthnetworknet and then, of course, one is for my brokerage. So that's the easiest way. I just find Ginger Crystal Faith and check me out. I'm all over the place.
Speaker 1:All right, ginger Crystal Faith, that is a unique name and I see your YouTube channel here is Loving Livermore and Tri-Valley, is that right? Yeah, I'm trying to change that handle, but that's not easy to do. Yeah, that's a long one that's a long one. Yeah, sound silly, but you could probably.
Speaker 2:I think you could probably just say you know youtube ginger crystal, faith, san francisco, okay I have to do it, do a, you know, go check that out, see if I can find myself awesome.
Speaker 1:Um, incognito well, ginger, we uh appreciate your time and insight on the california market. It's always interesting for us down here where our price points are your down payments. So it's, you know, definitely uh interesting always to hear from the other side of the country. We appreciate your time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thank you Thanks very much for your time as well. It's been an absolute pleasure, gentlemen.
Speaker 1:All right, ginger, if we don't see you soon, we'll see you on YouTube, and our followers follow Ginger Crystal Faith on all the socials. We'll see you next time.
