The Everyday Millionaire Show
The Everyday Millionaire Show
The United States Real Estate is Going Nowhere
The real estate market is showing conflicting signals, with some properties receiving multiple offers while others sit vacant for months. Ryan, Nick, and Chase explore this volatility and share their firsthand experiences navigating today's challenging investment landscape.
With rates hovering in the 6-7% range, the traditional approach of rapid property accumulation deserves reconsideration. Some investors now focus on aggressively paying down existing debt rather than acquiring new properties, potentially using paid-off assets to secure lines of credit for future investments.
Welcome to the Everyday Millionaire Show with Ryan Greenberg and Nick Kalfas. Alright guys, welcome back to another episode of the Everyday Millionaire Show. We are here doing an internal podcast, trying to get some more content out to you guys. Unfortunately, we made a boo-boo on our last podcast and forgot to press the audio recording, so we'll have to redo that one. Ruh-roh.
Speaker 2:That's like the third at third one that that has happened. I would say three, but I think it's been up there.
Speaker 3:Maybe double that listen. Nick doesn't know, because he doesn't do anything. Yeah, that's true, any idea?
Speaker 2:it was probably five or six.
Speaker 3:I mean, I know that it's happened yeah, and it didn't happen too long before that one, maybe a month before that when it happened yeah, I hate to even admit it, but life is hard it happens there's a lot going on, I mean with the cameras recording, getting all the settings correct and then pressing the audio, pressing one button, yeah, yeah, now I know what to look out for and I'm looking at it right now making sure it doesn't start to dim off well
Speaker 1:if we start getting some, uh, some advertisements, we'll have to hire an actual producer too.
Speaker 3:Maybe we get some sponsors, that'd be cool.
Speaker 1:Yeah, then we could actually go pro if you're out there looking for somewhere to market, we're here for you. We're here in the real estate world, especially maryland, uh dmv area. Um, all right, a couple of things that I wanted to talk about today was the market right now is it's all over the place. I feel like I can't get a, can't get a good hold on it. We have people that are saying they're getting multiple offers on things, and then we have properties Chase and I have properties that are sitting vacant, both on the rental space and for sale, and I don't know what's going on.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, I feel like a lot of that boils down to the location. I feel like, regardless of what market we're in, if you're in a good location and the house is priced correctly, it's going to sell, and then obviously we have those tougher areas. I have a few rentals that have been sitting for quite some time and it could I don't think it's just the market, I think it was maybe it could have been like the cold winters. Now we're hitting the spring it's starting to, you know, fire up a little bit more, but those few units that have been sitting are still sitting with not much activity units that have been sitting are still sitting with that much activity.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you know, one of ours is like a plus rental here. Yeah, it's a rental park. So you know, I mean, when we're looking at the we've talked about this deal 100 times but, like, when we're looking at the deal, it's like oh, this, this is gonna rent easy. You know we won't. That was the duplex.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, benfield yeah, one of them we got re-rented um and increased rent, and then the other one they left because we increased the rent and we we relisted it and it's been sitting now for like two months at least yeah, but it's.
Speaker 3:It's weird because the units right next to us. So fullerton, the guy that sold us the deal, um, he just rented his out and he came on after us.
Speaker 1:Basically same exact house with like one wall taken out yeah same quality of like finish and everything like that.
Speaker 3:I think it may be a little better. Um, I think they did a little better job over there. I think the layouts may be a tiny bit better as far as like master bathrooms, a little bigger space. They might get more space over there, but still nonetheless. He came on the rental market after us. 3500 were listed at 32 and he already had it rented out. So it's it's just kind of interesting to see. And then we have our flip that's absolutely dying down in pg county um right now, just getting kind of crushed by back to the benfield one.
Speaker 2:Their duplex is right next to each other. Both were listed at the same time. Do you guys both have signs out front like what would make a potential tenant look at one of them? Neither, and it's there's not a really good place for I guess could probably put a sign on, like benfield itself, a rental sign because I would just think anyone interested in the one would see the other, unless they didn't know that the other one was available for rent yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 1:I mean the everybody's on zillow. They're looking at you know wherever to be fair too.
Speaker 3:Like it's not like we haven't got rental applications yeah, we have applications, they just haven't qualified, so like we don't know what his standards are versus ours, that could be completely different too.
Speaker 1:That is true. That is true, I mean, because we are looking for like at least two and a half to three times rent. So they have to make at least 120 000 a year to qualify, and that's, you know, people in that, in that bracket, or a lot of them, are trying to buy houses and not rent them. So I don't know, but it is weird. Um, it's a weird time of year too. It's like spring time, it's just starting, so hopefully it picks up. But I know, like there are other markets around, not locally, like in florida that's get. They're getting absolutely demolished. So there are markets around that are getting, yeah, I mean crushed for here.
Speaker 3:Like I've been talking to some agents and like it's all sub markets, right, like depending on, like, what street you're on in baltimore. There's multiple offers, people are waiving contingencies. Again there's going 50k over, um, non-refundable emds even, which is absolutely wild, and it's just like it's all dependent. I think glenn bernie's starting to pick up. I just had one going to contract in three days, uh, 10k over. So, like it, I think it just depends on the market. Like you were saying, nick, location, location, location, um, and then if it's priced well, like yeah, and that's typical with the spring market.
Speaker 2:You know, spring is here, people feel a little better when it's warmer. I mean, we did have some of the coldest days in december, january and early february that we've had in quite some time. It was like you know, and we knew that just by how much of increased certain bgne bills were. Um, and talking just about bgne, I had a vacant property, 700 bgne bill. That was vacant for the whole month of december and january and it was 700 december and like 650 in january. I'm like this is crazy.
Speaker 3:Have you ever tried to call them and argue with them about that?
Speaker 2:no, I went to the property and saw that the fan was on on instead of auto and it's a heat pump, so there's no gas. If it was a gas furnace it'd probably be a little bit cheaper, but because it's a heat pump and the fan was on, it was just running 24-7.
Speaker 1:And then when I turned it off, it cut the BG&E bill in half, but it went from seven or 650 to 320, which is still pretty high, for bg is a big problem right now. I know I've been talking to a couple of multifamily guys that are getting absolutely demolished by bg and e increases, like they're saying that they've their bills have went up by like eight to ten times yeah it was.
Speaker 1:So, like some of these older buildings, the one that I'm working on now has one central like heating system for the whole all 12 units and that bill is on the landlord and that bill has gone through the roof. So the bg is a big problem and it's getting. It's not just bg need to. I found um insurance, delmarva power, different power companies, different power companies. So my brother's bill went from like three hundred dollars he has like a two thousand four hundred square foot house, brand new construction, so like insulated, well, the whole nine. His bill went from like three something to twelve hundred dollars a month he told me that that was wild.
Speaker 3:That's absolutely insane. Yeah, like, how does somebody like that's a mortgage payment for regular?
Speaker 1:somebody like people can't afford that issue. And then you think about the tenants in some of these units that are living paycheck to paycheck and they're getting the ones that the tenants are responsible for. They're getting crushed. So that's a big problem. I know Mike Griffith talked about kind of the power problem that we're having here, but it is a huge problem for investors.
Speaker 3:Before we move on real quick, I want to talk, nick, maybe we can. I can pick your brain about this. I had a solar guy come over and knock my door the other day and it's very interesting the pitch that he pitched me because I was like, listen, dude, this is going to be a rental, I don't really care about solar, because you know the tenant's going to pay their own bill. And he was like, well, I mean, if you think about it, if you put solar on, invest now, then you can charge them the rent and make the money and you know your where your energy costs are going to be and they're going to be stationary, so you can always just make extra money on the, on the energy costs. What do you guys think about that? As far as you know, using on your rentals?
Speaker 2:um, I mean I've. I just don't like being sold. So like if somebody came to knock on my door about solar, I would have a conversation with them for one minute and just tell them I'm not interested, I don't know enough about it to have an opinion on it. Um, the only thing that I would think is will it affect my roof and will my roof have leaks? If I did get it done and maybe there's a leak solely because there?
Speaker 2:was an improperly installation of the solar panels or, over time, kind of like a skylight how skylights? They're good at the beginning but over time, if you have a skylight it's going to leak eventually.
Speaker 1:They leak, and then you have to replace them, and so on and so forth, and I definitely wouldn't get solar with a brand new roof, or at least like within five years or something, because you put solar panels on a 10 year old roof and in five years you got to take them all off and put them all back right? Just ate up how many years of electric bill.
Speaker 3:So I mean the research that I've done. Most of these solar companies will guarantee the roof. So they check the roof out first and they look at it and say, okay, yeah, this, this is a good roof, this qualifies for our 10-year warranty or whatever. It is right they have certain warranties, but that's definitely a thought. The reason that I thought about this was because the military does this with their base housing, because their base housing is where they pay all the water, the utilities, the electric and everything. So their thought is they're just going to go ahead and invest in solar and keep costs low. Kind of makes sense for a landlord If you have you know 15 properties.
Speaker 2:With you know fairly new roofs, you can make some extra income on the electricity. And explain to me what do you mean by making the extra income on a property that has solar when a tenant moves in there? Like what are you referring to getting that extra income from?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean if, for example, let's say my average electric bill is $200 and by putting solar on my roof maybe it drops it down to $10 for deliveries and everything else, right, so now I can go to my tenant and charge them 150, 180, $200 a month for electricity bill and that's not really going to fluctuate that much are you so?
Speaker 2:you mean like include the bg&e bill but charge them what they think would be like an actual bg&e bill for that property? I guess?
Speaker 1:yeah, okay in a sense. What about the money that you have to pay for the solar?
Speaker 3:right, so that that money is included in what the difference is. So it's going to be a monthly payment or you pay out of pocket up front, so that's like a bigger, bigger.
Speaker 2:I would like to hear like talk to someone who had solar for maybe a few years and actually know like, all right, before I got solar, solar my bill was 300 and now it's X amount just to see like exactly how much you're saving. And then you know it's kind of like water bills. Having like multi-unit buildings and the owner pays the water bill. Like if they run up their electricity one month or if it's really cold in the winters, like we just had, it's going to drive that bill up you know more for you as the owner.
Speaker 3:They can do that. They can do that data with the solar companies and average how much you've been using over the last couple years kilowatts and say like hey, last year was a really cool. I mean, you know this past year was a really cold winter. So like how much did you use on average? I think mine was like 1200 and 1250 kilowatt hours of electricity is now.
Speaker 1:The other question is is the technology like changing and getting see?
Speaker 3:that's. That's the big question that I have, and that's been kind of my hold back is like you were talking about a guy that invented these shingles, yeah, which would be pretty cool that's yeah, so I've uh, our home inspector has equity in this business that I guess he just invested in where they're making like and tesla had them.
Speaker 1:But these are like. These literally look like regular shingles. They're installed like regular shingles with nail guns and they're solar cells. So I feel like this technology. It's just like if you were to get like an iphone five, ten years ago it does a lot, it's a lot less than the iphone right now. So I don't know. I would just worry about that um.
Speaker 3:The only problem I see with waiting, though, is the grid system can only hold so many people and, from the way I understand it, like only so many people in a certain area can have solar and then so many can't really yeah, from the way I understand it, but, and I mean.
Speaker 2:Another negative would be what a negative would be if the tenant doesn't pay your rent. Right, if they fall behind now, not only are they falling behind on rent, but they're also falling behind that's what I told the sale guy and you still got to pay the bg and e whereas like you know, if they didn't have, if they had bg in their name, you would just have to still continue to pay your mortgage obviously.
Speaker 1:I guess there are more questions yeah, I would have before I would make a decision.
Speaker 3:I just thought it was an interesting thought, something that I don't think most landlords think about, and I've just kind of started pondering it and doing a little bit of research with chat to see, I think, some of these multifamily.
Speaker 1:Guys are thinking about it right now.
Speaker 3:The other common spaces and stuff your brother should be thinking about it.
Speaker 1:I know the problem with his house it's all wooded.
Speaker 3:Oh damn this is not a lot of sun.
Speaker 1:That's the other thing. It's like if it's fucking cloudy, there's no, no solar. Yeah, so a couple months out of the year you get like is it worse in the winter? You know when, when you need the electric the most, is it not? It's not as sunny, obviously, because it gets dark at 4 pm, right? So are you? How much is that like losing out? I don't know. I have a lot of questions. I have a lot of questions. Maybe we can get a solar person on here to that'd be kind of cool finding somebody um nick.
Speaker 1:What are you doing right now? Buying more rentals or flips?
Speaker 2:it's about 50, 50, um. So I have five under construction right now and I think three of them are flips to our rentals um, and how are you determining, like, which ones you're gonna sell?
Speaker 1:like, because I know you're, you're kind of flipping and doing that all in like the same little pocket yeah, you determine which one I'm paying for it.
Speaker 2:So so, if, if, if I know so I guess generally speaking you know I buy a lot in a certain area and if I'm paying, you know, over 90,000 for it, it probably won't and I have to do like a full renovation. It probably won't make sense to keep it as a rental just because of you know the debt that I'm going to have on it and you know the mortgage after I refinance it. So that number will still make sense to do a flip, whereas if I bought that same property for 60 or 70 and I could refinance it maybe at like 140, 150, then it would be a good cash flowing property to keep.
Speaker 3:What's your criteria for cash flowing and keeping as a rental, and has it changed over the years?
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, it's definitely changed a lot. I mean.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's definitely changed. Back in 2021, 2022, when we were refinancing at four and a quarter, like anything and everything was cash flowing. And now it's like and that's another thing Like if I got to pay more and the interest rates are six and a half seven still, well, now then I might not cash flow. So it might make sense to to sell. If the house is really close to other houses I have, I may just keep it.
Speaker 2:If I can cash flow, um, like if I, if I can fully renovate a property and not worry so much about the big capital expenditures like the HVAC, roof windows, water heater and all that good stuff, and I can wait, you know, until the end of that life expectancy, then I will, um only have to worry about the you know, the reoccurring maintenance like pest control, broken down appliances and stuff like that. I can cashflow between three to 500 bucks and be happy after paying the PITI. Uh, if I buy a property and the cashflow is 300 and everything is 15 years old, that may not be worth it to me, because then I know there's going to be some cap capital expenditures that may be coming up shortly down the road.
Speaker 3:I feel like a lot of investors kind of make mistakes right now is like they get so bought in on their buy box of being like, okay, a cashflow is $300, but then they don't think about those big CapEx expenditures that you're talking about and that's what me and ryan talk about is like if we're going to keep a property, we'd almost rather it be fully renovated to where we don't have to worry about those things 10, 13 years down the road and we don't have to basically account for those in our cash flow.
Speaker 3:So three to five hundred is what you're keeping right now. If, if the if you replace the hvac water heater roof um, yeah, I'm satisfied that like 300 to low end.
Speaker 2:Um, obviously some are more than 500 as well, but if everything is new, I'm fine with that.
Speaker 1:Just because of that reason alone, like, obviously the capex expenses are a lot higher than the general maintenance right yeah, I, I don't want to say like the idea of like retiring through rentals is like dead, dead, but it's definitely way harder to do now than it was. Like you said, 2018 to 22 or so, that those you just couldn't lose. Like every deal that we did we made money on, we refinance it, pull down a bag of money still cash flowed. And now when I'm like coaching people and talking to different people that are trying to get into the game and they're like so gung-ho about like I want to buy this rental, I want to buy this rental, I'm like, look, you've really got to run the numbers because you might be better off putting your money somewhere else right now until rates come down and inventory goes, gets higher yeah, I mean I definitely want to buy some more rentals just by myself as well, I mean for tax purposes and other reasons.
Speaker 3:But I mean that's, that's a big thing that I think about. It's like, how much risk tolerance can I have on that cash flow side? Like 300 seems pretty low for me. But like now that you say like okay, well, if you're taking care of the roof, the hvac, the electric, the plumbing, like all those big things, then it might make sense.
Speaker 2:No, it does make sense and like that's a very small portion of the whole picture, right, Like you have to cashflow. Okay, great, Then you have, like you said tax benefits, appreciation, debt pay down yeah.
Speaker 1:And that's the other things you have to really focus on. So, like Jet who I'm coaching, we were talking about, like his portfolio makes a lot more sense for him to buy stuff that he can take tax losses from his other business and negate some of those profits where if you are just a regular w-2 employee, those same deals don't make sense because you can't write off the income right. So for certain people you really have to look at some of those other factors as like really big ticket items, like the tax depreciation part of it is, is a massive you know a massive come up for for some people. But then for the other people that are on the other side of the fence that are just regular W2 employees, even if they're high you know high income earners or whatever you can't write off those expenses from your portfolio. So that whole you know there's some benefit there but it's not like it would be for somebody that is a real estate professional.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but I would say I'm not and this is not advice in any way, shape or form but you know the nine to five worker who saves 15, 20, 25,000, they can make that money more money for them than put into like a stock market or something like that just by buying the real estate, just by getting off, you know, for those pieces, the appreciation debt, pay down tax benefits and the cash flow every month.
Speaker 1:Now, what are your thoughts about? I know we've talked about this before. What are your thoughts on now? You got some properties. Let's just say you have 10 houses right, you're a new investor. You have 10 houses. What are your thoughts? And you bought them recently, right? So your rate's 6%, 7%, 8%. What's your thoughts on just attacking the debt If you have an income from somewhere else? Right, Like high income earner on the W--2 world, you have a business, whatever. Just starting to attack the debt and pay it down.
Speaker 2:And now you have 10 paid off houses I think you start attacking when you want to start slowing down or stopping if you want to. If your whole goal was to get to 10 and get to 10 paid off houses, then you start attacking that debt. But if your goal wasn't to stop, if, if you still enjoy buying those houses, buy the right ones, buy the ones that still cash flow, even at the 7% interest rate that you may refinance at, then I would still continue to do that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I would agree with that. And then I would say if you are attacking them, you better attack the highest rate first.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, that's the whole idea. You attack the highest rate first and then, as you pay them off, you can bundle them up and borrow against them. So that's another kind of strategy. Instead of borrowing a mortgage, a 30-year mortgage, you can do a line of credit, an asset-based line of credit. So then you're not paying interest unless you use that money. So you still have access to the leverage. It's maybe not as much leverage as you buying something with with a mortgage, but it is still reusing that equity in a certain way. That's not costing you eight percent always throughout the year. You're only paying it as you use it.
Speaker 3:So that's yeah, but then you, just you put your money down, your free money, to pay off that debt.
Speaker 2:So in in turn, it's just you're cycling it, yeah because you could use that same money to buy another like one more house, yeah right.
Speaker 1:So that's why I'm saying like just you're cycling it yeah because you could use that same money to buy one more house. Yeah right.
Speaker 2:So that's why I'm saying, if you're ready to stop, but your cash flow goes up because you're not paying that interest right.
Speaker 1:All these loans are front-end loaded up with interest, so your cash flow increases significantly when they're paid off because you don't have to pay any interest. But then if you're going to leverage against, it got to pay interest. Right, but only when you do it in a line, like in the form of a line of credit. You only pay the interest as you use that money. So if you're going to do like a burr, for example, you could buy the whole thing in cash.
Speaker 2:So you mean like instead of like using hard money and then refinancing out. You can just use your own money, pay less and then refinance out to another long-term loan.
Speaker 3:I think you'd have to figure out how long that would take you to pay those off if you I mean if you had 10 and they're all yeah, everybody's in a different, you know obviously a different situation.
Speaker 1:I was saying like somebody that makes a lot somewhere else they could be a medical device salesperson making 300k a year and you'll. If you can live on 100k a year and you could pay off one house per year, yeah, and now, 10 years down the road, you have 10 paid off houses. That's pretty good, you know, I mean how much that's. You gotta ask yourself, I guess, how much money do you need per month?
Speaker 1:yeah to live and then decide that. But I I just asked that because it because the rates are sticking where they're at right now. They said they're not dropping them right now. They said that they expect, I guess, a 50-bip decrease by the end of the year, but that's really not that much, so like a half a point isn't really going to move the market all that much.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So just something to think about.
Speaker 3:You know comment if, uh, you have an opinion in one way or another and let us know where you think rates are going to be at by the end of the year that's what I'm curious to see I think we'll be in the sixes.
Speaker 1:Mid sixes is where I think we're going to land the end of this year. Okay, that's my prediction, just based on.
Speaker 2:I'm gonna say low people that I've talked about, low sixes low sixes I don't have an opinion on that, I'm just gonna keep pushing, just guess, just keep, all right. So I think rates will be maybe, hopefully, around five percent at the end of 2025 five percent.
Speaker 1:Five percent, I'm just being optimistic here.
Speaker 2:Yeah, cool, you said, give me an opinion, okay. And there it is cool.
Speaker 1:Yeah, five, five would be sick. I would definitely refinance a bunch of stuff pulling refinance for sure at five percent, because I got definitely a couple million in that seven plus percent range. That is tough, it's it's tough it is, but we have. You know, you got what's our dscr loan at.
Speaker 1:You know, like seven, seven it's like seven seven or seven seven, five or something like that. Yeah so, and that's a five-year prepayment penalty too. So that's tough, that's another tough one. But yeah, the market um is not, it's it's. We'll see what the rates do to the property.
Speaker 2:Is that?
Speaker 1:that's the bentfield one, but okay we're also doing like just to go to like some of like the the bad side or like the tough side of investing in the real side of it is like chase and I have two big flips that are open that haven't you know, that are for sale or about one's about to be for sale, one's for, and then we have one vacant unit at a $1.1 million duplex. We're hemorrhaging like $13,000 a month in interest payments. That's just out the window. Every month 13K. So for people that are trying to get into the game and new to this, make sure that you have a little nest egg saved up, because it is not all rainbows and butterflies. Things are not just moving, and you know that's what tyler just said to me today.
Speaker 3:He's like you, you can handle this. And I was like I can for a little bit, but not for like another year what was it? You know, the capital calls like having to put up 13k a month, you know, and capital calls. Yeah, I mean I can handle it for a look, like you know, but like it like it's not. I can't do this for a year, but we don't expect to do it for a year, right? Like it's all seasons and periods, the um yeah.
Speaker 1:So it's you. Just you do, you got to be careful, you really do. I think people get really like overzealous, Um, and they're just like, oh, just buy it, it'll sell or it'll refinance, like I used to think that way.
Speaker 1:Now I'm like we better, you know, yeah, and and we make money. I mean, we make enough money, but that's the other part. Um, what's nice about partnerships, too, because there's three of us that are sharing that expense. It's still not great that we're spending what four grand, over four grand, a month each in interest, but it's definitely better than one of us spending 30, the whole 13k.
Speaker 3:You know, that's that's for sure, yeah, no, 100, and that's, that's just the properties, that's not our crms and our, you know, wholesaling operation yeah, that's another three grand a month too.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the website yeah, that's why I try to keep all of my loan amounts around two to 250 that way, like those bigger deals kind of scare me, like if I get up and you know if it's a property at six, seven, eight hundred thousand I know just the wind.
Speaker 1:It's, it's it's all relative, right, the winds are bigger at that. It's this it's like arguably the same amount of work and it's a bigger win, bigger risk. But like for me to renovate like a single family, like the, the one in pg, it's just as easy to do that, if not easier, because the houses are typically newer than a city row home. Like it's probably easier for me to do the pg single family house than it is for me to do an old, 100 year old row home that needs a full gut. So, for the same amount of work, if you're able to, if let's say, you're averaging, you know, 20k in profits, we should be 40k in profits and it costs less.
Speaker 3:Typically I mean from my experience it costs less on the renovation side. Like you know, lakes didn't cost us 95, but a baltimore property I mean typically from the things I hear you got to go down, so that's going to cost you, you know, a couple grand and you're going to be at like 125 before you know it a couple grand to go down, where to dig down?
Speaker 2:we do a lot of couple grand.
Speaker 3:It's like more than yeah, it's more than a couple grand, but you know what I mean, that's how rich chase is a couple grand is now 30k yeah, a couple k couple grand couple of k's in there, but you know what I mean. There's a couple of, a couple of, yeah, yeah, yeah, I didn't want to tell your price to everybody so I wish it was a couple grand that'd be nice.
Speaker 1:I posted it on facebook.
Speaker 3:Somebody was asking but yeah, I mean so, I think, but it's, it's that thing, it's exactly that. It's like you're carrying bigger payments and you gotta.
Speaker 2:That's the thing. Like you can win bigger, but like if you're carrying it and you don't have the funds to carry it, if you ran out of construction money and it's just coming out of your pocket another thing I was about we're talking about wholesaling is a couple of the vibe.
Speaker 3:young agents were talking and they were asking about like different operations and asking me about like our CRMs and like the data providers and cold callers. And I was telling them like it costs us around $2,400 a month to buy the data and then to hire the cold callers to go through that data. And one of the agents responded like, oh well, you could just buy the data and then to hire the cold callers to go through that data. And one of the agents responded like, oh well, you could just buy the data and then go through it yourself. And I was like, well, if you do that, you're getting 10,000 records with five phone numbers each. So you're telling me you're going to make 50,000 phone calls in a month, and then what? And then then you still got to find that.
Speaker 1:But if that's somebody, that that's what they. If that's somebody, that that's what they.
Speaker 3:If that's their job, if that's they, want to make that their job, you technically could yeah, and that well, that was her point is like if you didn't have the money to hire the cold callers, you could do that. But my, my point was is like if you don't have the money to do that, you, you should just do it the free way, like you should just be on on market deals trying to find agents to connect with and have them bring you deals and that type of thing until you bring up a nest egg enough to cover a couple months worth of cold callers and data yeah, yeah, I think people like to skip steps and I think the good old-fashioned just hitting the phones for young people it's good.
Speaker 1:It's like the people that uh, uh did door to door sales, or like car salesmen. You know, they kind of had to cut their teeth at that grindy sales job and those people are typically become the best salesmen. Um, so, making those calls, I mean, if you don't, if that's what you want to do and you want to be, you know, getting off marketmarket deals, you can be bird dogging, you can go looking for properties, driving for dollars. You can be calling the leads yourself.
Speaker 3:You could be producing your own leads through tax records I mean, I think if you really want to be in the game, you should hit up somebody that's already doing it and ask to come join their team and, you know, work off a commission split with them, learn their systems and processes. And if you really want to do it on your own, once you've kind of built up that nest egg, then you can go do it. But, like you said, there's tons of different ways driving for dollars is that a sales pitch to get people to join the team?
Speaker 3:it's just like a slight sales pitch but no, I mean I, I. It was all relative to the fact that, like in this real estate industry, you have to have a nest egg and cover a couple months worth of expenses ahead of time.
Speaker 1:And this isn't. You know, we're not selling pizzas, it's expensive. There are zeros, more zeros than your typical transaction, your typical business. Like we're dealing with houses, these are big ticket items. So everything with houses, these are big ticket items. So everything inside the house is big ticket items, you know. And hfx is everything. So, yeah, having the systems, the all that stuff, that costs money.
Speaker 2:So having money around sitting there is important, um so, and I guess also you know we're talking about it cause we do multiple at once, like for those out there listening who maybe want to get involved with one um, you may not run into this scenario like we do, where we're, you know, balancing different construction projects and construction um budgets.
Speaker 2:However, the big thing that they have to look out for is like their estimate that they're getting from contractors and what their budget is on that particular one property and that they can, you know, that they're able to get a construction loan that's going to be suitable for them based on you know how much money they have to, where they don't run into a jam, where they run out of money and they can no longer front the construction until they can get a draw, and then things may start going downhill from there yeah, I think the I was talking to somebody the other day about maybe it was jed on one of our coaching calls that the construction is where it's make or break, like that's the biggest variable of the whole entire transaction.
Speaker 1:That's where things, dreams can be made and dreams can be crushed, because you can go over on something like our flip. Luckily we have a good cushion, but like we're over like tens of thousands of dollars. The pool was 15 000. There was one day so this is a. This is a funny story. Well, funny for some people I guess not for chase and I but one day we found out that the pool was going to cost us fifteen thousand dollars to fix and the septic which we thought was good because it was like fixed in 2000, it was there was a permit pulled in 2017 on it. Apparently the people that put the septic in put the dry, the dry field, higher than the wet tank so that nothing was running with gravity. So we had to put in a pump and that was like 80, I think it was 8400, something like that, something like that. So one day on that job on one house, we found out it was like 20 something thousand dollars in changes yeah that we didn't expect that.
Speaker 1:We didn't expect. We expected something on the pool. So we can't say it's 25 000 change order, but we expected. I was thinking like five, you know whatever. Five maybe closer to 10 maybe, but it was like 15 and then 84. That's just one.
Speaker 2:That was just one day yeah, did you guys consider filling the pool in instead?
Speaker 1:yeah, but it was going to cost money either way I bounced this back and forth, it's going to cost money.
Speaker 1:So it's a hundred thousand dollars to put in a pool, right, like if, if we wanted to put in a brand new pool, that that's where I started my rationing off of. Okay, it's a hundred thousand to put it in, it was going to cost at least five to ten thousand to fill it in properly. Then in our backyard the pool has a big concrete pool deck. So now there's just a dirt hole in the middle of the thing and a concrete pool deck. So what would we have to do? We'd have to put a big concrete pad there. But then you're spending a bunch of money. So, like, by the time I spent 10 on the filling it in, we spent 15 and you have a pool that's, in somebody's eyes, worth $100,000.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. No, it's definitely better to do it that way, but if you're filling in the pool, you would just take the concrete and put it in the pool and then just top it off with the dirt.
Speaker 1:Still costs money, true. How much would you have charged me?
Speaker 2:To fill it in cost money. True. How much would you have cost to?
Speaker 1:charge me to fill it in.
Speaker 3:Yeah, oh, for free. Can we get that signed?
Speaker 2:for our next project, yeah it's on video.
Speaker 1:Okay, it is on video. Um, yeah, I, so that that was. That was a big day.
Speaker 3:That was a big day for us I think we should go over that project ryan like we should talk about where we started is it done or is it just? About close. Yeah, um, just to like the numbers, like the construction, I mean you're talking about how it could be make or break and like I mean originally you thought 95 right and like this is coming from a contractor and how many square feet was the house?
Speaker 3:it's like 2 000 probably finished I think it's more than that maybe 2400, maybe upstairs, downstairs I thought it was more, I thought it was closer to the three range with the basement, but uh, it's a big house nonetheless. But also there's a garage that we didn't realize had a loft above it, and and then there was another building that we didn't see in the original pictures.
Speaker 1:We also went under contract because we wanted the area so bad. We went under contract sight unseen. We didn't actually see the property until a couple of days before closing. That's when we found a whole nother building on the property that was full of stuff. I mean, we're on 15, 15 dumpsters.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so it was a lot and I was.
Speaker 2:I mean we're on 15 dumpsters, yeah, so it was a lot. Did my guys go there? Yeah, oh, okay.
Speaker 3:I was originally thinking around 120 to do it all, and here we are. I mean, what are we sitting at right now Like 140?
Speaker 1:We're at 150. 150?. And I still haven't paid a bunch of people.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so we're going gonna be at like 170, but you know you buy the deal steep enough yeah, so what's the arv there? Oh, that's to be determined.
Speaker 1:Unfortunately, so we've already had offers at 725 like as like during the construction process.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we would have to finish it.
Speaker 1:But we've had offers at 725 and that it's severe. It's in the right school district. It's an acre lot. It's, it's got all the things you know. It's brand new roof. Um, it's got what it needs, I think, to pull some of the our one buddy lives locally and uh, right up the road from this house and he's saying that we should be close to eight. So at that price, you know, we're probably at all in and uh, 6 30 range, maybe at this point, 6, 20, 6, 30.
Speaker 3:I don't know what we said. Right to the numbers but we are um yeah, I mean there's money there.
Speaker 2:So how did you judge it from the beginning if the arv was kind of up in the air there? We didn't know the air, like that's what I mean we gambled, dude it was.
Speaker 3:It was a gamble. It was a gamble. At the end of the day, there was a purchase price.
Speaker 1:There was no comps that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, those are the, I guess, properties that make me a little nervous, like not knowing what the arvs are. But, like you said, if it's in a good school district, I feel like that can kind of drive the yeah yeah and then you're backed up to Chartwell, which are all million-dollar houses that street.
Speaker 3:I mean there are some comps that are close.
Speaker 2:We knew we wouldn't get under $7,000, but after that it's kind of up in the air what's going to be the list price $825,000?.
Speaker 3:We don't know yet. We'll figure that out $799,900. If you're listening to this podcast and you're ready to buy a house in saverna park, we will sell it to you for 799 beds, the best it's gonna be. We're gonna list it as five beds um so I just pulled up our calculator.
Speaker 1:If we get, um, if we get it done at 170, which I think we will, with all of our closing costs, upfront fees, um, and this actually fully counts all the interest that, so it's a little bit less than this, but 615. So if we get 775 or whatever, there's some, there's some money there's some meat on the bones there how did you?
Speaker 2:did you like pre-market? It is that how you got a few people interested at 75 well, I mean.
Speaker 3:I mean. So Sean is a big local guy here in Arnold and Severna Park in Annapolis and he had a client who was selling their house, sold their house, and he was like, hey, I have this property in Severna Park that's coming. You know, some of my partners have this property and we showed them, they were interested, and so on and so forth. And then Ryan's gotten a call from.
Speaker 1:I got two calls from two different neighbors, neighbors, yeah one of them son might be interested in buying the house and the other one was just inquiring if we're going to sell it or not. So people saw us working on it and stuff. I mean it was like a rat hole before. Now it's actually a nice house. So I mean it's that one's going gonna sell, I hope, but it is. It has been a uh, a cash intensive project. We'll say that I mean you charge us like five thousand dollars for demo labor.
Speaker 2:I think there's a lot of work. I sent my best guys there that day. Those couple days could have been free.
Speaker 1:Could have been free like the pool you said the pool.
Speaker 2:Was that what the pool was?
Speaker 1:yeah oh, should have been free. I'll take my check at the end of the um. So what are some of the things that we think are people are failing right now because of? So one of the things that I had on my list here was mindset. So why most investors fail and how to avoid it Common beginner mistakes. What do you think?
Speaker 2:Buying wrong, buying too fast, not actually knowing the numbers. You really can't actually know the numbers personally until you have some time in the game. When I first started I didn't really know a lot of the numbers and I didn't really understand CapEx and maintenance calls that may pop up. There's ongoing maintenance calls that happen in some of my properties, such as pest control, broken appliances because tenants don't know how to use them properly. For example, like a washer washer. They'll load it up with two loads of laundry and or three loads or whatever it may be, and then it just doesn't work anymore.
Speaker 2:So there's certain expenses that people might not factor in and I feel like a lot. The majority of the people that just factor in, you know P-I-T-I, principal interest, taxes and insurance and then they say this is my cashflow, but they can have a 15-year-old water heater, they can have a 10-year-old furnace, they can have old appliances that are going to break soon or have a lot of maintenance issues, a lot of different things. Like that, I think, is where people get trapped. They look at just that service number, my cashflow $400 a month after paying my mortgage. I'm good but in reality are they looking at all the big stuff?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so we've been working on some calculators for people that join our course. So I do have a good one for flips and a good one for rentals that do take into account percentages for each of those things, for vacancy, for CapEx, and it really does a good job of breaking down all the numbers for you automatically. So for those of you that are going to join the community, join the course, you will get access to all these calculators. We've been, I've been like really dialing them in. Some of them are, some of them are actually pretty cool now that we've gotten all the math to work right on the spreadsheet. So I will, uh, I will share those with with people. But the knowing the numbers, running the numbers, buying, right, um, I think, yeah, I think you kind of hit the ball on the head there yeah, I mean I.
Speaker 3:The thing is with investing is it's a business. Some people do it very passively and I think that's where a lot of people make the mistake of kind of treating it like a hobby in a sense, and like when you don't know your numbers, it's kind of like an accounting issue, right like you're, you're like oh okay, I'm cash flowing $300, but this maintenance repair was $300 this month and next month, and then next thing you know, you didn't even know you were negative for cashflow for the year and it's like, oh, I had to replace that AC unit, but things just start piling up on your credit card or whatnot, and it's just it's a business at the end of the day, so you got to treat it like one.
Speaker 3:Um, I think that's part of the mistake some people have is they treat it like a hobby and not a business.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean a big thing, like you said. Like, just know your numbers, know that. You know if on on the surface, it looks like your cashflow and 300 bucks, if you're playing, if you're paying a property manager 10% and let's say you're renting a property for a thousand dollars, which is on the lower end, that's you're paying them a hundred bucks a month. That's 33% of what you thought was cashflow, just because you're paying them a hundred dollars of that. Um, so there's a lot of different things like that, small things you have to factor in to make sure that you're not, and I think bookkeeping too, then like is really like that's where bookkeeping comes in.
Speaker 1:Knowing your numbers internally in your own business is super, super important. I learned it the hard way. Now I have multiple levels of accounting people in within our organization. That's literally counting the money every day, every single dollar in and out. I don't know how much is there and how much is owed or being paid to us. Like we have people that that's their job is to account for that money.
Speaker 1:And when you don't have that, if you're like a couple of properties in, you could do it yourself, probably on QuickBooks or spreadsheet even. But if you're not doing it with every single dollar and I say spreadsheet but that's really not a good practice because it's not capturing the expenses as you actually pay them in real time, like in quickbooks. As you swipe the card it comes into quickbooks, then it gets categorized in quickbooks. It's much easier to forget to enter that expense into a spreadsheet. At the end of the day, if your washer broke and you had to pay bruno's 250, it's really easy to forget to put that number in your you know, into a spreadsheet. So having a system um quickbooks is pretty cheap.
Speaker 1:I mean the baseline is probably like 30 bucks a month or something like that, um, having that and actually using it too, because I think a lot of people there's a statistic and I saw it, I think my bookkeeper maybe even shared with me like a large percentage of people have QuickBooks and don't use it.
Speaker 1:Or like they just oh yeah, I was that person for a little while so like they pay for it, but they're not in there categorizing properly or setting up the classes or whatever they you know, whatever you have to do for your specific business. When you do that, sometimes you have a stark awakening of like oh shit, I thought I was making money, but you're just turning wheels and not really making money.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's why you got me with Cindy, and so now I hired an accountant or a CPA whatever you want to call them to kind of go through those and category.
Speaker 3:I see that, because that's always. You know, I was paying QuickBooks and I sold $30 a month and I wasn't looking at anything. I just knew that you know all my transactions were going somewhere, so I had something saved. But now I just have to spend the man hours to go through and categorize. So I was like no, I'll just pay somebody else to do that. And now she can handle that for the next year or so yeah, is um.
Speaker 2:Is quickbooks good for real estate rentals, like owning rentals, and?
Speaker 3:yeah, it can work for that. I think your property Build it out.
Speaker 1:It's kind of something that you can build out to your own liking, using classes, using different there's project features in there. You can really, because $30 a month is your baseline, right. I pay probably $1,000 a month or something stupid, I don't even know how much it is, but we have all of this stuff under one kind of roof, so we have unlimited classes and it's not just your basic thing. So you can build it out essentially to be kind of what you need. But if you're I mean if for somebody like you I would say you could do everything that you need for accounting, probably within Appfolio.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's what I was going to was gonna say. The next thing is like if you're just doing rental properties and you don't have a business, then you can do it all in the property management software.
Speaker 1:Typically it depends on which app folio does have corporate accounting features that you can use, um, but we are just partial to quickbooks because that's what it's. Also, depending on what your cpa firm how you do your taxes my cpa firm gets in our quickbooks. That's how they do everything. So I would have to either pay more or figure out another system to do my corporate accounting within appfolio um. So that's. I have so many people. We have apm, which is like a third-party accounting company for app, for our app folio specifically. Then I have cindy, who's our consultant, then I have karen, who's our full-time bookkeeper, then we have brian, who's the cpa, and there's like six people yeah, you're deep over there.
Speaker 3:Um does now? Does app folio allow you to see transactions that were charged to your credit card, though for expenses?
Speaker 1:okay, yeah it on the corporate side of it, yeah, and then so at folio has two, basically two tracks of accounting corporate accounting for the whole business and then property-based accounting, right? So the property-based accounting is what's most important for the rentals specifically individually, um, but the corporate accounting is obviously important for the overall health of the organization but the quickbooks will be best for the rehab before to rental right yeah, I would say quickbooks is probably.
Speaker 1:The is more versatile in that way because you can put in whatever categories and gl accounts that you want.
Speaker 1:Um, I don't know if you really want to track your expenses and know your numbers for a flip like, I think, quickbooks is easily the best because you're seeing all your credit card charges and it can all flow straight from like home depot or wherever and what's also nice about quickbooks too, when you're getting into, like, getting some big loans and stuff like that is the balance sheet. So it keeps your balance sheet where it tells you exactly how much equity you have at any given point and as you pay down that mortgage, your balance sheet changes and it goes up. So there's other benefits like that I don't even want to talk about cause I don't really know too much about it, but I know that's what we do, so and I know I paid a lot of money for people to set that up for me. So, knowing your numbers again, it just goes back to what you said. Know your numbers again, it just goes back to what you said.
Speaker 1:Know your numbers. That goes for buying the house, rehabbing it. Um, don't get screwed over by contractors. I just got screwed over by a contractor in florida, a boat contractor of sorts. So this is, um, yeah, lesson learned for me and I'm like, literally in the contracting business. Not that they were a contractor, they're boat repair people, which is kind of a contractor, not the guy that was on the boat when we were there, right?
Speaker 1:no, no, no, no. So I somebody. I got carl actually found these people on google, but, um, and it's not. It's obviously not his fault. They're just pieces of shit, but the my welding thing that was, I was welding that rod holder bag they picked up my boat chart.
Speaker 1:They so they. The whole deal was they were going to pick up my boat with the trailer. So they're going to pick up my trailer at my tampa house, bring it to the marina. Boat goes on the trailer, trailer goes to the shop, they weld it. That was that's a lot of trust, dude, right? So they, they picked up my boat, they called me and they said, hey, when we picked up your trailer, your brakes were locked. It's $1,100. I'm like the fucking trailer is $1,100. What do you mean? So they charged me $1,100 to pick it up and bleed the brakes and then it sat in their yard and I basically told them I'm like, hey, I'm going to, before you pick it up, like I need it back by this day because I was coming down and I want to use the boat.
Speaker 1:So I was like I spend a lot of money to keep my boat down there and I'm only there every other week, so I want to make sure that you guys have it on that week that I'm not there. They said, no problem, we promise it'll get done. It'll get done. So it's like three days before I get there, I'm like, oh, let me check in and make sure that actually got done. They're like oh no, you're actually not on the schedule until next week. I'm like what the fuck? I literally told you guys that we were coming. I was coming into town this day. I needed it today, like in two days from now, and they're like oh well, well, sorry, nothing we can do about it. I'm like so you charged me eleven hundred dollars.
Speaker 1:You didn't fix the fucking thing when you told me you were going to, and now I'm sitting there with no boat. So finally they're like let me, let me see what I can do. So now I'm at this point I'm in florida and I'm like they're biting at the bullet to get my boat and they're leaving me basically like on red and they're like, oh well, we'll, we'll be able to get to it. I think you can have it by saturday. Okay, friday came and we were going offshore saturday. Like I had people like we were planning to go offshore fishing. They said, uh, friday comes. No, no call from them. I finally called and I'm like what's going on? Like, oh, we can't get to you. Until he had the balls to say I've moved mountains to get you done by wednesday of next week. I'm like this date has changed and moved back like four times at this point, so like I don't trust that you're gonna get it done. So I called like a million people down there that I knew, because I don't have a truck down there.
Speaker 1:So I had a boat on a trailer sitting in a lot somewhere and I have a little bmw race car like I have no way to pick it up so I called all these people that I knew with trucks to try to find a truck, finally found somebody from my marina that had a truck was willing to go pick it up, picked up the boat. By the time I got it it was it was friday night at 10 pm that I got that. I finally got possession of the boat and we were leaving the dock at 6 am the next morning it was a nightmare so and you paid them a lot of them yeah, and I paid them 1100.
Speaker 2:Wait, they were supposed to weld the trailer no, they were supposed to.
Speaker 1:I, a rod holder broke off like my t-top, so did they ever did they fix? That no no, it's still, it's still broken so they made money on your bleeding, your brakes.
Speaker 2:I'm just eleven hundred dollars in the hole so I mean, like do you even are sitting for a while? Like how do you even know that was accurate?
Speaker 1:I I don't think it was accurate, because before I drove it to chase and I literally just drove this damn boat down to florida a couple months ago and before that, like a week before that, I had the whole trailer serviced. I always bring it into this trailer shop before I tow it down to have it like just a once over done you know, and they, they did some. I don't know what they did, but I paid some money to have it serviced yeah and so I I think they just totally robbed me.
Speaker 1:I literally think they just robbed me. So they'll get what they'll get it, they'll get it back. But that's on to my next point. Be careful with contractors, especially in this, in this world. Um, I've been hearing more and more people getting robbed from contractors and I guess it's. It's not as crazy as it sounds, but there was a guy in Delaware that just got caught with $1.2 million of contractor fraud. He was taking deposits and just never answering the people again and he ended up getting caught. But $1.2 million is a lot to get away with on the front without anybody figuring it out. Yeah, you've got to collect a lot of deposits that way. Get away with on the front, you know, without anybody figuring it out yeah, you gotta collect a lot of deposits that way.
Speaker 2:there was a kid, years a few years back, who he was building a pool company out of colorado and he was taking deposits and wasn't finishing jobs and collecting new deposits, start new jobs and he just like kept going under and, uh, you know, went bankrupt because of it, just because he couldn't keep up with what he was doing. Yeah, that is tough.
Speaker 1:Um, yeah, so vet your contractors, ask them the right questions. Go see their projects. Like I'm doing a big job right now for somebody, um $500,000 remodel with big additions here in Serena park. These people have put me through the ringer, like I had to walk them through that waterfront build that we did. I literally have walked them through like six projects. I did a smaller project at their home here, like their current home, and like they are grilling the shit out of me, which rightfully so you're going to spend like a half a million dollars. Somebody you better know. You know what you're getting. But I feel like a lot of these people they especially I get calls a lot. I just had this. Actually, when I was down in florida, a lady called me, um, looking to she's like I'm looking to buy properties a foreign lady, I don't know where she was from, but looking to buy properties and fix them up and rent them or sell them okay great, that's what everybody's doing, right?
Speaker 1:she was like asking me. Everything that she was asking me was basically how to get things done the cheapest way possible, and I just got so frustrated. At the end I said you know, like you really get what you pay for. I'm probably not the right guy for what you're looking for, but be careful out there on who you use, because if you're just in it to get it done as cheap as possible, you're going to get burned Somewhere down the line. It's going to come back to bite you. So we'll see.
Speaker 3:I mean, that's on my first flip. I thought I was doing it the right way. I told my contractor like hey, I'll pay you more. I know I'm paying you more than I should be, but I'm doing that because I want you to do good work, right, and like I'm gonna hold money at the end to make sure you do good work, but I'm gonna pay you more than what I think you're worth yeah but please don't screw me over.
Speaker 3:And she did, and I still got screwed over so it's like you do got a, definitely vet the people that you're working with and I agree 100% A contractor can absolutely murder your deal.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:I think that's why you're so popular. To be quite fair, You've done really good work. You've built really good relationships with people.
Speaker 1:To be fair, the bar is set so low for contractors.
Speaker 1:I agree it's funny, but it's not funny Like if you just show up remotely on time and do close to what you say you're going to do, you've just beat out 90% of contractors, literally. It's like that's how bad it is. That's I mean. It's. It's really kind of crazy.
Speaker 1:And now, like we're booked with new constructions, now Like we've built you know, know, a bunch of new homes, but like people are flooding in because they're like all these other people have made these empty promises and whatever. I'm like it's it's very popular for people to get screwed over by builders and contractors. Like it's way more popular than than than you think. Um, so be careful, anybody that's out there buyer beware. You know, do your due diligence, knowing your numbers, all good stuff. Um, I did have somebody else reach out about our coaching platform and I basically told them and I'm going to tell everybody here like it's taken a lot more time than we thought to get all this content and everything together. So it's coming down the road um couple, probably another month or two before we have something like really solid, but it's. It's definitely more of an undertaking than I anticipated.
Speaker 3:Well, I mean, you can't rush it right, like that's the whole point that I've been trying to like dial in is is we're not going to rush it, no, we're taking our time.
Speaker 1:Like, of course we want it to be out there as soon as possible, but on the same token token, we want it to be super valuable for people and people actually feel like they receive the value that they're gonna pay for it and every time I think that I have like a segment in my head like all good, I talk to somebody or some conversation happens and I'm like oh shit, I totally forgot to add this part in and that's like such an important part of this topic of building a business or scaling the systems or whatever.
Speaker 1:Um then I'm like, oh, back to the drawing board and gotta, gotta redo it basically, uh, from scratch. And you, it's funny I we should have like a bloopers tape of all the takes that we do on these things like it would be really funny to see.
Speaker 1:It would be inappropriate because of the things that we say when we do screw up if I wouldn't go over well on youtube, but it is. It's a lot, man. It is way more than I thought. Um, and I was a teacher for nine years, I was like, oh, building a course easy, I did that basically, yeah, it's a lot.
Speaker 3:I mean even from the like, the camera equipment to everything. I was trying to make sure that all that's right, like we've had. We've had where the audio only comes in one ear and not the other ear. There's a lot to it, but we're trying to make sure that the value is super there. But we have the Facebook group.
Speaker 1:We haven't started really putting in content into that, but we're kind of using that as a place to collect people and use it as a kind of a launching platform. Nick's going to start posting valuable content in the Facebook group any day now.
Speaker 2:Yes, sir, keep an eye out for it Any day now.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think behind the scenes, like stuff at your rentals or anything like, if you're evaluating a deal, that would be a really cool place that we could start posting content and then, if people have questions about certain deals or something like that, they can post in there. Yeah, I think another thing that we, if people have questions about certain deals or something like that, they can post in there, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:I think another thing that we probably need to look at and we could talk about this like another time internally but is just having like somebody like Mitch unfortunately, mitch is so good but he's expensive Like having somebody like that, like two to three days a week, just following us around and capturing like the stuff that we need captured. There's so much valuable content of us just like going to these projects and checking in and seeing the mistakes and seeing what you know, what we could have done better.
Speaker 3:Um, a lot just goes uncaptured because we don't have somebody to do that but well, if you're out there and you're good with a camera and you want to see the insides of what we're doing and be a part of the team, yeah, hit us up If you know how to use a camera. Yeah, I mean I would love to have a little intern follow me around, and same for Ryan, like someone to follow him around to the projects. I think there's a lot of valuable content and I promise you you will learn a lot.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I do a lot of valuable content and I promise you you will learn a lot. Yeah, I do have an intern for the summer, maybe we'll teach him how to use a camera when he's back from college, we'll see but yeah, it's, it's something that we need to do.
Speaker 1:We need to do better, get more content. I mean, um dude, so that, uh, that p home remodeling commercial that I did I and I didn't even I should. I say I did, but I spoke, I didn't even speak on it. Mitch spoke on it. Yeah, 82 000 views on instagram.
Speaker 3:It's pretty good and that was that paid. That was paid right.
Speaker 1:I boosted it yeah yeah so, but compared to like our other ones where we're getting, like you know, I don't know thousand, eleven hundred, eight hundred, this one's like 82.4k.
Speaker 3:Yeah so, the boosting, the boosting works, boosting definitely works are you getting leads from that like, are you getting dms?
Speaker 1:so yeah, we've gotten a lot of dms. Unfortunately, we also get a lot of spam now because of it, I think. So there is like random people that hit us up that are they're clearly not clients, but we have gotten several leads from it as well. So I don't know. I'm just so busy right now anyway, I can't even really handle more leads, so we're working on scheduling stuff further out. But yeah, I think the social media stuff is important anyway what else?
Speaker 3:speaking of social media, I was actually in uh baltimore today teaching some of the young kids how to wholesale deals and I hate that you say young kids, because that's you are young and it's making us seem like we're like old pieces.
Speaker 3:You know you're old, you're super old, um, but no, I I call them that because that's like the. The group chat name is like the young vibers or whatever. So like in my head I'm like the old guy there because I'm 27, but like, and they're all like 24, 25, 23 some of them might be just youngins, just little, little babies.
Speaker 3:So, anyways, the point is like I, the the one girl there, uh, adriana, she has like a 13 000 followers on instagram, but she was telling me today she's like niching down in the new construction. She has a few new construction um buyers, and I was telling her about all the new construction. So I was like yo, like let's come on, let's collab, let's do some um, some content, because all of that now her network is seeing our network and our network is seeing her network and you know, you cross platform, you get some followers, but also it helps, you know, with the sell of houses and a different thing.
Speaker 3:But like content I was talking to her about, is content so evergreen, like it will always be there.
Speaker 1:It's a living resume that's why we do this that's why we do this. Yeah, we got to do this more. Um. Yeah, I think I mean we. I also want to say we have this should come out before then. But april 10th we have another event, cvp six to nine, towson. Um. Last event was really good. I felt like there was a lot of people at the last one so hopefully this one's springtime.
Speaker 1:The winter always seems slower, but last one was actually pretty popping, so hopefully, uh, everybody that's listening can make it. Um, we have a bunch of sponsors, a bunch of stuff to give away, so that'll be, uh, another good event. Um, if you haven't been to one of our events before, they're fun. We're not selling anything. We're giving food, drink, tickets and just good time with some some cool people. You get to see nick.
Speaker 1:You get to see nick over here yeah, you never lie, baby all right, anything else we got before we wrap this up, so I can go eat my sushi my tuesday night sushi I think that's all for for this episode. All right, next time we will have some more updates on this course and thank you everybody for listening and comment. If you have anything to share with us,
