October 2022 – REI INK

How To Raise Money To Get Through Tough Times With Brandon Brittingham

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With the current market we’re dealing with, raising money is a challenge for everyone, especially the investors. Many business owners make a mistake as they walk on a journey of a sale’s mind instead of walking through a consumer’s mind. In this episode, Brandon Brittingham shares how you can raise money with a business owner mindset to get through tough times. He also shares his experience on how he was willing to gamble to build a massive brand in the first recession. Tim Herriage took the chance to squeeze out some more insights from Brandon, not only about how he maintains trust from an ethical point of view but also how it impacts doing business. Tune in to this episode to gain more gems of wisdom from Brandon. — Watch the episode here Listen to the podcast here How To Raise Money To Get Through Tough Times With Brandon Brittingham I’m with an absolute rock star. Brandon Brittingham. Thank you for being here. I appreciate you. Thank you. Tell everybody a little bit about yourself. I do a lot of cliff notes. Anything that has to do with a home sale. I own a company around it. I have been in the investment space for a long time too. Why I originally got into real estate was to be in the investment space, and then I got into the retail side. I tried to create Amazon in real estate to how we can make it easy on the consumer. I have always had an affinity and love for investing in real estate. I have always done that too. I was lucky enough to sit next to you at Kent Clothier’s boardroom in Chicago. I remember I was sitting there, and I had no idea who you were. I got up and spoke. Sometimes I’m a little bit of the alpha in the room. People don’t want to give me feedback, and you like popped up and quietly, “I can help you with that problem.” I heard the authority come out. It was like, “What did you do then?” I was like, “Who is this guy?” The more and more the day got on, it was so fun to watch you pour into people. I’m excited to have you here. I start every episode with the bottom line up front. Do me a favor, take two minutes, tell the audience the single most important things in this market they need to be doing, avoiding, focused on, and changing. Whatever you think the bottom line is for this real estate investor. In this market, a lot of people try to make the mistake is timing the real estate market. If you look at real estate over the whole, you are going to make money if you understand how to underwrite a deal. If I could do anything over again, one thing that I would tell people is to figure out how to go after the bigger deals because it’s another zero. Your underwriting is the same, and everything is the same. In a lot of apartment deals and things like that I have done, the underwriting is easier than a smaller single-family portfolio, and it is way less pain. The appreciation and the economies of scale that I have gotten from apartments are insane. Asset classes like apartments and single-family houses, over time, are going to beat anything that’s out there. It’s one of the safest places to place your money but people are always trying to like, “Should I buy now? Can I time the market?” You underwrite a deal. It’s a good deal or a bad deal. Over time, if you buy and hold, the key to wealth is buying and holding and not emotionally selling and buying on a whim. Underwriting is being smart about what you do with your money and holding for the long-term. If you study and pay attention to anybody that’s wealthy, they hold cash-producing assets. They never pay taxes on it. Keep buying more and figure out how to never sell it. Pull their cash out of it to live off of but they never sell anything. If you follow that model in real estate over time, it’s going to make you wealthy. Don’t care about timing the market. Now, we are going to see some pain across the United States. It doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s real. There’s going to be perceived pain from people that were probably smaller investors or they didn’t know what they were doing. There’s opportunity. I would tell everybody to raise as much money as they can. Stack capital because there’s going to be an opportunity. The bulk of my wealth that I have was because I bought a ton of stuff between 2008 and 2011. Now, those assets that I bought are 10X and 15X. Stack capital now and wait for the opportunity. Opportunity is going to come but if you see a good deal now, don’t wait. If you know how to underwrite a deal and you are going to hold it for the long-term, you are going to make money either way. Don’t buy and sell. Buy and hold. Buy and hold make you wealthy. Stack cash and assets and take advantage of the compound effect of appreciation. Too many people underestimate the compound effect of appreciation. I spoke at Scale & Escape and was looking for some good examples. Besides Tim, the lender tells them, “Buy houses and always pay interest.” It was an interesting thing. I found that in 1971, Warren Buffett bought a home in Laguna Beach and borrowed $120,000 against that home. The CNBC host says, “Why would you have taken a mortgage? You didn’t need it.” He said, “The interest rates were a little high but I figured I could do better with the money than the interest would cost me.” That house he bought for $150,000. It was worth $11 million when he sold it

Invest In Yourself: Building Up Your Fundamentals So You Can Find Success In Your Industry With Jason Matthews

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If you really want to succeed in your industry, you need to have a knack for learning. The ability to just constantly educate yourself. Read every book, do research, get mentors, or listen to podcasts. Do what you have to do so that you can succeed and don’t make mistakes. Strengthen your fundamentals and move up from there. Join Tim Herriage as he talks to real estate executive Jason Matthews about his journey into real estate development and construction. Discover how he did it by investing in himself. Learn how he put some of his sports philosophies into creating a successful business. And find out how Jason is helping ethnical minorities break into the real estate industry. Start educating yourself today! — Watch the episode here Listen to the podcast here Invest In Yourself: Building Up Your Fundamentals So You Can Find Success In Your Industry With Jason Matthews I’m here with my good friend, Jason Matthews. Jason, thank you for coming to town. Thanks for having me. I’m looking forward to it. One of my favorite guys. I don’t know about all that, but let’s start off. Why don’t you tell the audience a little bit about yourself. Jason Matthews, born and raised in Los Angeles, California, and played high school and college basketball. I used that life of basketball, that vehicle, to guide me through my business career. I’m now living in Tampa. Many years as a real estate investor. I’m married. I’m a dad of three, great kids. I’m happy to be here in Dallas, Texas with you. I’m glad you’re here. I like to start with what I call the Bottom-Line Up Front. Imagine someone’s reading, they’re excited, they have to stop to do something for 5 or 10 minutes, and they forget to go back to reading. Let’s try to find a way to tell them the most important things happening in the market now, your opinion about that, things you think they should be focused on, things they should be doing, and maybe some things they should be avoiding. The most solid advice I can give people at this point in time is to focus on their education. You have to dig deep into the fundamentals because the fundamentals will teach you how to make adjustments. In the real estate market that we’re dealing with right now, things, underwriting guidelines, and values are changing so rapidly. You got to drill down into the fundamentals and know how to make adjustments. Our approach has been to study what’s going on, relying on the knowledge that we’ve gained over the last 25-plus years, and make the right adjustments. We’ve done a great job so far of doing that. We also have an action plan with more rate hikes to come. We also have an action plan with looking at some different uses for our short-term rental portfolio that we have. That’s what it’s going to take to be successful and get through the next few years. I’ve invested in my education on a continuous basis. I’ve invested in a couple of courses that have helped me. I’m investing in some more excellent coaching. I’m in a phenomenal real estate mastermind group that has a lot of talent, knowledge, and experience. I came into the year 2020 expecting to have to make these adjustments, expecting to build our infrastructure a lot stronger with the growth of our portfolio. That’s what we’ve been able to do. It’s worked well for us. I got to meet you in the Boardroom Mastermind in Denver in June 2022. You were immediately one of those impressive human beings, not because you’re a short man because you’re rather tall, but because you were soft-spoken but intelligent. I like to have intellectual conversations at times. I want to go back to something you said in the bluff. You talked about education and a team. It seemed like you were leveraging other people’s knowledge. Going back to your time in sports, because we talked a lot about that when we first met, what is it about having a team specifically in times like this that helps you? To be a part of a team, to have a team, I was fortunate. My dad put me in team sports at four years old at tee-ball. My dad was my Little League coach for ten years. It’s a phenomenal experience. You have to be on time and prepared. It’s not all about you. You can’t win the game by yourself. My dad was big on sportsmanship. Knowing how to get along with your teammates and realizing that even if you’re right, it’s okay not to have to tell everybody that you’re right. That transferred into being a businessman. I’ve never liked the vertical management of our businesses and being an entrepreneur. I’ve always preferred to work in a team. Whether I agree with it or not, I value the input from others on our team because they have different perspectives. They live in different neighborhoods and cities. They’ve had different experiences, personal experiences, family experiences, and business experiences. I want to look at the whole global view of what’s going on out here. I believe that a major reason why I’ve been able to stay in this industry for many years through all the real estate cycles and ups and downs and things of that nature is that I am willing to listen and learn from a variety of different people. I’ll give you a good example. When I was younger in the business, if I had a major business decision to make, I would intentionally ask one of my mentors’ opinions. I would ask one of my colleagues’ opinions. The third person I would ask would be someone that’s not even in the real estate industry. That was my process. They gave me three different perspectives. I added my perspective and then I move forward with the decision. That was a practice

Operating A Real Estate Business With Rob Fuller

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Are you one of those that have a real estate dream they want to realize but just don’t know how? Then this podcast is for you! Join us as Rob Fuller, a real estate developer, investor, and visionary, shares his journey on getting into the business of buying and selling homes and gives exclusive takeaways on operating a real estate business! — Watch the episode here Listen to the podcast here Operating A Real Estate Business With Rob Fuller Welcome back. Thank you so much for deciding to spend your time with me again. I am joined by my good friend Rob Fuller. Rob, thanks for coming down. I thought I was going to have to remind you of my name. We’re that good friends. Rob, tell everybody a little bit about yourself. In 2007, I was graduating from college, thinking I was going to med school. I applied and was accepted for five interviews. I went to the first and pulled all my applications out. The funny thing is when I was dating my now wife then, she said, “You’re not going to go to medical school.” I was great at the courses and I scored well. I did well in the MCAT enough to get interviews, but I didn’t have the passion for it. What I had a passion for was real estate. A couple of years later, in 2009, my wife and I together bought thirteen houses. As time progressed, by 2016, we were buying 30 to 40 homes per month at the peak of what we were doing. At the time, there were a lot more distressed homes than today. We may see some in the next few months, who knows? I certainly haven’t seen many for the last couple of years, especially with the forbearance. There was none to speak of. As time passed, we were buying so many homes. It actually became a burden to operate with that many homes that we were buying and selling, and so we started looking at other opportunities. We had some rentals. We had quite a lot of rentals. We tried to hold on to as many of them as we could. Time passed and we started moving into land acquisitions and building from the ground up. We still sold a number of those units that we built to institutional rent groups to the point that now we have a number of communities that are in some phase of annexation, rezone, entitlement, horizontal development, or home building, all across the span where we’ll hire site contractors to do the horizontal work. Right now, we have three developments in horizontal construction. There are a couple that is supposed to be coming into that within the next few months. We’ve got a few that are in vertical construction. We’re building homes. That’s what we do now. We try to buy early. We make our money by buying right. That’s what I talk to investors about. There’s the old adage of location, location, location, which is imperative. It’s the right location in the right city at the right time. Also, it’s buying it right. You don’t speculate that this house is going to be worth $1 million in twenty years or in six months. It’s more like that for a fixed and flip. “This house is going to be worth 200% of what it’s worth today in six months from now,” just based on value increasing if you’re going to actually build into the value by increasing the asset. Some of that is probably jumping the gun a little bit about what we want to cover here, but that’s my story with investing and how I got into it. I can’t wait to ask you more questions. I start every episode with the segment I call the bottom line up front, the bluff. In the Marine Corps, when I used to brief generals, they always said, “Don’t bury the lead. Tell the most important thing up front in case they have to get up and leave.” I would like you to tell the audience the most important thing they should be focused on today, what they should be doing, what they should be avoiding, or things they should be on the lookout for. Good to go? Yes. Go. I think this goes back to what we were talking about, which is buying right. Over the last couple of years, you can make a lot of mistakes. With the market appreciating and what it has done, those mistakes could be covered up. With the market in its current state of affairs, lending is more difficult. The declining home values are potentially more dramatic in some markets, depending on where you’re at. Buying right is more imperative than ever. People have a tendency to over-project their ability to get things done in time, in money, in dollars, and in the costs of rehab. Those numbers are tight. Whether you’re buying to hold or you’re buying to flip, you want to make sure you get the numbers right on. Take a step back and maybe even take it to a mentor, a friend, or somebody else who can look at those numbers and say, “I don’t think that you’re being realistic here, here and here.” Listen to those people. There’s a saying, “Haters will hate.” That sometimes is the case. Sometimes we need a dose of reality. To say we’re going to do $50,000 worth of renovation in a month is probably not realistic. We need to take a dose of reality and step back. The economy is changing. I don’t think anybody knows exactly where it’s changing, how it’s changing, how long it’s going to take to change entirely, and what the long-term effects are going to be. There’s a lot of speculation. After something happens, everybody will be able to look back and say, “I told you so,” but from this day forward, they don’t have solid answers

Finding Experience And Success In Wholesale Real Estate With Gonzalo Corzo

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Experience is the best education you’ll ever have. Gonzalo Corzo is well familiar with this. Instead of taking the college route, he started his real estate career by working for a wholesale realtor brokerage for free for a year and a half. Soon after, Gonzalo equipped himself with the knowledge that came from that experience to grow and become a successful real estate investor. He is now the President of Cash Geeks and Host of The Cash Geeks Network Podcast, where he is not only investing but also helping others find success in the industry. Gonzalo joins Tim Herriage in this episode to take us deep into his journey, his thoughts on the ESBI Quadrant, and his advice to investors out there looking to succeed. He then discusses more wholesaling, selling to hedge funds, and transitioning to flips. — Watch the episode here Listen to the podcast here Finding Experience And Success In Wholesale Real Estate With Gonzalo Corzo In this episode, I’m with an all-time rockstar, Gonzalo Corzo. Gonzalo, thanks for being here. Thanks for having me. I’m super excited. I’m glad you’re here. I’d like to start with tell everybody a little bit about yourself. I’m based out of Jacksonville, Florida. I own a wholesaling company called Cash Geeks. We do about 300 to 350 wholesale deals a year and our goal is to keep going nationwide. There are a lot of young people out there reading and thinking, “These old real estate guys.” You are still young and one of the most successful. You’re in the top 5% of investors in the nation. We’re going to get to that. I’ll start every segment with the Bottom Line Up Front. Think of it like the CliffsNotes version of the show. We want to give people in two minutes the top things that you’re looking at, thinking about, pursuing and maybe avoiding. Mainly, I want to focus on thinking big and treating your side hustle like a business. That’s the biggest thing that’s impacted me. One of the biggest things that make my business different from every wholesaler out there is we’ve taken the professionalism and the Corporate America approach to wholesaling and it’s blown us up. That’s the mindset that has made us who we are. It’s the main thing I want to focus on. I’ll have to dive right into this. You want to treat the business as a more corporate professional business. You’re not necessarily an old person. Where did you learn this? Honestly, it’s my business partner who is older than I am. When we connected, he had already a successful business that had a bunch of employees and systems processes. When I got into wholesaling, I got into it through FortuneBuilders. As they were teaching me wholesaling, I learned about the E Myth. I learned both at the same time. I’m a big fan of Robert Kiyosaki’s CASHFLOW Quadrant, where he exposes the difference between being self-employed and owning a true business. I knew because of my age, I had the time to build a true business and not just focus on something that’s self-employed, making a lot of active income. When I connected with my business partner, it meshed perfectly. That’s why we also work super well together because we have that clear vision of how we wanted to treat our business from the very beginning. In three minutes, you’ve mentioned two of my favorite books of all time. You’ve also mentioned FortuneBuilders, who’s one of the largest and probably most successful independent education companies for real estate investors. With the exposure to FortuneBuilders in a TV commercial or a radio commercial, is that how you learned about real estate or learn more? No, that’s how I learn more. Shout-out to my older brother. He’s a realtor and real estate investor. When I was eighteen, my older brother got into real estate. He had been trying to get me into real estate and shove Rich Dad Poor Dad down my throat. I was like, “No, I’m going to be a cop.” I was going to community college for my degree in Criminology. He took me to a personal development event where it was put on by a bunch of successful real estate investors. I got to hear David Green talk from BiggerPockets several years ago before he was anything big. He was a cop that was in real estate. I was like, “I’m going to be a cop and my older brother’s going to tell me about real estate.” We were talking about having a different voice in the locker room and a different show that you had. I was like, “My brother’s right. I need to get into real estate.” From that personal development event, driving home from the airport, I was listening to the radio and I heard a Than Merrill’s FortuneBuilders ad. It was like, “We’re coming into your town. We’re looking for some people that can help us buy houses with no money.” I was like, “This is what that event was telling me about. I need to be there. Say yes and figured it out later.” Two weeks later, I dropped out and started my real estate career. “We’re going to be in Dallas on,” it’s the old recorded same commercial insert city name but it’s led to a lot of success and successful people. I don’t knock any education, honestly, unless it teaches people to do things that are unethical or illegal. Let’s go back to the ESBI quadrant. A lot of people misunderstand that quadrant. In my opinion, they think they have to move from the E to the B to the I. I’m not sure a lot of people understand that you can occupy all four quadrants at the same time. I would like to know your thoughts and view on that. The biggest thing is understanding active and passive income. For me, when you break that down, you’re always going to have active and passive income.

Recent Renters Reveal Five Winning Strategies to Land a Place in Today’s Hot Market

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New Zillow survey finds being flexible about move-in date and offering to pay more up front are the top strategies to land a rental in an ultracompetitive market Typical monthly rents are the highest they’ve ever been ($2,084 as of September), yet the rising cost of buying a home is keeping more and more people in the rental market. Safe to say, it’s a stressful time to be a renter. In a recent Zillow survey,i more than one-third of recent renters (defined as Americans who moved into a rental unit in the past 2 years) reported that getting their current rental was more difficult than getting a new job. What’s making it so hard to land a rental? On top of determining how to afford a new place, renters face fierce competition from those who want or need to continue renting. Standing out to potential landlords among a slew of applicants is difficult, and staying organized to move quickly is of the utmost importance. Zillow asked recent successful renters for strategies they used to land their home. Strategy 1: Be flexible about move-in dateMore than one-third (34%) of recent renters said this strategy helped. Moving in earlier or later than initially planned is a (sometimes expensive) sacrifice, but it can help open up more options for renters. If a landlord won’t budge on a proposed lease start date and the renter is able to stay with friends or relatives during the lease gap or have rental payments overlap for a short time, this strategy has been proven to work. For renters who don’t have this flexibility, it’s best to keep their search specific to homes that line up with their move-in timing. Zillow’s new move-in date filter can better align the end of a lease with the start of a new one, eliminating the “double rent” scenario. Strategy 2: Be willing to pay more up front In Zillow’s survey of recent renters, 30% said paying at least two months’ rent in advance helped them win their most recent rental. Only 20% of renters said they were involved in a bidding war for their place, but paying more up front may be a way to grab the attention of a landlord. Even when that’s not an option, renters should always make their best offer. Renters can start by researching and knowing what they can afford before even starting their search. Zillow’s rent affordability calculator can help determine their price range, and Zillow’s Rental Market Trends tool provides an up-to-date look at their desired market to help them feel confident they are getting a fair deal. Strategy 3: Have strong references Serious renters should have all of their documentation ready to go even before they start searching. It’s common for landlords to ask for references, so having a few options ready to attest to a renter’s reliability and trustworthiness is an important strategy — one that helped 29% of recent renters land their place. In addition, Zillow’s Renter Profile helps renters get a jump on putting their best foot forward and moving quickly when it comes time to apply. Renters create a personal profile outlining their renter qualifications, such as employment, income and credit score, as well as their desired move-in date and lease duration. A profile allows them to introduce themselves to potential landlords and offer a sense of what they’re looking for in a rental. Strategy 4: Being one of the first applicants Landlords don’t want their units sitting vacant for any longer than they have to, so it makes sense that being one of the first applicants was a successful strategy for more than 1 in 4 (26%) recent renters. In fact, in some areas, renters can move faster by taking advantage of virtual 3D Home tours and interactive floor plans on many Zillow rental listings. This quickly narrows their options, avoids wasting time touring apartments that are not a good fit and enables them to be among the first to apply. Renters should also check to see if the city in which they are searching has laws requiring landlords to accept the first applicant who meets all requirements. Applications do still take time, and they come with a cost. Renters can gain advantages of both speed and savings in this supercharged market simply by using Zillow Applications. For a flat fee of $29, renters can use Zillow Applications to apply online for an unlimited number of participating properties for 30 days, which gives them the ability to control costs and add flexibility to their search. Strategy 5: Offering to sign a longer lease For a landlord, there’s a lot of work that goes into filling a rental unit, so the additional security of knowing that their rental will have a tenant for more than just a typical 12-month period may make an offer more attractive. In fact, 23% of recent renters noted that this strategy helped them into their place. In a market where rent prices continue to climb, signing a longer lease can be a great strategy for renters, too. Locking in the current price for two years instead of one can help them avoid annual rent increases. Despite the cooling temperatures, aspiring renters are entering an extremely hot rentals market this fall, but one or more of these proven strategies can help them land their next rental. SOURCE Zillow