REI INK

THE BEST OF SEASON 1

2022 was a great year. As we conclude the first season of Uncontested Investing, I want to look back on all the experiences and lessons, so we can take them into 2023 and use them to grow further. Listen now to discover what I learned in 2022 and how these lessons and experiences have prepared me for this year! Quotables “What I found after 21 years in this industry is you don’t know what you don’t know. No one knows everything and everyone knows something.” “The point is you’ve got to have a plan and you’ve got to plan your work and work your plan, and don’t let your work, work you.” “You should not be hoping or wishing, you should be planning.” “The thing about food, water, and shelter is as long as you provide a quality home at an affordable price, I think you’ll always have demand.” “When you network and meet other people, you actually get on the ladder where they’re at. You can skip all the wrongs that they had to climb.” “You have to wait, you have to have a plan, you have to work towards that end goal.” “Having a plan and delaying gratification is the number one way to be successful.” “Don’t keep doing the same thing, expecting the same result – that’s the key!” “Now is the time to formulate your plan. Now is the time to get your capital in a row, then go execute on your plan.”

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UNIN 27 | Real Estate Investment

MAKE YOUR MONEY WORK FOR YOU: THE POWER OF COMPOUNDING

Charlie Calise of Calise Partners and Imaginuity has decades of experience in data, analytics, and advertising and he’s on Uncontested Investing to talk about real estate investing, marketing and advertising, the economy, and so much more. Listen now to learn more about Charlie, his journey in business, and what he has learned through his years as a marketing and advertising expert and real estate investor! Quotables “What we’re in is a marathon and not a sprint, so take a long view. I’m making investment decisions today for great grandchildren 50 years from now that I’ll never know.” “Don’t stop at the headline, read the copy. Right now, what you’re dealing with is “the market is crashing” and so forth – the market’s not crashing, it’s correcting, but if you stop at the headline, you’ll be riddled with fear.” “If you think you’re going to keep one house this year, keep two. If you think you’re going to keep one this month, keep two. If you think you’re going to keep five this quarter, keep six.” “Here’s the thing that I learned – when you talk about 10x-ing, that first 10x is the hardest.” “I’ve watched small entrepreneurs wash out day after day because they didn’t have a solid business plan that’s going to make them money.” “Being an entrepreneur is not for the faint of heart. Work hard, it’ll get you through every short fall that you’ve got.”

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UNIN 27 | Real Estate Investment

How to Fast Track your Financial Success with Casey Quinn

  As Co-Founder and CEO of CityLife Realty Group, a real estate investment company located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Casey Quinn is not your average real estate investor. In his chat with host Tim Herriage, shares the strategies and methods that fast-tracked his financial success in real estate investing. He emphasizes the value of having a team and highlights the importance of chasing happiness, whatever that may mean for each individual in the organization. Learn the basic principles and values that Casey instills in his approach and the culture he builds for his organization. There’s a lot to learn from Casey and his way of managing, investing, and planning for the future. Tune in to learn all about it. — Watch the episode here   Listen to the podcast here   How to Fast Track your Financial Success with Casey Quinn Welcome back to the show. Thank you so much for stopping by. I’m here with one of the most impressive people I’ve met in 2022, Casey Quinn. Casey, thanks for stopping by. I’m looking forward to it. The first thing up is the BLUF, the Bottom Line Up Front. A lot is changing in this market. You got up to two minutes. What are the most important things you see in the market? These are things you think people should be doing and things should be avoided at the most important part of the day. What I’m paying attention to the most is what’s happening in the rates and how they affect me in my business and the local markets that I invest in. I’m from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and I invest in Pittsburgh. We’re a small-to-middle market. We’re not national. Therefore, how are the rates climbing impacting our business? We’re BRRRR model investors. These rates directly impact how we’re able to borrow on the refinance end of our investments. That directly affects our debt service coverage ratio and how we can get our money back out of our deals. Number two, for home buyers, it’s affecting the local market and what they can pay. What is their purchasing power and how is that changing the markets and their ability to buy? In our market, locally in Pittsburgh, we have properties sitting on the market for months when before, the last couple of years, they haven’t been. What opportunities is that creating for us to go out and buy? There are negatives and positives to everything that’s going on. When the rates are climbing, how is that directly impacting your business? Number two, what I’m paying the most attention to is what’s happening within my network. The people that I’m paying attention to, the people that I’m following and the education that I’m getting in this market, what are they saying? What are they doing? How am I then taking that information and applying it back to my business? Some of it could be good. Some of it could be bad. We have to be able to think through, fantastically process that information and apply it directly to what we’re doing. As I look through the winter, values are still a very important part of the BRRRR model. You got to get an appraisal. There’s a loan-to-value on the back end. I won’t say, “If we,” because you and I talk about this all the time. Markets are different. If a market has another 5% slide and you were buying at $75,000 and you needed a refi at $75,000, you have to plan for that. For our business, with the rates doing what they’re doing, the property values have not come down enough that the BRRRR model’s making sense for us. We still are paying a heavier price but with what we’re paying on a monthly basis, we can’t afford the back end to get out of those. We’ve had to shift our model. We were doing 10, 12 or 15 deals on a monthly basis in the BRRRR for the past couple of years. We’re averaging about one a month. It’s been a tremendous change in our business. Let’s talk about your business. Why don’t you take a minute and tell everybody a little bit about yourself? A few years ago, I was fired from my job. I had zero real estate experience at the time. I didn’t know what I was about to do in my future. I went into this real estate business and found my partner. We built a $70 million portfolio in the past couple of years. We didn’t start with any money so we had a BRRRR model. We are working with folks, like you, on the hard money front end, borrowing and understanding, “We’ve got to do whatever it takes.” It didn’t matter what the price of that was. We started a BRRRR model investment and built our portfolio. We built a $17 million-a-year revenue company off of that. How many rental units is that? It’s about 520 doors. It’s about 225 properties. That is our mixture. It’s about 160 single-family homes. At about a year and a half in, we realized we could BRRRR. We could value-add properties at the multifamily level, whether it be duplexes or triplexes. They’re not necessarily multifamily. We got into more of the commercial multifamily space. We have 5 up to our largest, which is 43. There is less competition there ultimately in that mid-market. It’s a lot cheaper. You come out here to Dallas or anywhere else and the prices are different. The management of that many units with only four years of true experience has got to be super hard. We certainly had our growing pains when it comes to its management of it. In my previous background in Corporate America, I wanted to take a business approach. To me, it was, “How do we create operational companies’ enterprise value off of the real estate that we’re buying?” With that, we took the approach on the management side. We were like, “Let’s run a management

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UNIN 25 | Real Estate

All Things Real Estate: Getting Started, Scaling Your Team, And Living The Dream With Jason Mcdougall

  Finding opportunities in the market has always been hyped and encouraged—but it is actually as challenging as it is dreamy. In this episode, Jason McDougall shares with us his financial journey and all the gold nuggets he got in real estate from learning the hard way! Jason is a DFW All-Star, real estate investor, and founder of Next Era Home Buyers. How do you pick a market to focus on? Why is success in social media not as perfect as it seems? How do you gain freedom from real estate? Tune in and learn all about getting started in real estate, scaling your team, and ultimately, living the dream! — Watch the episode here   Listen to the podcast here   All Things Real Estate: Getting Started, Scaling Your Team, And Living The Dream With Jason Mcdougall I’m here with a good friend of mine, Jason McDougall. Jason, thanks for stopping by. Thanks for having me on again. Jason is a DFW all-star real estate investor. I’ve known him for about a decade now. Jason, why don’t you tell everybody a little bit about yourself? I got into real estate in 2016. I had a W-2 job that I felt like somebody wanted way more than I did. I fired my boss in 2016. My wife was a few months pregnant. I started out wholesaling and flipping and then got into the rentals. That’s where I am now, stacking up the rentals. That’s a good time, 2016. I’m not sure about the whole pregnant wife part being a good time. It was fun. We don’t know what we don’t know. We forget what we did know. I like to start every week with a segment I call the Bottom Line Up Front, the BLUF. When I was in the Marine Corps, I was an intelligence guy. We had to brief the generals. They would always say, “Don’t bury the lead.” You have to say the most important thing up front in case there’s a mortar attack or people have to get up and leave or whatever. Bottom Line Up Front, up to two minutes, anything you think people should be thinking about now, maybe focusing on, maybe avoiding, monitoring in their business or the economy. Take it away. The most important thing to look for right now is opportunities. Back when I got started in 2016 is when I started buying houses. I was in real estate in 2011 trying to learn the business. Those were the best buying opportunities of most people’s careers. We’re about to get into the same situation now. Don’t be fearful of the market. Buy them, but buy the houses responsibly. Make sure you’re buying them deep enough to account for any drop in value in the future or something like that. Also, stack up some cash to make sure that you’re staying liquid during that time too. Both those things are super important. A lot of the people that are on the sidelines right now are going to miss some great opportunities to buy some good deals to hang onto for many years to come. That’s my advice. You said some things that are important that we have to peel back the onion. Buying deep. Why do you say buy deep right now? We all don’t know what’s going to happen with the market. It could go down by 10% or 20%. I personally don’t think that’s going to happen, but you never know. Buying deep where you have enough equity portion to always make sure you’re not upside down, and there’s enough juice in that deal. Maybe if you have to refinance it in a few months after your rehab and the market’s changed, you’re still good. You’re not going to be stuck with something in a bad loan or whatever. At RCN, to do well over $1 billion in loans, and as I shared with you at lunch, trying to do another $500 million or so by the end of the year, we’ve always got to have cash. When you’re funding hundreds of loans a week, you have to have cash. There are some people that say cash is trash. It rhymes and it makes a good little meme. You said during the BLUF to sit on cash or conserve cash. What is your business or investing thesis on how much cash to keep at any point in time? I don’t know that there’s a number. For each person, it’s probably different. For me, I want to have enough where I can maintain if there are no rents for six months across my portfolio. I want to make sure I’m not going to have to give those properties back. I want to make sure I can cover the debt on those. Also, for opportunities. There are some opportunities that might come up where maybe a lender isn’t available or maybe you can’t get funds fast enough or something, but it’s a great deal. You want to have cash available for that too. Cash is trash. I’ve heard that. I know it is because of inflation and stuff, but it also makes you feel good to be sitting on some cash. You can’t put a number on that investing-wise. There’s no return on how you feel. A great mentor of mine used to say that real estate can make a millionaire out of a multimillionaire quickly. You can get real estate rich and cash poor. You can’t service your obligations, but you also can’t take advantage of opportunities. That opportunity cost is huge. Real estate isn’t completely liquid. It’s pretty liquid. You can sell a house, but that takes time. If you have an event where you need some liquidity and all your liquidity is tied up in equity, then you’re stuck. What amount of cash these days can buy a house? You hear everyone complaining about how affordable homes are. You hear everyone complaining that you can’t get started in this. What’s the

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UNIN 21 | How To Raise Money

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

  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

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UNIN 23 | Real Estate Business

Operating A Real Estate Business With Rob Fuller

  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

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