All right. Mr. Cushman, welcome, sir. Good to be here, Brian, I don't, I am doing perfectly fine. Over here it is 2022. We're finishing up 21. And it was a wild year to say the least. So my first question he was actually going to be if you could pick maybe one or two wins from 2021. That just absolutely made your year. What would you say for last year? I'm gonna cheat and I think I'm gonna pick three. Oh, man, yeah, despite I have two kids, we have four of us. And we were all stuck in the house together for 18 months, because we're in California, and they shut everything down. Despite all being in house together for that long time, we still all got along great. And after 17 years, my marriage is better than ever. So that's definitely a win, despite not being able to go to the gym. When they shut that down, I'm in the best shape of my life. And then, in our business, 2021 was the best year our multifamily business has ever had, by far, our existing properties, just blew it out of the water in terms of collections, and then operating income. And then we also did the biggest acquisitions we've ever done. Which currently, we bought one for $49.8 million, which is the biggest that we've done. And we and then the current one that we have, under contract, when that closes, we'll have acquired 670 units for about 108 million in a 12 month period was for us is huge. A 2021. Fortunately, was pretty awesome. Over here. So yeah, it sounds like it. That's actually my segue to my second question, which is actually something I'm stealing from the Go abundance page. So it's been fun for me to ask, but what is your wildest, most ambitious goal for 2022, that just absolutely scares the hell out of you. Again, I'll give you two, I paid a deposit to go to Antarctica this year, to climb and ski eight to 10 Mountains in Antarctica. That's gonna be that's another reason I need to be in good shape. And so I'm doing that. So that's both excitement and a little, oh, geez, I'm really doing this. And then the second, I'm a former engineer, I'm really good at analysis, I'm really good at finding deals and putting deals together. I'm not as good at being a visionary and a business builder. And we're at that phase where that's really what I need to be doing more of, we made two hires a couple years ago, that had been phenomenal. And we're at the point where we need to hire some more people, to now Jesus is turning into a real business with HR and okay, I need to EOS and they all this other stuff. So I'm looking both looking forward to that, and a little terrified of it, bringing on some people that are going to have legit salaries, and it just makes things bigger, more complicated, more people depending on me. So I'm looking again, it'll be a good thing, but it's definitely stretching me beyond my comfort. Very well put. And that actually brings up an interesting segue there, between visionaries and operators, because I feel like a lot of the people that we roll with are visionaries. So everyone's got all this grand vision, grand ideas, grand plans, and then that's myself included. But we find it very difficult to put tangible operations to it and your operations guy through and through like you even ran. That was actually your job. After engineer, right? You manage plants. And yeah, good memory, man. As Yeah, as an engineer, the company that I worked for used to send me around to plants that were underperforming, and basically, stick me there for I caught some of these places were remote. Gosh, I used to say I was stationed there. And they'd stationed me there for six to eight months to turn it around. And then once it was running, well handed off to somebody else, and then I could come home. But yeah, that's exactly what I was operations even as an engineer. So do you think it'd be more beneficial for you to try to push out of your comfort zone and your natural zone of genius or, or just hire a visionary? How does that even look? Yeah, that's a really good point. Fortunately, to me, that the visionary piece is probably the least outsource double part of, of building a business. And at least it's terms of, okay, I'm gonna hire like the guy to do it. How I accomplish that so far, and how I intend to accomplish that is by surrounding myself with a highly competent, basically called board of advisors or board of directors. So you mentioned David Osborne is one of our business partners. Clearly, he's somebody that I talk to and rely on for visionary and stuff. Okay, if we want to take this from what we've done 2600 units to 10,000 What are the business building aspects of that and of course, David patent Tim, and then also have a pretty close circle of other multifamily operators that I I'm in regular touch with that are ahead of me. There's somewhere in that three to call a 15,000 unit Mark. So I talk with them and rely on them too. So it's not that i It's not that I don't have the vision, I do. As far as hey, this is where we want to be. What I struggled with a little bit is, is how building from what got us to 2600 units is not was not necessarily what's going to get us to 10,000. And so this piece, putting those pieces together, but again, it's a Fortunately, I've got a ton of much smarter people surrounding me that I can rely on and talk to you. I feel like that's a good litmus test. But aside from IQ, about figuring out how intelligent somebody actually, is, when they just constantly downplay it, and they're like, oh, yeah, I just surround myself with people that are way smarter than me. That's when that's when you know, you're a smart guy. But before we go into your backstory there, you prefaced it with your background in chemical engineering, and then operations there. My other question before we jump into that is, as a visionary, it's the operator role from the flip side of your equation is becoming more and more difficult to find a partner with finding the correct operator, quote, unquote. So as an operator, what are you looking for, in a visionary, to be able to partner with them? So if there's a visionary that's floating out there in the stratosphere, and they've got all these big ideas, as a very cold, hard, like, very competent operator? What is it that would attract you to them to pursue business together? Does that make sense? Yeah. Yeah, I don't, I'm not quite sure what the answer to that would be. You know, I guess, again, it would be, I don't think it would necessarily be a new partner, it would probably be a consultant or coach or mentor type role in what that person would look like. It's just someone who's already done it. And can be like, Oh, hey, yeah, Andrew, you have the vision to be at 10,000 units. And I'm already there. So let me all I can coach you or consult you on, hey, this is when I added an asset manager, this is when I added a bookkeeper, this is when you know, this is how we paid for these people, you know, all that kind of stuff. So it probably be more of a, I've been blessed to have really good partners from day one. And while partnership is definitely a key way to success in any business, but in even especially in multifamily, I think a lot of people run around good jumping into partnerships a little too easily. Other kind of like, like marriages, they're much easier to get into than they already get. And so yeah, so yeah, it would be more of a like said, I think a mentor slash consultant slash that kind of role. So sure, that makes sense. And then what are your partnerships? Do you think that was necessarily luck, or more so intention, and just put yourself in the correct rooms like you were talking about? It's funny. It is definitely a big piece of intention. But whenever, whenever you connect the dots in reverse, it's always Holy crap. How fortunate was that? Yeah. So it, you know, so to go way back how we got how we transitioned from engineering to real estate, is my wife and I were looking for something to turn into our own business, and to be able to leave our jobs. We just were aware and looking for some I was in the break room at my job, and someone had left the Wall Street Journal business section open on the table. In the front page of that section was an article about this guy who was flipping houses. And I just like, Oh, that's interesting. I took it home, read it, when and then I found out that he had learned it from this lady. He was teaching me not like a big guru. But she was teaching like groups of 12 people in California how to do it. And we went and my wife and I researched everything she did, like, you know what this seemed like it would actually work. And then we paid to go to her course. And then there's a whole backstory to how we held that work, because I think it was a struggle for me to learn how to do it. But I also believe that it would work. And so we eventually did make it work, quit my job, and then transition into multifamily four years later. And I sorry, I think I lost track of what your original question. Well, it's fun. I lost track, too. And that's the beauty of this show. We just go with the flow. So that was actually a perfect segue there. So you find an article from The Wall Street Journal, and then it's about someone talking about flipping houses. And then you go into all of this. Two things there. The first thing is you said you instantly hired someone to do this. In the Coach and the coaching sphere and everything. I remember you saying this before, in another episode of a podcast, and it's it resonated with me because I've since hired people to help me. I've hired professional coaches, mentors, even Jason drays from my mindset, and that that from what you said was the catalyst on doing that So do you for somebody that's getting started with is that the same advice that you would still give is find someone that's done it been there, done that? And then yeah, it's okay to pay the money. It's worth it. Absolutely. Yes. And that would so your original question, Was it intentional or luck, that we found all these partners and mentors, and I would say, these 3040 50 $60,000 courses and boot camps where they promised that they'll just package it all up, and everything is done for you. Ignore that crap, because it's, that's like someone telling you, hey, I'll be your gym trainer, I'll do the workouts for you, and you'll get fit. It doesn't work that way. You still have to do it. But with that said, absolutely find a mentor, coach, advisor, and it doesn't have to be a lot of times we get into this narrow definition of that. Okay, well, it's got to be a guy pay $10,000 a year, something like that. Now, a mentor can be someone that maybe you call once a quarter, and they can answer a few questions. Paid mentors, paid coaches. Yeah, absolutely. Just vet them to make sure that they are in the business and are really doing the business. So for us, when we decided we're going to into house flipping back in 2006. And we did our first deal in Oh, seven, we paid for that course. And then we went to the three day course we're like, Yep, we're gonna do this. And so we said, All right, if we're gonna do this, we're all in. So we hired the lady teaching. It had a small group of coaches, one of whom was Tim road. And, oh, I didn't know about that part. Yeah, one of the him. One of the coaches was Tim road. And by here's the best part. So me being me, I interviewed all four coaches and picked a guy who was not Tim road. And so learn the flipping business from him. And then after about a year and a half, then we say, I want to get a different perspective to add on to this. So then I hired Tim road. Yeah, what's that? Said Tim's like your opposite? Yeah. Tim is also one of our business partners. I love the guy. Yeah, he's one of the biggest reasons that you and I are talking today, and we've been able to get to where we are. So we brought Tim on as a coach. Then when we decided my wife and I decided to move go into multifamily. We said, You know what, let's do the same approach. So we asked our pre our first coach, hey, do you know anybody that we could learn the multifamily business from? He's Yeah, actually, I do. And he connected me with a guy who had done by 800 units, and we hired him to hold our hand for the first year. So a big part of that was it was very intentional. My wife and I said, this is what we want to do. And we had reasons for that. And then we intentionally asked people, Hey, do you know somebody, the luck part is, is the first guy we knew the perfect guy for us to hire to learn the business from and that relationship worked out. So well, that first coach is actually we ended up doing, we ended up becoming partners doing six deals together, we're still partners to this day. And then where Tim road loops back in is Tim invested in my first multifamily deal. And then he brought in patent David as investors. And then after a couple of deals, we were at a conference together, and they pulled me aside and said, you know, what, we don't want to just invest, we want to actually be partners. And so that's how the four of us became partners, I guess, eight or nine years ago. Now. If you look, if you go look at that, and reversed. There's a whole lot of luck and divine providence, but there's also intention, it's a combination of both right? Basically, the harder you work, the more intentional you are the luckier you tend to. So that's that seems to be kind of how things have worked out. Yeah, and then that was gonna be one of my other questions about the, the genesis of the group. And the reason I'm asking all of this for everybody listening. Andrew here works with David Osborne, Pat Heibon, Tim Road, these are all guys in the mastermind group that we're in called Abundance, which is a high level mastermind for high net worth individuals. And all of them are going to be on this podcast and for us, and then you're going to be introduced to all of them. And Andrew, I'll brag on Andrew since he won't for himself. Well, he'll just tell you the numbers. I will be outside the personality side of it. But Andrew is the COVID hard operations genius behind it all. He's the one that's been managing the syndications. And then Tim, Pat and David were like, Hey, we got a bankroll this guy, like, he's got something going, he's on fire. Like I'm talking to Tim about it. He's like, as soon as I said that first deal with Andrew, I was it was over. I was like, take all of my money. Go, run, be free. And so that leads to my next question, because this is something I was specifically saving for you. Is this something that you are branching out into? Is that something that you're gonna branch out into is the coaching and education space yourself? Is that something you have in place? Are you going to go into that space later? Or are you too busy? Yeah, um, I actually I enjoy it. I enjoy coaching. I actually I do I don't generally I advertise it, but I do one on one coaching up to two people at a time. But other than that, not right now, this because the our main focus really is on him streamlining operations streamline the business, and growing it in a way, I see a lot of operators in all types of businesses, they start out small, with a certain culture and a certain way of doing things. And then, as they scale, they tend many cases tend that they tend to lose that. And so that's one of the things that we want to do that we're trying to be very aware of and intentional about is that as we scale and grow, that deal number 27 is done and operated and managed the same way as deal number two, or five or six, and that everything stays the same. So as much as I enjoy, we actually did do a mastermind during 2020. We went great, and we really enjoyed it. But what we found what we decided for this year, is actually just 2020 and then into 2021. But what we decided for this year is we didn't feel like we had the bandwidth to do both really well. And so we just want to focus on growing the business and trying to do good deals right now. And then we might do masterminding coaching again, sometime down the road. But sure. So for someone listening now that's looking to get into multifamily. Do you have any resources that you could set where we could send them to be like, hey, this person or this organization tends to be pretty good by me. I think this would be a good resource to head towards. Yeah, absolutely. If someone wants to reach out our website, just it VP, a CQ comm vantagepoint acquisitions, if you just if you reach out through that, and you're like, hey, I want to, I'd like to be, here's my goals, and we were happy to connect you with either resources or people that we think might be the best to help you get there. There, there are some good as much as they get a bad some of the industry gets a bad name, there are some legitimate and well intentioned teachers and coaches out there. And we're happy to give our recommendations. Perfect. And for anybody listening, this is the action Academy. So I would expect you to take action. If you're serious about this, whatever Andrew says, go with it. This is not I'll trust you, because I trust you in this industry like this is your thing. And in the back half of this show, like we'll get into that. We'll get into the specific multifamily niche and where you see it going, how to get into it there. But my next question is, I remember Jay Scott, he was talking about how he has flipped all these houses. And now he looking back, he's I don't know, if I would have done he's like, I would have maybe gleaned into multifamily a little bit sooner, or would have held on to more of the properties. So looking back, is the house flipping something that you would have still done? Or would you have gone into multifamily sooner? The short answer is we still would have done it. And the reason is going into single family first is by no means of free work or pre requisite to get into multifamily. Did it help having four years of flipping experience? Absolutely. Because you know, I've had four years of dealing with contractors four years, four years of creative financing, just four years of doing real estate. So it's definitely not a prerequisite. But for us, it was the right stepping stone because it got us out Bo got both my wife and I out of our W two jobs. And it allowed us to take care of taking care of take advantage of a hopefully unique opportunity in real estate history and that we were in Southern California, a place with ridiculous amounts of houses and ridiculous amounts of equity and everyone going into foreclosure. And everyone was scared of real estate. So we were the only ones out there doing it for about two the first two years. And we were just able to flip houses for incredible margins. And it built the foundation to allow us to transition more easily into multifamily. So for us it was a good stepping stone for other people and and also we're in different parts different part of the market cycle right now for other people. It's not necessary, not necessary to go into flipping first. In fact, I would say if you already know your goal is multifamily. probably skip the flipping thing. We didn't know that we just want to get out of our jobs. And we found flipping and then how we got into multifamily is flipping was awesome for four years but it felt like another job right? You're only as good as your last flip you flip that you put a check in the bank and there's nothing left. You got it. You You better go find the next deal. And so in 2010, were like, Hey, this is great. But what's the next big thing, because by then equity was down everyone else and their brother was trying to flip and it was just the business was changing. And we said, we just had a huge recession, which means we're probably gonna have a significant expansion, which means more jobs and more household formation. And everyone just got foreclosed on. So they can't buy a house, which means now they're going to, okay, we have an economic expansion, job creation, household formation and a growing renter pool, we should figure out how to get into apartments. So that's why and when we made the shift, or first deal was in 2011, which was a bottom of the park Apartment Marketing, depending on where in the country you were anywhere between 2009 and 2013. So the timing was perfect. And the timing would not have been as good for us to get into multifamily in 2006, and seven. So yeah, looking back, actually, I think it worked out perfect for us to go single family than multi. But at this point, I wouldn't say that's a requirement by any means. Perfect, very well said. So you're talking about market cycles. And then that's something that's the main topic of every headline of every real estate publication, as every blog post is every single question that everyone's asking. And I remember that even as we were asking you at steamboat. I was in the room with you when we were talking about the the multifamily in Atlanta and around Georgia. So my question for you for this part of the market cycle. So for people who are looking to get into multi in this cycle, I know that there's frustrations that are growing in the asset class and in the environment. So I guess my question for you would be before we go into kind of how to get into this in general, I guess the question is going to be how do we make sure that we are still being safe with our acquisitions now in multifamily? What specific bumpers? Are you putting in your underwriting to make sure that the deals are still safe? And then maybe where do you see this market cycle going? And maybe where do you see that next? And kind of niche going into this? As we kind of space out of this next cycle? A lot of questions there. Hope that you pick the two or three hours trying to get across. Yeah, no, no worries. No worries. So I guess we'll start big picture first and that where is the cycle going? There? guessable? Yeah, the answer? I know, I, my crystal ball broke. So I found the Weegee board is much more accurate. Now, the the first part of that is, what's your timeframe? If, if your timeframe is three years or four years? Yeah, that might be a point where we're seeing some weakness, right? If your timeframe is 10 or 15 years, you're fine. But that's the beautiful thing about real estate in the United States is if you wait long enough time will cover all errors. So as far as the cycle now we there's no question we are high up, we're well above all forms of real estate are well above where they were in 2008, nine and 10. But what's interesting, and I've heard a lot of people as much smarter than me say is that we already had the recession in the down cycle. That was the COVID-19 recession. And then the government response to it basically is kicked off another upcycle. It doesn't feel like we had a change in the cycle, because for all of us who've been operating its operations continued to be great, straight through and prices, you know, held flat in 2020, then took off again in 2021. So it doesn't feel like a new cycle. But I've heard again, a lot of people with far more experienced than me say, actually, we just started a new cycle. And basically, it's almost like a cycle on top of a cycle. So there's that aspect of I don't know if that fully if I fully buy into that I if I were to guess, I think we are in an extension of the previous cycle because of the stimulus because of the growth, economic growth and inflation that's going to happen the next few years. I think those things extend the cycle even further than it naturally would have gone. And yeah, there could be a recession or a little bit of a pullback and maybe 2324 25 Something like that. However, big picture, multifamily and real estate in general, I would say, again, with Michi exceptions, is probably looking at a very long bull market and taking it back to multifamily. We have a huge housing shortage of all forms of housing for single family to buy multifamily to rent again, there's select markets where maybe they're gonna over build a little but in general, we are way short on housing. All the stuff built in the 50s 60s and 70s is becoming obsolete and falling apart. Not only are we not building enough, we're losing a We constantly lose housing units to obsolescence every year. And that tends to not really get tracked and no one kind of pays attention to but that that also happens. So we have a shortage, we also have, we still have population growth in the country. And then we are shifting to become more and more of a renter nation for, again, a variety of demographic reasons. And so, the number one, the most important fundamental for housing and multifamily is your supply demand balance. And we have structural imbalance in that we have a very difficult to change situation of demand that far exceeds supply, for housing and multifamily. And that alone is, will be enough to continue to to drive multifamily forward. Again, I'm not saying that there, there may not be some slowdowns or dips along the road. As far as a huge crash or something like that, it's tough to tough to see that, especially with rents going up, inflation tends to benefit real estate because it becomes more expensive to to build new real estate. So that that drags up the cost of existing real estate. And then wages go up, which means people can afford higher rents. And then the value of apartment is determined by the net operating income, which of course is the first is how much do you collect minus your expenses. So if your rents are going up and you're collecting more, your net operating income is going up, therefore, the value of your property is going up. So then you also you soak, you know, what are your margins? What are your bumpers going forward? One is if possible, we try to get fixed rate debt? Sure. Because that would be if you say, Okay, that's all that's great, Andrew, what are the risks that come up and that if interest rates were to dramatically rise and stay there, that could definitely cause a plateau or maybe even a cooling of pricing. Because as the interest rates rise, debt becomes more expensive, which means in order one or two things has to happen, either investors have to accept lower yield, because or prices have to come down to compensate so they can still get the yield. So that's the lever that gets pulled to Yeah, the Oh, yeah, definitely, definitely, a dramatic rise in interest rates could cause a pricing to cool a bit or flatten. Again, I think that would be a short term thing. And then also, just because interest rates go up doesn't automatically mean that happens. Because if you have net operating income growth, that is higher than the growth, if you're in the expense of your debt, then prices can still rise, right? So those are kind of your two, those are your two competing factors, you've got your OP net operating income, which is basically what that's going to determine the value of your property largely. And then the cost of debt and interest rates. As long as the net operating income is expanding at a faster rate than the expense of the debt or cap rates, then prices stay the same or keep Yeah, various stay the same or keep going up. But that is definitely something we're watching and we're trying to get we where possible, we go for fixed debt just to eliminate the risk of, of interest rates craziness, also, we tend to go for longer term debt now. Just because, okay, what if we get to your four and we are in a recession or prices are down. And it's not a good time to sell? Well, if your balloon payment loan is due that year, that's when you can get in trouble when you're forced to sell real estate at a time where it's not a good time to sell. And so the biggest margin though, the biggest bumper that we put on, a lot of everyone like let's talk about internal rate of return or IRR and equity multiple and all these things and those are important. But the your biggest bumper is really your cat. Because again, the only time the value of your property matters is when you refinance it or you sell it. And if you have the cash flow, to make it through a difficult time and just wait until it is a good time to sell, you're going to be fine. That's a that's your biggest bumper is making sure that you have the cash flow and cash reserves just sitting in an account to get through any hard times that will eventually come. And so those are the margins in the bumpers that among other things that are that we're putting in perfect and then for somebody listening that isn't as familiar with multifamily as they are with residential single family. What are the loan terms in link said that are pretty common throughout the industry. And that you're looking at is a fixed 30 Year 15 year or you're talking about a four or five year balloon payment? Yeah, that's a really good clarification. Yeah, there's all kinds of different types of debt but to simplify it down into two bucks buckets, there's more kind of bridges on your two biggest buckets are bridge lending and agency. So bridge lending, it's debt funds, it's just different lenders out there that say, Okay, we're going to give you a loan for three years. And the reason they call it bridge is it's saying, okay, you've got a property that you're gonna maybe it's half vacant, or maybe you're gonna do a huge renovation and bump the rents or just going to, we're going to be a bridge from today, when you acquire it until when your property is worth more, and you either sell it or refinance into agency debt, right. So you got your bridge loans are the normal term on that are two years or three years. And then in many cases, by paying 1% of the loan balance or one point, you can extend that term for one year, up to a total grand total of five years. The tricky part is you have to qualify for those extensions, you can't just pay for it and say I want it they had if you say I want an extension, they're gonna come in, and they're gonna look at your cash flow your debts or all these different things. And they may say no, right? So the benefit of a bridge loan are, are, are generally good interest rates, they're almost always interest only. And they tend to give you higher leverage 75, sometimes 80%. So that's why they're there, the bridge loans are probably 75% of multifamily transactions today. The downside is they're typically due in three years, sometimes two. And if the market shifts or isn't, or the finance market dries up, like they did in 2008, in that three year time period hits, you could be in trouble. So that's the downside of the bridge lending. The other side is agency, which is your Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, those your government sponsored agencies, and the terms on those vary dramatically. But on the short end, it's usually five years on the long end, it's usually 12. And typically goes five 710 12, that those are your most common terms on an agency loan agency. The downside of agency is they tend to cut you a little bit on leverage, right? A bridge lender might give you 75%, an agent, the Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac might only give you 65. So if you're if, yeah, so if you're tight on equity, that's where that's where agency might like your deal a little tougher, and it is tougher. If you're trying to bring on investors who want a certain yield, it's harder to achieve that yield if you have to put an extra 10% of equity into the deal makes it a safer deal. But it doesn't look as sexy on a pro forma, right, because the IRR, Yeah, cuz everything just went down. Because you're having to bring more equity, they'll go in at 65. And you can go again, five 710 12. But the upside is, you know what, you can lock an interest rate for 12 years. And you, you can also get what's called a supplemental, which is the commercial equivalent of getting a second mortgage on your house. So you don't want to refinance those agency loans because there's huge, it's called yield maintenance. But basically, it's a huge prepayment penalty, absolutely be me 10 10% 20% of the loan balance Cantigny, massive. So you do have to be careful and keep that if you want to sell in three years, don't get fixed agency debt. But you can get a supplemental, again, which is like the equivalent getting a second mortgage on your house. So you can lock in fixed debt, fixed rate, interest rate protection at acquisition, then you do your value add. And now you can pull cash out with that supplemental. And now you've got the best of both worlds. And then guess what if the market shifts on you in six months, or 12 months or 18 months, and you're halfway through the renovation, and you didn't hit your targets? Okay, the worst case scenario is now you can't you don't do your supplemental, but you still have a fixed rate mortgage, you can still cash flow. And again, your worst case is now you're just waiting longer than you planned, and maybe not distributing as much as you planned. But you're not losing money, or you're not being forced to sell a building when you don't want to. So that's the those are the kind of the debt is a huge piece of putting together that correct business plan for an apartment complex. And I say it's even more important today than it has probably been in the last 10 years. Yeah, because that like right terms and debt are all like the lever that you can pull all the levers that you can pull. So when it comes to single family, where you may have people that are buying hold, where they're like, I'm gonna buy all these single family houses and hold them for 30 years, 40 years and then do something with them. So it sounds like for apartments, you're more so going in for a three to five year value add take your capital, and then go to the next value add correct Yeah, in many cases, I mean, most of our deals are syndicated which means let's say we need that's really money. Yeah $10 million in equity then we investors will come in for 100 or 200 million or whatever. So most investors like to have a target, hey, I'm gonna get my money back in three years or five years or seven years, it's harder for people to come together. We'll sell it someday, right? I mean, just, I've literally I remember, most of our deals are five years. And we did a couple that were 10. And I literally had a couple of our investors say, I like to deal but I might be dead. I'm like, like, way to think positively man, David Sinclair on speed dial, I'm just like, Okay, I get it. So people generally want to have a five year exit or something close to that, or at least know what it is. A lot of people do want 10 year, but they want to know that up front, so they can plan on it. But really, you want to structure the debt. So you have some flexibility, because it may be when you buy it on day one, the spreadsheet and all of your research might say, Hey, your five is gonna be the perfect time to sell this. But when you get to your five, just like Mike Tyson says everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth. When you get to your five, it could be a completely different world. And you need to have some built in flexibility, just in case. All right, awesome. So we've done we've done a good case study, and Ted Talk basically on playing defense. We've talked cash flow, we've talked good debt, we've talked about good terms and everything. In our last 15 minutes, what I want to do is I want you to be able to take us on a journey, like a buyer's journey of someone that's, heck, selfishly, I'm even in the same position. It's like I have some residential single family. So I'm the archetype you're speaking to a lot of people are in that same boat. They maybe have some single family, maybe a small multi, maybe just like a quad or something, maybe an eight unit apartment, and they're like, Okay, cool. I have these cashflow goals. I'm sick of doing onesie twosie. I want to just go ahead and jump into a multifamily. In this next 15 minutes, can you maybe walk us through what that buyer's journey looks like from someone that's deciding? Okay, I'm all in, I'm doing multifamily. And this is what I want to buy, keep walk through what they need to get prepped for with maybe looking for the property, what they need to have set up in my cash reserves where they're looking to put down, stuff like that, should they start a syndication, just a high level view for the next 15 minutes and dive into this? Yeah, I'll get started and then feel free just jump in and redirect or ask questions as you go. So the first thing is, get clear on what your goals are, are your goals to to buy on your own balance sheet for your own portfolio and just build up like basically a retirement account? Or are your goals to get into a syndication business and buy 5000 units and have a you know, huge pool of investors those are two very different tracks and so number one figure out where you want to take it and then once once you know that you need to decide that will get what type of properties are you looking for and I'm a big believer in live where you like to live and invest where you get the best returns and that's why I live in Southern California I've literally gone surfing and snow skiing in the same day and but I sure as heck don't invest here it is a very anti business it is very anti landlord and is very litigious right so I live here and then all of our investments are in the southeast United States and Lana let's go yeah are exactly are Anthony are amazing acquisitions guys based in Atlanta for a reason. So number also decide you know, where you want to invest in don't let you know if you happen to live in Dallas or Atlanta, great. But if you haven't live in San Francisco or Portland or something like that, don't be like, Oh, geez, everything's so expensive here. And we've got all these problems and bla bla bla, and I guess I can't do this. Well, no, absolutely not go by David Greene's book long distance real estate investing. It's geared towards single family, but the principles apply to multifamily, just the same. So number one is don't worry about oh, geography, right. Just go pick markets that you want to invest in, in the short version of how to pick that is is number one, the two most important things, find markets that have population growth and job growth, right. Those are the two things that are gonna that are gonna draw, you're gonna put a tailwind behind your multifamily sailboat. Once you've got that market, get very clear on what you're looking for. You're you decide, okay, I'm looking for properties between 10 and 40 units that are built in 1980 to 2010 that are in neighborhoods where the median income is 40,000, or high crime as low population growth is at or above the national average and it's not in a flood zone. Right, have very clear criteria on what you're looking for. Because number one, there's so much stuff out there, you cannot look at it all. So you have to, in order to have success, you need to know exactly what you're looking for. Because eventually, you'll get to the point where you have 20 new properties in your email inbox every morning, and you have to be able to go delete it, oh, these are the two that are worth looking at. So you need to know that for you. Second of all, by having very clear criteria, that is how you train everybody else to send you what you're looking for. So that when Brian is like, Hey, I'm trying to buy 10 to 40 unit properties in San Antonio. And you've been talking to brokers and doing their and doing that for six months, or nine months or whatever. And then a broker has lunch for the guys. Yeah, I'm moving up. And I've had this 30 unit for 10 years, and that's too small, I'm going to sell it, that broker thinks all this is perfect, Brian, let me just call him, and then you get an off market deal. So be very clear, pick your market, and then be very clear on what you're looking for. Then figure out you've got to put your team together. And this applies whether it's local or long distance. And part of that is deciding on what your strengths and weaknesses are. Right. So maybe you have a finance degree and you're you really understand analyzing deals and running the numbers, and doing all that kind of stuff, but you don't know anybody with who can invest with you, right? If you need $3 million to do a deal, maybe you can raise five grand, but you're gonna run short, right? So you may need to partner with somebody that is really good at raising money. Or maybe I actually these days, we meet a lot of the opposite people who have a big network and can raise a lot of money, but they need to find an operator or someone to do deals with. So you're needed. And some people have both right, some people can put together both. So figure, you know, what, what, what what roles that you can do well, and then which roles you need to either partner with or outsource. And then when you get to that market, you're your number one most important person or group on your team is going to be your management. If you've got a 10 unit in your backyard, can you self manage that? Yeah, in fact, I would almost say it's probably better to do that. But if you're doing multifamily that's not in your back for many reasons. And this can be a whole nother podcast, I highly recommend hiring competent experienced third party management that specializes in the type of property that you are buying. And then you become a really good asset manager that manages them. That is the key to successful third party management, number one, hiring their company, that's the just the right fit for what you're doing. And then you being a really good asset manager in keeping them on track with the vision that you have for the properties for the business overall and maintaining really good communication. And in two way exchange, so find your property management, because number one, they're gonna manage your properties, but two, they're gonna help you with acquisitions, right? You're like, hey, broker just called me about this 30 unit in southwest San Antonio. It's on here's the cross streets. What do you think about this area? In a good property management company? It'll be unless you plan on packing heat? Do it. Yeah, stay clear. Or they'll be like, You know what, that area is a little rough, but it's coming back. Here's the pros. Here's the cons. You know what, we'll have our we'll have one of our managers go Secret Shop at tomorrow and write you up a quick little report of what we think. And, and hopefully, you'll get a report that says, hey, we here's some opportunities, here's some concerns, overall, this could be a good investment. Because, you know, they're going to be managing it. So a good property management company will say, if you will be like, Oh, we a bad property, they're gonna we don't want to manage this thing. And they'll tell you, no. So you're looking for you're looking for a property management company, they'll tell you no more than they tell you. Yes. And then there's other things on top of that, of course, you're closing attorneys, contractors, you're the other pieces of that syndication attorney if you're syndicating, but the main thing is that property property management company, so I've covered a lot of ground really quick. Any questions or what, in the last few minutes want to go a certain direction or not? I should think that's perfect. I think that's actually that answers the question, specifically and inadvertently, because you talked all about the team. And I feel like the team is the answer. So if you just focus on getting the right team in place, all the rest of the nitty gritty questions that you've got to ask are going to be answered by that team. So any other question that I was gonna, that I would ask you or that anybody would ask? Like, they can ask that property manager, they can ask the acquisitions guy that they're partnering with, they can ask That syndication attorney that they're partnering with? And then do you have any? I've got a couple more questions that I'm going to let you run so you can be able to get your kids. Do you have any? What are some specific resources that you think are best for people to go direct to is like, Are there any specific YouTube channels, any specific books that you would recommend to be like, Hey, this is the good, this is good reading or this is good material to get started. Yeah, I already mentioned David Greene's book. Yeah. And then, you know, everyone's heard of it. But if you haven't read it, go do it. It's of course, How to Win Friends and Influence People that's free. That's for any business you're in. And just life in general. It's a little bit older, but it's still very good. David Lindahl has two books, in called emerging markets. And he talks about market cycles and stuff in there. And then also multifamily millions. Those two are really good. And then for negotiating, especially if you're going to be reaching out to sellers directly. Jim camps start with no. And Chris bosses never split the difference. I was waiting for that one. Yeah. And then as far as podcasts, obviously, of course, I listened to bigger pockets. There's a lot of multifamily podcasts out there. Michael blanc has another one that's pretty good that I do listen to. I also listened to podcast called macro voices, which is nothing to do with real estate. I don't think they've ever talked about real estate. They talk about his very big picture, economic issues, stuff like inflation, and the supply chain and devaluation of the dollar and all that and it can get a bit dense and heavy at times. But it's really good information for helping you keeping helping you keep the big picture in mind and not let day to day things like oh hey, we set a new record for COVID cases right? Scare scare you out of scare you out of taking action, you're doing a business because today's new record and COVID cases is going to be forgotten six months. In the if you got a great deal and apartment complex five years from now, when you go to sell it or whatever today's peeking cases I'm going to use I'm going to remember it and not to minimize the impact COVID said overall, but what I'm saying is keeping some big picture is a good way to not get whipsawed by the day to day news cycle. Exactly. And then at the end of the day, hire a coach. Yes, either hire a coach or at the minimum surround yourself with people who have already gotten to where you want to go. I'm not a super creative type. I wish I knew from day one, I'm not going to create an app and make millions of dollars selling it or you know write books or any of that kind of thing. I just needed to find something that I could execute on and that's the beautiful thing about real estate is there is nothing new in real estate. It's been the same forever. All the creative financing. It's just everything cycles through. So the great thing about that is is practice r&d, right, which in the corporate world is research and development in real estate is rip off and do rip off and duplicate go find somebody go find somebody who's already doing what you want to do learn it and then go duplicate it in your world and in your market. It's not a malicious thing rip off and duplicate it's just it's already been figured out you don't have to figure it out. You just need to go learn how someone else is doing it and then you just go execute and that's that's why I'm here talking to you is I just okay this guy's doing it this way and we can do that too. And I feel multifamily and commercials even more like blue green. You're not dealing with the if your home appraisers a pissed off mood that day. Like you're talking noi like that's where your cap rate your valuations coming from so there's like less up to the imagination of someone's just had was stuck in traffic on the way to your home appraisal. So and that's and that's one of the beautiful things about multifamily is when you're in single family, you're at the mercy of the sale. With multifamily. You largely that this definitely market forces outside of your control. But with multifamily, you have a large degree of control over how well that property runs and the NOI it generates. And therefore if you have control over the noi, you have control over the value of it. So if you are really good operator, you can still increase your value even if you're in a down market. Perfect. And as we finished your how many units are you currently having under management? We sold a bunch so I think under management we're right around 1000 or 1200. But total acquisitions by when we close the current one total acquisitions will be at about 2600. Awesome, and where can people find you to reach out to your fund if they're interested in investing what you can just find easy to find just if you Google Andrew Cushman or vantagepoint acquisitions, lots of hits will come up but the website is VP AC Q. That's the easiest way to connect with to us and Yeah, happy to talk with anyone or as you mentioned earlier, if you're looking to get into the business, hopefully direct you to some helpful resources. Perfect, but that covers about every base right there, my friend. So, thank you. It was everything it could have ever imagined and even more. Alright, I am very excited to see you over in Park City. We'll tear up a mountain together and talk more in depth on this. Alright, sounds good. Looking forward to it, brother. I appreciate it. Go get your kids. Alright, thank you, buddy.