EP 178: Scaling Multifamily Investing Success with Randal McLeaird

In this episode of Agents Building Cashflow, Randal went on the Zen and the Art of Real Estate Investing Podcast with Jonathan Greene to talk about real estate investing. He shared how his early inspirations, like reading Rich Dad, Poor Dad, shaped his journey from a novice investor to leading a successful investment fund. He reveals his strategies for navigating market shifts, scaling a real estate portfolio, and avoiding common pitfalls that trap new investors.

Randal’s experiences highlight the importance of persistence, adaptability, and continuous learning. This conversation is packed with actionable advice and inspiring stories - you won’t want to miss the valuable lessons in this episode!

Key takeaways to listen to:

• How foundational principles in real estate investing still hold true across decades.
• Using house hacking as a strategy to build wealth and avoid paying rent.
• The nuances of flipping properties for maximum ROI.
• Building resilience through lessons learned from challenging real estate deals.
• Strategies to scale a portfolio while maintaining quality and risk control.

About Randal McLeaird

Randal is the Managing Partner at Ridgeline Investment Group, a privately held real estate investment fund focused on stabilized and value-add projects in the multifamily and storage facility space. In his capacity as the primary decision-maker at Ridgeline, Randal assumes the pivotal responsibility for concluding investment determinations on behalf of the organization.

Having successfully overseen more than 500 transactions, he possesses a substantial reservoir of expertise. Randal's judicious methodology, unwavering commitment to safeguarding capital, and emphasis on fostering enduring increments in cash flow and wealth generation have been integral to the consistent and progressive expansion of the firm. 

Randal is also the Founder, Broker, and Realtor at RAM Realty Group which is composed of his companies involved in his real estate business. He focuses on buying, selling, renting, rehabilitating, and owner financing his own properties.

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To connect with Randal and learn more about passive investing, visit www.ridgelineig.com and follow our social media pages below!

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Transcript

[00:00:00] If you're a real estate agent earning 200, 000 a year and you want to grow your passive income, this show is for you. Learn secrets other agents use and hear from experts in our field who will guide you on your journey to investing in assets like apartment communities so you can take your commissions and turn them into cashflow.

[00:00:20] Here's your host, Randall. Let's dive in. 

[00:00:25] Randal: Jonathan, thanks so much for having me on the show. It is good going through your list of guests and seeing who you've had. And so I feel honored to be here. So thanks again for, for having me on. 

[00:00:34] Jonathan Greene: Yeah, well, I appreciate it. Cause I was on your podcast and then I was like, Oh, I always meant like we were trying to get you right back on.

[00:00:40] Jonathan Greene: And then of course, you know, the email happens and it's buried in there somewhere, but I'm glad we've swung it so I can return the favor. And cause I had an enjoyable time talking to you. So. Let's do it again. The other way. Let's rock and roll, man. Yeah. So let me know. I think that the, your first kind of aha moment for real estate started with a book, which book was it that [00:01:00] really got you the juices flowing?

[00:01:01] Randal: I mean, honestly, it was, it was like so many, it was right after I graduated college and went to work for a buddy of mine. Right. And he, he gave me a book. He was a mortgage broker and this is 2004, but he gave me rich dad, poor dad. And I, you know, I had always wanted to get in real estate and didn't know exactly what aspect initially started in college and I just didn't have any money.

[00:01:21] Randal: So, but I always wanted to buy a house that all my friends could live in and we would, we would do that thing. So anyway, when I got out and I kind of saw what he was doing, what he was working on and how he had already amassed some assets, not a bunch, but he had some toys, he had some, some houses, he had condo, he had some other things.

[00:01:37] Randal: But it was, yeah, Russia had poured out like so many other, but I think when I think about that question, it's always like that. I don't know. There's about 50 to a hundred other books that I've read, you know, that like you get the, you get the itch and then you read all these other books on like how to it's funny.

[00:01:51] Randal: Cause I think really. Now that I say that there's a pamphlet that I got that was just like, I can't even remember the guy's name, but [00:02:00] he came to speak at a RIA and he handed out this pamphlet and it was like how to do a rehab, you know, and I was still trying to figure out my place, figure out what to do and where to go.

[00:02:09] Randal: And it was, it was so cut and dry and so simple. He was like, this is what I do. And then I had some, you know, the, the VHS tapes that came with it. It's like, this is what I do when I walk a property. I, I like, I look at this, where does the waterfall? And he just walks through and did a whole walkthrough on a property.

[00:02:24] Randal: So that's probably the one that, that like actually shaped me. The most, because that's when I was like, okay, I'm going to do rehabs. I can, I know how to walk property now. I know what to do. This is what I'm going to do. And that was very helpful. Just seeing some of the stuff that he was doing. 

[00:02:36] Jonathan Greene: Yeah. I mean, I think that's funny because I've been talking to a lot of people and what I found is that, you know, all the ways that used to work, they still work.

[00:02:44] Jonathan Greene: So that one little, very simple pamphlet, it's like. You don't have to be on tick tock to make it work right now, you know, the tried and true techniques about real estate work, you know, get something, add value. It's worth more. I mean, that's rehab in a [00:03:00] nutshell. It's just whether or not you know the numbers to make it do right in a market like this, which makes it a little bit tougher.

[00:03:06] Jonathan Greene: But I've also found with rich dad, poor dad, it's really a timing thing. You know, like you, he put it in your hands at a time where you're like, ready for it. You know, sometimes like I've given it to my kids when they were younger and they're like, not yet. But like now I think it's the time that it's going to really make sense.

[00:03:22] Jonathan Greene: And then click. Is that what happened? Like when you read it at the right time, you're like, okay, well, I can actually see this happening now. 

[00:03:28] Randal: Yeah. I honestly, I just hadn't thought of things in that way. That's what the simplistic nature of that book and the storytelling and the way they wrote the book. I mean, it really is like, Oh, yeah.

[00:03:38] Randal: Okay. I get that's a new reality for me, which it's fairly obvious now looking back on it. But yeah, so much of it is in the timing and I was ready to receive the, the, the knowledge that they were imparting when 

[00:03:51] Jonathan Greene: you were younger though, when you were saying like, Oh, you know, I didn't have money, but I was interested in real estate when you were like the first time that you remember thinking [00:04:00] about, Hey, real estate's pretty cool.

[00:04:01] Jonathan Greene: What interested you about it in the beginning? Honestly, 

[00:04:05] Randal: not paying rent. Like in my, in my mind without the knowledge of how to do it, I wanted to do a, you know, a live in, uh, what do you call it? The, yeah, years ago. Yeah. And so I just didn't know how to do it. My parents weren't real estate, you know, people, they, they didn't teach me any of that stuff.

[00:04:25] Randal: And so had I known that I could have gone out or gone to a RIA or gone to some of these things, this was like 2000 or so, like early, early days of, uh, you know, you know, Content or anything that was coming out on the internet. So yeah, I just, I, that's really what came down to because I was broke in college and was like, this sucks.

[00:04:42] Randal: I don't want to pay rent. How can I figure out a 

[00:04:44] Jonathan Greene: way to not pay rent? And when you, when you get the formula for it, it actually makes a lot of sense. If you do the room hack, you know, with college roommates, or you do a house hack, you know, live in a tiny unit and rent the others. I mean, Again, and that hasn't changed because I talked to so many people [00:05:00] who are house hacking before that was a term.

[00:05:02] Jonathan Greene: And it's like, that's just a smart way to make money. Yeah, for sure. And like you said, not pay rent. I'm going to leverage my rent. I'm living for free and people give me money, you know, this seems pretty good. 

[00:05:13] Randal: Yeah. And you're, you're growing a value through the appreciation of the asset as well. So 

[00:05:17] Jonathan Greene: yeah.

[00:05:18] Jonathan Greene: And especially depending on where you're buying and where you're living, that appreciation like a really good windfall for a lot of people. It's, 

[00:05:25] Randal: it's very funny because I went to school in new Orleans and a buddy of mine, he still has his house. I think he's under contract right now to sell it, but he bought like a corner lot gas station.

[00:05:35] Randal: He was working at the oil company and he'd fly out to the rigs, come back. But he did the whole thing exactly how I would have done it. He house hacked this house. And so he's, Pay down that, that property and just kind of seeing how he did it. And I was like, man, that's down the street from Tulane. That's like where, you know, that would have been awesome.

[00:05:53] Randal: Yeah. Yeah. So it's good to see him do that. He did that again in Austin as well. And so he's got these things that he, everywhere he moves, he ends up [00:06:00] buying one of these properties and doing the same thing. And so it's 

[00:06:01] Jonathan Greene: a great strategy. Yeah, and I think I think it's very accessible. There's a lot of loan opportunities that make it, you know, not easy.

[00:06:08] Jonathan Greene: But if you're making steady income, like you can get the job done, you just have to figure out really like, are you doing value add? Are you buying something that's newer? What's your appetite for risk? And, you know, do you have someone to help you along the way that you can trust? Because, you know, if you think back to your first property one, what was the first property that you bought finally?

[00:06:28] Jonathan Greene: And then How did you know it was time to take action? Because I think that's where a lot of people get stuck. That's a great question. So 

[00:06:35] Randal: I, I got into mortgages in 2004. So that my progression mortgages 2004 working for my buddy who, you know, gave me the book and he had a mortgage company. So I went and I was doing loans.

[00:06:47] Randal: I was like, okay, great. And getting some real estate experience moved, lived in Australia, trying to do some other things and then came back in 2008 and 2008 financial crisis. I was like, ah, should I go back to college? Should I do something to kill some [00:07:00] time while this is happening? 

[00:07:01] Yeah. 

[00:07:01] Randal: So I, I got a job with an attorney.

[00:07:04] Randal: Here in San Antonio, who was a fee attorney for title. So I was essentially doing, I was an escrow officer doing all the things for a lot of real estate investors. So it's just funny. The very first deal I ever bought, I had been working for this attorney. I've been on the loan side of the business. I think I was a licensed agent by this point because, you know, I needed to get access and the attorney had given me.

[00:07:27] Randal: You know, he was like, you need to go out, see houses. You want to buy something? You need to walk. 

[00:07:32] Jonathan Greene: I'm telling that to people now, because it's so easy to just sit behind the computer and, and, you know, quote, look at properties. Like you're not looking at the basement. So how do you know anything now? And you, and you don't know, I mean, a picture can be manipulated, 

[00:07:44] Randal: especially now.

[00:07:44] Randal: And so you show up on site, you look at it and you're like, Oh, well, that foundation is definitely off. I can feel it. You know? So anyway, he had, he had, he had Walked me through this whole process. And I think at the time we had these, like the E key where you actually had to take the little, you know, the brick with you.

[00:07:59] Randal: Oh, I remember. [00:08:00] 

[00:08:00] Jonathan Greene: Yeah. And it like barely worked like a quarter of the time you're like, hold it like, Oh, I don't know. Does 

[00:08:06] Randal: this work? Yeah. That thing was funny. So, but he gave me access to his before I was licensed. So anyway, I was, I was doing all of these things. So it wasn't like I just one day went and bought this property.

[00:08:16] Randal: So that the story of the first house that I ever bought, I was doing a closing for an investor. He came in this house, this is 2009. It is a 15, 000 contract that I'm closing for a single family house in San Antonio. I think it was a two one probably on the East side of San Antonio, uh, two 58 Bundy. We can look that up, but, uh, never forget it on my wall.

[00:08:36] Randal: But anyway, we, uh, So the investor, the day of closing, I'm sitting there with the seller and she's so excited, you know, she's getting rid of this house that, you know, no one had lived in. And the, the buyer who I had done closings for calls me, he's like, Hey man, I can't buy that house. It's not going to happen.

[00:08:52] Randal: He's like, okay, the lady's sitting here right now. Yeah. So anyway, I, I, I had no, no 12, 12 [00:09:00] grand to my name at the time, you know, I'd been traveling doing all these things and I look at her and I said, look, you know, I've been trying to buy a house. You're you're here. I got 10 grand. You want to, you want to sell me your house for 10 grand?

[00:09:09] Randal: She's like, okay, literally do it sight unseen, do the paperwork. Cause I'm sitting right there, right? That's crazy. It was crazy. So I ended up buying that house and I, I had this little Suzuki, uh, like, like white, neat, neat little like car. And I, you know, I've got no money and I'm driving to the East side of San Antonio to look at this house that I just bought for the first time.

[00:09:31] Randal: And there's, uh, Like bail bondsman's lining the street before you turn into the neighborhood and then right when I turned into the neighborhood, it was kind of like a apocalypse like now sort of like scorched or sort of, you know, like all these houses had been burned down and all the slabs. I was like, Oh, crap.

[00:09:50] Randal: I think I just bought a foundation. Um, 

[00:09:53] Jonathan Greene: yeah, well, you knew you were buying land though. And I mean, I think the thing about real estate that's so cool is, you [00:10:00] know, that you have something, you, you at least have the land and then you have something on top of the land or something you can build on top of it.

[00:10:07] Randal: Yes. It would have been sketchy at best. At this time in 2009 to buy just dirt, but I'll tell you why this is. So, so I go down the street, I look at it, there's a massive hole inside the house. I'm like, Oh crap. What'd I get into? Like, I don't know. It's anyway, ended up selling a house, a wholesale for 15, 000.

[00:10:22] Randal: So I got 5, 000. So of my 10, you know, that's a really good return on investment in short order. And I was off to the races. But I'm glad it was a house because that lady sold me the lot that she owned across the street for 1, 000. So had I, you know, had I, had I had just a lot, I think it would have been a tough deal.

[00:10:41] Randal: But anyway, that was the story of my first house. And to get. To answer your question about how, how did I get to be comfortable doing that? It was, it was all the reps ahead of time of going out, seeing the properties, closing a bunch of deals for other people, being on the mortgage side of the business, just understanding real estate and doing all the research and playing cashflow quadrant [00:11:00] thousand times, you know, like, yeah.

[00:11:01] Randal: Oh, 

[00:11:02] Jonathan Greene: yeah, I just did a solo episode on I personally think analysis paralysis is fake. And part of what I was saying is because it's most people just don't have any reps, you don't have analysis paralysis. You're just sitting on the computer looking at things that don't have the basement. Like you said, I've always said, like.

[00:11:18] Jonathan Greene: To me, smell is really important. Like, if you know what cat piss smells like, you know, you don't want to buy the house. Yeah. You know, these are things people don't think about. And like, you, you can't see online. 

[00:11:27] Randal: Hang on. Why don't you want to buy the house? 

[00:11:29] Jonathan Greene: Well, I, I will, cause I'm, I'm weird. I can't buy a smoke house or a cat piss house.

[00:11:33] Jonathan Greene: Cause I, cause no matter what happens, I will always smell it. So I can't even go to the rehab. I just have like a weird smell thing, but. Yeah. Like if anyone doesn't know, it's good for other people, but I'm a weirdo. We 

[00:11:45] Randal: have one listed right now and I went in there yesterday and hopefully it'll be closed by the time this thing comes out.

[00:11:51] Randal: But yeah, there were just like animals in that place and we, we just, it was, it was very hard to get the smell out. 

[00:11:58] Jonathan Greene: Yeah, 

[00:11:59] Randal: but yeah, [00:12:00] 

[00:12:00] Jonathan Greene: it can be done. It's just that, like, I have a mental block on it because my smell sense is so high. Yeah. But how did you even know to wholesale the deal? I mean, because of the reps that you had, you knew like, Hey, well, I have a number of options here.

[00:12:12] Jonathan Greene: This doesn't look like something I want to live in. So let me trade it. 

[00:12:16] Randal: I mean, I knew, I knew one that I didn't have the capital to do that. Like it really just didn't at the time. And I, and I didn't feel comfortable putting more money into it. And I knew that one investor was going to pay 15 for it. I, he must've told me at the time why he couldn't, he got tied up with something else.

[00:12:33] Randal: It wasn't like that. He didn't think the house was worth it or something. 

[00:12:36] Right. 

[00:12:36] Randal: So I felt comfortable again that I could, I could just flip the paper. And I had been to Ria's and I had been to these things. And so I knew it was like, okay, rehab, or I could sell this thing. And if I had to, if I couldn't sell it, then at that point, having a house, having an asset, I felt very comfortable that I could rent it out.

[00:12:55] Randal: I could swing a hammer, you know, my, my, I was raised with, [00:13:00] you know, Doing some work and I, and I wasn't afraid of doing some work if I had to do some work. So answer your question. 

[00:13:06] Jonathan Greene: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, five grand on a 10 grand buy. That's like a pretty, pretty sweet. And that, that, that actually sounds a lot like what a lot of people have done when they started land flipping just because of the price.

[00:13:18] Jonathan Greene: And like people are like, Oh, well, you only made five grand. It's like, but I only put in 10 grand and I sold in a 30 days. I mean, so do you want to do that? That's 60 grand a year. 

[00:13:28] Randal: Yeah. And, and the ROI annualized is pretty darn good. Yeah. 

[00:13:33] Jonathan Greene: Well, I mean, you, you knew you wanted to buy a house. You had the reps, but something in, you knew like, Hey, that was a moment.

[00:13:41] Jonathan Greene: It's kind of just like on a silver platter for you. And, but that was all your money. Yeah. Did you just feel like this probably can't go wrong because you knew the other investor had closed deals. They were going to pay more like you were saying. So you're like, someone's going to take this off my hand.

[00:13:54] Jonathan Greene: You're not going to be at a dead loss for a 10 brand. 

[00:13:57] Randal: No, no. And again, like I said, [00:14:00] had I sold it for eight, I would have had a 2, 000 loss with, uh, a purchase sale under my belt. You know, there's a, it's a win win education. Cost me two grand in that scenario, right? If it was just a lot, I would've figured out what to do with it that lot that I bought.

[00:14:17] Randal: The, the second deal that I did with her, she gave me, I, I i, I sold it for $3,000 and I took a note on it. So I said to the buyer, gimme, gimme a thousand bucks. And I literally took his a thousand dollars, gave it to her, and kept 2000 in paper. So I had free money coming in. So like I, I had strategies and I had ideas, and I had things that I could do with it.

[00:14:38] Randal: Um, if, if. If it went wrong or sideways, right? You know? Yeah. So I wasn't overly concerned with it. 

[00:14:46] Jonathan Greene: Yeah. But that's awesome. That's because of the reps that you took going to the Ria's getting that advice to listen, you need to get inside property. So, you know, people think it's so complicated. Like I don't expect people to know like how much things cost to repair, but if you look in a [00:15:00] basement, you know, what a giant crack looks like.

[00:15:02] Jonathan Greene: It's not good. You know, sometimes it's not as bad as you think, but like, if it smells. You know, like, dang, it's because water's been there, like, you can figure that stuff out. 

[00:15:12] Randal: Luckily, we don't have basements in Texas, but 

[00:15:15] Jonathan Greene: I always forget I live in a basement area. They're all like getting soaked with water.

[00:15:18] Jonathan Greene: I mean, I 

[00:15:19] Randal: would love to have one again. I'll sell you. My sister in law has one. We go up and it's a party. You can, uh, he has like video games, like, 

[00:15:26] Jonathan Greene: All it's a whole second house that you have in there. Yeah, I mean, that's what teenagers dream of. I lived in a basement. My son lived in the basement. Like this is it's like before ADUs, you just hit the basement, you know, go for the good stuff.

[00:15:38] Jonathan Greene: So you knock out that first one. And then when did you buy something that you actually kept for more than just flipping it? 

[00:15:44] Randal: That same year. I mean, once, once I did one, I got very comfortable. And then I, I met a private lender immediately. So I'd never, never even used hard money. until years later. So I met a private private lender, told him that I'd just done [00:16:00] that deal.

[00:16:00] Randal: He kind of knew my history and I was introduced from a guy that actually worked with doing loans 2004 or five. Right. Yeah. So it was a warm intro and, and I love Terry. You're the best man. Honestly. He, uh, he's a, he's like an old school lender where you sit down for three hours and talk to him and he's just eyeballing you, asking you questions, talking to you the whole time.

[00:16:22] Randal: So, Anyway, I met with him and he, he just gave me money. So I still have notes on three or four of those houses that I initially bought using his capital that he allowed me to wrap. So I would buy a 20, 000 house, wrap it, sell it for, you know, 70, 80, 000, get a small down payment and to just keep the paper.

[00:16:42] Randal: So then I'd pay him off and then I'd, you know, So that year, I think I bought two more immediately from the MLS, 20, 000 each, and then I bought, you know, a number of other deals. And so that just kind of ticked off and then kept growing from there. 

[00:16:57] Jonathan Greene: Were these all like mini renovations, lipstick [00:17:00] flips, full flips, or did you keep any of them?

[00:17:02] Jonathan Greene: Because that's like. Yeah. It's cool because I think this is showing people that you get the reps, you get the confidence and then you take action. But still, you're probably not going to buy all great properties because a lot of time you get like so hopped up that you can do it that you started to think like, well, I'll just knock out any of these because 20 grand doesn't seem like a lot, you know, for a house.

[00:17:21] Randal: I've got a, uh, I've got Another interview that I'm doing and it's, it's the, you know, like, what's your best device podcast. And it is funny because I'm like, just cause you can't doesn't mean you should. And I, but I, I say that in, there's a lot of, a lot that goes into that, but. Yeah. I don't know those deals to answer your question.

[00:17:41] Randal: They were 20, 000 houses. The first one was a two one. And I went to home Depot, picked up some guys, gave them buckets of paint. Let's drop them off. I said, here, paint the house. When gotten more guys to come to the second house. Cause I closed on two at the exact same time. I've got more bucks to paint. Hey, paint the house.

[00:17:58] Randal: Went back to the first house. This is [00:18:00] like. Four hours later, five hours, maybe at the end of the day, everything was painted. Like the walls, the windows, the light switches, the knobs, the doorknobs, everything was painted. 

[00:18:13] Yeah. 

[00:18:13] Randal: I swear to you. Yeah. And I was like, Oh God. Okay. You got to figure out how to mess that one up.

[00:18:19] Randal: Yeah. But yes, they were, East side properties of San Antonio, which it had, it needed a, it's taken from 2009 till now. It's gentrified a bit. And it's like a lot of rehabbers went in and started flipping and building new houses and doing all kinds of things. But in 2008, 2009, it was, you know, 15, 20, 000 houses and that same house.

[00:18:41] Randal: I mean, I get payments on that, on that very first house that everything got painted on. And the guy from San Antonio, I mean, it's worth like 250 now. So he's got a sweet deal and I don't know, 20 grand left and then he's done. So he cleaned the windows though. Right. I mean, my, my guys did. Yeah. We, uh, we got [00:19:00] that sorted quickly.

[00:19:01] Jonathan Greene: Uh, yeah. But that, that's, but that's, that's something that's part of the learning curve and I think it's important. Yeah. Also compared to what you said for that first property, like, look, if you're buying houses for 20 grand, you can't really expect, you know, them all to be perfect. You're going to make some mistakes, but that that's your, Hey, like, I'm going to learn while I'm doing it instead of just kind of surf the internet and see what people do.

[00:19:23] Randal: Yeah. I, I try to think of it now, you know, I think, so we bought one the other day, it's a hundred thousand dollar house. And I think that 20, 000 house is now that a hundred thousand dollar house. I think that's where it is. And we're doing the exact same thing. We're going in a hundred thousand, probably putting 20, 000 into it and then sell it for 200, but it's an owner finance deal.

[00:19:40] Randal: We'll sell it. We'll get 20, 000 down and, you know, we'll carry that 180 note. And so there's a big Delta in there. And you look at your return on your actual invested dollars and it's a solid return. I'm saying that for a reason, the 20, 000 houses. Yeah. I think it's just one of those things. It's hard for me knowing that I [00:20:00] could buy houses for 20, 000 back then to now give advice to anyone who's going out and starting with that strategy, because unless you have a lender who's going to let you have, you know, a wrap on that, or you don't have all the capital yourself, then that's kind of a difficult strategy just to like kick off out the door.

[00:20:17] Randal: Yeah. Unless you have cheap money 

[00:20:18] Jonathan Greene: to go buy them. Yeah. That's pretty tough to come by. I mean, I think you can have family money, but then I feel like you could let down family too. Like there's always a string attached to it. You know, you're either going to be paying a lot or you're going to be, you know, emotionally paying a lot when you screw up the first deal and your dad lent you that 20 grand that you just, you know, took a week on 

[00:20:35] Randal: frame it properly, going into that conversation, like, Hey, I may not do great, but your money is going to get paid back no matter what.

[00:20:41] Randal: Right. Something like that. 

[00:20:43] Jonathan Greene: Yeah. So, I mean, as you kept going, how did you upgrade your business and then, you know, keep going to grow? Because I find that a lot of people are asking about scaling like way too quickly now, but obviously you got to a point where you were really comfortable and trying out different types of deals, growing your [00:21:00] portfolio, doing more active and then figuring out what else you can do and then growing into the business that you did at Ridgeline.

[00:21:07] Randal: Yeah, so we went, my, my main strategy, the main thing to grow the, the, the capital stack that I've got was rehabbing houses. And so I got good at that. I was GC ing all my projects, running those and, and just doing some houses and then got to a point where we had project managers and two crews and that sort of stuff going on.

[00:21:29] Randal: And then when COVID hit, we shut all that stuff down. And, and, you know, I scaled back this direct to seller campaign that we had going for years and years and years. And, and it just turned into like, I'm buying now from just wholesalers or from the MLS and from other, you know, just because I don't have to do all that front work.

[00:21:48] Randal: I'm happy to pay a little bit more for the house because it costs me that much money anyway. So it's much more relaxed on that, on that side. And then I have a GC who just, she runs everything and she sends her [00:22:00] crews out. So I, I like right now, currently I'm looking at bringing on somebody to just handle all the acquisitions on the front end because that business can be standalone.

[00:22:08] Randal: I actually had a guy on the podcast the other day and he was walking me through his, he's got one acquisitions person who's in the Philippines or overseas. Just vetting simple deals and then a project manager. So I think I'm going to do that model because I really like that. Bring somebody in who wants to learn the business and learn what rehabbing is all about and just let them run and say, look, if you can do, you know, 25 deals a year.

[00:22:29] Randal: Fantastic. That's kind of the, where we're looking to be. I'll give you all the money for it and you run with it. And then we got into learning about funds and learning about syndications and, you know, on 250 units or something like that with, with multifamily. So that's kind of where we've gone to now.

[00:22:45] Randal: And I'm looking at small multis. In my backyard in San Antonio surrounding areas so that we can go 

[00:22:51] Jonathan Greene: and buy some of those deals. Yeah. And I, so small multis in Texas, that's an interesting conversation topic because the, the bigger [00:23:00] companies aren't buying those. So it is, it, there's an opportunity there, I think, for those mid range numbers, you know, that are, you know, 10 to 20 units in Texas.

[00:23:09] Jonathan Greene: Because there's so many 260 unit properties in Texas that you have a different, you're really buying against regular buyers a lot of times. So if you have more experience, you have more leverage over them to win and know the due diligence portion of those smaller multis. 

[00:23:23] Randal: Yeah, I'm still having a hard time getting to.

[00:23:27] Randal: You know, uh, a bit ask that makes sense. Um, so that's, that's one of the things that one of the challenges that we're seeing, but still, I like that to your point, you know, going and buying a 250 unit complex, you know, you're going to have partners on the deal and you're going to have a lot that goes into that.

[00:23:43] Randal: And you're competing with institutional funds that have been sitting on the sidelines for a while waiting for, you know, a dip in the interest rates or waiting for something data so that they can just deploy all the capital they've got sitting on the sidelines. So, I've seen an uptick in the deal flow on multifamily.

[00:23:58] Randal: And so, you know, [00:24:00] hopefully soon some of these things are going to start to make a little bit more sense. 

[00:24:04] Jonathan Greene: Yeah. I mean, San Antonio has been a market that's been consistently growing for years. And as a whole, Texas is still on the huge scale up, even though rents across the state are a little bit down. I think people are misconstruing.

[00:24:16] Jonathan Greene: What that means, there's just a lot of new construction in Texas, right? So there's a lot of inventory coming online, which will push rent down for a little while, but we need, you know, you need the housing. 

[00:24:26] Randal: Yeah. I mean, I get, I get varying stories, right? We've got one in, um, in Crowley, which is outside of Dallas, and then we've got one in Georgia.

[00:24:34] Randal: But the one in Crowley, the. The rents weren't necessarily the issue. It was competing with a new supply. And so the tenants that we had were there, but then we could not, we couldn't fill To, you know, 97 percent capacity. So even, even with some incentives and some things that, that, that we were working on up there, so anyway, yeah, I, you know, out of San Antonio, some of the guys that I know with class a product, they are [00:25:00] dropping the rents.

[00:25:00] Randal: They're adding a lot of incentives and that sort of thing. But some of the guys that have these 40, 50 unit properties, they're still increasing rent. They're not having any issues. So it's interesting to see. The difference in those two. 

[00:25:12] Jonathan Greene: Yeah, I think it's the, the amount of new inventory plus the old inventory.

[00:25:16] Jonathan Greene: So over the grand scheme of all these potential rentals, maybe it's going down, but I don't think that the, the best products are going down. And also if you're, you know, I've had a lot of people on who do that new build construction and they can purposefully, they, they engineered the construction so they know their costs, so they can go in.

[00:25:36] Jonathan Greene: And beat people on the rent and they get quickly to 98%. So they're making the crush money, but maybe their rent's a little bit under the others because they, they can undercut them because they vertically integrated the whole process. So they saved a lot of money that way. 

[00:25:48] Randal: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, if you underwrote that way, yes, fantastic.

[00:25:52] Randal: I know there were some guys coming out of the ground. It will not that way, but it's 

[00:25:58] Jonathan Greene: also specific to Texas, [00:26:00] you know, it's like in 2008, it was like, man, Texas is getting killed. And now during the, uh, you know, the syndication mess ups that some made, you know, there's a decent amount of them in Texas because there's, there's just a lot of opportunity there.

[00:26:11] Jonathan Greene: So there's people who bit off more than they can chew. I think on, you know, debt rates and things like that, that weren't going to really work out for them. A 

[00:26:19] Randal: lot of free money and, uh, and, you know, a lot of population growth. So helped fuel a lot of new construction, a lot of new, new deals, new, new syndicators.

[00:26:27] Randal: Maybe. 

[00:26:28] Yeah.

[00:26:32] Jonathan Greene: Hey, it's Jonathan on this brief interlude. I just want to remind you about something I talked about a couple of weeks ago. I'm soliciting feedback on the podcast as we're getting very close to 200 episodes, and I want to hear what you think. What you think, what you've listened to, what you've enjoyed, the guests that you feel were the best, the guests that you haven't heard yet that you would love to get on.

[00:26:55] Jonathan Greene: So you can go to Zen and the art of real estate, investing. com slash contact. [00:27:00] Send me a message there. I'm going to read them all and I will reply directly. I would really appreciate it. Let's get back to the show.

[00:27:11] Jonathan Greene: You said you had one something in Georgia. Also, how are you figuring out when it's time to leave your general market, which is San Antonio? That one 

[00:27:18] Randal: is with some partners. And so we bought that, um, it was brought to me and, and we started looking at it and like the, like the market, like Atlanta, like the area out there.

[00:27:30] Randal: And luckily nothing happened in the last couple storms that went through that area. Yeah. But um, yeah, it just, when it, when it. When the deal makes sense and when I can get on board with the numbers and what everything's looking like, then that's when we joined that deal. It has not worked out great. I will say that the, there was a burn building.

[00:27:52] Randal: So one of the big value adds for that project was getting the burn, the, the, the one building that was burned out, getting it back [00:28:00] online. And that would just huge value add right there. Never got that building built because another one burnt down. And then just the other day, got an email that somebody got murdered on the property.

[00:28:10] Randal: So it's just like all the things that can go wrong on that deal have gone wrong on that deal. So stay tuned. I'll keep you posted on how that works out in the end, but that's the latest on that, on that deal. So I'm like, Hey, I'm going to stay in my backyard on deals that aren't, it's my money and I'm going to just go on that.

[00:28:27] Randal: You know? 

[00:28:28] Jonathan Greene: Yeah. If you could dial it back to the beginning, do you think that There was a point where you should have said, no, not this one, or because it was not in your backyard. Or do you still think based on the data that you looked at, it's still a good swing? 

[00:28:40] Randal: I think had they performed better on their, on their business plan, then no, it was a good deal.

[00:28:48] Randal: It was a good deal. Yeah. And it, for me, it's, it's one of those. You know, 10, 000 houses, right? I want to get into it and I, and I want to, I want to, you know, find some people to work with and that sort of thing on that deal. And [00:29:00] so no, I think I would still do it again. Learned a lot from that process, working with those guys and, and I wouldn't change it.

[00:29:07] Randal: Luckily I didn't, I didn't like. Rope any investors into the deal, um, it's all my money. So, 

[00:29:13] Jonathan Greene: you know, I think, you know, when you look at assets and when you think about what people say, you know, don't wait to buy real estate, buy real estate and wait. Most assets that people get screwed up on, if they could just ride it out, if they had better debt or they didn't, you know, under calculate repairs, like you'd be fine in five years, even through like the worst cycles, you would be okay.

[00:29:33] Jonathan Greene: It's, it's the fact of leverage versus repair costs versus who you have in the deal, who wants to pull out. That can really pull the plug. If you can just ride the wave, like if you could hold every property, 10 years, you're not losing money in America. I mean, I don't know what you would have to do to lose money, but it would be almost impossible.

[00:29:49] Randal: You ever, you ever look at deals that you sold on a flip and you see it, you're like, God, I should have just kept that thing, you know, 

[00:29:56] Jonathan Greene: Yeah, well, so that that's a really good question and we can talk about it. [00:30:00] So I do like a win win, but I've had many properties where I was like, man, I crushed that when I sold it and then they crushed it.

[00:30:06] Jonathan Greene: And I'm like, yeah, I think we all have properties like. Everyone who's ever been involved in flipping is like, I should have held more like I should have just held it and rent it for a couple of years. That way would have made another 200 grand. But like, as long as I did, okay, I still feel fine about it.

[00:30:24] Randal: Yeah, you know, same, same. I mean, I have this story of why I started looking at land and buying land, that sort of thing. And I bought it. Seven acres with a mobile home on it outside of San Antonio and flipped it. I think we doubled our money. And in the guy that I sold it to, he subdivided it, quadrupled his money or whatever, you know, I was like, son of a gun.

[00:30:48] Randal: Okay. That's a good job. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, yeah, for sure. It was just great timing and it was, it was, it was a corner. It had a lot of frontage, like the whole setup. Had I had my eyes open, you know, [00:31:00] uh, it would've been, it would've been fantastic, but again, good for him and he opened my eyes to some things that I could Yeah.

[00:31:05] Randal: You know, then to 

[00:31:05] Jonathan Greene: go do. But I think that, you know, that's part of, if you're in it for the long haul, like if, if I held something for two years. Sold it at, you know, break even, and then the next person made 200 grand. I'd be pissed, but most of the ones where I'm like, man, they crushed it. I also did well enough to think like, or I messed something up.

[00:31:26] Jonathan Greene: So I shouldn't have, you know, I shouldn't have made that much money. Like I had to just like, I'm just take. 20 grand. There was too many errors there. But I think, you know, a lot of people do have that like, Oh, that's one that I really should. I never had an emotional attachment to real estate. And it doesn't sound like you did either because you were going to read like everything's tradable to me, even the houses I lived in.

[00:31:47] Jonathan Greene: You know, I've moved a lot with my kids now that they're older, but they're like, I was just talking to my project manager and she just moved to a new house and like, like her kid has a new room. So it's always good. [00:32:00] I moved. My dad was a house flipper. So, like, the house would be awesome. And then we move and I'm like, I don't want to move.

[00:32:05] Jonathan Greene: And then I go to the new house. I'm like, oh, this is pretty cool. 

[00:32:07] Randal: Yeah. Yeah. 

[00:32:08] Jonathan Greene: 1 day later, I didn't even think right now. Yeah. 

[00:32:11] Randal: She's comfortable in our house. I'm like, no. We got to move. If you're 

[00:32:15] Jonathan Greene: comfortable, it means somebody else likes it more than we do. When there's no inventory, I might happen. Like, as someone always says, like, it doesn't matter, you know, what someone will pay me.

[00:32:26] Jonathan Greene: I'm not moving. I'm like, nah, that's bullshit. You have a price for everything. If someone offers me a million dollars to leave my house, I will leave my house. Of course, if that's a good value for price, but like, come on, like you can just buy, then you can just buy a better house. Like, why not just do that?

[00:32:42] Randal: Yeah, no, we're looking at it. It's funny. We were talking about this morning, honestly, just because our kids go to school. If our daughter goes to the same school downtown and we drive downtown, we have a lot of friends in this neighborhood. We're like, okay. If she goes there, then we're going to move. So I think I have her on the hook and you can listen to this, babe.

[00:32:58] Randal: Maybe you'll maybe [00:33:00] yeah, 

[00:33:01] Jonathan Greene: let's see. But I, but I think these are important points because you know, there's, there's these regular home buyers who think like, everything's a forever home. Of course, that's fake. You know, you get a job transfer, you just leave, get another home, like their houses. They feel like homes when you live in them, but you can live in a rental and it can feel like a home for sure.

[00:33:18] Jonathan Greene: Like you have to really understand what real estate is. It's a vehicle. I was just posting something too, and I'll get your take on it too. Cause I think it goes into this conversation that like, it doesn't the house that you live in is always a great investment if you do it. Right. You know? So the way that real estate investors are taught in like social media world is like, you got to get a duplex and then a triplex and then a six plex.

[00:33:41] Jonathan Greene: But like, they forget about the houses that you can live and enjoy a house and then also crush it on the appreciation. I mean, A lot of my whole career, I just bought really nice houses that I lived in and I did some value out either on the front end or the back end. I think that's like an under known asset class.

[00:33:57] Jonathan Greene: Your own home is an awesome [00:34:00] investment, especially if you make it look nice. 

[00:34:02] Randal: Yeah, for sure. It's one of those things that we kick around. We're like, okay, we need to do X, Y, Z. And should we put it off when we're going to sell the house or do it now? We get to enjoy it. Like we should do it now. Like, let's go, you know?

[00:34:14] Jonathan Greene: Yeah. Well, cause I, so I call it backflipping. I've, I've a couple of times lived in the house. It was a nice house, but then I would buy another place and then move. And then I would like. Flip it to modern standards, do a couple more things. But then I, you know, I bring my kids back or my friends. I'm like, why now it looks sweet.

[00:34:31] Jonathan Greene: I'm like, it looked pretty good before. Like I just want the money. I, you know, but that's a fair point. I think that's always, it's a good discussion to have though. Like which things like doing the kitchen, I think you get a lot of enjoyment out and it's also a huge value at, but also. You don't want to do the kitchen and then stay seven years.

[00:34:48] Jonathan Greene: Cause then you have a seven year old kitchen. So you're really like thinking as a house flipper and somebody wants to make money on their own house. You do have to consider these things as a family, you know, when is the right time? We don't like, I've been in [00:35:00] houses that people are trying to sell and they're like, Oh, you know, I renovated this kitchen.

[00:35:03] Jonathan Greene: I'm like, what year they'll tell me the, that's 22 years ago, but that's old. It looks like. Old now. It's not new. Yeah. That's a really interesting thing. And I think, I just think that people discount the fact that if you're doing house hack, like you said, the first thing that you want to do, you can also enjoy that.

[00:35:21] Jonathan Greene: You don't have to live in a basement unit, you know, with five and a half foot ceilings, you can live in a nice unit and just maybe not make as much money. You know, like it's okay to enjoy where you live. That's why real estate is awesome. No, 

[00:35:34] Randal: not okay. 

[00:35:35] Jonathan Greene: No, you, you live in that attic unit with no air. And no stove and you just use a hot plate as an adult, like you 

[00:35:43] Randal: got to do until you can do what you want to do.

[00:35:46] Randal: You know what I'm saying? Yeah. 

[00:35:48] Jonathan Greene: Yeah. Well, how has it been though? Like, you know, everybody who has a family, we're always saying like, you know, is the family on board? Does everybody understand that like, Hey, real estate is a vehicle and that's a really important thing for [00:36:00] everybody. How has it been for you knowing that you can have that discussion with your wife and say like, Hey, Let's agree.

[00:36:04] Jonathan Greene: Like at some point we're just going to move. 

[00:36:06] Randal: Yeah. I mean, I think the one she's on board, she's all on, but she, she's been in, she's, she quit her job and she was working with us. And, and now she's full time mom in it and volunteering to all this stuff. Right. And so, but she knows real estate. And she has done her own flips and she is, she's, yeah, she, she's on board for other houses so far.

[00:36:27] Randal: She hasn't been on board on our house, but we'll get there. It's it, but having family involved, you know, like my brother's working for me, my, my wife was. And, and so like, it's a family thing now to, to understand real estate and to invest in real estate and just kind of knowing that that is a vehicle. And a skill set that we all have now.

[00:36:49] Randal: It's it's yeah, she's on board. Yeah. 

[00:36:52] Jonathan Greene: Yeah. I think that's really helpful. And then it's just it just makes everything easier when you're going about your job saying I need to deploy capital to [00:37:00] do this. Great. Yeah. We have a track record to show that you know what you're doing. Let's go. She doesn't. Yeah. 

[00:37:05] Randal: No, she does not care if I.

[00:37:07] Randal: Stroke 150, 000 check to buy a house. She's like, okay, when are you selling that? You know, I got a new pair of shoes. Yeah. 

[00:37:14] Jonathan Greene: You took the one 50. I know it's going to come back as two 50. So like, yeah. When, when is that when I can, when I can use that? Yeah. I think that's important. So in your history though, of flipping and renovating so many homes, where, where do you think people are going wrong now?

[00:37:28] Jonathan Greene: Cause I'm worried for new flippers now. I feel like they're, you know, like. Maybe you shouldn't really be flipping now if you're brand, brand new and you have no reps. That's kind of scary to me. What do you think? 

[00:37:39] Randal: I think it's all going to be risk your risk profile, right? And I highly recommend flipping over some other things.

[00:37:47] Randal: You know, I get, I think where people are going wrong right now, we're trying to wholesale and they don't know what the hell. They're doing and, and, you know, your, your, if, if you don't know what you're doing, you've never flipped a house and you've [00:38:00] never spent the, uh, the time to understand what actually goes into rehabbing a house.

[00:38:05] Randal: Then selling that product to someone else is, is challenging. At least for me, like I had, You know, I had a call from the owner of investor lift the other day doing a demo call. I didn't know who he was, but he calls me and he's like, Hey, you're on, you know, I want to sell you this house. And anyway, I start drilling with questions and he's like, this is fantastic.

[00:38:25] Randal: I'm recording this. This is going to go live. And I was like, okay, cool. Okay. But, but, but, you know, having all these new. Dispo reps for, for wholesale companies that have never done it. And, and they're being promised, you know, this is super easy. All you gotta do is come in and just, you know, do a little bit of marketing, do, you know, pay per click all around the country.

[00:38:44] Randal: And then you're going to get these things and they're overselling. So what I'm seeing now is a lot of overpriced ARVs. They haven't priced in the fact that it's a challenge market right now, and that prices on the resale for wholesale or for rehabbers are actually going down a bit. Yeah. At least for the ARVs and the, and the [00:39:00] price points that I'm working in.

[00:39:02] Randal: And they're not, they have no clue or concept if their repair numbers are accurate. So it's, it's the same thing that's always been, but it just seems to me that that is one of the things. The other thing that I think is happening right now, you got some guys who are going out very well known promoting, you know, sub two wraps and sub two deals.

[00:39:19] Randal: And I've done some of those. And, you know, we're in the process now of, of, you know, hopefully this guy's going to refinance and pay us off of one, but like all the legal issues you could possibly face. It is to me just not worth it. Like I did, this is 2011 and there was a guy out of Austin that was promoting this big thing and, and, and came, excuse me, came down to San Antonio and they were pitching it to us.

[00:39:44] Randal: Anyway, I went out, did the, did the program flyer, some neighborhoods, got a bunch of deals. Literally that day was getting phone calls from people trying to get out of their houses. Anyway, some of the closest calls to problematic litigation have come from those deals. And, and, and so I see [00:40:00] a lot of people putting those out, trying to sell them and, and they're selling them at like 90 percent because they're like, Hey, it's easy to get in.

[00:40:06] Randal: Okay. Well, if I'm a new guy coming in to buy one of those deals and all I got to 000 down, but I'm in that deal from 90%, I'm never going to cashflow that thing. And you know, it's just with the legal issues attached to it. It just doesn't seem like a, it's not a great deal. It's a really good deal for the wholesaler who's putting it together.

[00:40:23] Randal: But anyway, so. That's what I see. 

[00:40:26] Jonathan Greene: I agree with all of that. And I think that because people think it's easy, and there's kind of wholesale companies trying to train it, like you said, people think it's easy, but you're dealing with people. And the problem with the wholesalers that suck are they're not dealing with the people.

[00:40:40] Jonathan Greene: They're just looking at dumb numbers, you know, as always. Low repair, high ARV. They're not even close. So then they burn their buyers list and they're just looking for like one deal to get 10, 000 and they think they're going to become a flipper on that. Now, I've always said that the best wholesalers are home buyers who are really good at marketing who end [00:41:00] up with overage.

[00:41:01] Jonathan Greene: Because they're focused on the people, they're local, they understand that. Like, I think it's weird virtual wholesaling. Like it just doesn't make any sense to me because you're not connected to the neighborhood. Could it work? Yeah, sure. If you have the money to spend on marketing, you'll hit enough doubles where it'll work out over time.

[00:41:18] Jonathan Greene: But it just doesn't seem like a very like efficient strategy at all. Uh, depends 

[00:41:24] Randal: on what efficient you're looking for efficient on your time commitment. It's, it's highly efficient in that way. And you have your conversion ratio, right? It just, I don't know, a buddy of mine does it. And, and I was talking to him, but he was doing a lot on land and then he kind of, he had to pivot because when the rates went up and people, you know, just changed everything.

[00:41:43] Randal: So land isn't as good. That's what he told me. But this is four months ago. He told me he had 100, 000 wholesale on a deal that he never saw. He just, you know, put some paperwork together and I was like, okay, that's fantastic. Good for you. But I got off the phone with him 20 minutes ago and he's like, uh, that was the last deal I [00:42:00] did.

[00:42:00] Randal: So I don't know, you know, I don't know that market, but it is efficient on your time. It seems like, because yeah, but, but. Again, I just, I don't know, I haven't done any of that, so we'll leave that for some other guests on your show that can talk about the merits of doing 

[00:42:14] Jonathan Greene: PPC. I think if you're, I think if you're a good home buyer, then flipping is a more viable option because you're limiting your mistake.

[00:42:23] Jonathan Greene: And like you said, it's appetite versus risk. What are you up for? But I, I don't feel like people should be like, well, I'm just going to DIY this by looking on YouTube and get no permits and think they're going to sell it, which is, you know, the same as we're seeing kind of wholesalers not know what we're doing.

[00:42:36] Jonathan Greene: We're still seeing that amount of flippers who, you know, they're quitting in the middle or they're putting out a product and you're like, I have seen a lot of that, man. I've seen something. There's like, Oh, full renovation. I'm like, this is, this literally looks like a house. I wouldn't even buy, you know, to lipstick flip.

[00:42:51] Jonathan Greene: It's such a piece of junk. And they just like the conception of it. And, and look, to be honest, some of them are still selling because there's so many desperate [00:43:00] buyers in our area, but we look at them and we're like, whoa, like, are you serious? It makes it harder for us to flip that way. I 

[00:43:06] Randal: mean, my, so again, if you're buying it wrong, then that's when you get in that situation.

[00:43:10] Randal: It seems like, right. Yeah. But my advice in the way that I always looked at it in the reason I wanted to, to, to, to rehab, to sell is because then I have a product and I can control the quality of that product, right? I can myself, no matter what control that. And so you want to make sure if you're going into a rehab, that you have a quality product at the end of it.

[00:43:31] Randal: Because you can rent it, you could sell it, you could keep it, you could live in it, you can whatever, and it has value, but if you have a rehab that's halfway done and you run out of money or, you know, it's like, you don't have a sellable product that no one is going to buy that for what you think you could sell it for like, well, I paid a hundred and I put 50 into it and still halfway not done.

[00:43:52] Randal: No one's going to give you 150. 

[00:43:53] Jonathan Greene: And the classic of those are like. Oh, we have it almost there for you to pick up and then you're like, [00:44:00] yeah, but you did it without permits and now all the walls are closed. So we have to rip all the walls out anyway, just so you can, we can do it the right way. So you're not really helping me.

[00:44:07] Jonathan Greene: You actually have to cut 25 grand off that for all of our demo and then drywall. And that though comes from an experience and like, that's where I think it's hard because you told a great story about how you were able to take action. But I think you were getting the reps. I feel like people are generally too lazy to get actual real reps.

[00:44:25] Jonathan Greene: Like they don't say like, Hey, on Saturday, I'm going to look at the 10 crappiest properties on the market. You know, if you have a license, you have access to look at, you know, vacant properties. You just set an appointment and you can go to open houses on dumps. They're out there. I mean, there's ways to get reps without like.

[00:44:39] Jonathan Greene: You know, overdoing yourself, but I just don't know how you're going to know anything if you're not in enough houses to really see what, you know, you can take pictures and send them to your friends. Like you have a contractor friend. Hey, what is this? You know, is this a, is this being broken? Yeah, that's 12 grand.

[00:44:54] Jonathan Greene: Oh shit. I'm not going to buy that 

[00:44:56] Randal: to, to, to like quick piece of advice, right? [00:45:00] One, if you are wanting to rehab and you want to get into it, you want to get some reps, like Go find, go to the Ria's, find the guys who are doing the flips and then say, Hey, can I, can I go look at the next like five deals with you, whatever, right?

[00:45:11] Randal: That's what you're working 

[00:45:13] Jonathan Greene: on. They love to show off their, you know, new flip, but what do they care if you're there, you know, carry some blumber, they'll love it. 

[00:45:20] Randal: Exactly. What can I do for free? Or, you know, even if it's not me adding some value, but it's me just being a fly in the wall, right? That's one super simple way to do it.

[00:45:29] Randal: If you're a realtor, go find some investors that you can just give them your commission and say, look, I'll list your house for free. If I can just figure out what you're doing and you, you know, like you're going to save 3 percent and blah, blah, blah. Right. And then the other one, if you're at a RIA, or even if you go to Home Depot.

[00:45:47] Randal: Lowes, whatever it is, find a contractor who's got a ton of materials, or he's, you know, in there, go to the pro desk and talk to them and say, who's, who's doing a lot of business. And when do they typically come in or whatever, right? One of the [00:46:00] pamphlet guy, the pamphlet guy, the first guy that you're right.

[00:46:02] Randal: He would go to the supply warehouses at, um, 6 00 AM, 6 00 AM. And he'd have a pack of donuts and he'd have a card or he, you know, whatever. And he's like, Hey, what are you working on? Can I come by and take a look at your property? Or if he's trying to get a bid, he's there with a pack of donuts. Hey, one, two, three, main street down the street.

[00:46:19] Randal: I need to get, you know, a bid on it. Can you come over there real fast after you get your supplies? Super, super simple. But the whole reason you're doing all of that is And you're gonna go see projects, you're gonna get an idea of what that plumber or what that electrician or what that gc, you know, and they're, they're at R'S too.

[00:46:35] Randal: Contractors or at r's? Yeah. Oh yeah. Just go with them and say, Hey man, next time you're bidding a property, can I come walk it with you? Right. Yeah. 

[00:46:41] Jonathan Greene: I'll be quiet. I'll just like walk and listen to you talk. Those are great points because I think I hear too much, like, I need a mentor. You know, can I take you out for coffee?

[00:46:51] Jonathan Greene: Like, there's nothing, I'd rather do less than that . But if someone were like. Hey, are you going to be at your flip tomorrow? I'm like, yeah, I'll be there. Can [00:47:00] I just swing by and look around and I'll ask you only five questions. It'll take, I'll only ask you questions for five minutes, five questions. And I can just look around.

[00:47:09] Jonathan Greene: Okay. I'm there anyway. And then like, yeah, then maybe they figure out, Hey, actually I have a pickup truck. You know, if your guy is not here, you want me to like, take that to the dump. Yes. You know, that's a fair trade off. It's just much, it's much easier to do that because people like to talk about themselves and they like to show off what they're doing.

[00:47:28] Jonathan Greene: So why wouldn't someone just want to say, okay, to you coming onto a flip, if you're not going to be annoying, you can't sit there and ask them a hundred questions, but like you can just get an idea of what's going on and see the progress. I think that's, that's really important advice. And it's a better way to navigate yourself.

[00:47:43] Jonathan Greene: Or in a meetup situation is, you know, don't always be asking for silly things like, can I take you out for dinner? Like, definitely not . No. Why would I wanna spend an hour with a stranger? I, I'm good. You know, 

[00:47:57] Randal: here's a great, here's a great little story from when I was, [00:48:00] you know, fledgling little investor at my and, and in my little Suzuki.

[00:48:04] Randal: Yeah, probably, probably had like a button up on, you know, I thought it was, you know, when you're talking 

[00:48:09] Jonathan Greene: about the Suzuki, I feel it had like a really like high pitched, uh, 

[00:48:12] Randal: yeah, like really like, it 

[00:48:15] was, 

[00:48:16] Randal: it was like, I don't even know what kind of Suzuki it was, but it was tiny and it was like, it was just.

[00:48:21] Randal: It was, it was new, but it was funny anyway. So I'm sitting here at this RIA and, and I read a book from a local guy here in San Antonio and it was Mitch Stevens, my life's a thousand houses, how he like buys all these houses. Yeah. Anyway, he's talking at, at the RIA. So I'm meeting all of the guys there at the end of it.

[00:48:38] Randal: One of the well known Is walking out the door and I was like, here's my card, man, we should catch up. And he goes, no, that's me. I don't need that. That's what I would have said. Epic. And at the time I was like, kind of, yeah, and then, and then as time went on, I was like, that guy was [00:49:00] fantastic. 

[00:49:00] Jonathan Greene: Yeah. Then we become that douchebag.

[00:49:02] Jonathan Greene: And I mean, the funniest thing is that happens to me. 

[00:49:05] Randal: Nothing. 

[00:49:05] Jonathan Greene: Yeah, that happens to me literally every single day on bigger pockets. I'm literally, I've been doing this my whole life and I spend time answering questions for free and then people are, you're being mean. I'm like, holy, are you serious? Like, I'm just trying to help you.

[00:49:19] Jonathan Greene: What do I care? You think I'm going to fly to Illinois to buy your property? It's a stupid deal. It sounds dumb, but that's a really good point because I think like most people, they don't, they're not going to take your card. It's like, if you don't know what you're doing with postcards and you sending them, they're all going in the garbage.

[00:49:35] Jonathan Greene: Or if you don't have a follow up plan, you get the one call and you're not available. I'm going to wholesale, but I'm only available at seven o'clock at night to take calls. Well, I think they're not going to wait for you. I think those are really good points. Cause I think meetups and RIAs are so important.

[00:49:49] Jonathan Greene: I think they're the one thing that gets anyone who believes they're an analysis paralysis out because you can read books, listen to podcasts, but until you see like Joe Schmo over [00:50:00] there, who's knocked out nine deals and you're like, well, That guy's doing. He looks just like me. Like he pulled up in a Suzuki also, like you can really see that though.

[00:50:08] Jonathan Greene: You just see like, yeah, you're like, let's walk our horns at the same time. But I think that's really the thing. Once you start meeting real life people who do deals, you don't think of them as like, Oh, everybody, you know, Is like, you know, driving around and like, you know, an Escalade with like, you know, a heliport on top.

[00:50:25] Jonathan Greene: Like, yeah, yeah. That's not how they're doing it. 

[00:50:27] Randal: Yeah. Awesome man. There were a lot of yellow hummers in San Antonio at those meetups, I'll tell you that. Yeah, those, those shit 

[00:50:34] Jonathan Greene: were, they were popular. Actually, my, it's funny, my stepmom had one and we were always like, why do you have this? Like, that's so weird.

[00:50:42] Randal: stuff over. 

[00:50:44] Jonathan Greene: Oh, yeah, this is awesome, man. I'm glad I got you on here to return the favor. So if people want to get in touch with you, where's the best place for people to get in touch with you? I know your your website for the company is ridgeline ig. com. Correct? 

[00:50:58] Randal: Yeah. And if you go on [00:51:00] there, you can there's a little chat button.

[00:51:01] Randal: That's the easiest and fastest way to get to to me or my team. 

[00:51:04] Jonathan Greene: Yeah. Awesome, man. And kick off the little Promo for your podcast as well, which I was on a long time ago. I know we'll have to relink that. That was 

[00:51:13] Randal: great. So yeah, I have agents building cashflow podcast have great guests like yourself on. We talk a lot about growing cashflow over time, turning your commission into cashflow and investing in, in single family, investing in syndications and funds and that sort of thing as well.

[00:51:29] Randal: So, um, love to have the guests. Or the listeners, you know, listen in on that as well. Follow 

[00:51:34] Jonathan Greene: over and check it out. All right, man. Well, I really appreciate it. I'm glad we could knock out this hour and have some fun with the Suzuki. It was a great time. I appreciate the time. Good coming on. Thanks, John. 

[00:51:46] Randal: Did you know that 80 percent of the agents we speak with got into real estate in order to gain passive income so they could obtain financial freedom and become work optional.

[00:51:54] Randal: If you want to stay up to date, the best way is to make sure you're subscribed. So if you haven't done that, go ahead and [00:52:00] do it now. We'll catch you on the next episode.