Boilers, Elevators, And Million-Dollar Mistakes, Oh My

Ready to scale beyond flips and small rentals into commercial real estate without stepping on landmines? We sit down with investor and educator Becky Lambert to unpack the blueprint: how to pick the right markets, structure safer debt, and build durable cash flow with tenants who actually stay. Becky has 16 years in commercial under her belt and breaks down the core framework with clarity—what NOI really tells you, how DSCR protects your downside, and why a 1% shift in cap rate can swing a valuation by millions.

We dig into the hidden systems that make or break deals: boilers, elevators, roofs, and power capacity. If you’ve ever inherited an old building and found out the hard way what “inspection missed” means, you’ll appreciate the playbook for due diligence that buys leverage at the negotiating table. Becky shares how to curate tenant mixes that pull traffic—think surgeons, PT, pharmacies, and synergistic retail near hospitals—and why staggering lease expirations matters more than squeezing the last dollar on day one. We also explore counter-cyclical assets like storage, the trade-offs in specialized warehouses, and how ground leases and cell towers can add surprising income streams.

For those itching to jump in, Becky explains why joining a syndication is a smart first step to learn IRR, equity multiple, and lender relationships from inside the deal. From selecting a market with real growth drivers to designing leases with escalations and creditworthy tenants, this episode gives you a clear path to move up the ladder without gambling your portfolio. If the numbers tell the truth, learn to listen—and let your strategy match what the market actually wants.

Enjoyed the conversation? Follow the show, leave a quick review, and share this episode with a friend who’s eyeing commercial deals. Your support helps more investors find the tools to grow wisely.

Chapters

• 2:09 Host Welcome And Guest Intro
• 3:30 Beckie’s Background And Where To Find Her
• 5:43 Why Commercial Real Estate And Women In The Space
• 8:03 Commercial Types Beyond Apartments
• 11:53 Market Selection And Asset Fit
• 14:01 Storage Units And Recession Dynamics
• 18:00 Warehouse Risk And Long Leases
• 22:34 Real-Life Lessons: Boilers And Elevators
• 29:27 First Steps: Partnering And Syndications
• 32:42 Demographics, Employers, And Demand
• 36:54 Vacancy, Absorption, And Broker Intel
• 41:01 Cap Rates, NOI, And Valuation
• 46:58 Value-Add: Raise Rents, Cut Expenses
• 51:11 Staggering Leases And Tenant Mix
• 55:12 Ground Leases And Cell Towers
• 59:27 Curating Downtown Tenants And Parking
• 1:04:40 Inspections, Big Repairs, And Negotiation
• 1:08:32 Coaching, Mentors, And Avoiding Costly Errors
• 1:12:11 Rapid-Fire Personal Q&A

Transcript

Beckie Lambert: 1:13

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Dwan Bent-Twyford: 1:15

Hey everybody. Welcome to the most wonderful real estate podcast ever. I'm your host, Dwan Bent-Twyford. I am America's most sought-after real estate investor. And I'm so excited to have you here for another episode. I have a super great guest for you today. You're gonna love her. I talked to her the other day. She's super amazing. Um, so if you want to find me, it's Dwanderful. So I took my name Dwan and Wonderful and I made a new word, which is Dwanderful. D-W A N D E R F U L Dwanderful.com, Instagram, Facebook, all the places. So I would like to welcome my awesome guest today, Miss Beckie How are you today?

Beckie Lambert: 1:53

I'm great. How are you, Dwan?

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 1:54

I'm good. It's good to see you. I did you hear? Oh, there we are. Okay. I think we're back. Sorry, folks. We I had to re- I had to do a whole thing here to get Miss Beckie back on to the call today. So I'm super glad that you're on today. And so I just like to kind of throw my guest like straight in. And I just ask you to give us your name, all the ways to find you on social media. So it's coming from you. It's at the top of the show notes. And then we'll go from there.

Beckie Lambert: 2:32

Perfect. My name is Beckie Lambert. That's spelled B-E-C-K-I-E. No, I did not pick the spelling of my name. That is my given name. I probably wouldn't have picked that if I'd had a choice because almost everyone spells it wrong. You can find me on Facebook and Instagram under Becky, B-E-C-K-I-E Kimber. That's like the rifle. And then Lambert, L-A-M-B-E-R-T. My husband and I run Real Estate to Freedom, which is both a podcast and an education series of both residential and commercial real estate investing.

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 3:05

Perfect.

Beckie Lambert: 3:06

I've been an investor for almost 22 years now, Dwan.

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 3:09

I know. And you're just like still a baby. You've been doing honored to hear that because my kids don't think I am. Kids never do. They're always like, you're so old. And it's like, hey, you're 42. You're a young little spy woman. So I so first of all, welcome to the case. I remember when I was a kid, I thought 20 was old. Oh, I know. I can I can actually remember. Like my family's in Tennessee. And you know, my grandparents were those grandparents that like when they were like 40, they looked like they were 100. They had the little white curls on their hair, and you know, like the old grandma-looking things. And I can remember being like 20, 15, 16, and being like, gosh, how are they still alive? They're like 50 years old. Like, how are they living? And then you get to be 66, you're like, hey, you know, 80 doesn't really look that bad anymore. So it's so funny. So I love the thing I love is that you do commercial. And uh, so y'all, I was on her podcast uh recently, and we talked about that there are not a lot of women still to this day, I don't think, in real estate investing. And there are very few women that really run like a whole commercial side. So I was super excited when I found out that's what you did. Because it's like honestly, I've had my podcast, I'm in my seventh season, and I think you are the only female commercial person I've interviewed.

Beckie Lambert: 4:37

Oh, I'm so honored. No, you're right, you've done a lot of from all men.

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 4:41

And I'm like, you know, I love all the boys, I love the boys' club, I love men, you know, all that, but it's uh, and I interview women a lot, but I nobody nobody in commercial. So so you definitely are the shining star in the commercial side of things. Thank you. You're the shining star. Okay, so tell me about your commercial. So you said you're working on um a you just said it, like a system to help people figure out.

Beckie Lambert: 5:08

We are educating people on what to look for in commercial because there's a lot of people who have invested in residential rents, residential real estate, whether that's fix and flips or long-term holds, um, either as long-term rental properties or short-term rentals like Airbnb, VRBO, things like that. And there's a lot of people I know who are in the residential world and they like it, but they're ready to scale to commercial. And there's just not a lot of resources out there to teach you how to how to scale it to commercial successfully. The thing with residential is as you know, you jump in and you you try to get educated, and a lot of it you just you learn as you go. And if you make a mistake, you might lose five or ten thousand dollars here or there, and it sucks, but you learn in the commercial space. That same mistake will lose you five or ten million.

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 5:54

Oh, yeah.

Beckie Lambert: 5:55

So the numbers are so much bigger and it's so much more terrifying for most people. But the reality is I love commercial real estate because I love numbers. Numbers don't lie, people sometimes do, but the financial statements will tell you the actual story of what's going on on a property, and I love it. I have been in commercial real estate for about 16 years now, actually, now that I do the math backward. I've been in real estate for almost 22 years, but 16 of us have been in commercial. And it's to me, it's so empowering. You can look at the numbers, you can see what it should sell for, you can see how the property is performing, and you can see whether or not you've got a value add proposition where you can raise the rents, lower the expenses, and make the property profitable. You fix and flip a house in, you know, two, three, six months. You typically fix and flip a commercial property over three to five years. But instead of making 20,000, you make like seven million.

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 6:51

Yeah, no, exactly. So I had told you before, and anyone that's watches me knows that my husband and I are basically rehabbing a town in Iowa. So when we first started buying all these buildings, we said, okay, we're making a five-year plan. This is our five-year plan. And then unfortunately, my husband ended up with a super rare blood cancer, and he had to have a full bone marrow transplant. And that was like two and a half years of like living in uh like a bubble. We had to live in special housing. So I told Bill, I said, Well, our five-year plan just turned into a 10-year plan because we had to take so much time and just let our buildings just sit there. Now, luckily, we were able to do that, which I feel like that would have that right there would put a lot of people out of business. But people are afraid. So when you're talking commercial, you're like strip malls, commercial building. Not, we're not apartments here, we're commercial.

Beckie Lambert: 7:45

Well, apartments are commercial, but yes, I do it all. Anything five units and above is considered commercial real estate, four units and below is considered residential. And the reason why that cut off in such a weird spot is because if you buy a fourplex, you can buy it under a conventional mortgage, either owner-occupied if you're going to live in one of the four units or as an investment property, but using a residential mortgage. As soon as you hit five units and above, it has to go to a commercial loan. But we specialize, I specialize in um multifamily apartments, office, retail, warehouse, storage units, trailer parks, RV pads, um, aircraft hangars.

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 8:24

Oh, aircraft hangers.

Beckie Lambert: 8:25

Yeah, I've done a variety of them.

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 8:27

So let's talk about all the things except for apartments because everybody and their brother, men, are always, oh, I do commercial. I have, you know, $500 million worth of hundred 200 unit apartments. And I feel like everyone's like, oh, that's commercial. I'm doing that. But I don't feel like a lot of people get into like we have uh buildings that are the first floor is rented space, the second floor are apartments, the third floor offices, the top is uh restaurants. So they're just there are lots and lots of different things. So I personally now I have never done a lot of commercial. I've only owned two commercial units back, like 20 years ago. I had two commercial um multi-use places that could be, you know, in the old in the old areas where they take houses, they zone them like commercials so you can put in like an office or a dentist or something like that. So when we started in Iowa, this was my first time diving into like straight up commercial, and I didn't really know anything about it. I was like, well, we're buying it cheap. It's gonna take $500,000 to get this building amazing and da-da-da. But we're keeping everything for like ever, forever to our kids, to our grandkids, like all the way forever. So when someone is like, okay, I want to buy commercial, let's say, I don't know, a building or a strip mall. You mentioned a lot of cool things there. I like the airport hangers, to be honest. It's like, you know, I never even thought about that.

Beckie Lambert: 9:57

It's a great way to go, but you it it is complicated. You have to jump through a lot of government hoops to get after because it's basically on government land. But yeah, those a lot of those aircraft hangers, if you're gonna do something of that nature, it'll cost you 200,000, 300,000 to build it. But a lot of them rent for anywhere from $10,000 to $30,000 a month. I bet. People need to park their aircrafts.

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 10:19

Yeah, when I lived in Florida, um, I mean, we still have a house there. When I live there full time, there are a lot of small little airports where people fly all their jets and stuff in. And I was so used to seeing those everywhere. Like they're just literally everywhere. And they're in Boca Raton, they're in Delray, they're just everywhere. And I get up here to Colorado and slide, I don't think I've ever even noticed one. But that's we live in the mountains too, so different story than what's happening in Denver. But so let's talk about commercial buildings. As I feel like people don't know about commercial buildings. So if I'm new and I've already followed you and you've given me advice, you've talked to me about cap rates, talking to me about this and that, like, what would be a good thing? And I know this is a very broad question, but what would be a good place for someone that has the guts to take a step up to commercial and not buy apartments, but something like a strip mall or a building? Like, what would somebody look for? I know again, broad question, but if you have the experience. So say I'm new, I have money, I have credit, I've got rentals, I'm like, eh, it's all boring. I want something exciting.

Beckie Lambert: 11:28

And I have a high-scale. Something sexy, okay. It depends on the market, really. It depends on where you're at. Because in certain markets, office space is really, really valuable and it's really great. And in other markets, office space is so oversaturated that you'll build an office building and it will sit vacant for three to five years before you get tenants in there. So I would say figure out what type of commercial asset you want to jump into and then find a market that fits that. Or you could find a market and figure out what commercial fits there if you're not super picky, but making sure the market's not oversaturated for that, because I feel the same way. I love storage units, but everybody wants to invest in storage units. Everybody. And so it's really hard to find one that actually is a good deal. Most of the ones I see are there's not really a value add proposition too much. They're they're okay prices. You're mostly buying them and the for the long-term purpose of putting it in your portfolio and recognizing that storage use storage units are often counter-cyclical. So, for example, if you have office space and retail space, they typically struggle during a recession because there's fewer people out buying stuff, right?

unknown: 12:38

Yes.

Beckie Lambert: 12:38

And people instead of renting office space, they're like, oh, I'll work from my bedroom and my house or whatever it needs to be. But storage units tend to be counter-cyclical in the fact that when a recession hits, people need to downsize their homes.

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 12:52

Yes, they do.

Beckie Lambert: 12:53

And when they downsize their homes, they've got too much stuff to fit. They move it into a storage unit. Storage units will often do better during a recession than in the other real estate asset classes. And so a lot of people buy them just for the purpose of diversifying their portfolio, which I'm a supporter of. But you have to know going into storage units, you're not often buying them at like this killer deal because you're competing with everybody else for them. And if you are buying them for a killer deal, it might be because that market is an area where people are moving away from. So evaluate the market, look at the population and the demographics of that particular area. Is it is it a population that is growing or is it a population that's shrinking? That'll tell you whether or not you want to do office retail or even warehouse stuff in that area. The population can be shrinking and still do warehouse as long as the warehouse has great access to infrastructure, um, great access to whatever you are looking to attract. So, for example, if you're gonna do warehouse, warehouse can be super profitable. But there are there's good and bad with all forms of commercial real estate, truthfully. So, like warehouse, for example, oftentimes you'll have one tenant. If that one tenant files bankruptcy and moves out, you could be vacant for a very long time. But other times you'll have a warehouse, you negotiate with a really good tenant, you get them in there, and they'll stay 30, 50 years.

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 14:12

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Beckie Lambert: 14:13

Pay rent like clockwork. It's amazing.

unknown: 14:15

They do.

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 14:16

You know, it's funny. I have had storage units in the past. Like when I was younger, I moved a lot and I'd have a house or an I just I don't know, I moved, so I put stuff in storage, and then I would figure out, I would realize like two years later, I never even took anything out of storage. Because you don't need it, but I know that people put them in there, go, I'm gonna come back. I need this, I need this, and then years later, you're like, you know what? I've never even gone there. I don't need anything that's in it. Let it go. And you know that show storage wars made storage units like so popular, but they're honestly full of junk.

Beckie Lambert: 14:50

Most of them are, yes.

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 14:51

Yeah, we bought one of the properties that we bought in Iowa, it was six parcels, and so it had uh 20-unit storage on it, it had a big vacant parking lot, and then there was to me what I feel like is one building, it was three. So it was like, you know, a uh mechanic place with like the big doors to work on, like motorhomes or something, a motorcycle shop and something else. And I was like, Well, how is this three buildings? It just it's the one giant building with like two walls there, but each one was its own building, its own parcel, and the storage and then the the parking. I was like, Well, okay, so you get six parcels, which in Iowa count because we get to vote for the things that happened downtown, so it gave me six extra votes, but then the buildings had been sitting empty forever. So we decided we're gonna take the storage units and we're gonna fix them up and put on better doors and open them all up, and they have stuff that's been in there for 10 years, and no one's ever even come back or made a payment or anything. I was just like, So then you think, oh, there's a lot of good stuff in there. No, they're full of junk.

Beckie Lambert: 15:59

So for the most part, storage wars the the TV series. I've seen a little bit of it, but I don't do much TV, I'll be honest. But for the most part, that's the glorified version that makes it seem really exciting and sexy. They're full of it to a large extent when you are opening storage units. I mean, you've probably seen it. Anyone who's done a lot of storage units, most of the time you're not finding valuable stuff in there. If there was valuable stuff in there, they would have already pulled it out and used it to pay the rent. And use it to pay. That's right. Not always, but usually. A lot of times you open, you're like, wow, every newspaper article for the last 70 years. That's great. Where's the recycle bin?

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 16:37

Ah, I agree with you so much on that. Now, I like commercial, I like uh, so we don't have like a strip mall. We have one one of our buildings, it's actually the whole entire block. So all downstairs is retail, and then like I said, apartments and then um little businesses upstairs. So, like in a building like that, like I felt like that was a good investment for us, you know, brings a lot of money. It's obviously super, super long term. So, if someone wanted commercial, would they want to find like maybe a vacant strip mall or would they want to build something? Like, what would a person initially want that would be the easiest for a just think newbie to get in?

Beckie Lambert: 17:16

Yeah. Well, I think your easiest way to get in is to partner with other people who are doing it and learn the ropes first so that you can see how this works without being the only one putting all the money in. You can join into a syndication and put in, say, 100,000 or 500,000, and you're a part owner, but you're not the only one managing the whole thing. You learn how you how this works as you go through the process because you need to learn how to read and understand financial statements. You need to know how to manage the projects. You got to build relationships with realtors and brokers who really have a lot of existing great relationships with tenants who are gonna want to move in that space. The bigger the tenants, the better, as far as like if it's a mom and pop clothing boutique versus like being able to attract like a national tenant. Your national tenant has a much better chance of paying rent every month. Yeah, or something like a food chain or some food chain or something that's just something big. Because your mom and pop retail clothing store has a higher chance of going bankrupt because of companies like Amazon. I'm not opposed to Amazon, but you can see why the traditional retail space struggles if you try to just maintain your traditional retail space. So if you want to make money in the commercial real estate, what you really need to do is find what works in your market where there is a demand and fill that demand. To a large extent, I don't care whether you buy a vacant retail strip center, or if you buy an old office building that's vacant, or if you buy one that's full of tenants. If the numbers make sense, that's where you go. But you've got to understand the market, the demographics of your market, what's going on, the population is an in growth, and is the population growing because of births or in migration? And the reason I bring that up is not that I'm opposed to migration or anything, but because you'll look, sometimes you'll have a town where all of a sudden there's a lot of people moving to it. And investors will think, wow, I'm gonna build something here. But they haven't dove in deep enough to figure out that people are moving there because of, for example, there's one employer and it's really big here, and people are moving here for this one employer. Well, if that one employer changes shop, all of a sudden you have a whole bunch of vacant space and you have a population that's declined drastically. So, for example, oil fields is a really common example of that. The oil, the oil industry is booming. Everybody moves to these certain cities to go work in these oil fields, and one year later, six months later, two years later, oil's not as profitable. They shut down those oil rigs and the town becomes a ghost town. And you now have a beautiful strip mall in a vacant place. In a ghost town.

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 19:49

You know, I remember, I don't know, it was some type of like this was years ago. I don't even know. It might could have been seven, eight, nine years ago. It was like some type of a UPS type of something. And 90% of the people in that town worked for that company, like 700 people, and they closed. Gosh, I can't remember what it was, but I remember just thinking like, wow, all those people, like the whole town depends on this place, and they closed or moved or went out of state or whatever they did. And all of a sudden, everybody didn't have a job. And then all the other jobs were things like restaurants and you know, you're like supporting things, but the big place They're supporting that one job though. They're supporting that job. And gosh, what was it? It was like I feel like it was like a it wasn't UPS, it was a parcel company. And I just remember thinking, like, gosh, we should go there and like check things out. But then I thought, okay, but that is supporting everyone. So then now who's gonna go to the restaurants, who's gonna go to the boutiques, who's gonna go to the coffee shop, and like half the things in that town went out of business just in a year or two.

Beckie Lambert: 21:26

Right. And that's why it matters to evaluate the location, the diversity of employment sources, look at the infrastructure, look at what are the what are the demands that are gonna bring people to here. And is it going to be long term? If you have a diversity in in employment sources, do you have people of a variety of different ages? Because, for example, if you have a town where almost everybody there is 70 or older, and you don't have a lot of younger people moving in, you got to know at some point they're all gonna die. The population is not gonna be around for them.

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 21:58

And their kids are gonna inherit it, and it's gonna be like in the Carolinas, and the kids live in New York, and they're like, oh, we don't want that. We just want to get rid of everything.

Beckie Lambert: 22:07

Right. And if it's a place where the next generation wants to be moving, great, then that's probably a good place to invest. Like I mentioned, I'm not opposed to different people, different ages. It's not that. But as an investor, you and I both know you want to be where the market is continually cycling itself naturally and replacing itself. Yes. Um, I mean, there's so many things to look at, but they're all really good. Location, market, uh, population, how are things like that going? And then look at saturation of whatever asset class you are looking at. If you're going into a market and there's already a lot of office space that's vacant, just because there's a lot of office space doesn't mean it's a bad investment. If there's a lot of vacant office space, you can find this out pretty easily. You talk to local brokers who are your top brokers. Don't talk to the brokers who don't know much. Yes. In most every market, you're gonna have three to four brokers who really kind of run the show in that specific asset class.

Speaker 2: 23:03

Yes.

Beckie Lambert: 23:03

That's who you are looking for. Talk to those brokers and find out what's the average vacancy rate, or they call it an absorption rate. What it means is how long does this asset class typically sit vacant? And just know in the commercial space, this is not like um not like your apartments.

unknown: 23:20

No.

Beckie Lambert: 23:21

In an apartment building, if they're like, oh, three to four months, you're like, wow, that's such a long vacancy. And for an apartment, that a three to four month absorption rate is kind of high. Most of them are one to two months. In a commercial space, it's not at all uncommon, um, depending on the asset class. Like, for example, office space, two to three years is pretty common. So you got to make sure you've got the cash flow to cover that property for two to three years of vacancy. Yeah. Um, retail, sometimes two to three is pretty common. Warehouse is sometimes five to seven, depending on the and the reason why, because warehouse is very specialized. If you build a warehouse, I mean, let me give you a great example because it's so specialized, it really makes sense. Um, for example, if Facebook is building a data center, this is office or this is uh warehouse-based commercial real estate. Facebook's gonna come in, they usually sign 10 to 20 year leases, but you have to put in a whole ton of power because they have a lot of computers they gotta run. You also have a have to have a lot of water because the water cools down the equipment. When Facebook leaves that building 10, 20 years later, you have a building with a whole lot of water and a whole lot of power that may or may not be needed by any other company. I don't know.

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 24:40

Does that make sense? You know, one of the biggest things I learned because I've never bought so in Clinton, Iowa, we're buying like old, they're all really old buildings. So most of them were uh like you know, like a big long side on the town, and there's three or four little buildings, they have heat and air. But we bought a couple big buildings, and I learned about boilers. Oh, I bet that was fun. Oh, well, it was because one of the boilers, we didn't do something right with it. The guy didn't do it, and it like blew up. That thing cost sixty thousand dollars to replace. Like it was like 30 to fix, but it was already like 25 years old. 60,000 bucks. I'm like, oh my god. But so then we're like, okay, you know what? We'll just we'll this is the time to put in heat and air for like each unit, so they all pay their own. But then that was like 150,000. And we're like, oh, what the hell? So we had to buy a new boiler, and then now I was like, okay, I didn't even know what a boiler was, and it's in two of our buildings. So now we're like, okay, if we're getting so we just recently bought um an old Masonic temple, and we're gonna try and like rent it out for um like the the parties, the bar misfas, uh the I can't think of what the word is, you know, for the Mexican girls, the Hispanic girls from it. What is it? Quinceniera. It means 15. Yeah, yeah. I I I have such a hard time with that word because there's such a high population for that. Well, that one, it's like half of it's in a boiler and half of it has separate heat and air. And we were like, okay, we need to seriously get all this checked out because of the other one when it like blew a gasket, we're like, oh, we'll just fix it. It's like, no, you can't fix it, it's too old. Like, oh my God. So that was like a $60,000 lesson for us because neither of us have ever owned buildings that old. And we're like, oh, you just turn the a guy comes and turns it on October 1st and they turn it off, April, and it just sits, and you know, and it was so expensive. And it went out in like the dead of the winter. Always in Iowa, where it's like 10 below zero, and the guys couldn't put a new one in for like three weeks. So we have to buy everyone about we're buying them all space heaters, we're sending them all pizza every day, we're doing everything to keep everybody warm because I can't get it fixed overnight. And and people, and we were like, listen, you guys don't have to pay rent for these few months. And when I mean, we bought like 50 space heaters, we bought so much stuff for people, just so they wouldn't like, well, first of all, we would get the building like tagged. And I get people living in there with families and kids, and there's no heat, and they don't just come the next day and like fix your boiler. It's a giant thing. And we were like, okay, so now you know, we're more obvious and we're more aware, but if I had known more about commercial, I would have known to look for that. And we didn't know, we're just like, oh, yeah, we're gonna buy all these buildings, these are all great. Uh and then no, it's it's a whole thing. There was just like so there were my learning curve was so big. And the funny thing is, is you know, Bill and I both have been investing for like 35 years. And I said, Who do we know that does like commercial that we can talk to before we start buying all these buildings? And there was really like nobody. We looked around, I called a couple RIA groups. Do you have anyone that like specializes in commercial? And like, ah, we'll just you know, how hard, how hard could it be? We'll figure it out. Let me tell you something. We have five years, I've had so many learning curves. It's like, holy cow, people just can't go buy stuff like that. Well, well, now you do know somebody. Well, I do. Well, now if I had known you five years ago, I would have been like, Becky, listen, help me out. I've I'm buying all these buildings, tell me what I'm doing. And then a couple other ones had like air, but they didn't have heat, or they had heat, but not air. It's just like, and then the water, and then so you have to, so we have to pay the every building that we have that's big, we have to pay the water for the whole building. So we pay everybody's water, and then as we do, as each person moves out, we take each apartment or or office space one by one and give them their own central heat and air, and you know, so everyone is responsible to help us cut back and eventually get rid of having that boiler. But oh my gosh, the first we had it like two years when that thing went out, and I was like, How much do those things cost? And how long is it gonna take? And it was freezing. And I was like, Well, we can't put everybody in a hotel, and you know, so it cost us a fortune to fix it and to keep everybody warm. And I kept sending people like pizzas and food and just like trying to keep everybody happy so nobody would report us because it was right freezing.

Beckie Lambert: 29:28

So the timing of those going out is terrible, and yeah, a lot of your older office retail warehouse space all are on boilers.

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 29:37

Yeah, and I was like, What's a boiler? And Bill's like, yeah, what? And I was like, How do we neither one of us know this and being an investing for decades? Like, neither of us knew this. And I thought I would pay someone to go to their boot camp and hire them to mentor me to teach me everything that we just learned because it costs us a lot of money.

Beckie Lambert: 29:55

And now right, and even when you try to teach people stuff, there's still stuff you're gonna learn as you go along. But like the idea of how to evaluate a commercial property what is a debt service coverage ratio, what is an IRR? Well, let's talk about that.

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 30:08

These are all important to know because people don't know about cap rates and the servicing. So give it, and I know this I know these questions are super general because I don't have like a specific building we can talk about, but like the cap rates and the servicing. Like, tell me to the new people what does the service what does that mean? So a debt service. I know what it means now because right, you do now. A debt service coverage ratio.

Beckie Lambert: 30:33

It's just a glorified way of saying can this property cover the expenses and the mortgage on the property? And if so, by how much? A debt service coverage ratio is important for a variety of reasons. It tells you whether or not this project is gonna cash flow for that.

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 30:48

Okay, and so what would be like a decent debt service ratio? Is there a ratio? Yep.

Beckie Lambert: 30:55

You want at least a 1.25. That's your minimum. 1.25%. Nope, but just 1.25 times. I'll I'll tell you how to compute it and then I'll show you how that how that pans out. Above a lot of things, you're gonna be teaching me right now. And you know, I might even have a slide I can kind of show you just briefly because I did a training on it recently. Um, but essentially you're taking your financial statements from the property. A good financial statement, guys, is worth its money. It's so worth the money. People who are trying to sell you a property who have garbage financials, the one and only thing you know for sure is you have no idea how this property is doing, and neither do they. They may not even be lying to you, they just don't know. Good quality financial reporting is huge in this industry. Um, if they have terrible financial reporting, you have to back into it and then take a big discount on the property with the knowledge. That you don't know what you're getting into. But basically, it's the income on the property. I'm going to use an apartment building as an example because it's simplified, but the same applies to office retail warehouse. Okay. You take all the rents from all the tenants, you subtract from it the expenses, like your accounting, your office manager, your snow removal, your landscaping, all those kinds of expenses, not including the debt on the property. That one's separate, okay? Okay. You have rents minus expenses. What's left over is called the net operating income or your NOI. That NOI is really crucial in commercial real estate for a variety of reasons. You take the NOI and you divide it, or net operating income, and you divide it by the debt payments that you have to pay for the property during that same time period. So in a very, very simplified manner, basically you're taking your NOI, divide it by the debt. You want to make sure you're comparing apples to apples. So typically you're going to want to do like a year's worth, 12 months worth of rent minus 12 months worth of expenses and divide it by the payments on the property. This ratio, it's not a percentage, it's a ratio. You want it to be at at least a 1.25. What that means is you have 25% more than the debt payment you need to make. So you have a little bit of a 25% cushion here for boilers that go out, or electrical that needs to be replaced, or repairs to the property, or cash flow to you personally, which ideally that's where we want it to go, but it doesn't always go there. You know, repairs to the roof, all those other kinds of things that are normal on a property, any property, residential or commercial. The death service coverage ratio is not often used in the residential world. And I keep pounding the door telling people you need to be looking at this. Yes. Because it matters, it tells you whether or not your property is cash flowing. If your property is not cash flowing and it's not likely to cash flow soon, you should sell that sucker and put it into something that does because you are draining your bank account for no particular reason. For no reason.

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 33:52

I tell people all the time, you got to figure out the cap rate. They go, What's the cap rate? I'm like, well, it's like the percentage, and and you know, it's funny. I used to teach a session in our trainings on how to do cap rates, and I haven't taught that session in so long, I would have to actually go back to my own programs to repeat that because when you don't figure it out for a long time, it's like, I don't remember.

Beckie Lambert: 34:14

It's in there. No, it really matters. Let's walk through what a cap rate is because it really matters. It does a cap rate is short for capitalization rate. What that means is it's a really fancy way of saying what rate are investors willing to pay on this property. It's not an interest rate, but essentially it's the premium that they're willing to pay. And it doesn't mirror exactly, meaning it doesn't go up at the same ratio that the interest rates go up. But there is a very distinct link between the two. And the reason why, as you know, is if interest rates are low, if I go to buy a property for $5 million, if interest rates are low, my monthly payment on this property is going to be significantly lower than if interest rates are high. So if my payment is, you know, $105,000, which it wouldn't be on $5 million, it'd be more like that's more like a $10 million, but you know, say $105,000 is the monthly payment, depending on where the interest rate is. If interest rates go up by 2%, your monthly payment will likely go up from $105,000 to closer to like $138,000. That could make or break a property really, really quickly. And it doesn't just break the property. Oftentimes it's oh crap, now I got to come up with $10,000 extra every single month to feed this property for the foreseeable future because as interest rates go up, typically they stay up for a while. They do. The feds don't just yo-yo those very often. It creates too much. Um, I guess the best word for it would be post-traumatic stress disorder amongst investors. There's too much PTSD in the past.

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 35:54

And then having all those billings sitting there for like two years, and then we got back in. I'm like, gosh, I feel like I seriously have PTSD from all of this. Too much stuff happened in a short amount of time. Luckily, we had investors that had worked with their hey, listen, while you guys are doing this, don't worry about payments, don't worry about anything. We got you. You just, you know, get yourself healthy. So, and but that's because we had a lot of personal investors, not like so many banks where they're like, yeah, we don't care. You miss a few payments or taking out the property back. We don't care. So we we were very blessed by a very a lot of like really amazing people, but that's because we bought the buildings from the people and had them owner finance buildings to us. And I don't know that that everybody gets that lucky, but we went into a town with a lot of boarded up windows and a lot of like 75-year-old widows. Oh, my husband did that, he's been dead a decade. I'm just letting the it's just been sitting and sitting and sitting. So we were very lucky to get 90% of our stuff owner-financed, which I don't think that's uh I'm not common than commercial place. Or that that's not normal. So you that's people that were like, I just need to get rid of the property. And then when Bill got sick, they were like, hey, don't worry about it, we're fine. But now they're like, okay, you're back, he's working, everything's fine, let's go. Money, money, money, make the payments, do the stuff, catch up on all the things. So, and then you know, there's like the taxes, and we had two of our buildings have elevators. Well, so I learned so many good lessons. Oh, those are expensive. You got to have them inspected, and they have to do this and this and this, and one of them we didn't know about, and it got shut down. And I was like, Okay, well, what is that? So then, because it's in Clinton Island, we got to get a guy from Chicago, he's gotta come, he's got to do this and this and this, and he just tagged. And if it's tagged, people can't use the elevators to get up to the second or third floor. And you got old people, and they're just like, I can't make the stairs. So I was like, Oh, well, okay, so now I know check the roofs, check the boilers, check the elevators.

Beckie Lambert: 37:49

Yeah, your elevators, depending on the size of the elevator. Um, I mean, they have residential elevators, but if you're in a commercial building, you're almost never gonna have a residential elevator. They only hold like three people. Yeah, the commercial elevators run anywhere from a hundred thousand to two million. There's probably even higher if you're looking at like a 50-story big office building in New York City. But most of the ones I see, you know, 100,000 is like your bare minimum.

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 38:14

Yeah, I have a four-story building and the elevator. Like the guy tagged and said, What are you doing? He goes, Well, you didn't that whoever had it before didn't get this inspection, that inspection, didn't update this and this and this and this. And we're like, okay, how much is that gonna cost? And it's like, holy cow. So I mean, I guess Bill and I have a really high risk factor because we've been investing for 30 to do it, it'd be fun. And I said to him, I said, I feel like a new investor when doing pretty much our commercial because well, because I am, because I've never had a building with an elevator, and we have two. And you know, if one little thing goes out, then you don't have access, and then you lose your handicap access, and then it's like this whole giant thing, and I'm like, my gosh, what is the deal with elevators? So, so many lessons. I could write a bat book about all the things that we did wrong. What not to do in commercial room study? Oh, we have three buildings in the elevator. Oh, I'm not even joking. So now we're like, you know, redoing the insides and making them all fancy and bougie so people feel like they're you know, pride coming up onto their apartment floor and things like that. But my goodness, it's like I I tell people, if you and I tell people this all the time, because I we specialize more in like newer investors. And I'm like, if you ever want to buy something commercial or something big, you need someone besides us to teach you that because we learn everything by trial and error, and I don't know enough to teach it to another person. And now that I have you, I'm gonna be like, listen, Becky's the only girl you're gonna go to, forget all the other people. I don't care who they are, you're gonna work with her because she'll take care of you. Because you know, we have like the same moral compass. And I told Bill, I said, I mean, we have programs on wholesaling and short sales and scripts and NLP and bankruptcy, and we have all these programs that are. I said, I don't know enough to even teach commercial to another person. I can just say, watch out for these 10 things. But how to get in, I don't even know.

Beckie Lambert: 40:11

It it is challenging. The reality is once you do it a few times, you it's just like a fix and flip. You start to see the same things over and over again. Once you flipped a meth house, you get pretty good identifying what a meth house looks like. Yes. You know what I'm saying? Oh, yeah, I know for sure. It's kind of the same concept in commercial. You're like, oh, I've seen that before. I know what that looks like. Yes.

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 40:30

Now, now I feel like if I went to buy anything, I told Bill I said, look, so I made him promise because he bought two buildings in the last six months. I'm like, listen, for the love of God, stop buying buildings. We don't need, yeah, I know, but they offered them. I was like, listen, stop buying buildings. We have to get all the other ones fixed. So our five-year plan is a 10-year plan. I'm like, dude, we're gonna be like 75 when we get all these buildings done. Like, stop buying stuff. But like recently, a friend of ours had a building and she's sick. She's like, I'll just own and finance it to you guys, so you can just have it. And I was like, oh my God. So, like, you don't want to say no, and the building's beautiful and it's perfect. But it's like, now I gotta get another space rented and do whatever needs to be done to get people in there. And I'm like, stop buying buildings. I said, 28 buildings is all any person needs to own.

Beckie Lambert: 41:18

I don't know, I'd love to make it to 200 at this point. Yeah, I mean, commercial is fun, but like we talked a little bit about what a debt service coverage ratio is. That's important to know. You need to know what a cap rate is, and cap rates are important. Um, they really, really matter a lot because it changes the value of the property drastically. I've been hearing pull up a slide that I don't know if I can even show, but it it's important to understand because of how much it changes everything. It's so important. It's so important. The value based on the cap rate is absolutely huge. When you when you move from one cap rate, even a 1% change in the cap rate, depending on the because the value of the property, here's why it matters. The value of the property is based on the net operating income. We just talked about why that one's so important. That's your rents minus your expenses, not including the debt. Okay. Rents minus expenses, that NOI divided by the cap rate, that tells you what the property should sell for. Oh, yeah, okay. It's that simple. It's really that simple. Now, if I do is there are a few factors that change it, like your the condition of the elevators, HVAC system, or boilers, um, the condition of the electrical, the condition of the roof. But for the most part, that like that tells you what it sells for. And the cool thing about this one is that's the same, whether it's office, retail, warehouse, multifamily, storage units, RV parks, aircraft hangars. They're they're all they all sell based on the NOI divided by the cap rate. So in the commercial space, I don't have to go in and pick out curtains and hope the new buyers are gonna love what I picked out.

Speaker 2: 42:55

Exactly.

Beckie Lambert: 42:56

Which is not my thing. I like numbers. They're they're not they're not subjective. Like the interior design is so hard for me. I have no idea. But commercial, there's basically two ways to make money. You can raise the rents, you can lower the expenses. Well, I mean, or you can hope cap rates go down, but that one you're basically just praying for cap rates to go down. You really cannot control cap rates. So you can control the rents, you can control the expenses. So raise the rents, lower the expenses, sell the property. You just flip to commercial property. And the cool thing in commercial, this is the same with all commercial, including apartment buildings. If you can raise the rent and lower the expenses without remodeling the property, you don't have to remodel the property. So sometimes it's just a matter of the current management company. Sucks. Yes, and they haven't been managing it well, or they're not taking care of the tenants, and so tenants are moving out. Like, we literally just bought an apartment building in Texas where the tenants were moving out because the current owners hadn't replaced the AC units. You are in Texas, you have to have good AC units. It's so hot there. Like, this is an apartment building. It's like, guys, this this should not be rocket science. Good AC units are gonna matter a lot in Texas. Yes. Put in new AC units, the tenants are like, oh, yeah, okay, we'll stay, we're happy. Yeah, that was not even rocket science. But see, if the AC units were in good condition, and sometimes it's that the property managers are just not receptive. The people are calling saying, hey, there's a problem with my hot water heater, and no one responds, no one responds, no one responds. Eventually the tenants feel like, well, I guess we better go find somewhere else because these aren't being taken care of. And it's something as easy as lighting the pilot light.

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 44:33

Yeah. On the hot water heater. It's like, yeah, really? Yeah. It's funny because one of the one building that we bought, it's called the Tucker Building. So the one building, it's like I said, it's a whole entire city block, the whole thing downstairs and all the apartments. And we have tenants that came with the building that are still there. And we're just like, hey, listen, you know, we're gonna fix this or do that or update people's air, just update things. And we have people that have lived there for years and years and years, but we we have we see them because you know when we go to Iowa, like you know, you see them at the grocery store, like they're there. And but we tell my thing is like if anything happens at all, I have a property manager and she is a bulldog, she will get something fixed the same day if possible, or at least the next day. Because when you don't do that, people do move out. Right. You're giving them a reason to move out, you're giving them to your people, and they'll take care of you. Yep. So that's what I always do. I always try to get people to sign long leases as long as possible, and we make everything nice, and we're like, is there anything you want, you know, to make this place perfect so it's like your home? And we've had people that have been in some of our buildings that were there when we bought them. And then when someone does move out, then we go like remodel the whole apartment so it's like, you know, bougie and we paint the ceilings to make them all, we're making them like that loft vibe that everybody likes. Like, oh my gosh, this is like a loft. This is so great. And so we you know, we update them. But the ones that are there, it's like, no, we just make sure they're happy. If they need new carpet, whatever they need, like we just take care of everybody because if you don't take care of them in just a couple months, even like the commercial people, you know, they'll move out.

Beckie Lambert: 46:08

The cool thing with commercial is like on an apartment building, most people sign a 12-month lease. On an apart on a commercial building, like an office retail warehouse, they often sign 10, 20, 30. I have seen 50-year leases. Nice. Uh, especially with your larger companies like your McDonald's or Chick-fil-A's, those are really common in that in those industries. And the cool thing with that is you've got a set tenant for 50 years, as long as you take care of them. Um, now, McDonald's, for example, that they tend to do ground leases, and we probably don't have time to go into a ground lease, but a ground lease is really cool. What that means is I own the build, I own the land. McDonald's builds the building, they pay all the cost to build it, and at the end of 50 years on the ground lease, I now own the building. I say thank you so much for building a building that was amazing of you, given it's a 50-year-old building, it needs some work. But I got it for free, so who cares? Yes.

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 47:01

You know what else I found out? There's so many things we learned. Uh, one of the buildings we bought was the six-story building, and it's the tallest building in like the downtown area. And there were all these telephone towers on the top. Oh, those are so pro profitable. Well, I didn't know anything about those either. So there was like six of them. So we called them and they're like, Oh, yeah, they have like these 50-year leases. And so then I have a company that says, Hey, we'll buy 10 years of your lease for this amount of cash. So I was like, Okay, explain that to me. So I'm telling you, we learned so many things. So a couple of them, uh, one's like a Verizon Tower, and it's like it's not like a 50-year lease. They have a whole like it on the top of the building, and then on the fifth floor, these towers have rooms that are just full of like just equipment. And they have all these special air conditioners to keep everything cool, and like no one can really go into the uh like on that floor. It's every space is just full of acute computers and equipment and all these AC and all this stuff because you know it's running their tower. And I was like, So this company's like, yeah, we buy it, we'll buy 10 years out of your lease. And so I'm like, okay, so you buy 10 years, so I have a 40-year lease left. You buy 10 years, so for 10 years I don't get any rent, but I get this cash now, and then I pick up with the rent. So I didn't know about those. So we were like, hey, let's do that. So we sold a couple of the lease, like 10-year increments, and then used the cash to model the building. And I was like, Well, I didn't even know that was a thing.

Beckie Lambert: 48:34

Commercial is so creative, there's so many things you can do. I mean, yeah, cell phone towers, they're pretty popular on top of the building, but you have to be the first one to it because they don't need two on the same block. Exactly. Exactly. And you have to have a certain type of roof for it to work. But I mean, yeah, there's a lot of things that go into it. On the commercial space, you got to know what you're doing in order to make it profitable. Your debt service coverage ratio is an important part. You got to know what it should be selling for based on the net operating income divided by the cap rate. Um, you gotta know when the leases expire. Because if you've got an office building with 12 tenants and all of them expire within 12 months of each other, you could have a problem on your hands with no income coming in. But no, so find a way to stagger those leases, see if you can give a a discount to talk one or two of them or three of them into signing their lease early so that you don't have a vacancy. So you've got at least three of them moving over. Try to see what you can do to stagger those leases. You really don't want them all terminating at the same time, unless your goal is to tear the building down and build something new.

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 49:34

Yeah, exactly. Now, do you do you guys have uh syndication? Do you offer syndication options for people?

unknown: 49:40

Oh, yeah.

Beckie Lambert: 49:41

My husband and I are capital raisers. We have syndications on commercial space. Most of the syndications we've done is in apartment buildings. And the main reason for that is that's the easiest for most people to understand. It mirrors what their experience is, either as a residential real estate investor or as a person who owns a home that they live in. It feels familiar. And so most people are apt to jump into commercial by way of apartment buildings first.

Speaker 2: 50:08

Yeah.

Beckie Lambert: 50:08

It is not the only profitable niche out there, but it's the one that's the easiest to understand. Most people, just with no experience, aren't going to jump in and do an office space or a retail space because they hear horror stories of, oh, you don't want to own retail space because since Amazon came along, retail is all bad. Well, retail is not all bad. There's a lot of retail or office, or that's kind of a quasi between the two. Like a great example. I tell people, find what your market needs. Here's a really great one that worked really well is near a hospital that specializes in, say, uh orthopedic surgery, heart surgery, things like that. If there's a space, if there's a demand you could possibly put in, you want to own office space there. You want to bring the orthopedic surgeons from that hospital, make their office space across the street so it's easy for them, give them a good discount on the rent. Yeah. So they want to do it, especially your top performing orthopedic hospital. Because a hospital might have, like, or your top performing orthopedic surgeons, a hospital might have 10 orthopedic surgeons, but there's usually one or two that are just your top performers that really keep the place busy. Those are the ones you want. You put them in your office space across the street at a discount rent. Suddenly you can put in at top dollar rent all of the businesses that are synergistic. Meaning, if I'm an orthopedic surgeon, who's gonna want to be next door to me? Oh, well, what about physical therapists? Yes. What about companies that provide prosthetics and splints and all those kind of devices that they're likely to need? What about pharmacies? Yeah, they often do want to be right next door to the orthopedic surgeon. I mean, think about who wants to be next to these people. Like, remember the old, old movie? Uh I think it's called Field of Dreams. If you build it, they will come. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, create a reason why they want to come. Yeah. Put companies together and throw in the middle somebody that will attract the rest of who you're trying to attract. That's an easy example. It is not the only one. There's a lot of situations like that where you want to bring in people who want to be around that. So, for example, another one we did was an office building where we put in a uh it was actually like a plastic surgeon, a really good plastic surgeon, which sounds crazy, but then surrounding everybody else wanted to be in, you had a dentist who specializes in cosmetic dentistry. Oh yeah. And you have a company that specializes in like designer clothing. Oh yeah. And you have, do you see what I'm saying? Like, no, no, no, I do. Like people are gonna like, oh wow, well, next door we have this. Let's go check out that. Companies that are gonna benefit from being next door to each other, put them all together. And think that through. Be intentional when you're designing retail space. Office space often will work really well that way too, because like the doctor's offices, that's all considered office space. But there's a lot of crossover between retail and office. Like, okay, if you have a dentist office here and you have a designer clothing and handbag here, is this office space or is it retail? It doesn't matter.

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 53:12

Not really, it's making money.

Beckie Lambert: 53:13

I don't care what it's called.

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 53:14

You know what? That's so true because I had a hip replacement two years ago. And so it's at the hospital where I had the surgery, and then next to the building, and on the fifth floor is they're the Western Orthopedic. So in Colorado, they're like the top place where like all the football teams, everybody goes there. So on the floor, so my doctor's office is in the building next door, like you said. Well, right next to that is the physical therapy room. And then one floor down is the pharmacy and all of it. And I was like, Oh, that's so nice. You can just go there and I can see the doctor, I can get my x-rays and get my checkup, I can do my physical therapy, I can fill my prescriptions right there. And I thought, this is so then I'm like, so then I asked the doctor, I'm like, hey, listen, we own commercials, and that. So tell me the deal. He goes, Well, he goes, we have like 15 orthopedics. So he goes, I do hips, and this one other one does shoulders and elbows and knees, da da da. So we all got this building, and we're all in the building, and everything that you need for each and everything is like all right there. And I thought, man, this is really a brilliant idea. Yeah, and it's a five-story building, it's got its own parking garage. They just built a new parking garage. I think, oh that's a really great idea. So the guy Brian, that Brian White, that who did my hip, who actually owns the whole thing, he goes, Oh no, I I just got all these different hip replacement, arm, shoulder, whatever. I put them all here, they all work here. We all have a space at the hospital, and I put everything that everybody needs in this building. And I'm telling you, and you walk on every floor, and there's something for like every single thing. I was like, this is a great idea. And I thought, you know what? We should do that.

Beckie Lambert: 54:51

Energize, bring people, be the place everyone wants to come to. Um, because that's how you make money in in office retail warehouse space is well, actually, probably not warehouse, that's separate. An office and retail space, be the place everyone wants to come to. Create an environment where people want to come.

Speaker 2: 55:09

Yes.

Beckie Lambert: 55:10

That's where you will get top dollar in rent, and that's where it will stay if you be the place they want to come. So be creative, as creative as you need to be. I mean, I've seen as creative as like there's a swing dancing company here, and next door you have like a place that sells cowboy boots and cowboy hats and all that kind of fun attire. And next to it is like a Mexican restaurant that's got a mix between Tex Mex. I mean, you be as creative as you need to be, depending on what your market will bear. That exact model that I just talked about may or may not be super popular in downtown LA, but in Texas it's gonna go really well. Oh, wow to move your market and know what you're looking at, whether or not find what's missing and fill the gap. Yeah.

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 55:56

One thing I've learned with our little downtown area, because it's only three blocks wide and three blocks deep. So this is like the downtown. So we've had, like we had a guy that owned a mattress company. He said, I want to rent one of your spaces. I said, Listen, we're trying to help rejuvenate the downtown. And rejuvenating the downtown does not require a mattress company. It needs to be a bar, a restaurant, a barbecue, a place to eat, or an antiquement, or a place to shop. Like, you know, and I'm like, so Bill and I are like, well, we can't just rent every space to whoever wants it. We have to intentionally do things that will bring people to the downtown. So we've turned down, I mean, we had a chiropractor that wanted to rent a space. I was like, no, because at night when people are down here for the music and the food and the dining, my space isn't gonna draw nobody into it. So that doesn't help grow things. And so we we rejected a vacuum cleaner company, a mattress company, like a sewing. It's like seriously, people today will just throw something away and buy something new. They don't fix stuff, you know, for and that. So so we had to be intentional about all the spaces that we have, who goes in there, because the ones in the main downtown need to attract more people to the downtown to make our buildings have more value, as well as everybody else's buildings. So we've said no to a lot of people, and then now we got like a hot dog shop and we have a Mexican restaurant and we have a barbecue place coming in. I'm like, yeah, those are things that help my little, you know, slice of pie right there. But yeah, because people are just like, oh, I just gotta rent the space to whoever, but you have to be more intentional. If you really want to fill everything up, it it's gotta definitely be more intentional. And it's hard to say no when people offer you a lot of money. So, oh, I could use the money and they'll sign like a five-year lease. And you're like, nah, we don't need mattresses in the downtown. Like, we just don't.

Beckie Lambert: 57:41

Right. And sometimes, sometimes the exception to that, which in your case it doesn't sound like this would be the case, but some of the exceptions to that might be when you're looking at your property and identifying what's your parking ratio for building. Yes. If you don't have enough parking and there's no way to improve that, the answer to that is find synergistic benefits that don't bring people at the same time. So, like your chiropractor will have a lot of people during the day and the restaurant will have more people at night. Great. Your parking ratio tends to do a lot better because the chiropractor is going to close up shop around the time that the restaurant becomes busiest.

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 58:17

And I know they don't bring business to each other, but they can share a parking lot and then I also learn how lazy people are because on the three-block area, um, there's parking like you know, like um where you pull your car in like sideways in front of all the buildings. Yeah, the 45-degree block. And then they went down the street, they tore a building down and made parking. And people don't want to park. This is three blocks we're talking. Three blocks. People don't want to park down here and have to walk the blocks. It's like, dude, it's three blocks. Well, if I can't get right in the front, I don't want to go. People will drive around for 20 minutes looking for a spot. It's like right there is a massive parking lot, and they just tore an old post office down to add more parking, and people don't want to walk two blocks. It's like, what? When in America gets so lazy, they can't walk two blocks to go have a meal. You're gonna eat, you should walk that meal off. It's only a block.

Beckie Lambert: 59:11

It's a mindset. Oh my god. You have an entrepreneurial mindset. We tend to be the kind of people who are like, I'm gonna solve this problem, I'm gonna exercise, I'm gonna take care of my body, I'm gonna do all these things. Uh, just know that not all of Americans have the same.

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 59:24

I have watched people, because we have a little antique mall. I have been sitting in there and seeing a car drive by, and I've watched them loop like three times. It's like, okay, literally right there is a parking lot. And they're like, Oh, I don't want to walk. It's like, it's not like you're walking a mile. It's gonna be blocks. It's like, what the hell? And then you go to like New York City, and everywhere you walk, you walk, you know, 25 blocks to everything. Everything is walking. You get 25,000 a day. Clinton, Iowa, people don't want to walk two blocks for anything.

Beckie Lambert: 59:55

Like, what is wrong with this? Different mindset, different, different towns. So, again, you need to know your the dynamic of your location of where you're going. Yeah, that's important to know when you're allocating who's going in the space because I don't really have that much parking. And if I don't have enough parking and people aren't gonna walk two, three blocks, what's my solution? How do I solve this problem? Yeah, it's it's real. Yeah, so that's kind of commercial in a nutshell. I mean, we we obviously don't have time to go through how to compute an IRR, which is an internal rate of return, uh, how to compute an equity multiplier, how to compute cash on cash return. But those are all really important things to compute when you're doing commercial real estate. But to a large extent, I think it's more than just having like a YouTube class or something of that nature. Oh, it is. You kind of need to shadow somebody who does it. Yes. So who does it successfully? Not everybody's gonna be able to do it.

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 1:00:43

All those things that you just talk. So people that want to learn that from you, where specifically do they need to go to learn that?

Beckie Lambert: 1:00:50

Um, go to our website, Real Estate to Freedom. We have information on there. We have a Facebook group called Real Estate to Freedom. You can jump in there, um, send a message. Nate and I, my husband Nate will or I will respond to ourselves and we'll set you up with the information you need, depending on what type of asset class you want to learn and how you want to get into that.

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 1:01:09

I tell people all the time, I am a big believer because I learned everything by a seat in my pants. I, you know, back in, I mean, this is like 1990 when I started. There was no the Google, there was no internet, there was no YouTube, like that, nothing existed. There were no seminars coming through town, there weren't people to coach you and mentor you. So I really learned a seat in my pants and Home Depot. Like that, I learned everything from my my pants to Home Depot. That was my whole my whole thing. And I tell people all the time I'm like, listen, you're gonna learn everything from mentors or mistakes, and mentors are so much cheaper. Oh, it's so much cheaper. Okay, Bill and I knew what you know about. Buildings, it would have probably saved me $300,000 from just learning about elevators and boilers and roofs and like these sticky tar roofs versus this roof or that roof. It's like we didn't know all that stuff. We learned, but it's like I don't want people to learn that way because most people don't have the money or they don't have the risk factor.

Beckie Lambert: 1:02:07

Correct. A lot of people will come across the hurdle and it seems so overwhelming that they'll just decide real estate's too hard and run away. And in reality, the answer to overcome that hurdle is very rarely as difficult as people think it is. So real estate to freedom is. You just have to know where to turn. Yeah, realistate to freedom.com. That's our website.

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 1:02:25

So everyone, everyone. So everyone that asks me from today forward, that's like I want to buy commercial. I'm gonna tell them to go to you. And they need to pay for mentoring. I'm sure that you guys offer that, but people need to pay for that because you're learning from someone that already did it, they worked out all the kinks, they know the mistakes, because you're gonna make money faster if you don't have make any mistakes. That's what I tell people that mentor with me. It's like, listen, you're brand new, you've never bought a rental. So let me teach you how to wholesale or do a short sale or do a rental or do a storage unit or whatever, so you don't make any mistakes because most people, I don't think, have like the like the oomph to like make it through the mistakes.

Beckie Lambert: 1:03:05

Oh yeah. They tap out. How many people do you know a $60,000 boiler would have just bankrupted them?

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 1:03:11

I was like, what? And you know, I've never been in all these old buildings. And I was like, what the hell is a boiler? And what and then we went and looked, and I, you know, I had never even been to the basement. I see this giant thing, and I'm like, oh my gosh, that's so it's like it's like so like steampunk looking, this giant thing. I'm like, it costs how much to fix no, we can't fix this when it's too old, it costs this much. And I'm like, oh my god, what I wish someone would have told me that.

Beckie Lambert: 1:03:38

Those old boilers, they look like you walked back into the like back to the future. Like they do, back to the future was my first thought.

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 1:03:45

I was like, Marty was my first thought. Bill and I were laughing, and then after the guy came, I was like, Oh man, this is not funny. I mean, it's funny after the fact, it's not so funny at the time, but it was so cold that year, so we had to go to Iowa in the freezing cold, and I was like, Oh my gosh, and get all this stuff fixed. And I did, we looked at we were just like Marty, because it reminded me of Back to the Future, where Doc like rolls up on the train, uh-huh. And I was like, that's exactly what these basements look like. It's just so funny. So many things like with the boiler, though, is they often last a really long time for being such old technology, they hold up pretty well, they last long. I mean, they do last long, but good lord, it's like my learning curve expensive. My learning curve was hard, and I tell people all the time, like, listen, I we can teach you everything, but not really commercial, and you need to really learn it from somebody else. You need to pay the money for the mentoring because if not, you make one mistake. Like you said, that that would have put a lot of people, they would have just walked away from the whole building. And that same building has the elevator, so that was like two things in one building. I was just like, oh, we should have talked to somebody.

Beckie Lambert: 1:04:52

It's worth paying. See, on a single family home, I don't recommend this, but sometimes people buy a home without getting an inspection. They're like, ah, I know enough, I'm okay. That's up to you. I don't recommend it, but I know people who do it. I always tell them that's dumb. It's like 300 bucks. Like, cut back some Starbucks.

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 1:05:09

Just the inspection, yeah, exactly.

Beckie Lambert: 1:05:10

And put it put it to where it's at, so you know what you're getting into. On a commercial space, the inspection is significantly more expensive, but that is why they go through the boiler, they go through the elevator, they look at all the how often has the elevator been inspected? Is it meeting all the certification? With the building, what are your major issues? And it's not at all uncommon for that inspection to come back and say, okay, the purchase price of the building is $5.2 million, but you have a million dollars worth of repairs coming up in the next five years. So that gives you a negotiation tool. Yeah, I paid five, 10 grand for the inspection, but I have a million dollars I can negotiate with the seller. Yes. I don't understand why sometimes people are like, Well, I didn't want to pay for the inspection. Like, we should be a commercial.

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 1:05:54

Pay for the inspections. It's like that. That there's a book that's called like eat the cookies, buy the shoes. Pay for the inspection. It is worth it. It's worth it. So I want to jump off and ask you some some fun personal questions. Uh what's your favorite band of all time?

Beckie Lambert: 1:06:13

You know, the hard thing with that is I don't listen to music as much as I probably should. I have eight children. What place in our house is whatever our teenagers pick because it changes their mood enough that they're like not moody to be around. So on any given day, our 12-year-old daughter generally has Benson Boone playing consistently in the house. Um but when I when I pick music of my own, I almost always I don't pick it by band, I pick it by genre because I like the variety. But I tend to listen to a lot of Christian rock music because I love to run. I've done, oh, I think I'm up to 34 half marathons now. I've done one full half one full marathon. I probably want to do another one too, but full marathons take a lot of time to train for. When you've got eight kids, it's it's a pretty big commitment. Yeah. But yeah, I love like Christian rock music.

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 1:07:02

I love Christian. I discovered two new people uh from the Charlie Kirk thing. Yeah. Um I can't think of name Brandon. Somebody, Brandon Lake, probably. Oh, I didn't know who he was. I'm like, I'm so in love with him. And there's another one. He's got great stuff. The short black haired guy. I can't think of his name either. I started following the two of them. I'm like, I listen to them every day now. It's like, oh, they're so great. So I love that. What's your favorite food? What's my favorite what?

Beckie Lambert: 1:07:29

What's your favorite food? As a mother of eight, anything I didn't have to cook or clean up after, that's my favorite food.

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 1:07:37

I've had my four grandkids for like 12 days and and cooked every meal because by the time they get home from school, it's 4:30, then they have to go to bed at seven. And I'm like, I have never cooked so much food I feel like in my whole life. Like every day, the whole lunch is the it's like there's so much food. And because we live in the mountains, you can't just like run someplace, there's no place to run except like a full-blown sit-down restaurant. I was like, good lord. I told Bill, I said, can you just like bring home like some pizzas or something? I don't have to cook. It's so much cooking. Yes. What's your favorite time of day? Where where are you happy?

Beckie Lambert: 1:08:15

Oh, first thing in the morning. Morning. Yeah. That's when I love to go running. That's kind of that's my me time. My husband and I will go to the gym. We do a lot of um like stationary biking, lifting weights, or we'll go running together. He just ran his first half marathon with me. Um, I think it was in June. And ironically enough, his first half marathon was the fastest half marathon I've ever run in my whole life. Wow. So I hit my my fastest time ever at the age of 42. Well, good for you. Because I was chicken butt to try to keep up with him.

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 1:08:45

Because you want to keep up, you want to win.

Beckie Lambert: 1:08:46

And he's never been a runner, so I was really, really impressed. I was very proud of him.

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 1:08:50

No, I know. I'm not really a runner either. And uh, my daughters, two of them, they do marathons all the time, half marathons and marathons, like all the time, all over the country. They go to they went to Japan and ran a Disney marathon, and they just did one for breast cancer, like in California. They just they they take these sister trips and run these marathons. I was like, oh, good for you guys. Sounds fun. I'm like, yeah, no, mom doesn't want to run. I I think at 66, my niece was like, yeah, no, let's just go for a hike. Let's just be a little bit late. Okay, last thing. So, first of all, I want to thank you for your time because you've been so in uh helpful and really insightful. And I have taken this notes on two pages of things. So I may actually get into your coaching for my own self because I've still got a lot of buildings that need fixing. Um, I like everyone to leave to give us a word of wisdom. A word of wisdom, just one single word, just a word, one word.

Beckie Lambert: 1:09:51

Integrity.

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 1:09:52

Ooh. Okay, now so integrity. So everyone that follows me knows that we always have my guests give us the word of the week. And I tell everyone to write it on the sticky note and put it on your bathroom, you're brushing your teeth and doing your hair, say the word over and over integrity, integrity, integrity, integrity. So everyone knows they have a word of the week. So we want to know what integrity means to you.

Beckie Lambert: 1:10:16

Integrity has a lot of different aspects of it, but I think to a large extent, be who you say you are. Don't don't be fake, be who you say you are, and be honest in all things. Anyone who tells you they've never made a mistake in real estate, they're lying to you or they've never invested in real estate. So don't take their advice anyway.

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 1:10:37

Exactly. I feel integrity. Hold up to it. Integrity is one of my words. I tell my grandkids all the time that you know they're all 10 and below, and you know, they'll like sneak candy or they'll and I say, Hey, listen, you have to have integrity. I said, because you know who's watching you, but Mimi's not watching you, God. So when you sneak these things, that's learning to be sneaky, and as you grow up, that's not going to be a good thing for you. So we I've my my my son and my grand and my daughter-in-law at night when the kids are here at our house, we watch cops. Like there's a channel where it just runs live, it's like live cops. And so my husband and I'm like, see those people getting arrested? You know why? That's because they didn't have integrity and they lied and they were sneaky and they were drinking and you were that they're in jail. So they're just like, so the kids like, we don't want to go to jail, so they'll just they'll just tell whatever they did because they watched that show. And my son's like, don't let them watch that. I'm like, listen, it's live, it's not anything horrible. They're usually just like like pulling over drunk people. And I'm like, listen, that's what happens, kids. You lie, you sneak, you steal. You're gonna be in jail, you're gonna be on cops, live on cops. And they're like, We don't want to be on cops. No, please don't. So yesterday, my grandson like got into my granddaughter's thing and like took her candy. I said, Where's the candy? He's like, I don't know. I said, Benny, do you want to be on cops? He's okay. I took it. I was like, see, there you go. I was like, Oh, six years old, he's he's afraid to be on cops.

Beckie Lambert: 1:12:00

Hey, whatever gets them there. In our household, we have a rule. You'll get in trouble if you make a mistake, but you'll get in ten times more trouble if you lie about it. That's what we tell you. I tell them I'm not gonna take over the consequences, but I will lessen them if you are honest about it. If you lie about it, tenfold. They're right.

Dwan Bent-Twyford: 1:12:25

I tell them the same thing. I said, just tell the truth. If you tell the truth, I'm not gonna get, I mean, I'm not, I'm not gonna get mad. Tell the truth and we'll figure it out. But if you lie to me, and then I say, tell me two things you know about Mimi. They're like, Mimi, so I taught them, they go, Mimi, don't play. So they go, Mimi, don't play, and we better tell the truth. I was like, that's all you need to know for the rest of your life. I don't play. All right. Well, I have loved having you on today, Becky. I think we went a little bit long, but you know what? You're so fun to talk to. I want to next time we come to Utah, I want to like we'll have lunch and and meet you. I love that. That would be so great. So everyone, thank you for joining. I'm gonna ask you a favor if you learned anything, if you had fun today, go to the most wonderful real estate podcast ever. It's on every single place that podcasts are. We're in like the top 20 on Spotify, almost at 2 million downloads now. So we're really growing and doing good and woo. So leave a five-star review, write something fun, and doing all that, I will read out your comment and your name in an episode. So do that. And for me, and remember to go to duonderful.com for all of your real estate needs and for all your commercial needs, you have to go to Becky because she is the queen. You're the queen. Thank you, Rod. I appreciate it. All right, everybody. We'll be back next week. Same bat time, same bat channel. And remember that the truth is in the red letters. All right, everybody. Ciao. Becky, thank you. You're welcome next week.