VA Loans, Midterm Rentals, & More: Military to Real Estate Entrepreneur Journey

Ex-military entrepreneur, Cooper Wimmer, shares his journey to real estate success! Learn about VA Loans, creative financing, midterm rentals, property management, and building trust with clients. Gain actionable tips for a thriving real estate career!

Reach out to Cooper
Email: cmw@kyletucker.com 
Link Tree: https://linktr.ee/coopermalachiwimmer 
Instagram: @winwithwimmer

Get your free Multifamily Syndication Guide https://tr.ee/CtfK3vRN-V 

Cooper's Cleaner in Fayetteville:
Jasmine Morton
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MortonsCleaningServiceLLC/

Cooper's Electrician and Phenomenal General Handyman in Fayetteville:
Daniel Fonseca
Find him on Nextdoor: https://nextdoor.com/pages/mc-fonseca-electric-fayetteville-nc/

Transcript

 Hello and welcome to another episode of the Property and Wealth Podcast. I am your host, Enrique Hernandez. This podcast is brought  to you by Foxtrot Capital. Today,  our guest is Cooper Wimmer. Cooper is a former army infantry officer turned investor slash agent real estate agent in Utah and North Carolina.

As always. Disclaimer here,  the views and opinions expressed in this podcast are for informational use only and should not be construed as a offer to buy or sell any security. Always consult consult with your financial advisor prior to investing or making any investment decisions.  Without further ado.

 Cooper Wimmer,  tell us, how's your day going?

Oh, good. Enrique, thanks for having me out. Really appreciate this opportunity. So fun to connect with like minded individuals in this space and there's always room to grow and your network and to meet new people and to bring value to one another. So thank you. 

 You're welcome. You're welcome. Thanks for making time for, for this interview here though.

First of all, I know you are a former army infantry officer. Tell me how you got into that and what made you come out of it. 

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I'd love to first like a little bit about me introduction. My wife says I have way too many hobbies, but I love to do everything. I love adventures. I love, I'm a big reader.

 You know, we live right now here in sunny St. George, Utah, Southern Utah. We're really close. To all these beautiful national parks like Zion's, and we're not too far from the grand Canyon, love mountain biking. So many things you name it. I probably like to do it or know someone that does or want to get into it.

 So just, just love that. I have a family, my wife, we've been married. I'm going to get in trouble. I think five years now. And we have one daughter and we're getting ready to, to think about, she's Almost two and we're like, okay, it's, it's probably time to, to go for the next one. So we're, we're really stoked about that growing our young little family.

But yeah, I, I, I'm also very privileged. I grew up with a father that was a diplomat for the youth USA government. So we traveled all over growing up. I didn't really live in any one place. We lived, All over Europe and in parts of the middle East and everything. So just, I love adventure and I love meeting and interacting with new cultures and people.

And that's really helped me in every walk of life, you know, both in the army. And then now as a, a business, a business entrepreneur, investor, I love interacting with people. Culture and seeing new places. So I have big dreams, big goals. That's a, the big part of, you know, where, who I am and what I'm aiming for.

 But I enlisted in the Utah national guard first, and I did that in 2017. So I had just come back. I'm very religious as well. I just come back from a two year mission for my church. I went and Pretty much taught people in Indiana about Jesus Christ for two years. And then I came back from my church mission  and I was like, what's, what's next, you know, and growing up, I think everybody plays soldier a little bit, you know, or like my, my dream was to be a superhero and I'm like, okay, that's like.

Maybe not attainable. Like what's the closest thing. And for me, it was  always kind of like being a us, you know, us army soldier is like the closest thing to a superhero. And so and everyone's like that. I think all my friends were like. I, yeah, it would be awesome. And we're all going to be soldiers and like, I guess that's when we're 10.

And then the next year, my buddy, Kyle's like, I want to be a doctor. And I'm like, okay, I still kind of want to be a soldier. And then a couple of years later, you know, the next guy, Nick's like, well, I want to be a lawyer. And so I don't know, for me, I just got there and I was still like. Dang, I still want to be a soldier, guys, like I still want to, you know, and on top of that, what that meant traveling around the world, you really get to see that  I love all these beautiful places, but nobody has a way of life like we do in the United States of America.

You know, it's just, it's unbeatable.

You can't beat it. 

And you know, you know, Enrique you, you had wonderful service, but I'm so, I was so grateful for that chance to serve in the army. And so I enlisted in 2017 and went to basic training started out as an 88 Mike truck driver. Which was a lot of fun.

A lot of people, you know, when you get into the army, you can do anything in the army, right? A lot of people who come from other backgrounds don't know, but you got a job for everything.

Oh, yeah. You think you came in for 88 Mike and then somehow you end up doing all other jobs. 

That's right. That's right.

And so I came in 88, Mike, and was pleasant, pleasantly surprised off the get go. I got like distinguished honor graduate at my AIT. And I was like, dang, I'm, I'm pretty good at

this. Now you're showing off Cooper. That's messed up.

I was like, I could, yeah, I, I'm, I'm good at this. And so I ended up.

Deciding it's time to go to college after that,  and I started in the ROTC program at Utah Valley University, which is a college out here, and in, in the course of that, I found the ROTC program I learned quickly that  You know, I thought I wanted to be an officer thought that would suit me and, and of course, you know, they make a little more money and and I, and I enjoy leadership.

So I was like, okay, I'm going to go for that. And the ROTC program was, was very rewarding.  I actually met my wife through, through that. So very blessed. Very blessed to do that. And then in the course of ROTC and finishing college I was able to commission active duty as an infantry officer at that point.

And then I shipped off to Fort Benning, Georgia, where I went to, you know, infantry basic officer leadership course, quite a mouthful there. And in, in, in that course is kind of the first time that And we'd been married now just a couple of years, my wife and I, and I'm like, okay I got a lot of responsibilities as a, as a father or as a soon to be father, as a husband.

And I started looking out for what I wanted my life to be like, what, what all my dreams and aspirations were. And that's when we first kind of, in my mind.  I was like, okay, I, I want to be wealthy. I want to build wealth. One of the frameworks I used was if my child came to me and said Hey, I want lessons for piano, or I want lessons for whatever it is, horseback riding.

I never want to have to be the father that says, sorry, we, we can't do that right now, sorry, we can't afford to let you pursue that, you know? You know, does that make sense? Like, I think that's something most people can relate to. Oh,

definitely. Yeah. You don't want to say, okay, yeah, that's not a priority right now because we are low on money.

Yeah, definitely completely

agree. Absolutely. And so that was one of the things that like, one of those like piercing questions that I'm like, Oh, like, I gotta, I gotta figure this out then, you know, and so for us I mean, and I ran the gambit, right? I got, I was like, okay,  Crypto, NFT, tried it all kind of you know, stocks, mutual, I, I still recommend you keep, you know, an IRA, maybe some mutual funds and whatnot, but we were really blessed.

And, and I should say too, that my wife, Is my super power. He is amazing at what she does and I was really lucky to find someone Kind of like minded like I like to go to the bank account and see numbers adding up and so does my wife, but I have a lot of other friends who their wife likes to  Spend and force those numbers do other things.

Yeah 

I know what you're talking

about  Oh, man. So but no, and then in the course of things, we kind of started in a reverse way than a lot of people. We, we kind of saw exit strategies. We saw Airbnb as our concept of, of cashflow. I like to call it like, how can we make money? And we found a couple free mentors on YouTube.

You know, I always advise people, if you're just dipping your toes in something, you can. Go to YouTube. It's it's free and you can find all this information. And we found a couple individuals. We found Rob Abbas solo. He has a channel called row built. He's amazing. We found short term rental university, and I just started.

While at Fort Benning doing infantry officer things, I just started consuming this content in my free time.  And you know as well as I do, that in the military, you know, it can take up all your time, but there's, there's hurry up and wait moments where you're, you have plenty of time to learn other things, right?

Yeah, there's plenty of that. Sometimes it feels like 24 7 you're doing the hurry up and wait game. 

Totally agree. Yeah, we're either working 100 percent or maybe we're not. And what are we doing with our time? And I always, I try to coach people. Hey, like. Go out, get your real estate license, go learn about this while you're just, you know, waiting.

And anyways, we consumed that content.  And then I also think, you know, it was special cause then towards the end of my time there at Fort Benning, I was going into a really challenging course that I thought like I was going to be in for a while. And right about that time, we found this property and we're like, Oh my gosh.

This property could be exactly what we've looked for. It could be, it could be the perfect setup for us. And it was a main house that we could Airbnb. And then there was a little ADU accessory dwelling unit studio apartment above a detached garage that we were like, Well, on weekends, maybe we can Airbnb the house and we can go live in this apartment and then come back and it would just be perfect.

And, but I was going into, you know, a couple months long course and I was like, it's just not gonna, gonna work out. And then just in the course of things and how it worked out, that course didn't work out for me at the time. And And I came back and in the same week, I started airborne school and that was that had its own challenges.

And then my wife we found out was pregnant with our first child and we went up and saw this house. It was like, Whoa, all these things like just slamming us and but we went and saw this house and it was going to be possible for us because it fit perfectly. Fit the timeline now. And so we went and decided we're going to, we're going to do it.

We're going to do this house.    And of course, you know, I always tell people the greatest financial benefit to the military, hands down being the VA loan we were able to use that product.  So it was just, it was phenomenal. And, and a lot of people don't, don't understand the VA loan and we can chat a little bit more about that later.

 Cause I, you know, I think that's one of the most instrumental things I've been able to do for investors in our space to, to explain how that works. But we got that house and, you know, long story short from this point on, cause I've already had a long story. But from that point on, we moved out of the main house to that little apartment.

 One time and never moved back because that house was booked out. A hundred percent, you know, we have, we had like an 80 percent occupancy rate in our first year and it matched my income as a second lieutenant officer  that first year matched, it was over that in our in profit, not just revenue. And so that's when the wheels were spinning.

My daughter was born that next year. And I was like, wow this is. This is tremendous. And yeah. And then I guess to, to follow that up, I slowly work got crazy. It was really rewarding, but work got crazy with time and I wasn't able to be there quite as much as I wanted to. And that's what got me thinking, okay, well, we've been successful with this business, what do we need to grow it?

And what does it look like? Exiting the army in the next couple years and growing our businesses on this side of things. And that's what we ended up doing. We ended up moving out of that first place.  putting a traveling nurse renter in that ADU that we were living in and and that does really well as a month to month rental.

And then we bought our next house with conventional financing that we lived in for a few years or for a year or so until until I, Finished up with the army. And from that point on we decided it was time to move close to family and we're still investing heavily in the North Carolina market and in the Utah market.

And it's just been a, it's been a ride and it's been a blessing. So.  Here we are. 

That is awesome, man. Thanks. Thanks for sharing that. Now when you got your first home, you were living in an ADU. This is in North Carolina by this time, correct? Right. Yeah. So, so you decided to leave below your means just so you can pretty much grow your wealth through short term rentals.

Yeah.

Yeah. That's a good point.

Yeah. Because that's something that, you know, most people don't want to do. Well, everybody wants to.  Yeah, I want to show that I got right and sometimes you got to leave below your means so that later delay gratification You can actually show what what should what you got if you want to you might not have to right,

right?

So no, that's so big That's so big and people don't realize that is at no point in this whole story. Did we stop? Living like we were still students in college, you know, still living off of like ROTC stipend, you know, a couple grand a month at no point. And that's what helped us reach these huge goals.

 I mean, we were sitting at the dinner table in our first house we got. And, you know, I didn't even mention all the dynamics that play into that, but we had done our research.  Market research, which is so important and we knew that it could be successful We knew it and both of our families. It's a it's a big house and for anyone listening at the end i'll share my information and they can check out my link tree and my instagram but  and see the house 

This house is our, this house is our beautiful main pool, everything.

I don't know how he got all of these properties, but  they're beautiful.

Thank you, brother. Thank you. That first house is on over an acre huge pool. Like I, like a 40.  Thousand gallon pool, something like that. Massive pool. And then it's a, I believe it's a four bedroom, three bath that we, we fit sleep 18 people in this, in this house.

And so comfortably, you know, comfortably about 18, I believe. And so anyways, our, our parents from both sides are like, what are you doing? Like, you're just a young couple starting your family.  You do not need this big house and too much risk. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. And this mindset, like you don't want to leverage yourself and.

And essentially we, it really took us believing in ourselves because both sides of our parents telling us to do that. And we bought at a good time additionally, which is nice. Cause now we have a little equity in that property. But besides that, we just knew that the exit strategy was so strong.

And we didn't know quite how strong, you know, the way I, I structure every investment personally is I want like a worst case, you know, Most likely and this is kind of a military thing and then the courses of action and then like best case course of action You know

these officers man

 I love it. I love it.

And so the reality is we had this I thought we would operate, you know in our most likely and we've Every single month with that property we've done better than in my best case scenario. And so like You  It doesn't get better than that and and like if we hadn't done that and take taking a risk because it's absolutely a risk, you know we would be way behind on our goals to to wealth and and all these things and so  Anyways, we're just so glad we we did it and we sat down at the dinner table I was saying after getting into this property and we're like, what what are our goals?

And you know, we had a couple You Goals that just seemed like huge, like, what does it take for us to get to like a hundred K and start buying the next properties and buying and structuring things. And anyways, like every time we've done that and sat down and made these crazy goals, and as long as we've made a path and then we've done.

The small things to be disciplined and work there. We've, we've hit it. And it's, and it, and an important thing is like, we are not that special. We were like dedicated and we wanted to do it, but almost anyone in our shoes in the military, like we were has access to a VA loan. That's, that's all we use.

So. 

And since you're in the topic of VA loan, I mean, that's one of the, I think it's one of the most misunderstood loan options for veterans, right? There's, there's a lot of misinformation out there, or I guess misunderstanding about how many times can you use it? Can you have two properties under it?

Can you only do one? I mean, when I bought my first house, I was told you can only have one house. Later on, I found out, no, that's not the case. You still have some more room.  Right. And I think that's something that I guess gets ingrained into us. Maybe it's a barrack stock, you know, the barracks lawyer, like they call it.

But, but it does, it does limits. Your ability to get into real estate. So how, how was it for you using the VA loan?

Yeah, the VA loan is, is epic. It there's no other way to describe it. There's no other loan product that exists like it, that I'm, I'm really aware of. It's, it's so awesome. So we it's, it's exactly that we shopped around and not, not all, not all lenders are the same, so you can always get better rates, you know, through other people, but the product itself, you're getting to an, into a house with no money down.

So to use our first one as an example, we.  We had saved and scripted, saved 20, 000 because that's what we thought it would take to furnish this property, and we just needed to furnish it to be able to rent it right.  We obviously need beds and all the things that you see in an Airbnb and, and and we specifically had done the research.

We knew that if we had amenities, like if we have a pool table, a foosball table, these, these are the types of things that people want to see when they're going to spend.  Quite a bit of money to stay in an airbnb. And so we knew okay that 20k and then we got into that house we leveraged, you know our income But we leveraged that loan and we paid no money up front for that loan I think we paid for an inspection on the house, you know, five hundred dollars and now we're into a five hundred thousand dollar plus home and  exactly.

And, and it's, it's interesting because there's mentors that out there that would tell you, Hey, don't, don't do that. That's not a home you can afford and, and whatnot, but like, I'd never be where I am now if I hadn't. Taking that opportunity and we ended up furnishing that place. My wife is like a Facebook marketplace guru and we did, and, and we got nice stuff in that house as you were saying, anyone can go check it out, but I think we furnished it for about 8, 500  and then And then that was it.

You can add 500 for a home inspection. We're into a house, 9, 000, which is profiting me, you know, anywhere from  70 to 90, 000 now a year. 

Don't say that, man. IRS

might be listening, so you gotta be careful.

Hey, yeah, that's true, that's true. Hey, you know, there are lots of expenses,  so.

We're gonna have to edit

that.

I'm not too worried about it, but, no, I mean, it's just, it's, it's an amazing opportunity. If you have a VA loan, the best time to use it is, is now. And, and the important thing to note just to give a piece of value to anyone listening that is in the service is in almost in 48 of the 50 states. So in 48 of the 50 states, the limit for the VA loan.

On multiple properties is I believe 720, 000 right about there. Don't quote me perfectly.  So yeah, that sounds about right. And and so what that means is the first time you use it, there's no limit to the expense. So if you can qualify for a home, that's worth a million dollars. The VA loan will underwrite that loan, but but if you qualify for a home that's cheaper, you decide to buy a home for 200, 000, that means you could go anywhere in the United States and you have 726, 000 minus that 200, 000, that's 526, 000, you have that much  That you are able to use on your next property.

Which is, which is huge. And so I have people in Fayetteville in North Carolina at Fort Bragg, where we ended up and where I'm doing a lot of investing personally, who are saying, I'll wait until my next duty station to buy with my VA loan.  And I'm saying, is your next duty station in Hawaii? Are you going to try to buy a 700 20, 000 property there or something.

They're of course, usually no. And it's like, then buy here. Cause almost every duty station, except for, except for Hawaii, you're going to be able to find a house. That's probably, you know, 300, 000 and you'll have wished you bought one here because they're not thinking of appreciation on all the benefits that they can get from just owning property in general, you know?

And to add to that though, cause so when I bought my first house, we're talking about 2006, then I rented it for a few years,  I had no idea about bonus depreciation, cost segregation, I had no idea about any of that. Matter of fact,  I didn't even know I could put it under an LLC, which is another thing, right?

Cause now you're going to, oh no, if I switch it to an LLC, the due and sale clause, all this other stuff that comes, it's all fear, right? But back then, when I started in real estate, I didn't, I had no idea, I was just going based on the barracks lawyer, if that's a word, right?  The rumor in the streets, right?

But it's interesting that you bring that up, because I think a lot of  There's a lot of miss, misunderstanding on VA loans, especially for us military. How was it for you  to start, let me, let me get this straight. So it's a short term rent, it is a midterm rental and there are short term rentals. You are focused on midterm rentals.

For the listeners that might not know the difference between both, are you able to explain that? 

Of course. Yeah. Yeah. So I like to describe it as like yeah, let's see. So like long term rental is what everyone's familiar with. Like you're usually signing a one year lease to rent your property. Like those have existed since the beginning of like, since before Jesus, right, people were renting from landlords and usually for about a year or so, maybe, maybe longer.

Right. And then along comes this idea like that hotels have been using. Since those times, it's like, Hey, you're paying for the night. And now the, the idea with the short term rental or STR generally people just hear Airbnb nowadays. But the idea there is that I'm able to rent. My property on a night to night basis, or maybe a week basis.

And of course the benefit there being that I can, I can make more right. And most people nowadays have heard of Airbnbs. So as an investor, I described this. Space like to use baseball. We're kind of in like the seventh eighth inning, you know Like we're towards the end of the game like you can still get airbnbs.

We just bought one in january We were talking about before and we we bought it create with creative financing So we we we can shout about that because it's amazing but  we bought another one in january and it's still a good space you can still make money there, but People have heard of the Airbnb bust or these terms yeah, and we're, we're like at the end of the game, it's, it's harder to buy a great Airbnb and make sure it's cash flowing and whatnot.

But then there's this other concept of month to month.  Midterm rental, right? Or midterm MTR. And this is where you can generally find people that are in a situation where they don't want to sign on for a one year. They don't want to be locked into a one year lease and they're not looking for a nightly stay.

They don't want to pay that premium that you can charge on a night to night. They're looking for something in between. And this is still, in my opinion, a very new. Space a new place and a good, good place to be in because you can still charge a premium. But at the same time, you're not making like long term rental money right on a on a year lease.

You can't really charge premiums there in the same way. And so this is really attractive to people like traveling nurses.  Maybe there's people moving into your market that are building a home and where, you know, where are they going to stay while they're building a home? Or maybe like right now we're renting to a group of construction workers that have a construction project in the area.

They need a place to stay, but not permanently. Right. And if, if the company that brought You know, the 12 gentlemen who are staying in our house if they needed to get a hotel, they're talking about 120, 200 nights, maybe 200 a night per person, maybe, you know, and that's like, that adds up. That's huge.

And so we're able to offer in some of our Airbnbs, but some of these other things that we're looking at in month to month rentals, we're able to offer something where we structure it. So, Hey, you're not paying the 450, 600 a night. That we would charge maybe in one of our short term rentals if we were renting it nightly, instead, we'll write, we'll agree to a month span lease, essentially, and on a month to month period, you'll pay us X amount and and that's what we're doing right now in the short term rental that we just set up in January.

We have a group of.  12, I believe, electricians, and they're renting that property out for 9, 000 a month. And so it's a win win, right? Because that company doesn't want to put them up in a hotel for maybe 12, 000, 15, 000 a month. And we're offering something that not a lot of people Places in the area are offering and and so it's it's a good option and when we moved out of that adu That accessory dwelling unit that we were living in in our first house that I was telling you about It's only a 400 square foot space and our thought was like What do we do with this now?

Like, should we try to Airbnb them both? Or, you know, and we're, we're thinking about that. And as we're thinking about that, we hopped on to furnished finder. It's a great website to find people who are in need of midterm rentals. And we just they have a page where people can say essentially it's like an SOS thing like help.

I can't find anything that meets my requirements. I need to move in next month. And whatever it is, I need space for my dog or I, I need it to be furnished completely with these things. And I want to be close to the hospital. And so within the first month of moving out, we have had someone in there continuously now for two and a half.

Years and the traveling nurse that's in there right now is paying 1300  for a 400 square foot space month to month. So that was just like, this is a bonus. Like, I never thought we could rent it for that much, you know? So it's a really interesting space to explore. And I think there's a we're at the beginning of the game for MTRs month to month, you know what I mean?

Yeah. Now, and you mentioned Furnish Finder, which leads me to my next question. How do you do your market research for corporate renting? 

Yes. Yeah, that's a good question. That's a great question. So there's a couple different trends we look at for the traveling nurses specifically. I don't have the statistics in front of me, but there's five states in the U.

S. that aren't going to have enough workers until I believe it's  2032 or 2033. And I mean, that's a great place to start. North Carolina happens to be one of them, right? There's not enough healthcare. So they're paying premiums to traveling nurses who get a special per diem. That's a little bit like for anyone in the military, we get basic housing allowance, BHA or BAH.

And It's very similar. So they're getting paid extra because like the hospital or whoever's hiring them knows that they're going to have to get someone to agree to like a month long lease. And so if you can provide a solution that says, Hey, I have Want to rent to you monthly. I won't charge you nightly like maybe an airbnb would Like they're all over that honestly, and I have a I have a friend.

He's E 5 in the 82nd at Fort Bragg liberty, whatever we're calling it now.

We're calling it Fort Bragg, Cooper. For this instance  We're gonna call it Bragg, man

I love it. I love it. So he's over there And he's a paratrooper and a good, good long term friend of mine. And he said, Hey, I want to do something like what you're doing right now.

I want to get into a place I can live. He just finally got out of the barracks and then he's like, ideally I would like to, to cashflow. So together we put our brains together and I kind of gave him the criteria that we would look for in a place like that. And he found a place on his own and he said, Hey, will you, will you  Will you check this out?

And then I was able to, to help him out as his agent. And basically we have him in a living situation now where he's living in one room of this house. He, I believe he locked it up for 200 k to just give you the numbers to show people how good of a deal this is. And his monthly payment, I believe is about.

1750 1800 PITI. And then he has which is principal interest taxes and insurance for anyone who doesn't understand that acronym. And then and then on top of that, you know, he has some utilities. I'm not, I'm not entirely sure where that ends up. But he bought this place and it has an ADU, right? So exactly what we're talking about in the back with a big backyard.

And so And he's rent, so he's renting to three other soldiers who are friends and he's, he's not charging them very much. I told him, Hey, you need to, you need to charge people. And he's like, Hey, I'm giving them a deal. And so I think he's renting to them monthly for about  400, 350, something very reasonable, you know, very, very reasonable.

Exactly. And and then he's living in there, the main house with them. But then. He has a traveling nurse with a dog, so they, you know, a lot of these ladies or men want to travel with pets. It's kind of their comfort, comfort item, person. And so she has a dog and now she's paying 1, 800 for his ADU a month.

And so pretty much his monthly payment, he's living rent free and making a little bit. From his friends, you know, and it's like, that's, that's the ideal situation. Use the VA. So he got in with almost nothing down. So, like so many people have this available to them. And yeah. And, and like, that's a, that's a perfect situation for, for a lot of people.

Yeah.

It's a great advice for, for single soldiers or, you know, it's you and your spouse. Easy, easy, no? Once you get kids and you start getting serious and stuff,  it changes your perspective, right, where you can live and the things you can get away with. So, yeah, single soldiers, listen up,  right? 

Yeah, absolutely.

So corporate renting, how your fees or what the tenants pay, what does that cover? Does that include the utilities? What does it cover? 

Yeah, great question. So that's one of the things I'm, I'm hunting for as an investor. Now, what I'm trying to buy is month to month rentals for these traveling nurses close to the hospital, only two to three bedrooms.

And generally, yeah, I'm telling them, Hey, you come in and you're paying a premium you know, and essentially, you know,  Utilities are covered. Internet's covered. I'm trying to give them a very hassle free experience. And then and then, yeah. And then it's furnished, of course. So you know, it has the kitchen items they need.

And a lot of these people, what we've found out with our one and with, you know, My friend's other one that we have them in and from interacting as well with other people who are renting in this space is that these traveling nurses are generally staying in place for a long time. And one of the things that really does influence whether they stay in a job longer.

Or move on to another traveling nurse job. Cause they, they travel for their work is like, how much do I like my current living situation? If they really love that living situation and you provide decent amenities and it's a hassle free experience, we just had the one staying in our, in our first day to you that I've been describing.

She started renting in September and she just let us know like, Hey, I want Continue to rent till June and I'm liking it here so much. If the hospital still has need, I'm going all the way to next September and maybe further. And so at that point, we basically have a stable long term tenant, almost like an LTR traditional rental, but she's been paying a premium this whole time.

Yeah. You know, oh wow, that's nice. You can't beat it

But it also speaks on your commitment to your tenants, right? You call them tenants on a corporate corporate renting right or is there a different term for them?

Yeah, I know we just call them a tenant. Yeah tenant, right friend 

Yeah a friend just kidding No but yeah, it speaks on your your level of service, right if they want to stay there and they're not having any issues That, that, that speaks highly of you and, and your wife taking care of them so well.

Right. Now earlier on, you mentioned creative finance, right? We, we met each other crazy enough. We were, we were in the same base. We never ran across each other, but then we came to a creative finance community that we have in common. That's how we met. Right. And you mentioned creative finance. That's how you obtain your second property.

Did I get that correctly? Right. 

Third fourth, our fourth property.

All right, man. Okay. Ford. All right. So that's how you got your fours. So how did you find this property? So there's a lot of obviously once again, misunderstanding about creative finance. Is it legal? Is it illegal? All these other stuff.

So if you can cover some of the. The, the things you did to acquire this property

would love to. Absolutely. I guess I let me back up a little bit and start like with anyone who's listening, who's interested in just making money in general, like you don't. Oh, you don't have to like, I have a lot of passions and pursuits that I want to do.

I have a lot of ideas and things, dreams, you know, eventually I'd love, I love like science fiction books and I like someday I want to write a science fiction book. Another thing I'm really passionate about is, japanese onsen, which are like bathhouse, Japanese bathhouse, like really out there, right?

Niche kind of thing, and I'd love to start, like, it's almost like a spa, and I'd love to open one up and start that business someday. And I have, I have like 10 others I could talk about, right? But like, why real estate? Well, I also like real estate. I also like homes. But the biggest thing,  Is that for all those other interests I have, like, I, I don't have experience in those things to the point where I could walk into a bank and say, Hey, like, I'm trying to start a Japanese bathhouse.

I'm telling you, people love it in this area, yada, yada. And they're going to say, that's excellent. How long have you been running and operating one for? And that's where I'd say.  I've used, I've gone to one, I've used one. I just, I feel really good about it. Real estate is the only thing where you can walk into a bank and say, Hey, will you give me a hundred thousand dollar plus loan?

I have no experience in what I'm about to do. And that's because most of the time you're going to live in it first. But if you use that and leverage that to your benefit, it is the greatest way to build wealth. That I've found, you know, like hands down, you know, there's nothing 90, what's the statistic?

90 percent of millionaires made it in real estate, right? Just by owning and holding. And so   I back that up. I say that all to like, just the average person, maybe you're not passionate in real estate. And so maybe, yeah, maybe pursue a passion somewhere else. But it's one of those things that like, You will never regret buying and owning real estate because it will just grow in value and, and we could get into a hundred different reasons, but it's a great place to start.

This isn't my only passion. This, I have a lot of other things I do for fun and side hustle dreams and whatever. But my real estate ultimately is what's going to enable me to become extremely wealthy and pursue anything I want.  You know and so that being the case, you know, I've also pursued a lot of different mentorships and sought places to learn.

And eventually we found the kind of the same community where I'm,  To the point where I'm at multiple properties now, and I no longer can go into the bank and just get another loan for a big property because they see, Hey, like you got multiple properties on the books and right now they don't necessarily, you know, the way banks see income, even though I'm doing pretty well as a Airbnb business owner, they're, they're kind of like, Hey, this, this income isn't going to make it at the moment.

Like we want you to run the business longer.  And so my goal now is like, how do I keep growing as a business owner? I, again, I have these dreams and big goals and aspirations. What's the next step? And I found a community the same one you've found that said, Hey, I Forget about the bank. We're going to help you continue to grow your business and grow with these other concepts and these are the creative finance concepts and creative finance Strangely is like a bit of a trigger word to a lot of real estate agents who a lot.

I'll just add that most real estate agents, like this is, this is my personal belief, but a lot of them don't understand the space at all. A lot of them don't actually own real estate. A lot of cannot teach you how to actually invest in a asset that will make you money. They're more concerned with locking you into a liability that makes them a good commission.

And so if you feel like. You got a real estate agent doing that run go the other way if they don't own real estate and they don't know Like how it could benefit you  Steer clear, you know, So anyway, I and I really think you know with ai and stuff a lot of jobs might be on the chopping block Hey, that might be one of them But like a personal investor mentor who can walk you through the process and help you build and grow wealth That's really what I want to be for people like rather than an agent I see myself as like i'm someone who can sit you down because i've done it But i'm not And show you a path to building wealth for you and your family that will ultimately.

Like in the military, what we sacrifice is time and freedom and it's, and it's worth it because we get intrinsic value for serving our country. And, and there's a lot of things. But I, I mean, you can speak to this. You probably weren't for the time you put into it. You weren't necessarily adequately compensated the way friends are in their jobs, am I right?

I don't know, I mean, I retired and I see what comes in every month and I'm like, so 20 years for this? Okay, I guess I'll keep working, right?

 So, yeah, exactly.

I'm with you.  Yeah, you touch the nerve there. I almost cried. We'll

keep going, man. Yeah. So that's so funny. So, I mean, that's all to say agents here, creative financing.

They turn the other way. But creative financing is basically this concept where you're taking out, I feel like, a lot of the mystery for buying a house because people are afraid to buy a house because they hear about hidden fees and things like that. Once you go to escrow, you get charged these little things.

And I thought I was buying a house for 500 K and my bill at the end is like, I ordered way more food than I thought, you know, like what, it's like 530, 000. What, what happened here? People don't realize all the fees and the people that take a cut and whatever. What if we could take it back to where it's like the lemonade stand again.

And you meet a guy on the street and he says, Hey, Do you want my lemonade for a dollar? I pay you a dollar. I get the lemonade. What if it's like actually that simple? And that's what creative financing is. It's finding people and ways to buy that we don't involve the bank. And we can say, what if,  what if I can pay you directly for your house?

And if you own that free and clear and it's your second or third house, there's a good chance that they're willing to do that. And I'll pay you more because I don't want to deal with the bank. That sounds great. You know, and so to come full circle my wife actually credit to her. She found this property in North Carolina that had sat on the market.

You know, I think she saw it on Zillow maybe six months ago and she's like, Oh, that'll get bought because it's a really good flip and remodel. And it's not priced too bad. And then it sat and it sat, which is an indicator that the market was saying, Hey, he's actually wants too much for it. And after.

I want to say it sat on there for 150 to 200 days, somewhere between there. Yeah, we, we reached out and said, Hey love your property. Absolutely. Love your property. Leading with like, Hey, amazing thing you did here. I can see the value you added. It, it looks gorgeous. But I, I understand that right now it seems like, cause it sat on the market so long that the market is saying it's not.

Quite worth that. But it would be worth that to me. Like I'd be willing to pay that. And that kind of just starts the conversation for if you'd be willing to pay that great, like I'll sell it to you. And I was like, and in the course of discussions, we bring up that I'd be willing to pay that, but I can't do it traditionally through the bank at the moment due to X, Y, and Z.

But if you, you know, and, and we spoke about this earlier, but if you accept my terms, I'd be willing to accept your current asking price. And that's where  we open the hole. We open the funnel into this creative finance process, which was just how we began this discussion that essentially led to.  Us paying his and we went back and forth with some terms, right?

Right. But essentially we paid his asking price, his full asking price, which he's really happy about. And then we figured out a way that we could make payments. So just to give you some numbers, so people can kind of number crunch, cause I think, I think there's a lot of value there. I think we picked it up for  four 35 or 45 was his asking price.

And we, we. Gave him full asking and then we came in and said, Hey, we'll give you 10 percent down up front for the house. And then  we'll make you payments. And essentially the payments ended up coming to for the first five years. So the first year we're starting at 5%. So these are interest only payments too.

So these are not going towards the principle of the house, but these are the terms we worked out. So we came in with 10 percent down. Which was, you know, close to 50k and then in the first year, we're doing 5 percent interest only. And then every year where we keep it as financing up to the fifth year, it's adding a 0.

5%.  So the first year right now, our payment is 1, 600. Next year, our payment is going to be like, 17 something I think. And then it'll, it'll go to 5% until five years. And then we have an option to either pay it off in a balloon payment. So by then, just by  credence just to, by showing how well this Airbnb is performed, we'll be able to get a bank loan on it and so we can cash him out and now own it through the bank.

Or he would be willing to extend that with that 0.5%. You know, markup every year on our loan, but at 1, 600 a month, which is our current payment to him P I T I all told plus some overhead, right. For running a short term rental, which is like we have to get the hot tub clean. So we have a pool cleaner.

We have internet, of course, utilities all told. We're about 22 to 2300  on this property that we've bought creatively. And sick, like.  1600 like ask anyone who's buying real estate right now buying a 450, 000 property with a 1600 per month payment is like killer, you know, it's killer and I don't, I don't, it does not bother me in the least that that doesn't go towards the principle are down payment did.

But that's the property I mentioned earlier that.  We have it rented out for the next two months for nine thousand dollars a month.  And so For me, that's really solid cash flow and that's that you know nine thousand minus twenty two hundred Anyone can do the math like that's that's perfect for me and that's something that can work for everyone And so i'm out there looking for more creative finance deals just like this this deal in the first year Will be almost a 90 percent cash on cash return, which means I, I believe that we should get 90 percent of the money that we put into it this year.

And then by the next year, it'll have paid itself off. And then that's what in the investing space, people referred to sometimes as like an infinite return, right?  Like I got my money back and now it's just, it's just making me money, which is.  Which is the best. 

That's freaking beautiful. That is nice, man.

That's awesome, brothers. Now, you also mentioned the maintenance there when you were speaking. Maintenance. Do you have a property management for these for these units, for these rental properties? Or do you have like a family, a friend that does that

for you?  Yeah, great question. So short term rental properties are interesting because this is where a lot of people lose the money and why the numbers don't work out for a lot of people.

Because most property management companies are coming in and charging anywhere from 20 to 30 percent On your revenue for this property. And so like when you do the math 20 to 30 percent of revenue can often be like 50 percent of your profit or more And so at that point, for a lot of people the numbers don't work for us like  Again, very very blessed.

We kind of figured out the dynamic and we started operating them ourselves Which is how I would suggest anyone gets started in a rental You  Because you're not going to know and understand, like, eventually, if you do hand it off to a property management company, everything they should be doing, everything, the different ways you want them to take care of your property, it's like really important to know, I think.

So we started ourselves. And you know, hired landscaper, cleaner, and all these people. And then we really had to dial it down and find a good team. We went through probably five or six different cleaners, found a really good landscaper on the first try. And then we pay a pool guy. We pay him a huge premium.

Like if anyone's interested in a business opportunity, Fayetteville, North Carolina, Needs more pool people. It's crazy. It's, it's honestly ridiculous. It's wild. We called all these other people because our pool guy's nice, but he charges us a ton, called all these people and their voicemails are like, Hey, I can't take a single another pool.

I'm totally full and it actually had me thinking for a while. I'm like, can I start a pool business? You know, I, I don't really want to do that. So that hasn't worked out that way. But anyways, we built this team  which allowed us to step away and my wife still manages them. My wife's a part time marriage and family therapist, part time mom and full time manager of our short term rental investments.

Which is phenomenal. She's busy. Oh, she is. She's busy. She's a wizard. But our team is so strong on the ground now and we found these people who are just so helpful to our business. And yeah, so we have like a husband, wife, cleaner, landscaper team. If anyone's interested in the Fayetteville area, I'd love to shout them out.

I'd love, I love building their business. They're, they're phenomenal. Yeah.  And and then we have the pool guy. And then the other thing is we just found good, like handymen, good contractors. And the way we did that was just by being in that community, you know, we have went to church when we were there.

He went to our church and like, Hey, like now that we've stepped away, we're Thousands of miles across the country, but like I really do go to sleep pretty well every night. And if, when things, cause they do not, if, when, when things occur, we have people who I'm, I'm very happy to lean on. And I trust, you know, we have an amazing electrician.

Daniel Fonseca in the Fayetteville area who like, he's more than an electrician. Like I'd send anything his way and I know that he would either recommend me to someone amazing or or quote me something very reasonable on the price, just phenomenal work. So it's like people like that who allow, who make our business possible.

Yeah, I don't know if we'll do this at the end or maybe throw it in the show note show notes for Danielle Fonseca For all your contacts that you want to give a shout out. Yeah, let's let's do it I don't know if you want to do it here. You want to put it in writing?

Cool. Yeah I'll say I'll send those to you and we can we can add them in show notes and whatnot

Yeah, definitely man.

Gotta recognize the people that do good, right? The people that you can trust. They're hard to find, man. Hard to come by. Taking it back to creatively, right? I'm jumping around here, but something that came to mind is the fears of doing a creative transaction, right? What are some of the fears that this seller had on your fourth property that you acquired creatively?

What are some of the fears or objections that That you had to sort through in order to get the deal. 

That's a good question. This, this seller in particular was really interesting. He's part of a family fund that buys I think they transact, they have 30 million in holdings. Or 30 million personally.

And like something in hundreds of millions of holdings, I believe that they use to transact yearly on a ton of properties, just doing a ton of business. And so for, for him, one, He like really wanted to offload this thing. He's like, this is just a drag on my business. They're flippers there. And it's like, we just kind of, if we can have it off the books, like it's, it's just like paying us mostly, that would just be huge.

And so that's one thing is like, if you're interested in this creative structure, super important to find people who are motivated. And have like pain points. Like how is, I was solving a lot of like his pain points. He didn't want to hear about you know, a monthly balance hitting their business every month that like they're paying out and like I solved the problem right there and then We were just able to explain like within this creative structure he still has a lien on the home, right?

He still has a lien on title. So if something were to happen, there are clauses in place. There's performance clauses that essentially mean I have to perform. If I don't pay, he gets the house again. And so I'm very highly motivated to pay, right? Cause we went in there. And we, we spent a lot of money furnishing the place, we put in a hot tub, we did all these things, we, we fixed some things, he did a great flip and remodel, but it still needed a little bit of work to be what, like, was our vision.

And so like, I'm, I'm motivated, I'm not, I'm never missing a payment on this guy, right? It's, we already discussed, it's profiting me a lot, monthly. Yeah, why would you?  Exactly. But heaven forbid, if I were, this guy gets his property back. It's fixed up better. It's got all the electrical for a hot tub.

It's, you know, and once we explain these things that, Hey, at the end of the day what's the worst thing that could happen? Cause that's what people want to hear. What's the worst thing. The worst thing that could happen is you get your place back and it's in probably better condition than it was. And so.

Yeah, as far as objections, he was a really, really good one to work with. Now I've, now I've had interactions probably like you have as well with people who, who are more worried and have a lot, many more objections. But for the most part, it's doing like what we're doing now, just like discoursing and.

Just like bringing everyone out of the red zone down here and just discussing. And once you can do that with someone and you can build trust in a relationship, like it, that's the biggest game changer when you're just texting or you just catch someone on a phone call when they're busy. You're never going to be able to convey what I conveyed with this seller and what like we're talking about now.

Awesome. Awesome, man. I can tell you're a very grateful guy. I can tell by the way you talk about your, your wife. I can tell about how you talk about people you work with that you can trust over here in Fayetteville, right? So, as a grateful guy, I'm assuming you like giving, right? So, the reason why I ask is because, you know,  Are you, it's one of your goals to, I guess, give back to the military community in some way.

I mean, you already helped, you already helped one soldier do pretty much the same thing you did. So he can pretty much take it from there and grow just like you're growing, like exponentially, right? So are you, is one of your goals trying to start a sort of, sort of community? Training whatever you want to call it for be the military or be Civilians right based on your experience.

Yeah. No, it's really interesting. You brought that up. My My wife is currently starting a course for what what does she call it? I think it's military marriage makeover because she's a marriage and family therapist Yeah, so she's trying to build like a bit of an online course a bit of a therapy thing to help the military is a stressful place and and unfortunately for some folks like a lot of marriages don't last deployments and all these tough issues that come up and so, She's she's been doing that and it's been really rewarding for her to help help marriages.

I'm totally on board I love helping people. I personally actually get like so much like intrinsic value. And I get, I just feel so rewarded when I work with individuals. And so I love interacting with like our, our sub two community, that's the community that we're in and we've discussed but more than anything, I love when individuals reach out to me and I have the opportunity, what I really see myself doing.

Being is this kind of wealth advisor, you know, your tax, your tax guy helps you with your taxes, your, if you have an investment banker, he's helping you with your banker. But like, none of them in my mind are necessarily making you wealthy, you know,  they're kind of figuring out their, their their side of things to like, try to help you.

But none of that's, The overall picture. And so like that friend I mentioned, like in a lot of ways I consider myself and, and he's kind of said the same thing. I'm like his real estate wealth advisor. And so I love talking people through that side of things to say like, Hey, you got in this property.

That's fantastic.  Like what's the next step? You know? And they're like, I didn't even think about that. I'm just happy to, to be in this. And then it's because every day, depending on how you do things. You're choosing whether to set yourself up yet. I mean, we could talk about the E5 maybe the E4 mafia that get the job.

They're in the barracks. What's the first big purchase they make?

A big back in my time, it was a Nissan 300. 350z, whatever it's called. They don't even make them anymore at a 29. 99 percent interest. That's what, that's what it is.

Heck yes. When I went through basic, it was still like a Dodge Charger Challenger.

That's what people are jumping into. But I saw a lot of those Nissan Z's a hundred percent. A lot of my drill sergeants had that's what they were driving. But no, and that's like the, that's the.  To be honest, that's the worst possible thing that investment as a young man. Yeah. Cause that's, it's not a, it's not an asset.

That's a liability. And you're, you're statistically proven  that that is not growing in value, you know, and so whether it's my friend in who's an E5 in North Carolina or anyone I interact with, I love to be able to fulfill that role and bring value and it's kind of, as, as we've talked about it, when you bring value first, it almost always comes back.

So a lot of the value I try to it. Bring people isn't necessarily like like pay me to mentor you or anything like that. It's like somewhere along the process, we're either going to joint venture and, and buy something together or or you let me be your agent or, Hey, if I find you an amazing deal are you willing to just give me a little bit of an assignment fee?

And most people are like, That's totally reasonable and, and I'm happy to do it. And at the end of the day, as we're building a network of people around us, you know, like now, now you're a part of my network, anyone listening to this? Like, I hope you reach out and we can be in our, each other's networks.

Cause someday, like we're going to be on projects where it's like, I found the best creative finance deal, multifamily, whatever it is, and it's like, I need four more people interested. Who am I going to go to? It's not like, Random people I'm going to that network and continually bringing that value.

Awesome, and that was an awesome explanation. Especially in the giving part many people think that giving means Financially means money, right? But just giving somebody your focus your time your attention You know that is considered given as well. It's not just financially Well, thank you so much for your time cooper.

You got anything else that I didn't ask you about anything you want to cover? You 

I'm trying to think I just wrote a couple notes in my notebook here, but Yeah I mean real estate is the best vehicle guys, like it doesn't have to be your passion I highly recommend reaching out and to that value piece There's people who will never know how much value they've given me because I'll probably never meet them in person I probably consumed their content on YouTube or something But you better believe like I subscribed and I like I hit the like button like I commented  You know, I commented again Exactly.

And so it's like, I'll, I'll probably never be able to give those people money. You know, there's probably a couple of people where if I make it as big as I want to, I can for sure fly out and get them, take them to dinner or something. You know what I mean? But but like that doesn't stop me from consuming the content and that just, it's the pay it forward mindset.

It's like, I've learned so much from others. I love like the Arnold Schwarzenegger thing, right? Like I'm not really a self made man.  Because I didn't create all this stuff or develop all of it. Like I, I took so much from others and others took the time to teach me. I definitely advise everyone. Like if, if you're completely new you need mentorship, you need to learn don't necessarily run out and pay for it cause it's out there for free, but when you're ready, like One of our mentors is Pace Morby, who started this SUBTO group that we're a part of, and like, he's phenomenal.

He's, his content is A beautiful human. Excellent. Yeah, he's storytelling everything. And so yeah, I just definitely encourage anyone who received value from this. If, if any, something you could do for me is to just reach out so I can talk to you in person and we could see how I could help you in your business.

Reach out my You can email me directly at CMW, that C as in Charlie Mike Whiskey, at kyletucker. com. That's my real estate agent team and real estate email. And then on Instagram at  winwithwimmer W I M M E R, winwithwimmer. And I love putting out content there and we're trying to, trying to grow that.

Other than that, like, I don't think I have a lot more. I know The military guys is, is an excellent way to go. It's almost worth doing just for that VA loan. Sometimes people huge benefit. If you are in the military and you have that VA loan and you haven't used it, go to Enrique, come to someone like me that we can explain to you how valuable it is and how to, how to get in the game.

I think that's it. I really appreciate the opportunity. It's been great chatting.

No, man, the pleasure was all mine. Thank you for making time and providing so much good information so much value to the listeners I mean as well as myself i'm not in the midterm rental area, right? So I would learn a bunch of stuff from you and you're definitely killing it.

I'm sure that you're gonna keep killing it, right?  Because now you got creative Ways of acquiring more properties. You're not limited by the, by what the bank says. So this is going to be freaking beautiful. And hopefully we get to do another podcast where you're telling me, yeah, I'm on my 20th for 20th freaking property here that I bought creatively  and we just won't say how much you're making.

Right. So the IRS doesn't. Knock on your door tomorrow.

That's right.

That's right. Yeah. Thank you very much, man. Also thanks your wife, man. Again, cause you know, she's making a lot of things behind the curtain, behind the scenes. I don't get to see, right. You get to see it, but the people that are looking at your social media, like her growing and all that, we don't get to see any of that, right.

But she's a hard worker.

So yes. Yeah. The best investment is the people around you. A hundred percent.

Love it, man. That's a, that's a great one. That's a good one.  All right, Cooper. Thank you very much, man I'll share all your contact details on the show notes when we publish and also don't forget to send me that information for the people that are helping you here in Fayetteville.

I will so while you will 100 percent All right, brother.  Have a good one. Thanks for your time. Hey, thank you. Thanks everyone. Good luck out there 
https://youtu.be/7-mQIK0c8Hs