All right, welcome back to another episode of First Responder Financial Freedom. Today we've got Tyler, myself and our buddy, will Pritchett, who was introduced to me by my friend, marco Barrio, and he is a retired fireman from the great state of Texas, and this is going to be interesting because we don't really know each other, but it sounds like we have a lot of things running through the same vein. So, will, thanks for coming on the show and sharing what you do. Thanks for having me. This is exciting. Yeah, it's not too many weirdos out there that are firemen that really get interested in private lending or real estate, but you're within good company today. So for those of us like myself that don't really know Will, could you give us the three-minute version of how you got on the job, how you kind of got into real estate, and we'll just kind of grab a little topic here and there and run with it.
Speaker 2:Cool. Yeah, my name is Will Pritchett, retired from the San Antonio Fire Department After 21 years. I retired as a battalion chief about three years ago. I retired as a battalion chief about three years ago. 43 was my age barely I almost was 44, but I'm proud of that. That was kind of an accomplishment for our family. I got on the job. My parents' family was all educators and as a kid we had a house fire and it was all volunteers in the area I lived in Didn't know you could make a career as a firefighter, but I was always fond of those guys because they saved part of our house.
Speaker 2:Years later I had guys that were telling me they were going to test for San Antonio Fire Department and I was in college, didn't know what I wanted to do, went and took the test and did okay, got in and just loved it. Graduated drill school about less than a month before September 11th. So I was a rookie. September 11th occurred and I was like wow, I didn't know, this is what firefighters did. It was eye-opening and I think more people became aware of firefighting after that point. They were just such a focal point of that operation and I love the career. I love being a firefighter. I went to EMS, got, you know, paramedic and rode an ambulance for several years, always tried to go to the busiest stations I could to get the most experience. Just love the excitement of the job, made lieutenant was on an engine company and then captain was on the technical rescue team for about five years. Loved it and then I made battalion chief and I stayed in that position about five years. It was a little too far from the action and, you know, didn't love that part of the job as much but still loved the career. I mean, my best friends are firefighters. I'm super proud of what I.
Speaker 2:The time I served as a firefighter and started a meetup group here in San Antonio to help other firefighters. We'd be at a traffic accident and these guys are like hey, chief, I got a real estate question, we've got like four lanes of the highway blocked off and I'm like that's cool man and I can talk about it all day, but we should pilot traffic move and then we'll talk at the station, you know. So I had a few guys that reach out and wanted to do stuff and a lot of tire kickers, but a few took action and that was really inspiring to be able to give them some advice. And then so we started this meetup and we'd range between about 20 and 40 guys. Girls show up at a little taco house once a month and just have speakers and network and teach each other what we're learning. And after a couple of years you know the number of people showing up would stay around that range. And finally enough people asked about it that I opened it up to the public and it just blew up.
Speaker 2:That first month we couldn't all fit in the room. We had cars getting towed. I was like man, there's a demand for this. So we were called Firefighters. Investing in Real Estate was the acronym Real creative, I know. And when we opened it to everyone, we called it Friends Investing in Real Estate, our local union, local 624. Yeah, they let us use their space, their banquet hall, because it does benefit firefighters. So they gave us a bigger space to host this thing and now we're averaging like probably over a hundred people a month coming out to this event and it's just all free. We've got a few sponsors that help feed everybody and our title company and it's just been awesome. So my wife and I started buying rentals. We started with my first bachelor pad convinced her. Like let's try this, it'll fund my kid's college. Now my kid's literally going to college. We're going to his orientation tomorrow, so it's a reality. Now let's come full circle and there's a house with his name on it to fund that no-transcript a small part of it.
Speaker 1:Awesome. Well, there's a, there's a lot there and you know your story sounds similar to some of ours and our friends and it's definitely exciting when you start to see some of the guys that might even be the ones that were poking fun at the whole real estate thing. Next thing you know they're asking you questions. I had to chuckle because I had a cop come up and ask me the same basically question on the scene of a vehicle accident, like about a rental property. I'm like dude, now's not the time, but you know it is cool and, um, I love to just kind of share this world with folks, and Matt Terrio I don't know if he still has a podcast, but he used to always say something that like real estates the last, like great frontier, that the average guy or girl can still make a good bit of money. You know, maybe that's not as true now with these kids learning how to do TikTok and chat, gbt prompts and all these things who knows?
Speaker 1:But it's one of those things like the three of us, with a couple hundred bucks and a good attitude can still get started and actually change the trajectory of your financial family tree, if you will.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So did you. You started with your bachelor pad, so it was, I'm guessing, maybe not necessarily purchased with the intent of being a rental property, but you transitioned that too. And did you get started early on in your career, or was this something you chose to do later on in the fire department life?
Speaker 2:Yeah, good question. I was about probably about 10 years into my career, but early in my career I did want to buy a house and I don't know why I bought a four bedroom house for a single guy it's kind of dumb Bought a couple and I, you know I did everything wrong financially. One day I was sitting in the station. This guy's like hey, you're this Dave Ramsey guy. And I was like no, but I'm working a lot of overtime and I don't know where it's going. And then I was. Once I started listening to Dave Ramsey I was like, oh, and now I know where it's going.
Speaker 2:Like that taco house in the cantina. Yeah man, I was a single guy having fun. I had a boat, a couple of motorcycles, two trucks and a four bedroom house and couldn't figure out why I was broke Everything but the house went down in value that's the standard firefighter kit.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly, and I was getting good deals on all of it Good deal on the truck, good deal on the bike, and I was going broke by it. So learn about Dave Ramsey. And so I bought the house and just live there. And then, when we got married, my my son is my stepson Actually he's four. When we got married and we're because of Dave Ramsey the positive is that I had gotten out of a hole and had some cash saved so we were able to put a down payment on our new home and didn't need the cash from the sale. If we had sold, I think we would have netted about $30,000. And at that point that felt like about a million dollars.
Speaker 1:That was the big amount of money.
Speaker 2:And I told my wife. I said, hey, if we keep it, maybe someone else would pay it down for us. And then when our son's 18, that gave us about 14 years, it's going to be paid down a lot, it's going to have appreciated, I think. And I guess I had already been thinking about real estate and she got on board with me. She's like, yeah, let's try it. And we just lucked out that we had awesome tenants. Like we didn't screen them, we just lucked out. If we've gotten a terrible tenant, that person we might not be talking today because they left the house better than they found it.
Speaker 2:All of the naysayers I'd listened to for years that never had rental property Some of them were realtors and they're like, no, don't buy rentals, they'll trash your house. And I listened to the wrong people for years before jumping. So when Veronica and my wife got on board, we took the chance and then we lived in that house and managed this rental for a couple of years before we bought another one. You know, it's like a train it takes a lot sometimes to get moving and then it builds momentum and so that was probably 10 years in. That was right at 14 years ago when we turned that house into a rental and another probably three before we bought our second. Another two and you were probably five years into that before we started treating it kind of like a business. But our goal was 10 rentals before I retired and I had about a 20-year trajectory, so one house every two years and that just sped up and took on a life of its own sort of what does the portfolio look like?
Speaker 1:now we're at about 40 doors.
Speaker 2:A couple of those properties are like a fourplex, a triplex, mostly single families. In our market that's like a B class to C plus, I would say, class property, kind of working class All around the San Antonio market. We don't have a state income tax but we have pretty high property taxes, so that eats into cash flow. We don't have a state income tax but we have pretty high property taxes, so that eats into cash flow. We've had increases in insurance, just challenges. But yeah, we're still looking. We're looking to buy some larger units. We're under contract on a portfolio of about four houses right now. So we're still buying despite the high interest rates. And we do some private lending, mainly because we raised more money than we had deals to deploy it on and private money has been critical to our growth and to this day we're funding rentals with long-term private money and that's been one pivot we've done to kind of adjust to this market of higher interest rates.
Speaker 3:And how does that look? So if you want to talk about a little bit of that, right, like most of us, when we think private money or anybody listening they're thinking okay, private money is used for flip funds, bridge loans, things like that. Six to 12 month terms, depending on who you are, probably 10 to 12 to 13% interest in a few points. The conversation changes when you want to have private money on a long-term AM. I don't know if you're doing 20 or 25, 30, and then what rate. I mean and we talked about this off air but it's obviously a very secure investment and the one thing that I've always held is stocks can go to zero, barring something that I can't think of right now. I highly doubt real estate would ever have zero values, so I'm kind of curious, you know, do the rates change? What does that look like?
Speaker 2:yeah, good question. So I also thought of it as just 10 12 month terms. We stumbled into private money, originally talking to some friends at church. They'd lost money on a movie investment. They were attorneys and they're like we'd like to invest with you. So I'd heard of private money and just researched it and they were our first vendors and it was 10% and we've paid up to 13%. We never used hard money, it's always been private.
Speaker 2:But what I found just through experimentation is that these people like getting paid, but sometimes if we pay them for six months and we pay them off, they sit on that money for two or three months. So their yield went from 10% to eight to seven and then they got to find a new deal, evaluate the deal, and that's great because their yields is high when they're working and if they're willing to look for deals, they can make a really good return. But on the other hand, if they've got a couple million dollars or a few hundred thousand and they're comparing lending to CDs, they're making them 2%. I can offer them 7% and be in way above what they're getting with their CDs. They've got collateral. In that case, what I would do is I'd use a stabilized asset when I pay the high interest rate, the 10% that's for something that looks like trash. You know there's some risk there, right? Because I got to go in and rehab it and they're taking a chance on the property and on me.
Speaker 2:When I get a long-term loan kind of like the BRRRR strategy, but instead of going to a DSCR lender one of my lenders is very happy to make 7%. He loves that. If I can do it for five years and he doesn't have to rework that money, he loves it. So if I can do 7% interest only with him, not amortized, my loan constant or payment is lower than I could get with a DSCR lender that's offering me seven and a half, seven and three quarters plus origination points, plus every fee you can think of, plus a prepayment penalty. So I have found that interest only loans give me a low loan constant. A 30 year AM. The first several years is essentially an interest only loan anyway. So that's been kind of a win-win that we've pivoted into as some of these lenders. We were paying them for years and paying them off and paying them and paying them off and they're like, hey, what would you pay me? Give me just for a long-term, and we've settled in that six to seven. We've gone from six to seven for the long-term loans and these are unstabilized properties. There's already renters in there. They loaning at 65 to 70% loan to value. They have first lien position. They know they don't have to think about that money for several years and it's just been game changer.
Speaker 2:One more thing before I forget that really made me love private lending was during COVID, when everything was haywire and we didn't know friends were coming in. It was our private lenders that offered do you need to skip payments for a while? We can make them up later. We never took them up on that, but a bank's never going to do that, you know, unless forced to right by government. They were looking out for us, we were a team and they wanted us to succeed and weather the storm. So I'm a huge, huge proponent of real private lending, building relationships with people that want you to succeed, and we've been lucky enough to build those. Some of them are firefighters who've just been good savers and they've got some cash and you'd never know it by looking at them you know like they turn a ranch on their days off and they just stack up cash and they want to lend, but they have a side business.
Speaker 1:I think that is a great point, because the one thing I've realized is there is so much money everywhere. You know we look at it from a very scarcity mindset approach in most scenarios and you just think about the millions and trillions and dollars that are all out there and you only need one little sliver. It's amazing how many people that are probably already in your circle of influence or daily conversations that with one or two conversations you'd be surprised how much money you can raise. And a lot of guys on the job. Exactly what what you said? Um, yeah, I can think of a handful of guys right now where I'm just like you, you would never know it, but here's another hundred grand, here's another hundred grand and you just yeah it's.
Speaker 2:It's so often not the person that looks wealthy. You know, we've seen that millionaire next door idea play out. We joked, I mean this is kind of mean I guess, but at the RIA meetings we'd be like, hey, that guy that looks borderline homeless is probably the richest guy in the room.
Speaker 1:Dude, a hundred percent. I got the same guy. He's got like half the golden corral down his front of his shirt, you know, and I'm like, yeah, you wouldn't know, but that guy's got 70 rentals and they're almost all paid off.
Speaker 2:I'm trying to earn the right to dress that way to the rear. I'm not there One day when I show up with food on my shirt and flip-flops.
Speaker 3:There'll be signs, boys, that I'm rich. That was like uh, you guys, have you guys ever heard of fleetwood?
Speaker 3:they make like rvs and yes, yeah so the owner used to live here in southern california and I met him a few times and he had like the walmart jeans on. He would dude. So I think he was a billionaire and dude was like he would never in a million years the nicest guy and just unassuming. But yeah, I want to say he had, like you know, like the standard New Balance shoes, like the white New Balance Standard dad issue Nicest guy in the world and you would have never known that. And that's the thing Most people are unassuming, like you don't really know it, and I was going to, even though I'm in this space and I know I'm like how would anybody want to only get six or 7%?
Speaker 3:I would say for people that, listening, don't ever disqualify a prospect on anything. Right, that's any lead. You're going to buy a house. Why would they want to sell to me? Well, they called. There's most likely some reason that we don't know yet. And six or 7%, you get that every single year. It's interest only, so you get your full principal back and you do that on rinse and repeat and again, it's secured by a hard asset that most likely will never go to zero. It's an extremely safe investment. So I love it. I was just thinking. I wanted to say that because I myself was thinking, but it's, don't ever disqualify the prospect. My mom and uncle got into a deal and they're like oh yeah, we're getting 6%. I was like I would have paid you at least seven or eight.
Speaker 2:I think you're right. I think it's don't ever assume, have a conversation and listen to that person's needs. I don't think a new firefighter wants to get an investing should invest at 6%? Not at all. But after that firefighter has a hundred rentals and is looking to. You know, phase out, sell them on owner finance, lend money, do something more passive that's tied to real assets and you're looking at. I mean, if you have a few million dollars making 6% and you don't sleep at night and you don't have to work, it's different phases of life, different objectives.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and the other thing I was going to say is you talked about I don't want the average dude, or I say average I don't mean that in like a condescending way Like the person that's like well, I don't have a million dollars or I don't have a couple hundred thousand dollars, Start with something. You'd be surprised also as somebody that's borrowed money where it's like they want to start with twenty, five or fifty thousand dollars and it's almost like one toe in the water. Next thing you know, it's like oh, by the way, I have this two hundred fifty thousand dollars. Can you do the same thing? Like I have a guy again, you would never know him to have this kind of money. He started with like one hundred and fifty thousand dollars and at this point.
Speaker 1:I think he's up to just under a million with us. I joke with my business partner. I was like should we quit real estate and just do what this gentleman does, Because apparently all he does is print cash you? Know, because it's like every couple of months he's like, hey, I got another 200. Can you do something with it? I'm like good Lord, right, you know, but it started with just uh, you know I, I use air quotes small, smaller investment. You know a tenth of what?
Speaker 2:he has with us now I hear that over and over. Yeah, we've seen the same thing. They start with it, they dip their toe in, they try it and then you start paying them and they start trusting you. In fact, this last long-term lender that wants to do several more deals, he, he, you know the market's been in kind of disarray as we know right, the stock market, and he's like man, I don't, I don't know, he's retired from the department, he doesn't want, he wants off the ride, he wants steady. He goes you've been paying me for years, every month. I like it. How do I do more of that? That's what he asked. So he's not worried about the high upside and, as we mentioned before the call, you know syndications have high upside, high downside. You know, I think debt or lending has lower upside but much less downside. And they're, you know, they're good for different parts of your life and different risk tolerances. But I've, I've never lost money lending, but I have lost it in syndications and in stock market.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I always. I mean this. The syndication thing has obviously been a point of challenge over the last we'll call it year or two, but those that are not familiar, could you just kind of give, like the, explain it to me Like I'm 10, what's a syndication?
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, let me try to do this. I've only been a limited partner on syndications, but basically I'm going to go buy a $10 million building and I'm going to go raise $3 million from individuals. So we're all going to pool our money and we're going to be the equity participants in this deal, and you guys are going to each give me a hundred thousand, along with 30 more friends or whatever it comes out to, and and, and then we're going to go get a bank loan. So there's still a debt and debt involved. We're the ownership, but I'm the general partner who's going to run the operation, and you guys are going to sit on your couch and send me cash, and I'm going to send you cash back theoretically, and if I do a great job, you might.
Speaker 1:They would be the limited partners, correct? Yeah?
Speaker 2:in this example, you two would be my limited partners. I'd be the general partner and there were. There were a lot of tax benefits that went along with that as well for high income earners. Um, lots of upside for a long time but more risk because you're an owner, you know there's still debt, and sometimes variable rate debt. So everything was going up and we were slow adopters. We got in late on the syndication train and when we did, interest rates started to adjust, projects did not look as optimistic and they quit paying distributions.
Speaker 2:So with the syndication you can make extremely high upside or complete loss. Like Tyler was mentioning. It can go to zero, like the stock market. And that's kind of what led me to doing more lending is I don't need 30% IRRs with the risk of a zero. To me, if you take 100% loss, you go from 100,000 to zero to make that up with another 100,000, you don't need 100% gain. 100% gain doesn't get you back. In other words, if you or let's say you take a 50% loss, a 50% gain doesn't get you back to zero. Percent gain doesn't get you back to zero, you have losses hurt.
Speaker 2:I want steady upside every year with my wealth growing, so I am a little bit conservative, potentially and some people's books still have a ton of debt on real estate. Some people would say that's risky, a few million in debt, but you know, but that afforded me to buy more real estate. So we're not big on consumer debt but we use the heck out of it for real estate purposes. So anyway, I'm not against syndication. I think they can be great for some people. We just happened to get in at a bad time, kind of got burned, so I got cold feet on it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, I think there's a lot of people going through that feeling that you know it's like eh. I would rather make six or 7% versus the potential upside of something I have a lot less control over. Right, right, right.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so real quick too, and like we're always trying to look out for that, beginning firefighter, first responder, anybody to start. So you said originally your plan was to buy one door every two years and that way by the time you retired you would have the sufficient amount of properties and you would be good to go. So you mentioned overtime too. So I always tie this back to overtime. The reality is where we work overtime to cover either expenses or to have a little bit of extra money, and then we do that throughout your whole career because it's nice, it's comfortable, you make a decent amount of extra money, and then you retire and the overtime stops and then you're like, oh, this is what I'm going to get on my pension.
Speaker 3:If you have enough foresight and you plan out in the long run, and those I'm assuming those 10 rentals in your head would put you at a point to where, okay, this will at least cover what I was making in overtime and conceivably there's no lifestyle change in that and your cost of living under pension every year you're just going to maintain status quo. The reality is for most most of us is you don't think 10 or 20 years ahead, you think three days ahead and when's my next four day, or if you're on a Kelly schedule, that's, but that's anybody in any industry. I think we're not thinking, but you have to do it now. So A, was that why you had that 10 rental goal, and then B, let's kind of walk through, maybe like that beginning process, things you've learned and what enabled you to eventually ramp up quickly to where you were in a great spot by the time you did decide to retire.
Speaker 2:Cool, yeah, I am glad you asked this question and if I miss a spot, stop me. I think overtime was a big was a big thing for me. I saw a lot of guys working so much overtime they were never home and I thought it was sort of a shame. Yeah, and sometimes it caused real family problems and things like that.
Speaker 1:First couple of years of my career. I can go back and find that story and post it someday. But yeah, I worked on an ambulance.
Speaker 2:I worked every rat. We call them rats. I don't know where the term came from an overtime shift.
Speaker 1:That's a great name for it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I would work every other day and I still had nothing to show for it at the end of the year. You know then those boats and payments and stuff. So I wanted to kind of break that cycle and then my son was only with me every other, every other week, and you want to have an impact on somebody who you know he's only legally my stepson right, he's my son as far as I'm concerned and I can't be there for him half the time because he's at another house. Then I'm gone a third of that time plus overtime. I'm not going to have an impact on this kid. That was very important to me. So at first I was hustling, working all the overtime after we got that first rental because we're like we want to save up a down payment for the second, we did budget enough that every overtime shift went into a savings account just for real estate.
Speaker 2:I also took the kind of extreme step of I quit contributing to my 457, which is another supplemental retirement plan some of you may be familiar with. What did you say you did with it? I quit contributing to the 457. Let's say it was $400 a paycheck. I started putting that in the savings account, putting the overtime checks in the savings account, it would build up. Then any little bit of cash flow from the rental went in the savings account. So it build up, and then any little bit of cashflow from the rental went in the savings account. So it was like a saving snowball. And people are like you're crazy, you got to do the 457. There's benefits. And I said, well, this is what we're focused on. And I think sometimes the power of focus is important. I think diversification is good for protecting wealth and playing defense, but if you're trying to grow something, sometimes you have to just focus on it. And so we focused on saving up down payments because that's the only way we need to buy real estate. So between the overtime, the 457 contributions and the cash flow from one rental, it grew, grew, grew and we bought another.
Speaker 2:And, yes, the 10,. I thought, well, if I'm living on less, I'm already budgeting. So I'm not expecting the wrap the overtime shifts to pay me when in retirement, because I'm not, I'm not depending on that to pay my truck payment. I'm living on my base salary and saving the rest. So that was going to help that transition eventually. And then I knew real estate. I just knew too many people that were like, if I had that first house I owned 20 years ago, imagine what it would be worth today. And that was just stuck in my head like just hold stuff for a long time. So 10 was the goal. It seemed like. It seemed like a real stretch at the time. But I thought we can do this.
Speaker 2:You know, and later, as we, as my wife, we had five or six rentals and she was working a bunch of hours, loved her job too, but she's at high school football games, things every night. She's like we're going to have to hire a property manager or I can manage the properties and stay home. She turned her focus on the managing them. It wasn't a wash at all, but when she quit we realized, okay, well, yeah, she was making this much, but we're paying this much in taxes. How much is she really making to go to work every day between childcare and all these other expenses that we wouldn't have if she stayed home and help focus on the business? And that was a game changer, really. That, and then learning about real estate professional status where she could take passive losses to offset my active income and reduce my taxes.
Speaker 2:Like you, learn this as you go it's been 14 years of figuring it out, but it starts to build and you get more excited about saving for that next down payment. And then you figure out how to use private money and you don't need 50,000 to buy a house, you only need 10 and maybe zero. And you know you learn other strategies. So I do think overtime is a great tool that most first responders have, but I think too many get stuck on it as a way to live instead of using it for a purpose. And I kind of think of financial freedom in stages. One stage was when I never had to work overtime, when Nathan, my son, was with me and that was a proud day. Like I'm never going to work overtime, I'm only going to miss shifts when you're away. I'm only going to miss time at home when you're away other than my normal shift. And then I got to be there for that and I'm really grateful for that. I made less money but I'm super grateful for it.
Speaker 2:I think finding out what's most important to each of us is super important. Like I tell the people in my group like hey, you can have a Lamborghini, but Lamborghini is your thing, that's not my thing. My thing's travel and time with my family. That's my Lamborghini, but figure out what your Lamborghini is. And so I started to focus on I want to be with these kids, I want to have time with them. I don't want to regret it when they're gone and it's all too real today, as my son's about to go to college. Like you can't go back and redo that time. You know I can hustle for the next 20, 30 years if I want to, but I can't go back to that time, and so I don't regret those decisions. And then, yeah, the focus. It got to be fun, it got to be a game finding good deals. We really enjoyed it, so we started buying a couple of year, three, four year. Our goal this year is one a month, yeah.
Speaker 1:That's a good goal.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:What just? There's a lot there and totally can relate to the wanting spending time with them and kind of the reason for all of this even getting started in the first place, at least for me. But for those out there it's like, well, how do you even find a good deal? And I know that looks different. As you just said, find your Lamborghini, everybody's. What is a quote? Good deal looks different. What did you use as your parameters to say, hey, this might have some potential and it can be. You know, rule of thumb, back in the napkin math type stuff.
Speaker 1:But, I get inquiries often and I'm just like, well, that house, the rent wouldn't even cover the debt service. Like here's basically some good rules of thumb for what I would recommend if you're looking for a rental and what a quote deal is. So what did that look like for you and how has that evolved? A quote- deal is.
Speaker 2:So what did that look like for you and how has that evolved? Yes, starting out it was, you know, with a traditional down payment of about 20% could we make $200 above PITI. We weren't even setting aside for repairs and maintenance just $200 above PITI, which pretty much equals zero cashflow. You know, one thing we did learn the hard way is you've got a budget for repairs and maintenance. People debate what that number should be. I'm in the camp of probably about 20%. That's without hiring property management. That's a self-managing. We do 15%, but I think we have favorable pricing. If I was talking to a new firefighter that doesn't have long relationships with contractors, I would start at about 20% for repairs, vacancy, maintenance.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I always said like when you think about your budget, no one ever wants to show you vacancy on a pro forma, but like an 8% vacancies at one month.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 1:So, like it, I'm dealing with some stuff right now where we're changing some strategy and players and because they were basically four months to get stuff rented, two months to even show it, over a week to even get access Once somebody vacated, like this all eats at my timeline and takes that 8% and jacks it up to 16, 24, 32%, and it's like you don't realize like now, theoretically, I have to have it rented for the next two, three years straight with no maintenance issues. Just to get back to even Right, and I always say like finding the deal is one thing, operating the deal is a whole, nother thing.
Speaker 2:And we still self-manage. Mainly for that reason. We looked at it and we're bootstrapping this thing I've got. If 10% of my gross income is going to go to pay property managers, that's way more than 10% of my net income. That might be all my net income. Like these deals you know they're not home runs, they're not all those screamers you hear about where it's like, man, I just knocked it out of the park and became financially independent, like that. You know we're scratching out every penny we can and self-managing.
Speaker 2:And we thought, if we build up systems which my wife is awesome at systems she created these systems to make the management simpler, to minimize vacancy they still vacancies. I agree with you. They eat you up. Try to get long-term tenants. Take care of the long-term tenants so they stay as long as possible. We always say if they're going to buy a house, we're going to encourage. We always say if they're going to buy a house, we're going to encourage that. But if they're going to rent, we hope they rent from us because we've been good to them. You know they're paying our kids college fund, they're taking care of us. You know it's a, it's a partnership, um, let's see.
Speaker 2:So I think in in that um in, in building business, you have to think about your expenses and understand what they are and then evaluate them over time to make sure you're being truthful with yourself about those expenses. So we still self-manage. We do have some VAs that help us with that. We figured man for 10% of our gross income across this portfolio. We could hire a full-time employee and just in-house it and hold them accountable to our standards. So that's sort of the transition we're in is, instead of doing it ourselves physically, is having people to implement our systems. But yes, you've got a budget for expenses. I would tell new firefighters, new first responders, budget for expenses. But it's always. You're going to hear naysayers in this market. I heard them every year since I started in before and my little quote I came up with I think I came up with it. So it's always a bad time to buy real estate, but buy it anyway, because there's going to be someone in the firehouse that tells you today's a terrible day, dude.
Speaker 1:Oh man, where's Tony? Where's Tony Daniels? You know him and him and I had this conversation all the time, but no, it is, and that's where you got to just remember. The guys are great, love them to death. A lot of them I wouldn't take marriage advice from. A lot of them I wouldn't take financial advice from.
Speaker 2:Okay, you want to talk about pumps or ladders, excellent resource.
Speaker 1:But just keep in mind, if somebody has not achieved the financial of independence that you're looking for, they may or may not be the appropriate person to take that advice from, even though, in my opinion, most of them are probably doing it out of the want to protect you so you don't get hurt. They don't want you to get sucked into the mousetrap and then get hurt because you bought this real estate and it's a bad idea and the toilet's going to leak and all this other stuff. Right, I think they're doing it maybe out of a place of um trying to protect you, but at times it's like well, yeah you know what I mean.
Speaker 3:So for sure you can't pay the kitty either, so that's the funny thing too is, uh, yesterday I was listening to steve trang and pace morby on the distractor show and I hadn't listened to him for a while, but it was like, towards the end of the interview he actually he like put it in a good way. He said he asked steve like, oh, like, do you speak chinese or or another language? And I forget what, what dialect it was. But he said, yeah, he did. He goes. Well, he's like, think about that, if you know that I don't speak that, but you're talking to me in that language, expecting to get a favorable response.
Speaker 3:Whose fault is it Yours or that other person? And he's like oh, it would be mine. And it's the same thing. We're talking to people about these things, expecting them to be as into it or on that same wavelength as we are. And they're not. And they are trying to protect us. And that's why he was advocating getting rooms. I know you guys both have meetups getting rooms to where people are all speaking that same language and and, and that's what you want to. You want to look at.
Speaker 2:And.
Speaker 3:Mike on the side. He said that he used the 2% rule and for any bigger pockets people, I feel like that's at least where I learned at first was the 2% rule, and then they had the 50% rule and then I think now 2% has changed to 1% rule. So just create a criteria, stick to it and that's how you evaluate your deals and Will. You mentioned earlier with higher interest rates now for rentals, if a deal makes sense now on paper with the current interest rates, and it's when they go down, not saying they're gonna go back down to 2%, your cashflow is going to immediately increase. And it also made me think at that point. Then I can refinance, lower my debt, my monthly debt payment, and then I don't have to squeeze those good tenants for 50 extra bucks a month when it comes time to do rent increases, which it looks good on paper when you increase rent, but guess what? You're going to have vacancy, you're going to have to get everybody, the house repainted, everything fixed back up.
Speaker 2:So I just thought I had no, and if people are waiting for those interest rates to go down, I think that's when the buyers are going to come back in. Mass Demand increases. That increases prices. If we want to have, if you're waiting for that perfect time for prices to be low, interest rates to be low, rents to be high it's never going to happen. So if you get a deal that works today exactly what Tyler said and then you can refi it later, it's going to be better. It's going to be a base hit today and it's going to be a triple when you refinance it. And I've been doing it long enough that I did have loans in the fives and sixes that, after the COVID craziness and the rates dropped into the threes, we were able to refi and those deals that were base hits became amazing Now.
Speaker 3:I'm stuck with like I don't want to touch that debt because it's so cheap.
Speaker 2:I'll never get it. I don't think I'll ever see that again, but I do think I'll do better than seven and three quarters that I just got my house at. You know, I think there will be a time where I reset that. So you hear time and time again marry. So you hear time and time again marry the property, date the rate. But I think you're on the right track there. And back to what you're saying about firefighters want to protect you. They absolutely want to protect you. Their whole business is risk mitigation, weighing risk and reward. It's it always was kind of funny to me. And these guys are like that real estate stuff's too risky and I'm like you know you run into burning buildings for people. You don't know that that's risky. This is money, it's not your life.
Speaker 1:And the example I use now with that is you know, remove the heroic component out of it. Just think about how risky it is to put your entire financial livelihood in the hands of one mayor, one city council, a bunch of elected officials that are always trying to jockey the budget every couple of years to make it look rosy and like your entire financial wellbeing is in their hands to some extent. Would I, would I rather have it in the hands of 40 renters, where it mitigates my risk, or in one person that you know what I mean?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I do Frame it that way. It's like well, yeah, that's a good point.
Speaker 2:Or the guys would say I don't want to wake up at 2 in the morning for a clogged toilet. I'm like you wake up at 3 in the morning for sillier stuff. Every shift you're on duty For less money. This is something that could make you wealthy, and to that fact, I've never once woken up in the middle of the night for a tenant, not once. There's no reason they need to contact me. They can call the on-duty guys if it's on fire or flooded. Otherwise, I'll talk about tomorrow. You know so. We're responsive, but you're not going to wake me up Like that's.
Speaker 2:One thing I earned was my good sleep schedule. Now you know so anyway, that's. The risk is unfounded. But I think where it comes from is the reason you guys can run into a burning building is because you study fire science. You study fires, you've got experience. No one teaches people about financial education in schools. Most of our parents didn't know to teach us and in my case, my parents are brilliant, just not in personal, finance or business, so they couldn't teach me what they don't know and schools don't teach it. So how can we teach our kids and these younger firefighters, just like y'all, are doing this podcast?
Speaker 2:hey there's some stuff you can learn. There's groups you can go to where people will tell you quote unquote trade secrets. They'll tell you what worked for them. That's what I love about my group is these people. If they're holding back anything, I don't know it, because they'll tell me what marketing system they use, how they get their deals, how they fund them. They'll share everything. So there are people out there that want to help. You just got to tap into it if you want it. But I think the reason it feels risky is they don't speak the language. Yet, like Tyler was saying, they don't speak the language. When I first went to my first REIA meeting, someone said like LTV, you know these acronyms. I didn't know what the hell they were saying You're like dude.
Speaker 1:is it that month already?
Speaker 2:You know, you didn't even know.
Speaker 1:It was yeah, it was just very overwhelming, and I totally agree with that. So there's so many resources. So there's so many resources. And now I feel like with podcasts, youtube, tiktok, whatever you want to use, just find a couple people and follow them. If you sit there and take advice, you know you listen to Grant, he says this. You listen to Dave Ramsey he says that. Find somebody that kind of aligns with your values or your mental model and just follow their advice. Like you said, pace more, be like, if you want to be all into sub two, just follow his stuff and go with it.
Speaker 3:If you want to pay cash for everything.
Speaker 1:Follow Dave Ramsey syndicate, follow grant, but follow somebody. That's further ahead and there's so much information out there. You don't have to take it for gospel, but you can use it as a roadmap and get there a heck of a lot faster than just waiting for the local uh meetup every single month like there's just a ton of stuff out there.
Speaker 3:It really comes down to what you want to do yeah, yeah good, I don't know, and then create.
Speaker 3:I think when you go to the meet up and another Mastermind I'm in right now it's go there with intention. I'm going to go network, don't be a wallflower and then nurture those relationships. I think about the that group text message that we're still a part of Mike from fuel no joke. I think if I have a question, thousand percent guarantee I can put it in that group and within maybe less than two sometimes it's a well yesterday, less than five minutes.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we had, and, dude, sometimes it's a well yesterday, less than five minutes.
Speaker 3:yeah, we had, and for most super reputable person like I know who that person is he used to also be in fuel. It's like dude and you don't think that's valuable, right?
Speaker 1:it's amazing, man yeah and I always joke like I don't know much about a lot of things. But if I need to solve an issue like this has been really a prime example, as we've moved into storage, investing. Storage is real estate, but it's also, as AJ Osborne says, it's just as much of a business as it is, a real estate asset, like it's a daily living, breathing every day. There's churn. It's not like the 12 month renter typically, which is good and it's bad.
Speaker 1:But there's a lot of things, as we've moved into that, that I wasn't quite sure how to handle. A lot of it. I was able to solve by listening to a podcast or reading a book. But now if I have a question, I have a couple of folks that I can reach out to and if they don't know, they will put me in touch with the person that does know. And it's that that network effect is super, super valuable, I think. And you look at folks that have taken advantage of it and you know I'll use Tommy as an example. That's somebody that kind of got started, was working the streets of Philly as a cop, goes full bore into one component of real estate and has just gone that direction. And now look at him. You know I'm not saying this was the result of his success. It was his hard work and doing the work itself. But you know it's, it's all out there which is I don't know.
Speaker 2:No, it is, and people want to help you out there, which is I don't know? No, it is, and people want to help you. If you. A few things on that. Going to the RIA and not being a wallflower.
Speaker 2:I went one night and there was a focus group for rental property that's always what we wanted to do and the MC. We said, hey, we're going to do a elevator pitch tonight competition, you know, see who has the best elevator pitch? And I had been quiet and I was like you know what I care about being with my family, and this is a night away from my kids. If I'm going to be here, I'm going to talk, like get off the chair. And so I was like I'll do it and just got me out of my comfort zone. But from that day on people knew like, hey, that guy likes Reynolds or that's Will. And little by little, you know, I started to meet people and realized they were, they were willing to help me, just like you said, I could call them. Hey, I don't know how to do this or what would you recommend, or is this a good deal? People want to help and sometimes I have found sometimes the best thing to do is to just tell people like, hey, I'm new here, I don't know much about real estate, but I'd like to learn. People want to help in general, and if you're in groups where they don't want to help, you're in the wrong group.
Speaker 2:But I want to be around people that don't see us as competitors but collaborators, and in our meetup we funded millions of dollars back and forth because this guy's got money, this guy's got a deal, this one's got. I think last month we had one where a wholesaler made money because of the meetup. The guy that was selling his house to the wholesaler was buying from another guy in the meetup, so he got to do his deal, I got to loan on the deal. Everybody got something out of that one deal because we were talking and communicating and not seeing each other as competitors but collaborators. I tell people when I fly into San Antonio I'm always reminded of how many houses there are, how much opportunity there's way more than I could ever handle. There's plenty of opportunity for all of us. So I like to be around growth minded people that believe in abundance. It's out there if you want it, and let's just help each other get there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely. And it's funny you say that about the meetup, because we've we do a portion of our meetup where it's success stories and pitches at the beginning, and we had one where it's like the deal came from a wholesaler in the group, the buyer came, we loaned on it, then it got listed with this. I mean it was literally like a little in-house commune thing. But, and exactly, you said you had roughly 40 units. I had I don't know what San Antonio, how many people are there use units? There are, but let's just say a million. You only need a little sliver.
Speaker 1:40, 40 units is nothing to joke about, but it's also a sliver right of the population and the housing stock in that market, so it's like there's plenty to go around. Yes, we're not black rock, right, so so, um, how did I know we're coming up on time? In a nutshell, did we ever hit on how you evaluated how much rent versus purchase price? I know you said you did the 20% down model. Yeah, what does your model look like now? I mean, I know that's probably evolved.
Speaker 2:In the sweet interest rate times we were leaving zero money in deals. We're doing the BRRRR strategy which, if anyone isn't familiar, you're basically buying a house and I say flipping to yourself. Instead of taking your profit and paying tax on it by selling it, you just leave that as sort of your equity in the deal and sometimes you can get back all of your money and have a cash flowing rental. It's a lot harder with these interest rates, so we are leaving typically probably about 10,000 in our single families right now.
Speaker 1:But you're still phenomenal when you think about a cash on cash return.
Speaker 2:Hell yeah, If I can get a house that's worth $150,000, $200,000 for $10,000 of my own cash and some sweat, that's a pretty good deal and I started looking a lot more. At the beginning it was all about the cash flow, all about the cash flow. And a good friend of mine, Todd, one day said, have you ever calculated your net worth? And I was like no man, I'm trying to get $200 a door. And we looked down and that freaking pile of equity had happened while we were focused on cash flow. And so now I look at it like if I have $5 million portfolio, regardless of how much debt's on it, if I even have a 3% appreciation rate, how much equity am I gaining every year, tax-free, in wealth? If I have a $10 million portfolio and it goes up by 3%, that's $300,000 of wealth out of thin air just by holding and maintaining and managing these properties. So my perspective has changed over time.
Speaker 2:I think cashflow is still very important. That's how you keep your properties to ride them into the future. But in San Antonio it's hard to get these deals that oh, $1,000 a door or something. It's just very rare and I'm not going to say it doesn't happen, Very rare. So the cash flow is great. We reinvested all of it for at least 10 years, over 10 years and then. But the equity gain is what's really been life changing.
Speaker 2:Once you have some equity, you have options. You can go buy something different, you can liquidate, you can do you know you can do cash out refinances, which are tax-free money. I tell people, if I can pull $100,000 out of a rental, how much would I have had to earn in the department to pay taxes and actually end up with $100,000? So learning how to get your money tax-free, how to defer taxes, the tax game has been a new part of it. So, yeah, it was all about cash flow $200 a door at the at the beginning. Now it's.
Speaker 2:Can we leave 10 to 15 000 and have a positive cash flow property? Because I know eventually I'll refi that, I believe, and make it even a better deal. So I'm still just trying to stack up equity um with positive cash flow. You know, honestly, at this point, if it'll cash100 after all expenses and I'm in it for less than 10 to 15, I'll probably take it. But at first, you know, I mean we're all limited by the capital we have available and getting creative the private lending has helped with that. You know, to come in and buy these deals and make them cash flow at a 7% interest only, like just trying to get creative and make things work, Still picking up equity with each deal, you know, wanting to create equity at every step, yeah, no, and it's it's.
Speaker 1:it's one of those things. My deal metrics have changed over time because often what looked really good on paper or a spreadsheet in reality wasn't as quite as good as you thought it would be. So historically, when I was buying closer to those 2% properties like they were in those C to D areas, if I had to pick now where? Now I'm fine if it's called a 1% deal but it's in a B minus or B plus area, I would rather have that all day long because your turnover costs and just the clientele and all the things that I just am not interested in dealing with much anymore. You know it changes, but for anybody that's listening, like, just get started. Man, like he said he bought this first house, it had four bedrooms, like that, that's the, that's the way to go, or do something like that, because then you get, you could be in that house for nothing and you could rent the bedrooms to your coworkers or your buddy. That's a cop or you know.
Speaker 2:I lived in a four bedroom house for all those years. I should have had guys on the other shift living in other rooms, paying for that for five, six years. And you know, talking about action taking, just that just made me think about you know, you can learn all this stuff. All these books behind me are books that I love and I was the guy that would like read the hell out of these books. And finally, my wife's like, hey, like I don't want to hear another word about till we buy a rental, another rental Like we had the one. I was excited and I'm reading You're never going to know it all. You want to take due diligence and learn as best you can, but you have to take action. So she gave me that nudge.
Speaker 2:And you know one story about a fireman that's really cool my friend Brad. He reached out to me during COVID and I was writing this blog. He's like, hey, man, I read all your blog posts and I was like, shit, nobody reads that garbage. That got my attention already. This guy's crazy, he's to write all that nonsense. And he's like, hey, I'd like to learn about real estate and I just threw it out there.
Speaker 2:We were early in COVID with the masks and everything. I was like, hey, we're going to look at a property today at three and I was like he's not going to show up. Well, he showed up early. That dude, to this day, probably has over a dozen units. He had owned a house. He was willing to take the leap of moving out of it and living in a fourplex that he bought with an FHA I think it was financing house hacked the fourplex, so he went from a house to automatically five units total and then his fiance got a multi-unit and they've just and he took action, like at a scary time in the market and those stories are what just excite me. Like it's there, this dude, in a matter of what? Five years, since 2020, has accumulated these rentals Cause he was willing to get a little uncomfortable and take advice and ask questions.
Speaker 1:You know absolutely man and yeah, I love those stories because it's like you don't, it doesn't need to be. You don't even have to leave the job, like I think a lot of times we try and sell that or people try and sell the dream. Like you have to quit your job. Do this full-time type thing like that was never my goal when I started. My goal was, like you said, to not have to trade time for money and work overtime all the time and you don't need to go build. You don't even need 40 units, go out and buy, like you said, one every other year. If you retired with 10 houses, even if they weren't all paid off but paid down and just a little chunk equity in each one. Like you don't realize how that like little action, step over time, is just going to change so much you can't even really comprehend it. At that point I guess I should say I didn't realize that.
Speaker 2:I didn't either, you know.
Speaker 1:Whenever I say you, I really just mean me. I didn't realize it.
Speaker 2:John Schaub wrote that Building Wealth One House at a Time and I've gotten to see him a few times at the Masters of Real Estate some events we like to go to and learn from old timers and he's got, I think, maybe 20 units, if that. This is a guy that wrote a book on real estate and has been highly successful. He culled his properties down to, I think, 20. And he's living a great life with, like I think they're all paid off now. But you're right, it doesn't have to be massive. It all has to do with your goals. You shouldn't build something, you shouldn't buy 40 units if that doesn't align with your goals, but four. One of the podcasters I listened to said if you buy four, it will change your life, and I kind of believe that.
Speaker 3:Michael.
Speaker 2:Zuber, what was?
Speaker 3:that, that's Michael Zuber he does that one rental at a time?
Speaker 1:yeah, you got it, yep, yep. Well, now that we've done a great job for 55 minutes convincing anybody that hasn't bought a rental property to buy one, let's wrap it up. And if there's one book or podcast or something you'd frequently recommend or would recommend to this audience, do you have anything? Obviously, you have a bunch of books behind you, but, yeah, what would you recommend if it's like, hey, download this on Audible or listen to this podcast or whatever it is, if you're looking to get started or take the next step to grow your portfolio?
Speaker 2:Man. I took some notes on this, thinking about this interview and there's several I like, let me say one series of books that's not specific to real estate but helped me think about money is George Antone. He has this little trilogy it's the Banker's Code, debt, millionaire and Wealthy Code. Really kind of got me thinking about the debt side, the paper side, how you can use both equity and paper, and I think I'm still every day trying to learn more about how the paper side of this business.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I've read Banker's Code but I've never heard of those other two, so we'll have to get the spelling of those and add those.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they're real quick reads. I'm not affiliated, I don't pay for his coaching, I have nothing to sell. Please don't think that I have something. I just was kind of eye-opening. He tells it in a real digestible way. I've read them multiple times. After doing this for a lot of years, I was still like, wow, I never thought about it that way, so that was cool. Another one that I think is more mindset and finding your why, or your Lamborghini, if you will, is Life in Air.
Speaker 2:It really talks about some guy builds a big machine to build this. He wants a mansion, he wants all that. Another guy's really happy with a small portfolio, a small house, no headaches. I like that one. I like Coach Carson out of South Carolina, chad Carson. He has that approach that I think would be. I think it'd be really good for a lot of firefighters, that, like he calls it, like small and mighty investors, like you don't have to have a 40 units or a hundred, or you can have four, you can have two. And I like that approach. Like let's not get ahead of ourselves, let's just do one and see how that goes and then another one.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I steal this quote often and it's just go as far as you can see, and once you're there you'll see a little bit further.
Speaker 2:Yes, I just love that mindset, you know.
Speaker 2:Yes, we don't know. I, I, yeah, I mean what. Who knows what? The next thing we stumble upon and want to explore, um, and it can be overwhelming. Like you, I think, mike, you were saying like you can listen to grant cardone, you can listen to dave ramsey. At some point you need to have some focus and try something long enough for it to work or fail, rather than bouncing from thing to thing constantly. You know, uh, find something that intrigues you and then find someone that does it well and listen.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly, and man, there's a lot of good stuff in there and we could probably talk for another 40 or 50 minutes just about those items. But if folks are listening to this and they're in the San Antonio area, where should they reach out and find more information about friends investing in real estate or whatever else you have going on?
Speaker 2:Yeah, probably my Facebook's where I share most of that stuff. Just, will Pritchett, you'll find me in San Antonio and we don't even have like a real dedicated Facebook page for the group yet. We just kind of have an email list. People, can you know what you can email me if you'd like to be on our newsletter list where I do send out my little blog posts? It's will at home again, propertiesnet. Uh, that's properties, plural. Uh, will at home, again, propertiesnet.
Speaker 2:I'd be happy to add anyone that would like to just read what my thoughts are on the current market, what we're doing to pivot, to keep buying, even when it feels discouraging at times, and just lessons we're learning. We don't charge for anything we do. We don't have anything to sell, but we do, like you guys, we love to just share this. But we do like you guys, we love to just share this. Hey, regular people can still reach the American dream even now, even amidst all this uncertainty. So anything we can do to help people, particularly first responders, I mean, you can reach out to me directly and I will do what I can to help you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, definitely, yeah, definitely. If you don't mind, post that newsletter link in the Facebook group, because there's people that listen to this. But some people don't listen. They participate in the Facebook group and vice versa. Ok, I sure will.
Speaker 1:I was starting a private Facebook group, so the people in the group are an excellent resource. It basically just takes your room and makes it virtual so that in between meetings. Obviously you don't have folks attending every month every meeting, but it's a great place. If I'm like, hey, I need a carpet guy here or anybody have a recommendation for this. It's a.
Speaker 1:It's a great little ecosystem and we control it to the extent that we don't want a bunch of scammers and stuff like that in there. So we approve every single person that goes in and if we see people doing bad stuff, we'll just yank them out. But it's a great place for people in your facebook or in your meetup group to like, stay connected, and you can drop your newsletter, so on so forth. It's a super low cost. I mean, it's free. Yeah, granted, you're building it on rented ground with it being on facebook, but um it, it made us look like geniuses because we started it right before COVID, so, like whenever we couldn't meet in person, we were doing stuff on there and it just allowed it to maintain a little bit of momentum during that time and, in hindsight, has helped out tremendously with a lot of things.
Speaker 2:No, I love that. I think you know. One thing I did when it was a firefighters only is we had a group meet page or group meet thread, I guess, where we could ask and we posted a contractor list and I haven't opened that up to the larger group. Maybe I should now. But people had to have vetted that roofer, vetted that framework, vetted that whatever. And then you could see who vetted them and recommended them. And our thought was if these contractors also know they're getting business from the group, they're going to give favorable pricing and be responsive and give good service because they know they're going to get more business from the group. And if they're not, we'd take them off the list. If we got bad reviews we'd pull them. So it was mutually beneficial for the group, you know, to find the contractors and they could ask the question or they could go straight to that spreadsheet and see hey, we'll recommend this.
Speaker 1:Well, we don't have the list, but we have the same concept per se, and it's just basically the market dictating it. And if somebody's screwed somebody over it's going to get mentioned there. Vice versa, if they're good, they get a referral out of it. And the pricing and whatnot just kind of becomes a byproduct of them knowing they're from the i81 investor group. So it's, it's super easy to start and might be beneficial to your group. No for sure that's been on the list. I appreciate that tip yeah, so anything else or else uh man.
Speaker 2:No, I appreciate y'all having me. I just want to encourage anybody that's been thinking about it. Don't think there's going to be a day where everybody's going to say now's the time. It's not going to happen, it's. You know. Like I said before, it's always a bad time to buy real estate, but buy it anyway. Try to buy good deals in the market you're in. Try to learn how to manage them and operate them well, and for me, it's holding for the long term. We do flip every now and then. I'm not against that. I just don't want people to sell everything. The real wealth is by holding things, holding assets that go up in value and you turn around and you've got a sizable chunk of equity one day. So I just want to be encouraging that you can do it. If you're listening to this, like you can do this, keep listening to this podcast. Listen to people who are doing different things in the space. Learn about money and how it works. That's my main message.
Speaker 3:Awesome. Well, this has been great. I do want to mention one thing. I don't think very many people watch our video. I think it's mainly audio. My essay is still somewhat high, even though I've been off the job for a few years, and Will has been taking notes the entire time and it looks like he had pre-prepared things that he wanted to go over, and I just want to say that's a very good indicator of success. So he's intentional with what he's doing?
Speaker 2:I love watching it.
Speaker 3:I think you're the first guest. I've seen that's actually done it. I think you're the first guest. I've seen that's actually done it and I can see you working through it. I don't want to put you on the spot, I just want to say it's not an accident that he is doing what he's doing and he is where he is. I was taking notes today too, so I was writing down on my phone stuff thank you, I appreciate that yeah, you got it.
Speaker 3:Thank you for being on. I still love to watch every little detail. It's still my favorite thing one of the things about being on the job is like it's really challenging people watcher I'm a daughter, I was like, hey, that's between them.
Speaker 2:But yeah, if I can help in any other way with what y'all have going, we can go down the wormhole of something else, but but this has been a lot of fun. Really appreciate y'all having me.
Speaker 1:Awesome, We'll hang on a second, but we're going to wrap this up and uh, thanks for tuning in and we look forward to speaking every with everybody next week.