MMM Edition: Hans Gildein's "Agent To Owner" Journey

Ready to see how a modest first rental can snowball into a 36‑unit portfolio without flashy flips or risky bets? Cole sits down with Hans of White Fox Homes to unpack the gritty details: the early years as an agent learning the ropes, the first “doable” deal someone else passed on, and the disciplined BRRRR model that kept only a few thousand dollars tied up per property. The through line is simple systems and strong relationships—especially with lenders and tenants.

Hans opens the playbook on construction underwriting and draw management: why a scope of work must be a timeline, how to split kitchens and baths into bank-friendly line items, and the best checkpoints to trigger inspections and reimbursements. We get candid about budget reality too. Expect to go 10–20% over, avoid unnecessary demo, and preserve value where it already exists. That mindset, paired with leverage, shows how a $100k cash position can fund multiple projects at once instead of stalling on a single rehab.

The conversation takes a surprising turn with a mailer that landed a 21‑unit hotel‑bar deal. Hans explains stabilizing the upper floors first, the choice between re‑opening a bar or converting to two quiet apartments, and how midterm furnished rentals for traveling nurses can nearly double a one‑bedroom’s income where nightly STRs are restricted. We also talk about scaling past “one at a time,” including family lines of credit, blanket refis, and when to hand off property management. Above all, Hans credits tenant service—fast repairs and clear communication—as the quiet engine behind low turnover and smooth rent increases.

If you’re on the fence about your first property or struggling to scale, this conversation brings both strategy and courage. Subscribe for more real-world tactics, share with a friend who needs a push, and leave a review telling us which tactic you’ll implement first.

VCap Real Estate Podcast

Transcript

Welcome And Hans’s Backstory

SPEAKER_07 0:12

Welcome to the VCAP Real Estate Podcast, where we talk about building physical empires. Learn from industry experts about all aspects of the business of real estate. You'll learn how to buy, renovate, manage, and sell deals by people who actually do it every day. People who build their fortunes doing this. I'm your host, Cole Farrell. Let's talk. So tonight, we have an awesome interview coming out with Hans, Kildine. He's a local investor from the Valley. He started White Fox Homes. He acquired 36 units in just the last two years. And you have some other interesting things in your portfolio, which I'll get to. And you're definitely an expert in construction management, so we'll go into that as well. So first, just tell us your story. Tell us more about it.

SPEAKER_08 1:07

Yeah, it's a long story. I've been feeling like I've been doing it forever, and it took forever to get started. You know, I probably started thinking about this in 2004 or 2005, watching the silly flippers house shows. I love them, love them. Look, I can do that, you know. And uh like around 2008, I watched a flipper three doors down, you know, uh flip a house. And I went over and shook his hand, started talking to him, and you know, he worked for Remax, and he recommended if I was gonna get in the business, to go, you know, to join Keller Williams, um, which I thought was great. You know, so I entered the business as an agent, not intending to be an agent forever. Um my broker's here, don't tell him, I'm a terrible agent. But no, I was good enough to work for a while and make some money at it and get going and get and get in the business. And that was my goal to just get networking and and and and and meet the right people. And I ended up working for Don Winter, which is a local uh company here, DLP. And you know, maybe you've heard of them, maybe you haven't. They've almost moved out of real estate at this point, they're almost in lending, um, and I ended up doing a lot of lending work with them. So I just got exposed, um, and that was my my best opportunity was just the education. Um, and I think leaving myself open to just go wherever the the you know wherever the current took me to to to find my footing in in the business was key.

First Rentals And Early Deals

SPEAKER_07 2:40

That's awesome. So tell me about your portfolio because I know you've been interested in how you got started, kind of how you built up. I think a lot of people here resonate with that. So give us some more details on that. How'd you get started? How'd you build?

SPEAKER_08 2:52

Yeah. Uh slowly, of course. And really, my first rental was my first primary. You know, I bought a little um, you know, twin back in 2000, lived in it for 15 years, and then bought a bigger house and just kept that and rented it out. So that's like the super easy way to get your first rental. You already have it if you're living in a modest house. You know, if you're already living in a million-dollar house, it's gonna be tough to turn that. But you know, uh, but you know, uh, it was a nice little twin, and now it's renting for$2,000 a month, and my mortgage payments, you know, 30-year fixed for 3.5% or something silly like that. You know, so that thing's just cash flow.

SPEAKER_07 3:35

That's awesome. So you got your first one, and then where'd you go from there? Kind of how'd you get the next couple? Because now you have a size whole portfolio. So how'd you get there?

Scaling With BRRRR And Cash Flow Discipline

SPEAKER_08 3:43

Yeah, so again, I was working for the right company. I was really, you know, kind of in the middle of leads and lead generation and meeting being at the right time and the right places. And one of my first deals was a deal that Don literally didn't want, the owner of DLP. Awesome. You know, he and he's like, actually, what happened was we analyzed the deal. I went out and analyzed these deals for him to take them down, and I said we should buy it for 41,000. It was a little row house in Allertown. And he and we locked it up, I had the papers signed. I'm I'm literally walking out of the house, and Don calls me and he says, You know what? I want it for 35. I'm like, I just signed. And I get I let it brew for like 30 minutes, and I called him back. I said, Don, I'll buy it for 41 and I'll give you a couple thousand. And that was the way I got my first deal. That's awesome. So I was in and out for like total we have to repair is 55,000. That's awesome. And it and it and it rented at like a thousand bucks.

SPEAKER_07 4:45

Well, I think what's cool about that is I think a lot of people have different standards. Uh-huh. If anybody here is getting started, a big piece of it is like someone's standards might be completely different from yours. So if yours is different from his, well, that's a great deal for you. And maybe it was different for him, but it still worked. So you still did the deal. And it worked for him because he made a couple brands in the deal, and that's all he was interested in doing anyway. There you go. And I love that. So tell me about as you built, what were some of the challenges that you ran into? Uh, what were things that you wish you would have known earlier on?

SPEAKER_08 5:13

Well, cash flow is always a challenge. Uh, and and I did not quit my full-time job for eight years, you know, while I collected properties, and I just, you know, this this is how realistic it is to do this. I was making around$65,000,$70,000 buying as as many properties as I could possibly buy because I because I could buy them in the right formula. I could walk out of there with maybe two or three thousand of my own money tied up in after the more after the end of the burr. Right? At the end of the burr, I locked up two grand on a property that's cash flow. Next. So, you know, it went from like the first year I had one, then I bought two, and then I bought like eight, and then I bought twelve. And then I was I had to breathe.

SPEAKER_07 6:03

So was at that point, was it challenging when you kind of went quickly and then looked back and kind of stabilized? Like, so do you recommend somebody just powers through and goes 100% in? Or do you think it's just a good one?

SPEAKER_08 6:12

Yeah, because you realize you you don't realize what you can what you can't handle. Like, like uh there was no, it was just, I don't know. You don't stop yourself unless you stop yourself, I guess. You know, you know, it just didn't feel like I went into I got in this business thinking if I could buy 10 houses, and then I met a guy buying 10 a month, and I'm like, oh, I can buy more than 10 houses. So it's just perspective.

The Hotel-Bar Acquisition Via Mailers

SPEAKER_07 6:40

I love that. I love that. So you have an interesting project now. You have a hotelslash bar that you're working on.

SPEAKER_08 6:47

Give us some details. So the crazy thing is that mailers actually work. I got this on a mailer. Who does mailers here, still, right? Still, exactly. I love that. So I mailed the whole valley and I mailed like uh oh this may have been off the um off one of the lists off the probate list. So this was this was coming through probate, right? Um and you can get that list at Allentown, you know, or you can just pull it, pull it at the courthouse monthly um and create your own mailing list for free. Um so yeah, I mailed, you know, a couple of flyers out, two or three flyers, and and and this one just hit and she called back. And at first it was sounded so crazy, so weird the way she described it. I passed on it. I was like, it sounded like it didn't sound like what it is, and it sounded like completely commercial, and I was like, it doesn't really sound like what I'm looking for, but whatever. And anyway, she called back, thank God. And uh and uh yeah, we ended up putting a steal together. It was it was uh a hotel bar, a bar on the first floor, and 16 rooms in the second and third floor, and the um building across the street, which is three units. That's awesome. So 21 units total. Okay, yeah.

SPEAKER_07 8:08

Are you offering this in a bar currently or are you in renovations?

Stabilizing Units And STR vs Furnished Midterm

SPEAKER_08 8:10

We're in renovations. We the focus initially was to stabilize second and third floor, which was 16 of the 18 units, right? So there's 16 of the 21 units. Um and now the bar is in a weird conversion spot, right? Where I can run it as a bar or it's actually been approved to convert to two units. So a bar is a lot of daily concern, and two quiet units sounds really cool to me. So top two floors are stabilized, and I'm literally refinancing it and and setting up to finish the first floor and and finish renting those places. So I'm I'm at a really good milestone where I just got the appraisal yesterday, got got it appraised yesterday. I don't know, I don't know if I made any money yet this year. I'll let you know next week. We'll find out. But that's been my primary project this year.

SPEAKER_07 9:06

Okay. How is the short-term rental, like the hotel style, different from your longer rentals? Like, do you prefer one over the other?

SPEAKER_08 9:14

Or I love that long-term rental, and and and you know, I know there's an Airbnb craze, and I I have one of my rentals I turned into a furnished, and um it's in Bethlehem, so I can't do Airbnb, you're not allowed to. Uh, but I can do what's called furniture binders, which is a monthly furnished thing for traveling nurses and such. I literally have a traveling nurse in there right now. Uh when I was renting this as a one-bedroom, just a normal if was it uh, what was he paying? A thousand dollars? It's$1,900 as a furniture. So it was worth buying some use furniture at the thrift store, right? You know, to get that thing. I mean, we had fun renting it and I guess, you know, carry help.

SPEAKER_07 9:57

That's awesome. What's the kind of timeline look like? Like what's your average stay for that building? Uh is it turned quickly? Is there like uh they stay longer or what's it seem like?

SPEAKER_08 10:07

So the the hotel you mean? Yes, the hotel. So the hotel is um came with um nine people that were currently living there, and one of them we had to throw out, but I did manage to keep eight of them for the whole renovation, and they're still there, and they have been there for years. So I raised the rent a little bit, but I'm not gonna kill them because I want them to keep staying. Yeah, and I'll make most of my money on the new tenants, and they're coming in. The new tenants are probably coming in around 15% higher, 20% higher than the uh long-term tenants, than the uh you know the older tenants. Yeah, yeah. It's a good mix of people, it's uh retired, it's social security, you know, um income, and there is some working folks that work nine to five and and just can't afford a roommate, or you know, that's their roommate, you know, the rest of the house. They you know it's$7.50 a month, and that's it. You share a bathroom, what's so bad about that? If you want to save money, it's not that bad of a deal, right?

SPEAKER_07 11:07

You know, you're in it right now and you're still working through it. However, would you do another one of these again? Oh, would you tell somebody else like, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_08 11:15

Well, I do love it though. I'm like, you know, okay, I dream about renovation sometimes in that.

Construction Financing And Draw Strategy

SPEAKER_07 11:22

I love that. All right, let's talk about construction a little bit. I'm curious. So you talked about your like kind of focused in the construction work and focused in the draw. Do you want to give some more like insight into that? Like, what did you do? What's your expertise? And then I got questions on that.

SPEAKER_08 11:37

Yeah, of course. Yeah, so I I really did have a good opportunity at DLP following Don around and was able to do a lot of different roles for him. And one of the roles was you know, he ended up lending to everybody in this room. I mean, you know, you know, lending to uh this kind of structure. Um and so I'm on the back end of that. Um I end up being an underwriter, I'm I'm literally became a construction underwriter just by being there, right? Being in the right place at the right time. Um and we would analyze the deal. So if you would bring a deal to me and I'd say, hey, you know, you got fifty thousand dollars on this, blah blah blah, but you really need a hundred, we're gonna have a conversation, right? And I'm gonna I'm gonna help you bring that budget up and and and you know, or bring it down vice versa, right? And then on the draws, when you're when you do your drywall, your whatever, whatever, you know, I'm gonna say, well, it was complete. You know, so it it it it became it was really enjoyable because I really did, I was able to help a lot of people, help a lot of people work work through their situations, work through their their rehabs, and it was fun.

SPEAKER_07 12:45

I have so many questions I'm gonna ask here. So, one, have you seen it, is it always more advantageous to finance the rehab, or is it completely situational, or would you say it's more advantageous to do a cash?

SPEAKER_08 12:57

Well, certainly situational. Um, but you're gonna be able to do more when you have your financing set up ahead of time. Um you know, so you know, ideally you might be able to spread your money. If you have a hundred thousand dollars, you can spread, you know, you can spread it between two or three properties and do three three properties at once. If you're trying to finance your own, you're you're gonna wait six months between properties.

SPEAKER_07 13:22

Tell me more about that. So you're saying you can spread it across a couple different properties. Does it have to be in the same loan, or can you work that separately?

SPEAKER_08 13:29

Well, I mean, if you if you're if you had like a 100 grand to work with, right, and and you put it all down on one property and then there's no financing at all. But if I save money on financing, you know, you're gonna slow down. Right. But you know, if you if you just use that as your down money, as your seed money, as your operating capital, you'll be able to move through two properties or three properties, of course.

SPEAKER_07 13:49

Right, so use the leverage. Yes. Um and you mentioned like the scope of work. So talk to me about that. Do a lot of people get that wrong, or it's I'm sure you got stories.

SPEAKER_05 13:59

Oh, yeah.

Scope Of Work, Timing, And Bank Relations

SPEAKER_08 14:00

Um you know, I think what's misunderstood is sometimes about a scope of work is how it how important the timing is. Um you when your contractor's giving you a bid for a kitchen, he's just giving kitchen, bathroom, floor, windows, right? He's just very linear. But he's not really thinking about when it's going to get done and what should get done to trigger the draw so that people can get paid. Right? So when you have a kitchen, you should break it down. Rough, rough electrical, framing, tile, uh, cabinets, counters, you should break that down individually so that the bank can identify it and give you X amount of dollars for your framing in the beginning of the kitchen, and X amount of dollars for your cabinets when you order them, etc. etc. When you give them the information they need, they can they that's what they need. Then they can just throw it in their calculator and complete your draw. Make it easy for them.

SPEAKER_07 14:59

Don't make it hard for them. Alright, so let's back up. So there's a lot of guys here that I know are like, yeah, cool, makes sense. I know I threw like a thousand pen there. I know there's some people here that are like, all right, wait, you said finance rehab, and now you're saying rough in and all these things. What does that mean? So if somebody doesn't know, walk them through the process of how does that go? If you go rough in, you go this, you go that. Walk them through what should it look like.

SPEAKER_08 15:19

Okay, okay, sure. Uh probably three core phases. Um, you know, you want to break your scope of work down to what's gonna happen in the rough, your dirt work if you have to do any digging, if you got to demo, and you got you know the stuff that just creates havoc, you know, tearing walls down, you're gonna get paid for that early, and you want to break that out early. And and and you want to have the next point might be frame up, you know, where you're coordinating with the inspections is one of the easiest ways to do it, right? When you're when you're bringing your inspector out to to check your frame up and your rough and your rough plumbing and your rough electrical, you might as well get a draw then because it's a great checkpoint, right? And then align your next checkpoint with finished drywall or finished paint or whatever, there's a great point there where all right, all the walls are in and everything's painted, you can tell that everything's painted. It's pretty easy for the bank to figure that out, right? There's like built-in obvious checkpoints to create, and then like cabinets, of course, they're a big ticket item, windows are a big ticket item, you know.

SPEAKER_07 16:25

So if um if I'm an investor and I'm like, that sounds good, should I expect my contract to go do all that, or is it me as the investor that should be running that process?

SPEAKER_08 16:34

It depends on how your relationship. So I act as my own GC. Even though I hire a GC and I call him a GC, he's really my carpenter. You know, I don't let them do the plumbing, I don't let them do the electrical or the paint. I just need them for the carpenter. Um, so I run the job, I coordinate with the plumber, and etc. Whoever is coordinating your trades, that's your GC. And it could be you, Gotcha.

SPEAKER_07 16:59

And then you kind of talked about uh you know being smart about the timeline, having the draws come in. So, in my experience and the ones that we've done, we've always had to front the money, and then we get the draw, and we get paid back, right? Is that always the case? Is there any other scenario where the bank will do anything different?

SPEAKER_08 17:18

It's always the case until there's a comfort level. In the beginning, you're gonna have to front until you can show that bank that you can handle it, and then maybe, maybe they give you a little seed money, or if you could, if you're gonna do a$30,000 roof, maybe they give you$10,000 for it in the beginning. But that comes with a relationship. That's not first draw, that's not first project, that's not fifth project, that's 10th project.

SPEAKER_07 17:42

You know, you've got to build that relationship with that bank. I like that. The reason I asked that is I feel like when I first started getting in the draw process of learning this, I just assumed that the bank was funding the rehab, they'd give me a check of closing and I would just go. And I was like, yeah, no, no, no, no, no, no, that works.

Budget Mistakes, Over-Rehabbing, And Contingencies

SPEAKER_08 17:56

So you need to get some work done. Right. Because the value is not there yet, right? When you closed and you had$100,000 in construction to do, the property wasn't worth that yet. It still needed that$100,000 to be spent onto that project, and now it's worth it. Now the bank can release it. Their bank, their draws are all about leverage. They don't want to release more than 70% of the value of the property. So in the middle of construction, you got to kind of figure out did we are we still at 70% of the value, or do we did we release too much?

SPEAKER_07 18:33

Alright, another question for you. So you kind of hinted on this already, but what are a couple of the biggest mistakes that you've seen people do? So you hinted about timeline a little bit. Are there any other huge things?

SPEAKER_08 18:44

I think the biggest, simplest mistake is going too far. Most of these houses don't need a full rehab, they don't need you to rip the walls down and redo the plaster and you know, just preserve that laughing plaster. It's beautiful. It's cheap to leave it up. Yeah, but you poke holes in it and then you put it back. You know, you don't you know if you don't have to do a full rehab, don't make it a bigger project and it doesn't, it doesn't highlight that.

SPEAKER_07 19:15

Was there a lot of times that I just can think of it? Uh do you have any stories of people that either did way too small of a rehab budget or just way too big and you went in and you're like, here's this, here's why?

SPEAKER_09 19:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 19:25

Yeah, sure.

SPEAKER_08 19:26

Um and sometimes you question them. You know, it could be like a unique project, and they got like they they want to build some weird stuff, so they have it. They have an explanation of why they might be uh have a weird budget, but but yeah, the biggest uh thing is you want to you want to align your budget with what you're really gonna do. You want to be honest with yourself. You know, if if if you if you think it's gonna need 50,000, then budget for it and allow for it. And try to spend 40, that's fine, but have but have fifty sitting aside because you're probably gonna spend it. Um you know, you you're probably gonna go over ten percent. I've gone I've Gone over 10%, 20% on every single budget. I'm not proud of that, but uh it it got the job done, you know.

SPEAKER_07 20:10

And I think if we ask the room here's going over about it, everybody has done work that would say I have.

SPEAKER_08 20:14

Yeah, you know, it's part of it.

SPEAKER_07 20:16

So okay. In terms of either building your portfolio or that experience, what was the biggest mistake that you've made, and what was the biggest success that you've had?

Financing Growth, Help From Mom, And Management

SPEAKER_08 20:28

Well the host the hotel's a slam dunk, that's for sure. But I do have like I I didn't get a deal. And I'd almost turned my nose on that, and it was uh it's on Clay Street now in town, and it's a crappy little row house, and it's no parking, and it's own little alley, and you know, and uh and it's you know, Dale, you're probably thinking it's barely worth$100,000. You know what I mean? Like it was I got it for$28,000, it needed$5,000 worth of work. I put a Section 8 tenant in there, I did a couple Section 8, it didn't hold tenants very well for some reason. But after I think I held it for five years and I sold that for like$150 or something ridiculous like that. And it was one that I was like, oh, it's an alley property. I almost didn't buy it. Yeah, you know, no parking, yeah. That's fantastic.

SPEAKER_07 21:25

It just shouldn't do. I think if you just hold something and you make it work, yeah, especially in this environment, it would be still worth it. Yeah, so that's awesome. Yeah, long-term gain. All right, before I get to the next section, any questions? Shelby.

SPEAKER_11 21:38

You said you were doing like one at a time, and then eventually you got to being able to do like 12 a year, how did you make that transition? Like, I'm at the one at a time spot, and I can figure out how to like it's about to happen, probably.

SPEAKER_03 21:51

Right, but like how did you make that job? Like, how were you financing 12? How were you were you like using your mind managing 12?

SPEAKER_08 21:59

Well, that's about so that's about when I got my mom involved. Okay, and she's she's always she was a bookkeeper, and she has been helping me. And I'm gonna tell you right now, there's no way I could have done this without her. There's no way, you know, um, because she handled making sure we were paying the taxes, I mean, mortgages and everything. I mean, you know, I'm out there just swinging hammers, and she was she was essential, so so that's key, probably having help. Um, but I was also working for a vendor, so it wasn't too hard to bring a deal to the to my boss and say, Oh, here's what we're buying this month. He's like, Yes, good for you. You know, so approvals were really easy. So I definitely had an advantage there, um, but um, but it was also like aggressiveness, you know, finding those deals and not being afraid of them. And you know, um one I was very strict about my model. I had a you know, I had an awesome, I still have it, a nice little spreadsheet that works it all out where I can figure out that I'm gonna I'm gonna tie up two grand on this property or I'm gonna make two grand on the refi or something like that. Great, I'll take those all day. So that was the key. At the time, the market allowed me to not tie up a lot of capital. Right now, the market almost requires you to lose 10% into a deal. You're leaving a lot of money on the table, and you're just not gonna get it out for years. It's just you're tying up that equity.

SPEAKER_02 23:27

But when you were financing$12 a year, you were doing like small down payments. Like, how were you how were you exactly financing that?

SPEAKER_08 23:36

Right, great question, yeah. And that was where my mom came in. So she had like a hundred thousand dollar line of credit, and I had a little bit of money, so we would, you know, she would be my seed money on some of these, and then we would turn them and get all her money back in the finance. I'd pay mom back, you know, and I and and we'd refinance like six of them at a time, do a blanket loan, you know, and and you know, and then we just do the next few. You know, it she was pretty nervous on the first two or three. After, you know, after we were rolling, she was in. She was like, alright, cool, you need more money? All right. I've been paying my mom 10% a year or 10 yeah, 10% flat for since literally since we started. I'm pretty sure I gave her a quarter million dollars. I had to have. Which I'm that's awesome. Good for her. Good for her.

SPEAKER_07 24:28

That's awesome. That's awesome. Any other questions?

SPEAKER_05 24:32

So manager on the properties, or do you have the property manager?

SPEAKER_08 24:35

So I do manage them myself. I can't wait to be able to afford a property manager. Uh, you know.

SPEAKER_05 24:42

Because it seems like if you because if the average property manager wants 10%, that seems like that would be your proper, that would be your profit all.

SPEAKER_08 24:50

That's what I'm living on right now, that 10%, right? So once I build up more equity and I can afford to hire Connor, maybe, or a property manager, or turn it over to a property management company, then, but I gotta build up equity. I'm only in like a 55% equity position, and that's part of the reason why I'm working. You know, I think once you get down to maybe a 40% equity position, then you can you have that little extra flexibility, that little extra cash flow that you can give to a property manager.

SPEAKER_10 25:20

That happens pretty quickly. Right. Since you purchase 12, 30 units in a certain period of time. Yeah, it takes you years to get there, but all of a sudden, two years, you're there and you're moved on. Well, and now you opened up management, now you're free to do more, and that's that's when everything really starts to do.

SPEAKER_08 25:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_10 25:40

So it's just like a learning curve, a learning curve minute down.

Mindset, Barriers, And Finding Deals

SPEAKER_08 25:43

It's funny you say that. I had bought like so many properties, I was up to 30 units. I think it was 20, 28 units or something like that. And I was getting too busy. I could not handle my full-time job and keep buying properties. I needed to either go that route or keep working and just stop buying properties. And I decided to stop buying properties and just keep working my full-time job and went into like cruise control property management mode for like three years and just wasn't paying attention. I know this is terrible advice. I didn't wasn't paying attention to my numbers at all, and I added them up one day, and I didn't even notice the second million, and that's the name of the book.

SPEAKER_09 26:29

That's incredible.

SPEAKER_08 26:31

That's incredible. That's how fast equity built. Like all of a sudden it was there. And I was holy shit. And then I put my notice in. There we go.

SPEAKER_01 26:43

That's incredible. Good question. Oh, yeah. What would be the biggest piece of advice that you'd give somebody who thinks that they're ready to get their first property, but they're hesitant, they're on the fence, yeah. They're kind of waiting to get like that nudge. What would be your opinion, your advice? We need to do fish, what we need to do. I need to help you buy. Yeah.

SPEAKER_08 27:02

And and it it is it is well the first one's scary. The first one's scary, yeah. Yeah, the first one's scary. And in your position, you're young, and like you should be looking for a you could afford to pay full price for a multi-unit and live in one of those halves right now, right? You could absolutely afford to do that, and and one of the keys is now you have rental income on your tax returns that you're gonna need anyway. And you capture that through personal residence, it's a real easy way to take something down, yeah.

SPEAKER_07 27:36

Yeah. And just to expand on that, I think the biggest thing that holds people back is just the fear of it. I think like logically everything makes complete sense. It's just that like I'm nervous. And I think for somebody, especially young, but really anybody, like what do you have to lose? I'm not saying you have nothing to lose, I'm saying evaluating what you have to lose and just deciding if it's worth jumping over the fence, and then you know, if things go south, just make sure you can cover it and just be smart about it. But I think in most cases, as long as you have people around here that can guide you, you're not gonna lose. There's no way.

SPEAKER_08 28:06

Oh yeah, you have way too much good advice on your side to think wrong.

SPEAKER_05 28:10

Don't listen to the internet.

SPEAKER_07 28:12

Don't listen to the internet. I'll say I've interviewed so many people, and every single time, what they always say is I wish I bought more, I wish I bought sooner. So just buy.

SPEAKER_00 28:23

Michael, do you think it's a matter of the wish or the time or the information, the occasion?

SPEAKER_07 28:30

100% desire. I think if you don't want it, you're not gonna do it. No, it's not. I think you can come up with every excuse in the world. Um, if you want it bad enough, you'll get it.

SPEAKER_10 28:39

Well, listen, the hard thing is you've been brought up in a way that you've constantly been told you can't, you can't, you can't. You have to take yourself out of that. So you either through peers or just on your own, you've got to go figure out I've got this mindset that's not allowing me to get over this hump.

SPEAKER_08 29:01

It is mine.

SPEAKER_10 29:01

But there's a way to get through it. I need to find out how to get through it. And then once you do, and you get on the other side of you, you're like, well, I should have done that for five years. Yeah, how could I not? And hopefully you can use that to leverage for the next one. And same thing with you doing the first deal, it's just it's the mindset. And it comes with experience. As we're getting older, our job is to share that with younger people or people just getting into it. Because I like to see people's learning curve from how long it took me to figure shit out, not just in the business, but across the board with all the things in my life. I need to share that with somebody younger so that when they get to my age, they're way up here compared to where I was. So then my life had some kind of meaning.

SPEAKER_07 29:47

Yeah, it's so good.

SPEAKER_10 29:49

I think we I think we're all there. So, like, when you always get more.

SPEAKER_09 29:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 29:56

I'm glad they hit that point. The point is it's great. No. One thing is it doesn't have to do with another. Having information, I say, so comes now for you to be a large. Maybe your credit is called missile. Maybe you don't have a resource of funding. Maybe you don't have a partner. Maybe call how to do what now. Call, I went so that's really your bottom.

SPEAKER_10 30:33

But that's still your bottle, that's still your bottleneck. So you're still bottle, you're still bottlenecking your mind because you're looking at that as your limitation. It is, but if you could tell yourself, hey, if I didn't have that thought, what options could I explore? Oh, I could meet someone here, like you had mentioned that you know he he put himself in a position as a lender and he had easier access. So immediately we can say, oh, that's how he did it. I'm not in that place. Right. Well, guess what? You could find someone in here who's maybe lending, and all of a sudden your buddies and hey, but you gotta go up someone.

SPEAKER_08 31:07

Hey, listen, listen, you can be the cleaner. You know how much I pay cleaners? You can save a lot of money being the cleaner of your own properties. It doesn't matter as long as you find somewhere you know the less the maintenance cost.

SPEAKER_05 31:19

You don't understand what the main where I see owners comes out the most is they don't understand the maintenance cost. Like, there's a lot of realtors that will give people a bad little sale and be like, this property's great, you're gonna make all this money on this property. Uh, they forgot to tell you there were turbines and you need to be sewer. So you need to understand what it's gonna cost to not only turn the unit, but also what to maintain it, because maintenance is gonna be your biggest expense.

SPEAKER_07 31:45

I think on that it's having a Dallas in your corner to make sure that you don't make a mistake.

SPEAKER_05 31:49

Yeah, but I mean it's your it's your professional responsibility to look out for your clients and be like, not be afraid to be like, Hey sir, I think you're not making a good choice. Yeah. Question.

SPEAKER_04 32:01

All right, how are you doing? So how do you guys so essentially um I want to uh add to it and I should ask your question at the same time. There's to be a man card for a form of part of it, and uh pretty much on the hormones and stuff. But I would say, like, um, as a minority, you know what I'm saying? There's a lot of blockages in grain or DNA, not even because of big, maybe because of grand-grandgrand-grandfather that has been awarded to you unknown. Right? So it takes a lot of a lot of uh reprogramming the mindset and actually push your bar forward. So you can probably say, Oh, I have enough credit. Well, you have a point that I have a credit, the majority partner, it's just part of it. You know what I'm saying? So it's just sometimes uh opening up our mindset to a bigger or higher goals or miners all so that we ourselves can believe that we can do it. You know what I mean? Because sometimes I'm talking about myself, but essentially it's like, all right, you know, you come to a study, whatever, you know, I'm gonna be a member of public. So, you know, okay, go on and work at Amazon, pick some boxes, save home for 155 years, and maybe hopefully so. You might put it out there for a bed, right? You know, you get over that. You go, all right. I want to get there, how can I get there? Okay, well, what are the my options? Okay, you say, partner, partnerships are great. I'll have partners in all my business. Um, how can I actually I'm an AI official now?

SPEAKER_08 33:56

So how can I use tools available in the market to increase my one of the one of the best ways to get into the business if you have credit issues or if you don't have money is to just find the deals. If you're the guy finding the deals, then you get to sell the deals.

SPEAKER_09 34:11

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_08 34:12

Right? You can go knock doors for free, you can go hand out cars for free, you can find deals for free, but if you control deal flow, you will make money because you get to sell the deals. Then you're the wholesaler.

SPEAKER_04 34:26

I like selling and coal calling and stuff, ski tracing, all that stuff. I ski trace a list of like 200 people, pitch bar, whatever the case. We found a 40 unit in case of value added. I got a uh I never said a deal. You know, I said when I have a book on the ground. A great example? Right. On the premises, we wholesale the deal. We didn't have the capacity monetarily to wholesale.

SPEAKER_08 34:56

Right. You just gotta set up the deal.

SPEAKER_04 34:58

So we only made 50,000 on it, but it's on the minute bucks, and uh, actual owner made the most money of it. But if I cannot value to anybody in any sense of four, you can always once you get that sign agreement to each sign, how you find the bat. You like your sign, whatever you like, you have the terms, value add, you know how the excess range you want to cash out refined, whatever the case might be, maybe you controlling the deal, then you can be the um syndicator type of thing. I love those. Yeah, it's great stuff.

SPEAKER_07 35:34

That's really good. And just taking advantage of the resources that you have.

SPEAKER_04 35:37

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_07 35:38

I want to do more questions, but I want to wrap up a couple things real quick. So I like asking the same five questions here to every one of my guests, and I always like to see their answers, right? So some of these we hit on already, but we're gonna hit them again. So, what separates a top-performing investor from the rest of the crowd?

SPEAKER_08 35:55

Probably decision making, hesitation, owning it, rather than, you know? Yeah. Just being aggressive, I think.

SPEAKER_07 36:04

What's a daily habit that contributes to your success? TikTok, no, I'm just kidding.

SPEAKER_08 36:14

Um waking up early and and and having a routine, you know, waking up early and getting the getting ahead of the contractors and getting your stuff done in the morning. You know, work like uh an employee in the morning and work and act like an owner in the afternoon, you know.

SPEAKER_07 36:28

I love that, you know, I love that. What's a piece of advice that you give yourself if you're starting again?

SPEAKER_08 36:34

I know you kind of already answered this, but um, yeah, I mean, uh you'd be surprised what you can do, really. Uh, you know, and obviously if you don't if you're struggling with money, you go a different route, like wholesaling first and you work up to it. Um but yeah, I think uh like you Connor, go for it.

SPEAKER_07 36:53

Go for it. Do you have a favorite real estate or business book?

SPEAKER_08 36:59

Um I did well a couple. Uh early on, I liked The Millionaire Next Door, which was a real subtle book about just buying one and you know, kind of building equity nice and slow, and and and it's a very effective book. And you and you're a quiet, it it it spoke to me because I'm not um you know, I'm very humble. You know, I I the lights are killing me. Um but it spoke to me because it's it's it's the it's the unknown millionaire next door. You just don't realize it, you know what I mean? And it's a good light there. Yeah, and then one of the other, one of the more recent ones, and I didn't read the whole thing, I really just know the title, Founder's Mentality, and it's about an owner's mentality, it's about um um treating everything like it's your own, and and it's and and I did it naturally when I was working for Don, running his flips. You know, I ended up flipping 300 homes for Don. And I didn't do that by calling him every 10 seconds to ask his opinion. I just, what would Don do? And that's what I did. You know, and and it was a successful way to look at it. I just acted like the owner and got it done. That's awesome.

SPEAKER_07 38:09

Alright, last question what's your favorite part of real estate investing?

SPEAKER_08 38:12

Hmm. You know what? Probably, um, I really love tenants. I really, I know it's crazy. I don't think I've ever heard anybody say hey.

SPEAKER_05 38:25

I didn't get these tenants.

SPEAKER_07 38:30

It's so weird. That's awesome. I mean, that's something all should be.

SPEAKER_08 38:36

I mean, listen, I grew up working in the grocery store business and the restaurant business, and I was always in front of customer service, and I'm pretty good at customer service, and now that I'm I'm literally just doing customer service for my tenants, and they are my customers. They are paying me every month, so I have a responsibility to make them happy. And my number one of my number one things I've always done, I just don't mess around with repairs. If there's a problem, I'm calling somebody, I'm calling that bummer out immediately, whatever. The number one reason tenants leave, as far as I know, as I I've always heard, is lack of repairs or lack of response or just lazy landlords. And they don't have that with me. And I and listen, when I send my increase letters out, they never push back. They just never push back, and it's a it works, you know. I can afford to do repairs because I can ask for the money and I can give them give it back to them, and I can meet them with a smile, and and and and you know, I have a you know, a hundred people under me that that you know rely on me for their roof, and you know, that's a good feeling. They're appreciative, they're appreciative.

SPEAKER_06 39:42

Yeah, that the people who chuckled about loving your tenants, it is so pretty true. It's key. I I got a lot of units fast. I had a property manager that was, you know, I'm sorry, not good. Yeah, but I fired them. I didn't evict one tenant for three years. I went there every month, they knew me. They knew can you fix this? It was done in 24 hours. Right.

SPEAKER_07 40:00

And they never they never complain about a register, so I think it's awesome. I love that. All right. I want to give you a round of applause, so thank you for being here.