Afford Anything - Ask Paula - How Do You Pick a Rental Property?

Episode Date: June 19, 2017

#82: Welcome to another Ask Paula episode! This week, I answer three real estate questions: #1: What criteria do you use when you’re shopping for an investment property? What qualities make you sa...y, “heck yeah I’m buying this!!” — and what qualities make you say, “No way!” #2: I enjoy renting my personal home, but I still dream of investing in rental properties. Does it make sense to buy a rental property, even while I’m still a renter myself? #3: I’m a 45-year-old actress, and my income probably won’t qualify me for conventional bank financing for an investment property. But I already own a property with a lot of equity. Should I tap that in order to buy another rental? Or look for a private loan? Enjoy!   For more Ask Paula episodes, visit http://podcast.affordanything.com/tag/ask-paula Want your question answered? Leave a message here: http://www.affordanything.com/voicemail  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Starting point is 00:00:00 Today's episode is brought to you by SaneBox, a smart filter that prioritizes your inbox, removing the email distractions and saving you time. Get a free $25 credit at SaneBox.com slash Paula. You can afford anything but not everything. And that's true, not just of your money, but also your time, focus, energy, attention, anything in your life that is a scarce or limited resource. And I am not saying this to promote a scarcity mindset. On the contrary, I believe in abundance, but I also recognize the fact that every choice is a trade-off. So the question becomes, number one, what's most important to you? What do you value?
Starting point is 00:00:47 What are your priorities? And number two, how do you align your day-to-day decisions in such a way that your actions reflect those priorities? Those are tough questions, ones that we seek to answer in every episode. My name is Paula Pan. Welcome to the Afford Anything podcast. Speaking of answering questions, every other week, I answer questions that you, the community, have sent in. And this week, I'm specifically answering questions that you've sent in regarding real estate investing. If you're interested in the topic of investing in rental properties or in real estate, stick around.
Starting point is 00:01:22 If you're not into that topic, you can skip today's episode. That said, let's jump in. Hi, Paula. Firstly, thank you for this fabulous podcast. I am in a very different situation than the majority of your usual callers. I'm a 45-year-old actress, so I'm in and out of work and on the whole not brilliantly paid. So I'm sad to say I have no savings and no retirement fund, apart from whatever gets put away when I am in a job in a 401k.
Starting point is 00:01:50 On the upside, I own a house in the UK, which I rent out and get a great cash flow from and have a tiny repayment interest-only mortgage, but it will come to an end of its 25-year-term in 2020. I've had it valued at 500,000 pounds. I have 100,000 mortgage and 400,000 pounds in equity at the moment. That's about $515,000. My dream is to buy rental properties here in the States and to have passive income so I can pursue my acting career, but I am finding it impossible to get a mortgage because of my tax returns. Basically, I put in as many expenses as I can to offset my earnings in order to not pay too much tax, so my net income is really low. I'm willing to take money out of my house in the UK to have a bigger down payment, but there's no point until I know I can get a mortgage here. I know you've mentioned something about getting a private investor to take place of a regular mortgage. How would I go about finding one and setting that sort of thing up? I would also love to know how you managed to get your first properties. Any suggestions?
Starting point is 00:02:51 I really don't want to have to sell as I've always seen it as my pension and basically it's the only stable income I have. Thank you so much. I hope I get a response from you. Bye. That's a great question. Now, before I answer, I'm going to give a disclaimer. I don't know the financial system in the UK. So I'm going to answer this question as though you had just asked this question about a property that is based in the United States because the U.S. system is the one that I'm familiar with. So I'll give you the answer that I would give to someone who was in your situation but whose property was located here in the U.S. And then it's up to you to figure out how that translates into the U.K.K. market. But this property that you're describing, the property that you already hold, you have a lot of equity in this. You said 400,000 pounds in equity. That's an incredible amount.
Starting point is 00:03:43 You can take a cash out refinance loan against that equity. You don't need to sell the property in order to get the money out of it. You can borrow against the equity that you already have in that home. That loan is referred to as a cash out refinance. Essentially, what you're doing is you're refinancing the mortgage and taking cash out. And so that money is then paid to you as cash, as a check that gets deposited in your bank account. The power of that is really, it's threefold. Number one, because that loan, the cash out refi is secured by the equity in the property,
Starting point is 00:04:24 it is not contingent upon your income in the same way that qualifying for a primary residence mortgage or a second home mortgage would be. So in other words, even if you don't make very much money on paper, you know, even if your tax records show that you don't have much income, you could still qualify for a cash out refi because that cash out refi is being secured by the equity rather than by your earnings. The second benefit to that is that because the cash out refi is paid to you in the form of cash, you will, Then once you get that loan, you will then end up with a big chunk of cash that is sitting in your bank account, which means that when you go to make an offer on a property, you can, if you choose to, have the option of making that offer as a cash offer, meaning that you can make an offer on a rental property that is not contingent on financing. And when you do that, you have in many cases a better chance of getting a better deal.
Starting point is 00:05:32 because many sellers, all else being equal, would prefer to accept a cash offer as compared to an offer that is contingent on financing from the buyer and that could be then held up by financing delays. So the question that you asked was, how do you get a private loan? I'll answer that in a moment, but first I want to zoom out and ask the question, should you get a private loan? because it seems to me like that is not the route that you should be taking. When you have the opportunity to get a cash out refi, if I were in your shoes, that's what I would choose. Again, this is not legal advice. This is not tax advice. I'm simply telling you what I think that I would do if I were in your shoes and I would absolutely get a cash out refi before I would get a private loan because those types of loans are generally speaking going to be cheaper that you're going to have a better interest rate and you're going to have a better interest rate and you're going to have a private loan because.
Starting point is 00:06:28 better terms. Again, giving all of the disclaimers that this is not legal advice, this is not tax advice, always consult with a financial professional, all of those standard disclaimers. For me personally, I use private investors as a last resort, not a first. So that's why it concerns me that that was, that you phrased the question as how do I get a private loan without first asking, is this the appropriate loan for me? Now, in terms of how do you get a private loan, it's all about networking. So what I would do is whatever area you're interested in investing in, meet with the real estate investors in that area, meet with the investing community. People who give out private loans are going to be very well networked with the real estate
Starting point is 00:07:15 investors of a local area. Now, oftentimes, people who issue private loans are interested in shorter-term loans. They often want their money back within one year, two years, three years, but in some cases, you may find private investors who are willing to issue longer-term loans. And in other cases, you may also find that a one-year or three-year private loan is your entry card to a house, which you could then later refinance. That latter option that I just described, I would be a little cautious about it because I would never go into anything unless I had multiple exit strategies. And the problem with taking out a private loan that has a very, very short-term balloon payment is that if you only have one exit strategy and that exit strategy
Starting point is 00:08:03 fails, then you're stuck with a giant balloon payment. So what I would do if I were you, if I were looking for private loans, is network with the investors in your target area and look for a private lender who is willing and able to issue a longer-term loan, even if that loan is more expensive, which it most likely will be, because you're paying for the ability to hold that loan for a longer length of time. But again, personally, if I were in your shoes, I wouldn't go that route until I absolutely had to. I've only taken out one private loan, and it was when I had exhausted all other options. A cash out refi is probably going to be, in most cases, a much better deal.
Starting point is 00:08:50 So that's the route that I would go if I were in your shoes. Our next question comes from Yolanda. Hi, Paula. This is Yolanda. I am 34 years old. I live in Heightsville, Maryland, which is right outside of Washington, D.C. area. This might seem contradictory, but I actually enjoy renting and the lifestyle that I live right now, but I still have the dream of wanting to invest in a real estate property. I'm trying to figure out how do I go about this and is it even smart to get a rental property,
Starting point is 00:09:26 even if I don't live in it at first. I know the traditional way of things is to buy your own home first and then use that as leverage for investment property, but can I do it a different way? So just to give some background with numbers, I have 12,000 set aside for investing in real estate. I have about 40,000 in retirement, 10,000 in a Roth IRA, 5,000 in savings, and I make 100,000 a year. This is a brand new job that I've had for a year so far, and I'm hoping to continue with it. So, you know, what do I do with the $12,000 that I've saved so far?
Starting point is 00:10:10 Should I continue to save more if I want to buy a standalone investment property? Or should I go the traditional route of looking to buy a home on my own and then leverage that for investing? Look forward to hearing your advice. Thank you so much. Yes. So my answer is, absolutely do it. I love that idea. And here's why. First of all, just because everybody else is doing something doesn't mean that it's a good idea. The fact that most people buy their own primary residence before they buy rental properties doesn't mean that that is necessarily the smartest financial path to take.
Starting point is 00:10:52 And here's why. Your own home, your primary residence is not an investment. It is a personal expense. It's a consumer purchase. I know I'm going to get hate mail. I know. I'm not going to go down this road and argue exactly why or why not. There's an article that I've written, a very, very long article that I've written on my blog, Afford Anything.com. I'm going to link to it in the show notes. That article explains the reasoning why your home is not an investment, your primary residence is not an investment. But TLDR, the house that you live in is not an investment property. And depending on where you live, there could be.
Starting point is 00:11:33 in most cities where housing is expensive, there is often a very strong argument for intentionally remaining a renter. So if you live in an area where the price to rent ratios are such that renting makes more sense than buying, then be a renter forever. I mean, if I lived in a very expensive city, if I lived in New York, I'd be a renter. Because in those areas, in certain areas, owning is more expensive than renting and it makes more financial sense to save money by virtue of renting and then take that differential and put that differential into purchasing investments. Again, I realize I'm going to get a whole lot of angry emails because every time I broach this topic, I disrupt a lot of people's ideas of the world and then I get a whole bunch of like anger directed at me as a result.
Starting point is 00:12:32 So I'm not going to go into the full details right now just for the sake of time on why. But again, I'll link in the show notes to an article. And those show notes are available at afford anything.com slash episode 82. An article that explains why in some cases, if you will live in an expensive area where the price to rent ratios favor renting, in those cases, it makes more sense to rent your personal home. as compared to buying your personal home. I am 100% in support of you remaining a renter if the numbers in your area support the mathematics of renting. And really quickly, without going into all of the arguments,
Starting point is 00:13:17 because that's going to take an entire episode, here's the back of the envelope math that you can do when trying to figure out the math of your area with regard to your personal home. So the price to rent ratio is the price of a property divided by the annual rent. Let's say that a property costs $300,000 and it rents for $1,500 per month. Well, $1,500 per month times 12 months is $18,000 per year.
Starting point is 00:13:43 That's what that property could collect in potential gross rent. So $300,000 divided by $18,000 equals $16.6. So a property like that, if you're evaluating it as your personal home, that's toss up. That's a borderline case. I could see an argument either way there. But let's say that those numbers were changed such that that same $300,000 home rents for half of that. It rents for $750 a month. Well, that means the rent would be $9,000 per year. $300,000 divided by $9,000 equals $33.3, which means the price to rent ratio, which is 33.3, is extremely high. And in a location like that, the math indicates that you're much better off continuing to rent your own personal home.
Starting point is 00:14:35 So my broader point is don't just buy a house because that's what everybody else does. Buy a house only if the numbers make sense. And it is absolutely a myth that owning your own personal residence is a sign of financial stability. In fact, in many cases it's the other way around. There are many, many people who own properties where they would have been much better off renting. And zooming out a little bit, I guess the broader point is that evaluating where you yourself are going to live personally is a very different mindset than evaluating what you're purchasing as an investment property. Because when you're looking at an investment property, you're not thinking about how close is it to work. What kind of school district is it in?
Starting point is 00:15:21 Is this somewhere that I would want to raise my family? You're not thinking about those personal emotional factors. When you look at an investment property, you're looking purely at the numbers and the risk-reward continuum and the ease of maintenance. You're looking at a very different set of criteria than you would use if you owned your own personal residence. So mentally, just keep those two constructs separate. Yes, they're both housing, but they're apples and oranges. They're absolutely not the same, not in the same boat whatsoever. Totally mixing metaphors there.
Starting point is 00:15:53 Now I'm putting houses in the same boat. So, Yolanda, you mentioned that you have $12,000 that you've saved to buy a rental property and $5,000 that you've put into savings for yourself. What I would like to see you do is boost your own personal savings. So that $5,000, I assume that's an emergency fund. That's an awesome start. I'd like to see that emergency fund grow a little bit more. So work on boosting that until it covers about three months of your personal expenses.
Starting point is 00:16:23 And once you have that set in place, then absolutely turn your attention towards buying an investment property. And you can use that money to make a down payment on an investment property where the numbers make sense. And you can enjoy collecting rent from your tenants while simultaneously knowing that you're making a smart housing decision for yourself. So cool. Thanks again for that question, Yolanda. My inbox gets really overloaded. I get a lot of emails. It's stressful because the important stuff gets buried underneath all of the unimplained.
Starting point is 00:16:58 important stuff. And then I end up spending a whole bunch of time just organizing my inbox, sorting through things. And no matter how much time I spend there, number one, I can never keep up. Like, no matter how much I try to sort through my inbox, new stuff comes in faster than I can make sense of it. And number two, the emails that are actually important end up getting lost under all of the clutter and noise of the stuff that's not important. And that's why I was really happy to bring SaneBox on as one of the new sponsors of this show. Sanebox is a service that prioritizes your inbox. It sorts things into the emails that you have to actually look at now versus Sane later, the emails that can wait. And then it also sends things into the black hole,
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Starting point is 00:19:01 Hi, Paula. Thank you so much for your wonderful podcast. I learned so much from the recent real estate edition. I was just wondering, I would love to hear you talk about what criteria you use when you're shopping for an investment property, specifically what qualities about a property make you go, oh my gosh, this is a great buy. I'm definitely going to buy this. And on the flip side, what qualities have you go? No, I'm definitely not going to buy this or, you know, this is not a good investment.
Starting point is 00:19:46 And if you could provide some examples, that would be amazing as well. You just have so much experience. And as a new investor, I'm nervous about buying my first investment property. So thank you for any guidance and keep up the great work. Oh, this is one of my favorite topics. Okay, I could talk about this for a while. All right, here we go. So first of all, and I think those of you who have been listening to me for a while know exactly what I'm about to say, I use as just a first pass sorting mechanism. There's a very, very rough back of the envelope calculation that I do that's called the 1% rule. And it just means that the gross monthly rent should be at least 1% of the purchase price of the property. And when I say purchase price, I really mean the acquisition cost. So purchase plus initial repairs. So basically what I mean is, and because I realize I'm just throwing a bunch of big words around, what I mean is for every $100,000 worth of property, it should rent for at least $1,000 a month. So a $200,000 property should rent for $2,000 a month.
Starting point is 00:20:49 $300,000 should rent for $3,000 a month. Now, this is a very, very rough back of the envelope calculation, so it doesn't take any expenses into account. It doesn't take anything into account whatsoever. It's literally back of the napkin math. So never, ever, ever use this as your deciding criteria. Use it only as a first pass sorting criteria. Think of it kind of like if you're on Tinder or Bumble or any one of those dating apps and you have to very quickly decide whether you're going to swipe left or right.
Starting point is 00:21:25 That's what this is. This is not the who are you going to marry decision. This is just the which way are you going to swipe? Swipe left or swipe right. That's what the 1% rule of thumb is. And the reason for it, because it's more important that you understand the reason why, so that you can then make these decisions for your own and think critically about how you want to evaluate properties. The reason for that is because of something called the cap rate or the capitalization rate.
Starting point is 00:21:52 Here's how that works. So generally speaking, and again, I'm using an incredibly, incredibly broad generalization painting the entire country with a huge paintbrush. So take this with a massive grain of salt. I'm really mixing metaphors here, big paintbrush grain of salt. But, you know, generally speaking, about half of the gross rent will get spent on operating costs. And by operating costs, I'm referring to property taxes, homeowners insurance, repairs, maintenance, management fees, all of the expenses that are associated with maintaining a property, operating a property. So ballpark, and of course it's going to vary depending on where you live, how much maintenance the property needs, the property tax rates in the area, whether or not the landlord pays the utility bills, you know, there's going to be variance within that. But as a very broad back of the envelope generalization, about half of the gross rent will get swallowed up by operating costs. So, again, just doing back of the envelope math, let's walk through a sample.
Starting point is 00:22:58 Let's say you've got a $100,000 property that rents for $1,000 a month. At $1,000 a month, that means that its potential gross rent would be $12,000 per year, which is the amount of money that the property potentially could collect if it were fully occupied all 12 months of the year. For the sake of example, we're going to assume that you don't collect any other fees, like you don't collect pet rent or storage fees or charge for a coin-up washer dryer. We're going to assume that that $1,000 a month is the maximum that you're going to charge. So potential gross rent is $12,000 per year minus vacancy, which we're going to just estimate at $500. So your effective gross rent will be $11,500 per year.
Starting point is 00:23:50 That assumes ballpark around a 95% occupancy rate. Now, if your effective gross rent is 11,500 per year, and half of that, or 5750 per year, gets swallowed up by operating costs, then the other 5750 per year is your net operating income. And net operating income divided by the cost of the asset is the cap rate, which is analogous to the dividend, essentially, that you're getting on the asset. So, 5750 divided by $100,000 equals 0.0575, multiply that by 100 in order to see it expressed as a percentage. That's 5.75%. Essentially, rounding up a little bit, we'll say it's 6%. And what that means is that you have a property that is known as a 6 cap.
Starting point is 00:24:40 Again, that means that the dividend payout on the property is 6% of the value of the asset. That's the net operating income that you're collecting. from the property, the value of the asset. Now, the reason that I use the 1% rule of thumb as my bare minimum sorting criteria is as follows. I do not believe in buying rental properties for the sake of appreciation. I very much believe that market-based appreciation is speculation. That's my little like rhyme, like appreciation of speculation. And what I mean by that is that you cannot control the market.
Starting point is 00:25:19 There's nothing you can do. You can hope that a neighborhood will rise in value or that a house will rise in value, but it's completely outside of your locus of control. So to buy a property based on the hope that it may rise in value is speculation. And speculation is just another word for gambling. I do not encourage speculation on future appreciation. Instead, I encourage buying houses for the sake of that dividend that you collect on the value of the property. And so if you're collecting a 6% dividend and the house merely keeps pace with inflation, nothing more, no other appreciation, just inflation protection and that's it, historic inflation in the U.S. is about 3% a year, which means your total return is about 9% in total.
Starting point is 00:26:14 That's 6% from the dividend, 3% from it keeping pace with inflation. So a 9% total return, you might be thinking, well, why don't I just buy an index fund? Wouldn't that be easier? Sure. Yeah, absolutely. But what blue chip stock are you going to buy that pays out a 6% dividend? Maybe a few, but it is very difficult to find a relatively stable, diversified index fund that carries a 6% dividend payout. that's freaking awesome. And that's why I think that buy and hold rental properties are such a
Starting point is 00:26:49 great strategy, particularly for people who are interested in retiring early, because that emphasis on the dividend, on the cap rate is a big piece of what allows people to access cash flow now rather than waiting for appreciation that may or may not happen in the future. Now, other than math, like I'm not, I shouldn't say other than math, but other than that, which, you know, I've mentioned on several episodes, what other criteria do I look for in a property? Well, I'm glad you asked. First, of course, I'm going to take a look at the neighborhood. Now, broadly speaking, neighborhoods are classified as class A, class B, class C, or class D. And when I say classified, what I mean that figuratively. There isn't like a panel of judges. This. This is a panel of. This. This isn't dancing with the stars. There is no panel of judges that's like assigning different zip codes to different classes. But investors will, by informal group consensus, decide that a given neighborhood is Class A, meaning it's, you know, higher end, it's luxury. It's the type of place where you would have the type of rental properties that have granite countertops and stainless steel appliances. And those are the type of neighborhoods in which you have more. more stable tenants who, you know, tend to have less turnover and often fewer problems. As with many investments, there tends to be an inverse correlation generally between risk and reward. So class A properties are often the easiest to manage, but often also have lower
Starting point is 00:28:29 returns. And by the way, when people say, what's a good cap rate, I will say contextualize cap rate based on whether you're in a Class A neighborhood or a Class D neighborhood. I mean, getting a six cap in a Class A versus getting a six cap in a Class D are two completely different types of returns in the same way that getting a certain return on a Treasury bond is very different than getting that same return on an individual stock, you know, because a Treasury bond has such a different risk profile than an individual stock. same deal. You want the reward that you're seeking to be commensurate with the risk profile. So first, decide what type of neighborhood you want to be in. Do you want to be in a Class A neighborhood?
Starting point is 00:29:15 Class B, which is like a step below that. Class C, which is a step below that. Or class D, which is really, really step, step, step, step, step, step, step. You know, decide which of those risk profiles you're comfortable with. then decide what type of cap rate you're seeking that's commensurate with that. I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly. Commensurate. Is that how you say it? That's one of those words that I've always read, but I've rarely heard people actually say out loud. Now, the other thing to note is that both properties themselves as well as neighborhoods are informally classified as class A, B, C, or D. So you can have, for example, a class. property in a class B neighborhood or a class B property in a class A neighborhood. And what that means is
Starting point is 00:30:12 you might have a class B neighborhood and then there's one house on that block. It's the, you know, the worst house on the block. It's the type of house that you would normally find in a class C neighborhood. But here you are in a class B neighborhood and there's that class C house in the class B neighborhood. And that personally is what I look for. Most of my properties have been Class C properties in Class B neighborhoods. And the reason that I search for that is because it gives me the opportunity to do what's called forced appreciation. Now, remember what I said earlier. Market-based appreciation is the type of price appreciation that you cannot control because it's based solely on economic forces that are outside of your control.
Starting point is 00:30:58 But forced appreciation, as the name implies, is property appreciation that is the direct consequence of the work that you've done. So if you buy a property and then renovate it and upgrade it, and ideally better yet, if you are able to make the layout and floor plan more efficient such that you free up additional usable space without actually changing the footprint of. of the house without actually doing any new construction or building onto any square footage, man, that's where you can really force some frickin' appreciation. So that's what I look for. Like our triplex, for example, one of the units within that triplex had this massive living room that was completely underutilized. We walked in there, and the tenants were living in that unit at the time, they were using
Starting point is 00:31:54 half of the living room and they were using the other half of storage. And so what we did when we bought the Triplex was we just put up some drywall in the middle of the living room and boom, extra bedroom. I mean, the room had proper ingress and egress. It met fire code, all of that. You know, those are all of my caveats and astrists. And inspectors have been through it. The place has a certificate of occupancy. All of that is totally above board. But, you know, with just basically the cost of some drywall.
Starting point is 00:32:27 We turned a two-bedroom into a three-bedroom just by rethinking the footprint of that place. And as a result, we were then able to force appreciation into that unit because now that it's a three-bedroom, we can collect more rent from it and the property is worth more by virtue of the fact that it's a three-bedroom, even though the actual square footage is exactly the same. Similarly, House number five, we added a bathroom in what used to be. a laundry room. So again, the square footage itself is the same, but because we found additional space that was being underutilized and that could be turned into a bathroom, we were able to force appreciation on the property, which gets us higher rent and raises the property value.
Starting point is 00:33:15 So that's the other thing that I look for. All else being equal, you know, the 1% rule of thumb is the minimum sorting criteria. It's the swipe left to right decision maker. But once I have a basket of candidates that have met through that first-pass sorting mechanism, yeah, then it's time for me to evaluate the opportunity to force appreciation. In other words, the opportunity to buy something that's undervalued because the seller doesn't recognize the underutilization of the property. The seller doesn't recognize that that laundry room could be turned into a bathroom or that that living room, part of it, could be turned into another bedroom.
Starting point is 00:34:01 Or maybe, you know, I can't make any assumptions about what the seller may or may not think. Maybe the seller does recognize it, but either doesn't have the interest or the ability to utilize that space in that way. That's fine. I'm looking for that potential. I'm looking at a property, not for what it is, but for what it could be. I'm walking in there, looking at the kitchen, and not necessarily seeing the dingy, closed-off, dark kitchen that it is. I'm seeing, hey, if we rip out this one not load-bearing wall, this one partition wall, this kitchen can pretty easily open up into that living room, and boom, now we have an open floor plan.
Starting point is 00:34:45 Sweet. So then I buy the house with a pricing as though it's got this, like, old, outdated, layout and with just a little bit of work, which I hire out to a team of contractors, now the house looks much more modern. If you want to see some examples of this, in the show notes, which are available at afford anything.com slash episode 82, I'm going to post links to some blog articles that I've written that have pictures of some of the renovations that I've done. So the example of opening up the kitchen, that came from a recent renovation that we did. I'm going to link to that article in the show notes. Also, the example of the bathroom came from the renovation
Starting point is 00:35:27 of house number five. I'll link to that in the show notes as well. So yeah, house numbers four and five are the two, those two examples. They're both going to be at afford anything.com slash episode 82. So those are some of the things that I look for when I'm looking for a property. Hopefully that was helpful. And again, that was just a very broad overview. But those are the first things that come to mind when I think about what I'm looking for in a property. Thank you so much for that question. That was really fun to answer. Thank you so much.
Starting point is 00:35:59 That's it for today's show. By the way, one thing that I want to mention is that we've been getting a lot of questions. Thank you so much for sending them in. I love it when you ask questions because the Ask Paula episodes are some of my favorites. I just like hearing from you and I think this keeps stuff, it keeps it interesting. It keeps it fresh. So thank you for sending them in. Because we're getting so many questions, a one thing.
Starting point is 00:36:20 thing that I would like to do is start answering some of these questions on our new YouTube channel. So as many of you know, we recently started a YouTube channel. All of these podcast episodes in audio only format are on YouTube. And I have a small handful right now, as of the time of this recording, not too many, but I've got a couple of videos on there as well. Not many, but I'm hoping to change that. And I'm hoping to put some more videos on there. And one thing that I would like to do if it's okay with all of you is to start answering some of these questions on YouTube. So please just be aware that from this point forward, if you call into the voicemail line, I may answer that question on the air in this podcast or I may answer that question on YouTube.
Starting point is 00:37:10 And if you have already called in and you don't want your question to be answered on YouTube, please let us know. Otherwise, from this point forward, anybody who has asked a question, that question might be answered on YouTube, or it might be answered in this podcast. So that's just one way that we're going to try to be able to get through even more of these questions and get more information out there and, yeah, and just enjoy the ride. By the way, if you do have a question that you haven't asked yet, but you want to submit, you can do so at afford anything.com slash voicemail. For today's show notes, head to afford anything.com slash episode 82, where you can read the show notes and leave a comment. And of course, you can also head to YouTube.com slash afford anything to check out that new channel that I just mentioned. If you enjoy today's show, please hit subscribe in your favorite podcast player app, iTunes, Stitcher, however it is that you like to listen to podcasts, or hit subscribe on YouTube. Thanks so much for tuning in. My name is Paula. Episode 83 is a very special, very personal episode. So I hope you join me for that, and I hope you like it.
Starting point is 00:38:22 But, and I'm a little nervous about it, to be quite honest. But yeah, that's what's coming up. I'm going to be intentionally kind of vague, but episode 83 is really a very personal and very difficult episode. But I think one that's hopefully going to really help with the growth of the show and this community. So we'll see. No attachment to outcome, right? We'll just see. My name's Paula Pant. Thanks so much for tuning in. And I'll catch you next week.

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