BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast - 119: From Pro Athlete to Pro Real Estate Entrepreneur with Graham Mink

Episode Date: April 23, 2015

On today’s episode of the BiggerPockets Podcast, we are excited to introduce you to Graham Mink, a professional hockey player turned real estate investor from the state of Vermont. Graham shares the story of getting his first deal while traveling the world and his journey since that day. You’ll learn how he turned the lessons gained from house hacking into a profitable business managing tenants, being a real estate agent, and subdividing properties. If you want to invaluable lessons about jumping into real estate investing, scaling your business, the ins and outs of financing your deals — and much more — then take a little time out of your day to hear this inspirational show! In This Episode We Cover: A bit about Graham and his professional hockey career What it’s like to transition from professional sports to real estate His first property and first tenant, thanks to his father! Details on refinancing a property What you should know about home equity lines of credit What exactly an FHA loan is How to use house hacking to create income Details on his second deal A discussion about the real estate market The ins and outs of finding the property that fits what you want to do How Graham subdivided a property The role BiggerPockets played Graham’s success How to execute a seller-financed deal The pros and cons of getting real estate license And SO much more! Links from the Show: BiggerPockets is hiring! BiggerPockets Webinar Replays (for Pro) How to “Hack” Your Housing and Get Paid to Live for Free The Real Estate Market: How to Analyze and Predict Cycles The Real Key to Success is Cheating. Here’s How (and Why) To Cheat… BiggerPockets Podcast Show 118 with Grant Cardone BiggerPockets Forums BiggerPockets Calculators Books Mentioned in this Show The Book on Flipping Houses by J Scott Brandon Turner’s The Book on Investing in Real Estate with No (and Low) Money Down Landlording on Auto-Pilot by Mike Butler Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill Tweetable Topics: “The one who pumps out slow and steady kind of wins the race.” (Tweet This!) “If you’re not making money, you’re not making money.” (Tweet This!) “Get your license, find a mentor… scrub toilets if you have to.” (Tweet This!) “Walk before you run.” (Tweet This!) “Everybody’s got some kind of advantage.” (Tweet This!) “When you seen an opportunity that you lose, it opens the door for something else.” (Tweet This!) Connect with Graham Graham’s BiggerPockets Profile Graham Mink’s Wikipedia Page Graham’s Twitter Graham’s LinkedIn Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Bigger Pockets podcast show 119. Wow, there's other people that are doing this for a living. I can do this permanently. I can do this full time. You're listening to Bigger Pockets Radio, simplifying real estate for investors large and small. If you're here looking to learn about real estate investing, without all the hype, you're in the right place. Stay tuned and be sure to join the millions of others who have benefited from BiggerPockets.com. Your home for real estate investing online.

What's going on, everybody? This is Josh Dorkin, host to the Bigger Pockets podcast, here with my co-host, Mr. Adam Levine. Yeah, you know, that's me right there on the cover of men's fitness. I don't know if you guys have, obviously you can't see this on, you know, listening on your iPod or whatever you're listening on. But I'm holding up a picture of Adam Levine that was on the cover of men's fitness. And it looks identical.

even the hair identical to my host here, Josh Dorkin. Yes. I'm thinking like when I come out to Denver next week, we should like have you put on a, you know, tank top like this and grow your beard out a little bit and do a bigger pockets magazine with you just like this. You just want to see me with my shirt off. Freaking me out. All right.

How you doing? Other than that. This is Brandon, by the way, my co-host. Hi. I'm Brandon. Josh's co-host. Hi, Brandon. Hi.

Today's show is awesome. It's a great thing. And I don't say that word often. But this one is. This one really is an awesome show. It is a great show. And since you talked about you being in town, we are looking forward to you coming into town in two days.

But, you know, when this airs, it'll have been like a month of two ago. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Anyway, yeah, thanks are good, man. All is well. February was another stellar month for bigger pockets. I mean, we are just churning at all cylinders, helping people left and right.

I mean, the success stories that we keep hearing about are unbelievable. it makes everybody here on the team ecstatic. I mean, we really are really happy. And thank you to everybody who's a part of our world and for participating, engaging, for sharing bigger pockets and with your friends and family in circles. And anyway, I'm just really happy at how things are going. Are you happy? Happy.

All right. So anyway, today's show, we actually have a professional or an ex-professional sport player who played a certain sport player. Is that what you call? I didn't want to give away what he does. Strike you, Brandon. Thank you. Thank you.

Is that what you call? An athlete. An athlete. Okay, fine. A professional athlete. That's much better. Yeah, there you go. And he's going to talk about how he, you know, got started with real estate and all that.

Really good stuff. But before we do, let's do today's quick tip. Quick tip. Today's quick tip is Bigger Pockets is currently hiring for a number of positions. If you guys want to work for bigger pockets, go to biggerpockets.com. slash jobs, especially if you're in the Denver area, but even if not, check it out, see what's available. And maybe you can get a world-class real estate education while working for a world-class real estate I don't know, information. Organization.

Sure. There you go. Yeah, we're pretty much going to be hiring for, you know, add-in phonotum. So, yep, great, awesome, good, quick tip. Very, very good. Thank you. Well, otherwise, man, we've got today's pro tip of the week. What is today's pro tip of the week, Brandon?

Today's pro tip of the week is you can actually, I've said this before, but you can watch replays of all of the weekly webinars that we've done at biggerpockets.com slash pro replay. Biggerpockets.com slash pro replay. You can, yeah, check out. We've done how to find, analyze and finance a property, how to make a million dollars in real estate, how to, what else do we do? The top five. Yeah, yeah, we did a bunch of different things. How to buy a small apartment complex. How to quit your job. Yeah, yeah. Seven steps to get started, all this stuff. more and more coming. And obviously, all of our webinars are free.

You can go to biggerpockets.com slash webinar and see what webinar is coming up. But to get the replay, you know, weeks, you know, any old archives and stuff, you do need a pro account. So check that out. All right. Good deal. Good deal. Let's get on to the show. I think people are getting tired of hearing us talk about these pro sport players.

And let's actually introduce our pro sport player. All right, guys. Today's guest is Graham Mink. Graham is living in beautiful. rural, Vermont. Rural. Yes, and Grant, he's done all sorts of really cool stuff. Landlord, he's done seller financing, he's tried developing.

He's kind of tested the waters in lots of different ways and been successful in some and unsuccessful in others. And it's just fascinating to kind of hear a story. And we had a whole heck of a lot of fun just chatting and making fun of each other on the show. So it's definitely a blast. Most investors spend more time chasing deals than reviewing their insurance. But a quick coverage check can be fast, easy, and one of these smartest ways to protect and even improve your property's cash flow.

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All right, Graham, welcome to the show, man. It's good to have you. Thanks for having me, guys. No, it's a privilege. It's an honor for us to have you today because I am a hockey fan. I am a, at least I was hockey. I played hockey in my basement growing up, all right? I, I, Mighty Ducks, greatest movie I

made. I mean, come on. You just age yourself. Getting older now, Brandon, you know? I know. I'm no longer like a kid anymore now. I'm like, I don't know, whatever. I'm old. 29. It's, it's a rough age. How old are you guys? Yeah. Should we talk about that? You and my mom were both 29. Interesting how that is. I will be 29 for the next like 40 years. Yeah. 30 is a depressing birthday. Yeah, I'm not looking forward to July. That's all right. I got a year until 40. So there you go. I'm 35, so I'm right in the middle of you guys. Nice. You're still an old guy.

All right. Let me cut to this because Brandon can't get his act together here. You, sir, are an active real estate investor with kind of an interesting past. I'd say a little more interesting because we live in this culture of sports here in America and we love sports. And so you were a professional hockey player. Is that correct? Yeah, for 13 years I played professional hockey. mostly in the American Hockey League, which would be the equivalent of like AAA. Baseball

would be. So, you know, you're not making millions like the NHL guys are, but, you know, you can make a good living there. And it was, it was a good experience for me. And, you know, I played seven games in the NHL for the Washington Capitals over the course of three seasons when I was in my mid-20s. And, you know, wasn't able to crack the lineup permanently, but I played with a lot of, you know, excellent NHL players, a lot of good, you know, American Hockey League players and, you know, very happy overall with my 13 years of professional hockey. That's awesome. I think there's one question that everybody wants to know, and that is, did you ever get in any

fights, you know, like, loves it. I have gotten in a few fights. Okay, yeah. Some of them are online, but don't judge me. Don't judge me by the fights. We will be putting those in the show notes if we could find out. That might affect my credibility as a real estate investor, but I don't invest in real estate like I play hockey. He's the guy that you want on your side.

Yeah, that's funny. We'll see. That's awesome. Right before the show today, like we were doing something, you know, like getting the questions together. And I find that you have a Wikipedia page. And I want to complain for a second because you have a Wikipedia page and bigger pockets does not have a Wikipedia page. Can you believe that, Josh? I, you know, listen, you're trying to take away from Graham here a little bit, and we're not going to take away from Graham, because Graham deserves a Wikipedia page.

That said, Bigger Pockets also deserves a Wikipedia page. So if any of you listeners are Wikipedia editors or whatever they are, like you guys, man, let's get this thing up and running. Let's get the podcast. We've got all sorts of, you know, I mean, we've had a ton of press. So, I mean, we've got enough to be in Wikipedia. So if any of you guys are editors, that'd be, That'd be cool. But yeah. No, shameless, Josh. Shameless. Totally shameless and unplanned. There's a, it was, you know, I mean, there's a lot of, you know, rabid hockey fans and

and a lot of great fans, especially in the minor leagues. You know, those people live and die for their hockey and they love their players and they're very supportive. And, you know, I'm very appreciative. And a lot of hockey players are to have those fans. Otherwise, there wouldn't be a job. Yeah. Yeah.

So I don't know if you're willing to talk about this. I mean, you were not getting rich playing hockey. I mean, at the end of the day, you're kind of a working man type of guy. I mean, and so, you know, at some point, there was this thing that checked in your brain that's like, hey, I got to do something else. Is that kind of how it went? It's exactly how it went. You know, I played professional hockey for three years. And, you know, what got me into real estate investing was one morning in the summertime, I woke up.

And I was just, I was sick of being broke. He's not having anything. You know, everything I, everything I own could fit in the back of a, you know, Blazer SUV. You know, I would go to hockey, play, you know, we get paid over six months. So you get a full year's salary in six months. I was making, you know, $40,000 a year at the time. And, you know, you get all that money, you're 22 years old.

And, you know, it doesn't, by the time you get to September, you know, there's not a lot left over. So I got sick of doing that and wanted to start, you know, accumulating wealth on, I was in a different situation where, you know, I had another career that was super intensive for six months. And then for six months, I kind of could do what I want. So I can't go get a real job, right? You can't, no one's going to hire you for six months. And, you know, I was just really, really frustrated one day.

And I was venting to my father, who's a real, he's an insurance agent in Stowe. And he said, you know, well, I've been looking at the paper and there's this three unit building in the town next to yours. Why don't you go look at it? And since it was coming from my father, I immediately rejected the idea. No, it's a terrible idea. I'm not doing that. And then I slept on it. And the next day, I thought about it.

And I was like, sure, let's go look at it. And I knew nothing about real estate. No clue if this was a good deal or a bad deal. It was 2004, summer of 2004. So things were kind of picking up. And we went and looked at it. Cool. And you said Stowe, that's Stowe, Vermont, correct?

Yep, yep. So you are our first guest from the, great state of granite state isn't it? The granite state of Vermont? Or is that in New Hampshire? I have no idea what you're talking about. I don't know. I'm not up on the history. You live in the, you're in the crack state over there, Brandon. We're in the Green Mountain state.

Vermont. Yeah, whatever it is. Yeah, it's close. And we're very small. I mean, you talk about podunk all the time. Vermont, I mean, we have 680,000 people and there's greater metropolitan areas that have more than that. But there's a lot of wealth in the state. I mean, it's not a poor state by any no no i mean we have a lot of we have a very strong tourist economy it's a

great state for tourism i mean people come up we've got we're we're close to Boston and new york city and you know Philadelphia's not that far away it's a it's a close drive we love people to come up spend their money and leave nice i love her money it's beautiful man i spend

a lot of time there as a kid skiing and just exploring with the fam so yeah i love it if you haven't visited you should because it's a different it's a different place. It really is. It's very rural and there's a lot of room and it's comfortable. I like, I enjoy living here and I've lived a lot of places. Yeah, yeah. All right. So your dad tells you to go do something. You smack them around and finally you relents and go ahead and check out this property. Tell us about what happened then. Well, we called the listing agent and we set up a showing. We went

and looked at it and it was three units and it was located in Morrisville, Vermont and which is a town next to Stowe. Stowe is a ski town. We've got, you know, it's the ski capital of the east. There's a, it's very expensive to live here. You know, houses are expensive and rental property is the same. So went to Morrisville, the threeplex was listed for $165,000. Two of the units were rented.

One wasn't. It wasn't on the, you know, there's no like real good areas and bad areas here. There's no like areas you need to avoid in Vermont. It's very rural and safe. And, you know, everybody knows everybody. But there's nicer streets and there's not nicer streets. And this is one of the not nicer streets at the time anyway. And, you know, we ended up looking at it.

And I thought about it and looked at the numbers. And I just said, sure, let's do it. So we made a full price offer and we bought it, which, you know, all those things I would never do today. But it worked out at the time. So the full price offer, 165K, what were the units running for? 10 years ago. I think I was getting like 800 a month for a three bedroom and then 750 for a two bedroom.

And then there was another two bedroom that I think was 750. So, you know, this wasn't, you know, I didn't know anything about anything. And I was just hoping to have a place to live in the summertime and then rent the other two units out. Kind of like a quasi house hacking type situation. So it worked out well. And, you know, the best part of, I bought it right in October, which is right when our season start. So I had to leave town. So my dad was like, I'll find you a tenant and which is another big mistake. The first and last tenant he ever found for me. But, uh, good job, dad.

She lasted about four months and I don't know. There was some, there wasn't a good tenant. Anyway, so I bought it. Tell us why. Come on. I mean, well, no, I mean, we kid, but like, I mean, it would be interesting because this is a show that we, we really have our listeners here. we want to teach people, right? So what did your dad do wrong? I don't want their name, but like what happened? You know, he didn't, there was no screening. You know, it was just kind of put an ad in the paper

and the first person that shows up and has a security deposit basically gets it. So that was the first mistake. And then, you know, there's no income verification, no background check, no credit checks, no, none of that stuff. So you're kind of just rolling the dice. And, you know, in my market anyway,

you probably got 70, 80% of the market. market is, or decent tenants, decent renters. And then you've got another 10% that are kind of on the fence. Then you got another 10% that are really bad people you don't want to rent to. So I think this was one of the people in that bottom 10%. You know, pretty much, you know, she moved in and then a boyfriend moved in who had a criminal past and there was the cops were called a couple times. There was a door kicked in. The rent got paid for like two months. And then I don't know how my dad ended up getting her out because the eviction rules in Vermont are pretty strict, but he got her to leave.

She left about January. She moved in in October. And then when I was fixing up the apartment, when I got back, there was just like random guys stopping by all the time. Like coming upstairs and like, hey, we're looking for so-and-so. I don't know what she did for a living, but it wasn't good. So thankfully, my other two tenants stuck with me. They were very good tenants. They had been there.

I inherited them with the property, so it worked out well. So that was kind of a what not to do, but enabled me to move back in the springtime. Do you remember how you financed it? I bought it with, I don't, I know it cost $8,500 out of pocket. Okay. I know loans were different back then than they are today, so you don't have to know that. My second deal, whew, it was so easy to get money back then. It was ridiculous.

But I had put, I borrowed, I had 3,500 bucks in my bank account. I borrowed 5,000 from my dad for a short term loan because I was going to start getting paid again in October. And I paid him back, you know, quickly. But it was $8,500 down. It was a, so it was like a 5% down payment. You know, I got the documents here somewhere. Yeah, it's all right. Go get them.

Go get them right now. Stop what you're doing. And so it was, it was low money down. I was paying PMI and all that stuff. And the plan was to get a tenant in there and then to maybe refinance it the next summer. And so when I went to refinance it, I went to a normal bank and I was like, okay, I think I can refinance. Now I want to drop this PMI and they did an appraisal. And this was how crazy the market was at the time.

But the appraisal came back at $235,000. Whoa. I bought it eight months before for $165,000. Wow. That was like light bulb. Like, wow, I made $70,000 in eight months. And I did nothing except, you know, deal with problem tenant. But the light went on my head, like, man, you can really make money with this stuff.

And it was shocking. And, you know, the property wasn't worth $235,000. You know, the appraiser, whoever did it, and I don't know who it was. You know, the market was just going nuts at the time. So, yeah, possibly. So the banker, the mortgage broker that was like, hey, your appraisal came back at $2.35. You owe $1.65. We can refinance it at 80%.

And then would you like home equity line of credit? And I was like, what's that? I was like, what's the home equity line of credit? And he's like, you can borrow up to, you know, 90% of the value in the property and, you know, explain the rates and the details and everything. And I was like, and we're going to give you another $50,000 that you can use basically however you want. And I was like, really? And I was like, yeah, sure, sign me up. So that worked well too.

So, you know, but the lending climate at the time was just nuts. They didn't really care. I mean, it was, I wasn't making a ton of money. And they're willing to just loan me up to 90% of value on this investment property. It was, it was crazy. Yeah, those are good times. So just to bring this to the modern world for our people listening today. So the loan was different back then.

Well, you'll get what I'm saying. Josh is laughing at me. The loan may be different back then. You put $8,000 or whatever that you had to pay to get this thing. Today, the most common way to do that house hacking thing is usually through an FHA loan, which is 3.5% down payment. So if you're interested in that, just talk to your mortgage person. Most mortgage people can do an FHA loan. Again, yeah, three and a half percent down. Again, yeah, three and a half percent down, which lets you wrap in the repair costs on a property into that loan with still three and a half percent down on the whole thing. So anyway, I just wanted to let people know that's kind of a cool strategy that a lot of people use to house hacks. So you can look those up on bigger pockets. If you want to get more information, just, you know, search for it and there's plenty of stuff on it. And there's an article I wrote a long time ago and I'll link to it in the show notes, but it's called how to hack your housing and get paid to.

live for free. And it just talks about that strategy. So anyway, all right, do you still own this property? The tripod. I do. I've owned it for 10 years. It's honestly like one of the best things I bought. It just really, it just chugged away. It's just slow and steady. And, you know, that was initially a buy and hold property that I still hold today. But my thought process at the time wasn't to be a buy and hold real estate investor. I didn't really get back to that for another, you know, seven or eight years. It took me to kind of figure out like, okay, this is how I'm going to make money in real estate. I want to, you know, my next deal, I want to be a developer. I wanted to, you know, buy land, subdivided, sell it. I wanted to, you know, I've got friends that are contractors. I thought about,

you know, having build packages and working that aspect of it, too. So it was a buy and hold and it worked really well. It's still working great to this day. I'm glad I bought it. I wish I bought 10 more of back then. Rather than going, doing the other stuff, trying to do the other things to make, I thought I could make more money in real estate doing other things. And I was, you know,

unfortunately, it didn't work out that way. So I want to hear about all that stuff and I want to get to that. We're going to press you and make you tell us all the details about all the bad stuff. I almost had a bad word. All the bad stuff that's happened. But what's that property worth now, approximately?

I had an appraisal done last year, and it was 205,000 is what the rest of came back at. And what are you getting on rents now? I get 950 for the two bedrooms and 1,000 for the three bedroom. Cool. That's great. It includes heat, which is a big thing up here because it's so cold, especially this winter. So if I wasn't including heat, you know, each one would probably be $150 a month less to be market.

But, you know, $9008.50 is about the market. market value for a two-beder rental in Morrisville. Okay, okay, cool. So talk about, you know, it sounded like you had an idea that I'm going to go and do some active stuff like maybe rehabbing or developing or more, you know, as we say job-type real estate investing versus the passive, more passive buy-and-hold strategy. So what happened? I mean, after this deal, you went and kind of explored things a little bit is what it

sounds like. Yeah, you know, I had $50,000 to do what I wanted with. I also had some money that I'd saved up. And I looked around. I've been flying places for hockey and traveling and the rest of the country doesn't operate the same way, you know, real estate development-wise that Vermont does. Vermont's very slow developing. It's very, you know, you don't have like 200 house subdivisions that go up in Vermont. And when you're flying around and you're flying all these subdivisions and You're seeing these houses and you're thinking, wow, that's great. I want to do that. I want to try that.

You know, I want to bring that here. But, you know, Vermont likes being rural. It likes having slow development. It doesn't, you know, so because of that, it takes a long time to get through the permitting process to do that sort of thing. So I was looking for a house at the time. And this is when the market was the absolute craziest that, you know, it was. I mean, stuff was selling in days on the market.

There's multiple offers on everything. So I couldn't buy anything in stow. I couldn't buy anything in, you know, kind of within 20 minutes. So I ended up finding a house that had 27 acres with it in Hyde Park, which is like about 25, 30 minutes away from my house. And it was two acre zoning. So I was going to get, you know, I want to do nine building lots and the house, keep the house on one lot, sell the house and then, you know, divide the land, put a road in, put utilities in power.

And I did all that. but by the time I got through the permitting process, a two-acre lot that I thought I was going to sell for $60,000, I couldn't give away for $30,000 at the time. So, I mean, it was, I still own, of the eight lots, I still own three to this day. And I'm actively, you know, marketing them, trying to get them sold.

But it's not easy. When the, you know, land, the bottom fell out of land before the whole thing. And especially in a rural area, It just was a poor location. It was a poor decision at the time. But it didn't sink me. I was lucky that I had another job to bail me out kind of and not have to get foreclosed on or file bankruptcy.

And once I do sell the lots, I'll come pretty close to breaking even. I'm probably going to lose maybe 10 or 15,000 once I get them all sold. But it was a learning experience for me. And certainly the time. timing of the market didn't help. If I'd started two or three years earlier, I probably would have would have nailed it and been fine. But I just, the bottom fell out of the market. And a lot of people were kind of left holding cards that they didn't want to have. And, you know, for me, it was my second deal. I managed to sell the house, which was big. And, you know, I was able to

kind of get through it. And I did. So it was lucky. Well, so, you know, that's, that's, It seems like a fairly big project for a second deal for a guy who doesn't have a ton of experience. What would you have done differently looking back? If you could have done it completely differently, knowing what you know now, what might you have done? Well, if I mean, if I could really redo it, I wouldn't have bought the house to begin with. I mean, I bought this house for $350,000. I used one of those no-doc, like signature loans, basically. I bought it with like $15,000 down.

I mean, I just, I was really exposing myself. But again, I thought I was going to make one or $200,000 in a span of two or three years. And I wasn't going to have to worry about it. But unfortunately, stuff hit the fan. I wouldn't do it again if I could really go back. But if I say I bought the property, from a development perspective,

there's easier ways to go about getting quicker through the permitting process that I know of now, that I didn't know back then, where I could have, like, you know, took a two-acre chunk and sold that. Instead of trying to do eight units all at once, I could have done two acres at a time and did it a lot quicker. And so that's another, you know, kind of learning thing. And it was very ambitious. I was 24 years old at the time. I mean, you make decisions when you're younger. You're more aggressive. And, you know, I probably, I wouldn't do that now. But, you know, that's the way it went. I made a mistake. And you got to live with that.

But it was a learning experience. You know, ultimately it forced me to learn so much more about real estate. And it was a lot cheaper than a college education is. So I kind of look at it that way that this was my education. You know, I didn't go spend, you know, $20,000 on a boot camp or a seminar or something like that. Well, I was too cheap, you know. I was like, I can't, I'm not going to spend that much money. I can't do that.

But I did have all the books. I don't know if you guys, have you ever heard of Dolph DeRuse? You ever heard of that name? like this Australian guy. He was like a real estate investor. I mean, this is like 10 years ago. And I listened to like his books and stuff. And that was like what gave me the motivation to go out and do these things. But nice, nice. Yeah. Well, cool. Okay. Well, let's move on. talk about, so, you know, actually before we do, I have a question on the development thing. First of all, you said you were, you were, you bought the whole property itself. You were to subdivide it

out and sell the lots out or you're going to build on each lot and sell the house with the lot. Yeah. I bought the house on 27. seven acres and I ended up getting eight building lots. One of them had the existing house on it. So I sold the existing house and then I was going to sell the land for other people to purchase and build their own houses on. Or maybe I thought it was going to go so fast that I wasn't going to really have to worry about building. But I did offer build packages and things like that too. But, you know, people could, once the market crash, people could buy existing houses for so cheap. Why are they going to go build something? It made no economic sense. So it was like,

Like, great, now what, now what do I do? Yeah. Yeah. I ask that just because, I mean, that's kind of a something I would like to maybe get into some day of buying a big property, subdividing it, and then actually building all the houses on it or doing what you said, you know, offer the build packages or whatever. But the thing I've noticed with that is the people who seem to make a lot of money in that. I've been doing a lot of research the last few days on like real estate market.

Like what is the real estate market and how the cycles work just for a blog post that's coming up and we'll probably be out by this time. But anyway, in that process, like I looked at the people. people that seem to survive the best at that game are the ones who get in while the market, you know, is still like on the up climb. But once it gets too close to the top, those are the same people that are left holding the bag when the market drops then. You know, it's just, I mean, the real estate market is like this, you know, cycle. And so, I mean, it can be a fantastic way to make money in real estate. But into the day, it all just comes down to

timing. And that's why we give it the name like speculation or, or those people are speculating a little bit. I'm not saying it's a bad thing, but just something people should be aware of is you're not guaranteed to make a profit off that like your story showed. No, I mean, I needed, I got lucky that I did get bailed out and that I could have a job to put money to that. And, you know, it was really, I had it under a fixed rate, long-term loan. And I, you know, I could, it was costing me like 500 bucks a month or whatever. It was like, that was like my car payment. You know, I was like, I'm not going to get a new car until I sell all this stuff. And so I'm driving like a POS truck around. It's like, you're a professional hockey player.

you're not driving something nice? It's like, well, I'm punishing myself for making this decision. I did the same thing for you. That's funny. Yeah. Yeah. All right. So, you know, we've got the buy and hold, the triplex. We've got this development deal. What did you end up popping into next? Well, I met my wife. I actually met her in 2004. I remember calling and being like, I just bought a triplex. What day did you meet her? What day did you meet her? What day did I meet her? He's quizzing here. I don't know.

I don't remember the date I met. It's not important. I don't remember the date I met mine, by the way. That was because it was Christmas because you were sitting at a bar because you don't want to go to it because you're Jewish. That's what you do on. That's true. I don't know.

I guess. Okay. So I got put on the spot the other day by her. It was like I didn't know the day I proposed. And apparently we're supposed to know that date. I mean, if I could keep the anniversary date straight, I think I'm doing pretty good. I mean, I think that's good. But I'm not a woman.

I'm not a woman. Birthdays are important. Valentine's Day is important. You know, these are the things I put him in my planar on my phone and I try not to forget. But the day that we actually met, I don't know. I'm just giving you grief, man. Yeah. All right.

So what else have you done? I mean, what came after that? You said you met your wife. We bought a single family house. So you're no longer house hacking. Well, it was a quasi because this, I still was on the development thing. And this house was located in town. It was in terrible shape.

It hadn't been touched since the 60s or 70s. But it had one and a half acres with it. And in the town, you could put nine more units on that lot. So I have thought, okay, I'm going to chop a one acre lot off. And I'm going to build, you know, eight townhouse. house is there and rent them out. But we were going to live in the house in the summertime. So then I was like, okay, I'm going to fix and flip this house and, you know, this will be good. And so I got into the renovation part of the house and it ended up, you know, costing, you know,

quite a bit of money, but a little bit more. But we fixed it up because we were going to live there for the next four or five years, you know, at least in the summertime to get the money out of it. So it wasn't really strictly just to make money. You know, I wish, again, I knew about bigger pockets at this time and Jay Scott was on there and I could have read his books and done the numbers better because I wouldn't have paid as much as I did for the place. But I ultimately did subdivide that. I fixed up the house and then I subdivided the landoff and I sold that to a friend of mine who is a builder and he built eight units on there and he's renting them.

And what I figured was I was going to make almost the same amount of money by selling it to him as I would building him myself and have a lot less risk. And he could build it so much cheaper. he could build it himself. So it was kind of a win-win and he's a good friend of mine. So that worked out and we still own that house today. It works out really well as a single-family rental. Cool. We're getting $1,300 a month in rent and our expenses are like $900 a month. So it's pretty, it works out well as a single-family home rental. How did you determine how much to sell that, that acre off to your friend for? Well, I looked at what I could make with it on. I mean, you look,

there's not really a lot of comps. You know, Vermont is notoriously difficult for finding comps. Just so rural, there's no sales. There's no volume. And it's not really cookie cutter. Everything's kind of different. You've got mobile homes next to a million dollar houses. You know, the million dollar houses on 20 or 30 acres, but, you know, it's just, it's

different up here. So I looked at what, you know, we kind of did a price per unit thing. I was like, okay, like initially it was like, you know, 20,000 per unit. and then it was, you know, the market, this was 2007, so things were still on the way down. So by the time we talked about the deal and then agreed, and then by the time it got to the point to pull the trigger, you know, he asked if we could reevaluate and I did and we did. So the price kind of adjusted down on a per unit basis. And it was really what he could feel comfortable building everything for and still being able to, you know, have positive cash flow and make money on his end of things.

So it was kind of we looked at it or he looked at it from his perspective, what he needs it to be and then I decided if I could live with it or not. So we kind of worked backwards in that sense. And again, this was when I do something like this again, you know, possibly if it was the right situation. But I, you know, my focus is really shifted from what I was doing back then to what I'm doing now. Just because I want to be safer. You know, I want to be smarter about things and not take as much risk. If I didn't sell that land, you know, I could have gotten in trouble.

Hey, Graham, really quick, what is it cost, and then I want to hear about obviously what you're doing now, but what does it cost to subdivide a piece of property? So you've got this two-acre parcel, you know, in terms of, you know, obviously he's paying you money, but you got to go and you got to do all sorts of stuff to actually do the subdivision, correct? Right. The first, it depends on the town and it depends on where the property is located. And one of the things that I focus on in my investing is learning the rules and then finding the property that fits what you want to do, not the other way around. I think a lot of people get in trouble with permitting and with investing when they like, I want to own a 10 unit building. And so they buy someplace and they think they're going to add a bunch of units, but the zoning won't allow for that. So then they go to the board.

They try to get variances. They try to get permission to do something that's not allowed that the community doesn't want. want there and it's this huge fight and it's this big expense. So I work backwards where I look at the rules that each town has, the zoning maps, where that house fits in the bigger scheme of things and what do I want to do? Okay, I want to put up a four unit building. Okay, well, let me find a piece of land that's in an area where the town's going to allow that. And it's a lot cheaper if you do it that way. You're not fighting City Hall, so to speak. So if you're doing that and you're doing your homework and trying to work with the community rather

than against it. I think, you know, you've got to hire an engineer first is the first thing to kind of do a survey map and that costs about $2,500 to do the map. And then they've got to do, design your wastewater, you know, how you're going to hook up to the town lines and your water lines. And that's probably another $2,500. So you're kind of in for $5 grand for an engineer. And then you, you know, you fill out your applications. You go to the town. That's a few hundred dollars. If I represent myself when I'm speaking to the board, then it's free. But if you have to hire somebody, engineer will charge himself out at $95 an hour to kind of present your plan to the board.

And then you've got to put the infrastructure in. You've got to file the plats. You've got to make the map. So to subdivide a thing, like for that property, it probably had about $12,000 or $15,000 into the paperwork, process engineering to get it as a saleable lot to somebody else. Okay. And then I'm assuming your friend that you sold

to. He's the one that went and put in the water, the sewer, like, all that kind of stuff. Yeah, I had to get the permitting for it, which it wasn't, you know, it's not easy. You've got to get the state to do it. And state's a big bureaucracy. So it's not always straightforward. But yeah, he put all that stuff in and he installed that. And he, you know, he got on, he used his whatever from that point. He took it and ran with it. Okay. Gotcha. Cool. Gotcha. Cool. Yeah. Thanks for sharing that. That's, I think that's really helpful for folks. Yeah, we probably should do more with development and chat with more developers on the show because, I don't know, it's a Cool, cool strategy. Just talk with them when it's on the way up, that one is up.

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There go. All right. So you said you did, you know, after that you changed your strategy in the beginning. Now you're a little bit more secure. So what is it? What are you doing today? What's your main strategy in real estate? Well, you know, kind of the bigger thing.

The biggest thing was I found bigger pockets. I mean, it really did. It really changed my thinking. You know, first of all, like, it was great in a sense that there was an industry out there. Like, I never, what I was doing back then, I never really would, could even classify as, like, real estate investing. I was just working in real estate. So when I found bigger pockets, it was like, you know, wow, there's other people that are doing this for a living. I can do this permanently. I can do this full time. I can, you know, and I've got

people that'll answer questions, you know, it's like, who do you ask if you're trying to figure out, you know, something to do with a development? You know, no one does that stuff. So when I found bigger pockets, I was like, oh my God, look at all this information that's here. It's all free. look at these people that are found success and they've made failures and that I can learn from. It was really like a watershed moment in my investing career in my life as it pertains to real estate investing because, you know, a lot of the stuff that I was doing, I learned from Bigger Pockets was on there. So it was confirmation that I was on the right path that I could do it. And then, you know, and that was probably 60, 70% of what I knew. And then there was this other 30% was like, wow, I never thought of that.

You know, this person did this. And I might have learned it if I was done this for another 10 or 15 years on my own. But it just shortened my learning curve so much. And it just put me on this steep learning curve to just, I mean, for like when I discovered it, which about a year and a half ago, two years ago maybe, I, you know, I just read and read and read and read. I just was on the site, just stalking and learning and being and fine tuning. Yeah, yeah, I was a creeper. I was a stalker.

And it changed. my perspective. And I looked back at what I had done. And I thought, God, the first thing I did was the right thing to do. And maybe not everything I did was right. But this buy and hold strategy, it works for my market. I liked doing it. I like being property manager. I like being a landlord. I like that people aspect of the thing. I'm not going to like it forever, but for now it's good. So I changed my focus away from the development stuff. That was going to be my primary thing, was the development. But now my primary thing is trying to get enough of these, you know, little oil wells. Like, you know, like Karen Rittenhouse, I think was the one who referred to him as oil wells and like show two or something.

And, you know, just pump out, you know, slow and steady kind of wins the race. And that's, that's really what changed my focus. And at the time when I discovered, I had like a commercial building, which is the best thing I ever bought that I was working with. And I ended up selling that this past summer. and then I was like, okay, this is like my ground zero. I can really focus on just acquiring small multifamily residential rental properties, which are, you know, solid as they can be and go from there. And that's really what I've focused on the last eight months since I retired from playing professional hockey.

Wow. Nice. Cool. So tell me about that. I mean, like you said you've been focusing on now the small multifamily properties, little oil wells, as you call them. Can you maybe give us an example or two of like, What are some of the properties you've bought in? And how do you finance them?

Well, owner financing, which I knew was out there, but was like kind of this like, how do you get somebody to, you know, finance something, you know. And but through bigger pockets, you know, learning how it worked, you know, talking with people asking questions, it really like, I was like, okay, this is doable. I can do this. So I bought a three unit building when I first got back in May. I was in Austria last year for hockey. So I knew I was going to retire and I was going to, like gloves were going to be off. And that's a hockey term, I guess. But I was going to really get into real estate investing full time at that point.

I wanted to make a go of it. I want to see this. I want to be my job after hockey. You know, I didn't have millions of dollars laying around where I could just not do anything, you know, unfortunately. But so I negotiated this deal. I bought three units in a town about 40 minutes away. I got him for 95,000 and he owner financed it.

So I gave him a 20,000. dollar down payment and he owner financed the rest and then i had to basically these apartments hadn't been touched again in 30 or 40 years so i did all the renovations i had you know hired subcontractors and you know fixed the place up but not in the not in the uh sense that i was going to flip it and sell it but i was going to rent it and hold it as a long-term rental property so um that's that's what i did and you know i put about you know 75 or 80 000 into fixing up the three units and now they're They're rented and I'm in the process of refinancing it to pull my money out and do it again. That's awesome.

I love it. Yeah, yeah, that's great. So how did you find it? So, you know, I think that's the question that the average guy probably wants to know. Like, oh, that sounds great. Like, how on earth do you go about finding a property that somebody wants to sell or finance? I get that question every single day in my email, right? You do too, I'm sure. Like, we get that all the time.

How do you find seller finance deals? So answer the question, Graham. For crying out loud. I've asked you a hundred times. One of the things we skipped over before, I got my real estate license in 2006. Okay. And mainly because I couldn't find a real estate agent

that had any clue what I wanted to do or was talking. So I was like, I just got to study and get my license. And I did. So I'm still a realtor to this day, but I don't really buy and sell for other people. It's just for my own personal use. So I have access to the MLS, which in Vermont is pretty important because 99% of the stuff is on the MLS.

So I look for properties that have been on the market for a long time. And in Vermont, like, stuff can sit on the market for years in Vermont. I mean, it's slower. Things don't move in 90 days here. You know, I think the average time of market is like six to eight months right now. And that's if it's priced appropriately. So things just move a little bit slower. So I look at a lot of properties.

And I scour within two hours radius of my house. Every day I get an email that tells me everything that, came on the market and you know once a week i'm on the mLS for an hour or two looking for looking for deals and and so i found this one in it's in plainfield vermont and it's outside of montpelier and montpelier's the capital but it's like the smallest capital in the world and uh i think it's like 12 000 people that live there or something but the government's there and there's jobs and so this is about 10 minutes away which um you know it's kind of my target area and I talked to the real estate agent and was kicking it around.

And this guy, he was an older gentleman. He'd been owned the property for 25 years. He didn't have a mortgage. So that's very important. If you're looking for somebody that wants to owner, you want to find owner financing, you need to find out if they have a mortgage or not. And you go to the town records,

the town, at least where I'm from, you go to, you know, plainfield town offices and you go through the, there's either a computer there or, you know, you can talk to the town clerk. They're very nice people generally. and they'll help you, you know, look up the deed information. And they'll tell you if there's a mortgage on the property

or if the mortgage has been discharged and paid off. So you've got to, if you want to want to financing, you've got to find somebody that doesn't have a mortgage usually. Yeah. There is subject to and things like that. I haven't gone down that path yet. I may in the future. And then, you know, it's kind of tired landlords.

People that have been doing it for a long time. They've owned it for 20, 30 years. They just want to get out. They're ready to retire. You know, one woman I moved, you know, move south. She just wanted to, you know, not deal with the property anymore. So that's cool. Yeah.

I mean, not cool for her, but cool for you. Yeah, yeah. And there's no. Yeah, it does. It sounds like there's no quick and easy way that you're using to find these deals. I mean, you're scouring, looking for deals. You're not doing any kind of like easy filter. There isn't an easy way.

At least I don't know of it yet. And that's why today we're introducing the new Bigger Pockets, 997 leads on your Your seat is unlimited. Sears in your backyard. 10,000 owner finance. Exactly. Properties a day. No, you've got to, it's people skills.

It's learning, you know, when I got that, that was my first, well, that wasn't my first owner finance. But you got to ask, number one. Like, will this person owner finance? And, you know, it doesn't work to just come right out and do it. You've got to work, you know, the relationship a little bit. You got to build a relationship. You got to build a little trust.

You got to talk to the agent. You got to tell them this is what I'm looking to do. I'm not going to rip this person off. I'm legit. I'm for real. And then the person has to be in a situation where they don't need the money right away. You're not going to, you know, it's going to be difficult to buy somebody's owner-occupied house that wants to go buy another owner-occupied house because they're, they need the dough. They need the money.

So you've got to find someone that, you know, would like to keep getting the passive income that they've gotten for the previous 20 years, but not do any of the work, which is. is what the owner financing really is. And then, you know, you sell the interest. You say, look, you're going to make five, six percent interest on this money rather than just sitting in the bank at, you know, a quarter percent in your savings account. So that's really kind of how it's gone for me. You know, one of the, I love the idea of seller finance. You know, there's a, there's a chapter in the book on investing with no and low money

down that's all in seller finance. You know, because of this, like, I think seller finance is probably one of the best over the next 10 or 15 years, and here's why. Because all these baby boomers, oh, Josh just hold my book up. Look at that. I didn't have to do it myself. You're still in my thunder. This book might come up later in the podcast.

I don't know. Okay, I hope so. Nice. So here's the true. Here's my theory anyway, right? So the baby boomers, this generation of older Americans who are what today between 50 and 60 years old or whatever, I don't know, the exact age for baby boys. Older gone.

Okay. 50 to 70, whatever. Like the idea. Like my parents' generation, they bought these properties over the last 30, 40 years. They now own them free and clear. When I was doing research for the book, I figured out that 30% of all homes in America are owned free and clear with no mortgage. 30%.

Yeah. Shocking when I read that. Shocking. Shocking. And so like, shocking. Yeah. So people are like, well, I don't know where to find.

Crazy. Now, I don't. This is unbelievable. Simmer down, Josh. Can you get a thought going? No, so seller finance. seem like opportunities there everywhere. And especially with what I think small multifamily properties or even medium-sized multifamily properties because you got these older people. I mean,

that's how I got my apartment complex, right? Older, baby boomer generation. They like the income. They've been managing for 30 years their own property. They don't want to suddenly drop that, pay taxes on it and then go and throw whatever they have left in the stock market to, you know, try to supply for their future. They would much rather have the property that they've owned for 20 or 30 years, give them their retirement for the next 20 or 30 years. So I am a huge, I almost don't like saying that on the podcast because I don't want everybody else in America to like, oh, take that and run with it and leave me no deals. You got a big ego there, Brandon.

We got a big show here. We have six listeners. Six million, maybe. Yeah, we're going for six million. Now, we got more than that. So yeah, so I'm a huge fan of seller finance because of that, because of that reason, because of the generation that's retiring, but they don't want to stick their money. into the thing. So anyway, I think that's awesome. Seller financing, you're using that. I want to get back

to you now, since this is your show, Graham. I mean, maybe can you kind of share, like, what should somebody who's just starting out doesn't have any experience? They want to get seller financing on one of their deals. What should they do? They need to learn about real estate as much as they can. For me, like, getting my real estate license was helpful. I mean, you see beginners and people like, where do I start? And it's, it's going to be difficult for you to just find a seller financing deal and to get someone to trust that you're going to pay them back. If you don't have, you know, if you don't present yourself well and you don't have a track record, I think it is going to be difficult. So I'm not going to like sugarcoat it and be like, oh, these are out here everywhere. You know,

if some, you know, younger person, some whippersnapper comes to me and it's like, give me your house and I'll rent it out and I'll pay you for sure, you know, totally. And I'd be like, no, I'm not going to do that. So you need to be educated. You need to learn. You need to. And that's what, you know, one thing, Bigger Pockets is good for. And read the books that people recommend on bigger pockets. That's what has helped me is it's opened up, you know, and it'll save you time and it'll you'll get starting to think about this. But, you know, your book, Brandon, lays it out pretty, pretty well that, you know, to get started, you should be looking at these like low, low money down, government backed loans, house hack, get in there. You know, you're young. You've got. You've

not time. That's the, that's the biggest thing. If you're not young, you still have the advantage of being able to qualify for a three and a half percent down loan. For a new person to find seller financing, it can definitely happen, but you're going to have to be a pretty good, you know, salesperson. I think you're going to have to get lucky. And then, you know, you're going to have to do a good job with it, too. It's not like it's just getting, you don't want to buy a crappy deal if it's just because it's seller financed, you know, it's like whether you're paying the bank or the previous owner, like if you're not making money, not making money. I love that.

So, Graham, can a typical, you know, if there's somebody listening and they're like, well, I don't know, you know, about the county recorder or this or that. I mean, can I just ask my agent and can they tell me if there's a loan on the property or is the average agent not going to know that? Yeah, I mean, if it's listed with a real estate agent, they should know that information. If they don't, then they can find it out. I don't think that's out of line. I mean, it's, you might not even want to waste your time getting to the point of talking to the agent if you're really looking for a seller finance deal.

Like, you know, I, when I hear of a property comes on the market that I'm interested in, I go, you know, I go down to my town clerks and there's a computer there and I sit in. I type the address in and it, it shows me the deed and when they bought it and, you know, the mortgage is in there sometimes. So it shows me how much they borrowed to buy it. So maybe what they're thinking that they want to get for it. if it's not listed with a price on the MLS. And then if the mortgage has been discharged or not, you know, I know that. And then when I go to call the person to see, then, you know, I already know that it's potential. So then it's a matter of building the trust and building the relationship with the person before asking, you know, it's not like you go out on a date and you're like, you want to marry me the first day.

You know, it's not, it's not the way it should be done. It took me a solid year to get seller, like to get that seller finance department complex deal that it took. Hold on, guys. Hold on, hold on, hold on. No, no, no, no, seriously. I mean, like, this sounds like a lot of work. And, and, I mean, like, why, I mean, shouldn't the money just be handed to me? I mean, why do I have to actually work to do all this stuff? That's crazy.

Yeah. I don't work. I make my wife work. I just said on bigger pockets all day. She makes his money. I make a point, my point, obviously. Yeah, no, absolutely. This is not.

It's work. And especially when you're getting started, you know. And it's said all the time on bigger pockets. If you don't have money, if you don't have, you know, you got time and you got work and you got yourself. So you're going to have to put the time in to learn this stuff. It's like anything. And then, you know, the best part is is once you get the ball rolling and then it starts going, then you're going to find you'll have the time because the nature of the business enables you to make money. Well, one thing you said also just to, I had never really thought about

this before. But, you know, in gaining credibility to be able to pull off a seller finance deal or even a partnership or private lending, right? It's all kind of the same. You got to have that credibility and trust. One thing that you did that made a huge difference, I think, was, or at least it sounds like it, was getting your real estate license, right? So we all know that's good for the tools and stuff, but all of a sudden, when you're talking with a seller and you're like, oh, yeah, I'm a licensed agent.

Your credibility just goes through the roof with them because all of a sudden, oh, that guy's licensed. You know, like, that doesn't mean anything hardly. The other than the fact that you took a 90-hour class or whatever, but in their eyes, like a licensed agent has a ton more credibility than somebody who's just. coming off the street. So if somebody's out there listening to this and they want to know how to build some credibility and they don't have any deals under their belt yet, that is one of the best reasons to get your license. Right. Right. I mean, it's the same as like finding a mentor or

something like that. Get in real estate somehow. Work for a property management company. Get your license. Find a mentor. You know, scrub toilets if you have to. Like if you're going to be learning about real estate and figuring it out and you'll just, you'll pick it up. I mean, if you're that motivated, you're going to, you're obviously going to be an intelligent person. You're going to absorb the knowledge and the information and you're going to find your, your path will start to show itself to you. Yeah, I love that. I mean, people oftentimes, they hear people on the podcast or like, they hear my story, your story, Josh's story, whatever, and we're like, you know, oh, I want to do that deal that they just did. I want to get a seller financed, you know, property right now or whatever.

They don't realize that we did scrub toilets or at least I, you know, like, I spent evenings cleaning out, you know, nasty units. Speak for yourself, dude. Okay, yeah, well, I spent, I don't even scrub my own toilet. I don't do those things anymore. And so people think that they can just jump in at the level we're at today without having to go through all that. Maybe it's possible. But, you know, I don't think so. I think that early stage of the hard work and the hustle actually means something.

Right. I mean, walk before you run, right? I mean, if you're lucky and, you know, Brandon, you wrote an article about, you know, play your advantage. You know, everyone's got some kind of advantage. And that really struck home with me. it's like don't, number one, like don't feel guilty that you have an advantage because everybody's got some kind of advantage. So if your advantage is you're young and you're inexperienced, you know, don't look it as a negative. Look it as a positive.

Like I got time. I can spend three or four years learning this stuff. And, you know, if you start, if you don't buy your first deal until you're 30 years old, you're still so much further ahead of the person, the wage slave that's just nine to five for till they're 65 years old and hoping they're 401k is enough to make it through retirement. If you start at 30, you still got 35 years until you really need that passive income. Yeah, yeah. That was one of my favorite articles I've ever written and nobody's ever brought that up on the show before. I don't think. I've talked about it on the show.

Have we? I don't know. I like that article. Okay, I'm going to link to that. Thank you. I'm going to link to that in the show notes so I can brag about it more. That's good. Hey, Graham, back in 12, you did a big old commercial building this.

10,000 square foot building. Could we talk about that really quick? And then we're going to move on to this segment. Yes. It was an owner finance deal. And what happened was I had a, I'll try to be brief. I had another house that I was going to buy. And I had under contract, it was a foreclosure. My attorney came back and said, there's a problem with the title. You're probably not going to be able to sell it right away. You shouldn't buy it. And I was like on the fence. Ah, should I buy it? And I ended up not buying it. And then the next, like a week later, I went and looked at this commercial building and that ended up happening. So that was very lucky. When you see an opportunity that you lose, it opens a door for something else. So that was the start of that deal. But then I went and looked at

this building. It was listed at $150,000. It was in downtown Morrisville, which was in the middle of the beginning stages of a revitalization process. They had, they had brought in some community planners, the people, the zoning administrator, the government really was pro business and pro development and they were going to get this downtown going. And I kind of recognized that back then. So I was like, I'll take a shot on this commercial property. It had a couple tenants in it. I made an offer of, it's funny because my offer was owner financing and it was 110,000. And the seller took that as opposed to a full price cash offer because he was a Canadian citizen. And I found out later that he was not well and he was going to lose most of what he sold the property for to

taxes for some reason. So he had some tax advantage to that. So, you know, if you're thinking about an offer, you know, throw it out there because you never know what's going to happen. But so he accepted that deal. The town had a fund called the Morristown Development Fund that was basically half a million dollars that you could present them with a business plan and they would lend you money to promote the economy in the town. So they lent me $125,000. And I took that money and put it into fixing up the building because it was a hardware store for many years. There was a whole 3,000 square feet on the second floor that was residential back in like the 30s. And I actually found a letter in the wall from like 1918, which was pretty cool. Oh, wow. That's cool.

When we were renovating it. So I put the money in that I got from the Development Fund plus some of my own money into renovating that, turning it into office space, found tenants for the office space, found another tenant for the downstairs. And, you know, things were going pretty well. And I did a lot of the work myself. I, you know, a lot of it's just grunt work. I'm not a contractor. I don't pretend to be one. But you can hire a plumber. You can hire an electrician to do the kind of the skilled labor. But, you know, if you got to take a wall out or, you know, smash something, like that's, that's easy. You can do that. So I did a lot of that myself. And then this past summer, I had a gentleman approached me.

He owned a business in town and he wanted to rent from me. But I was waiting on another tenant that was going to rent the whole first floor, which is about 5,500 square feet. And I said, I can't rent you half the space because I've already promised the full space to somebody else. He was working on financing. And the guy said, well, would you sell the building? And I was like, well, I wasn't really planning on it. And at the time, that money I was going to make from that commercial property was going to be my income to replace hockey.

because I wasn't going to be playing hockey anymore. So I looked at it and I was like, well, you know, I would consider selling. And he's like, well, how much would you want? And I told him and he said, yeah, I can do that. And we made a deal and it worked off. So it was, you know, it was lucky. And, you know, he ended up selling a billing to him and getting all my capital back that I invested and paying off the loans.

Then I got, you know, a decent chunk of change to invest. But then I had this problem like, I need income. I can't just live off of this. sale because it's going to disappear, it's going to be gone. So that's when I was like, this is my opportunity to really put to use what I've been learning over the past 12 months, you know, through books and bigger pockets and things. And I started looking for owner financing deals that I could get with like 10% down and buying these properties and putting tenants in them.

And that's kind of what I did for eight months. And things just slowed down. I just rented the last unit on February 1st. And now I'm trying to refinance everything. to get some more money to do it again. So that's kind of where I was at. And the commercial property was, you know, it was the best thing I ever bought.

And it was kind of an unintentional commercial flip, fix and flip. I didn't mean to do it, but it worked out that way. And, you know, that's part of real estate. You just being dynamic and rolling with the punches, when something happens or goes one way,

you know, just kind of figure out a way you can benefit from it and do that. That's cool. That's what do you mind me asking how much you made on that? You don't have to say it. You don't have to say it. Yeah, no, I made, it was over six figures that I made on the property. That's great.

So for holding it for two years. And, you know, it worked out really well. And I spent all of that money on buying other stuff. So my way is like, you're crazy. But I was like, we need the income. That's funny. You know? And that's great, Grant Cardone said, is that whenever he makes money, right, he just

pours it back into real estate. He's always broke. Like, because what good does I do sitting in your bank account? Nothing. Right. Yeah. No, and that, that Grand Cardone show was great. That was a good show.

Yeah, it was a good show. All right, cool. Well, hey, let's move on to the fire app. It's time for the fire round. All right, the world famous fire round. These questions come direct out of the Bigger Pockets forums, which people can get to and engage on at biggerpockets.com slash forums. So question number one, when contacting a seller,

especially about seller financing, I'll add that part in there. But when contacting a seller, what information do you request from them? Well, how much they want for the building, how much they're looking to get, what the gross rents are, and what their annual expenses are. Those are the three most important things that I look at. And you've obviously got to verify all that information. But I'm at the point where if I know how much they want and I know how much they're getting for rent, I don't even really need to know what their expenses are. I'm just really gauging, trying to gauge their honesty or how much they know about their building or how well managed it is.

Because you use like the 50% rule or the 60%. It's more like 60 where I'm at. And then I can gain a value for the building. And if it was, if it's something I want to pursue or not. So those are my first kind of questions. And then I get, you know, I don't come out and say right away like, well, you want to finance it for me because it's, you know, again, you got to, You've got to build a relationship before you can really do that. Yeah, that's true.

You just mentioned the 50% rule. I was going to go there. That's really funny. Oh, well, I was going to say, so people who don't know what it is, it means that on, they say, on average, it's a rule of thumb, not a, you know, not a rule, but it's a rule of thumb that on average, half of your income goes out to expenses, not counting the mortgage. And so, you know, if you had a thousand a month rent, you could expect 500 just to leave

expenses, and you pay your mortgage and whatever's left might be your cash flow. Anyway, I thought it was funny. I just did my taxes last night. I spent the whole day yesterday doing them. my expenses came to 51%, like not counting the more. I mean, it was almost exactly 50% rule last year, which is crazy to think like how close that rule of thumb was for me. But that's a BS rule of thumb, Brandon.

I mean, 50%. And it's crazy. You said 60% for you, right? I again, being facetious here. It changes that. Experience people, you know, prove that over the long term, the quote unquote rule, it's not a rule. it's a rule of thumb, but it's a good way to estimate this thing is going to be between 50 and 60%.

And it really does tend to hold true. And for those people, don't use it as a means to buy a property, but you can definitely use it as a means to filter out some information and help you speed up the kind of calculation in your brain. Oh, for sure. I mean, it's a quick way in three seconds to tell, you know, this person's way off base with what their property is worth. than if it's something you can pursue or not. And that was one of the first things I learned on bigger pockets. I'd never heard of the 50% rule. And I was like, what?

That's ludicrous. There's no way it's 50%. And then sure enough, as I've grown and gotten bigger. And you might be able to with one property, you might be able to massage it a little bit, but it's pretty close. I mean, it really is. The massaging comes from like, hey, I'm not accounting for management.

Hey, I didn't have to do any repairs this year. Hey, I didn't have any vacancies this year. But you know what? If you hold that building for 5, 10, 20, 30 years, you're going to have all the above. And you have to account for it, period. And it's just, I mean, to not do that as silly, which is why we built these calculators at biggerpockets.com slash calc. I mean, you know, these tools, we've actually had some people say, well, it's not fair

to give calculators to people who don't know how to use them. In fact, I think that's your good friend, Ben Laibovich. Yeah. Ben Labor bitch, coming at you. I love Ben. I love Ben. I don't know him, but... To me, it's silly. Because, you know what?

I mean, the tools help you learn. That's the beauty of these things. You know, like running through these things, you actually learn, you know, that there are more expenses. You learn what they are if you didn't know what they were before. And you learn how to kind of account for them. And so if you haven't checked out the calculators, definitely go to biggerpockets.com slash calc c-alc and uh you know we we recommend testing them out so there you go that's what i got all right next question fire round what are the pros and cons that was the longest fire round question

we've ever done by the way well we just kind of go i blame my grams i digress all right what are the pros and cons of single family houses s f hs versus the mfhs and multi-families. Singles versus multis? In my experience, single families are a lot easier to rent. People want to live in a house, more so than an apartment, I feel like, in my area. There's less problems. You can pass more expenses onto the tenants in single families. It doesn't really make sense to just buy singles up here, but I've found from renting singles that those are the advantages. For multi-families, you've got one roof, you've got multiple

tenants. You know, so if someone moves out, your vacancy hit, you know, is a lot softer. You only have one roof. You generally have one heating system. You got, you know, one foundation. You got one driveway. You got one garbage. Economy's a scale. If there's a problem, you're driving to one place. And if you have, you know, three problems, they could all, you know, they're all there if you've got 12 units. But if you've got 12 single families, you've got three problems, you could be driving all over town. So I like multis. I don't really, I'm not even a big duplex fan. I find I need three plus units to really get the numbers where I want them to be. Yeah.

And that is a big, you know, you said, like, you started that whole entire answer with, in my area, you know, whatever. Like, it depends on your area. Some people might have great single family houses. Some might have great duplexes. Some might have triplexes, fourplexes, 50plexes. Who knows? Yeah, very cool.

All right. I love that answer, by the way. Number three, is it, is this very closely related. It's similar. It's very closely, but I'm going to actually change it. For my very first investment, should I consider a single or multi? I think the best thing for most people is to find a four-unit property where you're going to live in one of the units and buy it with an FHA loan.

I think that's kind of the – I mean, my brother did that a couple years ago, and he's really glad that he did. And I think that's the cheapest you're going to get in something. I think, you know, yeah, you're going to be jumping head first into being a property manager over three units. but you can learn that stuff if you're willing to. But if I was looking to get started in real estate investing, if I had to start all over, I would go buy a four unit property and live in one of the units and I'd use an FHA loan to do it. And I'd do that four times. And then you've got 16 units.

You got your four loans. It's going to take you five, six, seven years to do it. But then you're going to know a lot and you're going to be pretty well established. And I think that's a great way to do it. Yeah, you're wrong. in my area. I'm just kidding. I love that.

It's a great idea. Astrix. Yeah, yeah. What would be your first steps to make a home green? We haven't really talked about green homes in a long time. I live in a green home, actually. Do you? Not like physically, right?

Like you didn't paint it green? No, it's great. Okay. But it's highly energy efficient. It's got a hers score at 26. I don't know. If that, people that know green build, know what a person is. It uses 26% of the energy that a normal house built today would use.

That's what it uses. But if you want to get into green building, if you want to build green, you've got to focus on insulation. That's the insulation and air leakage is where the money's at with green building. And, you know, we could have a whole show about green building. And you guys should have a show about green building. There's a lot of very knowledgeable people about it. And there's a lot of good information about it. But my house is, you know, I've got foot thick walls and, you know, it's very energy efficient and my utility bills are very low for up here. How big is their house? How many square feet? Uh, 3,000. 3,000. You're in Vermont. What's like your utility bill for a 3,000 square foot greenhouse? I've got only electric here. I don't have any propane or

oil, which most people do up here. We don't have natural gas because we're too rural. but my electric bills are under $200 a month on average for the whole year. And you guys have a cold up there. It's chilly. Well, I've got a 3,000 square foot three unit building, and I spend $4,800 a year heating that with oil. So I'm saving $5,000 a year by having a greenhouse versus not a greenhouse. And I like the way that most of the green industry thinks and their thought process, but I didn't do it to save. save trees or to, you know, save the environment as much as I did it from a numbers standpoint

to save money. And I wanted to live in this house for a long time and I wanted to be comfortable. And it made financial sense for me to spend more on the building to save money on my, you know, variable costs or year to year are so much lower than everybody else's. Yeah. Makes sense. Make sense. And for a hobby, of course, you like to cut down trees, right? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Who does it? Who doesn't? I mean, if you're having a bad day, go get a chainsaw if you know what you're doing and cut a tree down and you will feel much better it's funny because that's actually what people in my area do

like I live in the wilderness right yeah we live in the I mean I am in the lumber industry out here save the spotted owl yeah you know they would not allow kids to watch Ferengali remember Ferengali they banned it my whole entire county back when it came out back in whatever the 90s because it was about how evil the loggers were and so I yeah we're not allowed to talk about Ferengulley here

but it's fun Running chainsaws is fun. I wouldn't want to do it for a living, but it's fun to do every once in a while. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I got a bunch of friends who do. That's what they do for a job. They go out in the woods with a chainsaw and cut down trees. All right, moving on.

All right. Let's go over to our world famous. Famous for. All right, these questions are asked to every single guest. And I know you've heard our show before, so you probably know what's coming. But let's go with, number one, what is your favorite real estate-related book? I have two. Is that cheating if I tell you two? That's all good. It's okay. I know other people have broken the rules before, but for property. And they're never invited back. Okay. Well, then I'm not in them changing my answer.

From property management and landlording, landlording on autopilot by Mark Butler is invaluable if you want, if you're going to be managing tenants. And I love that book. And I learned about it on bigger pockets initially. And I got it. And it helped me tremendously. So that's, That's one, but from an investing standpoint, especially if you're a beginner, I like the book on investing in real estate with no and low money down by Brandon Turner. First time, I think. Yeah, well, it's, you know, there's not a first time for everything. But from a real estate investing, you know, first of all, like you guys say in the book, everything that's in that book you can find on bigger pockets. But it's going to take you months and months and months on bigger pockets to find all that

information. It's not going to be organized or laid out as straightforward as this book is. So if you're seriously interested in getting started or if you've been doing it for a while and you want a great resource, like that book is great to do that. So I like your book, Brandon, and it was very well done. And I look back on it. I'm like, what did, you know, like what did Brandon say about, you know, this loan and can I get this loan? And I have people like my sister-in-law, she's younger, she wants to get into investing. And I tell her, like, get this book. book, like read it. You know, here are the loans that Brandon says you can get. And it really, it's a great book. So I recommend that. So I've recommended it to four or five people just in the

last month. That's awesome. I love that. You know, I think the best part of that book is the forward. The forward. Yeah. Yeah, good job, Josh. Josh wrote a great forward on that book. All right. So we've never done this before, but I'm going to do it right now. And Josh can edit this out if he doesn't like it later. But we're going to have a sale in the book right now. It's going to be The keyword, if you want to buy the book, you get 20% off by using the coupon code, Graham. G-R-A-H-A-M. How long is that sound good for, Brandon? I don't know.

What do you go? Two weeks? I'll give people time to listen. And so when this comes out, the two weeks following, use the discount code. How do you spell your name? G-R-A-H-A-M. All right. Two weeks after this, you can get 20% off if you want to buy the book on BiggerPockets at

BiggerPockets.com. And I'm not getting any of the proceeds from sale. I wasn't prompted to answer that question. And Brandon decided that he wanted 20% less of a cut on the sale of these books. I want everybody to read this thing. I want every person in America to have this book on their shelf. All right. No, I'm just kidding.

Thank you. Yeah. Great idea. Moving on. I think it's my turn. Can I speak? Hey, Graham, what's your favorite business book? You son of them.

Hey, Graham, what is your favorite business book? That's a really good question. I'm glad you ask you that. Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill really was a great book. I love it because it works. I mean, it really does. It's not an easy read. I mean, it's written in the, what, the 30s, but it really has helped.

And it cemented a lot of the things that were kind of, again, in the back of my head. Like, is this really working or, you know, but if you set your mind on something and you want to accomplish it, you know, And this is what I kind of feel the book is saying, you know, if you internalize that and you think about it subconsciously, you're going to attract things to you that are going to reflect what you're thinking about. And it's an amazing book. It works in all aspects of life, not just real estate investing or, but any business. I saw it firsthand in the hockey world. It's a great book. And honestly, again, I learned about it on Bigger Pockets. The first book that I read that was recommended by a Bigger Pockets for a member. And I love it. And then it works. I mean,

I get calls and I'm just like, man, I was just thinking about that last week. And it's strange. It's eerily strange how it works, but it's cool. That's great. That's great. All right, man, what do you do for fun? What kind of hobbies you got besides hockey? Snooze first.

I always struggle with this answer because when I hear other people on a podcast, they've got like these great, like, oh, I go cliff jumping. We have a guy who like hikes a car. I don't have any time to do anything. I mean, Josh, you can back me up in this. I got a three-year-old and a five-year-old. It's all I can do to do what I need to do with real estate and spend time with them. I really don't have any real hobbies. I mean, I still play hockey twice a week with my men's league team.

So that's pretty much my social time. Other than that, it's full-time real estate and kids. So I'm looking forward to the day where I'll have a little bit more time. But I'm really trying to enjoy my family while they're young. and spend as much time as I can with them. And real estate enables me to have a more flexible schedule to spend time with them. But I get so jealous of Brandon when he's talking about how a bunch of responsibility of his cats are. And it's tough to look after that.

I got to change the litter box once a day. I mean, come on. I know. I know. I mean, I wish I could leave my kids for like a weekend and pour like some Cheerios on the counter and be like, okay, I'll be back three days. Your mom and I'll see you. We love you. By the way, for any of the authorities listening.

Graham lives at. All right. All right. Moving on. Final question for me. What do you believe sets apart successful real estate investors from those who give up, fail, or never get started? I thought a lot about this.

Self-confidence is what separates. I think the people that succeed that don't. And a lot of little this comes from my past as a hockey player. But a lot of people think it's motivation. You hear a lot of, oh, they got to be motivated. They got to be motivated. And I think that's true. But I think motivation is a combination of two things.

It's a combination of desire and then self-confidence. And a lot of people have the desire. They want to do it and they never get started. You know, they think they're motivated, but they're not really motivated. They just have a lot of desire. So what's holding them back, in my opinion, is they don't have the self-confidence to take action, to take the next step. I think that's where like analysis paralysis comes from a little bit. You're constantly learning and you desire and you want that thing to happen,

but you just don't feel like you're ready to do it or you don't think you deserve it or you're not confident that you're going to be successful. And so I think if you find that you are, you feel like you're motivated and you want to achieve, but you're not. I think it's you're really experiencing desire with a lack of self-confidence that you just need to believe in yourself and go out and start to make things happen because they will happen. And I think so the lack of self-confidence, I think that's what paralyzes most people and what makes people not do it.

They just don't believe that they're good enough. And like I said, this is true in real estate, but it's also true in the sports world as well. There's a lot of really good athletes that never make it because they just don't believe that they can make it. And there's a lot of athletes that make it because they fake it until they make it. They think they're the best and they act like they're the best. And eventually it happens. So it kind of goes in with that, you know, the book, Think and Grow Rich.

But, you know, if you find yourself in that situation, build your self-confidence, you know, little steps, like find ways to, you know, have little victories and it'll add up to a bigger victory. And you'll get that feeling like you can do it. And then you'll go out and you'll do it. You know, that was probably one of my favorite answers I've ever heard on the podcast. Like, I don't know if I ever said the self-confidence before, but I don't know if I ever said the self-confidence before. but I think that is so important. I mean, people listening to this should like rewind that last, like, minute and listen again. Because I think that was huge.

I love that. There you go. There you go. Michael Jordan once said, I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and gosh darn it, people like me. Wasn't that smiley? Yeah, Neil Frankl or whatever. No, what's that? Senator Al Franken, that's his name.

It was Michael Jordan on us and L. With Stewart Smalley, yes. Wasn't someone on this podcast? on Saturday Night Live? All right. Moving on Graham. Where can people find out more information about you? Bigger pockets, you know, from a real estate perspective,

I'm on Twitter, but I'm not super active with that. It's a lot of sports stuff. It was kind of developed from a hockey standpoint. I'm going to be switching over to more real estate stuff if I get time. I'm on LinkedIn. He's on Wikipedia. Yeah, but bigger pockets is. my chosen forum. I mean, that's, if you want to talk to me about anything, if you're looking,

you have questions, if you want to invest in Vermont, you know, anywhere, look me up, you'll find me there. And also be sure to look him up on YouTube where you can see the best of Grand Mink. Mack, you're going to cross the head. I played 800 professional hockey league games and there's like four fights on there. So my, and they're not very good ones. So don't always get a video that exists of you. Here's a video of Graham on the ice. Here's another video of Graham

getting knocked on the ice. There's one particular video where the announcer is just brutal on me. And there's a little history between me and the announcer and we didn't get along very well. So take whatever he says

with a grain of salt. I got to watch it now. All right, Graham, listen, man. It's been an absolute pleasure. A lot of fun. Really, really enjoyed doing the show with you. And we thank you for coming on. And of course, thank you for being such a big fan of ours. And thanks for

participating and being a part of the Bigger Pockets family. We will look forward to seeing you around. And anyone listening, you can check out the show notes at biggerpockets.com slash show 119. Thanks, guys. You're welcome, guys. Thank you very much for having me. And I look forward to meeting you guys in person at the 2015 Bigger Pockets Summit. Yes, he said it. Now it has to happen, Josh. We're going to have a petition. We're going to start one. Change.org. It's going to be a do it do what you got to do I want to see somebody do that all right we're getting out here thanks guys it's been great I appreciate it thank you

thank you no seriously thanks man it was it was definitely are we still recording sure why don't you take us out right now we'll do there's a lot do you should I do all the way through well let's go back then and let's fix it we got this we got this this is terrible that's good this is good people like this stuff right here nobody likes you this is what this is what the podcast is like when we don't hit the edit button. Oh, stop.

Graham, no, I got my agent texting me. I got to go look at a property, so I'm going to get out of here. Graham, it's been a pleasure. Everybody listening. I'm Josh Dorkening. I'm not signing out yet, but check out BiggerPockets.com if you've not already done that. If you've not yet written us a rating

or review on iTunes, please go to iTunes and leave us a rating and review. We really, really appreciate that. It helps us a lot. It helps us expand our viewership or listenership. And thanks a million, guys. Thanks for being a part of our world. And thanks for being out there helping to improve our communities, our neighborhoods,

fixing up properties, giving people a good place to live. We are changing lives. We are helping people out. That's what real estate investors do. And it's a beautiful thing. And we don't talk about it enough. So I'm going to just spit it out here. Anyway, I'm out.

Josh Dorkin, signing off. You're listening to Bigger Pockets Radio. Simplifying real estate for investors large and small. If you're here looking to learn about real estate, investing without all the height, you're in the right place. Be sure to join the millions of others who have benefited from biggerpockets.com. Your home for real estate investing online. Thank you all for listening to the Bigger Pockets Real Estate podcast.

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