BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast - 140: The Riches Are in the Niches (Like Student Housing) with Bill Syrios

Episode Date: September 17, 2015

Real estate investing is a BIG field, and there are hundreds of ways to build wealth. However, according to our guest today, the riches are in the niches! On today’s show we sit down with Bill Syrios, an investor from Oregon who specializes in the incredibly lucrative field of student housing (as well as numerous other niches!). You’ll learn how he transformed an early real estate setback into a business that owns hundreds of properties in multiple states! In This Episode We Cover: Times when the Syrios family has been on the BP Podcast! How Bill got started in investing What the interest rates were like in 1980 What kept him going despite market crashes and failures How to treat your real estate investing as a business The importance of becoming an expert in a niche market How he got started investing in student housing The pros and cons of student housing Tips for handling student turnover What you should know about finding a property manager for these properties What Loan Care Services is How to deal with difficult rental situations Important legal restrictions for campus properties The details on a 48-unit fraternity house renovation Bill’s current portfolio and the states he invests in The concept of giving over ownership And SO much more! Links from the Show BiggerPockets Meet BiggerPockets Forums BP Podcast 121: Creating the IDEAL Real Estate Investing Business with Andrew and Phillip Syrios Ultimate Beginner’s Guide to Real Estate Investing Airbnb BRRRR Strategy BP Podcast 113: Becoming a Millionaire Real Estate Investor Using The One Thing with Jay Papasan Books Mentioned in this Show The Everything Landlording Book: An All-in-one Guide To Property Management by Judy Tremore Good to Great by Jim Collins Built to Last by Jim Collins 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey The 8th Habit by Stephen R. Covey First Things First by Stephen R. Covey The Millionaire Real Estate Investor by Gary Keller The ONE Thing by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcom Gladwell The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell What Got You Here Won’t Get You There by Marshall Goldsmith Triggers: Creating Behavior That Lasts by Marshall Goldsmith Profit by Investing in Student Housing by Michael Zaransky Smart Essentials For College Rentals by Dan Gooder Richard Tweetable Topics: “Even if you only own one property from day one, you treat it as a business.” (Tweet This!) “Every business, every niche has an obstacle.” (Tweet This!) “That’s where real estate investing starts—it starts with a great deal.” (Tweet This!) Connect with Bill Bill’s BiggerPockets Profile Bill’s son, Andrew’s BP Blog (He’s the writer!) Bill’s Company Website: StewardshipProperties.com Another Niche Website: StewardshipCapital Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Bigger Pockets podcast. Show 140. You've got to treat this. Even if you only own one property from day one, you treat it as a business. 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 Dork and hosts to the Bigger Pockets podcast here with my co-host, Mr. Brandon Turner.

What up, buddy. How much? How are you doing? I am good. School is back in session. In other words, your kids are out of your hair. You know what? That makes me sad.

That part makes me sad. It's nice to get back to our routine. There's something nice about just kind of getting back to it and really being able to focus. Of course, my routine was devastated this week because of jury duty. Oh, yeah. How'd that go? Did you send a guy to jail? I did not. I got to wait in the big room and wait for my name to be called, and it never was, which was kind of nice so I could get back to work. But it was a third time. The third time I've been called in like five years, four or five years, which is a little troubling to me. There's certainly enough people in our county to make it so I don't have to go that often. Yet,

keep calling me. You know, I'm 30 years old. I have never been called for jury duty. Isn't that weird? I don't feel weird about it. I, you know, and I live in Grace Harbor like felony. Next week and get some. Yeah, you would think Grace Harbour. There's probably, it's like felony flats, we call it, because there's a lot of 40% of your people in jail. I think so. It's amazing. So that's a lot of four cases. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. My wife's been called like three times. I've never been called. Fascinating. Maybe they don't have my address right. And maybe, I don't know. I have no idea. That might be an accident too. That might be an accident, too. I actually want to do it. I think it would be fun because I've never done it. I'm a John Gersham guy. I love reading court and I'm sure it's just like that, right? Oh, yeah, I'm sure.

All right, man. Well, yeah, so today we've got a pretty cool show. Yeah, I love today's show. Yeah, it was really, really great. Let's kind of get to it. But before we do, why don't we start with today's quick tip? All right, guys, quick tip. I know we say this probably on every other show or

something. I haven't really used it as a quick tip, but today's quick tip is get out there, find people, reach out to somebody. Basically, take five minutes today, five minutes tomorrow, five minutes the next day, and reach out to somebody that you have not yet met. Reach out to somebody in the business, in your area, somebody local, and strike up a new relationship. Just say hi to somebody. Jump on the BiggerPockets site. Go to BiggerPockets.com slash meet and look for local folks and reach out. The more you do this, this, the more that you make this part of your business on a regular basis, the bigger your network's going to be, the more the opportunities are going to fall into your lap. So get out there

and make that happen. Wow, that was very motivational. Thanks, man. That's what I'm here. I was actually thinking after the interview we did with this guy today, we just got done recording it. I'm like, I could drive down to see him. He's like three hours from my house. I was like, I want to drive down there and go and talk to him because I know that's the guy that's going to help me get my business to the next level because I want to be where he's at. So, yeah, Bill, I'm coming for you sometime soon. Yes. ever notice how every passive investment somehow turns into a very active lifestyle, active spreadsheets, active phone calls, active stress? Here's a better question. What if you could buy brand new construction

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market value, in the best markets across the country, without making real estate yourself, second job. That's exactly what rent to retirement does. They're a full-service, turnkey investment company, handling everything for you. In some cases, investors get 50 to 75% of their down payment back at closing, plus interest rates as low as 3.75%. They've partnered with BiggerPockets for over a decade, helping thousands invest smarter. If you want to do the same, visit BiggerPockets.com slash retirement to learn more. Did you know your house gets bored when you leave? I can't actually prove that, but it probably misses out on the action, the footsteps, the late-night fridge raids. Yeah, when you're gone, your place is basically on unpaid leave. It's sitting there in the dark thinking,

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at Airbnb.com slash host. All right, today, guys, we have Bill Sirius. Bill is the father of previous guests, Andrew and Philip. And Bill is focused on a really cool niche, which is student housing. But today's show, we certainly get into detail in student housing, and we really, really digging on it and he's got so much to share. He's been doing this for a long time. But we talk about a whole lot of other things that would really be relevant to pretty much anybody in real estate. So this is a great show for everybody to tune in to listen up, listen carefully. The strategy that he's got, the niche that he focuses on is great. And the way he looks at the business is unbelievable. So tune in. This guy's a pro. He's been doing it a long time since 1980 and learn a whole lot.

Let's bring him on board. Bill, welcome to the show, man. It's great to have you here. Thank you. Appreciate being here, Josh and Brandon. Thank you. Thank you. This would be fun.

This is our first ever, right? This is our first ever father, son, you know, or having both the father and the sons on a bigger pocket podcast. Is that right? Well, I guess the sons were the first time you had brothers on and now you have most of the family. Got a couple more sons, one in Portland, one here in town. But let's get them off. Yeah.

And we are talking about Andrew and Phillips. Andrew Phillip in Kansas City, Luke in Portland, Mark here in town with us. So I got four sons and they're all more gifted than their old man, which sadly isn't saying that much. Do what you can do. Are there like 17 daughters to go along? We wish. Yeah, my parents had 10 grandsons and that's kind of what they're dealing with. Wow.

We're looking for a princess among the pack here in the granddaughter category. We talk to Andrew and Philip, Andrew. I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. Do what you can for us, all right. All right. Well, so that was a great show. We really, really enjoyed having them. And I know they had mentioned you a bunch, and we've, you know, we decided it'd be great to bring you on. So let's just dig into this thing. You know, you've been in the business for a long time, correct? I have been. Yeah, I had an interesting semi-fault start in Portland, starting in 1980.

80, relocated down in Eugene. Yeah, that was at the crest of the market. That's like starting in 2007, actually. It's kind of comparable. So I wrote the crest going down. And I want to ask you really, really quick before you go on, just because I think it's important, you know, some stuff here is fairly timely. What were interest rates back in 1980? Well, yeah, they were going between 12, 13%, maybe even 15, at the very height of the market. It was a dark era and real estate. And darker yet was Oregon because Oregon was based on the

timber economy much more so than it is now. And so when those kind of interest rates hit the country, it went into recession, but Oregon went into a virtual depression. And prices dropped like 35%. So people were just holding on for the ride down.

Kind of like what happened, you know, not too many years ago. So we had seen that movie before and it wasn't a pretty picture, I tell you that. So that's when I started my real estate career. I actually bought four properties in Portland and I was fortunate to get out of town without having too many losses. But it kind of an experience that I started back up again in Eugene after I actually came down. I was a campus pastor for many years. And I relocated to Eugene because of the University of Oregon focusing on working there.

And then at one point it came down in 86. And 89, I realized I'm not. going to do this the rest of my life. What do I really want to do for the rest of my life? And I thought back, I really like that real estate thing. Didn't work out so well for me the first time around, but maybe I could try it again. So I want to ask you a question on that because I had an email from a guy a couple weeks ago and I get him maybe once or twice a month. Maybe I don't know. People saying I tried to invest in real estate once before. It didn't work out. And now I'm scared to get back in again. And so, you know, as somebody who went through that, you went through it. It didn't work out so good. I mean, how did you get the guts to go back in and what should the people do?

I realize the advantages of real estate, the I-D-E-A-L that I think my son's talked about, income, depreciation, equity, build-up, appreciation, potential leverage. I knew all that, so I knew it was a viable business. The question was, how could I make it viable? and it was a book that actually turned me around. The book on landlording, a property management, and I realized through reading that book, I had treated real estate like a hobby instead of a business.

I was doing really informal. I had an informal relationship with my tenants. I was doing kind of sometimes I didn't even do rental agreements. My construction skills were less and lousy, and I needed to hire people out to do certain things. So I made so many mistakes in starting out in Portland. And reading that book kind of said, you've got to treat this. Even if you only own one property from day one, you treat it as a business.

So that meant getting business cars. It meant getting a business name. It meant meeting tenants not in my home, but my office. Now, my office in those days was Wendy's. And, of course, they didn't realize I was out from my regular brick-and-water office, just happened to be out that day. and I could meet him at a restaurant. But that was my office.

That's where I'd meet tenants. So it wasn't so informal as to, you know, hey, you know, meet them at my house and bring them there. That wasn't a good thing. It wasn't business-minded. I was entrepreneurial in nature, but in college I never took a single business class. And that's what I realized. I needed to treat real estate from the first property on as a full-blown business.

Yeah. I mean, that is so true. That's something I didn't do at the very beginning either, you know, the idea of a business versus a hobby. I just got into it because they said to buy real estate, right? Like, that's just the thing you do. And I didn't realize there was so much more. In fact, you know, I don't know if we've talked about it yet on the show,

but we've got a new book on landlording coming out this fall, hopefully, here at Bigger Pockets. And my wife and I co-wrote it. And there was the second chapter of that book, the entire second chapter, which is like 10,000 words, is called the business of landlording. And it's entirely on the difference between that, because I wanted to emphasize that so much because,

I mean, I think if there's one mistake people make early on in their landlording, it's that problem of not, yeah, it's that not treating it like the business that it is and they just treat it like a hobby. Well, it's not professional, right? And that's not to say somebody is a bad person, but they don't understand that they have to be professional in order to, you know, they have to have that professional mindset in order to run it professionally. And I think you know you're restrained into bad territory business wise if you're treating your tenants as your friends. That doesn't mean they're customers, their clients, they're your residents, they're your income base, but they're not your buddies. And you shouldn't treat them as such and you shouldn't think of them in that way. Of course, be friendly, but they're not friends. They're just like any business, other business relationship you would have.

Sure. Yeah. Hey, Bill, so you talked about the four properties in Portland and you mentioned that you failed. So would you mind digging in a little bit on what exactly happened? How did you fail? Why did you fail? Well, okay, so I, that's a really good question. I, I was fortunate that one of those properties turned out to be pretty, pretty good. But here's, here's what you think, you failed, you didn't really fail, but then you really fail. Let me, let me give you an example.

So I bought a property near Mount Tabor, beautiful area in Portland. And it was, I bought it at, for 60,000. I put some money into it, about 70,000. I have. had into it. I sold it for that amount. And the couple that bought it from me was named Michael and Julie. And this is interesting. I happened to meet them, my wife and I, just a couple years ago. They sold it at the very bottom of the market in Oregon, and they sold it in 84, I think it was, for 66,000. They lost $4,000. Then they turned around and told me, would you like to know the rest of the story? And I knew what was coming. I said, I don't think so. I'll tell it to you anyway.

The property recently sold for $950,000, $880,000 more than I sold it for. Wow. So it's like, yeah, you can fail, but sometimes if you just hold on, if you just work it out, a failure can turn into something profitable. In my case, sadly, somebody else made the profit from that particular house. So I think I just, I pulled the trigger too quickly. I got scared. I sold property.

I didn't know what I was doing with property management. I didn't know what I was doing with construction. I didn't really have a strategy. Was I buy and hold? Was I flipping? What was I doing? So I think I was just confused as to what my niche was. And since then, I've realized that truly you have to become an expert in a niche market.

And there's niches all across the landscape, even when it comes to, to real estate. What is the niche market that I'm going to become initially an expert in? I can expand from there, but what's the market? I wasn't a niche thinker. I was just kind of a broad thinker. Yeah, I'll just do everything in every way. And that's why it didn't work out very well. Yeah, yeah. You know, Bill, you talk about the niches, and I think that is so important because people get overwhelmed with this idea of real estate, right? There's so many things they can do. And there's hundreds of books and thousands of, you know, hours of, you know, podcasts and videos. on YouTube and everything. And so what I like to explain to people is exactly what you said.

Just pick a niche to get into and focus on that. And then combine that with a strategy, you know, the idea of, you know, you're going to get into one niche of a property. Like, maybe I want single family houses or I want just small multifamilies for now, or I want student housing. And then what are you going to do with that? What's the strategy? You're going to flip it. You're going to rent it. Are you going to be a landlord? And so, I mean, it really simplifies everything down. It's one thing we really press upon in the ultimate beginner's guide to real estate investing, which, yeah, if people haven't read that, biggerpockets.com, slash UBG. They can check that out for free anytime. It's an online book. So yeah, check it out.

So anyway, niches. What did, what did you get into? What was your niche that you got into? Well, maybe one of the first things that picked me off or teed me off to a niche idea was when I decided I was going to buy a certain vehicle. I had this, well, I call it Battlestar Galactica, that my parents gave me a Ford Granada, 1976. Can you share to the 12-year-old, who is my co-host here, the Battlestar Galactica was. I know what Battlestar Galactica. Well, there's a new version of Battlestar Galactica. Yeah, just Google it.

I'm assuming you're talking about the old version. This car looked like something out of that sci-fi show. All right. Anyway, I wanted to get rid of it and get something that was usable. So I said, what do I want? So I decided what I wanted was a Toyota pickup truck. And then what year did I want? I didn't want a new one.

Didn't want to pay that kind of money. I wanted something between 79 and 81 because that was a certain kind of model. So I got to know 79 to 81 Toyota pickup trucks probably better than anybody else in the country. That was my niche market. I wanted to know how much they were worse. So when I saw one pop up somewhere, I would know exactly how much its value was. This is pre-internet days. You're not searching and comparing a bunch of stuff.

You have a limited market, right? I put an ad in the paper said, one, a 1979 to 1981 Toyota pickup truck. I'll trade you a car I have. I found a guy in Corvallis who needed to cut down on his debt to buy a house, and he had a 1981 Toyota pickup truck. I knew instantly how much it was worth. And I also knew what my car was worth. I went down and traded in my 76 Granada for that Toyota pickup truck. And I was, was a master of that niche market, truly the master. Nice. Now, if you could just take that kind of mindset to real estate, you know, a specific niche, we're going to talk about student housing, but can you get to know what houses are valued in a particular area so that when you show up, you know exactly what your upside is, you know what the problems are to work with, you know what obstacles you have, and you know what value you can come out with. That takes a real focus on a niche market. That's great.

That's amazing. I think that is absolutely pure gold for anybody who's listening. Just think about it for a second and let it kind of settle in because, I mean, that's exactly what you want to do. So you went, took that and you said went into student housing. Why student housing? Well, as I mentioned, I had relocated from Portland to Eugene to work as a campus pastor. So I was very familiar with students. I like students.

You know, not everybody does. I really enjoyed hanging around with students. I felt I was a student all the way up into my 40s. You know, I still feel kind of like I'm a student, I guess. Don't look that way so much anymore. I love the lifestyle. I love to stay up late. I love everything about students.

And so I was located close to campus. I just fell into the student market. Again, you'd think all this strategy was coming to four? No, I just said, I think I'll buy something. around the campus. And it was, as I got into it, I realized this was a very profitable niche, potentially. And that's kind of where things started out for me. No, people always say student housing is a terrible idea. I hear it all the time, right? It's a terrible idea because it's, you know, the students are going to trash the house and they're going to

party and they're going to drink and it's just going to be a disaster. Don't get into student housing. I've heard numerous people tell me that over like my life. What do you say to that? Well, here's what student housing gives you. It gives you very high rents, no vacancy, and no loss of rents. Okay. I can deal with a little bear pong. You know, no problem. I can deal with some parties.

I can deal with a heavy turnover, which that's probably one of the downsides of student rental market, is you have so many people relocating year after year. So you have up to 75, maybe 80% turnover. We can talk about that a little bit more about. specific orientation of property management towards student rentals. But if you can overcome the obstacles, every business, every niche has an obstacle, of course. And maybe the student obstacle are some that people would shy away from. I would say the kinds of rents and the lack of vacancy issues makes student housing very attractive for a real estate investor. Nice. Sounds good to me.

Yeah. And to add on, you know, I was kind of being, you know, like facetious earlier or whatever you want to call that, like the idea that people are always going to complain about what people do. When I said I wanted to be a landlord, everyone said I was crazy. When I said I wanted to flip houses, they said I was stupid. You know, like, no matter what you get into, like you just said, there are challenges in everything that you do. And you know, you can listen to people and be like, oh, yeah, that's right. I'm going to go back to watching my soap operas or I can, you know, overcome those challenges. Well, and I was talking to a guy just not long ago, and he was lamenting about how hard it was to get a profit in a certain area. And I said, you know,

business is kind of like going to war. You know, you're not really fighting an enemy, but you're trying to extract profit. You're trying to keep down expenses. And you're in a battle every single day. And you should look at it as you know, you're putting your suit and your armor on and you're going out there and you're doing what you can to conquer the expenses and to increase the income. Yeah. You know, kind of thing. You got to look at it as a contact sport, I would say.

Yeah. That's cool. So we've got low vacancy. We've got high rents. You know, we're probably eight, you said somewhere around 80%. So every year we're putting in a new student or a set of students into these units. Let's talk about the turnover. Because again, I think that's the one thing that people flip out about.

What, you know, yeah, you got beer pong. You got kids drinking and partying and not taking care of stuff. I mean, you know, if you compare the damage that kids are doing to a unit versus, you know, a rental to it, to non-students. I mean, we're probably talking a considerably higher cost, right? Well, let's, yeah, when we start with property management, we can jump back into some of the advantages, but maybe property management is a good place to start because that's where you end up. So the first thing is turnover, and that is something you just got to gear up. You got a roller coaster, your schedule, just like a student schedule. And so there's going to be really high activity

when you're leasing up, and there's going to be really a lull during, say, the winter months, when things are just moving around, you know, going a normal schedule kind of thing. So you have this roller coaster schedule, and if you have a number of student rentals, you almost wonder what your staff's going to do during the lull, and they're pulling out their hair during the busy periods. And you just have to deal with that. It's kind of a waning and waxing schedule. The turnover issues, you know, I mean, for one thing,

you want to get parent co-signers, which is what we get in every one of our student rentals. So this is another great advantage. We don't lose. I can't remember when the last time we lost a dollar of rent. Because you have five students living in a house. You have five co-signers. You have five security deposits. You have five last month's rent.

Tell me what's not good about that situation. No parent wants their son or daughter to destroy their own credit. So they're going to make good on anything that happens. And that's a pretty good hammer to use as a property manager when necessary. And we, you know, some students are great. Some students are a disaster. But, you know, overall, we protect ourselves on the downside by parental co-signer agreements. There's some other issues that probably ought to be addressed.

One is group leases. So you're not leasing individual bedrooms in a house. That might be different sometimes in apartments. You're leasing to the whole group. So everybody is jointly and severally responsible for that. And so one person gets out of line, the other is completely. pull them in because their dime is on the line with everybody else's. So that's really a good thing to remember. You want me to cover a few more things in property management before we move on.

Another thing is websites are incredibly important in the student world because I don't know of a student who's not on internet, just period. And so their entire life goes through the cloud and goes through the web. You want to be the presence that they're looking up. They want to look at the properties, they want to do a virtual tour before they step inside. So pictures are really important. And any website, that's true. I'd say if your pictures aren't at the level of Airbnb, then you ought to redo your pictures. Check out Airbnb.com. Those pictures are attractive. And that's what your property should look like on the web. That's awesome. That's where students are going to look first is at your photos. And that applies to anybody, by the way. I mean, that's just not just students. I mean,

you know, when you're selling a property, it spend the money to take nice pictures, period. Yeah, I hired a photographer just to come and take pictures at my apartment complex, of one, my best unit, the one with the best tenants with the best furniture. Yeah, she went through there, took a bunch of pictures, and we've been using them for three years, now the same pictures, and that's what we have on our website. And it's such easy, I mean, it was like 150 bucks or something like that. And just, yeah, great tips. I love that, Bill.

Yeah, and marketing is really important. and understanding the student schedule, particularly as you get a few rentals under your belt, because there's a lot of increasing competition out there. A lot of large apartment complexes have been built now next to universities, which has just increased the supply tremendously and sometimes over the demand. So marketing on Craigslist, marketing for rent signs, we start, this might surprise you, but we start in January for the next September. Our school year starts the end of September.

In January, a student gets a letter saying, do you want to re-rent this year or not? You need to tell us by February 1st. It used to be April 1st. Then it was March 1st. Now it's February 1st in Eugene because of the supply of rentals. So we're knocking on your door real early to say, would you like to release with us? If not, we're going February 1st to put this on our website and begin to marketing to another group of students who won't move in until the next. September likely. Wow. Yeah.

Sounds rough. I mean, really, finding tenants has got to be difficult when you've got such an organization. Yeah, I mean. I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. That's awesome. That's great. You either, the thing about student rentals is you either do or you don't, particularly if a property can't

really be rented to a family. Now, some can go either way, but some rentals are really only campus oriented. So you either have a group of students in there or you have an empty. Yeah. Yeah. That year. So what about summertime? I mean, do they sign a 12-month lease then or does it sit vacant all summer? That's somewhat a campus to campus issues. So when I started out, I started at the University

of Oregon. Go ducks. And he's rocking the duck shirt. Well, not only that, I'm rocking the duck, my $200 eBay duck ring. Now I actually got, check this one out. It's the Rose Bowl ring from our last, well, let's see, it was Florida State. Yes, it even says the score here on the side. How does one get a Rose Bowl ring? Oh, because you're the campus minister. No, no, no, no, no. One goes on eBay and looks at one of these Chinese companies and spends $15.

Rose Bowl ring. So, you know, I'm going to be rocking. I'm sorry for your people who aren't watching YouTube right now, but I'm really rocking the That is some nice bling. I like that. But anyway, so I started at University of Oregon. I also have a few rentals up in Oregon State. Now, those two campuses are interestingly different because Corvallis, Oregon State, is a very much smaller area, or population-wise, about 50,000 where Oregon, University of Oregon, has Eugene surrounding it, which is about 250,000. So people in Eugene tend to stay during the summer, much more so than Corvallis. So I was a little reluctant, actually, at first to go to Corvallis because of the very

factor you mentioned, Joss, what are you going to do in the summer? You know, you're going to have a lot of vacancies in the summer. And I think you just have to kind of deal with that. As it turns out, Oregon State is booming, and they're growing 6% a year. Oregon's basically flat. And so actually, there's no issue. People can get your leases, no problem right now. But that, you know, that's kind of a campus by campus thing.

And somebody who's deciding that they want to, you know, do some campus rental properties, they need to look at their specific campus and think of some criteria about why or why not this might make a good fit for starting campus rental. Yeah. Hey, what about lawn care? Like, who takes care of that? Do you take care of that or how does that work? Yeah. So I've seen some landlords thinking, yeah, we'll figure the students will do that or we'll supply.

a lawnmore, well, that just won't cut it. Truly. Yeah, thank you very much. You know, that is one amenity, quote, unquote, that you need to give a student if you're going to enjoy what your property looks like. They're just not coming to school to cut

grass. They're not going to do it. So have some kind of lawn care service that does that for you. And do they have lawn care services that cut around kegs and chairs and beer cans? You'd be surprised. And while they're there, they're going to pick up plastic cups, and they're going to pick up other things for you as well. Nice. And then they're going to possibly charge back the tenants for their extra time that it took them to clean up.

Possibly. It sounds like possibly a nice extra bit of money that you can make doing such things. Yeah, that's true. You're really trying to just make, oh, here's another, just a slide. Pets. You know, Susie grew up with Barnaby, her wonderful. dog and, you know, Phil grew up with Simon, his cat. What are you going to do about that? For many years, we had a no pet policy, which we totally switched directions on that. And part of it is

is because there's just so much more supply in our area. So we're very pet friendly. Now, on the other side of that, we're charging a security deposit, pet deposit for that. And also we're charging pet rent, which is $25 to $45 a month. And that's going to at least. And that's going to at least, least, you know, it's going to even itself out in terms of pet damage, or maybe it even make a little money. But what it does do, it increases your potential for your residents, your tenant base. That's good. That's why we're very pet-friendly at this point.

Right on. Let's talk about roommates. I'm assuming, you know, you've got all the parents go-signing, you got all that. But I'm guessing that you also end up dealing with some of this student drama where, you know, so-and-so stop paying and everybody wants to suck you into the whole mess. How do you typically deal with those situations? Well, again, if you think of it in a mindset of a business, what are your policies about that? And essentially, your policies, we don't get sucked into the drama. At least we try not to as much as possible. Once in while, we have to step in because it's

to our financial advantage to step in. But generally, it's you guys rented as a group, you guys worked it out as a group. We also have a house manager in our houses, not in apartments, but say in a five-bedroom house. And that person interacts with our office. So when somebody calls about a maintenance thing or goes online and lets us know about a maintenance thing or some other issue, we want to deal with a house manager. So we're not dealing with five different individuals and trying to call somebody back and not sure who we're supposed to deal with. So somebody usually rises to the surface and says, I'll take that responsibility on. I'll be the house manager.

Right on. That's a good idea. Cool. Yeah, I love that. What about, do you have a policy, you know, you've got a house and somebody wants to turn it into a fraternity house or sorority house? I mean, is that even feasible? Is that, as that happened, you know, talk about it?

Well, people do rent fraternities and sororities out, but here's how I see it. I've actually bought a fraternity house before. and I want to get into this because student rental value is all about the bedroom. And so this fraternity house, somebody had turned into 11 apartments, but done a very inefficient job. There was probably 20 bedrooms there. And so what I did, I tore the entire thing apart. And I made 31 bedrooms out of what was 20 before.

Now, that took a lot of money. But when you add up the cost of the funds versus the funds. versus the value of the increased rent, it was dramatically different. And that's what I've tried to do time and time again. I've made bedrooms out of in garages, in carports. We've done it. I took a duplex one time that had one bedroom on both sides. I took the best living room on one side, the best kitchen on the other,

and it ended up being a five-bedroom too bad campus rental rather than you'd think normally you'd keep a duplex a duplex. But not in this situation. Again, it's a niche market. And the more bedrooms, the better. Because every bedroom is worth $450, $550, $6.50. You don't really think of campus houses as houses, per se. You think of them as small apartment complex.

And each bedroom is an apartment. You rent it as a group. But if you can add another apartment unit to your little apartment complex, wouldn't that be a financially advantageous thing to do? Sounds good. Sure it would. So what about permitting? I mean, is, you know, does that create challenges trying to get permits to be able to do that?

Or do the, you know, does the city kind of bend a little bit because they know that this is a student housing type situation? Well, boy, every community is different. Some of them have been kind of, some neighborhoods have been kind of burned because, you know, students have moved into their neighborhood. And so they're pretty touchy about it. I think permitting is just like any kind of permitting. you just kind of go through the steps of the city. But I would say there is one thing you should be aware of or a potential real estate student housing investor should be aware of.

And that is city ordinances related to unrelated adults living together. So in some communities that are extremely restrictive and say you can't have over three unrelated adults living together. That is a killer for campus properties. Because you can imagine you're restricting whatever size, property, you have to three adults living there. That's, I would stay away from that market. Many, uh, restricted to five unrelated adults. And so that's kind of your top end. In our city, we even have something that that is fortunately, it goes beyond that. We have something that allows

nine unrelated adults living together. It's called congregate living. Is that per apartment? It's per house. It's in a house. Yeah, in a house. You can have five. We have a number of nine bedroom houses. And again, they're like many apartment buildings. And they have, well, let me give an example. I had a property that was built in 1884. It's the oldest building of its kind that still exists in Eugene. It was a Abram cider and fruit dryer. Folks went there and they pressed apples and made cider in 1884. Matter of fact, the name is still on the side of the building that says Abrams, cider, and fruit dryer factory. That's cool. The building has a lot of only been painted one time in its entire 131 year life. Wow. That's a testimony to lead-based paint,

by the way. Anyway, I had made the bottom part of that and it basically class A office space at one point, and three different software companies had rented it. In the downturn of the market in the late 2000s, there was a lot of unrented office space in Eugene. So I decided to turn it into campus rental since it was near the campus. And I was able to put a bunch of money into it, but ended up with nine bedrooms and three baths, which generates a tremendous amount. I think they're probably rented for about 450 a bedroom, something like that. You can just add it together. That's a tremendous amount of rental income. Wow. Wow. And the fraternity house, I'm just curious, and I don't know if you're willing to share or, you know, if you even recall, but, you know,

would you mind sharing how much you paid for what you spent on renovation and, and, yeah, Well, that cash is with the good old days. We're talking mid-90s there. And it was a disaster. It was not just a fraternity house that had a 48-unit quad complex behind it. And I paid, oh, about $900,000, I think. I put over time, I probably put at least that much money into it, at least that much, maybe more. And I was able to get actually a city loan initially for it that held me.

As a matter of fact, I bought the money. property. And this is, this is kind of my nature, but I bought the property and I said, wow, that was a good purchase, I think. But what am I going to do? Because this place is a disaster. And I was fortunate to, you know, just kind of move one step at a time, find the money to fix it up and go from there. So, so you rent, I mean, those are, you're running to the kids in the frat house at somewhere in that $450 to $750 per month. It's an apartment, it's an apartment building now. It's not really a frat house, but it was originally a frat house, yes. Okay.

Oh, right. Cool. Yeah. Now, here's another situation. Sometimes you could take a commercial building. I took a dental office and created four units out of that, two, four bedrooms, one two bedroom and one one bedroom. And you think of a dental office as being having very small rooms, which it does. So that was the downside, these teeny bedrooms with no closets.

But what you can do in a situation like that? is by a bunk bed apparatus that has a bunk on the top and a desk on the bottom. And all of a sudden you get a lot more floor space and a kind of a normal size bedroom, even though you started out with these teeny rooms. Yeah. That's another. That's a cool idea. Yeah.

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slash dominion. Again, that's biggerpockets.com slash dominion. Well, cool. Well, before we, I mean, Obviously, we'll still talk a little about student rentals, but I want to know a little bit about your business as well on how you actually run the business now. So, first of all, how big is your operation? How many units do you have and kind of what are you doing overall? Well, going back to the niche concept, you know, really the financial underpinnings of our company started with student rental properties. And that allowed us to expand into another niche. And interestingly enough, in 205 and 206, I ran a internship for 16 college students over two summers. and these college students were business majors from University of Oregon and Oregon State. My son, Andrew, was going to Oregon at the time and helped me pull that whole thing together.

So for three months over two different summer, these students learned everything about our company property management. They negotiated with sellers. We bought properties together. We fixed properties up. They just learned a ton because they wanted to learn how to become real estate investors. And so of those 16, five of those became partners of mine in 207. If you remember 207, kind of the height of the market. Yeah.

So it was just starting to tip over and go down. And what we ended up doing is, and I think you've talked to Andrew and Philip about this, we flipped nearly 200 houses in Portland, Salem, and Eugene with all these partners. And we were doing short sales and foreclosures, one after another after another. So that was the next niche we got into. We became experts at short sales and foreclosures. We became really, really good at it. But it got very tiresome.

As a matter of fact, I just got tired of the whole thing. The flipping operation is very complex because you not only have to be good at buying, you have to be good at selling. And I wanted to go back to the buying whole model, which the company originated with. And so that's when we began to look around for someplace else. And we kind of fell into the Kansas City market. A friend of mine had wanted me to go out and buy an apartment complex there together. I went out and I said, yeah, I'd like to do that.

And that ended up, I invited all my young partners to consider going to the Midwest with me. We looked at a number of different markets, and all of them said, no, we like the Northwest better. We think we'll stay here. The only one who relocated was my son Andrew. And so in January of 2011, he went to Kansas City. And that's kind of the, it was like Normandy Beach, you know, just starting from scratch and moving head. So now we've have basically as many properties in Kansas City as we have in Eugene, which is quite a number. Another niche market that we got into was I had a partner who came back from

Ecuador, who he lived there for three years in Merritt-Equodorian woman. And he said, Bill, I'd like to get back into real estate. And we had had one project in Eugene. We'd done way back in the early 90s. And so we decided to focus on the Dallas market. We bought multifamily properties down there. and he's become an expert. I don't know if I'm an expert in this niche market, but he's become quite the expert in multifamily in Dallas. So I've started at my age, somewhat my experience. I've started riding the wave of younger investors.

As a matter of fact, I was just counting up the other day. I have one sole proprietorship. That's the Eugene Rentals I own. But I have seven active real estate partnerships with other people who are involved in distinct niches around the country. That's really a lot of fun. I'm kind of an opportunity junkie, really, is what it blows. That's outstanding.

It's so cool. And, you know, we chat about this a lot. Had you not partnered with those folks, you know, you miss out on the opportunity. And so a piece, you know, however small it is, of a bigger opportunity that somebody else is doing is better than no piece of anything. And I know Brandon loves, loves, loves talking about partnerships and using those to build your business. And I love to see that that's what you. you're doing as well. It's outstanding. You know, that was the insight. I came. I was back in 204, and this was, I'd been in the business about 15 years at this point. I went on vacation, and I was

leading a class. I was teaching class on good to great by Jim Collins. And to prep for it, I read Bill to Last. And in Bill to Last, he evaluates companies that are 50 years or older and just companies that have stood the test of time. And he says, to me, what he's said was you had to think about moving out of the mindset of this little business you got. I got campus rentals. I'm doing all right into a different mindset. And this is the mindset. What does it take to build an enduringly great company? What a great phrase. And that turned my business mindset around because I didn't have an enduringly great company at that point. But what would it take to move where I was at that point to moving in that direction? You're exactly right, Josh. It would take

partners who had a lot other gifts and energy and perspective and background than I had to make that kind of thing happen. Yeah, yeah, that's great. Well, so how big is your operation today? I mean, how many people work for you? And I don't know, again, if you're willing to share, but how many properties do you? Well, we've got about, oh, I think about 250 houses and apartment units. And Eugene, we have going on 230 houses in Kansas City. in about 130 apartment units. By the way, we're just on the precipice of buying 97. That's why I can add nearly 100 more to what we have today.

97 units or houses? 97 houses in this purchase. Are you serious? It's crazy. It's crazy. We'll have to come on one time and maybe talk about that. Or maybe Andrew, who is your blogger, contributed blogger, could describe that purchase. That would be outstanding.

There's a lot of lessons. We've learned a lot of lessons just in that purchase. When do you close on that? Within the month. Wow. Yeah, by the end of the month. As a matter of fact, I hope in the middle of the month, September. Very cool.

Yeah, thank you. And then in Kansas and Dallas, we own, I think, 77 units in two different apartment complexes. Wow. So a little operation, you're going to go. Yeah. It's pretty diverse. We probably have, oh, let's see, we have about 15. We probably have 30 folks who work for us, something like that, and the whole thing.

No kidding. And I'll tell you, building a, if you want to build an enduringly great company, you've got to build a great team. And I feel like that through fits and starts, and truly that's what it is, because nobody is an expert at building a team. But I feel like we've come to that point where we have got a great team in Eugene. I mean, we've got people who do so well at property management. And they know the market. I'm not giving any direction. They kind of tell me what they're doing at this point. and that's just great. Kansas City, they're a little younger at building their team. They have about the same numbers we do, and through fits and starts,

they've put together what I think is really a quality team as well. My partner in Dallas has got a good team too. So it's, you know, becoming a team leader is kind of something new for people as they begin to become, you know, as they pull on employees and contractors and others. But essentially, you need to become a good manager and figure out what that's about. Is that, I mean, we've been going through the, the same thing. Today, our team at Bigger Pockets is considerably bigger than it was two years ago, one year ago. And I'm experiencing the same thing. My job is to learn how to be a good team leader

and guide these amazing people who work for me and are passionate and make sure they maintain that passion and keep them excited. Is that pretty much what you do today at your job, your role in the company is just kind of that team leader and visionary? Yeah, I mean, you know, I think of one of the big changes for me has gone from kind of a sole proprietor mindset to this partnership team mindset. And that was a big transition fairly recently. And we're talking three years ago. I went from making pretty much the decisions of the company into having an executive team. That includes Andrew, my son, Philip, my son.

And then our operations manager out of Eugene is Amanda. and so I can't make decisions anymore just on my own, which is freeing and frustrating at the same time. But they truly are partners. They have a say. And the folks who work with them have a say in their areas of responsibility as well. They truly have a say. And giving over ownership, so to speak, of whatever it is that you own is a privilege and a responsibility to somebody. and you're thankful to see that they often rise to the occasion.

Yeah, yeah. Very, very cool. Very cool. Well, before we get out of here, we want to go over to the Fire Round section of the show, which we have a lot more kind of student rental questions in there as well. So, or at least investing that will involve that. So let's do that now. Here's the Fire Round.

It's time for the Fire Round. All right, the Fire Round, these questions come direct out of the Bigger Pockets Forum. So these are real questions that people are asking on bigger pockets. Number one, are there any special financing rules for student housing? You know, any kind of real estate investment in my mind that's buy and hold really includes short-term financing and long-term finance. When I think it's short-term, you got options here. Fortunately, for me, the way I started was mom and dad financing. And that's between zero and six percent interest.

Okay, for me, oftentimes it was zero percent. And that's the only way a poor campus pastor who had no credit to speak of, no real income could get started was my dad and mom, they loaned me money. And they kind of believed in me. And that mom and dad prices, which was awesome. Not only that, my dad signed mortgages for me because nobody would loan me any money. And it wasn't until a few years ago that he actually got off of all the mortgages he had signed for me. So if you have a mom and dad or uncle or whatever that could do that for you is open to that because they trust you and you're making good decisions, then that's a good place to start. Then there's ma and pa money.

These are people associates, people that you meet, people that you network that you can show, hey, I've got something here that makes sense financially. The numbers add up and you show them the photos, you show them the numbers. Maybe you have a brag book by this time. We have a website that's kind of a brag book for us. people can go and get information about us. And I peg that at 9%. Most of the money we borrow is at 9%. We're no points.

We're not paying points on it. But that's not hard money. When you get to hard money, you're talking more like 11 plus percent and points. So if you have to go there and the numbers allow you to go there, then hard money is going to work for you. Finally, another short-term way to approach it is to get an equity partner. So you're splitting ownership,

but they're bringing the money into it if you don't. You have to transition to that, though, to long-term financing if you're being buy-and-hold. And that's the challenge of buy-and-hold. How do you transition to long-term financing? You've done some kind of value-add. And value-ad is critical when you're looking at a piece of property. How am I going to add value to this? Oftentimes rehab is how people add value.

But in the campus rental market, adding bedrooms is a value add. Changing the nature of a building can be a value add. So how do you do that? Well, how do you kick into long-term financing? And again, I think that I could go through a number of different strategies if you want me to, but you've had a lot of that on bigger pockets. But you want to eventually lower your cost of funds, even from mom-paw 9% money to lower interest money, like in the 5% range.

So would I be correct in saying that your strategy has largely been buy the properties with short-term money and then refinance it into longer term money after a value it. Absolutely. And our goal is to refinance all the money. This is not always achievable. But in Kansas City, we're really buying quite a lot right now. We want to buy something that when we're all sudden done with it and the property season, which local banks usually takes a year to season the property, you've rehabbed,

rented and seasoned the property. Then we bundle them together. So we're usually refinancing like 10 properties at a time. and we're trying to get all our money out, all our private lender money out, because we're usually buying 100% of the value of the property, not the value of the property, 100% of what it's costing us. The value of the property, hopefully, is at least 25% more of that, because we're buying really good deals.

You know, a lot of foreclosure properties and properties that are bank-owned properties, REO properties, etc. So we're trying to get a really good deal. And really, that's where real estate starts. It starts with a great deal. if you have a great deal, you can find the money. You can find the means. Find the great deal and the money will follow. that is our new quote card for this podcast. That's awesome. I use a phrase a lot around here on BP called Burr, which is like, you know, BRRRRR, I'm cold. Like, Burr is this idea of you buy it, you rehab it,

you rent, you rent, and then you refinance it. So it's the buy rehab, rent, refinance, repeat. And I went to a bigger pockets meetup up in like just a group of bigger pockets members got together at the Ram Brewery up in Lakewood, Washington. Anyway, and there at the thing, like five different people. They're all said, yeah, I'm working on the Burr strategy right now. I'm working on this thing. If you do it right, it can be an awesome way to get a lot of properties without putting a lot of money into it. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, that's the L of ideal, right? I-D-E-A-L leverage. You've got to be careful with leverage because it can cut against you just like it can cut for you. But if you can, that's why an ordinary person can become very well off in real estate

because they're leveraging other people's money and they're using a very little of their own money and hopefully if they value add right, they rehab right, they actually pull out all of their funds. Yeah, very cool. That's the goal. That's the goal.

And actually kind of answers one of the other questions of the fire round was just, is no money down real estate actually a thing? Like is that a possibility or is it just a scam? And you kind of answer that, right? You can technically do it. Starts with a good deal. Starts with a great deal.

Yeah. All right. Well, I've got my, My fire round question, since our fire round is running a little bit less fiery, usually it's quick question, quick answers. I like that. No, I like, I love. I would rather have the in-depth. Yeah. So our last question for the fire round is, do you have any unique ways to find properties? You know, the very best, and this goes back in history, the very best marketing thing I ever did was a three-line ad. And again, it was targeted to a niche geographical area. I put it in the classifieds, which I don't even know if they exist anymore, but in the campus area of town. And the ad said, save the commission and bold at the top.

I'm looking, let's see it said, wanted a home or investment property in the campus area, bill, and then my phone number. Three-line ad. The first property I bought from that could help me afford to do that ad for the end of time kind of thing. So, I mean, it's simple. It's maybe overlooked, you know, but it's a niche spot. Just target this. I mean, I've had high school students go into areas of town that were circled the campus that were not right against the campus. And by the way, this is a strategy that I used quite a bit with campus rentals that I didn't talk about was not buying.

So you've got A, B, C, D, E, F. A is like, you know, in walking distance of campus. B is like a half a mile walking by. distance. C is maybe a mile to two miles, say biking driving distance. D is driving distance, and F would be in another area of town, which I've even tried and once in a while gotten away with renting to students in a whole different area of town. But those make a difference in terms of how much you can charge for rent, obviously, and how good your occupancy is going to be. But what I've tended to do is not buying the A areas because they're so expensive, but look at it.

for the C and B areas that are a little farther away from campus and to focus on those where you have homeowners who aren't thinking about campus rentals, but their house would make a perfect campus rental. It's a little farther away. But if you made it attractive to students by thinking with them in mind as you rehabbed it or whatever, that that would make a great student rental. And so you've saved by not spending so much in the purchase price, but you still get the advantage of having higher rents than you would normally get.

Awesome. That's great. I do have one more question. I'm going to throw into the fire around here because it's my question. How are you attracting tenants then to those properties and not just normal people? I mean, do you write this is student housing or? Oh, no, no, no, no. You can't write family friendly. You can't do anything like that. Those are all big no-no.

So when people see the- Bill, Bill, really quickly, can you explain that for those people who are listening who don't understand? Why not? So, I mean, the discriminatory potential of putting any words like this, adult friendly or family friendly or student only, I mean, that is just not going to fly. Fair housing laws. Fair housing laws is going to have somebody knocking on your door about, you need to here apply to this. And it might not be a pleasant experience, as a matter of fact. So you need to be careful about that. And how we discriminate is the price of the rent.

We'll rent to anybody who will pay this price, but only students are likely going to pay that kind of price for that single family residents. You're not going to get a family to do it. So it's self-selective. Okay. You know, it's relatively close to campus. It's got more bedrooms than most houses would have.

It's got small living areas because what you've done, you've taken the dining room and made a bedroom out of it, right? You've taken the family room and split it in half and made a bedroom and a bathroom, two bedrooms and a bathroom out of it. So you've done everything you can to maximize the bedrooms and maybe added a bathroom while you're at it. And that's your thing. It's all about the bedroom.

Well, most regular families, it's all about the bathroom, the living room, and the kitchen. For you, those are secondary issues. When a student looks at a house, they're not looking at the manicured lawn. They're not looking at the two-car garage. They're not looking at the great school down the block. they're looking at where am I going to live? What's the home within the home for me? And that's my bedroom and maybe secondarily my bathroom.

You know, where is that going to be from my house? That's what they're thinking. And that's as a student rental investor, that's how you've got to think too. Yeah. Right on. Right on. Yeah. All right.

Very, very cool. This is like, I mean, this whole episode has been. That was a great show. Yeah, I've learned a ton of stuff. So this is great. I really want to know. Obviously, I say this every time. But I really want to like look more into it.

Because I'm like a mile away from my college. like our college here. I'm like about a mile. And we have a fair amount of students, probably 10% or 20% of our people are students. And they're always our best tenants. Like I love renting to students. I really want to make more of an emphasis on that now and try to, especially I'm kind of thinking these are two-guather apartments. I know. I know. We learned something new. We talked to somebody new and oh my God, I want to do it. Oh my God. I'm doing rental homes. Oh, my God. I'm doing. I'm doing. I'm doing. I'm doing. I'm doing. I'm doing. I'm doing. I'm doing. I'm doing. I'm in the richest. Brandon, Brandon, the riches. I know. All I got to do is tell my wife, though, hey, hey, you should, you know, let's emphasize the student rental part and then I don't have to do anything more. That's her business. Along with the 18 other businesses. I'll take the other ones. A couple of friends of mine who have done a couple of friends of mine who have done the same thing. A guy named Mark, we bought a couple of houses together and then we split off. But he is a contractor, a total craftsman, incredible finished carpenter. And what he did is he bought in the C-minus areas around, in terms of proximity to campus, kind of outside. But he charied out his houses. When he markets, he doesn't put the address in. He just puts the pictures in. Then they call and he says, oh, meet me at such and such.

They drive a little farther than they're used to. But when they get there and open the front door, they said, oh, my gosh, I have got to live here. I don't care how far it is from campus. And so he's built up. I think he's got seven houses right now that he's done that. Another friend of mine, Chris, who went to, he was an intern with us back in 205. he saw what we were doing. He relocated back to his hometown in Poughkeepsie, New York, where Maris College is.

And he said, I'm going to do the same thing. He's now got seven or eight campus houses. That's all he does in life is he just attends to his houses. And he travels the world. So it's pretty cool what Chris has done. And, you know, every situation is different. But again, you've got to, you kind of got to get good at it. You've got to have your niche, maybe even within the niche.

So, yeah, I love it. I love it. All right, cool. Let's move over to the world famous. Famous for. All right, these are the questions we ask every guest, and I know we asked your kids it, and so we're going to ask you it now. What is your favorite real estate book? Well, I was thinking about this, guys.

And if you give me a little room here for a departure, because I'm going to say something that probably everybody else has said on Bicker Pockets at one time or another. Let me talk just a little bit about how I think about reading. Again, I'll mention some books if you're a lot. okay with this. I think about what's classic, what stands a test of time, what's an awesome book that I want to reread maybe on a yearly basis. So I think of seven habits of highly effective people, I think I'm going to read a book by Stephen Covey every year. The Eight Habits is a great

book. First Things First is a great book. So every year I'm going to read a book by Stephen Covey. I don't care what it is. Then I think of, well, what are the classics in real estate? year I'm going to read the millionaire real estate investor by Gary Keller and you head on Jay. Yeah, Pappasan. Yeah, Pappasant. I think that's a modern classic as a real

estate book. Every year I'm going to read it. So, you know, what Francis Bacon said was that some books should be tasted, some devoured, and some well, only a few, he said, should be chewed and digested thoroughly. And I'm taking his advice that I can read

Like I love, who is it, Nisum's Talib? Yeah, Talib's books like The Black Swan, Tipping Point, what else has he written? Outliers. I love those books, but those books, you get the idea once and you kind of got it. It's probably not a book I would come back to every year. Great book, but not the classic kind of book I want to read year in and year out. A second criteria I often that orientes me towards books is, are they really? researched or are they anecdotal? There's a lot of anecdotal. You know, this is what I did. It turned

out great. You know, you should do it too. And even now, you've heard some of my own experience, which is somewhat hard to translate. But what are the books that are genuinely researched? Jim Collins puts 20,000 hours into Bill to Last, Good to Great, Great by Choice. Each book has had a graduate team of people behind that book researching that. So when he says, this is how it works, like he talks about, oh gosh, there's so many, I won't go through the principles. You know, this is fact. This is anecdotal. This isn't my experience.

This is fact. So I look for books that are research books. And I would put Gary Keller's book in that category too because it's really a research book is what it is. And finally, what I would say is read books, the great books you want to read in a group setting to get feedback on. Our executive team that I mentioned, Amanda, Andrew, and Phil. Philip and I, we read books together. One we read relatively recently is probably the greatest

title of any book ever written. What Got You Here Won't Get You There by Marshall Goldsmith. What a great book if you want to be hit in the face by the business version of the Sermon on the Mount. He goes to 20 personal character qualities that you're not doing very good. Andrew calls it, why you screw up so badly. I think something like that, or why you're screwing up so badly. But it's a very, it's a very challenging book to talk about in a group context because you know me, I know you, and here's some of the things I really want to work on. He's written a recent book, and I haven't read this yet, called Triggers, Creating Behavior That Last, Becoming the Person That You Want to Be. And that, I can't wait to read that book

and read it in a group context to get some feedback. Right on. That's awesome. Well, you answered my next question. which is favorite business book. Why don't we jump to hobbies? What do you do for fun? Well, being in Oregon, it's hard not to be outdoors. Hiking is something my wife and I like to do.

Any kind of outdoor activity is fun to do. I'd say, and maybe to my downfall, I'm a little bit of an opportunity junkie, as I mentioned before. So I love business. And to me, business is kind of a hobby now. Once it was a hobby and I was making a mess of it, now it's become a hobby in a different sort of way that I just enjoy it so much. I want to be around these folks that are partners of mine now and younger, visit with them,

hang out with them, you know, learn together, grow together. And that's kind of one of my hobbies as well, it's just the opportunities that present themselves. Just to give one, I can't stand this is such a great example. And Jim Collins, Bill to Last, I think it's built to last. He gives the example of how Marriott Hotel started. So Marriott in the 20s, it was John Willard Marriott started. He had the first ANW franchise. And instead of having this gigantic strategy about how he was going to build the Marriott Hotel chain,

he had ANW Root Beer stands. And as it turned out, the one next to the airport was doing better than all the rest of them. The reason he found out from the manager was because he was bringing in food. to give to airline passengers because there was no catering at that time on airlines flying across country or across the Europe or whatever. And so that's where Marriott started was providing catering on airlines. And then he realized that when the travelers got to their destination, there was no good hotels. So he said, well, why don't we start building hotels? Here was a guy who who went where the opportunities afforded themselves.

He just followed the opportunity. And I really feel like that's a great model. Follow the opportunity. And then get really, really good at that niche. Yeah, that's awesome. Love it. Cool.

All right, my final question of the day. Bill, what do you believe sets apart successful real estate investors from those who give up, they fail, or they never get started?

Well, I think, you know, if anything, you have to have a mindset. And the mindset is, somewhat that I am and this may be a little strong but I am kind of going to war

this is not this is really a challenging thing that is to extract value to gain profit to lower expenses this is this is not something that there's a book that can just tell you how to do this this is something that takes education training and then it takes action

and certainly it's action that separates people from wannabes to really doing it, is taking action. And sometimes you're stepping into the unknown. As a matter of fact, a lot of times you're stepping into the unknown. You want to do it carefully. You want to do it with, you know, some people, you know, in a network helping you along. You want to have a backup and etc. But you want to take action. If you don't just say, I'm going to make an offer on this. A matter of fact, I'm going to make a lot of offers out here. If you don't start doing that, you're just not going to buy a property. And then, so what's the action I'm going to take? Execution. Where am I going to go today? What am I going to do to take the next step? Right on.

I love it. Very cool. That's great. All right, Bill, where can people find out more about you? Well, you can go to our website, stewardship properties.com. We also have a partner, I have a website called stewardship capital. We buy notes, and that describes that business a little bit. our company is called stewardship properties because it kind of reminds me that we're all just

passing through this life, right? And while we're here, how do we think of ourselves, not so much as owners, but as managers of what we've been entrusted. So it's a reminder for me every time I look at that name, but that's who we are, stewardship properties.com. Fantastic. Thank you so much for being on the show. It's odd for me to be, you know, on a podcast. I've got the college pastor. I've got the student, the kid pastor, junior pastor, my co-host over here.

You are surrounded, John. I got to watch my mouth. Oh my gosh. Hey, listen, it was a pleasure. Thank you so much for joining us. We really appreciate it. Absolutely. Thank you very much for having me.

Thanks, Bill. Yeah, thank you. Bye-bye. All right, guys, that was Bill Serious here on the Bigger Pockets podcast. Show 140. That's BiggerPockets.com. slash show 140 and you can actually check out the show notes at bigger pockets.com

slash show 140. You know, we didn't do this at the front of the show. So I wanted to just take an opportunity to remind you guys, please, please leave us ratings and reviews on SoundCloud and Stitcher and iTunes. iTunes, YouTube, if you're listening or checking this out on YouTube. But iTunes is exceptionally helpful. And today we've got a really cool review from. I less than three this podcast. I love. Oh, I heart this podcast. I get it.

And, oh, you know what? It was, I went to a guru seven seminar, didn't want to pay 30,000 bucks, found BP. I never look back from my real estate investing education. Listen to this show if you're serious about your R.E.I. Love it. Love it. Love it. Love it. I's going to make fun of you for a second. I less than three. You know what? You're not hip on the on the teen language of the, I, lesson three, heart. That's probably a good thing, Brandon. Well, you don't talk to an 18-year-old girl or 16-year-old girl? Come on. I'm sorry. It's your job.

That's why I pay you. Wait a second. All right. All right. Anyway, so, yeah, obviously, you know, go leave us a rating review and make sure you use the lesson and the number three. So Josh gets confused. With that, Josh, take us out.

Take us out. All right, guys. Well, thanks for listening. we really appreciate it. Please be sure to check us out at biggerpockets.com. If you don't have an account, get on there, make one today. It's free, and there's a whole lot of people on there. We're almost 350,000.

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But with that, we'll see you next week on show. 141 of the Bigger Pockets podcast. I'm 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 hype, 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. Do you ever notice how every passive investment somehow turns into a very active lifestyle, active spreadsheets, active phone calls, active stress?

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