BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast - 178: From House Hacker to House Flipper & Landlord with Charlie Kao

Episode Date: June 9, 2016

Trying to build a real estate portfolio when you are brand new and work a full-time job can be tough. That’s why today we are excited to bring you an interview with an investor (and moonlighting stand-up comedian) with a remarkable story of using various “house hacks” to jump into the game. Charlie Kao, who hails from the Detroit, Michigan market, covers his entire investing journey, from condo investing to house flipping to landlording and more. And don’t miss Charlie’s powerful — and incredibly unique — strategy for finding deals through networking! Today’s show is sure to bring new strategies to your business, and the humor will leave you smiling all day! In This Episode We Cover: Where Charlie comes from How he learned real estate from his dad Thoughts on starting off with $5-40k houses A discussion about Detroit The details of his first deal How he realized how to live and flip via working at the bank What exactly an underwriter is Charlie’s first true flip in Grand Rapids Thoughts on valuing your time when it comes to flipping Tips for living in your flip How he started out as a househacker How he lived in the house for two years How it might be difficult to live and flip with kids Tips for getting your spouse on board How to flip while having a full time w-2 job How many flips Charlie has done so far How he finds properties and the price range he looks for The mailman and the foundation specialist as sources of leads How he manages to get stated income loans Some of the worst deals he’s had What would have he done differently if he started all over again And SO much more! Links from the Show BP Podcast 170: The Journey From Flipping Houses to Owning 1,470 Units with Andrew Cushman BiggerPockets Events The Secret to Unlocking Bank Financing Books Mentioned in this Show Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki The 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferris Maximum Achievement by Brian Tracy The Psychology of Selling by Brian Tracy Tweetable Topics: “The more tools you have in your toolbox, the more projects you can take on.” (Tweet This!) “This is going to be the last time I make this mistake because I’m going to learn from it.” (Tweet This!) “It doesn’t matter how many things you’ve done; there are always things that could happen.” (Tweet This!) Connect with Charlie Charlie’s BiggerPockets Profile Charlie’s Company Profile Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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fund's full portfolio, check out historical returns, and start investing in just minutes. Carefully consider the investment objectives, risks, charges, and expenses of the Fundrise flagship fund before investing. This and other information can be found in the fund's prospectus at fundrise.com slash flagship. This is a paid advertisement. This is the Bigger Pockets podcast. Show 178. I always tell my clients that, you know, this is going to be the last time I do not know the ants. And I kind of like getting it to my approach towards real estate. This is going to be the last time I make the mistake because I'm going to learn from it. 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. Horskin, host to the Bigger Pockets podcast here with my co-host, Mr. Brandon Turner. What's going on, Brandon? Not much, Josh Dorkin. How are you doing? I'm doing all right, man. Just, you know, necks a little floppy here. For those who are not watching the YouTube version of this, if you're listening to it on your phone or something, you're missing out on some pretty good video right now. Me and Josh actually both have bobblehead dolls of ourselves.

We do. Yes, yes, one of our guests from show 170. Andrew Cushman. Andrew Cushman provided those as a gift for being a guest. That was really cool of Andrew. Yeah, that was awesome. Yeah, man, very, very nice surprise. But yeah, man, everything's good. Very excited. Today, we've got a very interesting show.

Lots of cool info. Lots of making fun of you. It's pretty good. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know what happened here. I think, well, so our guest today is actually a part-time stand-up comedian who does in the evenings and weekends, and he decided to go after Josh today for his Detroit comments in the past. Yeah, so it's literally like a character assassination for 45 minutes.

There's some good stuff. It's all good. It's all good. It's all good. Lots of cool stuff in there. But anyway, before we get into the show, we're almost there, huh? By the time this show airs, I think we might have the final turner, the next turn. Yes.

By the time this is live, I should have a little baby girl turn. or running around. So next week. I don't think she'll be running if she is. There's something wrong. Oh, my daughter will come out running. Come on. She's going to be a turner.

She'll be talking, running. Six foot nine. It's going to be amazing. Yes. Bearded face, everything. Oh, man. Oh, man. Anyway, yeah, so lots of cool stuff going on.

Lots, lots happening here at Bigger Pockets H.Q. We just brought on yet another hire our head of product, Vignash. And that's very exciting. And we've got a lot of cool stuff planned ahead for everybody. All of our site visitors, we're working on some projects that I know we are all very, very excited to bring to you that I think is going to change a lot of people's businesses. So stay tuned as we announce that. But let's actually talk about a cool little update we've got in today's quick tip.

All right. Today's quick tip. Thanks. You want me to take it? I'll take it. Okay, you take it. Yeah, I didn't really get to talk a lot during the show. Yeah, well, so today's quick tip, guys, we just made some updates to the BiggerPockets, local networking part of the site, the events part of Bigger Pockets.

And you can find that at BiggerPockets.com slash events. Now when you go to the page, you can see local events that are coming up in your area. You can look for events in other areas by zip code, just a more cohesive, comprehensive event system. So if you're looking for... And a pretty map. Yeah, it's a pretty map. So if you're looking for networking events, go there, biggerpockets.com events. If you don't have a local event in your area, this is a great way to build one, promote it.

Go ahead and just create an event on the platform. And you'll get other BP members and other locals to come and hang out and talk shop with you. So get out there, get to events, local networking. There's really nothing like it. I mean, networking as a keyboard warrior is great, but there's something more. to meeting people in person. So make moves and check out BiggerPockets.com slash events.

There you go. And actually I used that earlier today. I found out there's one this week in my area, about 30 minutes from my house. So this Thursday night, I'll be going to a local meetup here. So anyway, it works because I'm going. So all right, with that,

before we get to the show, we really got nothing else going on, right? Man, there's a lot going on, but, you know, before we get to the show, guys, we appreciate your listenership. Thank you, thank you. Spread the word. let people know about the Bigger Pockets podcast and, you know, share the podcast on your

Facebook feed. Tell everybody how much you love us. You know, get out there, tell your friends, your family to start listening and hopefully they too will benefit from the show. Hopefully. Yes, yes. All right, let's get to this thing. Today's show guest is Charlie Gow. Charlie is a real estate investor in the Michigan area. A couple areas of Michigan. Umbridge in my treatment of Detroit, as you will soon find it. out. And apparently he believes that I have a punchable face. So let's bring on Charlie.

It's a compliment. You know, no, seriously, before we do, I, all kidding aside and all abuse aside, Charlie's a cool guy doing some great things. And, you know, he's just a little mean to me. That's all. So give him hell, guys. Give him hell. All right, here we go. Let's bring him in. What's going on, Charlie? And before I actually let you respond, let me just tell. the audience that Charlie just said that I have a face, the kind of face that he just wants to punch. That was, that was, that was, that was, that was kind of interesting, man. It's, it's not often that I talk to somebody who wants to sock me.

What's going on here, dude? I didn't see that exactly. I said, you kind of have the face that I would, you know, want to punch. That was the joke. So I want to know, do you think Josh, is Josh better looking than you thought he would be or worse looking than he thought? I think he's actually better. looking so but yeah i actually do so i mean better looking for a face you want to punch though

okay okay of course of course well this show is off to such a bad start it's not even funny you haven't gotten to the best part yet it's going to get it's going to get good really really worried all right well let's let's do this and and i'm going to keep in mind that we started off the way we started. So, Charlie, tell us a little bit about yourself. Why are we even, why do we have him on the show anyway? I mean, like, this guy should have gotten through our producer. I mean, I guess it's kind of a miracle. I came to the United States fresh off a boat, you know, landed in Detroit, and then, no, I just think, you know, that explains the hostility. No, I was going to bring that out now, but I grew up in Michigan, you know, I lived away out in California for a bit. I worked as a

personal trainer out there. And I had exposure to real estate through my father who had a number of commercial properties when I was younger. But to be honest, my dad was such a workaholic. It kind of turned me away from that process. So I didn't really pay attention to lots of process. But when I was out in California, a lot of my clients, they were real estate investors. And so, you know, a lot of times out of cons to be hearing about the deals they were doing. So that's where it kind of really wet my appetite. And then moved back to Michigan about 2007, 2008. And in that time, You know, that's when we had these five to $40,000 houses. So it was just kind of a perfect storm to get started.

Five to $40,000 houses. And you are in Detroit. Are you in like Metro? At the time, I lived in Grand Rapids. So kind of a completely different market. But I think, I can't remember if it was Forbes. I've read multiple outlets that have rated Green Rapids one of the top real estate markets in the country.

It's definitely a seller's market. I think my real estate agent there told me right now that there's six sellers for every east listing in the country. county right now in Garpids. Hard to go anywhere, but up when you're selling a house for $5,000. There's a lot of place. You could still go down pretty far. Yeah, it's true. It is true. That's funny. Okay. And to the point, by the way, because, you know, you open the box here, but, like, you know, that's, that, that is why we tell people a heat caution because that house that you buy for $5,000 may have, you know, $20, $40,000 and back liens on it. There may be other

negatives that come with the property. So, you know, you really do have to understand what you're getting into. A $5,000 house isn't always the deal that it looks like. And we've written a lot of articles on that. But, you know, for those people are like, oh, my God, I'm going to go to Detroit right now. Yeah, go. It's a great market. Detroit is blowing up like crazy. But, you know, at the same time, there's a lot you need to know and you've got to be real careful. Well, that's one of the things with all, with all areas that are lower income, you know, my area is not as low as Detroit probably, but you can buy a house for $50,000 in my area. Hey Brandon.

Yeah. Hey Brandon. We're talking about war zones, right? Not a war zone. Five minutes before this interview, I was watching a video of you in the car with your wife and a SWAT team was doing a shootout or something down the block from you. Yeah, I was out driving for dollars this morning and we saw a SWAT team like pulling, I mean, the whole street was cordoned off.

It was messed up. There's people everywhere. And SWAT team was like with their full gear rushing into a house when I was driving by. but that's not normally like that. But that's what you get in lower priced areas, apparently, even though I've never seen that before. But so what I say is in these lower price areas, it can be great for rentals potentially, as long as you don't get the SWAT team called in. However, like sometimes in those areas, the price, the value of the property is actually negative.

I mean, there's properties, many of them that I would not buy, even if somebody paid me $5,000, $10, $15,000, $20,000. Because I can put 50 into it and it's only worth $50 at the end of the day. So why do the hassle? So anyway, just one thing to worry about or look at when you're buying low-income areas. Nice. Nice. Quick tip for you. By the way, as we're chatting about Detroit, Detroit pops up on my Twitter feed that's in front of me.

Detroit is named the best city to start a yoga studio in, according to entrepreneur. There you go, Charlie. Yeah. Who needs real estate? I need real estate. I'm going to start doing all those pure barres and things like that. You're good. All right.

Before you do that, though, we need to know your story. Before you get out and get into yoga. How did you get started with the real estate? What was your first deal? So my first deal, I lived in Guern Rapids, Michigan at the time, and I was trying to find something closer to where I worked at, which was in Muskegon, Michigan, which is roughly about 45 minutes from where I was at.

So I was kind of looking all over at the time, and my real estate agent asked me if I'd be interested in looking at a condo. So the first deal was so easy. It's not going to be the greatest example, but I literally walked into this place. It was like 8 o'clock at night. The sun was going to go down. and the first thing I did when I walked in was I'm like, what is wrong with this place?

I'm not seeing it. There was a creaky floor, but it had a custom bathroom, custom countertop, and I did my research, and it actually foreclosed for $148,000. So I told my agent, I'm like, yeah, I'm going to offer on it. Just let me go take a look at in the morning because I'm wondering if there's something I missed. So I took a look at the next morning. I told him, you know, let's offer $38,000 on. And he's like, oh, yeah, there's a good fair offer.

let's submit it. And I'm like, really? I thought that was kind of low. I'm like, well, submitted for 36 then. And so he submitted for 36. There was a number of lower offers actually, but because mine was an owner-occupant offer, I actually got the property. Okay. So your first deal, you lived in it. Did you say that it foreclosed 148K or 48K? 148K. Wow. Yeah. So it was basically a large county medium complex. In Grand Haven, Michigan is, It's Coast Guard City, USA. So it's a very affluent area. It's very difficult to get anything that close to the beach under $100,000.

Even with a condo you could, but if a house, there's no way you could get anything under $140, $150, $1.50. Got it. So how did, was this an REO that you were offering to the bank? Yeah, this was an REO. Okay, got it. So that's what kind of started the whole process of kind of doing the living flips. Because from working at the bank, I knew that. You know, I may not be able to compete with these investors always on that level where, you know, throwing a cash offer.

But most banks have a number of different reserve prices. They have a reserve price for an owner occupant, a reserve price for owner occupant cash, and then also a higher reserve for an investor and an investor with the mortgage. So knowing that I would do from that point forward, I always used to take that in place. And I also used to do something where I call price creeping. but what I would do with houses going forward as well is that let's say that I offer 30,000 the house as a little offer every week or so I'd slowly creep it up a thousand because the worst feeling you have is when you get an offer accepted immediately on a house and you think gosh I could have gotten in for lower than that so I used to always do that too as well because it's kind of a

nice way of knowing okay I got the very bottom end of the price that they would get from that that's awesome price hey can you fill us in on your on the bank background. What did you do at a bank? So I worked at two, one nationally very, very large bank, and then another one was a large regional bank tool as well. That's actually growing pretty significantly. I think it was probably a top 15 bank in terms of assets in the United States now. And what did you do? I started out as basically like a teller universal banker working inside of a grocery store bank. And then I got my way up to where I was basically managing four branches by the time I was done. Got it. So you kind of have a little bit of kind of inside working of how

the, you know, how loans work, how banking works a little bit. So has that helped you in your career a lot? Yeah, I mean, I think one of the things my wife and I always do is that when we look at how we want to make a financial decision, we take in effect, she actually used to work at a bank too as well. And, you know, we look at like, those people that are always overdraft in an account, like, what would they be doing in the situation? And what were the person that's got $100,000 in their bank, you know, 15 investors

properties, what would they be doing? And because I got to see these accounts every single day, it kind of guides me on like, you know, what is that millionaire doing with their bank account? Like, you know, are they eating out a lot? And you can see all these things. You know, we don't discuss them in person. But you can see like, you know, the average person that overcast account, they eat out a lot. They spend a lot on their credit card. They do a lot of things that the person that is has large bounces of bank account isn't doing.

So I definitely took a lot from that process, especially the underwriting process because I learned a lot that not all banks. are the same. Not all credit unions are the same and you can't really say that about one bank and do that versus the other. Yeah, yeah. I used to work at a bank as well back in the day. I mean, I was kind of the same thing. I started as like a personal banker at a bank and I did loans for, you know, home equity lines of credit and all that stuff. And yeah, like you kind of get this inside look at. What is an underwriter look at? Like, what does debt to income mean? What is loan to value? What credit score do they care about? I mean, it's kind of like a, I like to use this analogy. It's like a combination lock. Like if you can get the combination right, you're going to get your

loan approved. You got to know what the combination is and then you got to enter it incorrectly. And anyway, so it's one of the benefits, I guess, of having a job at a bank. You kind of learn those things. Just to throw this out there, if people are interested in learning more about that, there is just a free ebook that we offer on BiggerPockets. If you go to BiggerPockets.com forward slash bank financing, you can read this e-book. I think it's called like unlocking the, I don't know, 12 steps to unlocking unlimited bank financing or something like that. It's just a free book. People can check out no opt-in or anything like that. So check it out. All right, back to your story. So you started with a condo and you bought this to live in and what came next? So that condo, I ended up having

to move again for work because they kept getting different promotions and so I ended up moving back to Grand Rapids. So I rented that place out. I actually had a roommate at that time that was paying my entire mortgage so that I rented it out to another person who was a teacher, running it out for three years and then the home I bought in Grand Rapids, that was probably my first true flip. I put in about $10,000 of materials, but I did almost all the work myself. And that was kind of what really got me going with, okay, this is what flipping really is. I mean, there was definitely times where I had no running water. I even went one day where my gas got turned off by accident. You know, it was definitely a unique process, but I learned a lot about how I want to value my time going

forward. And at the time, I think I was only making like $28,000 at the bank. So a lot of the work that these people would charge me, they're charged me $50 an hour, how I'll look at it as, well, if I can do this in, well, four times the amount of time that you can do it, maybe it makes sense for me to do it myself. Whereas now income's a lot different. I have to value in, okay, well, can I do, if I take this and I can do it in a half hour and you can do it in 20 minutes, you know, it's not worth it for me to pay myself to do it when I could pay you doing your hour pay is less than my hours pay. Yeah. Yeah, I look at that a lot when I'm doing projects. is like, is this worth it my dollar per hour?

I mean, last, two weekends ago, I spent like six hours underneath a house during plumbing. And the only reason why is because we got four bids from people and the cheapest one was like three grand. And I'm like, for six hours of work, three grand, I will go under the house. And I did it in six hours and it was done. And I don't do it very often. But at that moment, plumbers were so crazy, were busy. So they were just charging outrageous rates. So I sucked it up and did it.

But it's very rare for me. That's a good story. Could we talk to our guest here? Charles, were you living at the flip at the time that you were doing it? The second deal? Yeah, I was living at the flip at the time I was doing it. So, I mean, I literally redid the floor. I did everything.

But I think one time at one point that the shower, I actually broke off the shower knob when I was trying to basically replace it because it was corroded that bad. Nice. So I literally had to turn off the water. And then I had to get somebody out. And so I was going to a buddy's house maybe a mile away. showering in the morning, but I was sleeping there. So I literally, I got that whole process through. It really let me value how I want to pay, what I want to pay for everything. So flooring,

I typically like to still do the flooring myself because I can do it very quickly. But tile, plumbing, electrical, I always, I always, I always, I contract that out now. Okay. That makes sense. So, so essentially you started out by what we like to call kind of kind of a different way, but you still start out house hacking, this idea of using your initial property as an investment. So even that first condo, even though you lived there, didn't you say you had a roommate, right? Yeah, I did. Okay, so the roommate helped you obviously be able to live for free or, you know, close to while you were living there.

Then you moved out of the property, kept it as a rental, and you moved into a live and flip. Another way to do house hacking is to live and flip. How did that live and flip turn out at the end of the day? What did you buy it for? And did you make some money on it? Did you sell it or what's it at? I actually, I flipped that house after living it for two years. I think I made after everything, including the transfer tax,

17,000 off of it. But I only bought it for 37. I only put about 10 into it. So pretty saw invest in that. And then I didn't have to pay taxes on that too because I lived in the home two out of the last five years. And that's actually kind of a strategy we've implemented. Yeah. Can you explain that real quick? For people who aren't familiar with that strategy of living in the house for two years, what does that mean? So basically, if you live in the home two out of the last five years, it's like a homestead property exemption, uh, you do not have to pay taxes on that gain. And as long as it's under a certain amount. And the amount is so high.

I want to say it's like $250,000. I don't know the exact amount that I've never even come close to it. But it's kind of a nice tool because instead of having to pay a lawyer to do a 1031 tax exchange, we can be complex. It's kind of a way that my wife and I have upgraded home slowly. But on the flip side, I think of my friends and family think it's crazy that we've moved every two years into a new home. And it's gone to that point where my wife and I, if we buy a house, I joke around around

well, the next two years from now will be living to a different house. So you can make your decision. And so. Well, I mean, it's a cool strategy, especially for people just getting started with real estate. Like, there's ability to buy a house that needs work and you can fix it up. And as long as you live there for a couple years, you may not have to pay any capital gains tax on the gain at all. And I've known people like that for 10, 15 years, every two years, they just do it over and over and over again. Of course, we're not CPAs.

So make sure you guys consult with a good tax person for the specific laws and rules on how that works. but yeah, it's a cool strategy. And I mean, I'd say it's also likely an easy strategy, easier strategy when you're single or without kids. I think, you know, upending and moving kids every two years can certainly be a challenge. I know doing it once in a blue moon is a challenge. Kind of like having twin newborn prenees a year ago for me. Ah, yeah, yeah.

This guy just called you out, Josh. They won't resent you anything when they're, you know, 11, 3 years. 12, 13, 14, 15, 16. He's just being combative. He's just competitive. I know. I love you. You got to, you know, I just love that face.

I just love it. I love it so I want to hit it. I got a buddy. If I ever get divorced and get married again, I'm going to invite you to be in the wedding, which is a nice guy. I have not yet been invited to attend one of our users' weddings, but I did get this lovely bobblehead.

We did get a bubblehead. Recently. So, you know. But no, that's cool, man. That's cool. All right. Well, listen, I personally went to it. I know moving once, we just moved last year with my kitten.

It was difficult. And I can't even imagine moving with twins. Of course, we'll find out soon when Brandon moves after his twins are about to show up. I ain't having twins. No. Yeah, you know, I couldn't handle twins yet. How are you handling twins? Is that overwhelming, as I say?

Well, how do you think? Do I look tired? look a little tired. He's a little grouchy too. Oh, Ouch. I handle pretty good. I don't sleep a lot naturally,

but my wife is, I couldn't do a fodder. She definitely helps out a lot. Actually, I really help her out a lot, if anything. But yeah, it's,

I think right now in the last year, we've had a job change, a job loss, a move, and pretty twins. So from here, it can get any more stressful. And you're in the middle

of a house flip right now. now, right? Or several, right? Two house flips right now. Okay. So why not create more work for you? Yeah, why not? Yeah, why not? Yeah, why not? We've gotten to that point now where, you know, kind of getting the idea of the wife on board.

I really are trying to automate this so that way my wife can manage it. So over the last couple of years, we've slowed down a little bit so I could kind of teach her everything she knows because at this point, I have a job that has a very significant W-2 income. And in addition to that, because of a health scare I had a number of years ago. I don't think I want to go the fully real estate employed routes just because I'm not sure if I could get health benefits from any insurance company. So that's kind of something we've considered.

So my wife is kind of taking over. She just got a real estate license and she's kind of been able to manage that. We still run into the issues of contractors trying to charge a rip-off prices, but, you know, nothing that any other female I think is probably dealt with in that case. And it's fortunate that that actually happens as much as it does. Yeah. Gotcha. So you work in a full-time, W-2 job.

Your wife is getting her license. You're flipping two houses. How many deals are you doing now? I mean, so it sounds like 0708 was kind of the beginning. You know, we're at, what, seven, eight years now you've been doing this. What have you accomplished in the time that you've been involved in real estate? So I'm on deal 15 and 16 right now. We had, I think the most I've done in it is one year's three.

This year, I just sold one. So I guess I'm going to close. on three houses this year and hopefully acquire one or two more. Flips or rentals? Flips. We, because I had some health scare number of years ago, one of the nice things about the real estate is that this health scare that I had,

it would have crippled me financially if I was not able to invest in real estate. But because of that, I really didn't come away with any debt, but I pretty much had to commit almost the years of my salary just towards medical expenses a number of years ago. Wow. So we sold off a portion of our portfolio to pay for that. That really slowed us down.

I think we only did one each of those years. And then unfortunately, I wish we could have held on to those because three of the rental properties that we sold, if I could have just held on to it now, I probably could have quit my job now because the amount of the rental appreciation that's been in that area as a comparison to what I had bought it for, I'd be making probably, I think, $2,800 in net

after all my expenses, and that's including a property management company. Wow. I mean, that is one of the benefits of real estate, right? It gives you that freedom to be able, when things happen, when crap hits the fan. I mean, you've got the ability to, hey, I've got this income. I've got this asset I can sell over here to be able to pay for my life or while my job is going to these things. I mean, just another benefit that we don't really talk about much, but it really is a powerful asset to have. So that's very cool. Well, cool. All right. So you've been doing mostly, it sounds like mostly flips, but a few rentals in there as well. Is that right? Yes. All right. So let's talk about your average. When you're doing a flip, how do you, first of all, how do you find properties? And then, you know, what price range are you looking in? At the beginning, it was definitely multiple listing service on MLS. My real estate agent, a lot of times I would be getting properties that were actually his listings. A lot of times he could let me know, like, okay, I have a property.

I'm probably about to get in the market. So I could vet the deal very quickly to figure out, you know, what I needed to do for get funds. More recently, I've been doing a lot with bird dogging. So, you know, the mailman. The one I found that's been very successful is actually the foundation specialist because they're dealing with these people that have, you know, 20 to 30,000 foundation problems. And they're not going to be able to sell it to a typical investor because they won't get approved with conventional financing. The other thing, too, is that my background at the bank is that I've heard or known of a number of instances where condos. So, for example, most condos are not FHA eligible just because of the HOA requirements. And,

In a number of instances, if HOA is doing poorly or about to go bankrupt, they won't even be eligible for financing for conventional. So it's only cash buyers, which I picked up a property condo, $17,000. That number of years, two years before that was selling for $60,000 to $80,000 specifically for that reason. So those type of deals have been very influential for me. And then what's better now is that now that I don't work at the bank, I don't have to worry about it being a, I think it's like a non-compete agreement. I'm not supposed to purchase properties that the bank owns in that sense. Gotcha. I want to dig in on the mailman and foundation specialist thing.

We talk a lot about marketing. We talk a lot about just putting the word out to your network. And I think we've already heard somebody talk about mailman as a source of leads, but foundation specialists. I mean, that's really creative. Can you kind of dig in a little bit more on that? So I had basically three guys come out to my house and quote. And the last guy that came out, he really, really wanted the deal.

He was young and hungry. He had only been in business for two years. And he actually worked for one of the other people that had quoted me. And, you know, I told him, like, you know, honestly, I'm not sure why I would go with you because, you know, you said you worked for this company. He trained you. So if you're doing a good job, I can imagine that they're probably doing just as a good job, not better.

Plus, I have this company where, you know, if the bank or the person buying the house sees, hey, this basement system company worked on the foundation. I know that they're reputable. I've never heard of that. It's just one last question I have to deal with. And so he said, well, he basically just asked straight up, asked me,

like, well, how can I add more value to you? And I'm like, well, this job, you're quoting me for $6,000, like,

how often do you run into projects that people can't afford it? And then he basically brought up, like, you know, all the time, actually. And I was like, so what happens to those cases?

He's like, well, we offer financing to them if we can, but if we can't, then, I pretty much just don't get the job. And I'm like, well, how about you just, you know, letting that person know, maybe they could go through something to purchase a home from them and then maybe alleviate that problem, maybe even allow them to still live in the house. So one of my first purchases from that, I actually allowed the person to stay in the home afterwards.

They were paying me basically what their mortgage was anyways, but because I got my mortgage at today's rates, which were absolutely low and a better price, I was able to net money right off of it. They treated it like their home and then we were able to get the foundation fixed. And I end up making about $35,000 off that property when I finally sold it. Wow. On top of the cash flow I was getting from it. That's awesome. Yeah, I mean, this is a clever idea. I mean, it wouldn't even be just, I mean, foundation guys especially, but roofing too.

I mean, I'm going to talk to some of the roofing contractors I know and just say, hey, if you got leads, you know, like here, give me my business card, you know, like, I just think it's a fantastic idea because a lot of people can't afford those $10, $15, $20,000 expenses on their house. So they just let it go forever until they finally lose it. So, yeah, very clever. I like that a lot.

Yeah, and I applied that to septic, like pretty much everything, any type of major job of framing. I definitely have done with framing for sure too, but the foundation, especially guy in particular, he's my biggest lead. And the best part about it too

is that I don't even have to pay him for the referral. He just is happy that I'm going to get him this big job. Yeah. Yeah. That's a great idea. Yeah, that's what networking is all about.

You know, scratch their back, they scratch yours. And, you know, I think that's awesome. So very, very cool. All right. So let's let's talk about your, you know, more recent stuff. So like number wise. Like what are you buying a flip for? What are you typically putting into them and what are you typically selling them for? You know, it's not really a cookie cutter. It's kind of all the board. I can get a condo for under $20,000. I can get, you know, I'm working the flip down working right now. I bought for $60,000. It's actually very close to a lake. It's pretty, it's 16 or 60?

60. Okay. So not quite into Detroit yet, but we're getting close to there. Okay. And then I think the most expensive property I bought that I flipped is probably 77,000. Okay. So I'm kind of in that price range where I'm comfortably paying cash for properties now at this point, or at least my offer is cash, even though I'm finding different ways to actually obtain the financing for that to offer cash. And what is that?

I mean, how are you buying them if you're, you know, what financing methods are using? You know, I've done, well, the Burr method. So I basically use a home equity line of credit off of my current home to basically draw money off of that to do that and pay for the house. I've done, you know, zero percent interest credit card offers. I think all my credit cards I have very high balances on that as well, barred a little bit of private funds from family. I am very familiar with which banks do underwriting with verified assets and which ones

don't. So that's been another asset I've used a loan before that was $35,000, no verification income, just state-income assets. And then it was basically closing three days. I had to pay a higher interest rate for it, but it was no questions asked. Really? I didn't know that stated income loans were happening at all anywhere. As long as it's not attached to a mortgage, which would make it apply under a Nino, like the no-income, no asset loans for mortgages, but it's just a general unsecured loan. Actually, Discover still does them I know of right now, because I did one just recently. Got it. So you're just getting unsecured business line and you're using it towards your real estate. You're not getting a real estate specific loan on a particular property. Yeah. And then kind of a quick tip. One of the things that I think is very important is that understanding the underwriting process is that there are a number of banks that it is an automatic computer decision for the type of loan. So when you ask, in my case, especially if you're self-employed, there are a lot of times where the bank will immediately say, nope, you're denied and the computer makes the decision you can't go up.

back on it. But there's a number of other large banks, too, where there's called a second pass, which means that a person will look at that and say, okay, you know what, this may not meet our guidelines, but it does pass the eyeball test, so they will still allow that loan to go through. And I can tell you that it is, it's one of the first things you show up front before dean your credit asking a bank is that if this loan is not approved initially, would I have opportunity to appeal that, or is there a second person that takes a look at to see if might still qualify. And you'd be surprised how often you get those pre-approval letters in the mail, you go through it and a computer turns it down and then you've had a dean to your credit. Whereas the credit you and I

work with right now, for example, they actually have two people look through, especially because of the relationship I've developed with them. And so I always go through them knowing that if the deal is tight, they're going to give me that benefit of the doubt based on that relationship. It's always a second and third passive with that underwriting system that they have. Okay. Got it. Got it. And you're just talk about the ding because they had to pull your credit. It's not like a penalty because you got denied or anything. Yes. Yeah. Okay. Gotcha. So first of all, I want to point out that I like the fact that you're very creative in how you finance these deals. I mean, you use a lot of different methods. I think that's, I mean, I've said that a million times before, but it's very much like a toolbox.

The more tools you have in your toolbox, the more projects you can take on. So you definitely have a lot of tools in kind of your mental toolbox. So I applaud you for that. What is your favorite way to finance a deal? I mean, do you have something that you're like, man, if I could only do this the rest of my life, and besides cash, if you're just loaded. Like, what's your favorite? Oh, I just kind of started exploring Harmony loans. So I don't know if that's going to be. But the one that I've really done recently is I actually max out my 401k through work. So I've actually established a pretty high balance in there.

They will actually allow me to do, I think it's a 3.25% loan. And it's taken out of my check, but the lot of me take up to 75%. So basically, I'm getting two investments out of it. Every dollar I put in is getting invested into my 401k into stocks and mutual funds. But then 75% of that I can draw back out kind of like a, it's like a self-directed 401K, but it's not because I'm just taking that as a loan. So I'm getting two investments out of the same dollar that I'm putting in. And so that's actually been my favorite method.

So I'm getting, you know, 7 to 8% out of my portfolio and then the company stock plan. But then on top of that, I'm also investing in basically real estate, rental properties and such, which is a lot of me to basically make further income. off of that. So if you add all my gains off of that same dollar I've invested, I'm getting 40 cents and the dollar back on an annual basis off of it. Okay. Okay. That makes sense. I like that. I've never, I've not done that, but it's smart. People love to call real estate passive income, which is interesting because most of the investors I know are very busy. Busy finding deals, busy managing teams, busy worrying they pick the wrong market. Rent to retirement flips that model.

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I want to talk about losing money because you mentioned just we were talking before the show that right now you're in the middle of a flip that you're not going to make a lot of money on. Can you tell us a little bit about that? Yeah. I mean, if we were to break even on this deal, I would be overjoyed. But, you know, there's a lot of factors to it. And, you know, not to make excuses. But there's one of the things is that my wife and I, we moved from Gurna Rapids, Michigan to Novi, Michigan. And so I didn't encounter, I knew exactly what I were paying in Gurna Rapids, Michigan, but I realized that what I'd be paying would be more expensive and a bigger market. So that alone 10 to 20% right off the top.

And then I didn't realize that how long it would take me to get my team or my boots on the ground. So in Grand Rapids, I could pretty much find a new drywall guy, a new framer, pretty quickly because I had such a big book. And I underestimated how long it would take. me to get going with my group there. The other thing that this is probably the biggest issue is that where I'm at the properties in Wolverine Lake, it's only a township of 2,000 people. The inspector that does all the inspections for our work, he works two hours one day a week while he's working for the next township next door. So if we don't get something done on by Tuesday, we got to wait a

whole another week. And so literally I've spent two to three months just waiting for this guy just to come out. And I mean, I've done everything. I've brought the girls donut. So like, hey, you know, because you'll be mine now. You know, sending him emails. I even had my wife bring the twins in there and wait for him because he was notorious for not coming in during his lunch on that Tuesday anyways. And the work, this house was so notorious. It was so well known in this super small town, even though it's only, only 25 miles away from Detroit, that there's no way I could have gotten away with doing anything off book. Like, I mean, my neighbor across the street told me that, well, not my neighbor, but the neighbor to that house said that she just did the roof on the weekend and the person to come out. There's no way I could have done anything like that. Every step of the process had to be too a T to what the inspector wanted because he had already had this eye out on this property for a number of years anyways. And it was such a hole that people used to be like, Oh, you know that house over there with the dump truck and all the junk?

I live two blocks over with that. They use it as a landmark. That's how bad it was. That's awesome. On top of that, I had a contract that work for me. Did a lot of subjobs for me and smaller jobs. Based off of the work he had done in the past, I thought he would have been able to do this job, but it was just too much.

He bit off more than he could chew, and then bad just delayed things as well. He didn't even get along with an inspector, which was even worse, but a whole slew of factors in that and the fact that. and the fact that, you know, we were trying to balance a new job, new, you know, new home, as well as newborn kids too as well. So, I mean, I definitely learned a lot from it. I won't make a lot of those mistakes again. And if I can restrict it to maybe, you know, 10 to 15K loss, I would still consider it as success because I've learned every process of building a house from the ground up, including the tear down all the permit requirements are to as well.

Hey, Charlie, I'm glad you brought all that up. It's some really, really good points there. I took a few notes. One, considering the cost of work in a different market, that we're not talking going from Detroit to New York. You're talking about how far is the town you worked in Grand Rapids? It's a two-hour time frame. And one of the things that contributes to is that it's such a rural area, or not really a rural area, but it's just a difficult spot to get to that.

Even though it's a five-mile drive for some people, that's a 30-minute drive. So you have to factor that end when the accordingly price is to as well. So just a lot of factors. And then also, this was actually my first flip I ever dealt with that was septic and well. Gotcha. Gotcha. Yeah.

But so I guess my point is there's all these considerations that I'm glad you brought up, you know, that going from more urban or more rural area, there's going to be different factors you've got to consider. The time to get a new contractor, time to get new vendors, the inspector, I mean, that's a huge one. If there's one guy who's inspecting the entire town one day a week for two hours, that's a real pain. I mean, that's going to slow down your process, presumably, if they have to come and approve things over and again. And so, you know, I love this. I think it's really easy for us to say, yeah, flipping a house is, you know, is great. And once you figure it out, you figure it out. But, you know, you've been doing this.

And despite it, you're still learning because, you know, little tweaks that you make, you may not have adjusted for or, a plan for the complications that come with it. So I just want to reiterate that for those folks that are listening because it just really, in the beginning it's scary and you're always afraid that you're going to screw up and a lot of people never get started because of that. And what you realize once you're doing this for a while is you're going to screw up. Things are going to happen. You use it as a learning experience and you make sure you don't ever screw up again doing the

same thing and it's a victory, right? Well, moral victory, I guess, with what I'm going to learn from it. but not pocketbook victory that's for sure. Yeah. You know what? Yeah, I feel like every time, I mean, I've lost money on a couple flips. And I'm doing a flip right now that I'll break even on. I might make a few thousand bucks maybe, but like I always, like I don't hate doing it.

I don't regret doing any of those. Like, I mean, even the one I'm working on right now, like I'm working with a brand new partner on it. We figured out a ton of stuff in the process in a new town that I'm not used to flipping in. And we're figuring stuff out. I mean, yeah, even if I break even if I had lost money on it, I would still consider a win because because of his partnership, we got another one under contract, we'll make 50 grand on, hopefully. And so, like, again, it's all just, when you look big picture, it's not the end of the world.

And I hope that people know that are listening to this, that, you know, not to get scared away from the fact that you might someday lose money. You shouldn't just be, you know, fearful of it. So if you could do it all over again, what would you do differently? Let me ask you that. I mean, there is so many different factors for it. One, I don't think we would have rushed into as what, as much we did. I think it was part of, we hadn't done a deal in like a year.

And I think it was that urgency, like, oh, we got to get a deal. And I know a lot of new investors I see in bigger pockets like, you know, it's time to do, time to do a deal. I think you had to go back until you have to be humble enough to keep remembering what got you to where you were in the first place. So I should have gotten the vendors in place for sure, which that could have been a little bit difficult because you're not working off any referrals, but you also can't call the guys on Google because they're not going to be priced anywhere where you want to do it. So vetting that more, I would have utilized bigger pockets context for sure. hindsight with what I know now, I've learned up quite a bit. And then I called the inspector. I actually spoke with them and I actually had a relationship with the office even more.

But I would have done even more due diligence with that small town because I didn't, it never occurred to me that it's a possibility, some dude who's an inspector only works two hours a week. But you're killing me. He's living in the Tim Ferriss life, right? Yeah. Well, I mean, it's literally on his lunch, That was probably the most frustrating aspect of it. And we had a period of time where he wouldn't, I had told him, I'll pay whatever amount it needs you, but I do not have a roof on the house. I need you to prove the framing so I can put the roof on.

And he basically didn't do anything. So it got rained on for six days in a row. So we tarped it, but I mean, there's only so much you could put tarp on a roof about, you know, keeping the water out in that aspect. Yeah, yeah. Well, thanks. I mean, thank you for sharing that. And again, obviously, hopefully it's all uphill from there. But anything before we move on to the fire round that you want to add any kind of, you know,

stories or anything that you think people might like hearing or learning from? I got kind of a funny story. And I actually didn't mention this, but I did do a land contract and it was the biggest disaster ever. But I think you'll find this funny. So I had a guy that did plenty of great work for me, did roofing tile. And he came to me and he's like, hey, Charles, my wife from Mexico is actually moving to the United States, and I need to put it up in her house. And I was like, Eduardo, I've met your wife.

Like, you have a wife and two kids. You live over on, you know, and he comes up to me, you know, gets even closer. And he's like, so my wife doesn't know about my wife in Mexico. And so I'm like, oh, so what do you want to do? What? I mean, like, I don't know. My wife ever found. out that I was helping you hide one wife from the other. I just fascinated. So he's like,

this house I'm fixing right now, like, what are your plans with it? I'm like, I'm either going to rent it or land contract it. And, you know, he's like, well, can I land contract off of you? I'll do the roofing and the, he did like about $5,000 worth of labor. I paid for the materials. And so long story short, his wife ended up in him, I'm not moving from Mexico because he'd end up getting her to stay there. But then he put in two tenants that basically did not pay him money. So then I had to close on him essentially because we had to record it to keep the city off our backs off from housing code.

And then on top of that, then I had to turn around and get these tenants out and the tenants stole all the appliances on the way out. So another learning experience. But even with your contractors, and this has happened to me twice now, which is a little bit different scenario both times, but even though your contractors have done good work for you and you trust them,

you still got to continue to vet them in every bit of the process. I mean, I would have never taken no money down, but considering that he had done a number, a lot of labor, as well as he had done all his work for me in the past, I felt like I could have trusted him, but it just didn't work out in that scenario. Yeah, yeah, and never hired a wife in Mexico. would be another tip, right?

Oh, you and O Josh. All right. So by the way, yeah, I think the idea, like, when you go outside of the bounds of what your business normally is, you know, when you do things like that, like, I'm going to help out a buddy. I'm going to help out a contractor friend of mine. Like, those are the times in my life I've always been screwed is when I go outside of how it should be done and try to help out other people. I mean, my lead contractor is the one that burned down my property last year. like he was rented from me and burned it down because he was angry and I mean yeah anyway I always I always try to keep those lines and and you know for me it's like I'm going to keep

it very clear you're going to go through the exact same process as that anyone else yeah you're my first cousin or you're my you're my this or that I'm not going to give you any you know you're not going to get treated any differently here than anyone else if you expect that let's not even start and and I think that's a that's a good precursor to kind of getting into bed with friends, family, contractors, whatever it is that you do. Yeah. Wise words from Josh Dorkin. Oh, yes.

All right. Cool. Well, hey, let's move on to the next segment of the show called the Fire Round. It's time for the Fire Round. All right, let's get to the questions. Number one, how would somebody figure out how to remodel a flip to make it more appealing to buyers? In other words, how do I know what to do to the property in order to get it to sell the best?

You know, my wife would probably like this answer, but I think a lot of the ideas that she gets, she kind of handles that aspect. She does a lot with Pinterest. She watches a lot of HDTV. But I think those really help you keep a pulse on what's trendy. And trendy is what sells houses, especially to the female buyer or the people that I think are willing to spend more. So I would definitely use those resources to kind of get an idea from that. Outside of that, I think, you know, a lot of it's just common sense. You know, it just, you got to factor in.

You know, if I move this, if I add a bathroom here, is the market going to support a $5,000 increase if it cost me $5,000 to put it in? Right on. Right on. Cool. Next question is house hacking the safest way you would excite somebody about investing in real estate? I definitely don't think so if you're a, you know, a more affluent person because I generally think that when you're house hacking, you're typically house hacking in my experience in B or C areas, not the A areas. So it may be difficult for somebody to give up, you know, their nice house in the hills to go live in a condo or a duplex next to somebody that, you know, is, you know, I don't want to insult, you know, Josh Dorkin or something like that, you know. Well, Josh has got nothing, nothing.

You know, I don't know how much money you paid this guy, Brandon. My God. I do know people who have house hacked. Like, I have some friends that live down in Portland. in a very expensive area, like in town of Beaverton, in this nice, really nice area, spent a lot of money in their house, and their house has a basement apartment that they bought, and they bought the house with their in-laws,

like my friends' in-laws, and the in-laws live in the basement, they live in the top, and they split all the rent. And so they're living cheaper than I am in a much better neighborhood, much better town, like, you know, much more expensive house. So it can be done in those better areas, but yeah, typically I see it, you know,

like I started this crappy little duplex in a C-class area. Yeah, I feel somebody would know off the bat if they were open to it. I don't think it's one of those things you would bring up to somebody because I feel like most people have already kind of considered that process, especially with duplexes and whatnot. So the other thing, too, is that if you have a very large home, like there's no way my wife would ever let somebody live with us with two kids. I mean, that's just not going to happen. So if you have a family, I think that's kind of a non-consideration. Yeah, how's that different for everyone, obviously? Unless you have that separate, you know, you know, like an in-law.

sweet or something, you know, off to the side. So yeah, there you go. All right. Number three. What should someone look out for when they're dealing with an HOA? If they've never had to, you know, I never dealt with that before. What should they look out for if they're going to deal with a homeowners association kind of committee people? Pets, if they're allowed, what's required for it, if you can rent them because this is a number

that don't allow it. Yeah. Age requirement, which is an obvious one. And then lastly, the actual financial status of the HOA itself. So going back to the example I had, if you have an HOA that is almost going bankruptcy, then you have an issue where now anybody who wants to buy that house from me down in the road when you want to liquidate it, they have to pay cash, which that's going to drive everything down in the area. So knowing whether it's a good financial condition is a big one too as well. And then also I like to see what assessments they've done over the last five years. if they're happy with assessments, like, you know, assessment for siding, hey, I have a brick condo,

why am I paying that? Or upgrading a second floor deck, well, I'm a first floor deck. That's just giving me more shade. Those are the things I would probably focus on most. Nice. I want to add one that I haven't heard mentioned in a lot of our shows when we've talked about HOAs. A lot of HOAs are restrictive on the exterior of the property, particularly when we're talking about like a home in an H-O-A area. So, you know, the home may have to fit specific requirement, specific criteria for what it's got to look like. You can't paint it a different color. You can't, you know, do the lawn the way you want to do the lawn. You can't, you know, landscape it the way you want to landscape it. So, you know, there's a whole lot to consider when you're looking at an H-O-A. Just make sure you're up to speed on it if

you're doing that. Actually, that is a good one because I read the entire H-O-A documents anyways, but I almost bought a condo once that required that if you were on the second or third floor, you could not have regular floor and you had to have carpet. Interesting. That was unique too. So. Yeah, it's important. I think the key there is make sure you read the docs.

Read the docs. Yeah, read them. Yeah. I got a lead last week on a vacation property out of the beach, this cool little house up there. They wanted 50 grand, which is nothing. I was like, oh, great. And then I find out that, yeah, you can't rent the property, period.

Not vacation rental, not monthly rental, nothing. So screw that. All right. Number four. Our last question. Number four, what is the comfortable amount of flips a new investor should try and achieve in their first year? That's an interesting one. One.

Yeah, I mean, I would just focus on that first one. If you're thinking ahead, then you're probably not having the right focus. I just really think, you know, like my wife and I, we do exercise. And this is going to kind of plug into when we get into your questions. But we do exercise by Brian Tracy where it's basically right all the good, list of all the goals that you want to accomplish in your life. And then from that, if you could accomplish any one of those goals in the next 24 hours, which one of those would impact your life the most? And so, you know, looking at that, I really just think it's, you know, it's just one.

I mean, get that first one out of the way and then let's see what happens from there. I mean, if you take a $5,000 loss and you're still trying to get on these five flips a year because you set that goal, then that's not realistic. You need to be able to adjust your goals as it happens. Shockingly good advice from the man with the forked tongue. All right. That wraps up our fire round. Now let's move on to the Famous Four. Famous Four.

All right. These questions are asked every week to every guest. And I know Charlie, you listen to the show, so you know what's coming. But number one, what is your favorite real estate-related book? You know, I read so much. And it's going to be cliche to see the Robert Kiyosaki. but what I would say is that for my job, I drive probably four or five hours a day. I really treat bigger pockets as like a university on its own.

So what I mean by then I've said this in the forums is that I've calculated that I do three podcasts a day where I listen to an average. And it's not always a bigger pockets because I've gotten through them. But if you look at that 15 of those a day, that's almost equivalent to a 15 credit course. I've kind of treated bigger pockets university as kind of a course. So I'll actually say bigger pockets would be really my favorite at this point because everything else I've read was kind of stuff that got me started. And, you know, little things I've picked up along there. Not that I don't read.

It's just that I think I'm learning the most right now from bigger pockets right now. And so why not utilize all these free resources? That's all of it. That's awesome. So speaking of which, what do you actually do for a living? I don't think we actually ask that. And what is your job right now where you drive around so much? I sell drugs to older people like their ram off our living.

You're a drug dealer. Yes, legally. Okay, okay. Just making sure we got that on the record. You're a drug dealer. But not like Colorado Washington drug dealer. You're like pharmaceutical, correct? Like prestige worldwide type of drugs.

The expensive ones. Expensive ones, yeah. So I work for one of the largest medical device pharmaceutical companies in the world. And I'm primarily in the immunology sector. so I do have highly specialized medications. Oh, very cool. Very cool. Awesome.

All right. So let's get back to the famous four questions here. Favorite business book? Brian Tracy, maximum achievement. It's kind of more of a motivational book than anything, but I think he has a lot of exercises, a lot of things that help put things in perspective and more importantly help you with focusing in out what's most important to you.

Cool. I just read Brian Tracy's Psychology of Sales, which was fantastic. So I'll have to pick up that one as well. Cool. Nice. Number three. All right. Number three, hobbies, what do you do for fun?

I'm kind of an adrenaline junkie, so I like to do all kinds of sports, skydiving, you name it. I also have done some stand-up comedy where part of my act, I just rip on people in the crowd. So unfortunately, you put my act today. You don't have much of a career, my friend. Oh, come on, come on. I think it's going to be longer to live than that Japanese car that you're driving. He's got something. All right. Number four. What do you believe, Charlie Gow, what do you believe sets apart successful investors from those who give up, fail, or never get started?

I think the biggest thing is knowing how to overcome that you're going to have a point where there's going to be a setback, whether it's at the very beginning or at the end. So it's appropriately responding to that setback, but more importantly, making sure that it doesn't happen again. It might feel, you know, when I'm selling drugs to people, I get questions all the times about my drugs and they, I don't know the answer. But I always tell my clients that, you know, this is going to be the last time I do not know the answer. And I kind of like getting it to my approach towards real estate. This is going to be the last time I make the mistake because I'm going to learn from it. So I guess that's what I would say outside of the cliche, you know, motivational and all that stuff of what I would say otherwise. Cool.

Right on. Excellent. Excellent. All right, man, before we let you go, where can be you be? people find out more about you. Just launched my website. So I buy houses, Michigan.com. I'm on Facebook and all the social media stuff, but probably the easiest way

is actually bigger pockets. I'm starting to contribute a lot more on the site more recently. Perfect. There you go. And do you have a website for your failing comedy business? No, but I'll probably

put this in the front page for it because I think this is pretty funny. Especially, can all the viewers see your facial reactions to all this? If they're watching on YouTube, yes. I'm going to do one of those quick one second snaps where you can see your face and as it progresses from like agony to like sadness to my wife is called me too. It's just disdain. No, listen, we definitely appreciate it.

All joking aside, great stuff. You know, congrats on all the success and good luck to you. And obviously I give you a hard time about your comedy business because you're just terrible. But that aside, you know. Good luck having tomatoes thrown at you next time you're on stage. Thank you. All right, Charlie. Well, it was really good having you today.

We will definitely see you around bigger pockets. Hey, Charlie. Take it easy, man. Take it easy. Bye. All right, guys, that was Charlie Gow. Hopefully you enjoyed the show. Hopefully you weren't cringing as much as I was at the abuse that I took.

And hopefully you learned a thing or two as well. But, yeah, good guy, you know, doing some cool things. And as we had just talked about towards the end of the show, it doesn't matter how many deals you've done. I mean, there's always things that can happen. There's always complications that you didn't quite think about. And so, you know, keep an eye out for that and be ready for it. There's no way to avoid completely being surprised, I think. And I think that's one of the big lessons that I walk away from this one with. Yeah, it's true. I mean, like, it's nice to see it's very real, you know. It's not always just what you might hear on a podcast. You

You know, on Facebook, you just see the highlights of somebody's life. Like, they're always doing great things. On BP, sometimes it feels like that too. Everyone's doing all this cool stuff and I'm struggling here. You know, like, but the reality is we're all struggling. We're all just trying to make it in this game. And there's ups and downs to everyone's life. And so it's just kind of nice to hear Charlie's story of the entire, entire thing.

Yeah, for sure, for sure. Cool. All right, man. Well, good stuff. Good show. On to the next one. On to the next one. I'm going to go out and have a baby.

Good luck for you. You got this. Is it he, he, who, who, who, he? I don't know. You know, I have not experienced such things. So, you know, there you go. I don't know how I got to figure that out. I can coach my lady friend here.

Get your bag. Get your bag. Get your bag. Get your escape bag. Whatever they call it these days. I got it. We're good. All right.

You're set. All right, man. Good luck to you. All right. To our listeners. Thanks. Thanks for everything. And we'll see you next time on 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. Thank you all for listening to the Bigger Pockets Real Estate podcast. Make sure you get all our new episodes by subscribing on YouTube, Apple, Spotify, or any other podcast platform. Our new episodes come out

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