BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast - 184: From Real Estate Agent to 800+ Deals with Bill Lublin

Episode Date: July 21, 2016

In today’s humorous episode of the BiggerPockets Podcast, you’ll meet Bill Lublin, a real estate expert who has invested in over 800 deals while also building the largest real estate agency in his state! You’ll learn how Bill got his start in real estate sales, why he was a terrible agent, and the one thing that changed everything. You’ll also hear how Bill has been able to do over 800 investment deals (from single family homes to multifamily to motels to development and more), his management philosophy, and why he thinks investors probably should NOT get their real estate license. In This Episode We Cover: Who Bill is How Bill got into real estate by accident Why work ethic is important Tips for employing hundreds of agents Why some agents don’t buy their own properties What you should know about a wraparound mortgage How he learned to do creative financing How many deals he has done so far (hint: 800 to 1,000) His favorite type of deal How to time your investing (despite the recession) The 4 big things that will give you value-add on a property Sage advice for investing for the long haul How his business and partnership works What the “elephant approach” is And SO much more! Links from the Show Podcast Movement BiggerPockets Webinar BiggerPockets Forums Books Mentioned in this Show The Book on No or Low Money Down by Brandon Turner List More, Sell More by Jerry Bresser The E-Myth Revisited by Michael E. Gerber Tweetable Topics: “You make a living by selling real estate.” (Tweet This!) “Anybody who has a periodic payment is paying somebody else’s mortgage.” (Tweet This!) “I haven’t met anybody who owned a property for 10 years who didn’t make money on it.” (Tweet This!) “You make a profit in the property when you buy it, not when you sell it.” (Tweet This!) “You don’t recognize a loss until you sell something.” (Tweet This!) “The hard part is not doing deals, but finding deals.” (Tweet This!) Connect with Bill Bill’s BiggerPockets Profile Bill’s Website Bill’s Company Website Bill’s Twitter Account Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Bigger Pockets podcast show. 184. Investing is investing, no matter what you do for a living. 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 Jorkin. Hopes to the Bigger Pockets podcast here with my co-host, Brandon Turner. What's going on, man? Guess who just had a birthday. This guy, right here. Did I get to see you at 4 a.m. on your birthday? You did. We saw each other for about eight seconds on my birthday.

Yeah, man. Because we were, you know, yeah, I was sleeping and you rolled over and got out of bed. Don't be creepy and talk about me in bed. That's pretty much what happened. No, me and Josh were in Chicago. and did a little podcast conference, and we learned a lot about podcasting and talked to other podcasters.

The podcast movement. It was good. Yeah. And anyway, we did not share a bed. We didn't share a bed, but we did do a session. We did do a session. Yeah, the session was title, Here's why your podcast is boring.

Yeah, it was a good session. It was fun. Eight people in there. They laughed, some people. It was more than eight people in there. It was good. It was good. We talked about podcasts.

And so, yeah, anyway, yeah, but Josh had to catch an airplane at like two in the morning because you're weird in the book early flights. And I slept in because of my birthday. Nice. Nice. Well, happy, happy belated birthday, Brandon. Thank you. And happy anniversary. Oh, thank you. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. Well, all right, man. Well, we've got a really cool show today. I'm, I've got, you know, this new energy coming off of that podcast conference. It was fun meeting. We got to meet some of our listeners. We got to meet tons of other podcasters. And that was, that was amazing. But today's shows is really cool. And let's just say that,

that this guy has got a little bit of experience. Yeah, man. Just a little, just a little. But before we get to his story, I'm going to cut you off right there. And go straight into today's quick tip. You almost forgot that one. No, I know what I'm doing here.

All right, good. Today's quick tip is, for those of you guys who are members of Bigger Pockets, you know that we offer keyword alerts on the community, on the forum. So if somebody's talking about your mortgage and you set up a keyword alert for mortgage, you're going to get notified, and then you could jump in and either read or get involved in the

conversation. We used to have limitations on our free tier and on our plus tier. We have now opened up our keyword alerts. So all users, all people with a account on bigger pockets can now have unlimited keyword alerts so you can set up as many keywords as you want. So do use those for things like, you know, your local area. If you're in Denver, set up a keyword alert for Denver, set up, you know, other local towns around Denver, set up, you know, you can do combination keyword alerts. You can do all sorts of fancy stuff. Check it out at biggerpockets.com slash alerts. Get your keyword alerts set up today. And especially if you're trying to grow a brand, build a business, things like that, it's a great opportunity to jump in and answer questions related to your niche and, you know, let you grow as an expert in our little world.

So that's today's not so quick, quick tip. Not so quick tip, not so quick tip. Do you 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 homes, 10% below market value in the best markets across the country without making real estate your 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 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. Have you ever lost a DSCR deal because the financing just took too long? Red flags popped up late. The lender needed more time. The deal fell apart. Well, our friends at Dominion Financial just launched a program to help prevent that. With their new express rental loan, you can close in 10 days or less. And they still offer their price beat guarantee.

So you can get great pricing and a timeline you can count on. Fast, simple, reliable. That's Dominion financial. Check them out at biggerpockets.com slash dominion. That's biggerpockets.com slash dominion. Here's the thing about traveling. If you buy food at the airport, a burrito, salad, bag of peanuts, you start wondering if you should have opened a savings account for snacks. So wouldn't it be great if you could actually earn money while you're traveling? Well, you can. Airbnb has something called the co-host network. While you're away, you can hire a vetted local co-host with hosting experience to help take care of things, communicating with guests, preparing your space, managing reservations, everything runs smoothly while you're off making memories.

Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at Airbnb.com slash host. And now, let's get to the show. You guys are going to love this show, especially because he's a little bit Let me see with this. Controversy. He's a little bit controversial in his. We asked him a question later on in the show and we said should real estate agents get, or investors get their license. We talked about that. And he has a very, very interesting take on that. I don't think we've ever heard before. Well, he says no. Yeah, he says no. And so if you want to know why, listen up. You do want to know why. That comes later in the show. Yes, yes, yes. All right, guys. Today's guest is Bill Lublin. Bill's been in the game for years and years and years. He works and does

lots of traveling and events and speaking on behalf of NAR, I believe. I hope I'm not misquoting it, but he's out there. He's a very well-known speaker in the real estate space. He's an active investor. He's done, I believe, over 800 deals. And he's got his own management company. He's got his own real estate brokerage company and obviously investment firm. So the guy knows what he's talking about. He's been doing this forever. And he's a really, he's a great guy. So let's bring him on. What's going on, Bill? Welcome to the show, man. Good to have you here. Thank you. It's so nice to see both of you guys with my left and right eye. Thank you. Thank you. It's good to have you.

Josh has been raving about how cool you are for quite some time. So, you know, I know nothing about you at all, deliberately. Be prepared and I'm disappointed. But you do know that Josh has really low standards. Yeah, he does have very low standards. All right. So today we're talking about real estate, obviously. And I hear you're an agent. Is that correct? No, I'm the CEO of the largest century 21 company in Pennsylvania, which sort of is like an agent except more. Oh, so you run a real estate agent business.

Yes, I run a real estate company and I employ agents who work with me and I own a property management company. I own a title company and I own a portfolio of real estate. Okay, so you've been around the block and you kind of get this real estate thing. I've been around the block so many times I'm dizzy. Okay, good. All right, so we're going to talk about that today. And you, like you said, you are also an investor. So we're going to go through your story a little bit. But why don't we just begin way at the beginning?

I mean, what made you initially get into the idea of real estate? Has that been your whole life? No, actually, I had no intention of being in real estate ever. I got into real estate by accident. My dad was a real estate agent who when I got out of college and was, I guess, essentially unemployed, got me a job at the place where he worked. And I was for, and I've said this on a number of other podcasts. So I feel like I'm almost proud of it. I was possibly the worst real estate agent that ever existed because I was just 21 years old. And I was far more interested in women with poor eyesight and bad judgment and staying up late at night than I was in the real estate business. Nice.

Nice. So you start working for your dad. You're a terrible agent, but he can't fire you because that would be a bad thing. No, no, no. Actually, I didn't work for him. I worked for, he worked for someone. Oh, okay. I am not an SOB.

I am not a son of a broker. My dad was a real estate agent who worked at another company and who convinced the guy that he worked for that he should employ me because my dad was a really good salesman. Got it. And he didn't realize that we would average out into an average salesman. My dad was really good. It was really horrible. Nice. All right.

So we take you guys, you're in the business. How did the path kind of continue? What happened next? At the end of my first year, the guy that I worked for, even though he respected my dad and my dad was his top guy, came to me and pretty much told me that I sucked and that he was going to have to what was called a draw in those days. It was an advance against commission. And I was sort of devastated because I was getting very little money and now I was going to get even less. And somebody came and recruited me because real estate brokers often recruit anybody with a pulse. And I decided I would use that as my new start. So I went to work for the guy, and I walked in the first day, and he said, you come in at nine in the morning, you work until nine at night, you do whatever this guy over here tells you, and we'll see how it works out. And I came in at nine in the morning, and I worked until nine at night or later. And I began to learn how to work with buyers. And then I learned how to ask for the order. And I learned about inventory. And at the end of the year, I was his top guy. Because I mean, this is really a business work ethic, more than anything else. I think. All right. Oh, sorry.

Sorry. Sorry. I don't want to interrupt you here. All right. So you go right. All right. So you started working these long, like 12 hour days for this guy, learning how work ethic matters.

Can you actually talk to that, talk about that just for a second? There's a lot of people listen to the show who are, I don't know, I don't want to say lack work ethic, but they lack work ethic, right? There's just a lot of our generation, my generation especially that lacks that. Like, how important is that in investing in being an agent? I mean, like, can you talk about that for a minute? So Woody Allen said that, what is it, 85% of life is just showing up. So work ethic is about showing up.

Now, I will tell you, having employed hundreds of agents, I would frankly rather have a hardworking guy than a very talented guy. And when I say guy, I mean man or woman or course, but somebody who's going to work hard, who's going to show up, who's going to do what you tell them, they're going to be successful. But real estate agents, for the most part, have a really poor idea. about how the real estate business works. You know, they think, for example, that having a higher commission rate means that you are more successful when the truth is that success in our business is really volume.

The more business you do, the greater the success you have. And then a higher commission split, of course, can follow with that. But we get agents that are new in the business. They've done a couple of transactions. They get recruited by a business model that is based on the number of bodies in the office. and there are several of them, and we don't have to name them because they're very proud of themselves

and they name themselves. But so what happens is because they've been recruited now, they come in and they want to get the kind of commission split that are really productive agent who's doing $5, 6, 9, 10, $12 million worth of business is getting

and they haven't earned it yet. So that's sort of the problem. People don't get, you know, we talk to agents in recruiting all the time, and we pride ourselves on being a leads rich environment, being a company of opportunities. And they say, well, if I come to work for you, I would have to sell more properties. And my answer is always the same. If you don't want to sell more properties, I really don't want to hire you.

Because I want people that want to sell as many properties as they can during their work time so that they can be as profitable as they can. So I think that's sort of a disconnect. And I don't think it's generational. I hate to take away the claim that your generation has more slot than any other generation. But I think it's just a matter of fact. People want quick and easy solutions. They figure, I mean, we roll back people when they come to work with us very frequently in their commission splits.

But then they end up taking home more money. So they're very happy at the end of the day. Right on. That's cool. No, I agree. I mean, I think young people, especially people like Brandon, who works. Good looking, talented, so infrequently. Sexy. Now, Brandon's one of the hardest working people I know, but no, it's something we see on bigger pockets with a lot of investors like, you know,

hey, how do I make money with doing the least amount of work possible? I know when I was an agent, it was the same thing. You know, how do I get away with doing the bare minimum? Four-hour work week doesn't really help that mindset. But, you know, the hardest working people I know are the most successful people I know. So, you know, I typically believe that there's... That's so coincidental. Oh, yeah. It's just by accident. That's the hardest work of people you know are the most successful. Yeah, weird. Exactly. So let's transition this a little bit. So you're in the business. You know, you've obviously, you understand the business from all angles. How did you get into real estate investing and why did you get into real estate investing?

I got into real estate investing because I believe that you make a living by selling real estate and you create wealth by buying real estate. I love that. Okay. Or you want another great saying? That's tweetable. It came from a broker that I worked for for years who said the biggest mistake that he ever made in real estate was in buying real estate was selling you.

He was a big believer of buying you and holding. And he became a very wealthy guy buying real estate and then he would sell it in a few years later it'd be worth even more and it was like oh my god if i had just kept that because now i've spent the money i got from selling you yeah so um so i like buying houses i i knew when i was younger that you know i had a son i was hoping to educate him so you know i began by buying a property that had a 15 year mortgage when he was i guess nine or 10 and knowing that in seven years i would pay off 30 percent of the debt and assuming a little bit of appreciation that I felt I could count on at that time, I figured that that house would be a year of college for him. Then I figured I'm being in

real estate and being self-employed, I'm really never going to get a pension from anyone. I really didn't believe when I was younger that I would get Social Security because I figured it would collapse under its own weight. I'm still not sure that's going to happen. So I figured buying houses and having mortgages that, and then having mortgages that would pay off over a period of time would give me income when I was older and I wanted to do stuff because to retire and have to stay home and count pennies sort of sucks. That's not a good retirement. Another tweetable quote right there. So here's my question. And we definitely want to get into your real estate and the types of deals

that you've done and things like that. But I was an agent, and the first thing that I asked when I became an agent to all the other agents is, why aren't you guys buying property yourself? It was the first thing. And everybody was like, I don't know. And, you know, I didn't know anything back then. And I was a terrible agent, probably as bad as you were in the early days. But I just, I never got it.

And to this day, I still don't get it. You know, we've got tons of great people in our commute. who are agents that are investing, but the large majority of agents that I go to that I meet at conferences and just meet, you know, in my day-to-day, they're like, I don't know, I don't get it.

I don't, you know, it's something they can't even see. They don't imagine themselves even being able to do it. I think either they're risk averse, you know, they're just scared because that we see all, look, we really do see all the horror stories. You know, people to buy things, they get over their heads,

The place needs work. It's a terrible tenant. Look, you know, I just don't want that stress. Look, I have a partner of mine, someone in my real estate company, who years ago, I'm going to say 20 some years ago, began buying real estate. And her husband was a teacher. And they had, I got a call from her once. I forget where I was.

Your tenant just stabbed my tenant. You know, two houses on the same block. Whoops. Now, I don't know what happened between the two tenants, but they had some. kind of fight. It was a low-income area. Sure. You know, and it was too much drama for her husband who said, look, you got to get out of this. I don't want to get those calls. I don't want to worry about the property. I don't want to have to re-rent it. There's a certain amount of, you know, investing in real estate

for most people. They don't look at it as work. But it is, I mean, there's unlike buying a CD, there's actual work involved. Yeah, right. You know, the place gets empty. You got to fix it up. you got to re-rent it. The reason I tell people never to rent a place that they've lived in is I believe they take it personally when a tenant doesn't keep the property well. And then you have additional emotional stress. For me, it was always a business. If I buy a piece of real estate and it becomes empty, if there's a fire, if there's a

problem, if there's a repair, I just have to do it. But I never, when I started investing, I never anticipated. taking cash flow. I was already making a living. I just wanted the properties to build equity because it was an easier way for me to build some kind of wealth. I'm not a great saver. You know, if I make a bunch of money, I can put a chunk in the bank, but I'm not a good program, $10 a week kind of guy. It just takes too long for me to get anywhere. So I think the risk adverse, the fact that they don't want to take the emotional stress. Many agents, I don't think, have enough cash left over at the end of the day to begin investing, you know, there are a lot of

people who live to the limit of their income. Yeah. And, you know, and who live from larger paycheck to paycheck. I was always a warrior, so I always sort of under, undershot, didn't undershoot my income. The things that were important, you know, my kid went to a private school, he went to a private university, he came out with no educational debt. That was what was important to me. Sure. But I had guys that I worked with who made less money than I did who drove fancier cars and lived in a bigger house. I mean, that's cool. Everybody chooses to spend their money the way they want. And even for me, I mean, when I started investing, I really invested with, I didn't have a lot of cash.

I've just tried to be created. Right on. Right on. And I'd love to talk about that. But before I do, I've got a really serious question. Are you peeing while we're on the podcast? I'm going to hear that. So I have a waterfall.

in my own. Oh, a water feature. And it is a very soothing, calming sound, which is not at all like a running toilet or a creek coming off the side, but it's very calming when people come in for stressful conversations. And I don't notice it after a while, but I'm pleased that you guys did. And it was a gift when I rehab this building. Oh, nice, nice. All right, so that's great. I mean, everything you said makes a lot of sense. Let's talk about your first deal. What was the first deal that you got into? Investing deal. The first deal I had was an assumption on a VA property. We actually created a little bit of a wraparound on it. You're familiar with the wraparound as a vehicle, I'm sure. Let's explain it for the listeners who may not know. So there was a debt of, I'm going to use small numbers,

but there was a debt of, say, 20,000. I was buying the property for, say, 25,000. And I created a $25,000 instrument of debt, a portion of which went to pay off the $20,000 mortgage and a portion of which went to pay off the $5,000 in equity to the sellers. But the secret there was that I had two owners that didn't want to be owners anymore. So it was easier for me to structure a transaction because they weren't worried about how much they were taking.

out, they weren't worried about whether they got a lump of cash. They just didn't want to own that property anymore. So there was that. I was big on trying to find assumable loans back at that time. So VAs and FHAs at the time were assumable. And today they're generally not, right? I mean, I think VA might still have some kind of assumption thing. VA is still the problem with the VA is if you assume the loan, the portion of the veterans

eligibility that guarantees that loan stays there until the loan is paid off. So you really have to explain that to the vet because it would be if they're planning on going out and using their VA for something else, this sort of stuff. And that would be unfair to do without letting them know. And really quickly, can you just explain how an assumption works for those people again who may not know? Sure. An assumption is when really you're assuming the debt of the seller and you're making the payments on their behalf. Now, there are times when people do that without notifying the mortgage company because there's generally an alienation clause in the mortgage, which says if the original borrower is alienated or separated from the property, the loan becomes due.

And we oftentimes call that subject to a lot of people in bigger pockets call it subject to. Well, that's a subject to rather than assumption. The assumption is actually a transfer of the debt to you, generally not releasing the first borrower. But, And yeah, I don't typically see assumptions anymore. I know those are the thing. Like if you read old real estate books, you know, from the 80s or whatever. Yeah, we rarely hear about it. Yeah, you hear them all the time.

But, yeah, banks started getting wise and saying, wait a second, if all those people are just assuming this new loan, I don't know who the new borrower is. I don't know if they're going to pay me on time. I don't know anything about them. Hey, Brandon, can you be polite to our guests? I mean, calling them old. It's not cool. Not cool. Sorry, Bill, I apologize for my co-host.

I'm fine with it. I have no problem with that. You know what they say? The alternative is much worse. So I'm all good. Look, I'm leaving here when I'm done talking to you guys to go to Las Vegas. And then flying back tomorrow night. So age notwithstanding, it's not slowing me down at all.

Well, don't worry, you get out of the senior benefits when you fly, so you're good. There you go. I get upgraded. I fly a lot. Oh, there you go. And free waffles up the casino or something. Absolutely. That's all that.

Dinner at three. Yeah, it sounds good. you guys are much safer doing this over online than you would be if we were face-to-face. But I like it. All right. So you're doing all these creative things. Did you just learn that on your own? Or was that something that you picked up from, you know, the other real estate brokers or agents that you worked with?

Well, Josh, clearly he read the book on Invest in Real Estate with No and Low Money by Brad and Turner. Clearly he read that. And he probably got it from BiggerPockets.com slash no money. Right now. At that time, we were actually reading parchments. Okay, okay. It wasn't so much books. They were more of these scroll kind of thing.

I mean, basically, I was just, I was looking for opportunities. You know, I've always been, I'm a very big believer in your price, my terms, my price, your terms. So if I didn't have cash, then I needed to be able to give price so that I could get terms that worked for me. Yeah. You know, as I became, as I became wealthier and I had the cash, then I could give. go in and, you know, make a lower, buy it for less because I'm giving the other person great terms. Hey, you know, I'll buy a cash. I don't care if you clean it out. If you want to leave this stuff here for a month, if you want to settle it in 30 days, I can do that. If you want to settle it in 30 months,

I can do that too. I'm not going anywhere. So you were willing to pay more for a property in order to get the terms that you wanted so that you can actually get your hands on the property. Sure. And remember, my strategy at that point was to buy the property and have the rent pay off the debt. Yeah. Look, I believe that everybody who in the United States who has a periodic payment for housing is paying somebody's mortgage. Yep. They may be paying their own. They may be paying the landlords. So I wanted to get, I wanted to borrow money and then have somebody else pay it back for me. Yeah. I thought that was like the best thing ever. So that was how initially I began buying.

And I created a small portfolio. And then, you know, I mean, of course, you want to buy the store that you're operating your business out of. You know, you want to own your primary home at some point. It's a nice to own a vacation home. So. And then you can parlay those things over time if that's not your eating money. You know what I mean? And I always made a living as a real estate agent and then broker.

So, I mean, we, you know, we always had a nice lifestyle, but in the background, the real estate's being paid off and we're building equity. That's cool. I'm a big believer in, you know, whether or not somebody becomes an agent or not. I love the idea of separating the investment side from the business side, right? You need to make money to eat. You need to make money to pay your bills. And an agent, being an agent is an incredible way to do that because you also get all the, you know, first dibs on deals as they come on the market. You get all the cool tools.

You don't have to have your agent show it. But, like, you mean, you could also do, you know, if you love teaching high school, math, go teach high school math if that's what you love to do. But, you know, think about the investing as well. You don't want to do this forever. You don't want to be, you know, 95 and still teaching high school math probably. No, I agree, especially because they've changed it to this core math, which becomes far more confusing. But no, no, I think, look, I think investing is investing, no matter what you do for a living. I had a guy that worked for me once as an agent, and he was a day trader in stocks. That's always very confusing for me. You know, some guy has an affair with

his girlfriend with his secretary in Albany and I lose money in Philadelphia. I don't like that. Houses make sense to me. People need to eat. They need a place to live. They need clothing. So those things are our core. So if you own a home and you maintain it and you buy it with the right principles, you know, the right price, you know, you're not buying it for stupid reasons because somebody else paid a lot of money for it. Like I'm okay not buying a property if it's more money than I think it's worth at this point. You know, in the beginning, I'm just trying to get in the game. Once you're in the game, it becomes easier.

And then as you accumulate some assets, buying property without taking money out of your pocket becomes much easier. Yeah. Because banks love lending money to people that don't need it. Yep. Yes. So how many deals have you done so far as an investor, approximately? As the eyes go back in his head?

Well, no, I mean, so. approximately. Yeah. Buying and flipping, buying and holding, ground, developing, building, all of it. Sure. Yeah. Between 800 and 1,000 transactions.

Not that impressive. Hey, Brandon, why do we even bring us? And they're small because we have low average sale prices. Okay, so eight, that's a lot. That's pretty impressive. I mean, this is, you know, you've been doing this for like, you know, 80 years, so I get it.

I'm actually only 35, but I got to... Life has been rough on Bill, everybody. So, 800 transactions. I mean, that's not inconsequential by any means. So I guess what I, you know, I think we could talk for hours and hours, and unfortunately, I know you don't have a ton of time today. Maybe we can get you on and dig in a little bit deeper. What's been your favorite type of deal?

My favorite type of deal, the one where I pay a little for something and sell it for a lot. I like them a lot. That's fun. Way to be specific. Right. Well, no, no. So a lot of my portfolio, the stuff that I own where I started was buying single-family homes and renting them. I find single-family, you know, a three-bedroom home.

It's easy to rent. In our marketplace, generally, you can have a positive cash flow with a reasonable deal. I like value-added stuff. But those are good because you can accumulate them. But I've done like a lot of things. You know, I've walked around and had, you know, been the managing partner to get somebody to go out and build it. One of my favorite things was we bought a motel at the Jersey Shore and it was a really nice size one. And within 30 days, we traded the big motel that we had bought for two smaller motels and a small bucket of cash.

Actually, it was a moderate size bucket of cash. Nice. So I like that one a whole lot. because we were going to knock down the one motel and build on it. And we ended up with two building sites and with a bunch of additional cash. And we got all our money out and it was 30 days. So that was a really, but that's serendipitous. That's not.

I'm a big believer of grinding out singles, you know, and hoping for the occasional double. I'm not always shooting for the home run. Yeah. Yeah. And that's work for me. Talk about the motels for a second. I don't think that we've actually spoken to anyone on the show before about motels. So I don't know if you just had that one.

No, because you ended up trading for those two smaller motels. Did you guys hold on for a while? And what was running a motel? The strategy at the time was to buy motels, knock them down and build townhouses or condominiums because it was 2003, 4, and 5. So they were really strong. And of course, the problem is when, you know, the Jersey Shurts, is a secondary market. It's a resort market. So it's a resort market specifically for the South Jersey

shore, specifically for Philadelphia, just as the North Jersey Shore, Asbury Park, and North would be a resort area for New York. York, yeah. So the problem is when the market goes south, vacation homes are the first thing people don't care about anymore. When the market's really hot, everybody wants a vacation home. You know, but it's not something unique. So the conservative part me as an investor loves owning stuff that people need. Yeah. Like I, I, I, I, the three bedroom, bath and a half, three bedroom two bath, row or semi-detached home, a row home is a townhouse, but it's cheaper.

Yeah. But we had them, we had them 120 years ago. They don't really have a Mount West except in San Francisco, right? Right, right. So, but, but because we had textile workers and that was inexpensive housing that was built for them, you have a really big base of them. And they're really, they're really, they're really a. They're easy to rent.

There's only two exposed walls. They're not expensive to heat. And they generally will provide a rental that is higher than the cost of financing. So I like them. I like them a lot. That's, you know, even within investing, I think you want to have your core that's, that's generating your base. And then you can try for the things where you might make a couple of bucks, you know, that become income.

I like a value. A friend of mine just brought a two family that I, I helped her with. It was an estate. The two units will rent for about $9.50,000 a piece. The acquisition and renovation cost, they'll be in under $200. Yeah. So it's about a one percent deal. Yeah. So that's a nice deal all day long. And if she wanted to, she could sell it and take a profit. But because she rehabbed it so well, it's much smarter for her to hold it longer. Yep. Yep. So you talk about value ad. You know, can you, can you dive in just for a second on that?

You know, what type of value ads do you find, wow, what a stupid question, add the most value. But, you know, I love smelly houses. Yeah. You know, smelly houses to me mean money. Yep. Because they'll turn off the average consumer. Yep, I love it.

So, you know, to me, I guess the four big things that will give you value add are paint, flooring, kitchen, and bed. And if you, if you can do that so that it's visually, impactful and financially responsible, I think it's a, you're going to make a profit every time. Yeah. 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.

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That's Indeed.com slash rookie. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring Indeed is all you need. Okay. Okay. Cool. So let's dig in a little bit more on timing. And since you've been around for a little bit, the real estate crash.

And, you know, what was that, 2008? How did that affect? Well, you know, the most recent one. Most of our listeners aren't quite, you know, using canes and wheelchairs to get around as a result of. They're 12 and under. I guess. So, okay, so let's talk about this. You can talk about the previous one, too.

I don't know if we will get it. What I'm going to say to you is that I've never met anybody who owned a property for 10 years who didn't make money on it. The second thing I'm going to tell you is that you make the profit on a property when you buy it, not when you sell it. Yep. Yeah. That's deep and that's tweetable. Yeah. True.

Both. You know, but I think that's really true. I mean, we didn't, through the recession, we had more vacancies than we might have had. had some additional expenses. We had some investment pieces that were ground or for building that just weren't going anywhere that needed to be carried by the portfolio. But the bread and butter stuff, that three-bedroom row home, people got to live there all day long. They got to live there in a recession. They got to live there when times you're good. And if you've bought them well and you need to take cash out, you can always resell them. But even in a recession, you don't recognize

a loss until you sell something. Yep. So I have a place in L.A. When I bought it, the market was very strong. And I actually spoke to a friend of mine who had a large company out in California. And I said, I'm thinking about buying something in L.A. Because my son lives out there. What do you think? He said, look, if you don't mind the ride down, it won't be a problem. Yeah.

So let's say that I bought the property at $600,000, that when the market tanked, it went down to $450,000. and my neighbor literally across the hall from me sold recently for 810. So did I have a loss? No. Never. You know, and the truth is even now, it's for me to use. I don't want to sell it. So I'm not even going to recognize a profit.

But when I bought it, I bought something that was in a solid location, wasn't far from LAX. It was a newer development. There was a section of the development that was going to be built that was tied up with environmental issues that since has become a new campus for Google, YouTube, and it's, they're calling it Silicon Beach. So all of a sudden, the condo that I bought, and I guess it's nine years now, the condo that I bought nine years ago, I guess seven years ago would have been a loss had I sold it. Now I'm brilliant. So the way to become smart in real estate investing is to buy something you're whole. Yep.

Because the longer you have it, the smarter you are. Agreed. Agreed. Well, so who runs your business? I mean, you've done 800 transactions. You're running, well, you're running this real estate brokerage. Is there someone over my shoulder that I can't see? I mean, is it just you?

Look at this guy. All sorts of jokes. All sorts of jokes. Is it just you? Do you have partners? How's your business structured? Well, so my, so now we're talking about my, which business This is your investing business. Okay.

So in my investing, I have a single real estate partner whom I have been buying and selling with for, I guess, 15, 16, 17 years. And we are partners in everything. And over the years, we've had a number of other people who have partnered with us on individual projects or that sort of thing. I own a property management company, so that manages our units as well as managing units for third parties. Got it. But that's who runs the business.

The inmates are running the asylum. There you go. Nice. And are you really quickly, I know Brandon, I know we need to move on, but are you active, are you the active manager of the management company as well? I mean, you've got a lot of entities going on. So are you running all those businesses or do you have other people kind of running them for you? So when you're the boss or the owner, you're always the guy that solves the problems.

I don't know if that answered your question. But if there's a problem in my real estate business, you solve it. And it escalates up to me, I'm the guy that's got to solve. You're not taking phone calls from tenants. You're not taking toilet phone calls of my toilet's not running. Yeah, no, no, no, those phone calls, I don't care. But I do take the phone call when there's a fire in your building. You know, when one of the buildings is caught on fire, then I'm going to be involved because we're going to have to decide how we're handling the claim.

We're going to have to decide what we're doing with lost rent insurance. We have to decide what we're doing with the tenant. We manage about 550 units. And I have one, two, three clerical people that handle the intake of repairs and stuff. We use a cloud-based piece of software. And then I have a full-time leasing agent who's one of my real estate people. whose primary job is to keep our stuff occupied. Gotcha.

Okay. Let me ask my final question before we move to the next part of the show here. And that is you're talking, we've got probably 80, 100 plus thousand people listening to this thing. What would you tell the new investor who comes and hears you and says, well, you know, that's great. This guy's done 800 deals. He's been there forever. You know, how do I get going? How do I start to do this on the side while doing something else?

what approach should I take? What would you tell that guy? You take the elephant approach. Thank you. That was great. All right, moving on. No problem. I could let it could turn up.

See you guys later. It's going to clarify. It's the old joke about how to eat an elephant, one bite at a time. So if you want to get started buying an investment, the first thing you have to do is understand what your goals are. in buying the investment. You know, is it income? Is it equity building? You know, I mean, there are all kinds of different,

there are all kinds of different deals. And you guys know that, we could talk about that for hours. But then you have to go and you have to do the hard work. You have to sift through all of the chaff to find that good deal. And you have to recognize the good deal. And then you have to do your gazintas, which Josh, Josh now knows what that is,

because we did a tech edge together in Boulder, Colorado. So the gazintas are like two gazintas are four, four gazintas. You do your gazintas. You figure out the numbers. And if the numbers work, you make an offer. And if they say no, you move on and you sift through more chat, and you look for another deal. You know, it's really, the hard part is not doing deals.

The hard part is finding deals. I get driven crazy by these guys that go out and do seminars and get the people who are paying them for their books or audio downloads or however they're selling them these days, and then let them be bird dogs. If you go out and find the transaction and send the transaction back to me within 72 hours, we'll run the numbers and we'll let you know

and we'll put the money up and blah, blah, blah, blah, and you'll get 10%. I would love to have people going out finding me deals and I'll give them 10%. You know? And then these poor guys go out and they call realtors with these scripts that are so annoying that when I hear them, And the first question is like, did you go to a seminar recently? Yeah.

You know? Or do you just need to change your dealer? Because there's something here that doesn't smell right. And that's finding the deal. It's just going out and looking for the deal, finding the deal, knowing what your strengths are and what your weaknesses are, and being clear about it. Because I run into a lot of early investors that they know that buying real estate is sort of a good idea and that people that have money have real estate and people that have real estate and people that have real estate have money. but they're not quite sure how it all works. Yep.

You know? Yeah. Cool. Makes sense. All right. My last question before we go to the fire round is how many hours we wait do you typically work? Like with all real estate combined, how many hours you think you work? Oh, seven, eight hundred hours a week.

I'm sure. I don't know. You know, there's a call leisure that has come into the world. So I travel a lot, but I, you know, I carry multiple screens with me. I do email. My phone works everywhere in the world, everywhere that I've been in the world, and I've been a bunch of places.

So everywhere that I've taken it, it's worked so far. So I work remotely. I don't know. I never counted it. I just want to do what has to be done. I like making a lot of money because then I can have a nice house. I can drive a nice car. I can travel to exotic places.

and I can talk to you guys. Yeah. You know? That is a requirement to talk to us. We have an income level. Listen, I actually said to someone last week, and I believe this, I'm really not all about money. If I had a Willy Wonka ticket that allowed me to do anything I wanted, any time I wanted, without worrying about it, I'd be fine not to have money. Yeah.

Yeah. But the truth is, the things that I like to do cost money. Yep. So I don't count the hours. to do to get it done. There you go. It's cool. I love it.

All right. Well, hey, let's shift gears and head over to the fire round. It's time for the fire round. All right, let's get to the fire round. These are short, quick, fire them at you, fire him back at me sort of answers. You ready for this? Number one. Sure.

They're actually not very short questions today, but number one. Is it a bad idea to buy a multifamily property close to a university? Am I just going to get party animals? Depends. You can expand a little more. You said you're in a short answer. He follows instructions. That's a silly question.

If you buy a multifamily for a university and you run it properly, no, you shouldn't get party animals because you should screen your tenants better. I like it. There you go. Perfect answer. All right. Number two. Yeah.

But I love this question. I'm going to get my real estate license. I'm wondering what the least expensive way to hang my license is. I believe it's a law that you have to. hang it somewhere, but the purpose of getting my license is for access to the MLS for finding properties, comps, and saving money on realtor fees when flipping. So it's an investor. They want to go get their license and they want to know. So the cheapest way to hang your license is with duct tape. If you want to be an investor, be an investor. If you want to be a real estate agent,

be a real estate agent. Pick one. Oh, that's good advice. That's interesting. A lot of people say I think, I mean, if you can be a real estate agent and be good at it and then go out and invest, not a problem. If you're an investor who comes in that thinks that being a real estate agent is some sort of magic switch to make you a better investor, it's not. And actually, I would advise you not to get your license. Just be an investor because real estate licensees have greater liability, higher risk, and have to make far more disclosures than the regular investor. Great information. Cool. All right, number three. My name is Darren. I'm age 21 from Ohio. I'm highly interested to get in my first property, which is a 10 unit, and I'm nervous as hell. I don't really care,

though, because I'm trying to do big things in life, but I have no money. And I'm, yeah, I'm had no money, and I need something to call my nerves. What advice would you give me? Okay, so to begin with Darren, who's 21 in Ohio, I have no desire to date you. So I don't know why you started with all of that. You want to buy it. Is there a like a real 10 unit where he has it sounds like he's got one there somewhere it sounds like it's in Detroit it's in Ohio right we have it's Ohio it's probably Cleveland or something

oh no it says Ohio whoops but 130 000 for 10 unit is this is he wrote 130 for 10 unit in in my world and there are parts of there are parts of Ohio that are very very well not depressed but they're really cheap yeah so if it's a low income 10 unit I would see

just at 21 that you be a little careful and mindful about, again, the screening of tenants and the cost of repairs and whether you'll have the money to keep the property in a good enough condition to attract a higher quality tenant there. Because handling 10 units, in my world, if it was 10 units at 130, there'd be something wrong. And we're in a cheap market. We're in an inexpensive market and fill. Yeah. Yeah. So I need to know more about that, but I would just, I would be careful and make sure of my resources before I went into the job. And I think that's one of the biggest mistakes people do is they, you know, they think they can get in. They don't consider all the CAP-X, all the things that are going to hit them down the line. And they're like,

oh, wait, I'm out of business six months later. Right. Right. All right. Last question. I'm new to the real estate community and don't have much experience or friendships in the business. I work hard, mostly six days a week, and 12 to 14 hour days. And I would rather work that hard for myself. Is there any advice or tip? You all with much more experience and expertise than I would offer to me, starting with a little bit of money, seems impossible. Though I do have a fairly decent credit score. Any advice you have would be helpful.

Well, I'm not sure if this guy's trying to find friends or investments. I mean, I'm a little confused there. I would suggest that he might want to network a little bit to get a clue, but was the question, how could he invite? I think he's just advice. He's the same general advice. Yeah. Yeah, I think that he should, if he's working 16 hours a day, he needs to work a little bit more efficiently. Or he's got to go out and meet some people that are around during the other, the remaining eight hours, because you should have a life.

I'm just saying, I think you want to make a living, but you should also have a life, get a girlfriend. the boyfriend, you know, get another of some sort, get a dog. Well, maybe not. 16 hours in time for the dog to stay home alone. Yeah, poor dog. All right. All right.

All right, good deal. Well, moving on to the very last segment of the show, which we love in the call our... Famous Four. All right, the Famous Four, these questions are asked every week of every guest. And so it's kind of fun to see what different people say. Sometimes they say the same.

Sometimes others. So we're going to throw them at you. Number one. I'd like to give you the Famous Four answers, which are yes, no, sometimes. All right. We'll see how that lines up. Number one, your favorite real estate book. Yes. I don't know that book. Favorite real estate book? Yeah, real estate book. My favorite real estate book was actually, is actually out of print. Okay. It was for, it was for real estate agents and it was called Listmore, Sell More, by a guy named Jerry Bressor. And it made me a listing person when I was just after I had just worked with buyers.

Okay. It caught me all the scripts, everything I need. Cool. Never heard that one. All right. Favorite business book? My favorite business book. I like the E-Mit. I like that too.

Which has been rewritten a couple of times. It was a mid-70s thing. But it does separate the difference between being an entrepreneur and being good at your job and why sometimes you shouldn't go out and open a business. Yeah. Yeah. Love that book. All right.

You talk about having fun, spending time on. on good things and joy. So what do you do for fun? What do I do for fun? Yeah. I know I'm not hitting on you. So I just came back from two weeks in Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Slovakia.

I am headed next week to Marin County to do a Tech Edge event on Tuesday, and I will fly from there to San Diego Comic Con, where I will spend four days nerding out. I get to dress up. Excuse me? Are you going to dress up? Are you going to Spider-Man? I take pictures of people that dress up.

But I hang out with people that write comics and movies and TV shows and we watch the people that dress up to imitate the things that they create, which is really a lot of fun. Yeah, sure, yeah. Sounds cool. So you're a comic nerd and you travel. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm a comic nerd. I travel.

I'm a foodie. I love movies. I'm a big fan. Best movie of all time. What was the best movie of all time? Best movie of all time. Yeah. Nah, I can't do it.

There is no one best movie. Favorite comic. You'd have to break it into genres. You know, I'm a big fan of, I'm a big fan of Superman and the Lone Ranger. Not just as comics, but I was like a black and white thing, wasn't it? Excuse me? Nothing. I'll pass my question.

Okay. No, I like them because they were old school. values. They were good guys helping, they were strong helping the week, they were doing the right thing and they were doing things to make the community better. So I like that. I'm very distressed about the country right now just because everybody's so busy being part of an individual tribe. They're forgetting that we have this larger tribe that accepted all of our disparate and running ancestors at one time and allowed us to be sitting here and doing this. So, but so I like Superman and the Lone Ranger.

Old school, but a lot of fun. So Superman versus Batman, not so great. Yeah. All right. Last question of the day. Number four. What do you believe sets apart successful investors or agents, we'll say, from those who give up, fail, or just never seem to get traction, they never get started?

Work ethic and persistence. Okay. It's that simple. Show up, do it. The reason I am where I am today and guys that started with me are not is because I just kept doing it every day, whether it was hard, whether it was easy. If things were going great or things were going bad, it's what I needed to do because I wanted to build something over a period of time. And it's worked very well for me. I have a life that I'm sometimes jealous of.

It's so good. That's awesome. That's awesome. All right, Bill, before we let you go, where can people find out more about you? Where can they link up with you? They could go to Bill Loveland.com. They can find me on Twitter at Bill Loveland. They can go to C-21AG.commer.

Dot net, which is my real estate company. I'm actually fairly ubiquitous electronically. So you could Google me like my friend Todd Carpenter says I'm kind of a big deal. There you go. Good guy, that Todd Carpenter. He's awesome. I love it. I love it.

All right, Bill. Well, thank you so much. I wish we had more time to dig in deeper on a lot of the things that we wanted to dig in on. But maybe we'll have you back down the line. Thanks again, and we'll see you around. Thanks for having me. It was a pleasure, guys. All right, everybody.

That was Bill Lublin. Big thanks to Bill. Obviously, he can crack jokes with the best of them and knock out real estate deals with the best of them too. That he can. Yeah, he's serious. That was fun asking him, how many of you done? He really had to sit there and go wait. Yeah.

Let's add them all up kind of. At least 800, maybe a thousand, maybe more. I knew he did a lot of deals. I didn't realize it was that high. And that's very impressive. Yeah, that's very impressive. Now, what do you think about his advice about not getting your license if you're an investor? Oh, man.

Put me up a spot. Yeah, it was a little bit controversial. Yeah, a little controversial. You know, I get it. And I think his points were certainly valid. I mean, there absolutely are additional responsibilities that come the real estate license. There's additional liability. There's all sorts of other stuff that can affect you. And I'm glad he mentioned it because I don't think we've ever actually really talked

about that. So, you know, heed that advice and make a decision. You know, if you're willing to put up with some of those things that come with it in order to get the value that comes with a license, you know, quicker, easier access to the MLS, the ability to go look at deals on your own. Go for it. Obviously, you make your own decision. But that's what I would say. Yeah. I don't have my license. I know you used to have yours. I've never had mine. Yeah. Because I want to, I mean, I mean, there's a lot of reasons why, but I want to be the best investor I can be.

I don't want to try to become an agent and an investor, though it would be really nice to have those tools. And I likely will get my license at some point. But yeah, anyway, cool show. Or, I mean, or as an alternative at some point, you'll have a licensed agent as part of your team. Yes, and that might work just as well. I mean, I have a full-time assistant who works for our real estate company. Why not make her get her license or encourage her to get hers? and then I can get the same benefit of not having to take that class.

There you go. See? How about them apples? Interesting. All right. Well, anyway, let's get out of here. I would love to go to Comic-Con and watch Bill, like, you know, throw on his Spider-Man or Lerange or Lerang. I was hoping.

Yeah, I was hoping he was going to say he dropped out. Too bad. That'd be awesome. Yeah. All right. That'd be cool. Well, let's get out of here. Guys, thank you so much for listening to the show.

This is show 184 on the Bigger Pockets podcast. Please check out the show 184.com. slash show 184. Also, we do ask that you please jump on iTunes, on Google Play, on Stitcher, on SoundCloud, subscribe to the show. Make sure to follow us, subscribe, leave us ratings and reviews, leave us feedback. We love that feedback, even the occasional negative feedback, which we happen to share at the podcast conference that was quite entertaining, wasn't it? It was. It was entertaining. We had three one-star reviews, and they don't like us because we're, what was the word? We're, One was rap boys. One was childish. And the last one was because I shared a single tweet with a political view. And he was not happy. So fascinating stuff. Fascinating, fascinating.

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