BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast - 200: A Step-by-Step Guide to Buying Your First Real Estate Investment

Episode Date: November 10, 2016

Welcome to the BiggerPockets Podcast show 200! We wanted to create a show that we could point people to in the future as an ultimate resource for building their real estate investment business. If you are new, this will give you a step-by-step plan. If you are experienced, it will help you systematize your business better and pick up new ideas to streamline how you buy properties. These tips were obtained from the community in a recent Forum thread Josh started. In This Episode We Cover: Commit Gain Knowledge Get Your Life in Order Decide on What You Want With Your life Decide What Niche/Strategy is Going to Get You There Set Your Goal(s) Choose Your Farm Location Figure Out Your Financing Get Your Core Team Together Start Looking for Deals Estimate Rehab Budget Run the Numbers Review Your Numbers With Someone Make the Offer Negotiate and Get It Under Contract Manage the Due Diligence Process Keep Yourself Organized Buy the Property Manage the Property or Rehab Stick Close to BiggerPockets for Every Step of This process Connect with Brandon and Josh Josh’s BiggerPockets Profile Brandon’s BiggerPockets Profile Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Bigger Pockets podcast show. 200. You're listening to Bigger Pockets Radio, simplifying real estate for investors large and small. If you're here looking to learn about real estate investing, without all the hype, you're in the right place. Stay tuned and be sure to join the millions of others who have benefited from BiggerPockets.com. Your home for real estate investing online. What's going on, everybody? This is Josh Dork and host to the Bigger Pockets podcast here with my co-host, Mr. Brandon Turner,

here for the epic show 200. What's going on, man? This is going to be epic, isn't it? How are you doing? Oh, my God. How the hell are we still here? I don't know. 200 episodes is pretty significant.

There's not a lot of shows out there that got 200. Yeah, they haven't thrown us off the air yet. They have not thrown us out the air. That's good. We'll have to keep paying the money and they'll keep us on. Yes, yes, yes, yes. I'm good, man. I'm pumped. I'm pumped for show 200. This is great. I mean, we're almost four years now. It's been a real journey. It has been a journey, and I have been happy to walk it with you, and I'm looking forward to the next 200. Oh, that's really kind of you. You have a sweet thing to say?

I, you know, I don't know if I would use the exact same words, but, you know, it's been a fun adventure, Brandon. And I, and I, and I, I, certainly look forward to the next 200 as well. No, man, you're great. This is this is awesome. It's been a lot of fun. And I don't know, I think what's so cool about this show is that we are changing people's lives. There's not many people who can say that, you know, professionally, their job is to help transform people's lives for the better. That's pretty unique and pretty amazing. And I'm so proud to have the honor to do that. And I know you are too. very much so. So thank you everybody who's listening right now, who's listened to all of our show, some of our shows, or maybe today's your first show. Thank you guys for making this possible.

It's awesome. Yeah, we appreciate it. We appreciate it. We have a really extra special show for you guys today. We wanted to create a show that could point people towards the future, really as this ultimate resource for building their real estate investment business, something that is kind of the beginner's guide, true beginner's guide to not just the concepts of real estate, but really what concrete steps do you actually need to take in order to build a successful real estate business? So if you knew this is going to give you a step-by-step plan, if your experience, it will help you systematize your business better, hopefully pick up some ideas on how to streamline the way that you buy properties. And I think what's the coolest thing about this show is...

It's not me? No, I mean, everything here is from the community. Yep. Yeah, so what we actually did is we went, Josh, started a forum post a while back and just asked, what are the most important things to know when you're trying to build your business? And we took, I mean, there was like a hundred some comments in there. We took that and we broke it all up and divided into 20 actual, like, actionable steps that we're going to actually walk through and give quotes, give shoutouts to people from the bigger pockets community. So who knows, if you were in that thread, you might be a, we might give you a shout out today. And, you know, whether you were there or not, either way, this is going to help you.

And yeah, I'm excited. Some really good advice in here. For sure, for sure. Well, before we get into it, let's get some of that housekeeping done. and we'll get to it. So why don't we bring on today's quick tip? All right. Today's quick tip, actually, is related to this episode.

We're going to cover a lot of stuff, guys. This is probably going to be a little bit longer episode. And as such, you're going to hear a lot of things, a lot of links to places you can go check out. Obviously, a lot of you guys are driving to your car. So my quick tip today is head to biggerpockets.com. So show 200. And we're going to have a PDF there that you can download

that's going to give you a summary of everything we're talking about today. So again, biggerpockets.com slash show 200. and they're on the show notes page, you can download a PDF with all this good tips and advice and print it out, hang it on your wall, and kind of follow this journey. Nice. They can put it on the wall next to their photo of you, Brandon?

Yes, they could. Do you know in high school I actually had a four-foot tall photo? I was in a play in high school theater, and I was like the guy on the mantle. Anyway, they took like a four-foot portrait of me and I carried around for a few years in college. I gave it to put it in the girls' dorm room and all that. That was great.

Nice, nice. Yeah, that's creepy. I lost it somewhere. Somewhere it's around. Somebody has it. That's the creepier thing. Somebody has that in their house right now. I don't know who. Yeah, like Team Beat magazine you're up on the wall.

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So, Brandon, what would that first step be? All right. So this is something that I talk about on the Bigger Pockets Web. almost every single week. If you want to sign up, BiggerPockets.com slash webinar, come to the next one, you'll hear me harp on this. But the very first step, I believe, before anything, and a lot of the communities said the same thing, is commitment. So, like, the idea of, I know it's not like a tangible step, and we're going to get a lot of tangible things, but I think this is probably the most important because, I mean, there are so many people out there who, like, want to invest in real estate. And they're like, oh, I think it'd be great.

But, like, they never actually do it. One of the guys in community, Tim Puffer said, An individual needs to decide that they need a complete life-altering change. They need to decide that they are done with the rat race. Once they have that conviction, then start looking for deals. Looking for deals won't happen if they don't first have that need or want to change their life. So start there and everything else will fall into place. Yeah, I love that. I love that.

Brian Beatle, another user added, am I absolutely out of my mind passionate about real estate investing? That's the question. I mean, because you don't necessarily need to be in order to get. get started, but if you don't have any kind of excitement about it, it's a process. You have to commit to going in there and doing it, unless you're going to be a truly passive real estate investor and just to hand your money to somebody who's going to do everything and trust somebody else to do all your due diligence, you're going to need to know some stuff. You're going to actually understand the process. And so unless you have that passion, you know, you're going to get

beat once or twice while you're doing this. It's not necessarily easy because there are highs and lows, right? So make sure that you've got that passion before you get going. Yeah, I like to compare it a lot to losing weight. You know, like some people out there like, I'm going to lose 20 pounds. Like there's people who say that and then there's people who do it, right? The difference is commitment. Darren Hardy once said, I was reading the, what's it called the compound effect and Darren Hardy said in there, commitment's like being pregnant, either you are or you aren't. There's no like, I'm kind of committed. Well, no, you're not. You're either you're, you're committed. Yeah, you're committed. or you're not. I know I'm not committed to losing 20 pounds. I'm like I've tried, you know,

but am I committed to real estate? Yes or no. I mean, it's a yes or no question. Yeah. Well, I agree. I think one more quote would probably be apropos, which is the great Michael Jordan said some people want it to happen. Some people wish it would happen. Others make it happen. So be one of those people. Oh, look at that. Look at that. Yeah, I actually have that sign hanging in, well, it was hanging in my office. Now it's sitting down the floor because I'm to remove it in my office. But yeah, I have an actual quote on this metal sign in my office. There you go. Yeah, that's awesome. So again, this is all about commitment. You know, don't, you can't half hobble into this thing. If you're going to do it, you got to jump in and you got to

kind of follow, follow with all the other steps that we're going to get into today. But if you're kind of half cocked and like, I'm not sure, you know, keep going. Keep looking and listening to the rest of these steps. But once you're ready to get going, like, if you don't have that commitment, you may want to, you know, put your money in the market or, you know, invest it in something else because you really have to be determined in this space. Yeah, very true. All right. Moving on to number two, Josh, what's that? Number two is knowledge. It's the act of getting out there and learning something and knowing something. I can say from personal experience, the reason bigger pockets exists today is primarily

because I didn't actually have the knowledge. When I started, I assumed I had the knowledge. I understood some of the basics that you needed to understand. And that led me into a path where I started to make lots of mistakes and come into lots of problems. Now, you don't have to know everything. And a lot of people get stuck there. Like, oh my God, I can't go until I know everything. And that's not true, but you need to know the fundamentals. You've got to know the basics. And, yeah, this show alone is going to give you that. But having knowledge before you get started is going to help you avoid mistakes, help you make better deals and help you make better decisions. So I'm going to read a quote here from Scott Hollister from the community. He said,

the most important and, in my opinion, the most overlooked on a first deal is knowledge and action. I believe you should arm yourself with books that are highly regarded by people on the site and be careful not to pick up analysis paralysis grab a book learn study review yeah yeah i'm a big believer in the reading thing i mean like both josh and i you know like to read just because i don't know when you're reading it's like you're inside the mind of that author of somebody who's you know already walked that path ahead of you and it's more than you can ever get just in a quick conversation even or you know you watch a youtube video i love youtube videos i love you know all that stuff but books like you just get like this brain dump of the information so i'm a huge fan of that

If you guys want to know some of the best real estate books that I generally would recommend, I wrote a blog post a while back. Just go to BiggerPockets.com slash best books, B-E-E-S-T, B-O-O-O-K-S. And we update that semi-regularly with, you know, new real estate books that come out. And, of course, I'm selfish and grudies. I put two of mine in there, but whatever. Look at that. All right, guys, beyond that, I mean, other great ways to get education.

Obviously, this podcast is a fantastic way, motivation. You sure. You know, it's all right. I never learned a single thing from the, okay, maybe not. Yeah, yeah. Maybe I learned a thing or two. The books, of course, that Brandon mentioned other free ways of learning. We rewrote the Bigger Pockets Ultimate Beginners Guide to real estate investing.

You can find that at BiggerPockets.com slash UBG. We've got thousands and thousands of articles, free articles on the Bigger Pockets blog, and over two and a half million posts on the Bigger Pockets forums, just chalk filled with information. If you ever have any questions, go there, ask. If you don't know something, go there. ask. There is no such thing as a stupid question. We all had these same questions at some point in time. And so don't be afraid to ask. There's absolutely nothing wrong. And if you don't ask, that's more of a mistake because you're going to move forward not knowing the answer that when you

could have just as easily asked. That is very true. Very true. All right. Well, to wrap up this point of education and knowledge, Radley Estrada from the Bigger Pockets forums, ads, continue to get educated, find a local mentor, download BP's real estate books. listen to podcasts and sit in at local real estate investment meetups. I think those are all great tips. The idea of the local mentor, that was a big thing for me, is finding a local investor. He was just my best friend's landlord sitting down with him for coffee, learning the mistakes he's made. I mean, I love learning that way. It was a huge help for me. Yeah, and that's something we talk about a lot is there's not a need to go and spend all this

money on some expensive course boot camp. It's local guys who are, are active who are doing things in your community are more than willing, not all of them, but more than willing to help out other investors. So, you know, sit down, grab a lunch with somebody, take them out to eat, buy them a coffee, pick their brain, you know, and use that resource. Also, local meetups, local real estate investment clubs, things like that. We've got a page on BiggerPockets, biggerpockets.com slash events that has a list of local events around the country, or you could go to National RIA, and they've got all. all their meetings.

Just be careful. Some real estate meetings around the country, people might be there to pitch you and Seltia, just know that ahead of time and go in with the intent on learning and networking, and you should be fine. There you go. And I'd also recommend if you guys don't have a meetup in your area, or maybe you just want to start another one that's a little bit different or maybe not pitchy,

just go to BiggerPockets.com, such events and start your own local club or meetup or whatever you want to call it, like just with BiggerPockets members in the community. It's pretty awesome. We do that out here in Western Washington quite often. I know you guys got one in Denver or several in Denver. So pretty awesome stuff. All right, cool. Moving on.

Number three, I like this one. You got to get your life in order. Hey, Brandon. Yeah. Have you done number three yet? I'm working on getting my life in order. No, I think a lot of people go, I mean, a lot of people maybe take this too far and say, well, I got to be rich in order to get into real estate.

That's not what we're talking about necessarily. I think there's a difference between being rich and being responsible. So like Julie Marquez, I hope I'm saying that right, from the forum said this. Your very first step should be in lines of getting your life in order and to get ready to invest. Get your personal finances in order, budget wisely, and save money. So again, it's just, it's about being responsible to have, make sure that you are in control of your money and that your money is not in control of you. And I know for most of the U.S. population, like, are, we're ruled by our money.

And it's like, oh, you know, I don't have enough to, you know, not enough month in the money or, you know, month. And what's the phrase? And what's the phrase? You know what I don't know. There's not enough. I have no idea what you're ever. Not enough.

But keep coming. Money in the month. I don't know. Anyway, yeah, whatever. Anyway, basically the ideas, people are like, oh, crap, I don't get paid till next week. I'm out of money. I got to budget and be all careful. I don't know. Like, know where your money is going and be responsible about it. You can't live paycheck to paycheck, right? I mean, you got to find a way to stop doing that. And I think there are obviously certain people who that's going to be impossible. But I'd say the majority of the population does have a, well, I'm throwing out majorities. But a large swath of the population who is currently. currently month to month could probably operate in a different manner. They don't necessarily have to be. If they altered some of their choices and decisions on how they live their life and what their priorities are, then they would potentially have different outcomes. I was going to recommend mint.com is a fantastic tool for tracking what you're spending.

I love Mint. So you guys haven't checked it out. Check it out. It's really cool. For sure. I got a great quote from Kevin Maxwell. He said, I would say the best thing is to have your home life and good standing as well is making sure you have an emergency fund set up in place of about three to six months of income and cash reserves. And again, we understand that that's not easy for everybody. But if you can do that and set out a plan to get your financial house in order in the next six months, the next year, next year and a half, you know, you're only going to be in a better financial position to make

decisions like getting started in real estate investing. And so you really have to have the basics of budgeting, the basics of personal financial responsibility set before you become a real estate investor. I think a lot of people think, hey, I'm going to just jump in and they realize that they don't have their house in order and they find themselves in a lot of trouble. Yeah. I feel like personal finance is like the foundation upon which wealth is built in any regard, right? So if you want to start a business, you want to, you know, I don't know, play the lotto, whatever. Like if you don't have your personal foundation set, like you'll never be able to be rich long term. Even if you win the lotto, I mean, that's why so many lottery people go back.

If you don't have that personal finance foundation, you're going to struggle. Yeah. Cool. All right. Number four, decide on what you want with your life. I love this one. It's huge. I mean, look, a lot of us float through life, never actually having made a decision on what do we want our life to look like. You know, they just, they let life drag them around versus taking control, making a decision and saying, hey, this is the person I want to be. This is who I want to be, where I want to be. personally what I want the next X years of my life to look like. Once you do that, now you've got a direction. Now you can make decisions that alter that direction and make determinations based

upon it. So here's an amazing quote from Michael Wagner. He said, to me, the single biggest decision that must be made before one starts investing is, what do I want my life to look like? Too many folks start down an investing path that, quote, unquote, more is better. We look at the guy with 100 houses and say, wow, that guy's a success. And he might be, but he also might not be. What if he's running around working 100 hours a week and cash flowing the same amount that he might have been if he was earning a 40-hour-a-week job when he had a day job? Is that still successful? That's the question, right? So before deciding anything else, I think someone's starting out needs to decide what success is to them and not the world at large and then formulate a strategy to

create that picture of success. And I think the part that I really loved was the not the world at large. So many people get caught up in keeping up with the Joneses. What are my neighbors doing? Oh, they're driving this car or they're sending their kid to this school or they're shopping here and wearing these clothes or everybody who's going to Starbucks. I should be shopping there. Their coffee is delicious. So what decisions you make, make them for yourself. At the end of the day, you're going to live through your life. This is one of my favorite things from my childhood was a quote I got from a friend. And he had talked about looking back upon your life when you're an old man or woman and saying,

hey, did I live the life that I wanted to live? Did I make the decisions that I wanted to make that were going to be best for me and my family? Everyone else, I mean, look, we're all cogs in the wheel, but everyone else is kind of irrelevant. So who cares what people think about you? You know, who cares what they say? That's irrelevant. You know, some of the wealthiest people are kind of really cheap. They go, they don't spend their money on, you know, things like cars and clothes and things

like that. But they go, they travel the world, they see everything, and they live a life full of experiences. You'd never know. And they're happy as, happy as can be. So like, you know, stop worrying about what everyone else is telling you got to be doing. That's true. You know, the best book I read in the past year.

I mean, hands down, the best book I read in the past year was called Life and Air. It's by like Steve Cook and some Steve someone. Anyway, fantastic books. It's like millionaire but with life. And the whole idea behind that book is, yeah, like this like stop thinking like stop designing a life that you want. Oh, life and air. Life and Air. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And life and air, fantastic book. Anyway, so instead of like deciding like I want this life, I want this house, I need this car, I need this whatever. And then you work your tail off to get that. It's not really what you ultimately want. I'll really good analogy for this. I've been thinking a lot on lately is let me ask you a question, Josh. and everybody listening.

Would you, is it better, let me ask you this question, is it better if you went to go to the store, junk and donuts, go to a donut, is it better to get 10 donuts for a dollar or one donut for a dollar? And generally, what would you say is the best answer? One donor for a dollar or 10 for a dollar? I think it depends.

So here's, I'm going to give you, I'm going to parse it. So for me, it's the one for a dollar. I don't need 10 donuts. That's exactly it. Yep. But if I'm here at work, I'm going to go get 10 for a dollar

and give them out to my, co-workers and I'm going to get the pleasure out of sharing. Exactly. So the rules change depending on what the goal is, right, or whatever your situation is. So I love that because a lot of people just instantly would say, well, oh, it's a way better deal to get 10 for a dollar. Well, it might be financially a better deal, but is it good for your waistline? Is it good for your health? Like, what are we taught? What's the goal?

Then we can base the rules on that. And that kind of summarizes that what does you want your life to be like? Then define the rules to support that life, not the other way around. Right. That's great. And I didn't realize that I was signing up to be stuck with you for an hour or two every single week for the rest of my life to record this podcast. I think I want to change the rules. You should change those rules because you make the choice, Josh Dorkin. Nice. All right. Moving on. Moving on. So step number five is to decide what niche and strategy, like what real estate niche and strategy is going to get you there.

Now you know what you want your life to be like, what vehicle we take. So, you know, single family, multi-family, are you going to flip houses? Are you going to hold rental properties? You're going to wholesale properties? Do a little of all that. You know, what, what are you going to choose on? And so, you know, in the ultimate beginner's guide to real estate, we broke that down and said, choose your niche, choose your strategy. When you're just getting started, pick one. I want to flip single-family house. I want to rent single family. I want to rent multifamily. I want to wholesale multifamily. You know, whatever. Pick your niche. Pick your strategy. Yeah. And there's going to be about a thousand decisions that get made in there. And I think a lot of people get caught on this step. This is, I think,

probably the most confusing and difficult step for the average person. And so like, you know, hey, niches and strategies flipping single family. Should I, you know, should I be doing new houses, old houses, what neighborhoods should I be picking? Things like that. There's a lot of decisions. There's no way we're going to be able to talk through all that right now. What you're going to want to do is figure out, you know, what works for you. What works for you financially?

You know, what works, what type of housing is popular and available in the neighborhood that you're in, you know, given budgets and things like that. I mean, there's a lot of micro decisions that are going to come in around that. What I advise people to do is get on the forums, ask those questions. Hey, I'm 35-year-old single man who's, you know, trying to start to build wealth. I want to build about $1,000 in passive income. What do you guys think the best steps are? What do you think the best approach would be? Or, you know, hey, I'm a 60-year-old retiree. That would be nice. living with my significant other and we just want to

build a little bit of extra money so we can buy gifts on Christmas for our family. That's a different persona. That's a different decision. That person's going to make than, you know, I'm 19 years old. I'm not going to college, but, you know, I want to get into real estate.

Well, that person might go in house hack and live in a house and live in it by a duplex and live in one of it and get a roommate and rent out the other side. So those decisions, decisions, you got to build up some of the knowledge in order to make those, but you also need to figure out where am I financially, where do I want to be, what are my goals, and using the site,

using the articles that we've got and the community to help you get feedback on that is going to really be helpful. A couple of quick quotes, David Bond said, simply decide how hands-on you want to be. Yeah. And, you know, that will make a big, I guess, part of, do you want to get into flipping? If you do, are you going to do the work yourself? And that's very, different from a guy who is being a note investor, you know, overseas, right? Like, those are two different things, but they're both involved in real estate. So you choose, like, based on what you want your life to look like, and now you know the strategy you're going to get there is going to help you determine that. So again, decided on how I hand you on you would be. Andrew Hall from the

podcast, from the forums added, after listening to the podcast, I've learned that being consistent and sticking to a game plan and not getting the shiny object syndrome will help me remain on the right path. I think that's, you know, we interview a lot of people here on the podcast and, you know, a lot of different strategies. And we don't do that telling you, hey, you need to do all these strategies. We do it because, hey, the guy last week might work for you. The guy two weeks ago might work for that guy. And then three weeks ago might work for him. You give a broad overview of what everybody's doing, 200 some people are doing. And then you can kind of pick what works in your hood. Yeah, that's great. Final quote, James Syed adds, don't try to be at the jack of all trades.

find one or two and stick with them. I love that. But yeah, again, I think the value of this podcast beyond the fact that you are stuck with me for an hour, which is truly enlightening. It is rough. What? I'm sorry? What?

Keep going. The value of the show is you're getting these different perspectives. We are talking to guys and gals just like you and I. When I say guys and gals, I mean, guy, me, gal you, Brandon. Oh, thank you. Yeah. Yeah. Just slightly furry.

I'm a hurry gal. Yes. Guys and gals, just like us, that, you know, we've talked to somebody who came to this country who had no opportunity, no money, no nothing who went out there and found a path that worked for her. We've talked to people who've had full-time jobs who are working in, you know, really good white-collar jobs who are just building income on the sides. We've talked to people who meet, you know, almost every persona that you could imagine out there.

They all have kind of tried different paths and strategies. And so it's cool to stop and listen and say, oh, you know what? This guy sounds kind of like me. Oh, that idea seems to make a lot of sense. Let me try that path. Yeah. That's great. That's good.

Good. All right. So let's move on to number six. All right. Number six, set your goals. So setting your goals, I think we've kind of covered this. But I'll start with a great quote from Waylon Gates. He said, it's extremely important to decide on a plan or method and then set a smart,

which is an acronym for specific measurable, attainable, realistic, time-based goal that puts the ideas to paper and defines a path to get there. This must be written down. He goes on to add, when do you want to do a deal? In the next 24 hours, yes, it's actually possible. Or in the next five years. If you're not making that decision, you're never going to make a decision, right? What do you want to do? Well, I want to own eight houses in the next three years.

Okay, now you've got it. Now work backwards. How do I get there? What steps do I need to take to get to eight deals? And what does a deal mean, obviously? But I would say I want eight single family houses in my neighborhood in the next eight years. Cool. So what do I need?

I need to figure out how I'm going to finance them, how I'm going to find them, what I'm going to do to them, what I'm going to do to them, what my entrance and exit strategies are going to be. You need to determine these goals, figure those. out and put them down to paper and start executing on it. Yeah, there's a, in the book, the one thing by, you know, Gary Keller and J. Pappas, they talk about this thing called goal setting to the now. And basically is that exact process you were just talking about, Josh, where, you know, if your goal is to buy eight houses the next eight years, what do you need to do this year to be on track for that?

And then what do you need to be, you know, this month to be on track for that year goal? What do you need to be doing this week to be on track for your one month goal, day, minute, you know, this very second? Like, so what should I be doing right now to be on track? to hit my goal. And I love thinking in that way, and you can really work backwards in real estate very nicely like that. Yeah, that's great. And the one thing is an unbelievable book, everyone who's thinking about real estate and even those who aren't should probably go out and get it. Let me close out with another quote here. This is from Ben, I think it's Heiner.

Hopefully I didn't butcher it. Ben Heiner says, decide what your goals are. Do you want to buy and hold? Do you want to flip at the beginning? Then move to buy and hold. How do you see your real estate portfolio looking? What are the quantifiers you need to hit to have a successful, quote unquote, successful property. Do you want a certain cash on cash return or a certain ROI or a certain amount of passive income each month? Figure out what you want. Again, there's no one right decision, right? Yeah, there is no, and it's different for everybody. I mean, like, it's tough too when you're just starting out. You're like, well, I don't know what cash flow I want. I don't know. But that's where I'd recommend. Talk to people in your area. Talk to people who are doing it in your

market and say, hey, what are you doing right now? What's working for you? And you'll kind of start to formulate a plan. I mean, I can tell you my, like when I buy a rental property, I want, generally speaking, 12% return, cash on cash return, and I want to see at least $100 per month per unit in cash flow. I mean, and that's just in my market, in my town, that works well for me. For you in Denver, that would never work for you, Josh. I mean, like, because, you know, I mean, maybe 12%, but you're probably not going to be happy with $100 per month per unit because, you know, a house is 10 times more expensive in your town than mine. And so, you know, it definitely is a localized thing, but yeah, find out what works in your market.

for sure for sure i think at the end of the day we we we like to call that criteria what are your criteria what exactly are you looking for well i i want to buy duplexes that require somewhere between ten and twenty thousand dollars worth of rehab in a class b neighborhood and i want to do x y and z with it you know narrow it down as as far as you can get as much detail as you can but really at the end of the day i think you said something really powerful which you is talk to people. It's really scary when you're isolated and you feel like you have nobody to ask for help. I think that is the beauty of bigger pockets. You've got hundreds of thousands of people out there to help you out. And locally, you have tons of people as well. So get out there and don't be

afraid to ask questions. That'll definitely help you get there. Very true. Very true. All right. So let's get on to number seven. And that is to choose your farm location. Now we're not talking about farming here, but we call it the farm location. In other words, like, what area are you going to focus on it? Are you going to be an in-state investor, out-of-state investor? Are you going to buy in this neighborhood, that neighborhood, this town, that town? I know very specifically where I invest, and I don't generally look outside that because it would just be a waste of time. There's too many deals everywhere.

You got to focus in on something. It could be a zip coat. It could be a neighborhood. It could be an entire city. Yeah. If you're in like Rhode Island, maybe it could be your whole state. Or it could be multiple areas, right? I think a great quote from Michael Strobel is, find areas that you can see yourself succeeding.

It could be different based on what REI strategy you use. So, you know, one area may work for one strategy, may not work for another one. Yeah. And to go back to what we talked about a minute ago, too, find what works in your, talk to local investors, find out what's working. People tell me all the time, oh, I live in insert an expensive city name here, right? Like, I live in San Francisco, San Diego, Seattle. I can't invest. Well, are you telling me there's no real estate investors in your entire area?

Of course there are. So what are they doing? Figure out what they're doing. And maybe that doesn't meet with your strategy. Okay, then now we need to talk about going somewhere else. But, I mean, there are people. So get out there, talk to local investable in your community. You can find people in your area actually at biggerpockets.com slash meat, M-E-E-E-T.

You can actually connect with people in your zip code or, you know, in a surrounding radius of where you're at. Take them out to coffee. Get to know them. Cool. All right. A couple of quotes here from more. Here's one from Ben Harper. Set your price point in farm area.

Depending on where you live, you'll need to figure out how much you. you can purchase pre-approval from bank and where that will let you purchase. Then start looking at the properties that are available. So to Brandon's example, if you're in San Francisco and you get pre-approved to buy a $600,000 property, you're obviously not going to be able to buy anything in the city proper. But within a, well, maybe not obviously, but within an hour, hour and a half drive, you probably can find something great at that price point. Yep.

And so it's just, yeah, find out what you can, what you can purchase and then look in the areas that support that. Yeah. Let me add one more quote from John Fedford, which is there are places I will not buy regardless of numbers. If I would not live in the unit, I would not buy it. Remember, the quality of unit and location matter to many and you want the best tenants possible. A lot of people use that as a criteria. Hey, would I live there? Would I feel safe walking in that neighborhood at night?

Would I feel safe having my partner walk around that neighborhood at night? If not, I might not buy there. So you create your own criteria. You make your own determinations because the place that Brandon is going to be afraid of is going to be a place that I'm going to be happy buying in. And the place that I don't want to go anywhere near, he'd love to go to. So what works for me doesn't necessarily work for you. Yeah.

Yeah. And so, like, you know, personally, I don't say that, I mean, I buy property where I wouldn't live because I don't want to live in, you know, those neighborhoods necessarily. But I don't buy things that I would, you know, I don't buy junky things that I would feel embarrassed to own. You know what I mean? And I think John's point there is like quality attract, like weird properties attract weird people. I've said that before. And messy properties attract messy people. So like even if you buy an area maybe you wouldn't want to live in, at least by, you know, make the property respectable, make it nice to attract the best people.

If you're, we're talking about rentals here, but flips is kind of the same thing. That's the same thing, man. You got to, you got to do right by your clients, your clients of the end buyers or your tenants. And, you know, you can't half ass stuff. You start half assing and doing a shoddy job on your property, you're going to get a bad reputation. It's going to hurt your long-term opportunities. People start to know that your product stinks and they're not going to want it. Where to mouth will spread. So do right by your clients, do right by other people that you work with and you'll flourish.

There you go. There you go. All right. I was going to read one last quote came from my actual real estate agent who works with investors. At least that's what I could get. Jennifer Lee said, I always tell my clients to find their market area. first. What is it they want to do? If they decided to buy and hold, then what tenant population do you want or can you handle? That usually determines the price you can afford. I really like that

a lot too. Are you looking for a quality tenants? And can you afford a quality tenants? And you're like, that's going to help you determine where you want to invest. And yeah, we all want a quality tenants and a quality people. Some of us can't afford that. You know, so cool. There you go. All right. Next number eight, figure out your financing. So this is the big one. This is the Whopper, right? How can I afford this property? Well, Josh, I don't have any money so I can't invest in real estate. I don't have money. I will, somebody else is going to go out and make it happen. Yeah. That's true. Yeah, I mean, look, you don't actually have to have a ton of money to invest in real estate. You do have to have your finances in order. You do need to be organized. You do need to be able to have a certain level of financial responsibility, but you're a prime example of what you ask, which is, do you

You need to have a ton of money? No, you can actually go out, find a screaming deal. Learn how to find deals. Go out, find a deal. And then go out and find a partner who's looking for a screaming deal. Right now, I'm not out looking for deals. But if somebody brought me a deal right now, by the way, do not bring me deals. My inbox just exploded.

Yeah, that'd be great. So depending on who you are, there's potentially a match for you. You don't necessarily have to go to the bank and get a traditional loan. although that's certainly a great path. There's other creative ways to finance a deal, seller financing, for example, you name it. But you do need to figure out your financing in order to kind of understand the path

that you're going to take on forward. And I think a lot of people have trouble with this and they wonder, well, do I find the deal first or do I find the financing first? And it's kind of a chicken of the egg kind of probably. And I don't think there's a right or wrong necessarily, but I would say this. And you can tell me if you agree with this, Josh,

it's a good idea to have an idea of how you're going to finance something before you go and waste somebody else's time. If you have no idea what you're doing with financing and you start going to making offers, then you're just wasting everyone's time. Correct. So I don't usually know how I'm going to finance something, but I know that I have multiple options at my disposal.

Well, that's the key, right? You understand the various financing opportunities that are available, right? Whether we're talking about paying cash, conventional financing, hard money, private money, partnerships, home equity, loan off your primary residence equity and other properties, going creative with things like Burr, partnerships, you name it. You know, you understand those different methodologies, right? So it's easy for you, but the average guy does it.

So what I would say is for, you know, somebody getting started, you want to get some basic knowledge. Let's go back to the point on knowledge. Get some basic knowledge about what are the financing types available. Josh, didn't somebody write a book on that? I could have swore somebody wrote a book on investing with no and low money dude. Real talkative dude. Well, that was me?

Amazing. Oh, yes, yes, yes. But it's not just that book. If you don't want to read a whole book, I mean, there are a thousand articles written on the bigger pockets blog about creative finance and forums, hundreds of thousands of conversations about financing on the forums. There is a wealth of information. Yes, yes, yes. So anyway, point being, get out there. understand the different types of financing. Look at what types may work best for you. And you may be

able to go in and say, hey, I'm going to buy this with a traditional loan. Cool. That's great. If you are more financially strapped, I would say first make sure you get your finances in order. If you are there and you're still strapped, look at some of the creative ways to buy property. But at the end of the day, if you find a good deal, a good deal will definitively give you options for finance. A good example of that is I like to tell people of this when they tell me they can't, you know, they don't know how to do creative finance. Think of it, Josh, if I were to offer you a deal for $1,000, I was, you know, I want to sell you this house here for $1,000, that's it. And it's worth a million dollars. However, let's just say, Josh, you had no money.

I mean, like your bank account is at six bucks and that's it, right? How would you come up with $1,000 knowing that tomorrow you could make a million? And then, like, I'm sure you could figure out ways, right? Oh, yeah. What would you do? Knowing that there's a path, you would find a way. You'd find a way. You'd like, oh, maybe I'd borrow the money.

Maybe I'd beg and borrow or sell something. You'd figure it out. Yes. Hey, here's my favorite car that's worth $600. Yeah, right. Let me sell it and let me sell that because I'll buy a new one in three weeks when I get the million. Yeah, exactly. So that's that point of the better deal you find, the easier it is financing is because

like you figure it out. If there's really good money to be made, there's a lot of people out there who want to make money. So partnerships are a lot more, you know, easy to get. Things like private money, hard money, all that's easier. the better deal you have. Just be realistic. I mean, at the end of the day, I think the problem a lot of people get into is like, oh, here's a thousand dollar house. Cool. I'm going to make a million dollars off . Sure. Well, come on. It's a story. But yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I mean, find good deals. Make sure

they're good deals. So you need to know your numbers, which we'll get to in a minute. But a couple of quotes on that. Justin Eaton's from the forum said, figure out your financing and define a budget. Will you use cash to buy and renovate? Or are you going to use a construction loan maybe? Or are you going to use hard money or maybe a private money lender? So again, Justin's, just saying identify some of the avenues you're going to take to be able to get that financing. Here's a great one from Chris Lowe. Make sure your money is available. In most cases, you're going to have to put up some cash. Make sure it's readily available to you because the deal can fall apart pretty quickly if it doesn't. Don't wait until you're in the deal to

raise the money. If you do online banking only in lieu of a traditional brick and mortar bank, make sure you can withdraw or transfer the funds without delay. And I love that point. That's all about being prepared, right? I mean, if you have all your money locked up, well, assuming you're a new investor, you're not going to have all your money. You're locked up in another real estate deal, but let's say you had all your money locked up in a 10-year bond. Can you get access to the bond? Is there going to be a penalty? All your money is in your retirement. Is there any way to get it out? You know, does that make sense? But knowing that you have access to the resources that you have access to and what the cost to that is going to be is going to be a great step for you.

There you go. Last thing I want to say before we move on to step number nine is this like toolbox theory that I probably said it here on the podcast before, but I'm going to say it again, is that financing in general is kind of like a toolbox. If you have only a hammer, there's very few projects you can take on around your house, right? Like you can go and, you know, hit a bank robber in the head with it or, you know, or house robber. You can go and break down a fence maybe, right? There's a, You can punch a hole in the wall. That's about it.

But if you add a drill and a circular saw. You could hammer, hammer, hammer in the morning. It's not a saw. Right. No, you could hammer some board. That's about it. But if you have a drill, if you have a circular saw, then you got some screws and then you got a tape measure,

the more tools you have, the bigger projects you can take on. And so in creative finance, the more finance tools that you understand how they work, the more you can figure out how to put together bigger and better deals. So the only tool you have is conventional. financial financing. And a lot of people, that's it. That's all they know is go to the bank, get a 20% down loan. You're going to be very limited on what deals you can put together. So pick up some more tools, metaphorically speaking.

It's a good thing I have a tool as a co-host. It's a good thing you've got a tool as a co-hote. Wait a second. All right, moving on. Number nine. There are two kinds of real estate investors, those who have reviewed their insurance and those who think that they have. Most don't realize their coverage wasn't built for how they actually invest. Vacancy periods, rehabs, short-term rentals or LLC held properties. These gaps surface only when filing claims. That's why investors work with NREG. They specialize exclusively in real estate investors,

understanding portfolios, risk at scale, and cash flow protection. One claim can erase years of returns. If you own a rental property, don't assume you're covered. Have NREG review your insurance with someone who gets investing at NRE.com slash BPPOD. That's N-R-E-I-G.com slash BPPod. If you own a short-term rental, here's something worth knowing.

Not all landlord policies are built for your your type of property. And with holiday bookings, chilly weather, and higher guest turnover, having the right coverage is more important than ever. Steadily offers insurance designed specifically for short-term rentals, covering property damage, liability, lost rental income, and even unexpected issues like bedbugs. Steadily works exclusively with real estate investors. So they understand the details that make short-term rentals unique and they build coverage to match it. A quick review of your rates and coverage every year can help you protect your property and your cash flow. Get a quote in minutes at biggerpockets.com slash landlord insurance.

Steadily, rental property insurance for the modern investor. Managing properties can feel like a full-on circus. You're juggling vendors, tracking payments, chasing approvals across multiple properties, and maybe a few HOAs, all while trying to keep tenants happy and owners confident. One delay can throw everything off, and suddenly your day is all clean up, no progress. That's why hundreds of property managers rely on bill to streamline their finances. Bill for property management lets you add all your properties, assign permissions, pay bills, and receive payments quickly and efficiently without the usual bottlenecks. It syncs with platforms like QuickBooks, Zero, NetSuite, and Sage intact,

so your accounting stays aligned. You can automate bulk payments across properties and HOAs, choose flexible payment methods like Same Day ACH, International Wires, Card, or Check, and set custom roles in approval policies. There's even a dedicated bill inbox for each property to keep everything organized. Ready to simplify your workflow, book your free demo at bill.com slash bigger pockets, and get a $100 Amazon gift card. That's bill.com slash bigger pockets. Number nine, get your core team together. Now, before we go into the core team stuff, I want to say like, this is huge, by the right? It is huge. And don't get weird about it. Like, don't go out because we'd be part of my super team. Like, that's always weird, right?

Is that how you do it? That's how I do it. I walk up to my agent and I'm like, well, you be part of my superhero team. And I give them like a badge and make them wear a cape. It's really fun. No, don't get weird about it. But a team is basically this idea of people who you're going to need to help you accomplish these things.

So a real estate agent is a good example of that. Finding a lender is part of your team. A property manager or maybe a project manager, maybe part of your team, if that's the, you know, the route you guys want to take. So, again, getting that core team together. Chris Lowe, there in the forums, said, quote, this may seem obvious, but make sure your team is in place. It might be tempting to poke around a little bit if you're unsure about jumping into your first deal. But if you take

that approach and do find a deal, you'll have to move on it quickly in most markets. So the time to get your team together is before you start looking at properties. You need an agent, unless you are one, a contractor and financing, unless you're using all cash at a minimum. Yeah. That's great. To add to this, we've got a quote from Rick Santaseri. Hopefully, I didn't butcher that. Working with a good agent is always the best. way to get into any opportunity. I would say I'm going to add to that any good investor-friendly agent. Off-market deals happen all the time and investors can spend money marketing, but in all my years, it's always paid off to be in the know with a local agent. The point on the investor-friendly agent

is, you know, there's a ton of agents out there that don't know anything about real estate investing. And, you know, unbeknownst to them might be giving you bad advice. I've seen that happen time and time Again, people just follow the advice of an agent who didn't know anything about real estate investing. A prime example is lots of agents say, hey, if you buy a property and you make X mountain rent and your mortgage and interest needs to be paid off and taxes and your cash flow break-even, that's bad advice. There's lots of other expenses, and a lot of them may not necessarily understand that. So work with an investor-friendly agent. Other people on the team, that would certainly be valuable people like accountants, real estate attorney.

You know, hey, if you're flipping, maybe it's a stager. Hey, if you're property manager, if you're buying big properties, resident managers, things like that. But people that you're going to want to be or have around you, people whose advice and knowledge is going to make your job easier, you definitely want to put together the team. It's hugely important. I know we've written a few articles on it. I think we'll tie them up to the show notes here, BiggerPockets.com slash show 200, and we'll link to a couple.

But yeah, definitely get out there and get a team. Otherwise, places to find referrals. Ask your friends and family. Ask people, your friends on Facebook for referrals, things like that. Go to BiggerPockets.com slash meet. Brandon mentioned that earlier. Go to or host local real estate meetups, Biggerpockets.com slash events.

Those tend to be really great ways. people at local meetups love sharing their team and their referrals. So, hey, I need a good contractor. Cool. Ask other investors. Yeah. It's a great way to build your team is by finding who's on other people's teams and kind of borrow them. So there you go. Yeah, there you go. Cool. All right, number 10. Number 10, start looking for deals. Finally. And that's funny that actually took number 10 before we start looking. A lot of steps come before that. So you got to make your bed before you get into it is kind of the deal here, right? The first nine steps are getting up in that.

Good job. I thought of it without stumbling, bumbling. I know, that was good. Good for me. So now you can start looking for deals. Justin Eaton incorporates several of these steps into one. He says, search the MLS portal, Zillow, truly, etc. Visit these homes, run the numbers on them,

and come up with offers on homes that work based on your numbers and desired profit. If you don't have construction experience, dot, dot, dot, dot, it looks like we probably cut off the quote there. But point being, there's a ton of different ways to find deal. So you've gone and you've set your criteria. You know what you're trying to do. You know your strategy. Now you're going to get out there. And there's a whole load of different ways to do that. So you can drive for dollars, driving around the neighborhood, look at every vacant property or property that looks vacant and send them mail. You can go on the MLS. You can do marketing, direct mail marketing. I believe we have some resources for that, Brandon. Yeah. We have an ultimate

guide to DirectMil Marketing, people can get it at biggerpockets.com slash direct mail. Cool. Otherwise, networking, working with wholesalers, talking with commercial real estate brokers, or looking on places like LoopNet. There's all sorts of mail strategies for finding deals and opportunities, auctions. There's a ton of different ways to find deals. The key is, what kind of deal are you looking for? Once you figure that out, and you may not know specifically very, very narrowly, but you say, hey, generally I'm looking in this price range, in this area, this type. Now you can go out and start trying to find those deals, prospecting for those deals that are off market, or looking at the deals that are on market and waiting and finding an

opportunity that arises. But you got to start identifying them. And then once you do that, you've got a few other steps which we're going to get to. All right. Cool. When you're looking for deals, remember also that an agent, generally speaking, if you're looking on the MLS and multiple listing service where agents put their properties. An agent doesn't cost you any money. Most areas, the seller pays for the agent. So I'd recommend if you guys are listening to this and you haven't started yet, like connect with a local agent. Go to Facebook, ask your family and friends for an agent. Very easy task to do right now while you're listening to this show. And then once you find a good agent to work with, just go look at a couple properties. I mean, it doesn't cost you

any money to go start looking. Maybe find some open houses. Just get your feet wet in that thing. I mean, it's kind of overwhelming to say, go find a deal. But it's not that bad. Just say, hey, I'm to go out on a couple hours on Saturday to go actually walk through a few properties. So maybe local bank REOs and just to get a feel for what your market's got. So just kind of a lot of action. Let me answer that. Please. Let me answer that.

Because I think it's a great point. Those, that step, that action of getting out there and looking at physical properties is going to help you better determine some of the other things that we talked about earlier, determine your criteria. Make certain decisions about what type of property. Make decisions on what you're willing or able to do to a property. You know, until you've gone and actually walked and looked at different types of properties, looked at actual houses that are on the market, your brain doesn't start to really register it. You know, once you're in there and you're like, oh, I could buy this.

I could do X, Y, and Z to it. Cool. Like, we want you to do that. Then you can start thinking of the possibilities and then think about the strategies, think about the financing. I think anybody who's going to become a real estate investor should get out there and look at 50, 100 houses before they go and buy their first house. I mean, you want to see what's in the market. When we talked about your farm, even if your strategy is not to buy the high-end houses,

you should probably go and look at the high-end houses. You want to see what they are. You want to know your market cold. Somebody, an experienced investor, you know, can walk past a block in their farm and when they see a property come on the market, they're going to know, just from looking at all these houses,

they're going to know how much that house should sell for, generally. They should generally know what kind of, how it's going to be rehab, to what level it's going to be maintained. That comes with looking at properties. That doesn't come with anything else. It's just experience.

And so get started by getting out there and looking at different properties. There you go. Cool. All right. Moving on to number 11. You know, Once you look at the properties, you get in there, you start looking at them.

You're going to find out that most properties need work done. So step number 11, you've got to estimate the rehab budget. And this stops a lot of people. They just say, I can't figure it out. I'm done. I'm going to go back to watching dance with the stars and wasting my life away. They give up because it's hard to estimate rehab costs if you've never done it before. A couple suggestions here.

First of all, Justin Eaton, to continue the quote that we cut off a minute ago, if you do not have, this is the other half of that quote. So if you do not have construction experience, consider bringing a contractor or a home inspector along for a second visit to the house that you'll be making an offer on so that your renovation budget is accurate. Now, that's the end of the quote, but it's not always necessarily easy to do that before making an offer because sometimes you have to be very, very quick. But, you know, at least it'll start giving you a good idea of how much things cost to fix up. So when you go look at properties, take a contractor with you, even if you have to pay them

$50 for an hour of their time, that will be very, very helpful. for you and, you know, every deal you go make an off run after that. Yeah. And I love the note that you made here, which is record a video walking through the property and when you get back home, sit down and then divvy it up into categories. So, hey, where does it need work? It looks like it's going to need new outlets. The bathroom's going to need to be renovated.

The kitchen's going to need to be renovated. And then go and figure out what those things are going to cost. The great resource would be the book onestimating rehab cost by Jay Scott. but there's lots of other resources out there that you can Google, and that will help you get a great idea, or just take that video to a contractor and say, hey, what's this generally going to run? Get me a bid on this. Yeah.

So now you know what your budget's going to look like, whether you're buying and holding, if you're flipping, you name it. Yeah. And you can also talk to local investors in your area who can tell you what their general price per square foot for rehab is. You know, like what I like to do, like Josh said, I like to walk through with a video camera or my phone and record it and go home and put in the categories. but I also sometimes will look at properties and my preliminary analysis of the rehab is really as simple as this. Is this a 10, 20, 30, 40, or 50,000 or rehab?

And I'm usually like, like to do my initial numbers, that's all I really care about. Is it a 30 or a 10? That's probably somewhere in between. It's probably 20. You know, I just want to ballpark when I first start. Now, later on, you know, as I get more serious about a particular property, then I'm going to go through it with a fine tooth comb and, you know, find out every single dollar where everything's going to be. go. But when I'm just looking and I'm starting to run numbers, yeah, you just need to get close. Nice. All right, which leads us to run the numbers. How about that? How about that?

All right. So Ian Wall said, know your market and how to evaluate a property. You have to be able to determine if you're really into a deal or not. Essentially, we're talking about taking the inputs, which are the data, the numbers on the property. What's it going to cost? What's financing going to look like, you know, how much work does it need, things like that. You're going to put it in and you're going to say, hey, is this, are these numbers going to give me a deal? If I buy a house spend this much money and I'm thinking about flipping, can I sell it and make a profit? If I buy a house or something else and put this much money into acquiring it, will the income I make from my tenants help me out, you know, offset those costs or am I obviously going to make a cash flow? every month from it. So I think where a lot of people go wrong on this is the example I used earlier with the real estate agent, which is they don't really understand all the inputs that go into what numbers are involved in a rental property.

They don't understand holding costs. They don't understand cap for a flip. They don't understand cap X, you know, the cost, that you're going to have to replace your roof every X amount of years, that you're going to have to replace HVAC every X amount of years or upgraded. Those costs have to be built in. to your initial cost because they're going to hit you at some point.

Vacancy, it's going to hit you at some point. You're not going to have a place that's not vacant. So plan for the worst case scenarios. Plan for what can potentially happen. Use that, input that data into your model. And now when they don't happen, great, you've got a couple of extra bucks in your pocket. When they do happen, you're actually prepared for it.

That's the biggest issue. Most people are not prepared when those unexpected costs. and they're not unexpected. They should be expected if you know how to run your numbers. So you actually have to know and understand how to analyze deals. And there's a ton of,

ton of resources on that, but I know you wanted to chime in here. Well, I was going to say one of those resources, actually, is I just recorded a video for Bigger Pockets. It's on the Bigger Pockets YouTube channel on how I analyze a deal.

Like, how to analyze a deal by hand using what's called the four square method. And if you guys want to check that out, just go to YouTube.com forward slash bigger pockets. You can also go to the show notes out on this page, biggerpockets. dot com slash show 200 and we'll actually embed the video there as well but yeah check it out

kind of how to analyze it deal quickly now but on that note there's four ways that me and josh have seen people run numbers like when they buy a property there's four kind of general i don't want to call it theories but ways that people run numbers one i want to talk about those real quick number one some people just don't run the numbers at all and that i think that's a huge mistake they just buy something because they feel like it's a good idea oh it's going to be great yeah it's going to be awesome it's a series yeah it's going to make me a lot of money i'm going to be Rich. Yeah.

I once got a house under contract or I bought it for $42,000. I'm like, you can't go wrong with $42,000, right? Yeah, I end up putting like $45 grand into the thing. And then it's in a terrible location. I can't rent it for my house. It's like my hellhouse. Hey, Brandon. Have you heard of a city named Detroit?

I have. This is why I harbbed on Detroit in the first 10, 15, 20 episodes, maybe more. But, you know, it was, hey, just because it looks cheap or sounds cheap doesn't mean it's inexpensive. Correct. So that's the first way. Yeah, people just don't do it at all. Don't do that. The second way some people do it is by the rules of thumb.

For example, the 70% rule for flippers is a very popular rule. The 2% rule for buy and hold, the 50% rule. The problem with running numbers with rules of thumb is that they're rules of thumb. They're not laws. They're not always true. And so you could buy something that makes sense as a rule of thumb. And if you want to know more about each of those bigger pockets, we'll put some links in the show notes about each of those. But, I mean, they can be good for just quickly analyzing a deal, but you should never buy a deal based off.

of a rule of thumb. Correct. Yeah. And then there's number three. You can do the numbers by hand. You can sit down and actually on a big whiteboard, like the video I made, you can kind of do them by hand. You can get pretty far doing them by hand. I mean, you're not going to get into too deep of stuff like internal rate of return and stuff by hand, but you can get at least cash flow, income expenses, those kind of things. And then lastly, some people use as software. For example, bigger pockets. We actually created calculators to help people analyze deals. So there's the rental property calculator, house shipping calculator, the burr calculator, and the wholesale calculator. So I know a lot of people are using those all the time, BiggerPockets.com slash analysis. But there's other tools as well out there. I mean, there's some far more expensive. There's some spreadsheets out there. There's all sorts of technology that can help you as well.

Excel. Yeah, Excel. There's a lot of ways to analyze deals. I would just advise you, if you guys use software, which, again, I recommend using BP's, but if you use software, understand how that works as well. Like, don't just assume by throwing some numbers

into something you're going to get a right answer. I see that mistake all the time. People find a spreadsheet online. They plug in some numbers and they'd go buy a property. I'm like, do you even know why that came out that way? Yeah. Kind of have an idea.

Understand the inputs is what you're saying. Yeah, understand the inputs. Understand kind of how you're getting there. And that's what we try to do when we built the calculators on BP is we put these little question marks next to every single input to help people understand why and how. Yep. Yeah, that's key. I mean, you've got to understand basic deal analysis in order to start buying deals.

If you don't understand how a quote-unquote deal works, don't get into it. Don't buy a property, no matter. how good somebody tells you it is until you can confirm it yourself. It's a very dangerous step. Yeah, it is. Cool. Cool. All right, next point. All right, number 13, you want to take it? I think that's yours. That could be. I was just being gracious. Number 13. You're far from gracious. Review your numbers with someone. I love that they said this. A few people actually said this. Like Chris Lowe in the forum said, run the numbers. Once you know what you want to do with the property, run the numbers, then run them again. And have someone else check your math. Use tool.

that are available to you like those on BP, the more deals he analyzed, the better you'll become. And I love that he said, like, yeah, run the math by somebody else because there's a very good chance you screwed up somewhere or you weren't thinking of something or you just, you know, whatever. So Zach Fetchu said, quote, have I reviewed my numbers with someone who has many years of experience been successful in real estate? And do they agree that this is a wise investment? I love that. Yeah, I love that. Because, yeah, like, again, what you might think, People have sent me this deal. This is this 15-unit property in my area. That's super cheap. People have asked me a couple times because it's super cheap in my area. They're like,

I want to buy this property. What do you think, Brandon? Can we partner with it? And I'm like, I've looked at it's a terrible deal. Let me explain why. And like I can go through the numbers on why it is. But, you know, and people wouldn't know that because they're not from my area. Yeah, there you go. Cool. Last quote on this point here is from Ben Hainer. He says, if you've been going to real estate meetings, then you should be able to find someone there that you can bounce ideas off of. I was lucky that one of my friends has been doing real estate deals for a while, and I was able to use him as a sounding board for a lot of my issues. So again, I mean, this is, we gave this a point.

We gave this a number. This is number 13 on our list because it really is important for new people. Getting that extra feedback from somebody else, getting another set of eyes on the deal is huge. I mean, once you're more experienced, you're not going to need that. But when you're getting started, definitely get another set of eyes on it. Yeah, huge. All right.

And we also do have a deal analysis forum on Bigger Pockets. It's just a free forum. Anybody can jump in and post your deals in there. I mean, if you've, if you use the bigger pockets calculators, you can actually post like a link to your calculation in there or, you know, you can just write the general details. You can just ask for help in any, even if you don't use our calculators, ask for help. They'll say, hey, guys, here's a deal I'm looking at.

Here's what the income was. Here's what the expenses. Here's what the ARV is. Here's what, whatever. What do you guys think? And the community itself will jump in and help you guys out. So it's a good way to get a second set of eyes. All right. Number 14, make the offer.

Finally, Josh. Yes. That should have been number two. No, no. Get out there and make the offer. All right. So Sam Shua, I hope I didn't butcher him either, says you got to have the guts to make an offer. Most talk more than they do. And I'm going to paraphrase this a little bit. But he says basically you need some guts. A lot of people just do a lot of talk. And they're like, oh, I'm a real estate investor. You go to local real estate clubs and you meet all these people who are investors.

And when you, you know, they've been doing it for years and years and you're like, hey, how many offers have you made? How many deals do you have? I don't make offers. Wait, what? You got to get out there and make the offers. You have to make the offers. And make offers based upon your analysis of the deal. Yeah.

Don't chase deals. It's really easy for people. to say, oh, well, I really want this property. You know, it's going to be amazing. And then, you know, I need to pay $70,000 for it or $170,000. And suddenly the property gets bid up and now it's, you know, 200,000. And you're still kind of emotionally tied to this thing. But at $200,000, you're losing money hand over fist.

So that's where the deal analysis comes in is make sure your offers aren't chasing other people. your offers are not based on emotion. You want your offers to be based on the facts. And the facts are what you've analyzed. Those are the facts. What you can afford to pay, that's what it is. Let me give you a couple other quick quotes here. Ben Harner adds, using your template and your goal numbers,

you'll have a good idea of where you're comfortable, making your offer at, make sure you've got a little wiggle room. Your mentor, for example, should be able to help you to determine a good amount of room and go with it. also, you know, if you posted in the Bigger Pockets forums and got feedback in the analysis room, that'd be helpful or that other person that you're going to share with. Yeah. And I love Ben's kind of point is like, you know, once you have your number, then, you know,

make sure there's a little wiggle room in there, but then you've got it. Make the offer. What are you waiting for? You know every property has a number that it's worth. Now, maybe that number is negative in my area. Sometimes, like, some properties are just not even worth a dollar. But every property has a number. figure out what that number is.

And then once you have it, make the offer. Ask them. I mean, what's the worst they're going to say? No. Oh, it might make me hurt my feelings a little bit. But, you know, like, who cares? Once you know the number, go and make the offer. John Fedford added in that form thread, be prepared to move fast if the deal is a steal.

If you don't, someone else will. When I found properties I wanted that were right, I made sure I had the funds and then I just wrote the contracts up. I love that. Yeah. Well, you do something similar. I mean, when your agent hits you up, it's a tax. You'll look at the numbers and you'll very quickly decide, hey, is this an opportunity or not? That's why knowing your market matters, right?

You have the ability to within minutes respond to an opportunity and make an offer on it. And in a lot of markets, if you don't have that capacity, you're never going to get an opportunity. Yeah. And a lot of people ask the question, I hear this all the time. You know, if I go and make a bunch of offers, do I have to have earnest money for every single one of those? And so it's kind of a weird topic, but this is what I'll say to that. generally speaking, you don't need earnest money to make an offer until the offer is accepted. Now, your agent might tell you otherwise, but generally speaking, earnest money is given when the

offer is accepted. So I can make a couple offers this week. And if both got accepted, well, I only offered great deals anyway. I'd figure out a way to make it work. But you don't need to put out earnest money on every single deal that you make an offer on. And every offer doesn't have to be official either. I mean, like, just verbal offers are not a bad idea either just to get people talking and

get conversation going, especially with private sellers. Yeah, I think the big thing is not having that fear of making the offer, and then not having the fear of offending people. I think we see that a lot in the community. We see a lot of people who ask that question, hey, I'm afraid, you know, they're selling it for 100. My numbers say I should offer 60. You know, I don't know. I'm going to make them angry and I don't want to make anyone angry. Well, if the numbers say it's worth 60, make an offer at 60.

You know, I mean, that's why you have an agent. Your agent will make the offer. And if they don't want it, they won't accept it. Or they may counter you. Or they may do nothing, right? Or they may accept it. And that's the beauty, right? I mean, if you listen to the 200, well, 199 previous shows on the show here on the podcast,

I can't tell you how many times people have said, yeah, I made some crazy lowball offer and they accepted it. They're not accepting it because you're putting a bullet to their head. They're accepting it because they believe, given their circumstances, that that offer is an offer that's worthwhile to them. That's an offer that they're willing to accept whether because that's what the market says it's worth or maybe they're in a rush and they have to get out and yours is the only offer they've gotten. Or, you know, they're going through a divorce or there's a death in the family or whatever it is, whatever their reason is, which you

want to know because that's going to help you make better offers. But don't be offended. Don't be afraid and don't be offended. Yeah, I love that. And I think this is a good, probably a good point to talk about this thing called the deal funnel, which we talk about, I talk about on the Bigger Pockets webinar all the time. Because it's like, this is like the one thing I wish somebody would have explained to me when I got started with real estate. Yeah, this is great. I love this concept of if you want to buy more deals, you've got to make more offers. If you want to make more offers, you've got to analyze more deals. If you want to analyze more deals, you got to get more leads coming in. And so that basic funnel, I mean, you start with leads, you analyze some of them, you make some offers,

you get some accepted. So, for example, let's say you had a thousand leads. Maybe there's a thousand properties on the market in your area. And out of those thousand, let's say only 90% of them, you just didn't care about. You're like, nope, bad area. I don't care. I don't care. I don't care. This one, you know, these 10% of that thousand we're going to care about. So out of the thousand you start with, you have a hundred that you care about. Out of those hundred, you analyze them. Now, you know, maybe that's over a three-month period or an eight-month period or a one-week period. Who cares? But out of those hundred deals you analyze, maybe 10% of them, once you dug in are even worth pursuing. So you make offers on those 10 properties. Out of those 10 offers you make,

how many are going to be accepted? For me, it's usually about 1 in 10. So you might start with 1,000 leads. And by the time you get down to the bottom of the funnel, you might get one deal. So if you wanted two deals, just work the funnel up and make more offers, make more, analyze more deals, you know, get more leads coming in. And that's kind of how the deal funnel works. And so that entire theory kind of changed my entire real estate business. And as a result, we actually, at bigger pockets, we have our developers put together a lead manager. And this thing is still in kind of beta mode right now, but we're going to put a link to it just for you guys here on the podcast listening. If you want to check it out, dive in what this lead manager does. It gives

you the ability to actually upload a list of all your leads or just enter them one at a time. And then you can actually move them through the lead funnel. So you move from active leads to I'm analyzing this deal, then you can analyze it right there. Then you can move it over to I made an offer. And you can keep track of all the deals that are in your current system. And again, we just want to open up to you guys here on this podcast that have listened through all the way here to what the hour mark, whatever we're at. So definitely check that out. You can get to it by going to biggerpockets.com forward slash lead dash manager. Lead dash manager. And I think you guys will like it. Definitely try it out and give us some feedback,

which you think. Again, we're still working on it. But it's pretty awesome. I'm really, really excited about this new tool. awesome that's great that's great also you wrote an article didn't you i did wrote an article yeah but i wrote about article called how and why i make offers sight unseen and i'll put a link to that in the show notes at bigger pockets dot com slash show 200 i just kind of you can see my process for like i make offers a lot of times on properties without even looking at them in person and i'll explain how i do that and why i do that and uh you can kind of learn more there so nice all right moving on this is very you this is a short simple one. Justin Eaton said, negotiate the deal. That's it. That's the quote. And that's number 15.

Negotiate the property and get under contract. I mean, once you know the number, make an offer, making the offer, and then they're going to say no. They're going to, they're going to counter. What does that mean? Yeah. What does it all mean? I mean, I don't think I've ever in my entire life, ever had a seller except an offer straight up. I mean, I've made hundreds of offers. And I don't think I've ever had an offer accepted straight up. They always negotiate every time. And so I always, I always make sure I offer a little bit less. I don't play a game. I don't offer, you know, way lower than I can pay, but I always offer a little less

than what I've actually willing to do, knowing that I can go up a little bit. In negotiation, both parties want to feel like they gave and they gave a little bit and they got what they wanted. So, you know, if I'm offering 70, if I know I can pay 70, I might offer 65 and then I'll work up to 70 and I'll be very grumpy about it and then they'll feel like they got me five grand higher, but really I came in my number. So again, negotiate the property. And price is not the only thing to negotiate either.

You can negotiate terms. Terms. Yeah. Closing date. You know, all these different things like how. Concessions. Yeah. You want them to pay closing costs or not.

You want to do repairs, fix this, don't fix this. Anyway, so there is an article. One of the best articles I've ever read on negotiation was written by Jay Scott, author of the book on flipping houses and the book on Estimating Rehab costs. And this article is just a free article anybody can read. It's called How to Negotiate, Seven Real Estate Negotiation Tips. It's just unbelievably fantastic. We'll link to that in the show notes at biggerpockus.com.

So show 200. Perfect. I've got nothing to add. All right. Number 16, manage the due diligence process. Let me start this with a quote. Yeah, let me start this with a quote. We got a quote from Joe Fairless.

He said, who are the inspectors? I need to hire after getting it under contract. How do I find those inspectors? Also, he adds, what type of home insurance do I need to get on it? Do I need to get general liability? insurance two, how much does this all cost? So due diligence is what information do I need to know, now that I've made an offer on this property and gotten it accepted, what information do I need to know in order to close on the property appropriately? So you're going to have an inspector

going, they're going to look over the property and they're going to tell you, hey, you know what, you thought everything was great with this property. Actually, this property has a broken foundation. there's all sorts of issues, and this property is going to cost you an extra $20, $30,000 above and beyond what you were thinking. Well, good thing you went and got the inspection. Because if that was an unexpected expense that you weren't prepared for, you're in a lot of trouble. The other nice thing is, you know, there's contingencies that people write into contracts like inspection contingencies where when things come up, you know, there's opportunities for you to actually get out of the deal. So due diligence is essentially going to, it's going to be, hey, is this thing going to floodplain? Is this, you know, are there any things that I don't know about this property that I need to know about in order to make this a successful transaction for me?

And that due diligence is going to help protect you from getting into a deal that could cost you a lot of money down the line. Yeah. I would also say it's things like checking, if you're buying a rental property that's currently rented, check in to make sure the rents really are what they say they are. In fact, last, what, two weeks ago? Huge, huge. Two weeks ago, we bought this duplex and there was a tenant living in one of the units, and they told us his rent was $500 a month, and we just kind of went with that. And I mean, I wrote the book on managing rental properties, right?

And in that, like, I talk about the estoppel agreement, and that's his form. You get the tenant to fill out that tells what their rent are. Well, I somehow dropped the ball on that, didn't do it. We closed the property. We go to talk to the tenant to go get him to sign our lease. And he's like, oh, no, my rent was $450. And, like, if we contacted the old seller and we said, Can you verify you guys said originally 500?

Oh, we were mistaken. It was actually $450. Sorry. I mean, it's only $50 a month, but that's $600 a year now that now I'm going to raise the guys rent after a little while. But it's just like that little mistake cost me, you know, maybe my numbers wrong. It cost me $600 my first year until I raise his rent and all this stuff. So again, due diligence is just checking to make sure everything is the way you wanted to be and kind of managing the process through closing. I kind of include all that.

So working with the title company or the attorney kind of working through closing. And if you have a real estate agent, they can help you work through a lot of that stuff as well. Yeah. And if you, like on a condo, you know, what are the CCNRs? All that stuff. You know, what does the HOA do? Things like that that, hey, if you're not doing your due diligence, you may find out that you just bought a condo. And these guys like to do these special assessments once a year for a thousand bucks that you didn't budget for.

I mean, it's trying to help you find the unexpected. Yeah. That's great. All right. Oh, no, I forgot. I do have a, I put a due diligence checklist in the file. place recently. If you guys want to check that out, we'll link to that in the show notes as well, Biggerpockets.com, so I show 200. It's actually my company's like what we use when we buy a new

property. And on there is the estoppel agreement. I just for some reason dropped the ball on that last time. Whoops. Well, Brandon, if only you had paid attention to number 17. If only, I know, that was a problem on this property. What is number 17, Josh? I think it's yours, but it's keep yourself organized. Wow. Ouch. Yeah, I was apparently not that organized on that property. But yeah, keeping yourself organized. Chris Lowe, he's had a few good, quotes in this thing so far. Chris Lowe said, create a tracking system. You're going to be signing and reviewing a lot of documents, whether in person or electronically,

have a system set up to manage them so you can have all the relevant information for a specific property in one place. You'll be surprised how quickly it can become confusing, especially with counteroffers going back and forth, disclosures, inspections for reviews, financing, escrow documents, etc. You can get highly technical, but honestly, even a simple Manila folder for each property is better than nothing. Again, yeah, just organization.

I love that quote from Chris. It's just organization. I mean, even if all you're using is an envelope and you put everything in there organized, that's better than just what most people do is just like throw it around wherever it lands when the mail comes. Create a Dropbox, Google Drive doc, you know, create a folder on Drive, you name it.

I mean, there's any of a hundred different ways to keep yourself organized. And hopefully your real estate agent is going to help you with that portion of the transaction, dates, tasks, things like that. but you definitely need to create some kind of system to make sure that you're on the ball with everything that you need to get done. There you go. Cool, which leads us to 18 by the property.

All right, so you've gone, you made an offer, you negotiated, you countered, and they've accepted, you've gone through the due diligence period, and you are now at the closing table. Radley Estrada said it plainly. Take a huge leap of faith and close the deal. You got your financing lined up.

You know how you're going to pay for it. You've done all your inspections and due diligence. Everything seems to be checking out. Everything that needed to be done got done. Now you just show up. Now, I think the big thing that I have to add to this is something that the average person doesn't do. Whenever I go to a closing table,

I get lots of grief from the other parties because I actually read through the contract. no, obviously if you can get the final paperwork ahead of time to read through, save everybody the headache of you reading it then there. But most people don't actually read through it. Yeah, I never knew. And that's a problem. It is a problem. I bought a property two years ago that had an easement, a 12-foot driveway easement through the back, or through the side yard. I never knew about it because I never read the detailed title report thing. And that really caused a lot of drama for me over the previous two years. But I sold that property.

yesterday. So it's no longer my problem. Congratulations. But that's, you know, the point is you need to understand what you're reading, you know, and you don't have to be a lawyer to read through this stuff, but you really need to read through it because people make mistakes all the time. I mean, I don't know that I've done a closing where there has not been something that needed to be tweaked, scratched out and initialed because somebody was in a rush when

they were prepping documents. Yep. Yep. So you buy the property and congratulate. You are a successful acquirer of property. And you're done. Now you're a millionaire. That's all you have to do.

You're a millionaire. You've just bought your first property. Now what are you going to do? What's your plan? Well, you know. Well, this is interesting, right? Because so many people feel like, like, so much of the emphasis in real estate is on the everything we've covered so far, the purchase and whatever, it almost feels like,

oh, if you do all this right, you're just, it's passive income, right? We love that phrase, passive income. But in reality, yeah, everything real estate-wise is going to require a lot of work going forward. Maybe not as many hours, but you've got to manage it, whether it's a rehab project, a rental property, whether you're managing a property manager, you know, if you screw up the management of your real estate, all 18 steps that came before this can just be, you know, for nothing. You can lose everything. Even after you do 18 steps correctly, you can still lose it all. So make sure you guys are on top of managing it, again, no matter how you're doing it.

So Sean Palmer says a few things on management there in the forums. He said, will I manage or not? I've decided to self-manage at first to get going. and so I moved next to pre-screening tenants. Otherwise, I would have been talking with property management companies as a next step. And then, you know, I added there, it could also apply to flipping. Who's going to manage the deal? That you, a partner or project manager or a general contractor. So whatever you're doing, make sure you have that plan in place for how you're going to manage it.

Yep. Yep. And along that line, if you're self-managing, you know all the rules you need to know to self-manage. If you're self-managing, you better have an attorney. Yeah. plain and simple. If you're not self-managing, you're going to use a property manager. You better know how to screen a property manager, you know, because it's not just go, you know, pick a name out of a phone book. You need to know what you need to know in order to make sure

that they're doing the things that they need to be doing because they don't all necessarily do everything that you need them to do. I know that sounds really vague, but we've got tons of articles on managing the manager and other stuff also, you know, as far as flipping, or rehab. Yeah, I mean, what contractors are you going to work with? What are the plans? Who's going to help you out? You know, if you wait to close to have that figure it out, especially on a flip, now you're dealing with holding costs. You know, if it takes you two, three, four weeks to get all your ducks in a row, you've wasted two, three, four weeks of holding costs, which it can power, you know, other things that can add up the cost of money, which may make a profitable deal into a losing deal. Yeah, it's very true. So manage correctly.

It's a big deal. And if you want to know more about managing rental properties, you can go to biggerpockets.com slash bookstore and pick up a copy of the book on managing rental properties by my wife and myself. All right. Lovely. Lovely, lovely. All right, number 20.

Stick close to bigger pockets for every step of the process. You know, totally self-promotional. Sorry, we had to do it. But the reason Bigger Pockets is here, we are here to help you out. We're here to hold your hand. We're here to provide you with the tools and resources you need to successfully get through this process. And we know it can be intimidating, particularly for new people. Brandon, if I said to you, you know, you're about to buy a 200-unit property.

Would you be slightly intimidated? Maybe a little. Yeah. I mean, there's, you know, I mean, that's something new, right? Something you haven't done before. It freak me out. Yeah. So it's a great resource, whether you're networking, whether you're looking for answers,

whether you're looking to find people to help you through the process, whether you're looking for deals and opportunities, tools, you name it, bigger pockets. We are there for you. We are here to support you. And we definitely hope that you'll use our website and the tools. Like this podcast is a tool for our website, but the tools that we offer to help you be more successful. So you call me a tool again. I am not calling you a tool, Brandon.

I say it with love. You're not a tool. Come on, man. We're kind of tools. It's okay. We're a little nerdy, but it's all good. Whatever. It's okay. All right, well, that is the tip number 20. It's a good thing we did do like 200 steps in our 200th episode.

It is a good thing. It is a good thing. It's a good thing. Let me just run through a quick review. Is that cool? So we go through everything. All you, man. It's all you.

You can repeat. You can just talk. I'm going to sit here and put the snoo button on. I'm going to do it in less than 30 seconds. All right. Number one, commitment. Number two, knowledge. Number three, get your life in order.

Number four, decide what you want with your life. Number five, decide what niche and strategy is going to get you there. Number six, set your goals. Number seven, choose your farm location. Number eight, figure out your financing. Number nine, get your core team together. Ten, start looking for deals. Number 11, estimate your rehab budget.

12, run the numbers. 13, review your numbers with someone. 14, make that offer. 15, negotiate and get it under contract. 16, manage the due diligence process. 17, keep yourself organized. 18, buy the property. 19, manage the rehab or the property.

And 20, stick close to bigger pockets. Awesome. Awesome. All right, guys. Hopefully you found this to be really helpful. We put a lot of time into getting this prepped and organized for you. And we want to hear your stories. We want to hear from those of you guys who have used this or any of our shows, frankly, to help you be successful. So please leave us some feedback. Jump on the show notes, biggerpockets.com slash show 200. Let us know what you think. Let us know what you think about the Bigger Pockets podcast. In general, jump on iTunes, Stitcher, SoundCloud. however you're listening to the show.

If you are not yet subscribing to us, please hit subscribe and do subscribe to the show. If you have not yet done so, for show 200, for us putting out 200 amazing shows for you, please take five minutes of your time and give back to us. Leave us a rating review there. It would be really, really helpful. Those ratings and reviews definitely help us in the rankings

and help other people who are interested in learning more about the show to find out. what you guys think about the show. So please do that for us. This is great, man. I think this is going to help a lot of people. Yeah, I hope so. I think this will be something we can send people to who are new to the site. Be like, hey, listen to Episode 200. And you'll know what's what. Wow, man. 200 shows. Congratulations. Celebrates. Awesome. Awesome. Hopefully this 200 show gets us ranked in the top 100 podcasts. That'd be nice. All podcasts, right? I mean, we're teetering on the brink and those reviews. and subscriptions and everything else should help us out.

So let's do it. All right, guys. Well, thank you very much, you know, being part of the Bigger Pockets community. For all those who contributed their ideas to this episode, you know, we gave you guys a special thanks and shout out. And again, lastly, I'll say this. If you want to actually connect with this thread that Josh started,

we will also put that in these show notes at BiggerPockets.com slash show 200, along with a free PDF. You can download of all this information all put nicely. So there you go. All right, guys. Well, we'll see you on show 201. I'm Josh Dorkin. Here's my co-host, Brandon Turner.

Me? 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 Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. I'm the host and executive producer of the show, Dave Meyer. The show is produced by Ian K, copywriting is by Calicoke content, and editing is by Exodus Media. If you'd like to learn more about real estate investing or to sign up for our free newsletter, please visit www.w.com. The content of this podcast is for informational purposes only. All host and participant opinions are their own. Investment in any asset, real estate included, involves risk. So use your best judgment and consult with qualified advisors before investing.

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