BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast - 206: Taking Massive Action to Do 20+ Deals in Two Years with Joe England
Episode Date: December 22, 2016Two years ago, Joe England was just a full-time military guy, dreaming about financial freedom. Now, he’s done over 20 deals and is taking massive action to create an incredible future for himsel...f. On this episode of the BiggerPockets Podcast, we dive deep into Joe’s story and learn how taking massive action has helped him build his portfolio — despite being deployed overseas the majority of the time. In This Episode We Cover: How Joe learned about real estate from infomercials and BiggerPockets Why he needs power of attorney Important books he’s read How he started investing while still deployed in Iraq How he landed 22 properties in just 10 months What exactly a rent-ready property is What kind of properties he invests in How he finances these deals Joe’s end goal and his “why” The state of the real estate market in Baltimore How to NOT be a slumlord How he manages his properties His experiences with bad property managers How to find properties on the MLS and Zillow The strategy of putting an offer on everything he sees His advice for the military And SO much more! Links from the Show BiggerPockets Forums BiggerPockets Webinar BiggerPockets Podcast BP Podcast 108: Building a $350 Million Real Estate Empire Using the 10X Rule with Grant Cardone BP Podcast 060: From 0 to 68 Rental Units in Just Four Years with Serge Shukhat BiggerPockets Bookstore Zillow Landlords: 8 Tips for Hiring the Best Property Manager (blog) Investing in American Real Estate While Serving in the US Military (blog) BiggerPockets Analysis Advertise with BiggerPockets BP Podcast 014 : Cash Flow, Creative Finance, and Life with Ben Leybovich Books Mentioned in this Show BiggerPockets Ultimate Beginner’s Guide to Real Estate Investing The Book on Rental Property Investing by Brandon Turner The Book on Flipping Houses by J. Scott Investing with No or Low Money Down by Brandon Turner The 10X Rule by Grant Cardone Ego Is the Enemy by Ryan Holiday The One Thing by Gary Keller Tweetable Topics: “When doing an offer, if you are not embarrassed by your offer, it’s too high.” (Tweet This!) “Real estate is kinda like an accidental pregnancy. At the end of the day, you’ll figure it out.” (Tweet This!) “You can measure success by creating new problems.” (Tweet This!) Connect with Joseph Joseph’s BiggerPockets Profile Email Joseph Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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This is the Bigger Pockets podcast.
That's what I'm talking about.
You guys, that's my mom.
Hi, everyone.
Hi, Josh's mom.
This is the Bigger Pockets podcast show 206.
From there, it's sort of steamrolled.
And in the last 10 months, since that first property, you've done 22.
You're listening to Bigger Pockets Radio, simplifying real estate for investors large and small.
If you're here looking to learn about.
real estate investing without all the hype. You're in the right place. Stay tuned and be sure to
join the millions of others who have benefited from biggerpockets.com. Your home for real estate investing
online. What's going on everybody? This is Josh Dorkin. House to the Bigger Pockets podcast
here with my co-host, Mr. Brandon Turner. What's going on, man? Look who's back, Josh Dorkin after leaving
almost three weeks, a month? Well, it's been a very difficult.
A couple few weeks.
I know.
Everything good now?
Well, first off, thank you to Dave and Mindy and Brandon, you guys for holding down the fort.
Yeah, well, I mean, so basically we had some family stuff going on.
My dad got very sick and had to have some emergency heart surgery.
And, you know, the doctors really saved his life.
You know, it wasn't looking good and they came in and did magic.
And he's still recovering right now.
But yeah, I've been out dealing with family, family things and helping out.
And, yeah, well, first, you know, thank you to everybody who's listening, who has been supportive.
And this has been a tough time, very, very, very difficult time.
And I do appreciate all the support that I have gotten, although I think this is the most public I've gone about the situation.
Yeah, public.
So a big thanks to everybody.
It's been rough.
It's been rough on everybody.
And, you know, my job has really been to be supportive to my family and be there for my
and, you know, help out advocating for my dad and everybody else.
So thanks to everybody.
But we are back.
Today we have an unbelievable show.
Again, I heard the last couple of shows have been fantastic.
People really liked Mindy and Dave.
And, you know, I don't know.
I'm a little offended.
I'll be honest.
They're good hosts.
I stayed co-host.
They took over a host, you know, I don't want to step on your toes.
So, you know, it was good shows.
They even let me, Mindy, oh, Mindy didn't let me.
Let's you.
No, Mind you didn't let me.
She let you.
She interrupted me.
Then Dave, let me do the intro of one of the shows.
It was pretty remarkable.
Oh, we love those guys.
Those guys are going to be filling in, you know, give Brandon and I breaks when we need it.
You know, we've heard great things about, we know they're awesome, but, you know,
you guys have really loved them.
So we're really pleased.
Anyway, we got a great show today.
Very, very exciting show with a fantastic guest.
This guy started investing.
Well, active duty in the military, and in very short time, and two years has done some incredible
stuff in the last year alone.
I think he's renovated, rehabed, like 21 properties.
It's remarkable how we did it, how he came to it, really, really cool.
So we'll get into that.
But before we do, why don't we get to today's quick tip?
Quick tip.
All right, today's quick tip.
So you might be listening to this after Christmas, because this show does come out a couple
days before Christmas. My quick tip today is, you know, at Christmas dinner or when you're with family
and friends hanging out, like, don't be afraid to talk a little bit about your real estate investing.
And I say that because a couple reasons. One, you never know if one of your family members
maybe someday wants to partner with you or maybe wants to be a private lender. Or more likely,
maybe they know somebody who, you know, yeah, I got this guy at work who's actually been talking
about real estate or, you know, I got my cousin does it, you know, whatever. It's a good time just
to kind of bring that up. I mean, don't dominate conversations, but don't be afraid to talk a little
bit about your real estate. You never know where it might lead you. Yeah. And you could even do that during
Hanukkah dinner. You could. Like your Festivus celebration, perhaps. My Festivus? I don't even know what that is,
but I'm going to know. Wow. Should I know what that is? I'm a little disappointed. Yeah,
it's a Seinfeld reference. I was going to say, I think that was Seinfeld. I just thought it was something like that.
Yeah, seats of strength. Come on, Festivus, for the rest of us. All right, never mind.
Well, anyway, that was a quick tip.
All right, guys, so this is show 206 of the Bigger Pockets podcast.
You can check out the show notes at biggerpockets.com slash show 206.
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You guys, for Christmas, I want one thing from you. If you have not yet left us, a rating and
review on iTunes, please take five minutes, jump on iTunes, leave us a rating, leave us a review.
There's things really, really help us. Subscribe to the show if you're not doing so already.
And lastly, share it. If you're listening to this podcast, if you listen to more than five episodes,
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Let people know.
Post the link,
BiggerPockets.com slash podcast on Facebook, on Twitter,
to your friends and family, share it to people.
Let people know that this is a great show.
Help us, help us to grow the show,
help us to educate more real estate investors
and get more people successful.
Help us out if you could.
We really would appreciate that.
Yeah, we would.
All right, should we get into this?
Let's do this.
All right, guys, today's show is with special guests.
They're all special.
But today's special guest is Joseph England. Joe England, like I said, real estate investor from the Baltimore area. Joe's only 32 years old, full-time active duty member of the U.S. Army and has been for the last 11 years. He's deployed over 10 times to countries in Africa, Asia, and Europe. And he is now having massive success in his real estate investing career. He's a good guy. He's got a great story. And he's got a great why. He's got an unbelievable why. He's got an unbelievable why.
So stay tuned, listen up, and let's hear from Joe.
All right, Joe, welcome to the show, man.
It's good to have you here.
It's great to be here.
Great, great.
So we're talking about your story.
You actually came to us here and you, you know, came to our attention, I guess, because
I'm getting there.
Seriously, spit it out.
Spit it out.
I know I've been gone from the show for like two weeks.
You've been gone for like forever.
But we had a great time without you.
I haven't been around here.
Let's get this thing going.
Three weeks, actually.
Three weeks in a row.
It has been three weeks.
It has been three weeks.
It's been really sad.
Yeah, I know.
Well, you're back, sadly.
So let's get to this thing.
You probably didn't miss you.
Can I ask you a question?
I did not.
Okay, ask them the question, then let me get to my question.
Okay, go ahead, Brandon.
All right, so my question is, okay, so you came to our attention because on the forums,
you wrote kind of a success story, and it was amazing.
And so that's what we're talking about today.
Kind of like how you got started, where you came from.
I think it should be kind of fun.
So why don't we just started at the very, very, very beginning.
Who are you?
And how did you get into real estate?
So I'm 32 years old.
I've been in the military for 11 years now.
And you look it.
You look it.
You look it.
Well, I know.
Like, can you.
Can you challenge him to fight brand?
I would never challenge.
Can you give me like, like, can you flex just like to the camera?
It's, it's not impressive.
It's actually.
It is impressive.
You look at that.
Okay, everybody.
His, his biceps are larger than my waist.
All right.
So you look.
You've been in the military.
All right.
Yeah.
And my.
job within the military is always I deploy a lot and I've been deployed over 10 times to
Africa, Asia, Europe, places like that. And when I'm not deployed, well, I guess a combination
of deployments and trips away, I'm usually gone nine months out of the year. So I pretty much had
every excuse in the book not to start real estate because I've always wanted to begin in real
estate and about a little over two, two and a half years. It was the summer of 2014. I was in a
school for four months down in Florida and the whole ISIS thing had kicked off in Iraq.
And I got notified that when I got back, I was going to be on standby for deployment to go
to Iraq as far as the few, the people that were going back to Iraq is in response to that incident.
And at that point, I had lived in my apartment for two years in Baltimore City that I'd planned
just to live there for a year. And, you know, I guess two and a half years later, I was still
living there and hadn't bought a house. And this thing came up and I was like, before
I'd heard about the Iraq thing. I had every intention to go home and start my search for my house.
And then this came up and I was like, oh, maybe I'll push it off again. I decided, no, I'm not going to do that.
I'm actually going to do this. So started searching. I was able to finally find a house.
But at that point, when I got a house under a contract, I was notified that I was leaving two weeks later.
So this was the middle of November. So instead of letting that deter me, I set up a bunch of power of attorneys and got my dad to basically buy the house,
while I was in Iraq and then I'm closing on it in I think either end of January,
2015 or early February.
And then I had arranged for two roommates to move in before I even came home and was
already house hacking before I even stepped into the house.
That's awesome.
So that was the start of my first property purchase.
As far as the investment portion, I always knew I wanted to, but sort of like an interesting
thing is like about a week before I was supposed to sleep at the appointment, I fell asleep
TV and suddenly I woke up and there was a infomercial for Yancey real estate and going to one of their
like guru seminars and I've never called, you know, a commercial in my life. But I decided, you know,
what the hell? So I called this thing 3.30 in the morning decided to go, went there and it was very,
you know, obvious, you know, the stories they tell the gurus. There's people obviously implants, actors,
you know, but it still kind of sparked an idea in both me and my partner who had went at the time.
And so we then got introduced to Bigger Pockets, and then I left on this deployment a week later.
And then, you know, I was working average like 15-hour days, seven days a week.
But the few hours that I had free time, I would spend that either listening to Bigger Pockets podcast or some book on the Bigger Pockets' biggest reading list.
Sure.
That's awesome.
Nice.
Hey, I want to go back really quick because you talked about power of attorney.
For those people who don't understand or know what that is, can you just explain?
explain really quickly. So because I wasn't able to be there and physically be able to sign in order
for someone else to sign for me, and especially because it was, there's a little more red tape
involving because it was a VA loan, that someone actually had to sign for me and physically be there.
So my father, who actually lives in Lakewood, Washington, came all the way out and signed for me
in my stead. And that's what the power attorney was giving him power to sign for me.
Right on. That's awesome. Well, you know, what I love about that is like, you know, you kind of
mentioned already, you had like every reason not to get involved with real estate because you're like,
well, I'm in the military, I'm going to be traveling a lot, I better not. Or, you know, most people
out there probably would not have done it anyway. But I just love the fact that you're like, I'm
going to do it anyway. And then when you ran across the difficulty, instead of again saying, okay,
well, let's just forget it. I'm leaving in two weeks anyway. You found a way to make it happen.
And I just hope that's like a lesson to everyone listening to this is like no
what excuse you think you have for why now is not a good time to do it. Maybe you'll just do it later.
Like, there's no time like the present, right? Yeah. And I'm the master of making excuses because I'm
made excuses for years.
You know, for the longest time,
the majority of my free time was spent playing video games
or going out and drinking and, you know,
living the night life, I guess.
And I just thought it was time to be serious.
There you go.
So anyway, so you started learning about real estate,
watching the late night in commercials and found bigger pockets,
started listening to this and reading books and all that good stuff.
Just out of curiosity, like, when you were starting,
like, what books did you read?
Like, what were the big books back then that got you kind of excited?
This was 15, right?
January, 2015?
Yeah, it was about January 2015.
Well, first was the beginner's guide to beginners' ultimate.
Nice.
Yeah.
The ultimate beginners guy to real estate investing by Josh Dorkin and Brandon Turner.
Yeah.
Okay.
I did not ask you that because I knew you were going to say that.
I just asked you because I was actually curious.
But that's awesome.
Okay.
Anyway, what else?
And then from there I went to, because I always liked the idea of rehabbing.
Because when I was in college, I ended up becoming an apprentice carpenter to help rebuild my sister's roof.
and who builds a flat roof in Lakewood, Washington,
but apparently she bought the only flat roof in Washington,
and we spent six months building it
only to find out the guy who had written the plans
had, I guess, put the trusses backwards,
and then it was not to code,
and they had to tear it back down,
and it obtained some other contracting company to do it anyways.
Yeah, a good lesson learned, I guess.
Yeah, flat roast out here, not a good idea.
All right, so we've got this first deal.
You've gone, you bought it, your dad took care of all the business.
You come back.
these two roommates who are in there and you're making money off of it, I'm assuming, at this point,
by the time you get back from your deployment, yeah?
Yeah.
Okay, cool.
So actually, the investment part actually started while I was in Iraq.
So at that point, I decided to partner up with my girlfriend at the time.
So we basically developed a plan.
And she is actually a diplomat in the Department of State.
And she was actually stationed in Jamaica when we decided to start this venture together.
So we, together through Skype and all, you know, communication and our few hours that we had apart, you know, being in different time zones, we basically organized our plan to hit.
As soon as I got back the week that we were going to have properties ready to go and look at and we want to start an investment career as soon as possible.
So we picked, you know, I lived in Baltimore.
So we picked out of a few areas.
And we ended up using my real estate agent that used to buy my original house.
and she ended up working out amazing, still are my main real estate agent to this day, and it's just awesome.
So we basically ended up having like a good 30, 40 houses that we wanted to look at,
and much to the smear of my real estate agent, we saw those probably the first two weeks, like every single one,
because I didn't know really quite what I was doing other than what I had read from Jay Scott's book and other stuff like that.
But from there, we basically end up putting an offer on every single house, minus the few that had like foundational problems.
And just, you know, one of our, I guess, way behind how we do offers is one of the best piece of advice ever I got was when putting in an offer, if you're not embarrassed by your offer, it's too high.
So we frequently were putting in these extremely embarrassing low offers.
And, of course, most were rejected.
Most were like, you know, but there were a few that actually came back and you were able to instantly tell who was serious and who wasn't.
who's motivated. And we were able to quit after a few weeks, we got one property under contract,
and then a few days later, we got a second one. And then about a month later, we actually found a
third property on Craigslist, which ended up being our first sort of property in Section 8 house.
We bought it for $35,000. This is a rehab. This is like a turnkey itself, $35,000, and it rents
for $1,000 a month. Wow. Wow. That's awesome.
So you said, so you bought basically three, you came home.
Three and three.
You had three days.
Yeah, three, probably a month, month, month and a half.
That's awesome.
So the first one, the second and third one, return keys, the first one needed work.
And I ended up doing the work myself.
Okay.
And then, you know, obviously you can see the appreciation that you got from doing the rehab yourself.
And then from there is basically when I decided that I no longer wanted to buy turn keys.
I didn't want to pay for anybody else's, you know, rehab profits.
You know, I wanted those to be mine.
So basically,
Then we kind of took a break for like six months.
And then, you know, around like Christmas time, I started looking at more distressed properties because I came up with the idea that I wanted to just rehab properties.
I wanted to do the birth strategy.
I wanted to flip.
And I started looking at more houses, doing the same process.
And got a house under contract.
It closed on my first distressed property, January of 2016.
And from there, it sort of steamrolled.
And in the last 10 months, since that first first.
property. You've done 22. Wow. Oh my God. You've done 22 units or 22 properties?
22 properties. They're only individual single family houses.
Those all flips. They're all rehabs in some form. I take that back. One of them, we ended up buying
one other turnkey. It just ended up being this really good property with this high paying renter in it.
And we're just, okay, well, threw down another conventional loan on that in the midst of these. So there were
21 rehabs.
So Joe, I got a couple of questions on this.
So first, you're saying the word turnkey.
Can you define it as you're saying it?
Because I think there's various interpretations of what a turnkey property is.
So I just want people to understand specifically how you're defining it.
Yeah.
So my definition of a turnkey is a house that is already rehabbed and ready to go,
ready to go and basically rent-ready.
Okay.
You don't need to really do much work to it.
Somebody did the work already.
Yeah, somebody already did the work.
So that is my definition of returning to it.
Okay, perfect.
How, you know, 22 properties over the course of a year,
were they all in distressed neighborhoods, you know,
that $30,000, $40,000, $50,000 price range?
Or, you know, did it vary?
Actually, it varied greatly.
So my first house is in the kind of like A-class neighborhood,
Baltimore City known as Canton.
It was valued over $400,000.
And then I would say majority of my properties,
is sort of like a B class, B minus kind of class where the ARV is around $150,000.
And so the majority of them would be buying for $50,000 to $60,000, maybe $65,000,
rehab them for about $30,000, maybe a little bit more depending on the property.
And then we would then either flip or refinance out of them.
And the ARV would generally be around $150.
So like the lowest one was like $144.
We had one to go up to $160 for a flip.
Okay.
And then we've got a number of them in also the distressed areas, probably have about a seven in the kind of the Section 8 neighborhood specifically.
It's actually in the same neighborhood we bought the first house from Craigslist.
They're all within a two block radius of that house.
So 22 properties in a year, not even a year, what are we at, 11 months is considerable.
You know, you're a guy who's out of the military.
I hope don't come jump through the screen and hurt me.
but I'm assuming you're not loaded.
And so my question is, how are you financing, you know,
how'd you end up financing 22 properties over the course of the last year?
I mean, it seems like a lot.
I'm assuming you did some creative stuff in order to get to the point where you can really
start to scale it.
So I'd love to hear that story.
Yeah.
So we use all sorts of different type financing.
And actually, of the 22, we've had a number of properties under contract,
but there's never been a property that we had to forego due to financing.
We've, every single property that we've gotten, we've been able to get fine financing.
And almost majority of them, we didn't have financing secured when the contract was ratified.
So I kind of almost finds a little, I wouldn't recommend that for beginners, but it's an extra motivation.
But if it's a good property, the money is there.
So my very first rehab property, you know, both me and our partner, we didn't have money, really.
I had a number of investments that I had acued over, you know, 11 years.
well, they weren't doing very well in the stock market.
And so I decided to liquefy my entire non-retirement investment account,
which actually paid for the purchase and the rehab of my actual rehab property.
Then I am refining sound like getting my money back.
And then for the second property, while the first one was still going on,
I was able to find private financing through a guy who I actually served in the military with.
He actually flips houses.
And we were really good friends.
And so he'd been doing it for years.
and we sort of started doing a partnership where he would help me find the money and the financing
for a few of the properties.
But, you know, he only had a limited number of private lenders.
So then on my third property, I used a hard money lender.
On my fourth property, I used a combination of a private money lender and a hard money
lender.
And then ever since then it's been a combination of that pretty much private money, hard money,
and my own money to finance every single property.
It's fantastic.
Yeah, I love that creativity.
I love just, you know, you're figuring out.
I mean, so people always want to know about creative finance.
Like, what's the best way to finance a deal?
And, like, the way that you're kind of saying it, exactly what I found is, like, every
deal is different.
You just figure it out.
You put together a little bit of this strategy, a little bit of this one, a little bit of
this one.
And you kind of put it all together and it makes the financing work.
And it's kind of cool to hear your story of that.
Yeah.
I actually, there's a funny joke that me and my partner made the other day, just in kind
of relation to this.
And, you know, real estate's kind of like an accidental
pregnancy, you know, you'll figure it, you know, at the end of the day, you'll figure it out,
or you'll end up on team mom or maybe.
Whoopsie.
I love that.
It is kind of like, right?
It's like, oopsie.
Well, now I got it.
I better figure out how to make this work.
Like, it's very true, you know, and it's stressful sometimes, and sometimes you end up on
MTV.
You look kind of stupid, but, you know, like.
Brandon, is that how you got on TV?
That's right there.
I was on teen mom.
Or even worse.
BV podcast.
Yeah, even worse.
Even worse.
Ouch, Joe.
Hey, Brandon, we've got to go.
We're having technical difficulties.
I think we are.
I think we are.
All right.
I love that.
You know, one thing I talk,
I mentioned in the,
what is the book on Invest in in Real Estate
with No and Lomoney Down is that
real estate is a lot like a toolbox, right?
So if you have like one tool in that toolbox,
you can do like, imagine you wanted to go build a house,
but all you have is a hammer.
You couldn't do it.
But if you have a hammer and a saw,
now you can do a little bit more.
Hammer saw screwdriver.
Now you can do more.
Basically, the more tools you have in your toolbox,
the bigger projects you can take on.
So that's what creative finance is like, right?
Just get as many tools, you know, metaphorically speaking, in your head as you can get,
figure out how does hard money work, how does private money work, how does, you know,
house hacking work, how does all this stuff work?
And then when you have a deal, you just figure it out.
You put together what you know and you can take on some pretty cool projects.
That's awesome.
All right.
So go ahead, Josh.
You were jumping at the bit.
No, I'm not jumping.
I'm not jumping at anything.
Relax.
All right.
So back to these 22 deals.
That's a lot of work.
I mean, that averages out to, you know, about a little less than two per month.
How are you crewing these rehabs up?
Do you have one team?
Do you have multiple teams that are working on multiple projects at the same time?
What does your infrastructure look like?
So originally I started on the first rehab.
I didn't have a GC at the time.
I purchased the house and I actually even closed on it before I even had a general contractor.
But on my very first property, I had, I think,
was six different general contractors that I'd gotten references from to come out and do a bid.
And we had bids, I think it was like $16,000, all the way up to $50,000 for the exact same scope of work that I had put up.
And a lot you can tell from general contractors when doing the bidding processes, one, their price.
And two, how long it takes them to get it back to you?
The one guy who came at $50,000, like, took almost two weeks to get it back to me.
But the guy I ended up going with who bid the property, I think, for $23,000, which is one I am going with.
He did it in two days.
And he actually is still my main general contractor and actually my pseudo project manager to help supervise other general contractors we've brought on board.
I think that's actually a great tip.
The contractors that get back to you fairly quickly, like in what I'm thinking just in my past few years, those are the guys that I end up using a lot more as well.
It's like they're responsible enough to get you back a bid.
they're probably responsible enough to manage their time to do a flip as well.
Exactly.
Now, what of the idea that those guys are getting back because nobody wants to hire them or because,
I mean, there's different ways to look at it, right?
And the end of the day, it's a business.
And if you really want my business, you're going to, you know, you're going to put some effort into it and get off your ass.
There you go.
Brandon, get off your ass.
I'm trying.
I'm trying.
But it started with one.
And then over time, we then, through this whole process, we've created new problems.
And one of my favorite books, you know, The 10X rule by Cran Cardone, he says, you can measure
success by creating new problems.
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contractors.
So then we then created, we found more general contractors.
And then we had so many properties and so many general contractors that we were then
running out of money to finance all these properties.
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So, you know, you're a freight train, right?
You're going, you're rocking and rolling, moving forward.
Why?
Like, what's the goal?
I assume you, I don't, I should assume nothing.
But are you still in the military?
Are you out?
Are you trying to, you know, become a bazillionaire?
You're trying to just, you know, build enough wealth to kind of live up?
off of what's what's kind of the path? So, you know, of course, one is economic freedom, you know,
our financial freedom, but mainly is, you know, causes that are more kind of like, you know,
close to my heart, you know, through like deployments in different places and especially Africa,
you know, you see a lot of like hunger and stuff like that and there's a lot of issues that go on
in these countries. And there are a few organizations that are actually, you know, have like
former military guys like myself and, you know, who go there and try to advise the local governments
and help try to, you know, combat some of these militias that are stealing food from, you know,
countries in Africa. And my goal is I want to eventually get, you know, to a point where I can,
my real estate empire can help fund one of these, you know, these efforts to combat, you know,
hunger and, you know, the violence in a lot of these places.
Wow, that's amazing.
Brandon, it's not true what you were saying about him before he came on the show.
What was I saying about?
He's a good guy.
Seriously.
He's just jealous that my beard's actually nicer than his.
Yeah, it is nicer.
Whatever.
Shorter, but nicer.
Shorter.
Well, what I was doing, I was doing the no shave November, right?
Now we're in December and I'm like, oh, let's just see how long you can get this thing.
So my goal now is, we're going to do no shave 2017.
That's what this is.
Yeah.
So we'll see a year from now how I'm at.
So, okay, let me jump back in here.
So, first of all, I love that you have that why.
I think that's fantastic.
And I think that is important for everyone.
You want something bigger than just getting rich, right?
Like, if that's your whole goal in life
is to get rich, you'll get there with real estate,
then you'll be miserable and you won't know what to do next.
So, like, I love the idea of having something a little bit bigger,
and it keeps you kind of focused when you're like,
you know what, this is hard work.
And I don't really care about getting rich that much.
But instead of like, this is hard work,
but there's kids dying in Africa.
well, you know, okay, I'll get back up and go do some more work.
So I love that.
All right, so going back to what you said earlier about you bought some houses in really nice areas,
some in kind of the middle class areas.
Then you bought some in like you said, I think class D or, you know, the really cheaper end.
I want to talk about that for a little bit.
What has that been like?
I mean, like, have those been terrible?
They've been okay.
So, you know, Baltimore, you know, has its own reputation.
You know, it's still better than Detroit.
but I think I saw the wire once or twice.
Yeah.
I actually think some of my properties are in that show.
Oh, nice.
It's awesome.
When you're doing these lower income, you know, houses, you know, your cash flow is you really can't beat it.
But one of the side effects of that is your analysis and due diligence that you have to perform on these houses is a lot, you know, it has to be, it has to be a higher degree.
of scrutiny and your block-to-block analysis, and I mean that by block-to-block analysis,
has to be, like, dead on. You have to, like, know these. Like, you can look on a map and Zillow,
and Zillow can tell you the Z-estimate, but that doesn't tell you anything, especially in these
areas in Baltimore City. So, like, for example, there is an area that we rent majority of
our Section 8, are those type properties. Not everybody's Section 8. We actually have a bunch
of, half of them are actually market, actually market tenants and not actually voucher
tenants. But if we see anything on the 2,500 block or a 2,400 block or even lower, we don't even
touch it. But the 2,600 block, that's that 26, 27, 2,800 block, that's money. And between these,
it's probably, it's probably a nine block radius, three blocks up, three blocks down. It's been a nice,
it's a nice friend, quiet pocket. So can you explain like the difference between in, in those low-income areas,
the quiet pockets versus the not-so-quiet pockets.
I mean, how would somebody know the difference?
How would somebody who is willing to work in a tougher neighborhood for a potential
higher return?
How do they not get screwed?
I invested in a tougher neighborhood and I thought I was in a quieter block and
I might have been, yeah, I was 2,000 miles away.
I didn't know the block to block area and I, you know, I didn't do so well with that.
So I'd love to learn.
So one, you kind of have to drive these areas.
You have to be there.
you have to see it for yourself and also different times of the day like if you go there you know noon
you know it's you're not really going to be able to see much you know but you can tell a lot for one is
a number of boardups you know if an entire block is boarded up you probably want to stay away from
that block you know or the majority of them you know why though is it i mean like you go you're
an investor you're like i've got a whole block i could buy this block cheap rehab it and get people
in there i mean i that's what that was the the thinking i had when i started
to get into real estate. I was like, I saw that as real opportunity, and I think a lot of other
people do. So I'd love to hear your why on that one. So I think there's sort of a, this is a
multifaceted answer this question. One, you have to think about the tenant, you know, people who want to
live there. Nobody wants to live next to boardups. You know, that's one thing. And then two, I don't have
the resources to buy entire blocks or two entire blocks. Got this show. Yeah. One day. Maybe, maybe,
maybe in about two months, but you never know.
Yeah, a couple months, maybe three.
And, you know, this kind of goes into another thing.
You know, there are people in these areas actually not that far from where we redo the, you know,
we rehab these houses and, you know, make it suitable for these tenants.
You know, we have these other rehabbers who are buying these houses for $15,000 and putting
$100,000 in them and trying to sell them from anywhere from $200,000, $300,000.
And then the people that live in those areas can no longer afford.
to live in those areas. You know, they can't buy these houses. So, you know, they become displaced.
And it becomes another issue, you know, somewhere else within Baltimore. You know, we kind of go in
buy, rehab these houses. You know, I think our typical is we, we buy between 10, 15,000, put in $20,000 to $30,000.
You know, don't really spend more between purchase and rehab for $40,000, $45,000. And it's a good house that people can
appreciate and, you know, can live in who already live in that area. And one of our kind of, that
like to stick to is that
it's okay one of the things that we'd like to
you know your criteria when we're buying and rehabbing these houses if we
we don't rehab a house that we wouldn't live in ourselves you know we do we don't
like the idea of you know the kind of stigma that people get you know like oh you
invest them in these low-income houses in Baltimore City well you're slum lord well
it's like we're actually trying to make the community better and not just trying to
gentrify it and kick people out that's great I hear that I hear that a lot from
contractors who like I'll go in I'll have a contract to do a job for me
and I'll go in there and they'll be like, you know, there'll be something wrong, right?
Like they just paint it over a light switch. And I'm like, hey, you paint over a light switch.
It's just a rental. It's, you know, whatever. It's just a rental. And I'm like, like, at some point, yes, there is, you have to do different work than you're going to do on a flip on a rental property.
And especially lower income, even if it's a flip and low income, you have to do different work, but it doesn't mean you have to do bad work or sloppy work.
And I think, I think a lot of, I don't know, people get that wrong.
And they just, you know, you're just a landlord. You don't care about quality.
We don't want that.
I mean, that's, you know, well, at least we hear bigger pockets.
I mean, you know, that's not what we represent, right?
I mean, we want real estate investors to do the right thing.
We want real estate investors to not be the used car salesman of the housing industry.
You know, I mean, we want a reputation.
I mean, I think it's important that we be looked at appropriately because I think we are doing a good service,
at least the vast majority of real estate investors.
And I love that, you know, you take such pride in what you,
do and, you know, your approach is so methodical and meaningful. So I think it's fantastic.
All right. So are you on the properties that you're keeping? Are you managing them yourself or do you
have a management company? So we do about half of them manage myself and the other half we have
property managers. And we didn't, we just recently started with the property managers this past
summer. And it's actually been a very bad experience. We went through one property manager.
and then tried to, that just didn't go very well.
And then we tried to switch to another one,
and that actually ended up being even worse.
So we're in the process of trying to go back to self-management for a bit,
you know, while we kind of go back and then we'll try,
our new plan is to try a property management company on an individual house
and then, you know, try them out instead of giving them like six properties
and then it's just not working out well.
Like one had to replace a toilet and gave me an,
invoice for $500. Like, it does not cost $500 to replace the toilet. I can get that done for like $120.
Like, this is ridiculous. And then, you know, and when you ask him, because I put specifically in the
contract, like, hey, I need to know before you plan to do any repairs. They're like, well, I just can't
sit here and, you know, wait for you. It was like, oh, that's wrong answer. You're fired.
Yeah. Yeah, that's crazy. So one, you know, crazy overcharging. What about the other one?
What went wrong with them? So they were supposed to hand over to, to,
other and the new property manager said that he was going to you know he went from door to
door and you know hey met all the tenants and you're like hey this is your new payment plan or you
know this is you're now paying us this is how you do it well the next month rolled around and every
single tenant except one paid the old property manager oh man and then we had another house uh we had
bought it it was one of these lower income houses and there was a gas problem and when you go through
the baltimore gas and electric bg e out here
that it's such a backup, and especially during going in the winter, people want to turn on their gas.
Well, this one house was, had to, they had to dig out the underneath the street to bring in a new gas line from one of the vacant houses next door.
So the general contractor or the property manager, the new one had just come on and he had just placed this new tenant and he told me, hey, I'll take care of it.
So a month later, I was like, hey, how's everything going?
I know this takes a while.
And he's like, well, I haven't even submitted the paperwork.
I haven't even gotten a pressure test.
And he's like, oh, you know, he's like, you know, trying to, like, I don't even remember that.
And I was like, okay.
And then we, so we started it.
And then it came down to it.
If I remember this correctly, he thought there was an issue with the chimney.
And my general contractor came in and even signed a paper saying, hey, no, the chimney's fine.
I actually did it myself.
And he's like, and I went back to him.
And he's like, okay, so let's, let's start the process of the BG.
Let's get the inspection.
Let's get them out there.
It can take a month, month and a half from them to get out here once it's actually been inspected.
and he's like, well, I just don't feel comfortable doing it.
And I was like, okay.
Okay, so I end up doing it myself, and it took a month and a half to actually get the gas turned on in this house.
That's crazy.
So I've experienced the same thing as you have when I was working in low-income properties with management.
It was the same thing, one ripping me off on everything from on rehab.
tabs, you know, another one not contacting, not taking care of people, another one not screening
tenants the way they're supposed to. I mean, absolute nightmare. So, you know, that's why we press
upon so strongly to people to do your diligence on looking for property managers and making sure
to get out there and interview them as much as possible. We've got a couple articles, great articles
on the topic on how to screen property managers. We'll link to those in the show notes at
Biggerpockets.com slash show 206.
What advice do you have?
I mean, given those experiences beyond just those interviews, do you have any feedback or
advice for folks on what to avoid potentially in those screenings?
Looking back, maybe?
It's kind of hard because the very first, both of these property managers were under on a
list that was like pushed out as like top 10 property managers in Baltimore,
which is, you know, obviously not saying much.
Yeah.
But, you know, one, you know, making sure, you know, putting in the contract, like some
these guys will sneak in, you know, certain things in the contract like, hey, you have to have
us for a year.
You know, I would say if you're trying a new property manager, you know, make that
trial period, you know, maybe a few months instead of a whole year.
And then staying on top of them and making sure that they're doing exactly what they say
they're doing.
And, you know, make sure, you know, especially at the beginning portion that any
repairs or anything like that, you should be consulted by you. And then once you feel comfortable,
then you can sort of let them go on autopilot and just not really, you know, you know, to have to
over, you know, micromanage them as much. So makes sense. Good, good feedback. Yeah. All right. So
kind of one of my last questions here. How are you finding properties? Like, there's a lot of
properties to find, especially when you're still working and involved in military and all that. How do you do
that. So we actually, I actually find majority, almost all of them, but a majority of them on the
MLS and Zillow. And this is one of the things that about Baltimore and Baltimore City, to be exact.
So everybody around here is like scared of the city. They're, you know, even people who live just
outside the city in the county, you know, I've run into contractors, investors, and I'll be like,
I'm in a property manager, property manager, contractor and be like, hey, you know, I'd like to do
business. Like, okay, great. You know, I'd love to, you know, I've, I've run into, you know,
I like working with investors.
And I'm like, well, he's like, where are your properties on Baltimore City?
He's like, no, sorry, I don't do that.
I don't go in there.
And one of the things that comes to our advantage is that people are scared, you know,
either whether it's, you know, the high property taxes, you know, the high utility bills,
the tenant friendly laws.
And, you know, you've even its reputation from, you know, the riots, you know, the other year.
And actually, a little side note, I was actually in my very first RIA meeting when the city
declared a state of emergency.
and we actually got kicked out of the RIA meeting because of the Freddie Gray Riot.
And actually going back to my house and actually could see the fire from my house.
And then purchasing some houses not that far from those fires.
But because of this, you know, I really don't have that much competition.
There really isn't that much competition because I've went out in the county and I've even done some deals in D.C.
And you know, you go from, you know, any property in D.C. is going to have 20, 20 to 30
different people competing for that offer.
You know, maybe the county, maybe it's a little bit less, but you're looking 10 to 15.
Maybe Baltimore said you're looking at three, you know, other people trying to compete.
And especially if you're in these kind of like not as well-known areas or the, you know,
the already established, hey, this is a good area.
You know, one of the things I look for is these like kind of like fringe areas, you know,
these developing areas as people's, you know, things are going on.
And we're able to be able to find almost all our deals on Zillow and still to this day.
Cool.
But I probably put in like a couple offers every day.
Like everything I see, you know, almost any house is a deal if you get it for the right price.
So I pretty much put an offer on everything that I see.
And, you know, they're all embarrassing low.
And some come, most of them don't come back at all.
But, you know, we occasionally get some.
And we're actually some, we're even surprised.
What does your agent say about that?
How do they feel about submitting all these really, really low offers that they know the odds are really slim?
Because a lot of agents, I think, would say F off.
Yeah.
My real estate agent, Carrie Walling, at the beginning, she wasn't, I don't think she was quite the fan of it.
And then she was able to develop a streamlined process for her through her, kind of like her systems and how she does things, to where that she was able to start pumping out offers instead of individually writing each one.
So she ended up fixing her own problem, you know, and still accommodating me.
And she's been a huge part to my success.
Nice.
I love that.
You know, on every, like every single week, you know, I host the Bigger Pockets webinar, usually on Wednesdays.
And one of the things I'd say over and over and over, I talk about this funnel.
Like, if you want to buy more deals, you have 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 coming in, you know, figure out your lease stores.
If you just get those four parts of the funnel down, you're going to do all right.
And I think you're like a perfect testament to that.
You're just, you're making offers.
And yeah, a lot of them are going to get it rejected.
But that's okay.
There's always somebody else who's going to say yes.
That's fantastic.
By the way, you can track and manage everything Brandon just talked about on Bigger Pockets.
We've got tools for all of that.
So check it out at BiggerPockets slash Analysis.
Hey, so, Joe, I've got one last question before you move to the fire round.
You know, you're a guy who started doing all this while you were active duty in the military.
We actually wrote a piece.
Brandon wrote it.
It's called Investing in American Real Estate while serving in the U.S. military.
We'll link to that in the show notes to BiggerPockets.com slash.
206, but what would you tell your peers in the military who are, you know, thinking about,
hey, you know, I know there's ways I can, you know, be making some money and doing some of
this other stuff while I'm serving abroad or even at home, just, you know, in different bases
around the country. What kind of advice would you give to those guys who are like, I don't know,
it's going to be too hard or, you know, have complaints, excuses, that kind of stuff?
You know, it's...
Or are scared.
Yeah.
Well, what I say is really, one of my favorite quotes is actually about Arnold Schwarzenegger.
And he says it's important to have fun in life, of course.
But when you're out there partying, horsing around, somewhere out there at the same time, at the same time, someone is working hard, someone is getting smarter, and someone is winning.
And for the longest time, like, I was, you know, probably your typical military guy.
I just, you know, when I was home, I just had fun.
But, you know, it's what you do in your free time, you know, that really denotes your success.
especially if you have a full-time position.
And even when you're deployed and you have very little time,
what are you going to do?
You're going to go off and play video games.
You know, you can do a lot of different things.
But, you know, at the end of the day,
what are you working towards and how are you spending your time?
I love it.
That's a great quote from a real estate investor, Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Yeah, too bad.
We can't get him.
We've got him on the show.
Yeah, if anybody's got a connection to Arnold's, you know,
and wants to help us get him on the show, we'd love that.
That would be pretty great.
So I have one last question before I headed the fire round.
A few times you've said we.
I'm wondering, are you still working with that girlfriend or ex-girlfriend now?
Or are you different partners?
Are you doing this alone?
How's that work?
Yes, yes and yes.
So we still do, and actually, funny things.
So when I went to Iraq and then came back and then we were there home for two months,
she took leave, came back, and then she went to Iraq after that.
And then I was back here doing a lot of the property management.
And then I actually went on two other deployments as well as a bunch of personal trips on the, you know, throughout the world.
So we, almost the entire time, we've never been in the exact same place.
But then I started doing, I started partnering up with one of my buddies from the, from my former unit.
His name is Ben Smith.
And he's the guy who is a rehabber and just amazing experience.
And, you know, we've partnered together and be able to, you know,
make so many deals happen that without the partnership probably would never have happened.
And so, and I'm always looking for more partnerships.
Another guy I work with, we're actually starting our first project properties together,
and we're actually closing on two at the same time on December 23rd.
Nice.
Yeah.
That's awesome.
Day before.
So Christmas Eve Eve.
Merry Christmas.
Exactly.
Wait, way to make that up.
Early Christmas.
You like that?
Yeah, early Christmas presents.
Very cool.
All right.
Well, hey, let's shift gears here a little bit.
head over to the world famous fire round.
It's time for the fire round.
These questions come direct out of the bigger pockets forums,
which our listeners can get to by going to biggerpockets.com slash forums.
So question number one from the forums.
I'm in the military and unsure how to get into real estate investing.
What should be my first step?
First step would be education.
You know, as much as you can talk about will to get, you know,
just to jump right in, but you should spend some time learning the basics,
kind of figure out what you want your niche to be, whether it's rehabbing, you know, buy and holds,
wholesaling, and do as much education as you can. But don't sit there and, you know, be frozen by,
you know, as a paralysis, by analysis. But eventually you need to jump in, but start with that
education. And then once you get to a, you know, a good point, just go ahead and jump in and,
you know, see where you go. Nice. Love it.
All right. Next question. I was wondering how I could go about renting one house to multiple people.
would I have to make one person the head of the household or could I simply collect rent from each person individually?
That's a good question. It kind of depends on exactly how you want to do it. Probably the best way to do it is to get everybody on the lease and collect it from one person.
But if you're not able to do that and if you're managing individual rooms like I was at the time, we just manage a room.
Someone come in, someone would come out and then just collect money from them.
individually.
But a funny side note is I actually have no longer house hacking this house.
I'm actually put it up on Airbnb.
And just had my first guests come in last weekend and the next one's come in next two days.
How'd they go?
It went well.
I got a five-star rating.
Yeah, that's what I'm talking about.
Told you, Brandon.
It's not true.
Five stars, this guy.
Five stars.
Number three, when you don't have money.
that's happened.
When you don't have any money, how do you fund a fixer-upper with the goal of being able to
hold it and rent it?
In other words, how do you do a burr with you don't have any money?
So one of, you know, the easiest way to do it is to, I'll try to find a family member,
private investing.
Anything past that, you know, it becomes difficult because even hard money lenders who will
be, you know, the quickest to give you a loan, even if you don't have experience,
depending on what you're talking to, you're still going to request.
require 20% down. So it's difficult, but private money is your probably best chance of going in
with no money and getting a loan for the rehab and the purchase.
There you go. Cool. Her last question of the fire around. When analyzing deals, how do I
determine how much I should rent a property out for? So anytime that I have a question on whether
or not, whether it's a rental comp or an ARV comp, I, you know, I'm a firm believer that there are,
you can try to do everything or you can delegate to the experts.
And so at this point, I would always, if I have a question, you know, Beazillo and all those
other different websites, they can be off.
But the person who knows best are the experts.
And so this is where I would then pose that question to my real estate agent.
And then she'd fire back with either rental comps or ARV comps.
And that's pretty much how we get that done.
And I don't even try to bother getting in someone else's lane that knows way better than I do.
Sure.
Cool.
Very cool.
All right.
Well, let's shift gears to the final segment of the show, which we lovingly call our
famous four.
All right.
These are the four questions we ask every guest, and I know you've heard a lot of our shows
and so you know what's coming.
Number one, what is your favorite real estate-related book?
You know, I actually really do hate to say this just because it's you.
But I would have to say the book on rental property investing by Brandon Turner was probably,
you know, as you sort of watch these podcasts, you sort of, over time, you kind of like,
oh, you know, maybe I could be on there one day.
And you start thinking about, hey, what would be my answer and stuff like that?
And as I've read books, I'm like, oh, this is my new answer.
You know, I'd be like, oh, I really like Jay Scott's book and stuff.
But, you know, what I really got out of that book was just kind of like a whole approach
just to just the whole concept of, you know, rentals and burrs and stuff like that.
And just really enjoyed it.
Thank you.
Sorry.
My head's a little bigger now.
Don't be sorry because now, yeah, now we have to put up with his crap.
You do.
Oh, God, this guy.
I'm going to make Josh support it even more.
Josh, where can people find that book?
Do I have to?
You have to.
You have to.
Supports the mission of Bigger Pockets.
Go to BiggerPockets.com.
It is a great book.
I think it's fantastic, or I wouldn't be publishing it.
However, he just doesn't need any more of an ego than he already has.
So nicely done, Joe.
Nicely done.
See, I just read that book, Ryan Holiday's book, Ego is the Enemy.
So I depressed my ego.
So I need to build it back up again right now.
Because right now I'm just like, man, I'm an idiot.
So I need to build a backup.
So thank you, Joe.
You could keep chanting, that.
I will.
All right.
All right.
Joe, favorite business book.
So my favorite business books, this also kind of like evolved as a running,
but originally for a while I thought it was like the one thing,
but I just recently read the 10x rule by Cranc Cardone.
And I think that book is amazing.
Just his whole concept of massive action, massive success through massive action
is just sort of like how I try to model a lot of everything that I do in my life now.
Cool.
What do you do for fun outside of real estate these days?
So my, I would say probably like three things is one is I like to travel,
probably I went on like six different trips last 10 months to 11 different countries, including the Olympics.
I like to skydive.
Probably there's nothing more exhilarating than jumping out on an airplane.
And then strange enough, in the last few months, I started playing polo.
Not like Marco Polo or like Polo?
No.
No, actually I did play water polo in high school.
But no, it's actually polo with horses.
With a horse.
Yeah, and a stick.
My name is Joe.
I'm going to go ride my polo horse now.
That's awesome.
I've never met anyone in my life who played polo.
It sounds like a very difficult sport, by the way.
Yeah, it's very fast and actually very surprisingly aggressive.
A lot of it is just like go run around hitting the ball,
but a lot of it is actually you riding other people's horses off with your horse.
So it's kind of like a...
You try to knock them off their horses?
No, you try to push there.
You try to drive.
use your horse to drive their horse off the path of the ball.
Or, you know, might even cut them off into the wall, stuff like that.
Wow.
Well, that's like, it's like modern day jousting or something like that.
All right, next Bigger Pockets Conference, we should have a polo tournament.
Everyone bring their horses and, you know, it'll be fun.
That's pretty cool, man.
That's pretty cool.
What's your favorite country you visited out of those 11?
Brazil was amazing, but I have to say one on my favorite trip, you know, outside of that,
was went to
Tromso Norway
which is a
town within the Arctic Circle
the very northern port of Norway
went up there with a buddy of mine
and went dog sledding
chased the northern lights
and actually went
snowmobiling up in the kind of like
their
they're kind of like their Norwegian Alps
up there and did all that
in three days and that was awesome
sounds amazing
yeah that's amazing cool all right well
My last question of the day.
Joe, what do you believe sets apart successful investors from those who give up, fail, or never get started?
So I think one is to have passion for something.
It goes, passion, I think, to be good at something.
And if you really want to be truly great at something, you need to be have an obsession.
To be truly great at anything, you have to be obsessed with it.
And then that has to be followed by massive action.
I like it.
I love it.
I like it.
Sounds like Greg Cardone.
You've been listening to a little Grand Cardone.
Yeah.
Drinking the juice.
Hey man, before we let you go, where can people find out more about you if they want to reach out and get in touch?
You can either find, you know, hit me up on BP or email me at JDE at vikingproperty Solutions.net.
And that will be the best way to reach me until I finally get my website up.
Is you saying Viking?
Viking and Property Solutions.com.
Don't get your head any bigger, Brandon.
No, is this how you're you Norwegian?
Is that the Norwegian trip?
Are you a Viking?
It was a thing before it.
It only reinforced.
Nice.
Do you like crum caca?
I don't know what that is.
They're Norwegian cookies.
I've never had.
I'm Norwegian.
I don't know that.
What are you talking about?
Yeah.
I'm pretty sure they're Norwegian cookies, crumcaca.
Yeah.
Whatever.
Whatever.
Whatever.
Whatever.
All right, Joe.
Listen, man.
It's been a pleasure having you, man.
astounded by your success. You're doing fantastic things. I love the attitude. I love the mentality.
I love how you're out there just killing it. So congrats to you. Kudos on everything you've been able to
accomplish. And thank you so much for being on the podcast. We really do appreciate it.
And obviously, I will look forward to seeing you around the bigger pockets community.
And all the good folks in Baltimore should look forward to seeing you blow that place up, man.
Thank you. I appreciate it. Hopefully not blow it up too much.
Yeah, blow it in a good way.
Not in a bad way, yes, obviously.
Yes, yes.
All right, Joe.
Well, thanks.
Take care.
Hey, take care.
All right, guys, that was Joe England.
Big thanks to Joe for coming on the show.
Great stuff, man.
That's great.
You know what's interesting?
As I was talking to him, this is nothing to do with real estate whatsoever.
I just couldn't help, but every time I looked at him, I thought I was talking to Captain America.
Like he looks like Chris Evans from, you know, like Captain America.
He's got like kind of the hair.
and the bill, the military presence, I don't know.
I think I for guys like him because, like, I'm scrawny.
You're tall and scrawny.
I'm just short and I don't know.
You know, yoked guys who are out there like, you know, saving our, you know, protecting our country, protecting other people, protecting innocent people around the world and doing good.
It's amazing.
So big props to Joe and everybody in the Army and the armed forces here in the U.S.
us that's doing great things for people we definitely appreciate it yeah definitely so but yeah but awesome
show anyway i mean i love his creativity i love his drive i love his like the massive action that he's
i mean like he perfectly yeah that perfectly exemplifies a show is just massive action like he's just
i'm gonna go look at 40 houses on my two-week break and like just it's crazy i love it yeah
hey brandon yes sir what are you doing for christmas this year what am i doing for christmas this this
this is this is rosy's first christmas this is rosy's first christmas
So, you know, we've been, I don't know, taking a lot of pictures.
Going to get a tree today.
I just got back from Phoenix where I was hanging out with my good buddy, Ben Labovich and Serge
Shukot to Veterans of the Bigger Pockets podcast.
Both been on three times.
But we sat outside of a restaurant and talked to real estate for like three hours.
Nice.
Yeah, good stuff.
Can't get enough of those guys, can you?
I can't get enough of those guys.
It was a great, great weekend.
It's awesome.
Yeah, talking real estate.
Just networking.
You know, that's fun.
Cool.
I love it.
I love it.
What about you?
What are you doing for the holiday Christmas, Hanukkah?
The Hanukkah holiday.
Hanukkah holiday.
Well, I mean, we've got my, when this thing happened with my dad, it was here in Denver.
And so my parents are actually here with us.
We were supposed to go to California.
And I don't know where I'm going to end up.
I don't know if I'm going to be here in Denver.
I don't know if I'm going to be in California with my wife.
I'm not sure what it's going to look like.
But, you know, we'll be around family and we'll be doing our thing.
There you go.
Well, have fun.
Well, happy holidays to everybody.
we really do appreciate all your support.
We appreciate you guys for listening
and being a part of the BiggerPockets community.
If you're not already a member of BiggerPockets,
jump on the site, BiggerPockets.com,
create your free account today.
I talked about in the show some of the tools
that we have, our analysis tools, our calculators.
We've been building out a lead manager.
We're building out lots of different tools
to help real estate investors manage their business
and scale and build their businesses up.
So if you haven't yet explored that stuff,
jump on bigger pockets, check out the different tools on there.
And yeah, get in there and create your free account, start networking,
building up your team and your knowledge and get out there and make it happen.
Don't just wait until January and make it your New Year's resolution.
Hey, I'm going to get rich next year.
I'm going to make money.
I'm going to plan to retire.
I'm going to quit my job or whatever your purpose, your reason for listening to us now is don't wait.
Get started right now and commit to yourself to make things happen.
because life is short at the end of the day and you got to make it happen. So with that, thank you.
Thank you again. Brandon, great, you know, great having you on the show. Great being on the show again.
Thank you. Great doing this. And it's good to have you back. Thank you. Thank you. I do appreciate it.
To everyone else, we'll see you next week. Happy holidays. And I'm Josh Dorkin. Signing off.
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