BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast - 22: Building a Marketing Machine, Spec Houses, Flipping & Wholesaling with Tucker Merrihew

Episode Date: June 13, 2013

While most investors think of real estate investing as buying an ugly property and making it look good, today we sit down with an investor who runs a highly successful investing business that focuses ...heavily on investing in new home building, along with wholesaling and flipping as well. Tucker Merrihew, the owner of TTM Development Co in Portland, Oregon, shares a ton of great advice on creating a sustainable and automatic lead funnel, as well as numerous tips on a variety of investing techniques. Read the transcript for episode 22 with Tucker Merrihew here In This Show, We Cover How a “failed personality test” led to real estate investing The early mistakes that caused major problems for Tucker Do condos make good investments? How to build a marketing machine Direct mail “shock marketing“ Why knocking down houses might make you money Tucker’s online marketing strategy The financial benefits of spec building Tips for finding and working with great contractors Finding deals when the MLS is too competitive Links from the Show Every Door Direct Mail BP Podcast 010 : Flipping Houses 101 with J Scott Tucker’s Lead Generating Website Books Mentioned In The Show: Donald Trump Books How to Win Friends and Influence People – Dale Carnegie Tweetable Topics: “There’s motivation in weird places sometimes.” (Click to Tweet) “When investing in real estate, you’ve got to have a website.” (Click to Tweet) “To be successful in real estate investing, you gotta build momentum.” (Click to Tweet) Get in Touch with Tucker Tucker’s BiggerPockets Profile Tucker’s Company Website: www.TTMDevelopmentCompany.com Tucker’s Facebook Page: www.Facebook.com/TuckerMerrihew  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Starting point is 00:00:00 This is the Bigger Pockets podcast, show 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 height, 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. Greetings, everybody. I am Joshua Dorkin, the host of the Bigger Pockets Podcast. I'm very excited to be here for show 22 and slightly less excited to be talking with my co-host,
Starting point is 00:00:36 Brandon Turner. I am also slightly less excited to be talking with my co-host Josh Dorkin. How are you? I'm okay, Brandon. Thanks. Just okay. Yeah. Do you want to cry about it? You know, I might. You were whining earlier about the fire and the smoke and all these things going on. Oh, life is so rough in Denver where it's...
Starting point is 00:01:00 warm and not 35 in raining like it is here. Wow. Okay. Somebody grew up here. Okay. It's on, baby. It's on. Yeah,
Starting point is 00:01:11 I don't know what I just unleashed, but... You unleashed the beast, man. Well, listen, man, no, I'm super excited, of course. As always, to be here with Brandon, we've got a very cool show ahead. And let's kind of hop in and get to it. Before we do, though, a couple of things. Really cool. We're actually up to now 272 five-star reviews on iTunes for the show.
Starting point is 00:01:39 272, man. That's a pretty cool number. That is huge. I mean, like six months ago, we only had like zero. Look at us today. You're brilliant, man. Oh, my goodness. No, but that is a really good job.
Starting point is 00:01:53 I am hiring a new co-host if anybody's interested. Well, wouldn't that be great to get fired for my co-hosting job right on the air? Wow, that would be awkward. Just a little bit. Awkward, awkward. Well, so we've got 272 five-star reviews, which is pretty awesome. Also want to talk about a pretty cool thing that happened just yesterday. The Bigger Pocket's iPhone mobile app went live.
Starting point is 00:02:23 And this thing is pretty cool. we've been working on it for a while now. It is definitely a version one. It's definitely a beta version. However, it's pretty cool. It's got lots of good features. Many are still missing. We'll get to them.
Starting point is 00:02:39 But if you've got an iPhone and you want to follow the site, definitely download the app at biggerpockets.com slash app. Or you could just go on the Apple store and look up bigger pockets, spelled bigger pockets without a space in between, of course. Otherwise, I think we kind of wanted to do a quick tip. Yes, we did. That was good. That was good.
Starting point is 00:03:07 So listen, if you guys are not already in the habit, please go reach out to a new member each day on the forums and just say hello. You don't have to do much more. Obviously, saying more than just hello would be appropriate, engaging but you never know who you end up doing business with
Starting point is 00:03:25 so the whole point of the site is to reach out meet new people network if you are not networking you're not using
Starting point is 00:03:33 the site appropriately and part of that is just engaging so reach out touch someone meet a new person and grow your business every day
Starting point is 00:03:43 if you guys do this look at what's going to happen in one year you're going to have a lot of new friends so make it happen is that a
Starting point is 00:03:50 Is that a good one? That is a great quick tip today, Josh Dorkin. Good job. All right. So let's move on to the show. Today we are sitting down with a really cool guy that a lot of you guys probably don't know. But he is really kicking backside, doing a ton of business. And I'm very excited to introduce him, sitting down with a guy named Tucker Merahue, I believe, is the appropriate pronunciation.
Starting point is 00:04:19 Is that correct, Brandon? That sounds good to me. Tucker is one of the bigger rehabbers, builders and wholesalers in the Portland, Oregon market, works through his company, TTM Development. They rehab and build over 30 houses a year and wholesale another 20 to 30. This guy's got a really solid grasp on the world of lead generation and is going to share strategies with us today on the Bigger Pockets podcast. A lot of property managers think their job is answering tenant emails
Starting point is 00:04:49 and coordinating repairs. That's not the job. The job of a property manager is protecting and growing your operating income and earning your trust while they do it. And that comes down to three numbers. Occupancy, delinquency,
Starting point is 00:05:04 and net promoter score. If those numbers slip, your income slips, and your trust slips too. And most PMs don't hold themselves to performance standards. They focus on activity, not outcomes.
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Starting point is 00:06:46 It's just cleaner. Sign up at baselane.com slash BP and get $100 bonus. Baselane is a financial technology company and not a bank. Banking services provided by Threadbank member FDIC. So without further ado, let's bring in Tucker. What's going on? Tucker, welcome to the show, man. Thanks, guys.
Starting point is 00:07:01 Glad to be here. Yeah, man. Well, listen, we're definitely excited. You bring a little twist to the show. We've talked about a lot of topics so far on the 21 episodes. And I think we're going to reveal some new. and interesting details today, so I'm excited. Why don't we jump right in and talk about how you got started in real estate?
Starting point is 00:07:25 Well, you know, let's see. I was in college and I was delivering Chinese food. And I was searching for that job, I guess, everybody wants when they leave college so that they feel like they've accomplished something in their four years. It wasn't delivering Chinese food? No, that was an interim gig. Oh, okay. It stayed pretty well, though.
Starting point is 00:07:45 Good tips. But I got a job offer with one of the bigger investment, I guess, firms in the Denver area. And right before they actually hired me, they had me come back and take a personality test. And I guess I failed. They revoked the offer. And so I was, you know, college graduate delivering Chinese food. So I saw a ad at that point for loan officers. They had hired loan officers.
Starting point is 00:08:13 This was back in 2002 when, you know, anybody and everybody. could sling loans. So of course, I got into that, which, you know, ended up being a really good thing for me. It taught me the financial side of the real estate business and ultimately allowed me to start my own mortgage company, which I owned and operated for six years. But that was kind of my lead into real estate. So, you know, right out of college, I didn't really have another job other than delivering Chinese food and that I got right into the mortgage side, bought my first house within about three months of being in the mortgage business. It was kind of like the YMCA. I had, you know, one room for myself and all the other rooms were
Starting point is 00:08:49 rented out to my buddies and I'll pay the mortgage. And, you know, about two and a half years later, I sold that one at an 05-06 at the top of the market, made a nice chunk of change. And that kind of springboarded me into buying a bunch of other houses. Nice. It was an experience. That's for sure. I mean, I was the guy the neighborhood hated at that point. I didn't understand that because I was so young and, you know, partying all the time with all your buddies. But now I realize what a pain in the, you know what I was for the neighborhood. Nice. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:09:20 Now, that's awesome. But it was a good experience. I'm glad I got into it. I did learn a little bit about landlording. Fortunately, I had some pretty good friends that didn't stift me on rent too badly. Nice. We only had one guy that slept on the couch for an extended period, but we made him cook meals and clean the house. So it worked out.
Starting point is 00:09:36 Nice. There you go. Got the boarding house up and running, right? Yeah. Nice. Cool. So you started as a lender. It's interesting. It's one of those. I know we've got plenty of lenders on the site who are always like, you know, I want to be an investor too. And, you know, it's kind of cool that you started that way. Was there anything in particular that you found truly valuable? Obviously, learning to evaluate deals came in pretty handy. Yeah, you know, understanding real estate financing is really, it's kind of like the big black box that, you know, nobody really understands that well unless you're in the industry. And it really kind of clarifies how everything works.
Starting point is 00:10:23 So, you know, for that reason, I'm really glad that I got into the lending side first. It was kind of a tough transition, though, because for a while there, the lending side of the business was so profitable that, you know, it was hard to kind of move on to, you know, the real estate investing side. And so it took the crash in 0708 of the business for me to say, you know what? I need to devote my time fully to the investment side of the business and not so much to the, you know, lending side. And so, you know, once I made that transition, it was a little tough at first, but once I did, I'm very glad that I did. Oh, that's great. That's great. Is that your dog in the background, bark at all? Yeah, you want me to, yeah, she doesn't like the little ankle biters next door and I got two big English mastiffs. So they, they're left.
Starting point is 00:11:07 Nice. Nice. No, it's all good. Just, you know, just so everybody knows that, you know, none of us are having a seizure in the background. It's a 200-pound English Mastiff, so she's a big girl. Wow, wow, wow. That's awesome. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you're full-time right now, right? Yeah, I've been full-time since about 2009. You know, I was buying probably a house at a time and flipping it and I bought a bunch of rentals in between 2002 and 2000, let's say, nine. I took a little bit of a hiatus from 0708.
Starting point is 00:11:39 The market was, you know, obviously in the dumps. And I bought a couple turds, I guess you could call them in 2007 right before the crash, which, you know, most of us that were in the game did. Gotcha. Well, tell us about those turds. Never thought I'd never thought I'd be talking about turds on my real estate show. Well, you know, those of us that have been in the game that long, we've all done it. And it was, you know, it was a good learning experience too.
Starting point is 00:12:07 But, you know, I bought what I thought were great properties in great areas, but they ended up being, you know, much more valuable in 2007 than they are today. So, you know, I've held on to a number of them for a while and rented them out. But it's been a learning experience. The gift that keeps on giving. Well, were these deals that you were hoping to flip and you had to change your strategy? You know, I was big into rentals for a while. I liked the idea of some of these.
Starting point is 00:12:40 They were actually condos, a couple of them, but they were in kind of higher-end areas, and they drew really good rents. And there was very little that ever go wrong with them. So it made the landlarning experience, you know, pretty easy for me. But it was also kind of on the front end of my real estate investing, I guess, career. And so I didn't really think it all the way through. I thought that there would be some appreciation potential
Starting point is 00:13:04 and they were great tax writeoffs at the same time. But thinking back, it was probably a dumb idea to buy what I bought. But, you know, you live and learn. Yeah, for sure. Can I dig a little bit and feel free? So it sounds like you're still holding on to a couple of them, yeah? There's, well, full disclosure, there's two that I'm in the process of short sailing right now.
Starting point is 00:13:25 Okay. This is something that it just had to happen at this point. And, you know, there comes a point where it's, just a decision you got to make. So I've crossed that line and a lot of other people have too. Oh yeah. Listen, nothing wrong with it. It certainly happens to plenty of people. So can I ask why now versus say a year ago? It sounds like these weren't the greatest of deals last year or potentially even the year before. Was it kind of that, hey, let me hold on a little longer and maybe it'll turn, maybe it'll turn,
Starting point is 00:14:01 and ultimately you're tired of kind of spending money on a losing proposition. You know, our biggest problem here, the ones that I had to ultimately short sale, they were HOA problems and property tax issues. Our city likes to continually increase property taxes, even though property values are going down. So it became increasingly more expensive to hold these properties every month. That and the complex had a large number of defaults throughout it.
Starting point is 00:14:28 which caused the HOA to kind of have to up the dues to make up for lost dues. So, you know, over time, not only did the value go down, but the cost to hold went up exponentially. So it just was not a good deal. No, I got you. Well, I used to live in a condo complex and experience very, very similar stuff. You know, we had a board that went rogue, so to speak. I mean, they were, it was pretty much a dictatorship, which was not fun. the dues were just climbing out of control.
Starting point is 00:15:03 I was, you know, I was very happily living in this building and ultimately decided to sell because I was very fearful of the decisions that the board was making. And I knew that ultimately it would be detrimental to the long-term sanctity of my investment, so to speak. And so, you know, I bailed. You know, certainly would have liked to have held on to that thing, but the board really was the cause of it. And I think, you know, things like special assessments that boards like to throw out every once in a while. Things like raising dues are certainly some of the hazards of condo investments. And it sounds like we've both dealt with the negatives there, huh?
Starting point is 00:15:52 Yeah, there are a lot. You know, I've learned my lesson. We're in the process of flipping a condo unit right now, but, you know, I guess I go into it with my eyes wide open now. I know what to look for, and I like to be in and out of condos real quick these days. So that was going to be my final question on the topic was, you know, I would say the same thing. If I were going to get into condos, I probably would not do it as a buy and hold personally, because, again, I've experienced the true negatives of condo ownership. But it seems like if you could get a good deal on a unit,
Starting point is 00:16:30 if you can turn it, that's probably a good opportunity. Yeah, we had one come into our lead funnel about, I don't know, about three weeks ago. And it was just one of those where, you know, we don't even normally go look at condos when they come in. But, you know, the guy gave us a price that he was looking for, and it was just so cheap. and we went and looked at it and it was literally paint and carpet. You know, it's hard to turn that down. So we're, you know, it's two-week rehab. We'll have it on the market next week and we'll be in and out.
Starting point is 00:16:58 That sounds great. That is one of the benefits of condos is that you're not looking at a 3,000 square foot house. No. That needs six months of work. So, yeah, that's cool. You mentioned your lead funnel. What do you mean by that? Well, we've got, I guess we could just kind of go into how my business is set up if you guys want to do that.
Starting point is 00:17:15 Yeah, that'd be great. So, you know, it started out as just me doing everything, sending the mailers. We do a lot of direct mail, doing all of the online posting, taking the calls, going and seeing the sellers. And it just, it was way too much. And I would say it's way too much for anybody to do if you want to do this any more than kind of a onesy-to-sy, you know, amount of deals. So I brought on a acquisitions manager that ultimately turned into an acquisitions manager.
Starting point is 00:17:45 listing agent and a marketing manager. So now I have two guys in the office that pretty much deal with all the leads that come in. So we do a ton of direct mail. We do a lot of online marketing. And we drive them to two different numbers as well as the online ones come in through our website. But once they come in, we've got a lead funneling system or a screening system where one of the guys in the office is his responsibility to check the messages, take the calls, screen the sellers, find out what they want, find out if there's any potential of there being a deal there. And then they land on my desk if there are.
Starting point is 00:18:22 I take a look at them. And from there, we'll go out, we'll see the people, we'll shake their hand, we'll get to know them, and we'll try and put a deal together. That's cool. Well, let's talk about the direct mail a little more. You know, we talked a lot last week with Jerry Puckett about that on show 21. And so I'm just curious, what does your direct mail look like? I mean, do you use yellow, letters, white, postcards?
Starting point is 00:18:42 We do a combination of things. We do postcards, but we'll use, I don't know if you guys have heard of it, but it's the every door direct mail system from the Postal Service. And it's a great little technique to use if you want to saturate an area. So we have areas that we like to, you know, that we call it our hood. You know, we want every deal that comes out of it. And we don't get every deal, but we get a lot of them. And we'll use the every door direct mail system with that. And what that is is it's basically an oversized postcard that only costs you 14 cents to send.
Starting point is 00:19:11 So it's significantly cheaper than other postcards. cards. The only downfall is you have to hit every door. So we do those when we're doing postcards. Other than that, we do a lot of letters. Is that a, the 14 cent, is that discount only given on a condition that you're going to hit every door? Is that kind of what it is? Yeah, you have to do every door. So they basically, the reason why it's so cheap is they just put one for every door in the mail route. So they don't have to sift and sort it. They just put it on top of every door that they're delivering to. Gotcha.
Starting point is 00:19:45 So the downside then is you don't get to only choose people who are motivated or you can't sort your list, right? Exactly. But on the flip side, you know, we've gotten some deals out of that where they were people that we would have never thought to mail to. So, you know, there's motivation in weird places sometimes and that helps us find it. What kind of... Oh, sorry, go ahead, Ryan.
Starting point is 00:20:04 Well, I was going to say, that's a good quote. I'm going to put that in the show notes. What kind of messaging are you using on those? You know, with the postcards, we try and do a little bit of shock marketing, something that's not so boring and goes directly in the trash can. So I actually use my dogs, the two big English mastiffs. And one of the postcards, it says George buys houses, and it's got a picture of George on the phone. And the other one says that George eats realtors for breakfast or something like. It's just funny marketing.
Starting point is 00:20:37 And we've had, you know, the houses we have bought from it, you know, they're from people that, you know, they're dog lovers. this is Portland. There's a lot of dog lovers in Portland, so we're playing on that. But they also, you know, just, it stuck with them. It was something they remembered. It wasn't just your typical, you know, hey, I want to buy your house at 1, 2, 3, Main Street kind of thing. Oh, that's cool. That's cool. Hey, I don't know if you'd be willing to, but if so, we'd love to share that with folks. Oh, yeah. That's fine. I'll put it up. That's no problem. Cool. Cool. Yeah, I'll definitely link to that in the show notes. Speaking of show notes, we are going to have the show notes at biggerpockets.com slash
Starting point is 00:21:12 22. No, no, no. Oh, I did it wrong again. It's slash show 22. But that's fine. Oh, I always do that. That's why we've got two hosts, one to get it wrong and one to get it right.
Starting point is 00:21:23 So, you know. Thank you, Josh. It's bigger pockets.com slash show 22. All right. Well, moving on. You know, you talked about Portland that you're in that area. So I want to kind of touch on that real quick. I'm just wondering, what is your market like there?
Starting point is 00:21:40 in Portland. You know, it's not a cash flow rental market. So we'll start there. We have lower end and we have higher end, low end. The cheapest house we've ever bought
Starting point is 00:21:55 has been $46,000 bucks and it was like a shanty. So I wouldn't even really call it a house. Although we sold it to a guy and he flipped it and he made some money. So, you know, somebody else bought it as a real house. But the high end, you know,
Starting point is 00:22:08 we're doing a $2 million spec home right now. So, you know, it just, it's a big variance. But, you know, you're, probably the median price is somewhere in the twos, I would say. So you're not going to find those $40,000 turnkey houses that rent for $900 a month here. You're just not going to find it. So for that reason, you know, there really isn't a whole lot of hedge fund activity. There isn't any major turnkey outfits.
Starting point is 00:22:35 So it's, you know, it's pretty much buy and flip, buy to live kind of market. Gotcha. Yeah, I think that's really important that, you know, a lot of people come on bigger pockets and they, I don't know, they see guys like me talking about I bought a house for, you know, $35,000. And it's like, oh, man, I can't get into real estate because I don't have that market. And probably, I would say most of the U.S. doesn't have that market. I mean, most of the major areas, you know, Seattle or Portland, L.A., New York, whatever, aren't going to be like that. So I think that's cool that you found a way to make it work. And Portland's a lot like Seattle.
Starting point is 00:23:09 which you're probably pretty familiar with that market. You know, it's just a smaller version. There's a, you know, Seattle has a lot more higher-end neighborhoods than Portland does. We've got, you know, you can count them on one hand. So those are the ones that we try and fixate on for, you know, I guess our go-big model. But, you know, Seattle's just a bigger version of Portland. How far out of the city do you mail? We try to stay pretty close in.
Starting point is 00:23:33 You know, the Willamette River runs right down the middle of the city, and there's the west side and there's the east side. and most of our stuff is close in east side just because that's where the trendiest high-end neighborhoods are in Portland. Yep. So what do you look for in a deal? Well, there's a couple different, I guess to go back to my business model,
Starting point is 00:23:55 there's a couple different, I guess, angles that we take. One is your typical fixer type house, buy it, fix it, resell it. The other is the knock-down new build model, where we look for basically the smallest house in the nicest neighborhood. And then we knock that house down and we build a new house. Oh, okay. Nice. And I definitely want to get into that a little bit more.
Starting point is 00:24:20 Yeah, I was going to say, let's definitely come back to the spec building and the tear down, so to speak. So I want to just jump back really quickly. We talked about the direct mail. You also had mentioned online. What are you guys doing for your online marketing? What's the strategy there? You know, we do a lot of video. We also have, I guess, your tip for the podcast.
Starting point is 00:24:47 Here's your SEO tips. First get a website. You got to have a web presence. My suggestion would be get one that has a WordPress blog attached to it. That way you can do blog posts every day, every other day, once a week. When you do those blog posts, do them with a video. So you've got a video, a blog post. Get yourself a Facebook page for your business.
Starting point is 00:25:10 Post those same videos and blog posts on Facebook and get yourself a YouTube channel and post those same videos on YouTube. And if you do that enough, you know, you're going to end up on page one. And that's, you know, without paying much money. I actually did some research before the show and I actually went to Google and typed in like something like,
Starting point is 00:25:27 you know, we buy houses Portland or sell my house fast. And yours came up, I think, number one. Yeah, we've got, you know, probably 20 different websites. The other thing that we do is we have a website for every search domain. So, you know, sellhousebass Portland.com, that's ours. You know, sell house quickly, Portland, that's ours. So any search phrase or keyword phrase that people search on a regular basis, we have that exact match domain.
Starting point is 00:25:55 And so every time you search that keyword phrase for our area, we're the number one choice because we match it exactly with our domain. So that's another thing people could do in their markets, and it's helped us get a lot of deals. I'm going to jump into something geeky here, which is a little SEO. My understanding is that Google has kind of reduced the importance of exact match over the past couple of years. Have you seen that negatively impact you? You know, I'm sure it does in more competitive markets.
Starting point is 00:26:25 Portland, you know, we only have a couple competitors online. It's not, I guess, quite as evolved when it comes to real estate investing in some of the other markets. You know, we're probably one of the more thorough outfits in town, whereas if you drop us in a Phoenix or something like that, there's probably guys that have much more sophisticated businesses than I do. So, you know, it really just depends on where you're at. And so we haven't had to work too much harder than what we already do to get those high rankings. But, you know, if we're in another market, we'd probably get geeky and do all the things we need to do to stay number one. Nice. Nice. No, that's great. So how did you end up ultimately transitioning to, uh, uh, uh, the spec side. Let's talk about that a little bit.
Starting point is 00:27:07 Well, we, we bought a house that we were going to rehab. And, you know, we'd always, we'd wanted to jump into the spec building side. We've seen a lot of builders that, not a lot. We saw a couple builders in the areas that we were operating in that seemed to be selling houses for like a hundred grand more than we were selling our finished rehab houses for. And it was just blowing me away what the prices people were getting for these new construction houses. So we bought a house in one of those areas.
Starting point is 00:27:32 and as it turns out, there was a sewer line that ran under the right side of the house, but it was the neighbor's sewer line. And they never got an easement for the sewer line to cross the property and run under the house. Over time, that sewer line was made out of terracotta pipe, which a lot of sewer lines of Portland were, and it started to crumble and break up. So a lot of that water and sewage and everything never made it to the main in the street. And so it was basically washing out under the house,
Starting point is 00:27:58 which caused a major amount of erosion, and ultimately caused the house to bow kind of like a rainbow. Wow. So we bought the house thinking we were going to rehab it and put some peers in the ground and, you know, kind of sure up the foundation. But, you know, the more we started thinking about it, you know, it just didn't seem like a good idea to put 20 peers in the ground, you know, and try and sell a house to somebody on a retail level.
Starting point is 00:28:21 We just figured they'd probably freak them out. So we decided to take the plunge at that point, knock the house down, and build a new house. That's cool. There you go. Yeah, that's that simple. Now, we wanted to get into it before that, but that was kind of the, I guess, the nudge that we needed to do it at that point in time, which ended up being a good thing. It was kind of scary at first, but, you know, ultimately it's just a few more things.
Starting point is 00:28:42 So it worked out well. Can you walk us through the process? I know it might take a couple minutes here, but, you know, kind of the step-by-step new construction, new home building process? Yeah, so it's, you know, virtually the same as rehabbing, except it's easier once you get to a certain point. So it's, you basically, you've got the existing house or a piece of land, and you've either got to knock the house down or you've got to excavate for the foundation. So if you got a house on there, you've got to knock the house down, then you have to excavate for the foundation. And really, you're just pouring foundation. And other than that, you know, it's the permitting process and getting that foundation for it and picking your plan.
Starting point is 00:29:24 that's really the only difference between that and a major rehab. Now, do you always have to, I'm obviously assuming you're going to need an architect to sketch it up. Okay. And how does that work? Because I think a lot of people probably have no idea. What does it cost to hire an architect? Is it a percentage of the cost of the property? Is it just flat fee?
Starting point is 00:29:50 Or how does that happen? You know, it varies on the architect that you get. A lot of them, you know, charge. per square foot of the house that they're designing for you. That's kind of a way they do it. But it really varies. You know, we've paid 33 grand. We've paid 12 grand for plans.
Starting point is 00:30:07 So it just kind of, you know, it just kind of depends. Yeah. Well, that makes sense. So what comes next then? So you find the architect, you get the plans together. Well, you find a lot. You then from there decide, you know, if you're going to knock the house down, you decide which plan you want to build.
Starting point is 00:30:23 you knock the house down, you take it to the architect, they finalize the plan, you get engineering done to the plan, which basically says, okay, what they designed will work. And then you take it down to the city and you go through the permitting process at the city, which can be a bit of a, you know, pain in the you know what, but, you know, it's just kind of a necessary evil in the process. How long does that process usually take for you to the permitting? I know every area is different. It takes about 30 days here. That's not too bad.
Starting point is 00:30:50 So it's not too bad. But it's just, you know, you got to go down at the city. You got to, you know, pull a ticket, wait in line, sit in front of people, go back over and over again sometimes. So, you know, it's a little bit, you know, time-consuming and irritable. But, you know, again, it's just kind of a necessary evil. On that go-back stuff, is it essentially you've got the plan? They don't like a specific thing about it. So they say, hey, go back, drop, make a change here.
Starting point is 00:31:17 You go make a change and then you have to resubmit. Is that essentially? Yeah, exactly. They could be changes with the house, or sometimes it's as stupid as they want a tree put here in the planter in front of the house, you know, in the parking strip. So, I mean, it really, you know, that's why I say it could be trying on your patience at times. We just had a house that we finished that closed last week, a new construction house, and they wouldn't give us our building final because once you build the house, they have to go through and give you the final approval, which basically is the occupancy permit for the house. and they wouldn't give us our final occupancy permit until we planted two trees in the backyard
Starting point is 00:31:55 that were on the site plan. So even though it had nothing to do with construction of the house, they wouldn't give us our final until we got the two trees. So we had to have our landscaper run up there, put the trees in so that we could close the deal and get the occupancy. It's amazing. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:32:08 That's amazing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. So, Tucker, what do the typical financials look like on these things? I mean, like, what do you buy them for? What do you sell them for? How much does it cost to build? You know, again, it varies. There's people in town that do them in all different types of neighborhoods.
Starting point is 00:32:27 We've built in kind of the mid-range neighborhoods and the high-end neighborhoods. We try and stick to the high-end neighborhoods now because your building costs are going to be what they are. The only difference between the mid-range neighborhoods and the high-end neighborhoods is just your paying a little bit more for the dirt. But your profit margins are significantly larger in the high-end neighborhoods because the ceiling is so much higher for the the area. So I guess for example, we built in a mid-range neighborhood in Portland. We bought a lot about, I don't know, a year ago for 110,000. We built the house for about 265, and we sold the house for about, I believe it was 585. So that was kind of a mid-range neighborhood spread. In our higher-end stuff, we tend to buy the lot somewhere between 250 and 350. We build the houses anywhere between
Starting point is 00:33:17 275 and 350 depending on whether or not we do a basement and then we'll sell them anywhere between you know 750 and a million wow that's that's not bad so it looks like a hundred grand plus margins on on any of those yeah i mean we're obviously the pretty good size margins so definitely six-figure margins on this stuff which is why it's you know so appealing for a lot of people in the country right now are kind of looking at this model yeah interesting well let's talk you mentioned earlier something about a two million dollar flip i mean uh new construction. What exactly was that? So we're doing, we're actually building a house in the 2013 Street of Dreams for Portland, which is kind of like the crem to look cram of building shows for Portland.
Starting point is 00:34:00 I think it's like that in most cities that have it, but they basically get the best builders in town every year and they have them build that house on what they call the Street of Dreams. And so this year it's in a really great high-end area. They're all one-acre lots and we built a 5,400 square foot custom home. It's going to be a spec house. We're one of only two spec houses in the whole development, which is good. But it's a big 5,400 square foot house on a one acre lot. It's got million dollar views. And we got to be done with it in a month for the show. Get moving, man. Yeah. It's been some work. I'll tell you that. But it's going to be an amazing house. So how, you know, you got into this. I know, I know you're wholesaling. You know,
Starting point is 00:34:45 you're flipping suddenly now you're doing these spec builds. I think one of the biggest challenges that a lot of investors face is finding high quality, good quality, reliable contractors. Can we chat about that a little bit? How did you find your first contractor? Are they the same contractor you're using today? Well, you know, my model is a little bit different. I started out hiring a contractor when we first started going kind of full time in a flip in a house.
Starting point is 00:35:15 back in 2009, beginning of 2009. And, you know, it worked out okay. The guy, you know, he basically tried to gouge me everywhere he could, which is pretty typical with any sort of, you know, house flip or contractor relationship. So ultimately what happened was is that we ended up getting our own contracting license, and so now we're our own builder contractor. So my business is set up so that we basically have a marketing company,
Starting point is 00:35:42 which is the guys in the office that I had previously talked about. And then we have the guys in the field, which, you know, a couple project managers. My wife is our main project manager and designer. So we have kind of two businesses that run side by side. The marketing business basically feeds the construction business. So we've got, you know, both the marketing side and the construction side. So you're, you are your own GCs. Basically, yes.
Starting point is 00:36:06 We have our own general contracting license. So we are our own GC. Okay. And then what your, your subcontractors then, how did you end up finding those guys? I mean, you know, are they now internal or? No, they're all, you know, their own subcontractor, I guess. They've just been guys that we've kind of run across over the years. You know, some of them have, you know, been a rotating door,
Starting point is 00:36:29 but a lot of them have been the same guys. So, you know, when we find somebody that's good, we make sure that we keep them. Yeah, yeah. They make for better product at the end of the day and they make our lives a lot easier along the way. Do you have any advice on actually finding those guys? where do you, you know, I know we always like to share a tip that Jay Scott gave us about, you know,
Starting point is 00:36:51 the best place to find a good contractor is going to Home Depot, what is it, 6 a.m. when it opens up and see who's, see who's there. But, you know, maybe you've got your own. You know, I don't like to get up that early. I would suggest that, you know, just network with who the big players are in your market and just talk to one of the bigger rehabbers and ask them who they use. for some of their subs. A lot of them will be happy to tell you,
Starting point is 00:37:18 letting you know who their subs are. They're not really that particular about keeping them just for them. But, you know, they could probably give you some referrals to some guys that are actually pretty good. So I would just network with the guys that are doing a lot of rehabs in your market
Starting point is 00:37:32 and see what they say. That would probably be the easiest way to do it. Yeah, I like to tell guys who I use because it reflects well on me. Like my contractor likes me more, gives me a better deal because I give him more work by giving him referrals. So it's all, it works really well that way. Exactly. And if you got a great tile guy that does amazing tile work and, you know,
Starting point is 00:37:50 you're willing to refer him just as you would anybody else. So I would say find the guys who are the biggest players in your market network with them, get to know them a little bit and ask them for a referral and, you know, that way at least they're tried and true. Yeah, that's great. If you own a short-term rental, here's something worth knowing. Not all landlord policies are built for 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.
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Starting point is 00:41:21 Okay. So that's kind of the progression, I guess. Obviously, our cash is the cheapest. So we like to use that first. Private money is generally the second cheapest or the terms of the best. And then hard money is hard money. So for those who don't know, do you want to just explain real quick the difference between private and hard?
Starting point is 00:41:36 Yeah, so private money is basically, you know, comes from individuals that are in your sphere. You know, from what I've heard, people pay anywhere between 6 and 12 percent on private money. They either pay points or they don't. In our case, you know, we pay pretty well to our private money lenders, but that's because we want them to be excited to lend on our deals. So we pay them a pretty high return and we pay them some points. But the biggest thing is for us is it accrues throughout the process. So on a cash flow basis, we don't have to pay out each month for a payment, whereas with hard money, you know, you have to make your monthly payment each month to the hard money lender.
Starting point is 00:42:11 So, you know, if you're taking a good size loan, you know, two, three, four thousand dollars a month on a mortgage payment, you know, that can be a big deal for a lot of people. So that's why private money is so much better than hard money because you don't have to make that payment throughout the process if you structure it that way. Yeah, that's a good tip. I know that whenever I do a flip, that's always one of the hardest parts is, is that monthly payment. It just, it sucks every month. Yeah, it does. So, you know, private money is really the key to this business, you know, if you don't want to do, you know, any more than, you know, one flip at a time.
Starting point is 00:42:43 You know, and if you find a private money lender that's got money and you can pay them a decent return, you know, and still make a great profit, you know, they're excited to lend on your projects and you're excited because you've got the ability to purchase stuff and, you know, rehab it. So it's, you got to find private money if you want to, you know, do any sort of volume in this business. Gotcha, gotcha. How many projects are you currently doing at a time you mentioned, you know, obviously being able to do more than one? It sounds like you do a few, yeah? Yeah, we've probably got somewhere around 10 that are in process being built that have been acquired.
Starting point is 00:43:18 We've got a number that are kind of with the Street of Dreams House that's taking a lot of our time and effort over the last few months to get this thing done because we have to be done by a certain date and it's such a big house. So we've got, you know, probably three or four new builds that are just kind of sitting on the sideline waiting for us to finish. And now let's finish the street of dreams house. We'll start the new build process on these three or four spec houses that we've got just kind of hanging in the winds. But the good thing about those is that there's a house on the lots. So we're able to rent them out in the meantime. So we're generating cash flow out of these properties that ultimately we're going to knock down. So, you know, we get a thousand, two hundred a month out of all these houses.
Starting point is 00:43:53 So it's not a total loss. We get, you know, it's feeding the cash flow of the business each month while we're going to. waiting. Do you have property management that takes care of them or do you do that in house? You know, it varies. Most of them are property management managed. I've got a good buddy in town that we actually sell a lot of our wholesale deals to and he also owns a property management company. So it works out to be a really good relationship. You know, whenever we get one, I just call them up and say, hey, I got one, fill it. And it's a pretty easy process for me. I know a lot of people have had a little more of a struggle finding a property management company
Starting point is 00:44:26 that's worth a crap in their areas. But having a guy, and I got a guy, fortunately, makes it really easy. I got a guy. Got a guy that's a property. He's a leg breaker. I got a guy. No, that's really cool. And I think that speaks to having various exit strategies, so to speak,
Starting point is 00:44:49 happening at the same time. You know, even though renting out isn't necessarily an exit strategy, it's kind of a good transition strategy while you're holding. Yeah, and we've got one right now that we've been renting. It's in a nice, probably mid to higher end neighborhood of Portland. And originally we were going to knock it down and build new, but since we bought it, the market has turned quite a bit here. So, you know, that's one where we'll probably just go in and paint it
Starting point is 00:45:14 and do a white rehab on it and sell it because our profit margin will be, you know, maybe two-thirds of what it would be if we built new. So, you know, we've definitely felt the market improve here. and that's kind of changed, I guess. We've chosen plan B, at least on one of our projects. No, I have a question for you. A lot of people, when they got into the spec building back 10 years ago, and then the market dropped.
Starting point is 00:45:37 A lot of the problems, a lot of the foreclosures and stuff happened with people who are spec building. What do you do to prepare for that in the future? Are you just watching the market? You know, we watch the market really carefully, but we also only take on these longer-term projects because, you know, spec building is a six-month endeavor. So, you know, you're in it six months.
Starting point is 00:45:55 There is no speeding that up. So, you know, you're pretty much married to this thing for six months before you can dump it. We try and stick to the A plus neighborhoods. So that's our first layer of insulation. The second one is, you know, we're building with pretty high margins. So even if the market takes a 10% shift, it's still a successful project for us, even if we have to drop the price 10%. So, you know, is the market going to drop more than 10% in six months?
Starting point is 00:46:21 probably not, but if it does drop 10%, we can still get out and make some money. Okay, yeah, that's really good. We talked about wholesaling at the beginning of this a little bit, and then you just mentioned it again, so why don't we kind of loop back around to that again? And you said, you're still wholesaling, right? Yes, so, you know, obviously the key to us continually finding deals is that we have to have our marketing machine cranking all the time. So I guess to get back to a little bit of our direct mail, we do the everyday direct mail
Starting point is 00:46:49 or every door direct mail postcards, but we also do a lot of letters. And we've got two full-time letter writers in our office. So we've got guys that are writing handwritten letters every day. And so we send those out to those areas that we want to, exactly, that we want to saturate with those. And it generates a lot of leads for us. So we buy up everything that we can buy and build and also renovate.
Starting point is 00:47:12 And then once we reach our max capacity, we're at wholesale. So we wholesale everything else that comes through. So that's kind of, I guess, the wholesale outlet. And we've been doing that for, you know, probably since 2010. We've been wholesaling fairly consistently. And we've got, you know, the same group of buyers that generally buy from us all the time because they don't have that machine that generates deals for them. And right now, you've got, you know, pretty much no inventory.
Starting point is 00:47:37 MLS is, you know, hard to get deals on. No, that's cool. You know, it's funny because, you know, my question was exactly what Brandon asked, why are you still wholesaling? And then it got me thinking when you're talking here, you know, so many real estate investors, particularly new investors, you know, they're so fearful of other real estate investors.
Starting point is 00:48:00 You know, they're afraid that they're going to steal their deals. They're afraid they're going to take their business away. And, you know, you're a prime example of why you have to network and know everybody because, you know, you're kicking backside. You know, you're doing your specs. You got your rehabs. and you've got this massive lead funnel that's crushing it. But, you know, no matter what, you're not going to be working on 40, 50 projects at a time.
Starting point is 00:48:25 So you've got all this excess inventory that you still can monetize. You're not going to just let the leads go away. You're pitching them out and you're wholesaling and you're making side cash, you know, on top of it. Yeah, exactly. I mean, you've got to keep your momentum up. If you stop marketing, you lose your momentum and you lose your deal flow. So, you know, we keep that marketing, you know, machine cranking all the time. And, you know, we, we know everybody in town that's, you know, does this with any sort of regularity and even some of them that are kind of onesy-toosies.
Starting point is 00:48:56 So we've been selling to the same guys for years. And, you know, like you said, you know, some people are afraid of their competition. And we, you know, we, we know, we know, we, we know, we're on, you know, texting cell phone, you know, basis with them. So, you know, they give us a call most days asking us what we've got for them and we got something. We tell them. If we don't, we tell them we'll get them something. Well, I think you said something key there, and that is you have a small group of people who buy most of your deals.
Starting point is 00:49:22 And I think a lot of gurus and other guys try to say, you need to build your buyers list, build your buyers' list, and like it's some like, you know, 400 line Excel sheet of buyers. But in reality, I mean, you need a small group of people who can actually complete those. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the fact that anybody says you need 50, 100 buyer, I mean, it's just ludicrous. You don't need that at all. I mean, you're just going to be waiting. in your time with most of them. If you have, you know, five guys that, you know, all do a slightly
Starting point is 00:49:48 different business model when it comes to rehabbing, that's all you need because you're going to get different types of leads in. And so some guy might like the big rehab that's got a little bit bigger margin on it. The other guy might like just painting carpets that makes, you know, 15 grand on the rehab. You know, that might be his thing. So when we get deals in that we're going to wholesale, you know, I know immediately, okay, which one does this fit with the best and we'll usually take get to them. Got it. So for a new wholesaler, you know, for somebody who's just starting to kind of crank out
Starting point is 00:50:17 their marketing machine and get the ball moving, you know, finding out who that those five people are is certainly not something that's going to happen immediately. What advice do you have for those guys for filtering through the, you know, the time wasters, the, you know, the guys who are just full of it. and actually finding those people who deliver. You know, there's a guy in our market that, you know, I bought deals from and we're actually co- wholesaling a deal today, and he was a newer wholesaler, and he's, you know, started to get some traction, and he's making some good money, and he's getting some pretty good deal flow.
Starting point is 00:50:55 But his strategy, and I think this is a really smart one, is just network with, you know, the players in your market. You know, find the guys that are doing a lot of rehabs, you know, like us or somebody else in another market, and go network with them. They'll be your buyer. you know, if you get a deal, they're happy to pay you some money to take the deal over. And that's exactly what's happened with this guy. And he's found another guy in my market, too, that he sells to.
Starting point is 00:51:17 And, you know, he's having a lot of success just selling two guys that, you know, do a lot of rehabbing. Yeah, yeah. It's funny because today on the site, somebody had posted an ad on bigger pockets, of course, that they've got this property for sale. And, you know, I asked a couple questions. I asked, you know, hey, you know, tell us about the numbers. and they were super shy. They didn't want to answer. Any questions on the numbers?
Starting point is 00:51:43 Do you own this? Are you wholesaling? You know, top secret on that as well. And, you know, I think, again, it speaks to this kind of fearful wholesaler mentality that, you know, people are going to kind of, might steal from them or might take their deals. You know, can you maybe talk to that a little bit about, you know, the security of, you know, your wholesale contracts and how to protect yourself? You know, again, it just comes down to the guys that you're selling to. You know, we like to do business with guys that like to do business with us.
Starting point is 00:52:14 So, for example, the one that we're co- wholesaling today, you know, I was straight up honest with the guy who's buying it. You know, I even introduced him to the guy that we're co- wholesaling with. I mean, we walked the house together. I told them what our spread's going to be. I told them what we're making. You know, as long as you're doing business with people that you like to do business with, you know, they're not going to go behind your back and screw you. You know, they want you to bring them the next deal. I mean, this guy, there's no way that he'd ever screw us because, you know, we've been feeding him deals for a while and he wants us to bring them more in the future.
Starting point is 00:52:42 So, you know, why sever that relationship over one deal? So I think it's a really short-sighted strategy if people do do that, and I don't think they're going to be long term in this business. So, you know, if somebody's doing that, just ax them, get them off your buyer's list. That's funny. I said the same thing to Brandon. I said, you know, unfortunately, I don't think he's going to be around very long if he keeps it up. You know, you've got to establish some sense of credibility for yourself by being honest and up front. But not that I'm saying he's not being, this particular person's being dishonest, but they're not being transparent. And I think some level of transparency is definitely required in order to build your credibility.
Starting point is 00:53:16 Yeah, I agree. Absolutely. And it's a small community in every city, some are smaller than others, but a real estate investor. So, you know, if you got a crappy reputation, it gets around the circle pretty quick. So, you know, just operate with a high level of integrity and, you know, work with people to do the same. Yeah, no, that makes perfect sense. Well, cool. Well, one of the last questions I wanted to ask, and again, we're kind of jumping around a little bit today, so I apologize to all the listeners, but I just want to make sure I ask this,
Starting point is 00:53:43 is when you're either flipping with your wholesaling, if you're spec building, in your particular market, what are people looking for that you found specifically? Is there any kind of like they're looking for this size house or a pool or, you know, what are they looking for? Yeah, on a retail end? Yeah, yeah. Okay, so on a retail end, when we build houses,
Starting point is 00:54:04 we try and do pretty open floor plans. That's one thing that's different from the rehabs as we do an open floor plan. We'll do either master on the main or master upstairs. We try and keep the bedrooms fairly close to the master, so if they have small kids, they're not too far away. We always do a garage. Garages are key.
Starting point is 00:54:24 And one thing that we learned in some of the higher-end neighborhoods is we always do a basement. So we had one house that we built in the higher-end neighborhood, and we probably sold it for 100 grand less than we could have if we just put a basement in there. And the reason for that is is because every other house in the neighborhood has a basement because they're older homes. And so people just walk into the house and they expect it to have it. So that's a few of the things that we do to kind of make sure that things sell that. And our design touches.
Starting point is 00:54:50 We're really, really good with design. That's one thing that sets us apart from a lot of the other guys in our market. And, you know, we have a lot of copycat guys that, you know, copy us because of that. but, you know, I guess imitation is the finest form of flattery, right? Sure. Now, those are design touches, obviously, on the actual construction as well, itself. Presumably, you're also doing a fair amount of staging as well. Yes?
Starting point is 00:55:14 Yeah, we fully stage all our houses, but when I say design touches, I mean, you know, all the surfaces, paint colors, you know, trim packages, doors, cabinet details, all the stuff that, you know, buyers see when they go in the house. Gotcha. This is kind of a weird question, but where do you get materials from? Do you just go to Home Depot and buy them all like for a spec house? No, we don't. You know, that's the thing we try and shy away from because we're selling, you know, a lot of these are seven, 800, 900 million dollar homes.
Starting point is 00:55:41 So, you know, you don't want to get the surface mount light at Home Depot and look in all the rooms because you'll look like, you know, you probably don't belong in that price point. So, you know, we order all of our stuff specific from vendors that are, you know, lighting supply company or you know we've got um a doors and trim outfit that just sell doors trims and windows so we'll you know we'll buy from them so we have a vendor for each specific product which gives us a lot more um variance in what we can choose to put in the houses now are you are you obviously it sounds like beyond just quality and choice uh you're also probably getting a discount um working through these direct vendors uh versus going to to home
Starting point is 00:56:24 Depot or is that not the case? You know, Home Depot prices are pretty good. You know, some of our stuff is definitely cheaper because we've got a, you know, Oregon construction contractors license. So, you know, we're basically buying a contractor prices through a lot of these vendors. So, you know, but Home Depot does have a good deal on a lot of stuff. I mean, sometimes their tile is cheaper than anywhere else. So, hey, on the contractor license thing, you know, that seems like it might be pretty
Starting point is 00:56:50 useful for guys who are flipping spec building. obviously. But is that something that you think, you know, a guy who's going and, you know, flipping a couple houses a year is going to benefit from getting? Well, in our market, I believe this is still the rule, but if you do five houses or more a year, legally you have to have a contractor's license. So that's the initial reason why we got it. So, you know, if you do, you know, even if you're just kind of a small time guy, legally you have to have that construction contractors license. Now, there's a lot of guys that operate without it, but they should be getting it. And so that kind of made the decision
Starting point is 00:57:26 for us, at least here. Nice. Nice, nice. Cool. Well, listen, I mean, lots of really interesting information. I think you know, there's so many investors who are sitting and thinking, you know, well,
Starting point is 00:57:42 I'm going to wholesale, I'm going to flip. You know, they don't ever even consider the idea of spec building. They think it's this unreachable, untenable thing and I think you're kind of bringing it I mean certainly
Starting point is 00:57:57 it's not something you want to jump into as your first task in real estate but you know it seems a little more realistic I think after hearing you kind of go through you know how you've kind of developed your team and built your processes and you know even though it's a six month project
Starting point is 00:58:15 you know even just putting together a house I mean it seems seems like something people can aspire to yeah you know it's you just got us You got to crawl before you walk. So, you know, you start out wholesale a few deals, get comfortable with getting your deal flow up, maybe partner with a rehabber in town that you're selling to on a deal, see how the rehab goes, and then maybe eventually you jump out on your own, you do your own rehab, and then you just kind of grow up from there.
Starting point is 00:58:40 So, you know, that would be the process that I would take if I was starting over. And you said partner with a rehabber. How exactly might they actually do that if they're just, you know, just a wholesaler who doesn't have too much experience? Well, like I said before, you want to kind of find the guys in your market that you can sell to. You know, inventory is hard to find right now. So, you know, everybody wants a deal. So if you can find a deal as a wholesaler, bring it to a rehabber, you know, instead of wholesaling to him and taking a spread off the top, partner with him to some extent. And, you know, have him teach you how the rehab game works.
Starting point is 00:59:12 Follow, you know, follow him around. Go to the property. You see what he's doing. You know, they'd be happy to do that. I know, you know, a guy in my market that's doing that, you know, not only with me but with another guy as well. and, you know, that's how he's kind of getting back into the rehab game. So it's a great tactic. It, you know, takes a lot of the risk off your shoulders.
Starting point is 00:59:30 You can kind of piggyback on somebody else at the same time learn. Great advice. Very, very good advice. Well, listen, as we run out of time, we've got our famous famous, famous, famous for. Yeah. By the way, as I sit here and look at you, it's kind of tripping me out here, Tucker. I feel like I'm having a conversation with Matt Damon. It's, it's, uh, it's, uh, it's, uh, it's been out.
Starting point is 00:59:56 But we're at a house two days ago, got a contract and everybody said the same thing and made me really uncomfortable. It's not like man love that I have for you or anything. It's just one of these, you know, okay, you know, I'm a fan of Damon. This is, this could be cool. This could be cool. I've gotten it a lot. The beard kind of deflected a little bit, but, uh, you know, it is what it is. Nice. That's funny. Nice. We all have our doppel gangers. Yeah, Josh, he might not want to admit it, but he looks exactly like Adam Levine from Maroon 5. You know, now that you say it, I see the resembles.
Starting point is 01:00:32 And you don't want me singing. Well, let's knock out this famous four. What is your, what's your favorite real estate book? You know, I wouldn't say I have necessarily a favorite. You know, I like reading the Trump books. I've read them a number of times. I haven't found any real estate books that are overly specific, that are mass-produced. So, you know, that's kind of the biggest thing. I like to read stuff that's tangible and usable in my business, and it's really the only place you find that is through people and conversations and blogs at bigger pockets and places like that.
Starting point is 01:01:08 Nice plug, and he wasn't paid for it. What about non-real estate, just business book? book? You know, probably my favorite book is How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. That was a pretty powerful book. You know, a lot of it's intuitive information, but to have it, you know, read it and have somebody else, you know, kind of explain it to you. It makes a lot more sense. So that's probably the book that I've put to use the most, I guess, in my life and in my business. Right on, right on. And you're up in Portland. So hobbies, you win surfers. in the gorge, skiing, mound, you know, rock climbing.
Starting point is 01:01:50 What are you doing up there? You know, I enjoy snowboarding a lot. I've been doing that my whole life. I play a lot of basketball. I like golf, golf this weekend. So, you know, those are probably the big three, I would say. Nice. That and my dogs.
Starting point is 01:02:02 I've got two big dogs, so, you know, I hang out with them all. That's cool. Hey, all right, so final question for the day. And I, you know, I ask this to everyone. What do you think sets apart the successful investors from those who just come and go quickly and never or never really get started. You know, momentum. You got to keep your momentum up. You know, people start and stop all the time and it's hard to achieve success in this
Starting point is 01:02:27 business if you're starting and stopping. You got to keep your momentum up. So if you start marketing, keep marketing. You start rehabbing, keep rehabbing. So that's what I would say. That's an awesome tip. That's, I know, nobody has ever said that, but that's so true. Yeah, I was going to guess you were going to say something along those lines. You seem like the guy who just like, yeah, I mean, you're, you're a train and that's awesome. It's a bad thing, but yeah, you know, we just kind of set our mind of stuff and we do it,
Starting point is 01:02:52 you know, and that's just the way you got to be in this business. It's not an easy business some days, but it's really rewarding. So you just got to, you know, put a goal out there and go get it. Nice, nice. All right, man. So where can people find out more about you? We're obviously, we got the bio and stuff on the show notes at biggerpockets.com slash show 22.
Starting point is 01:03:11 Show 22. You know, they can find me on Facebook. that would be probably the best way. I've got a number of pages, but you can just go to my profile. And from there, you can kind of go to the different pages and follow our business and see what we're buying and selling every day. And you're also on bigger pockets? Yes, and I'm also on bigger pockets.
Starting point is 01:03:28 You can find me there. I've connected with a lot of people there. It's been a lot of fun. So find me there. Find me on Facebook. Nice. Awesome. Awesome.
Starting point is 01:03:34 All right, man. Well, listen, Tucker, it's been great having you on the show. We definitely appreciate the time. And we'll all look forward to seeing you around the site and Facebook. Sounds good. guys. Yeah, thanks, Tucker. All right, everybody. That was today's show with Tucker Merrihew, Bigger Pockets
Starting point is 01:03:50 Podcast Show 22. Hopefully you guys enjoyed it as much as I did. I know when I get done with these things. And Brandon and I talk about this all the time. I'm super motivated. It's funny. It's like each new show, I'm like, oh, I got to go do more wholesales. In today's show, I'm like, oh, my goodness.
Starting point is 01:04:07 I got to go out there and starts backbuilding. Whatever it is, hopefully you guys are getting the same vibe, the same energy, the same feeling. as Brandon and I are from doing these shows. And obviously, we hope you will continue listening. Our show notes, for those of you guys who might have missed it, can be found at biggerpockets.com slash show 22. Otherwise, definitely make sure to join us on Bigger Pockets
Starting point is 01:04:36 if you're not already a member. Get on, sign up, set up a profile, get engaged, get involved. Crazy. We had almost not. 400 forum posts in the past 24 hours. So this site is crazy lighting up with energy and activity. Definitely get involved. Otherwise,
Starting point is 01:04:55 make sure you find us on Facebook at facebook.com slash bigger pockets on YouTube at YouTube.com slash bigger pockets. Check out the channel. We got lots of cool videos, interviews, all sorts of great stuff. And Twitter at Twitter.com slash J.R. Dorkin. Oh, wait.
Starting point is 01:05:12 Twitter.com slash bigger pockets. You can check me out at Twitter.com slash J.R. Dorkin. And you can check out Brandon at Brandon at BP. Thank you again for listening. And we will catch you around at the next one. I'm Josh Dorkin. Signing off. You're listening to Bigger Pockets Radio.
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