BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast - 25: Four Newbies and Their Very First Real Estate Success Stories

Episode Date: July 4, 2013

On today’s episode of the BiggerPockets Podcast – we’re going to change things up. You see, all of our interviews thus far have been with real estate investing professionals, who are absolutely crushing it in their real estate journey. However, today, we want to sit down with some investors who are just starting out and can tell us their stories of how they achieved their first real estate deal. These stories are not only helpful for new investors, but even the pros can learn valuable lessons from their experiences. We cover everything from investing when you live in an expensive city to dealing with the drama that might arise during a wholesale deal and even tips for buying a small multifamily property as your first primary residence. Don’t miss this amazing set of interviews with some really great individuals! Read the transcript to episode 25 here Links from the Show: New Member Introduction Forum  ThisMomBuysHouses.com The 2% Rule and 50% Rule Google Street View The BiggerPockets Deal Analysis Forum Books Mentioned in the Show How to Be a Deed Grabber by Rick Dawson How I Turned $1,000 into Five Million in Real Estate in My Spare Time by William Nickerson Tweetable Topics “When financing real estate, find a lender who knows what they are doing.” (Tweet This!) “If you have a good property, at a good price, in a good location – you won’t have a problem selling.” (Tweet This!) “You can’t use your location as an excuse not to invest.” (Tweet This!) “It’s more important, with early deals, to get them moved early and build your confidence.” (Tweet This!) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Bigger Pockets podcast show 25. 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. Hey, what's going on, everybody? This is Josh Dork and host of the Bigger Pockets. podcast here for our

25th show Brandon Turner, my co-host. What on earth do you think about that? That is exciting. 25. That's like a quarter of a hundred. You're such a smart guy. I'm so glad I hired you. It's amazing. It's a good number.

Lucky 25. Lucky 25. Yeah, no, it's great. I'm glad we've come this far and we continue to educate and help thousands and thousands and thousands of people each week. The emails we get and the introductions on the site from people who found us through the podcast. I don't know. I'm honored. Yeah. Yeah, me too. I'm actually,

the podcast is probably our number one referral of traffic nowadays. I'm not sure, but from the new member introductions anyway, like majority of them say they found us through the podcast, which is pretty cool. Yeah, that's awesome. That's awesome. Well, if you have found us from the podcast, make sure you jump in on the site for today's Quip! Yeah, just jump in and introduce yourself if you haven't done that already because the cool thing about that is the second

you jump in and introduce yourself on our new member forums. You'll have all these people who are going to say hi. And in particular, if you're like, hey, I'm John from Buffalo. Anybody who has keyword alerts set up for the word Buffalo, which are going to be

local investors, they're going to jump in and they're going to welcome you. So, it's one of the greatest ways for starting to build up your local network is introducing yourself. But anyway, so yeah, listen, I mean, for today's show, we thought we tried something a little different here, and we hope you guys all like it. We've got a totally different kind of podcast, something we haven't done before. Today, we're not just talking with one real estate investor, but we're actually talking with four different investors who've all just recently completed their very first deal in real estate.

So far on the show, we've actually had some of the best and brightest minds in real estate. And while they're all doing really incredible things with their investments, a lot of people don't want to know how to wholesale 30 houses. They want to learn how to wholesale that first deal. So our guests today, they're all relatively new to real estate. And what they're going to do is they're going to tell us their story of how they did that first deal, which they literally just closed.

the lessons they learn and hopefully share some really good tips and tricks that even the pros out there can learn from. So why don't we start with the show? What do you think, Brandon? Let's do it. Yeah, yeah. All right, first up, we're going to talk with Nicholas Stevens. Nicholas is joining us from the Boston, Massachusetts area, and he's got a great story of getting his first buy-and-hold investment, along with his first primary residence all in one. Why don't we jump on to that interview now? We all joke that rentals are passive, but if you're spending nights matching receipts or guessing what a property earned last month, that's not passive at all. Baselain fixes that part of landlording, the financial chaos. Their banking and AI bookkeeping system automatically tags every transaction, updates cash flow insights in real time, and builds the reports you need for tax season.

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hire one that manages your investment like an investment. You've upgraded how to buy properties, but did your insurance get the memo? When investors start scaling, insurance can't be an afterthought. Most policies were designed for a single property, not multiple rentals, LLC ownership, short-term stays, or properties mid-rehab. That's where blind spots can creep in. NREG works exclusively with real estate investors. They understand portfolios, how risk compounds as you grow,

and why insurance should protect your upside, not just a checkbox. One uncovered claim can undo years of progress. Before your next acquisition, review your insurance. Talk to NREG and get investor-specific coverage from specialists who actually understand real estate at nreg.com slash B-P-Pod. That's N-R-E-I-G.com slash B-Pod. All right, Nick, welcome to the show, man. Good to have you. Thanks, guys.

Appreciate you having me on here. We appreciate you being here. You know, in the forums a while ago, you talked about you bought an investment property, and we're going to get into that, but I'm really excited to talk more about it. Before we do, why don't you just tell us a couple of things about yourself, like who are you, and where'd you come from, and what do you do? Yeah, definitely. Thanks.

Yeah, again, my name is Nick Stevens, and, um, I bought a three-family last October. Background on me. I work in the financial industry at a large financial institution in Boston. I'm 29 years old, and that was my first investment purchase, too. So it was my first time home purchase.

So definitely brand new to the real estate game. So I'm super excited. That's great. That's great. And what inspired you to branch out and start with this first purchase? What got you into real estate? Yeah, I mean, I was really just kind of, I worked one job out of college for about three years, and then I ended up moving back home just to basically get closer to family.

My parents had a in-law apartment that they built basically from my sister and her husband. So they saved up for a few years, and they ended up buying a duplex, actually. And then I moved into that in-law apartment for, lived there for two or three years to save up money. I was basically just kind of saving money blindly knowing I wanted to buy a house, but I had no idea what it was going to be. And then I was kind of slowly saving money, you know, not a whole lot. You know, again, you need, even if you put down three and a half percent, the monthly payment, I was kind of doing the rough math along the way. And I was slowly realizing that a single family, I was going to need to save up a lot of money and then start earning a lot more money to be able to afford it in the Boston area. Real estate's so expensive.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. I was initially thinking. Oh, cool. Yeah, so then I kind of just started running some numbers. I knew my sister who bought the duplex. She was kind of telling me about her cash flow situation. I was like, wow, that makes a lot of sense.

Still didn't know all the qualifying that went into it when it comes to buying a two or three family. But that definitely got me thinking about it. And then I just started just kind of looking at a few and called a realtor just blindly off the internet. Nice. And her husband is also a mortgage broker. So the team of them too kind of helped me along.

We started looking at places and then I started learning more about how to qualify for the property and started slowly realizing that on my modest income. I just earned a really average income and started realizing that, wow, the numbers really could work even on an expensive property. Yeah. So you just got a typical mortgage? Was it like 20% down or the FHA or how'd you do that? Yeah.

So I did an FHA, 3 and a half percent down. And I also ended up doing a renovation loan, a 203K loan where the bank gave me money up front to renovate. I ended up just needing to work on mostly just my unit. The other two units were ready to go. But yeah, so I did that 203K loan and FHA all in one. Cool. And for those who don't know, the 203K basically is a loan that you can incorporate your repair costs into the loan itself, right? Exactly, yeah, so they give you the money up front, not all of it up front, kind of along the way, but they basically help you pay. They use that money to pay for the project, and then it's just financed into your mortgage, which is really nice. Are there any special requirements for the 203K loans? There are. I mean, there's some paperwork involved with getting the right qualified contractor that you work with. So they have to have certain licenses. So there's a little bit of red tape qualifying the contractor that's going to front the whole project.

So that's a little bit. They can then subcontract out if they want to, but that's probably the main thing that comes to mind. I actually did that a couple years ago. I was the contractor for a friend who did a 203K loan, and so I had to go through all that paperwork and the red tape. And it was annoying, but it wasn't too bad. Yeah, it wasn't like any special, like,

I didn't have to take a special test or anything. It just was filling out forms. Yeah, and you're going to be insured, obviously. They won't do like that. Yep, yep, yeah, license bonded insured. And yeah, it really does work out well. I mean, if you got like a, yeah, it's only three and a half percent of the total amount, too. So if you're borrowing, let's see you're buying a $200,000 property and you need $20,000 for repairs, you need $220 total.

You only pay three and a half percent of that total $220, which is awesome. That's a great deal. Yeah, I always recommend people look into the $203K. Well, so, oh, sorry, go ahead. No, go ahead. I was saying it was over, I think it's overlooked as well. Yeah. Yeah.

Right on, right on. Well, I was, I was going to jump. jump right into this property, a little more detail. Can you tell us maybe some of the numbers and tell us how everything kind of came together? Yeah, for sure. I was putting in offers. The market I could tell was definitely heating up for the multifamilies in my area. I was basically looking around anywhere around Boston where I could be relatively close to family and get to work easily. and I put in, I think, five or six offers on two family homes. That's basically what I was focusing on, and I didn't see too many three families pop up anyways

and didn't get any, you know, didn't have any of those accepted, obviously. And then this three family popped up and I took a look at it and I was, you know, really impressed. So it's a two-bedroom on the first floor, two-bedroom on the second floor, and then the unit that I live in now is a one-bedroom. Okay. one bath in each unit. And at the time, there was, they had two, yeah, they had two tenants. So they had it fully rented at the time.

So it was kind of the situation, you know, as far as when it was on the market. And it was listed at 400,000. I ended up putting in an offer around 380, I believe. Okay. Yeah, and then ended up, there ended up being some work where we asked for some money back at closing, ended up coming to about 383 that we agreed on for the purchase price. And so it came with, not all three units were rented, or was it actually just the two that are currently rented?

So at the time, so the middle unit is the nicest unit. It's completely renovated. That's where the previous owners lived. Yeah. And when I saw that unit, I was like, wow, I didn't even think for a second of living there. I was like, wow, I could get a lot of red for that unit. Nice. I saw that.

That really caught my eye. The first floor was in decent shape, rent ready. You just needed some updating, but that was occupied. I don't know if you want me to run through some of the numbers for the rents. Yeah, sure. Yeah, so the first floor was being rented for a thousand, and they were just month to month. They were tenant at will.

And then up on the third floor where I wanted to live, and this was really kind of the biggest thing that almost held it up. There was a woman that was living up on the third floor that we weren't sure. It was really tough communication between us and the sellers. Their attorney, he typically dealt with other types of closings, I think, and didn't usually deal with just regular real estate residential closings. But he just made the process horrible. And basically, we weren't sure if she was going to be the type of tenant that was going to be,

basically squatting here and not wanting to leave. And it was a lot of back and forth with that. Finally, she ended up moving out. out and that basically I did end up making the decision to go forward with the paperwork, even with her there. And I just said, I'll deal with it, even though the eviction process in Massachusetts can be, that probably might not have been the best choice, I'm not sure. But the eviction process in Massachusetts can be really difficult.

The laws really protect the tenants. Was she just not paying rent at the time? Or did she stop paying when you acquired it? Or what happened? She actually was, but we were just hearing very little. information back from the sellers on her situation. That's really all I came down to. And we were probably starting to speculate, you know, why they weren't telling us certain things about the tenant and why she hasn't moved out yet. I think they might have said she was moving out and then she still hadn't

at certain points. So there was just a lot of back and forth and kind of miscommunication between us and the sellers, I think, not helped by that their attorney that they were working with. But she ended up moving out and I ended up renovating this unit, which didn't need a little bit of work. like I mentioned for that loan. And at the time, yeah, she was, I think she was paying like $600. Okay. Yeah. So now you moved into that unit and then the middle unit then did you just get that

rented out too then? Yeah. So for the bank, I did have to make it. I did have to do a little bit of work to it. Again, it was completely renovated. But when the property appraised it as a two-bedroom and there wasn't a door going to one of the bedrooms. So we just had to put a door in and wall off one open area that,

between two of the open areas as well. So there's some minor work that the contractor needed to do just to make that an official two-bedroom. And my contractor was awesome. He rushed that for me. So within about 25 days or so, I basically got to rent it for the next month and got tenants in there pretty quickly for 1475 a month.

That's what it ended up being. So you're 2475 in rents, and then you've got your unit. and then what was the purchase again? It was for something, right? It was 383. 383, okay. And then the first four tenants ended up moving out after just a couple months.

Okay. And now I'm getting $1,400 for that unit. So right now I'm getting $28.75. And what's your note on that? Yeah, PITI is right at just under $2,800. Okay. So you're pretty much living for free. Yeah.

I mean, minus the expenses when you have them and stuff. but exactly yeah wait but why would why would you want to do that i mean that sounds terrible living for free yeah i i don't understand i mean as a first investment property buying a place where i mean people are covering your costs that it doesn't sound like a good deal at all yeah that's awesome i feel like i'm getting away with something but it's it's awesome i love it obviously yeah and brandon here is a fanboy of similar type things i am i i bought a duplex I talk about that all the time. One of my first properties was a duplex I lived in, and I still have it today.

And that's the cool part about this, Nicholas, is that, yeah, when you move someday, like, if you keep it, you just get to rent out that other unit then, and then you're, you know, hopefully cash flowing at that point. Yeah. It's a good way to start out learning how to be a landlord and how to, you know, give you a place to live as well. Yeah, it really is. Yeah, kind of, I was saying to a few people, kind of all at once, I, you know, was a first time home buyer going through that whole process, becoming a, a minor construction lead manager kind of deal on that on my unit and then being a landlord. So kind of all those three things happened at once, which was, I loved every minute of it, but it was definitely a little bit overwhelming at times.

But it's been a, it's been really awesome, steep learning curve for sure. Yeah. So can you talk about any of the major lessons you've learned along the way? I think you had mentioned one, which was, you know, not really anything you had much control over, dealing with the seller's attorney who was sound to be somewhat inapt. I think that's a pretty big lesson, which is, you know, always work with an experienced real estate attorney if you have a choice. Don't just grab any old lawyer, right? Right, for sure. Yeah, I mean, I did learn, you know, kind of all the process of, you know,

being a first-time home buyer, you know, I did kind of realize how difficult it can be working with the banks. I'm sure being a putting down three and a half percent FHA makes it even more difficult with all the regulations that they're under. But yeah, I mean, the deal almost fell through so many times up to closing really. So I mean, just going through that whole process was probably the most stressful part of the whole thing because I wanted the property so bad. The more I got into it and I just, you know, I just really wanted the property and it just almost fell through so many times with all the things that the bank was asking me for and the timelines. I almost

I ended up I initially tried going for a different type of loan I think it was the soft second loan I don't know if you've heard of that no I think it's I think it might be a Massachusetts thing but it's basically it's a similar type program but it's a little bit more friendly and I think the interest rate

was even a little bit lower and actually the main draw to it was there's no PMI oh nice yeah yeah so that's and that ended up falling through so then I ended up going FHA and we're at that point we already signed the P&S and we had about 35 days to close, I think, and we ended up getting it done.

But just definitely learned that it can be difficult working with banks. Long story short, long story long. But the beauty is you got this FHA, three and a half loan. I mean, what else do you want? You know, I mean, most people, I mean, rates are finally starting to creep up. And, you know, to get a three and a half percent is out of the ordinary, obviously, now. Right, absolutely. Yeah, that's awesome.

Yeah, that's cool. Well, cool. Well, do you have, before we go, do you have any tips for other people who are, you know, thinking about doing this? I would say, I feel like when I do talk about it with people, I feel like they get overwhelmed. I think, you know, definitely just kind of, you know, looking at the whole process, I think, is something that anybody could do. I do have, I mean, my dad, he's a master plumber, and he definitely helped me with a lot of the renovation and some of his contacts to help with some of the work. So that I think took some of the stress off me a little bit. But I think, yeah, definitely, if you're looking at anybody that's thinking about buying a single family house, I would 100% look at buying a duplex or a triplex because I think it's not as many headaches as you might think.

And what's your take on having your tenants living downstairs? I mean, is what are the negatives to that for you at least? Definitely. Yeah, I mean, this is an old house too. It was built in the early 1900. so you can hear a lot of things in the house. So for sure, you definitely, that's part of it. And you have to accept that going in.

But a lot of tenants like that, so when I interview potential tenants to come in here, a lot of, you know, 90% of them, at least the ones I want living here too, are happy that the owners living in the house. They're usually, that's usually good news to them. If it's not good news, it's usually somebody I wouldn't want to live in there. Nice. But, yeah, that's definitely something you have, you have to accept some of those things, for sure if you're thinking about doing it.

Well, awesome. Well, hey, well, Nicholas, you know, this was really, really good. So we really appreciate you, you know, coming on the show to talk about this strategy. Yeah, definitely. Appreciate you guys having me on. Thanks again. Yeah, thanks for stopping by, man. All right.

That was awesome, man. That was really cool, Brandon. What did you think? I think it's awesome, too. I'm a big fan of the 203K. I haven't done it personally, but I was, you know, the contractor on it one time. So I definitely recommend it. My best friend did it, and it worked out really well for him.

I mean, it's, it's annoying sometimes with the red tape. Yeah. I think we had like a foot high stack of paperwork when we were done with the thing. But, you know, I think key in doing a 203K loan is finding a lender who knows what they're doing. Like, we worked with a lender when I did it with my friend and she knew exactly how to do a 203K loan. And it was, it was awesome. I mean, it really went faster than other people. I've heard horror stories.

Yeah. And I think this interview for me was particularly important because I think, I think, For a lot of these new, newer investors, they're just worried, hey, how do I start? Where do I go? And the cool thing is, you can go buy your first investment, and it could be your first home as well at the same time. And the beauty of it is, of what he's doing is he's living pretty much rent-free for himself, while learning and training himself how to be a landlord, how to deal with rental properties, and that kind of stuff. And that's invaluable, I think. Yeah, yeah, definitely.

I 100% agree. Awesome. Awesome. Cool. All right, guys. Well, why don't we move on to our next interview? Our next guest is Ezzawan Hawkins. And she's going to tell us the story of how she did her first wholesaling deal. So why don't we like having a hard time talking today. Let's get to it. Hey, Eswan, welcome to the show. Thank you very much for having me. I really, really appreciate it. It's an honor. Oh, yeah. Listen, we're so glad to have you. Why don't we just jump right into this thing. Why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself and your background?

Sure. So I am a married mother of three girls. They're almost 13, almost 14, and my youngest is six. We live in Washington, D.C. I've lived here all my life. And we are currently looking to invest in Baltimore, Maryland, which is just about 40 minutes away from D.C. with hopes to include D.C. in that investment plan, hopefully in the next couple of years.

Okay, very cool. So you just got started, right? I did. I did. And I think I joined Bigger Pockets in February or March. Okay. Just a couple of months. Oh, very cool. So the reason I found you, I mean, I've seen you're on the site a little bit, but you put a success story recently about your first deal. So that's what I want to talk about today is how did that come about? Just walk us through beginning to end. What did you do? And how did it, how did it work out? Sure. Well, my husband and I made a decision at the end of February that we would get into real estate investing. We had a small amount of money that we wanted to sort of put to get

youth. And when I joined BP, I learned about wholesaling and thought, oh, this would be a great way to sort of add to the small pot of money that we already have. So I started researching wholesaling a bit. Ned Carey, who is a very active investor in the Baltimore market, graciously agreed to meet with me. And I wrote around with him all over Baltimore and picked his brain for about eight hours one day at the end of March. He was really, really great. And so after that, I decided, you know, what, we can do this. So having three kids, especially girls, extra money is not something that is that we have a lot of, especially currently. So in terms of being able to do a lot of marketing and direct mail marketing,

we just didn't have the funds to be able to do that. So I picked up the phone and just started calling landlords who were renting apartments. I literally was in Baltimore every day driving for dollars, talking to neighbors, talking to the mailman, talking and giving my business card to whoever would take it. About a week and a half after I initially met with Ned, I got a phone call from a seller who actually is a real estate agent in Baltimore. And he owned a number of properties, is also an investor, and wanted my help, ironically, in unloading a couple. So one of the properties that he wanted me to sell, actually fell through, didn't work out. He decided to hold on to it.

But the other was a shell, which I thought was a great sort of start for a beginning wholesaler. It should be relatively easy to unload. So I was very excited, sign the contract. Well, initially talked him down. He wanted about $6,500, I think it was, for the property. And we were able to talk him down to $2,000, which is great. And so a couple of days after that, I actually got pneumonia. Oh, that's not good.

No, it wasn't. I didn't know it was pneumonia at the time, but I had like 104.5 temperature and I was in the bed for like nine days. It was, I have never felt worse than my life. And so obviously that limited the amount of marketing the property I was able to do in advertising. But as soon as I was able to sort of sit up and be able to breathe okay, I started just advertising the property on Craigslist, mainly Craigslist, actually, at that point. And literally, almost immediately, I was flooded with phone calls. I didn't have a buyer's list. I didn't have anything. But I knew from speaking to Ned that if I had a good property at a good price in a good location that it would sell, even if I didn't have anyone on the list. And that's why negotiating it down was so important because I wanted to be able to unload it quick. Yeah, definitely.

Am I, is it too much information? No, no, not at all. This is excellent. Okay. That was great. So I had, I feel that probably 50 phone calls maybe within the next couple of days. And I had one potential buyer who over the next three or four days after that was pretty consistent about following up with me, the shell was completely boarded up. And it was not safe to enter, really.

So there was really no walks or needed on that. her boyfriend was a contractor. So they just drove by and sort of did an assessment of what they thought it would take to fix. And she made me an offer. We were asking $4,500 for the property. And she made an offer of $4,000. And we accepted that. Cool.

That was the first deal. We were very excited about that. Yeah, that's awesome. And so then you went to closing. Did you assign the contract or did you actually go to actual title company to close? We went to a title company to close, but the contract was assigned to her. Okay. Yeah, so you didn't have to come with any money then?

No, we didn't, which was great. We were actually able to, she actually put a $1,000 earnest money deposit down initially. So literally the day that I met with her to sign the contract, she gave me the deposit. And so that was strange because I was expecting it to go directly to the title. company, but she didn't have an issue writing the check directly to us. And at Ned's suggestion, the initial contract with the seller was just for $10. That was the consideration for that contract. And when Ned initially mentioned that to me, I thought there's no way someone's going to put a property into contract for a $10 deposit. But the seller didn't even question it at all. So

that definitely was very eye-opening to me. When we got to settlement, there were some issues that came up. The seller owed a ton of real estate, back real estate taxes, property taxes, excuse me, on the property, like somewhere in the neighborhood of about $5,000. Oh, wow. And so he initially attempted to sort of, you know, wiggle out of the deal and said he didn't know. And I was, you know, professional but firm and reminded him that he had a contract. And at least with my offer, he would at least get $2,000 and help as opposed to letting this fall through, he would have had to be responsible for the entire out on past due amount. So he actually brought money to the table to get the property sold. But we were able to do that.

And I actually offered, when it looked like the deal was going to fall apart, I offered $500 of my fee, which was half of what I was expecting to get back, half of the balance I was expecting to get. But it was important to us for the deal to actually go through. So we were committed to that. Yeah, yeah, I've been there before, definitely. It's never fun, but no, it wasn't. But it was our first, and we were thrilled that, you know, we didn't make any major mistakes and were able to actually make some money off the deal. So that was exciting.

Oh, yeah, for sure, for sure. And, you know, and that's a great thing about wholesaling. I mean, if you're brand new to house flipping and you go out and make some mistakes, you have the potential to lose a whole lot of money. But with wholesaling, those mistakes, they're usually not as costly, so it's really a great way to learn as you build your business. That's exactly what I used to convince my husband that this should be a good first step, so I definitely agree with that.

Oh, right on, right on. So have you done any more deals since then? I have. Actually, a week after, I think I got that property in a contract, or maybe a couple of weeks, I got a hit through my website, ThisMombisehouses.com, from a seller who had a, who wanted to sell, actually wanted to give away their property. They said they were looking to get rid of it. And they just wanted a dollar for it, I guess, to have some sort of consideration in the contract. And when I first got the email, I honestly thought someone was playing a joke on me. I thought there's no way. Why would anyone give away a piece of real estate for nothing, essentially? And I was able to speak with a seller. did a little research beforehand, and they were very motivated. They had gotten into this property and a number of things that happened, and they weren't able to start working on it as quickly as they, as the city of Baltimore was expecting them to. And so they just, you know, they wanted to

get rid of the property. And Ned also mentioned to me, you know, that disclosures are so important. And so, you know, I made sure with my first deal and definitely with this one, look, this may be something that I keep for myself, but I also may sell it to another investor, are you okay with that? And I probably repeated that two or three times to them. And each time they said, you know, whatever it is that you need to do in order to, you know, get the property, you know, sold and out of our name, you know, we're completely fine with. Which made me nervous because I then thought, well, they must, you know, maybe there's a huge lien on the property or what's going on. And I did some initial research in Baltimore, you can do some initial research in terms of outstanding liens, but it's typically

just for the most recent tax year. And so I didn't see anything. So I sent it to the closing attorney and just kept my fingers crossed. And I kept expecting something to happen just because that's my nature. It sort of happens when you have three girls. That, you know, something's going to happen. they're going to back out. There, you know, something's going to happen. And we got to closing. And I, well, first of all, I was able to find a buyer very quickly for that one as well. I got a lot of interest for it, obviously.

We weren't asking as much as, probably honestly, as much as we should. But again, it's more important to us with these early deals just to get them moved quickly to sort of, you know, build our confidence. So that's been pretty important to us. So we probably, I think it took us about eight or nine days to unload that one. Net had given me sort of a tip that if I have a property longer than a week, then it's probably priced too high. And so that's been, you know, the rule of thumb that I've been trying to go by.

So when I got to that seven-day point, I started to get nervous. And I think the weekend came and by that Monday it was sold. Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah. That's cool. Well, very cool. Well, what's your plan going forward? What are your plans? Well, the profit that we've made so far from the last two deals is going to go into our marketing efforts.

We really like to start direct mail marketing. And so that's our sort of immediate plan. We'd like to do another two or three wholesale deals to sort of add to our pot of money, and then we'll look to purchase a couple of buy and hold problems. properties, hopefully in the next six to nine months in Baltimore, something that we can rent out. Okay. Very cool. That's awesome. All right, well, good deal. That is really, really good information. I actually learned quite a bit as well, because, like I said, I want to do more wholesaling. So I love to hear, you know, successful wholesale stories. So, very cool. I never thought that it would be me. I was expecting, you know, nine to 12 months. You know, I was really committed to that time frame to sort of get it done to get our first deal.

done, but I think the way that we sort of, you know, sort of dived right in. And literally every hour of the day, I was committed to talking to sellers. And I probably spoke to, I don't know, probably somewhere around two or three hundred people. Just within that couple of weeks, just calling, you know, doing skip traces and calling Craigslist ads and going on and speaking with neighbors. And it's just good to see that it all panned out and worked out. So we're excited about that. Yeah, that's cool. You know, what I like about your story, too, is that, like, you could have gone out and spent, you know, $20,000 on some kind of, you know, private class or course or something like that. But you probably learned more in those, you know, in the last couple months of actually just doing it than you would have learned in, you know, months and months and months of courses. Definitely. Now, I did, I do scour in bigger pockets every day.

And most hours of the day, I'm willing there researching something. So I definitely couldn't have done it without all the information on the site. Oh, that's cool. We appreciate that. I mean, that's how I learned almost everything I've done was the same way. So, yeah, very cool. Well, thank you very, very much for, you know, being with us today. No, thank you for having me.

I really appreciate it. All right. Well, thank you. We'll see you on the site. All right. Well, you know, hopefully the listeners out there learn some good tidbits about wholesaling in that interview. I know I'm super excited to do more wholesaling. And I think I say that like every episode.

You do. I know, I haven't really started it yet, but I really want to do more wholesale. I just, I spend too much time on this weird site called Bigger Pockets. I don't know. It is your job, you know. Oh, yeah, that's right. That's right. Well, anyway, yeah, I love that story because, you know, she just totally proves that it's doable.

Yeah, no, that's great. Well, why don't we, why don't we move on to the next interview? where we're going to talk with a great guy Matt Whiteside, and Matt's from the great state of Illinois, and he's going to fill us in about his first deal. And of course, Brandon, you know that I love this next story because all the gurus, you know, they love to talk about how easy wholesaling is.

But just like Ezwan's story, Matt's going to actually talk about some of the problems that can arise with a wholesale deal and how he overcame them to make a really great profit. Cool. Yeah. I mean, yeah, definitely wholesaling does work. We've seen that on the site, but it's definitely not as easy.

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Absolutely. All right, man. Well, why don't we jump right on to that interview? All right. Matt, very good to have you here. Let's start with this first deal of yours. You're going to tell us a little bit about it? Sure. It was a wholesale deal. I was marketing to people who were back behind on their taxes. So it was tax lien. I went down to the county and got a list. And I was marketing to people who were in Illinois. They have two and a half years to redeem their taxes. and I got them right before that two and a half year was about to end. And here in our county, it was the 25th of April. So I had them out prior to that, the letters. And I got quite a few calls.

I had this call to this woman who was the sister at the time. She was living in the unit. And she said, well, you know, my sister takes care of it. My mom died, passed away. You'll have to talk to her. So I said, all, fine. So she gave me the number. I called her.

left the message, call me back, and said, you know, I'm just tired of dealing with it. She had the two siblings there who weren't helping out, weren't doing anything, weren't paying the taxes, weren't paying the association fees, we found out. And she said, I'm just tired of, you know, putting money after this thing. And I'm done. And they were ready to move and just be done with it. And I offered her, you know, over the phone, I offered her $10,000 based off of what I could, you know, the comps in that area. what I think I could, you know, get it for with making some money off of it.

And the taxes at the time were about $4,700 that they needed to redeem. So she said, all right, that sounds good. And then I went and looked at the place after that, and it was a wreck. It needed at least $10,000 to $15,000 from repairs. Did she tell you that it was perfect? He didn't tell me it was perfect. I said, well, how is it? She goes, oh, it's good.

You know, she hasn't been there in a few years. So she didn't really know, you know, she said, oh, you know, it's three bedroom townhouse, you know, one and a half baths. It had a finished basement, she said. I said, okay. Went over there and like I said, all the flooring was all shot, you know, ripped up. They said they started to, they were to put new carpeting down and they just ran out of money so they didn't put anything down. The floors were saggy in the kitchen. You know, there was just, just there was a hole in the ceiling from when they put in a new bathtub and it leaked down and they just never repaired it.

So, yeah, there was a lot of work that needed to be done in there. And so I said, yeah, I went back to her. I said, you know what? It's just, it's not as nice as you thought, you said it was. So I said, you know, maybe I'd do $5,000. And she's like, oh, all right. You know, I guess I got to get something, you know, it's better than nothing. Because at that time when I was talking, she really had, you know,

then I had found out, though, that whoever bought the tax lien, they did extend the redemption period to August 5th. So we did have some time, but, you know, she said, well, all right, let's just do it. So I said, all I fine. So I sent her out an option contract where I was just going to give it. The option fee was going to be $100, but I was only gave her a dollar deposit. And, you know, I said I'll buy it based off of, you know, she was going to get, they were going to get $5,000 cash. Plus, I would pay the taxes roughly around $5,000.

I had her sign it and had her sign a memorandum. of option. She signed it, notarized it, sent it back to me. I recorded the memorandum of option. And then from there, I listed it on the MLS. I'd gone and

researched it and just to make sure that I could do it. And I found that, you know, my wife's an agent. And I found that, yeah, we could do it. And I know in some states, I've heard that you can do that in some states you can't. Right. So that's good that you could do that. Yeah. You should just, but

I don't see a lot of it being done, you know, and I, that would have anybody that's thinking about doing it, check with your local, you know, listing service and see what their rules are. And, you know, maybe you can get an agent that can do it for you. That's great advice. So, yeah, we figured it out. And we went to my wife's broker and said, this is what we wanted to do. And she said, all right, well, we'll do it. I've never done it before. So it was kind of like the guinea pig here.

So we did it. We listed it. I had it listed on a Thursday at like 4 o'clock. On Friday, we had the first showing set up at like 10 a.m. First guy that came through offered me $20,000. I did list it at $25,000 based off of it. And I was a little nervous because there was an REO that was on there that was listed at $11,000. And looking at the pictures, it looked a little nicer than the unit I have.

And I was like, I don't know if I'm going to get much for this place. But then it sold in four days for $22,000 over $22.5,000. So I said, well, there's a whole. there. You know, so I was, I said, well, let's just put it up for $25,000 and see what we can get. I said that the first offer, first showing guy offered $20,000. I said, well, you know what, let me think about it and now I'll get back to you. Came home, told my wife, we were shocked that, you know, first showing, first cash offer. And he came in, he said, you know, this place needs like $10,000, $15,000 of work. So he knew. And I think it was, he was an investor that

I was looking to rehab it and flip it. So I said, well, let me think about it. Came home, talked over with the wife. She said, you know what? Maybe we ought to just take the money. And I was going to, you know, like, let's just get in and get out. I still make some decent money off of this thing. And then later that evening had another showing and another offer of $23,000.

So then we got into a, you know, multiple bid situation. We told them, give us your highest and best. The $20,000, he's stuck with the $20,000. The $23, they came up to $25, $595. So I was like, wow. maybe we'll go with this one. And then the next day, I think we had a $26,000 offer. Wow.

And really what happened was I was having a lawyer redo my assignment fee, or not my assignment fee, my assignment contract. And he got sick, and it was taking, because I was going to take the $25,000 offer. He got sick, so it took him a few days to get it done. And I was putting off that guy going, okay, just hold on, hold on, we'll get the contract. You know, I didn't say yes or no.

I said, we're leaning towards it. Then what happened was while the lawyer was out sick with, you know, getting that assignment contract, I got a $26, or no, $31,000 offer. That's when the $31,000 offer came in. So I said, well, I didn't have to go to $31,000. So, and it was a cash offer. He waived, you know, all, like, inspections, everything. So I said, okay, great.

well in that meantime at that first day I found out the sister that was living there tells me well you know I'm behind on the the HOA fees and I said well how much and she said oh five and I said what five months because there's only $120. She says no $5,000. Oh wow. I'm like great that's going to take a big time. Then I found out it was like $5,950 and $6,000. Wow. So that's going to take a huge chunk out. But then you know, then we got that $31,000 offer. I said well that that that'll help. You know, but then I, you know, I negotiated with the HOA. I told them, I said, you know, if I don't buy this property, if we don't do this,

whoever bought that tax lien is going to take over this property. It's going to wipe out any of those, any of those fees. And they never did put a lien on it. So we never came up in a title search or anything. I don't know why they chose not to do anything with it. It was almost four years worth of HOA fees that they never even bothered to collect. But I got them down the 2,500. So I said, well, that's good.

So then we find out that the sister or the mother died without a will, didn't go through probate. So now I have to get four siblings to sign off on everything. This is the most complicated deal ever. It was. For your first deal. Yeah, for my first deal, I said, I hope they go, I'm hoping I'm getting a tough one right out of the way at the beginning and everything else will be smooth sailing from here on out. but so yeah I had to go and get them all to to sign everything then we had to do an affidavit of airship you know stating you know that they are who they are and that they have the right to you know sell

this property all right so it took me a couple weeks had all the paperwork together and then we you know I didn't want to take anything to chance so I went out and I had mobile notaries meet me at the one brother he lived out in Joliet which is not too far for me had him sign the stuff and I went to the other brother who was still in the area, had him sign everything, had him notarize everything. And then I took a weekend trip. I said, I'm just going to go down there. And the sister moved down with the other sister in Kentucky and Louisville.

So I said, let's just go. Me and my wife and daughter, we just got in the car and we went on a Friday night. We went down there, hung out. Saturday went, she had a local notary right down the street from her. We went over there, had him sign everything. Got all the paperwork, set the closing for that next Tuesday, that following Tuesday. made sure I had all of the, all of my, my ducks and, you know, I was kind of nervous since being my first one. The last time I was in a closing was I bought my house. So it's been over, you know, over 10 years.

So I went in there without a lawyer. I paid off the transfer tax, got the transfer stamp, went to closing, actually impressed the closing company with how well I was prepared. They said I was more prepared than most lawyers that come in there. So, yeah, we had, we had everything that we needed. the closing went fine. You know, when I got the assignment, you know, I agreed to pay for the title. And then the buyer was happy with that. So, you know, I was only, I put out another $1,250 for that.

The only other, the funny thing about it is, though, the day we were supposed to close, he had asked on Friday because he thought we were going to close on Friday, and I had my lawyer contact his and tell him, now that wasn't going to happen. I don't think we were going to have the paperwork signed in time. And then he was asking, well, he didn't sign a lease on his new place. And, you know, he has to pay a penalty when I reimburse him from that. And I said, well, no, I'm not going to do that.

Yeah. I agreed, even though I didn't have to, because it said in the assignment agreement that he would be playing all the closing costs, like for title and stuff. I said, no, I paid for the title. So if anything, you know, if there's any penalty over that, then maybe we were something out. It was dropped.

He never mentioned it again. But I went to the closing, the day of the closing, went over there to get my wife signed the lockbox off. And I find out that there's workers in there. And I said, who are you guys? And I said, oh, the owner hired us. I said, well, that would be almost me. You know, they said, oh, well, he said it was okay.

He closed on Friday. I said, no. So he jumped a gun on me. And I said, I talked to the lawyer. He said, what do you want me to do about? He goes, I wouldn't say anything. He said, they'll just make the closing go easier because if they come up with any, you know, if they say anything, you can go, well, you owe me rent for being in there for the days you were.

And you actually put money into it so you've actually improved my place. So, you know, I could not close. But it never came up. We went smooth. So, you know, after talking with a title company, just making sure we had everything correct, they knew, you know, wanted to make sure they had a, you know, everything in order. We closed and I picked up my check.

So I made, you know, over, it's probably, with my wife's commission, it was over $11.5,000. We made off that one first deal. That's awesome. That's very cool. And it only took me, like I said, $1 is what came out of my pocket in the beginning. I mean, obviously, you know, I pay for some other stuff like, you know, notaries and, you know, stuff like that and getting filing, you know, $42 to file. the memorandum, but other than that, it really wasn't a lot of money out of pocket.

Everything was paid at closing. So. That's an interesting, interesting story. Really, really, really quickly, what, you know, what inspired you to kind of go that route with, with the tax liens?

You know, it was something I'd gotten, I read something about, ordered a book one time called Deed Grabber, be a deed grabber, about getting, you know, tax liens, getting them before, you know, they go to, the tax lien investor.

You know, people who obviously, they're motivated. They're going to lose this house just based off the back of taxes. And I'm, you know, I've been finding a lot of places that are free and clear that really they old just the taxes, you know, so if you can find those properties, then you do pretty well. Yeah, that's great. Nice. Well, hey, thank you very much, Matt, for, you know, kind of sharing your story with us.

No problem. Cool. Thanks a lot, Matt. Yeah, definitely. All right. All right, guys. And that was Matt. white side, that story definitely paints a different picture about how easy wholesaling is.

Doesn't it be? It definitely does. I like how he says he had to drive down to another state to get things signed. That was not something you read in the, you know, we're here on the, from the gurus. Definitely, definitely. All right, everybody, for our final interview today, we're going to talk with somebody that, well, if you regularly hang out on the Bigger Pockets forums, you probably know pretty well. Maran Camari. Maran's actually a moderator now on the Bigger Pockets forums

and is definitely one of our most active members. We wanted to talk with Maran today because like a lot of our listeners, Maran's located in a big city where prices are kind of crazy high and it just may not make sense to invest in. But he lives in L.A. and he's actually crushing it right now with his investments by investing at a distance.

So if you're in an area where prices are too high, you definitely, definitely want to listen to this interview, out-of-state investing. So why don't we just jump right into this? All right. So, Mayor Ron, can you tell us about your first deal? Okay, so my first deal, actually, for me, was my primary residence. You know, I just got a well-paying job around 2009. I started saving some money to put towards the down payment.

I figured that would be the biggest investment in my life. And what I decided to do was just buy a bunch of books, learn about mortgages, learn about how to actually buy a house. And that's what led me to BP. So I had a question about debt-to-income ratio, and that led me to BP. And I got so much information on just the one post that I read. I was like, man, this is a really good site.

I'm going to stick around here and learn what I can before I buy my first house. and the information I learned from BP really helped me kind of decide what type of house I wanted to get. I knew from the second I started on BP that I wanted to get into real estate investing, and I figured the best way to do that would be get some practice as a landlord. So I figured I'd find a house that I can easily rent out some rooms, you know, get the hang of being a landlord, finding tenants, screening them, signing a lease, doing all the things the landlord does.

And yeah, that's pretty much how I got started on my first deal. Well, that's cool. Nice. And since then, you've continued to pick up property. What was the second opportunity that you went through? Okay, second opportunity

as a duplex I found on the MLS in Indianapolis. I had been looking at some turnkey properties from some turnkey companies and it seemed like every property I looked at wasn't meeting my requirements for, you know, the 2% rule in bigger pockets, the 50% rule, which I figured would be just kind of good criteria to stick to. So I figured that Indianapolis would be a good market because a lot of the turnkey companies were offering properties there. So I figured, you know, let's just check out the MLS. And I did that.

I found a good property that had the numbers that I was looking for that easily met the 50% rule. So I just pretty much called the agent up. I had a bunch of questions to ask her. You know, due diligence questions like, why is the seller selling? Can I get copies of the lease, rent roll, stuff like that? And it was pretty simple, actually. Oh, cool. Did you go and visit it then before buying it or did you just?

Oh, no. I did everything online with pictures. I hired a property inspector. And pretty much, yeah, they were my eyes and ears on the ground. And you're in Los Angeles, so obviously there's some distance there. What was the strategy? Was it to buy and hold? Definitely buy and hold.

I had just saved enough for a down payment, and I got pre-approved, figured I'd be able to afford the house, and I just bought it with conventional financing, and that was it. It was pretty simple. Did it require any work, or was it ready to go? It was pretty much ready to go. another investor had bought it and rehabbed it in 2009. He already had tenants in there, property management in place,

and everything was pretty much good to go. I guess we did the inspection, and there was a couple of repairs that I asked him to do, which he did willingly. And, yeah, everything was pretty smooth. Go ahead, sorry, Brian. I was wondering if you've had any problems so far with tenants or anything like that managing from far away.

You have a property manager, right? Yeah, yeah. So the property manager is actually, she's so awesome. I put together kind of like a questionnaire that I got from all my research I did on bigger pockets, like all the things I need to ask about this property manager to vet her out, see if she's really good to see if I should either replace her or keep her on. And she answered every question perfectly. And I felt like it was such a blessing.

Everything's been good so far. The tenants that were there were long-term tenants, so I haven't had any problems. She collects around on time and everything. That's awesome. That's fantastic. It's been awesome. And the cool thing about that is, you know, you basically saw what other successful companies were doing, these turnkey companies were doing.

And, yeah, I mean, certainly not everybody can go out and do what you did. And some people do need, you know, a company to kind of take care of all the work. But you realize that the numbers didn't work for you. And so you kind of went around and found an opportunity that was perfect. And that's cool. Yeah. And I found when I bought my house that I live in now, I went through the house and I thought I saw everything. It looked perfect.

And when the inspector came in, he found all these things wrong with the property that I didn't even see. So I figured, you know, I'll just hire an inspector to go check out the duplex that I'm buying. And they'll probably see more than I will, even if I flew out there anyway. So it worked out good for me that way. Were you concerned at all about the neighborhood since you don't know the area? Like, how did you determine what was good? So I relied a little bit on the selling agent who I knew kind of had an ulterior motive for kind of sprucing it up. I used Trulia to check out some of the crime reports in that area of the city.

I spoke with the property manager who was really helpful. She didn't really have too much to gain by giving me kind of jumbled up information. The duplex was the only multifamily property on a house of single. single family home, I mean on a street of single family homes. Okay. So it seemed like, you know, the street was well taken care of and everything. Now, it's not the nicest neighborhood, but it works. Yeah.

I think that's really, I would look for that too, a multifamily on a street of single families. I followed the same. I love that. Yeah. You know what else works? Google Street View is a fantastic tool for doing that as well, the diligence. I mean, if you see bars in all the windows, you know, you kind of know where you're, or cars that are, you know, blown out and sitting on yards.

I mean, it kind of tells you what you're looking at. Yeah, I think I drove around with Google Street View for like two or three hours in that whole neighborhood. It's like I practically live there. That's awesome. Nice. Well, cool. Well, I know you mentioned on the forums that you also found, you know, a partner through BP. Do you want to talk about that with your next one?

I found my partner on BP. Her name's Don Anastasi. She's in Milwaukee. And after I close on property number two, I was already, I mean, yeah, I was already thinking about the next. property and she had posted something in the marketplace. She posted a couple of numbers on certain properties that she's seeing and the numbers in her neighborhood and everything. And I was like, man, that's better than I'm seeing Indianapolis. And I've seen her all over the forums, giving advice on all the different subforms. She's been really helpful. So I've seen her around and

there was a lot of credibility there. And I figure, you know, let's contact her and see if I could work on something with her. And we talked to each other, vetted each other out. What I really liked about working with her is because we're part of the BP community, we're always around the same lingo, kind of like the same culture, the same beliefs when it comes to, you know, investing, which is like doing it right and doing due diligence and make sure all the numbers are correct everything. And so far it's been so smooth working with her because we're always on the same page with everything. We have the same goals and it's working out pretty good. That's fantastic. Can you tell us about the deal that you guys are doing? Okay. Yeah. The deal we just

closed actually fairly recent on the 31st of May. There's a short sale, small little to one house. We bought it for 21,000 cash, putting about 3,000 into rehab. And our estimated ARV is about 40,000. And we have a portfolio lender lined up where we can refinance right after we finish the rehab and put a tenant in there and get our money back and kind of rinse and repeat. That's awesome. And the rent she's looking to get for it is about $750 to $7.95. So it's cash flowing pretty good for what we got it for.

You know, and that just shows like, you know, I know, Marron, you didn't know I was going to do this, but like you are one of the most active guys on bigger pockets. I mean, you're always in there welcoming people and talking and engaging. And you are just proof that, I mean, that it works. I mean, like, they're just getting out there and meeting people and talking with investors and, you know, making deals happen. So I think that's really, really awesome. Oh, and one last thing.

One thing that really helped me get over the hump on making that first offer was posting a post in the deal analysis forum so I can have, you know, the opinion of all the other investors on there kind of pick apart my deal and let me know if it's good. or not. So even though I did my own due diligence before that, for some reason, I was like stuck in that analysis paralysis stage and I just like couldn't get myself to make that offer. But after I made the post and I kind of got the feedback from everybody, I felt a little more comfortable moving forward and it really helped a lot. So I suggest any new investors that are honing in on a property that they're really serious about and they just can't get over that

hump. If you just post something on the deal analysis forum, I mean, you can't really go wrong with the collective intelligence, I guess, of people that have done over hundreds of deals. And it really helped me get over that edge. So I highly suggest that. Yeah, that's awesome. I did kind of the same thing. When I was starting out, I would post my, I guess, deals on there. Like, you know, is this really a deal? And yeah, it worked really good. Yeah, I think you actually even contributed to that, to my post. And it helped me out big time. Yeah. Oh, that's cool. That's good to know. it's funny i went back and looked at my first comments i ever made on the forums you know

and the the change that has happened from the time i first posted on bp until now is like amazing and i i credited it i wouldn't say 100% of bigger pockets but pretty much all my direction has been because of that i mean i've read a lot of books also i i like can't start reading books for bigger pockets i'm like fascinated with real estate investing now it's awesome that's great hey what's your what's your favorite real estate investing book? Actually, I'm kind of reading it right now. I actually got it from some of the other big, the podcast is the how I turn a thousand into five million in real estate. Nickerson. Yeah, what I really like about it is he doesn't just tell you what to do. He breaks down

the psychology of why he's doing it and why it's kind of the best decision to do this move for this situation. And that's what I really like about it, because I like to get into the the mindset of a successful investor, not just step by step what to do. Yeah. No, that's awesome. I like that book a lot too. That's one of my favorites.

Very cool. So what are your plans for the future now? So my plans right now are to continue to buy, you know, cash flowing properties that I could, you know, cash out refinance and get my money back so I can keep rolling with the money I have now.

But to build a portfolio big enough for me to leave my job, to replace my income that I'm earning right now and leave my job and kind of pursue things full time. The job that, of course, you love. Oh, yeah, yeah. I love my job. It can't be any of my coworkers. Actually, it's not that my job's not that bad. It's just that it's the line of work I do. We kind of have to work graveyard shift, and it's not the ideal shift for me to be working. Oh, look, I mean, beyond that, you know, everybody's kind of, you know, everybody's kind of I got the dream of, hey, I can work for myself and kind of have the opportunity of freedom

to spend time with family and friends and do what I want to do. I mean, you know, if there's any boss listening to an employee who says, hey, I don't want to work, you know, I mean, I will work my backside off for you while I am working, but the dream is to not work. I mean, come on. Yeah. Having goals for working so hard to accomplish my goals has made me. me a better employee even at my job. I'm just so motivated and excited all the time rather than just sitting there with my back hunched and all that stuff. That's awesome. Well, listen, I really want to thank you for giving us a couple minutes of your time. And I think you shared some cool little tidbits here. And it's exciting to learn about the success that you're having.

so we'll definitely look forward to continuing to watch you as you grow and share what you've learned with everybody back in the community. Thank you. Thank you. And thanks for starting bigger pockets, Josh, and making the community what it is. You guys have made it so awesome for me. It's so easy now. Nice. I appreciate that, man.

Thank you. All right. Thank you very much, you guys. Bye, bye, bye. Oh, that was awesome, awesome. Listen, I mean, Miran is, he's definitely one of the many, many, bigger pocket success stories. It's so cool. Yeah, it is cool. I mean, it's fun to watch him because when he first started posting on the forums, he didn't know a whole lot of what was going on, but

definitely it's pretty cool to watch. And I know I just talked to him the other day, and he mentioned he got another deal. Now, even since this interview that we recorded, he got another deal that he's closing soon on. So, sweet. Yeah, he's on fire. It's awesome. Oh, that's great. And it proves that you really can't use your location as an excuse to not invest. You know, I live in New York City. I can't find anything under, you know, $50 billion. Yeah. Well, you got to find a way to overcome things like that, just like Marron did.

So, yeah, it's great. Yeah, awesome. Yeah, I'm a big fan of his. I'm excited to see where he goes with this. Yeah, definitely. All right, man, let's wrap this thing up. For those of you guys who are listening, we really just want to say thank you for supporting bigger pockets.

And furthermore, we actually really want to thank you for support. supporting your fellow investors around the site. Bigger pockets, I think is so amazing because the people who make up the community, you know, these four investors have all, you know, they're all in the earliest stages of their careers. And anytime they jump on the site and ask questions, you know, those investors who've been around are jumping and helping them. And, you know, what else can you ask for? I mean, Brandon, it's just, I don't know, it makes. It makes me really proud to be a part of this whole thing.

Yeah. I mean, it was fundamental in my success so far, and it continues to be. Yeah, for sure. Well, I just want to encourage everybody who has listened to please come and leave a comment on the show notes. Also, make sure to leave some encouragement for these guys. I mean, ideas, encouragement, any questions you've got, you know, they'll be around to answer them to communicate with you. you could check out the show notes at biggerpockets.com slash show 25. That's biggerpockets.com slash show 25.

And finally, if you aren't a close member of the community, we once again want to invite you to jump into the conversations that are happening every day on the forums at biggerpockets.com slash forums. Make sure you introduce yourself to the community and the new member introductions, like we said in the quick tip, click, and let us know who you are. Finally, come connect with us over at Facebook at facebook.com slash biggerpockets. And until next time, this is Joshua Dorkin. Fine enough.

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Our new episodes come out Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. I'm the host and executive producer of the show, Dave Meyer. The show is produced by Ian K, copywriting is by Calico content, and editing is by Exodus Media. If you'd like to learn more about real estate investing or to sign up for our free newsletter, please visit www.biggerpockets.com. The content of this podcast is for informational purposes only. All host and participant opinions are their own. Investment in any asset, real estate included, involves risk.

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