BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast - 29: Using Peer-to-Peer Lending to Finance Deals, Cash Flow, and Fix and Hold Investing with Dawn Anastasi

Episode Date: August 1, 2013

On today’s episode of the BiggerPockets Podcast, we are going to dive into some really fascinating new ways to finance your real estate investing while talking with residential investor Dawn Anastasi. Dawn is an active investor in the Milwaukee area who, while working a full time job, has collected a number of rental properties with amazing cash flow each month. Dawn shares with us her strategy for buying low priced houses (with unique financing in place,) fixing them up, and leasing them out to great tenants. This show definitely has a lot of great tips, ideas, and strategies for both new investors and seasoned pros. Read the transcript to episode 29 with Dawn Anastasi here. In This Show, We Cover Working with Family and Friends Investing in Real Estate from a Woman’s Perspective Dealing with Difficult Contractors How to Find Houses for Between $20,000 – $30,000 Financing Real Estate Through Peer-to-Peer Funding Buying Long Distance Properties Why Single Family Rentals Rock Finding Partners on BiggerPockets Links from the Show Lending Club (BiggerPockets Partner Link) Prosper (BiggerPockets Partner Link) How to Buy a Small Multifamily: A Step by Step Case Study Brandon’s Twitter, Josh’s Twitter, BiggerPockets’ Twitter Tenant Screening: The Ultimate Guide The BiggerPockets MarketPlace Rich Dad Poor Dad Audio Book on Youtube How to Analyze a Fix and Flip: A Step by Step Case Study The BiggerPockets Fix and Flip Analysis and Reporting Tool Books Mentioned in the Show The Section 8 Bible Rich Dad Poor Dad Tweetable Topics You need to be comfortable with whatever investing strategy you choose. (Tweet This!) A deal is a deal, whether it’s a single family home or duplex. Go where the deal is. (Tweet This!) Know your real estate market: the niches, and the neighborhoods. (Tweet This!) The Bigger Pockets Marketplace is eHarmony for Real Estate Investors! Have You Found Your Match? (Tweet This!) Connect with Dawn Dawn’s BiggerPockets Profile Dawn’s Website www.coreprop.biz/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Bigger Pockets podcast, show 29. You're listening to Bigger Pockets Radio, simplifying real estate for investors large and small. If you're here looking to learn about real estate investing without all the hype, you're in the right place. Stay tuned and be sure to join the millions of others who have benefited from biggerpockets.com. Your home for real estate investing online. What is going on, everybody? This is Josh Dork, and host of the Bigger Pockets podcast. here with episode 29 and my fabulous co-host, Brandon Turner.

Hey, Brandon, you are fabulous. I love when you call me fabulous. That's the best title right there. Yes, you and Elton John. Thank you. Can you feel the love tonight? I will tell you, I'm not totally feeling the love. And I will tell everybody why.

Please tell them why, because... Well, the reason why is this is, this is the second time we are recording episode 29 of the Bigger Pockets podcast. And, you know, it's not because of anything other than the fact that... Your sound quality was terrible the first time. It simply just was not very good, Josh. That was what it was? Because I have to think it was the fact that when you recorded it, Brandon, the show

somehow magically vanished. And so we all did an hour plus of work. hour and a half of work this morning. And, and, and, uh, and suddenly the, uh, the show disappeared. It did not disappear. It was corrupted. The file was corrupt. The file is corrupted.

You're corrupted. It was corrupted. I tried for two hours to uncorrupt it and, and I, uh, who knows. Anyway, it's okay. Because the second recording was a thousand, like, it was, it was awesome. It was a thousand times better than the first. It was great. It was great.

And, uh, you know, if I'm surly at all, It's not the two hours of sleep I got. And having to record this, it's, it's, no, that's why. No, this is one of my favorite, this is hands down one of my favorite interviews we've done. So, yeah, I think people are going to love this. Yeah, awesome. Awesome. Well, really quick, before we get started, I'm going to do today's quick tip.

And for today's quick tip, we're going to talk about shared workplaces. And the reason we're talking about shared workplaces is this morning when we recorded the podcast. I was actually recording from a shared workplace. And we thought, you know, hey, listen, this is a great opportunity. Investors who may not want to work out of their home office or garage or something, you know, co-working spaces are really great opportunities. They're fairly inexpensive and you can rent desks and things like that, get boardrooms and conference rooms and access to a lot of resources by using a shared workspace. I work out of galvanized downtown here in Denver. And it's fantastic. So if you've never thought about it and wanted to get out of the

house and are looking for an office, check out the local co-working spaces, share workspaces. I think that's going to do well for you. Yeah, I agree. Very cool. Yeah. Nice. Nice. Well, today's show, we've got a cool guest. And really quick before we do talk about her. I just want to thank everybody who has left us ratings and reviews on iTunes. We continue to climb in the ratings, continue to get lots of great reviews. If you haven't done so, please do. We really appreciate it, and it does help us get more visibility. But today's guest is Dawn Anastasi.

She's out of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and she's a real estate investor. I've been doing this for a couple of years, buy and hold primarily with single families and some duplexes. And she's got some pretty cool insight. We're going to talk about things like peer-to-peer lending. We're going to talk about partnerships. We're going to talk about just general landlording topic. So definitely stay tuned as we move forward with the show. And really quickly, if you've got questions when you're listening to this or any other show,

make sure you check out our show notes. This show, it's BiggerPockets.com slash show 29. And what you can do is actually ask questions of our guests or us in the show notes. And so if you've got questions for Dawn, ask them in the show notes. And even if you thought she did a great job, don't have questions, want to just thank her for her time. Do that, you know, because our guests, our guests love it. A lot of property managers think their job is answering tenant emails 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, 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. Mind is different. They obsess over the metrics that actually grow your cash flow.

Go to mine.co slash show me to see how mine performs and get a month of management for free. Because if you're going to hire a property manager, hire one that manages your investment like an investment. Have you ever lost a DSCR deal because the financing just took too long? Red flags popped up late. The lender needed more time. The deal fell apart. Well, our friends at Dominion Financial just launched a program to help prevent that.

With their new express rental loan, you can close in 10 days or less. And they still offer their price beat guarantee. So you can get great pricing and a timeline you can count on. Fast, simple, reliable. That's Dominion Financial. Check them out at biggerpockets.com slash dominion. That's biggerpockets.com slash dominion. Okay, we're going to shift gears for a minute to cover something important, especially for new landlords. The shows often talk about getting stuck doing everything ourselves and the cost of sweat equity. The key question is simple. Is my time better spent elsewhere? I use a tool that

cuts down on a lot of landlord hassles. And the wild part is, it's just $12 a month. It handles rental screenings, rent collection, maintenance requests, and accounting, all in one platform via a mobile app or desktop. It saves me time in tenant communication and keeps me organized for tax season. It's called Rent Ready, and you can sign up for a six-month plan for just one dollar with promo code BP 2025. Pro users get it for free because we believe in it. Just sign in through your pro account to get started. Rent Ready helps ensure on-time rent with auto reminders, keeps communication professional, and lets you post listings to multiple sites. Check it out at rentready.com slash bigger pockets. That's rent rEDI.com slash bigger pockets. So without further ado, I think we should

bring her on. Dawn, thanks for being on the show. Nice to have you. Hi, Josh. Hi, Brandon. Hello. Hey, hey, hey, hey. Well, it is really nice to have you and we're very excited to get started here. So let's jump in really quick and talk about what kind of investing do you do today. Josh, is it possible to jump in really slow? It is possible. You kind of jump at one speed when you jump into something. Well, if you do kind of a time warp, right, since Dawn here is a super sci-fi freak like I am, you know, if you're actually traveling at close to the speed of light, oh, am I still geeking

out here? Yep, still geeking out. Are we on the air? We are. Don, welcome to the show again. Hi, Brandon. Welcome. Yeah, so let's jump in slowly.

I'm a little sad. I tell you, I'm a little sad that Dawn did co-geek with me. We're going to leave you out there on that one, Josh. All right. So we're going to jump in real moderately here. And Josh, would you like to ask moderately? I don't even know what that means. What kind of investing are you doing right now, Don?

Okay. Well, I am actually working on single-family residential home investing. I do some duplexes, but primarily single-family homes is my bread and butter. That's what I've been focused. on. Nice. And you do that up by where you live in Milwaukee? Exactly. I live in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the land of milk and cheese. And it is, believe it or not, I don't have a cow in my backyard. So I don't believe it. I know. I'm completely amazing. Nice. Nice. Okay. So you're you're buying single families and duplexes. And really quick, is that how you started or? How did you get going? And we'll just jump through that kind of quickly. Not that it's uninteresting because it is very interesting. But apparently everything I do has to be quickly or Brandon's going to chastise me.

I actually started investing in early 2008. I started with my cousin and her husband, believing that since he was a contractor, that he knew what he was doing. And with the plan of, Flipping Houses was the goal. And to leave a long story short, which is probably good in this moderate conversation here, we, he got one of the two properties that we started with almost rent ready. And then things kind of just fell apart from there. And to all your listeners out there, I'd like to advise them on a quick tip. Quick tip. Yes.

Don't invest with family because it doesn't always work out as you would expect. So that is my first tip of the day. That's awesome. And that's awesome. Actually, you shouldn't say that's awesome. You should say that sucks. That is an awesome tip. Yes.

The tip is a good one. The tip is an awesome tip. It is unfortunate that you had a problem with said cousin's husband, the contractor who failed. in many ways. What did you do? Well, among stealing from me, not finishing what he did, taking 10 months to rehab a house, and he was a contractor supposedly doing this for a living, that's just a few of the minor things that I'll kind of point out at this time. Now, is he still the husband of your cousin? Yes, he is. Wow. And that's crazy. Is there like a whole excommunication thing going and you don't have to answer any of these questions.

Oh, that's okay. We, we don't talk. We kind of parted ways and that's all where we are today. Wow. Wow, wow, wow. Well, I am sorry. And your quick tip was a good one because, you know, so many people think that you can just jump in and hey, you know, so and so in my family would be great to work with. And ultimately what they don't realize is, you know, it's a marriage, you know, a partnership. and real estate really is a marriage and you have to get along and you have to trust them wholeheartedly and unfortunately this thing this situation happens over and again for a lot of people and I am truly sorry that that you did have to deal with that. You know, in podcast 27 maybe I think it was with Jason Groot and Catherine Groot,

they invest with their family. But I think like, I think sometimes it seems to work out really well and sometimes it works out terrible. You know, like, I do, I do not believe in renting to family or friends ever because it always seems to work out bad. But now some people seem to do it. And I don't know what the magic, you know, is. Maybe like, I don't know, maybe they- I would love to rent to you, Brandon.

That would be fun. I would not rent from you. You would evict me. I'm not kidding. I have too many cats to rent anyway. All right, let's move on. So, Don, you, your relative left picture. and what happened next?

I mean, did you buy more property? Did you pull out for a while? What happened? Well, he basically left me with two properties. Like I said, one was close to being rent-ready, and the second one was actually completely gutted down to the studs. So, yes, I had to essentially come in and finish this property off, put in drywall, get drywall put in complete electrical, complete plumber.

basically everything. Everything needed to be in there. There was nothing, no kitchen cabinet's nothing. So I kind of got a trial by fire and worked my way through that with this property that was two hours north of where I live. So that was a challenge as well. And had my first landlording experience actually with the first property, which was almost rent ready. And once I finished up a few small things was actually advertising it and found a couple that lived in North Carolina, of all things, that wanted to rent it. They saw the ad online. They had family in the area that came by and checked it out, called them over the phone to see what it looked like, and basically packed up all their belongings, and moved to Wisconsin. That was my first experience as a landlord.

So they never even saw the place before moving in? Other than pictures online, no, they actually never set foot in the house before they decided to rent it. How'd that turn out? That turned out actually really well. They were renters for over three years until the husband's job took them elsewhere. And they were always good payers. They took great care of the house. So I think I was lucky in that respect of finding a very good first set of tenants for this rental.

Nice. Nice. And you do all the management and you take care of all these properties wholly by yourself, correct? That is correct, Josh. Cool. And you don't like do the swinging of the hammers or anything like that, right? You hire contractors. I hire contractors when necessary. I actually do swing a hammer, use a screwdriver. If I had a hammer, I'd hammer in all. I'd hammer in the evening all over all over. All over this town. All right. Go Josh.

Yeah, keep going. Wow. All right. Now that Josh is done singing. So you do do work. That's cool. Yeah, actually, that's probably unusual for a woman in real estate to actually do some of the rehab work herself, like drywall, installing light fixtures, doorknob, ceramic tile, things like that. That's probably pretty unusual.

And I think that also kind of sets me apart from some of the other women in real estate as well. Gotcha. Gotcha. So, you know, and obviously you bring up the fact that you're a woman and clearly we understand this. And, you know, it just brings me to the thought that, you know, on bigger pockets at least, I'd say where the audience is somewhere between 70 and 80% men. That's my guesstimate. And, you know, I would assume across the population of investors, it's probably somewhere in the similar ratio, maybe less, maybe more, whatever. But let's talk a little bit about that because as a woman, you know, I'm sure you probably have different things that you have to deal with than we do.

Obviously, you know, in terms of just interrelating with folks and potentially dealing with, not that you're incapable. You're obviously very capable all women. But, you know, I'm trying to say this in the right way. I bet you there's a bunch of people out there that give women a hard time as an investor. And I'm curious if that's something that you have to deal with. Yeah, Josh. And I just took my foot out of my mouth, by the way. Yes, I saw that.

That was great. Okay. So in terms of being a woman and a real estate investor, I think the most challenging aspect I run into is dealing with contractors. You talked about 70, 80% of real estate investors being men. Well, if you look at the contractor side, you're probably up, you know, 95% or more being contractors that I've worked with. And some contractors are perhaps older, set in their ways. And it's very hard for them to work with a woman.

They're kind of used to dealing with the man of the house, so to speak. A little lady is your husband home? Yeah. Is that what you're Brandon? That's my old man stuck in his way's voice. Nice. I'll do that more often. So that can be a challenge sometimes when, you know, contractors don't take you necessarily seriously.

And when I do find those contractors that actually listen to what I have to say and understand that, okay, maybe I don't know every single thing about their trade, but I know enough. to at least talk intelligently about it. And if they get that, then it's actually, you know, great to work with them and have actual good, ongoing business relationships with them. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, to the contractors out there, get over yourselves. You know, there are, you know, there's women in this business and you got to deal with them,

right? And to the women, I guess, you know, is there any advice that you might want to give to them in terms of dealing? I mean, what do you do? you call and you getting on the phone or you hire a contractor and he's cool up front and then suddenly he's giving you the chauvinistic crap or he's, you know, just kind of disrespect. Obviously you could fire him, but is there any way to overcome that or ensure that doesn't happen? How do you dominate the situation?

That's a good question, Josh. The biggest thing that I do is essentially, you know, first and foremost, you talk with your money. So if you don't give them any more business, you know, that's a clear indication that they're just not doing what you wanted them to do. And you can kind of tell a little bit up front when a contractor is going to be easy to work with when you're dealing with them on getting quotes. If it's very hard to work with them on getting a quote for the work, then you're kind of looking at having a hard time dealing with them on the actual work itself. So that's probably a good tip right there. There you go. That's awesome.

There you go. Yeah, that's great. That's great. Okay. So you're in, you're in Milwaukee. You're this strong woman who's crushing all those chauvinistic brand in contractors.

Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey. Yes. It's like the perfect Ed, Ed McMahon actually. Ha.

Ha. Yes. What price range are you, are we talking about here? I mean, I don't know, here in Denver, you know, well, I guess, you know, in any city you're going to have your high, your mid, and your low. Are you working in the high end, the low end? What's your kind of niche?

Well, I actually have found that my specialty or what I have invested in recently is more on the low priced end. I traditionally try to stay within the $20,000 to $30,000 price range. Wow. And, yeah, that's definitely. That's not just for like the bedroom, right? That's, are these houses that have walls or? Yeah, these are actual single family homes in the $20,000 to $30,000 range.

I primarily look for the low-price deals that need some rehab. They always need some rehab, but primarily either bank-owned foreclosures or short sales, things like that that you can get really cheap. Okay, so I'm just curious. because my neighbor just built a garage for $25,000. And it's literally like a giant three car garage. I mean, it's crazy as big as a house. But how much rent does a $20,000 or $30,000 house go for?

Well, it certainly depends on the number of bedrooms and amenities, Josh. But the range that I'm seeing in the Milwaukee area here is roughly around. and this is specific to the zip code that I focus in, is roughly around 700, 800 for a two-bedroom single-family. Between maybe 800 to 9-50 for a three-bedroom and 9-50 and up for a four-bedroom, maybe somewhere around 1,100, 1,200, 1,200. I do have one-four bedroom rented out for 1,100, so that's kind of a guideline. So your strategy is to find negative cash.

properties then. No, exactly not. Yeah, those definitely meet the 2% rule. Yeah. Oh, actually, in 3% in some cases. Yeah, yeah. And for those who don't know, the 2% rule basically means that the monthly rent comes in is 2% of the purchase price.

So $100,000 house would rent for $2,000 or a $50,000 house would rent for $1,000. So, yeah, that's awesome. And it's just kind of a general guideline. Yeah, it's not like you have to do that to be an investor. Just that's a, it guarantees pretty much, not guarantees, but it gives you. You come close. Yeah, it gives you a good indication you're going to cash flow like crazy. Well, that's over, and again, that's over an extended period of time.

Yeah. That's essentially going to take into account all your CAPEX and all your, all your expenses. But yeah, 3%. That's crazy. And I already hear the sound of people. getting ready to email you and get in touch and booking tickets to Milwaukee, Wisconsin. No, wait, did I? Did I say 3%. No, no, you got to stay away. This is horrible. It's getting a little crowded over there now. Hold on.

The secret's out. No, that's cool. So do you think, I mean, there's been a lot of debate on the forums lately I've seen about people saying that the 2% rule days are over and people need to start compromising on their standards? Do you agree? Do you think people should invest in their, like if they can't get the, 2% should they come to Milwaukee or elsewhere? What do you think? My impression is that people really need to be comfortable with what they do because they need to be able to sleep at night. And if the thought of investing elsewhere just makes them worry a little bit, then they need to keep their money safe and more for me. No, I'm just kidding. They need to be comfortable with whatever strategy they do because at the end of the day, you want to be happy, you want to be comfortable.

you want to sleep at night. And if you're okay with, let's say, one and a half percent in your home market, that's great. There's, you know, something to be said for those who do want to go after the, you know, the 3% or 3.5% type of properties. Yeah, that's awesome. That's good advice. Well, how are you then financing these properties? I mean, do bank loans? Have you always been using bank loans or what do you do? No, for the most part, I have, I started off with in Milwaukee investing by purchasing a couple with actual conventional financing, a single family and a duplex. And then starting around 2012, then I started actually making cash purchases with some of my own savings as well as using peer-to-peer lending to actually get cash and make cash offers on

properties. So let's actually talk about that then the peer-to-peer. What exactly is peer-to-peer lending? Well, peer-to-peer lending is essentially a method of financing somebody through a group of various unrelated parties. So, for example, I might put out an ad saying, I need $30,000. Joe contributes $50, Sally contributes $100, maybe Jim Bob contributes $1,000. So everybody... Oh, Jim Bob.

Jim Bob. Jim Bob. Yeah, exactly. Jim Bob. Yes. So there's a group of different people that are completely unrelated that chip in little bits of money until you get to the full funding amount. How do you find these people? There's actually a couple of sites, peer-to-peer lending websites out there that work on matching up these investors with the borrowers. One of which is called Lending Club.

and the second is called Prosper. Those are the two sites that I have used. Yeah. Yeah. And we actually do work with those companies as well. BiggerPockets does. And actually for anyone listening, we've got a relationship with those guys. And we'll actually put a link to both websites and the show notes.

If you go to BiggerPockets.com slash show 29, that is the link to the show notes. And there you'll find the links to both Prosper and lending. Club. And yeah, you know, we've, we've had, I've had some, some good chats with those guys and and they're, they're really good people. And it's great. It's so cool to hear from somebody, at least, on the real estate side, who's, who's using those things. So, so how does, how does it work? I mean, well, first, why don't, why don't we talk about the differences between the two? You know, what's, you know, are they identical or why would you choose Prosper over Lending Club, for example. Okay, Josh, the differences between the two. Lending Club, for example, has loans up to $35,000 each loan.

Prosper, on the other hand, has a total loan amounts that you can take up to $35,000, but that's across multiple loans. Now, with Lending Club, that's up to two loans of $35,000 each. So you can kind of see the difference is right there. The second thing is that Lending Club and Prosper, they do rank your loan based on a credit score. They do it a little bit differently, but for the most part, they do it pretty much to protect their lenders. Lending Club is a rating system from A1 to G5, so the rate that you get on your loan depends on your rating with them. And with Lending Club, you can have up to two loans at any one time, like I said. However, the second loan can only be after at least a minimum of six months of on-time payments with them. So those are a few of the differences that I've seen between the two sites. And what about rates? So you're borrowing $30,000 or $15 or whatever for – and I'd love to hear what you actually have used these sites to borrow for,

what types of projects. But first, what are the rates that you're getting that money for? Well, the rates, of course, depend on your credit score, like I said. But if you have a good credit score, you know, over 740 or whatnot, you're looking at rates that are a little over 6, 7, 8 percent somewhere in that range. So they're definitely much lower than what traditional hard money loans are considered. And so that is also another advantage to these peer-to-peer lending sites. Nice. Nice, nice, nice.

Okay. And then I talked about rates. We talked about loan amounts. Oh, so for you, for example, are you financing the purchase of, I mean, these are fairly inexpensive property? So are you financing the purchase of the property? Are you using it for rehab? What are you specifically using them for?

Yeah, Josh, the benefit of my strategy with investing in these very low-priced properties is that kind of fits the target of the peer-to-peer lending sites loan amounts. So as an example, the first property that I purchased in 2012 was a bank-owned foreclosure listed at 24-9. And I actually took out a loan from Lending Club for $21,000. and I kicked in my own money for the remainder of the purchase price plus the rehab work, and I was able to get a single family home with a loan term of three years at like a seven point something percent interest rate. So that was a pretty good deal there. Another one that I purchased using Prosper, which was the next one, was a property for $23,000, and I got a loan for $18,000. and then, of course, kicked in my own money for the remainder plus the rehab work as well.

So you can kind of see it's a mixture of using primarily the peer-to-peer lending and then some of my own money as well. So what do the payments look like? Is that interest only or do you actually make a payment? No, Brandon, it's actually a fully amortizing, amortized loan. Sorry, I can't say that word. fully amortized loan. So you are either getting a three-year or a five-year term, and then your payments are spread across that, just like the payments would be for a conventional mortgage other than the much shorter time frame. So almost more like a car loan, it feels like.

Yeah, somewhat. Keep in mind, though, that your payments are going to be pretty high on a, you know, three-year or five-year loan. So it's great for the strategy of getting one of these loans to get the cash quickly to secure and get the property and get the rehab done. It might be, you know, good for a flipper, perhaps, who just needs that extra cash. But then if you're going to do a buy and hold long term, for example, you probably either, you might want to let it sit for the three years and just pay it off and then you've got a free and clear property after three or five years. Yeah. Or, you know, do some sort of cash out refi after your ARV is higher. And then you've got, you can get basically all of your money back if you do it correctly and then have

this property that has a much lower monthly payment on it. That's cool. Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. So, yeah, it sounds great. It sounds cool. Clearly, it's going to be problematic in a lot of cases where, you know, you're working on a, you know, half million dollar house and you need 50,000 or, you know, anything more than obviously they lend out.

though, you know, it sounds like, you know, maybe you could get, you know, again, one of these smaller loans. But, you know, it makes me think how, you know, for other people listening, I'm assuming this is totally kosher, right? I mean, there's, I, I know that, you know, there was a whole hullabaloo back a couple of years ago when these guys, I think even one of them was shut down for a while. And, you know, so my question is, you know, is there anything to worry about, do they actually vet the deals before you can start getting investors on them? Fill us in. Well, from what I know of these organizations, you're responsible for placing your own ad, so they're not going to write the ad for you, and they will basically verify your credit score

and indicate if you're a homeowner, those type of things, and put those details up so that other investors can look at your details so they can determine for themselves, is this a loan that they want to fund? So there's all these loans out there and investors can pick and choose the ones that they want based on the rating that the site gives the investors to choose from. Gotcha. Gotcha. Yeah, it seems that this could be an interesting way to go not only for the borrower, but also as a potential lender. If you've got some cash sitting on the sideline, It might be a good way to go to lend out some money. Have you tried that?

I've actually tried lending money with both Prosper and Lending Club. I did that as essentially like a science experiment. I took a couple hundred bucks and put it out on Prosper and tried to see what the results were. I actually tried that experiment with Prosper before they reorganized, and so I wound up only getting $80 back out of my $200. That is not a good return. No, that is not a good return. But then they, like you said, Josh, they shut down for a little bit.

They reorganized. And I haven't tried that same experiment with them since. But I did try also with Lending Club. And out of my $200, I so far have actually gotten a couple of the investments paid off already for the people that borrowed. And I'm still collecting interest on, I think, a couple other ones. Nice. Cool. That's great.

That's great. So, you know, I guess in terms of benefits and downsides, what would you say are overall benefits than for these peter-pure lending organizations? Well, as far as... Yes. As far as the benefits, I think it's been a great vehicle to invest in these lower-priced properties. I'm able to put an ad out and get funded within a week, week and a half. So I can get the cash very quickly to be able to...

buy these properties. And then it just provides an extra avenue as opposed to going to, let's say, a hard money lender or trying to get conventional financing, especially if you're over the for-mortgage limit that a lot of banks have internally. So those are a couple of the advantages, I would say. And as far as the disadvantages, I would say that, first of all, there are limits. $35,000 may not be helpful for everybody in their markets and what they're trying to do. And secondly, because the loans are considered unsecured loans, you may actually take a small hit on your credit score when you use these unsecured loans. I did notice that my credit score did take a little bit of a hit, but I was actually, when I've been monitoring, I haven't seen it dip that low as to be

a complete detriment. Yeah. Gotcha. The thing I would notice, like, when I heard you talking about this on the forums a couple weeks ago, I thought, you know, that's awesome. Like, I wonder if I should try to use that. But the thing that I haven't done it yet is because I want to refinance. I got a fourplex, well, four or fiveplex, depending, that I got to refinance soon.

And I'm worried that would, like, mess up my debt to income. So that's something that people would have to worry about because that's going to show on a credit report, right? Oh, absolutely. Just like any credit card, you know, um, balance that you have on your credit report, these show up on your credit report as well. So, yeah, it can fit into a strategy as long as just like any other financing vehicle you use it wisely. Yeah. You know, just sitting here thinking, I'm thinking it wouldn't be a bad idea for somebody

who doesn't have a lot of money but wants to get into flipping. If you found a really good deal, you know, you can usually get a hard money lender to fund, you know, let's say 60% or 70% of the after repair value. And that might cover the entire purchase price or, or, close to, and then you can use a peer-to-peer lending to cover the repairs. And I mean, because the peer-to-peer lending isn't dependent on the property, it's not a mortgage. It seems like it'd be a decent way to flip a house with no money into it. So maybe somebody can try that. I don't know. If somebody does, let us know how it goes if you try that. I'd love to actually know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a great idea. And maybe you'll try, Brandon.

I actually will. Once I refinance this fourplex, I probably will. Is it four or five? Because you said four, then you said five. right now. It's four and a half. It's, yeah, there's a decommissioned fifth unit that I can't recommission until after I refinance it. So it's a long story. That's kind of like your twin brother who's actually inside you.

There is a long, I have a big long post called How to Buy a Multifamily. I'll put the link in the show notes and you can learn why it's a four slash fiveplex. But it's a, yeah, long story. But anyway, enough about me. It's always about you. It's always about me. All right. So, yeah, peer to peer lending.

Cool, good stuff. And like I said, if anybody else has any, you know, experience with that, come on the show notes or the forums and let's talk about it because it's fascinating, I think. So, cool. The rise of the tech savvy investors here. You don't need a huge team or tons of overhead to manage rental properties. Just the right tools. So I want to tell you about how I use rent ready to get ahead. For landlords who treat their time like capital and recognize the cost of sweat equity, this tool.

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You heard that right. A 100% success rate, and that's over 10,000 studies. Go to Costsegregation.com and use code tax deadline to get 10% off your first report. Don't overpay the IRS. Head to Costsegregation.com before April 15th. Let's go back a little bit, Don, if you don't mind, to the world of being a landlord and buying rental property. So you were talking about buying these houses. I'm wondering, how bad are they?

You say they all need a little bit of repair, but, How bad are you actually buying them for? What are you putting them in to make them rentable? It has actually varied. There has been one property that I've put in maybe about $1,600 a work, and it was already, it had tenants in it. And I basically started collecting rent, like, within three days. Another property put in about $1,200 worth of work,

and had that one rented out for $750 a month. These are, you can kind of find them all over the board and typically the lower the price, the more work there's going to be, but not necessarily. It's all about finding the deal. Interesting. It's interesting. So some of our guys actually, I guess from podcast one, Marty, Marty Boardman and from six, Jay Scott are, I believe, doing some work up in Milwaukee. and it's fascinating. We've had some interesting conversations about it. From what I gather, I find it hard to believe that there's these deals and people just aren't clamoring all over it. And I'm thinking right now in my head, like, you know, the turnkey guys, they're all crazy up in the northeast and down in Memphis. Are there turnkey companies up in Milwaukee?

because it seems kind of like a no-brainer place where, you know, these guys can set up shop. Is that going on over there? I've never actually purchased from a turnkey place. I know that there are some wholesalers that are working in the area. I'm not sure about turnkeys. I know for a fact there's wholesalers in the area because I've actually gotten letters, yellow letters from wholesalers, so that's kind of amusing. Yeah, nice.

You know, I've never gotten one. Somebody should send me a yellow letter. Yeah. You're not loved one. Brandon's address is. I want to yell a lot. He likes brownies, by the way. I do.

And he lives in Washington. Me brownies. Good guy. Anyway. Enough about me again. Yes. Enough about you, Brandon. Yeah.

Okay. So, no, that's, it's interesting. I mean, it just kind of has my brain turning about this. You know, I would think that folks would, would want to do that. But, you know, that leads me to the next question. And I, and I know that you're managing your. own properties, but, you know, is there a pretty strong property management infrastructure in town there? Are there a lot of good property managers? Or maybe you have little experience in

dealing with them since you're not actually using any? Yeah, Josh, I'm not actually using any property management companies myself. I have since starting landlording, I've always been managing my own properties. I think that's just because I like the control aspect of it. I like dealing with the tenants one-on-one. I certainly know of at least a property management company in the Milwaukee area I would not work with, but as far as those that I would work with, so far I have not spent the time searching them out yet because I have been doing everything myself. Gotcha. Gotcha, gotcha. So you're doing these singles and you're doing these multis as well.

Why single families versus multifamily? And you said you're starting to get into the duplexes, but was there a reason for the preference originally? Well, first of all, the single families will also come at a cheaper price point than the duplexes or multifamilies. It was a very small way of starting. And so, of course, that fit right in with the peer-to-peer lending strategy of the $35,000 or less. So that was a benefit for me. Second of all, the single-family homes have multiple exit strategies, which I really liked.

First of all, you can find a tenant that has occupied the property that decides that they want to buy it. So you have that potential opportunity. If a tenant decides to vacate, you can either sell, you know, directly retail on the MLS. You can possibly find just by word of mouth another investor by going to a RIA group or something like that that might want to buy your property. So as you can see, there's quite a number of different possibilities that you can work with single families. Duplexes primarily maybe owner occupants that are going to rent out the other half or investors.

you probably have a more limited pool of people that are going to buy that type of property. And then apartment complexes, you know, four families, eight families, etc. You're typically marketing only to investors for the majority of what you're going to do. So you kind of have even smaller pool there. So the single families just give you more exit strategies and are less expensive. Yeah, that makes sense. Nice. Yeah.

And that's really quick. Sorry, I was just going to say, and that's pretty awesome. I mean, you know, what I think for a lot of. lot of new investors, they don't really think out towards those exit strategies. It's like, hey, I'm going to flip a house. Cool. Well, everything is going to go perfect and I'm going to do this. Or, hey, I'm going to buy and hold and everything's going to be perfect. But it's so cool that in your plan here, you're thinking about these exit strategies because I think it's a necessity, you know, because things are bound to go wrong or you may not be able to sell it for what you think you're

going to get for it. Oh, absolutely. And the difference between a single family and a duplex. I mean, I guess my rule of thumb, and this is what you call a tweetable, is a deal is a deal, whether it's a single family or a duplex or whatnot. You just have to go where the deal is. Yeah, that will be a tweetable topic in the show notes at biggerpockets.com slash show 29. Tweetable topics. Yeah. Yeah. You know, and for those who don't know what a tweetable topic is, go to the show notes and find out it means you can click a button and tweet it. There's some fancy stuff going on there, so it's pretty cool.

And it basically gets the word out about shares these wonderful quotes and of course brings people back to check out the show and hear them. So yeah, if you have a Twitter account, be sure to tweet our tweetable topics. Say that 10 times fast. I was going to say, and add me and Josh on Twitter. And bigger pockets. And bigger pockets because we like friends.

Yeah, and Brandon will link to us on Twitter, our Twitter accounts on the show notes. And Don, are you on Twitter, by the way? Yes, I am actually on Twitter. Nice. So we'll add Dawn's account too and we'll all have a big old Twitter party. Cool. Well, hey, Don, how are you finding properties, these cheap ones? Are you direct mail or driving for dollars or MLS? I am actually just finding them right on the MLS, which is probably going to surprise a lot of people because they think, oh, these low-price properties, you're going to have to send out the yellow letters. You're going to have to drive around. I'm actually just going for the low-hanging fruit right on the MLS, and I haven't even taken the time to investigate other

options because these are just right out there for the picking. So what you're saying, in case I'm hearing it wrong here, is I could go to Milwaukee. I could look on the MLS, and I could find properties that require like $12, $1, $1,400 in repairs that cost me $20,000 or $1,000. $30,000 that are going to rent for like seven or $800 and I don't have to like do any kind of marketing. They're just there. No, Josh Mocky's a terrible area. You got to stay away from that.

Because I'm booking a flight. You know what I'm saying? I mean, yeah, I'm coming down. I'm coming up. There probably are like good and bad neighborhoods though that I mean, a person like Don, you're going to know those. And somebody came to my town. Yeah, they would start buying up the cheap ones and then I'd laugh at them.

Well, yeah, and that's, that was kind of a little bit where I was going to head is, is it is so important to know those markets and know the niches in the neighborhoods. If, you know, if you end up buying in the wrong place, you can find yourself in a lot of trouble, right? Oh, exactly. I mean, there's, in Milwaukee, there's properties that are under $10,000, but those properties are in the areas that I would not want to walk around at night. So I definitely stay away from those type of things. Those areas are called Detroit.

I watched a really good video on Detroit on YouTube the other day. It was showing how awesome and amazing it's becoming. They've got cool plans now that they're bankrupt and now all the debts wiped out. But yeah. Well, supposedly it's coming back. I just like ripping on Detroit every two shows. Yes, you do. That's why we have this gap of listeners in the Detroit area.

Okay. So you're in, you know, I'm just curious. You're investing in these lower end neighborhoods. I've invested in lower end neighborhoods. I have found that I am not built for investing in lower end neighborhoods. You're too short. I am.

Damn, seriously? Wow. I thought we were past that. Oh my God. Okay. So are you finding that that you're having a fairly high turnover? And, you know,

are you experiencing lots of challenges? because what I found at least was in those neighborhoods, it really did tend to be a little more difficult. There are more challenges in screening tenants and more evictions. I mean, I've dealt with drugs and all sorts of nonsense. Have you experienced these things? Actually, Josh, I've been pretty lucky in all the years that I've done landlording since 2009. I have never once had an eviction. I've never had any...

Rub it in, Don, rub it in. I've never doing this first one. I'm having my first one right now. It's like a baby. I'm having my first. It's pretty painful. It is very painful. Just like labor.

Anyway. Yeah, Brandon. I'm sure there's a lot of women out there. All the women listening. Wow. Everybody cry for Brandon. Yes. Yes.

It's a hard-knock life. So, yeah, I have not had to deal with an eviction, not had to deal with drug issues. Primarily, most of my tenants have stayed. The first unit in Milwaukee rented out. January 1st of, it was 2012, and it has been, they've been there ever since. The only time of turnover I've had is in one of the duplexes where I've gone through a couple set of tenants. So I've had pretty long-term tenants, no evictions, no drug issues.

I think I've just been either pretty lucky or I've just been doing a pretty good job at tenant screening. Yeah, I rub it in that I suck at it. Wow. Okay. You know, pile it on you too. Well, I was going to ask Don, do you have any, like, do you think there's any tips that you can give? Like, why do you think you've had such luck, I guess, or, or, you know, good experiences with landlording? And other people just, yeah, like Josh. Have a horrible time.

Hey, hey, listen, you're evicting your first. Wait. It's going to. I don't wish that on you, Brandon. Thank you. Well, definitely. Definitely, I would attribute it. a lot of things that I've learned, especially recently, since I've joined bigger pockets, to just reading all of the forum posts, different user experiences from all across the country, even though different states are different, you know, the human experience is the same, and the, you know, the concepts are pretty much the same.

And so you get a lot of knowledge and experience just by pouring over all of the forum posts, the blogs, the podcasts. I mean, there's just so much information. information that it is just extremely valuable. Nice. Nice. We'll give you your $20 after the show. Oh, okay.

Thanks. No, no, I agree. That was totally an awesome plug. Yeah, thank you. We did not, again, pay Don for a set of like. Well, and I think you hit on a big important thing there. That's tenant screening, how important it is up front, even if it means having an extra month or to a vacancy to have a good tenant in place.

It'll save you money in the long run. Oh, absolutely. And Brandon wrote a pretty good post on tenant. screen. I don't know. Have you read that? Oh, I read everything Brandon writes. Yes. Yeah, I will link to that. I write. Josh doesn't write.

You can barely read. Come on. No, and just so everyone knows, my tenant that I'm evicting, I did not place her. I took over that property. We bought that with her in place. So that's my excuse of why I have a bad tenant. It's okay. It happens to everything. Yeah, it's sad. It doesn't, but yeah. Yeah, not to Don. All right.

All right. You've been good so far. Yeah, that's good. All right. Let's move on to something two weeks ago, three weeks ago, four. Wow. Time flies. We did podcast number 25 and we interviewed four new investors and we just talked to them about their very first deal.

And one of those investors, Maran, talked about investing in Milwaukee. And he actually mentioned he partnered with you. So I'm wondering, how did that? that happen? Can you kind of tell the story of how did you meet him and what are you guys doing? Well, that's a good question. Since I've been having such prosperity in the Milwaukee marketplace, I decided that it might be helpful to see if I could find out if there were anybody else that wanted to get close to the 2% rule, et cetera, in other markets that weren't doing as well. So I placed an ad out on the Bigger Pockets marketplace, which is a great site.

for connecting potential investors to people that are looking for partnerships. And I was actually very surprised by the response that I got, responses from people in California, New York, Chicago, even all the way out to Australia. And just in the process of emailing people back and forth, you know, you kind of develop a sense of that person's personality and get to know what their goal and their strengths and so forth are. And we just developed, you know, a kind of a relationship over email. We started investing in Milwaukee together with a 50-50 partnership,

and it's worked out really well so far. That's awesome. Wait a second. So if I heard you right, what you said was that you posted an ad on the Bigger Pockets Marketplace, which is found at BiggerPockets.com slash Marketplace. And suddenly you had people contacting you from, Not only all over the country, but all over the world. Is that, I mean, is that correct?

Yes. Exactly. Josh, Australia is part of the world. Wow. It's a conspiracy to doggone Josh. That is, that's awesome. And yes, I was aware that these things happened. But I did my stick here for emphasis as to the importance of and the power of posting on

our marketplace. And yes, it's a plug. Sorry, guys, deal with it. We've got to pay for this show somehow. But, yeah, I mean, the marketplace is a great place to post. And if you've got deals, opportunities, things like that. And I'm so happy to hear that you had such success and such a great response when you posted there and obviously ultimately finding your partner there.

Exactly. The Bigger Pockets Marketplace is kind of like the Match.com or the E. Harmony, connecting, you know, investors to people that, you know, need to find deals and people that have deals. that need investors. I like that. Yeah, I like that analogy. That's cool. Yeah, that's awesome. We should make like a dating site video, Josh. I found my match at bigger pockets. And then you've got like Brandon and I running up the hill, holding hands. It would be awesome. Yeah, I don't know. All right. So how do you, I mean, what made Marron stand out to you and how should other people, how should people be doing that? What should they be looking to advertise themselves if they need

somebody to work with. Well, obviously the first thing is not just to say, I need money or I'm looking for an investor, but kind of describe, you know, what your goals are. I think that's a bigger part of it as well, is what are your long-term goals? What are you looking to get out of real estate investing? Are you going to be a good match personality-wise? Because if you find somebody that you're just going to butt heads with on every decision, then the partnership is not going to work out. It really is, like Josh said, a marriage. And you have to find the person that you're going to be compatible with personality-wise, not just investing-wise.

Yeah. That was, I love when you said there that you don't just go on there and say, I'm looking for a partner. I'm looking for money. Like, people do that all the time. Here's what I got. Here's what I want. I mean, it's about like a relationship. Like, you don't just say, give me this.

And so, yeah, I think that's a really, really big tip. And I'll take it one further. You know, what we see. all the time. And, you know, this applies certainly for bigger pockets, but, you know, frankly, it applies everywhere. We'll see people coming on the marketplace and, well, they're joined bigger pockets. The first thing they do is post an ad. Hey, I need money. I need a partner. I need this. And I'm like, oh my goodness, well, like, what are you doing? People, this is a community of people. You don't just jump in and start begging for stuff, right? So you want to create

a relationship, as Brandon said, establish report. Again, not just on our market. Whether you go to ARIA and you're networking there or anywhere else, you know, get involved, get into the conversation, let people start to know who you are, what you're about, you know, and maybe after you've done that a little bit, then you could start saying, hey guys, I got this opportunity, I got this deal or I need a partner. And honestly, Don, you and Mayeron both are two of the best I've ever seen in the forums at doing that. Like, you guys actually like are part of the community and I love that because everyone knows who you are. And everyone, like, I ask you questions and you ask other people questions. Like, I mean, I love that. So good job on that. I mean, like, you're the ideal part of our community.

Awesome. Yeah, very cool. Well, so partnerships, do you do them deal by deal case by case or are you just full on? It's a business partnership. How does that work? Definitely a business partnership, Brandon. After the investing with family experience that I had, you know, I was a little bit turned off by partnerships, but...

No. Yeah, hard to believe. But I jumped right back into it because I definitely see the value that, you know, one person's not an island. They can't do everything themselves. And having a good partner actually allows you to expand your horizons, expand your business, and both people can, you know, grow as individuals and investors. Yeah, that's awesome.

Cool. That is. And really, really quick because we're very fast running out of time here. How do you screen your potential partners? Is there anything you look for? Is it like hiring an employee? You're doing background checks, things like that, or what do you actually do? Or what have you done?

Well, definitely, first of all, the personality, that's the easiest thing to screen for, because you kind of know if you're going to get along with somebody or not. But you also want to check to see, okay, well, what kind of income does this person have? What type of real estate investing experience do they have? person's going to bring a certain set of skills to the table, another person's going to bring a different set of skills to the table. So you kind of have to vet your skill set and see are those going to be compatible. Nice. Definitely. Cool. Well, why don't we, I guess, move on to one of my favorite parts of the podcast, which is known as the Fire Round. That was my firing. Those are

good sound effects, Josh. Do you like it? That was awesome. All right. Basically, we're just going to ask Look around. Wow. We're going to ask some good, quick. I wish Dawn would put in on this. All right. So I wish we, wow. All right.

Refocusing. Focus. Get it together. All right. We are going to ask some quick questions with quick answers, hence the name, Fire Round. So these all come from the bigger pockets forums. So if people have questions they want to ask, go in the forums, ask questions. And we might pick them for the next Fire.

Round. Fire, fire, fire, fire. Fun base. I want to do it. All right. First, fire round question. Do you take cash from tenants? Yes. I actually take cash in very rare instances, Brandon, because I prefer to take money orders, which most of my tenants use to make payments. But on very rare occasions, I have taken cash. Okay. Okay. Dangerous. Do you have anything to, yeah. Do you have any way to protect yourself if you're taking cash, you just don't do it very often. Where do you get your cash? Where do you pick it up? Can I, can it? When's your next pickup?

Yeah, I just realized we just told America where you're, anyway. No, I very rarely have any cash on me whatsoever. And if I do get cash, it's basically going into the bank immediately. Okay. Okay. So, you know, this is not a far round question. It just, your answer kind of got me thinking about safety a little bit. And Brandon mentioned it. But, you know, I'm thinking, you know, you're doing showings or you're looking at properties. Do you have any tips in terms of just staying safe?

And really, it doesn't matter if you're a male or female, just in general, keeping safe as an investor. Yeah, Josh, just some quick tips for the listeners out there that is that you want to be safe and don't go walking around necessarily at night to look at properties. I do everything pretty much during the day. I have showings in a group environment, open house type showings on a weekend. I don't go looking at properties at night. It's always during the day.

And I just don't meet anybody individually one-on-one at a property generally at night. And if I do meet somebody individually, I usually have somebody with me. So those are my quick tips to be safe when showing properties and so forth. I think that's great. That's great. And, you know, I think one of the strategies that a lot of people use is, you know, particularly when you're showing a property to tenants is to have, to schedule multiple people to come at the same time. That way you eliminate the need to do the one-on-one anyway. And you're not wasting your time going back and forth 15 times. You have one schedule time, you know, every day or something and show up and they either come or they don't. Exactly.

Yeah, yeah. Right on. Cool. Well, back to the fire round. Should an investor look into a short sale for their first deal? You talked about short sales, and they tend to be really long and onerous. But what do you say about that? Oh, absolutely, Josh. A deal is a deal, and sometimes short sales can really be great deals if the bank complies. And I've even had short sales that have only taken as short as a month. So sometimes, you know, if the bank has already pre-approved a price and they've had somebody else, you know, fall out, then you can kind of snap it up and you don't have to wait as long as what a traditional short sale might be. Cool. Nice. All right. What is the first tool somebody should buy or have if they're going to be a real estate investor?

Tool. Yes. You know, like a toolbox tool. Yeah. Yeah, Brandon, I would probably go with a split between either a tape measure or. or a flashlight. Tate measures are always handy to measure, you know, dimensions and sizes and things like that. And a flashlight is great for going into the basements of properties, especially bank-owned properties that don't have any electricity on. Nice.

Nice. That's awesome. All right. What would make an automatic denial when screening a tenant, and I assume, obviously, if somebody shows up and they look like Sasquatch, like my co-host here, you probably reject them. nickname in high school. I'm not surprised. Everyone called me Sasquatch. Anyway. Well, I have actually had one person show up to a showing kind of high. And so that was almost pretty much an automatic denial there. Yeah, man, this is awesome. Yeah, I know. I'm pretty strict on that. But just things like, you know, a recent eviction, criminal history, you know, the basics like that. You're automatically out. Yep, agreed.

Business cards. When is the right time to get them and do you absolutely need them? You don't absolutely need business cards. I think that's a myth when people are starting that they think, oh, I need to have a website and business cards and they focus on all the extra little fluff that doesn't necessarily get them there. But I've actually found business cards to be very helpful as a landlord. When I go to RIA meetings, I can pass them out.

When I am working with, you know, showing a property, I can give them to, potential applicants and then they can take that with them and you know if they have any questions on the property they've got my card right there and they can ask questions via email or give me a call cool nice do you buy houses with bad foundations i have bought one with a bad foundation once it was only slightly bad just a little bit bad so a little bit bad is okay and got that fixed up and it wasn't a problem after that but if something is crumbling and bad i just i just stay a way. I figure it's going to be, you know, too much money to fix up and it's not going to be worth, you know, me getting my 3%. Right on. Nice. All right. Last question of the fire round and the

most important question of the podcast. Are you, because you are from Wisconsin and I am from Minnesota, are you a Green Bay Packer fan? Brandon, you'll be happy to note that I do not care one way or another about football whatsoever. I'll take that as a no. All right, you pass a test. I'm a Packers fan. You are not. I don't even know what football is. I may not, but I'm a Packers fan. So what are you going to do about it?

You're out, Josh. You're out. Damn it. You're fired. Yeah, yeah. All right. All right. Well, that gets us into the final segment of the show, the famous four.

That was good. Lovely. Yeah, that was pretty. All right. Number one of the famous four. Josh, go. Number one of the famous four is what is your favorite real estate, real estate investing book? Real estate book.

What's your favorite real estate book? Well, I changed my mind. That's okay. Oh, forget it. Let's talk about something else. You didn't want to answer that. We'll ask something else. Okay, okay.

Is that fine? No, seriously, what's your favorite book? Favorite real estate book? Since I am very big into comedy, I've actually found that the Section 8 Bible is a couple of books that are hilarious for reading, especially if you've been a landlord for a while. The guy that wrote it uses a term called elimination, which is not bathroom humor. It's actually taking things out of a rental property that the tenants absolutely do not need. And the things that he eliminates are just absolutely hilarious. Is the Section 8 Bible supposed to be funny,

or is it supposed to be serious? I think it's actually supposed to be serious, but it really is funny. Those are the best. So what is he, I mean, like, is he like eliminating bath, sinks, you know, like bedrooms? He eliminates windows. He eliminates garages. Are you serious? I am serious. You'll have to read the book.

You're a bit classy Section 8 Bible. I'm going to read that one. All right. What is your favorite non-real estate business book? Non-real estate business book, I guess it sort of relates to real estate. And this is going to be a cliche, the rich dad porting. I think everybody says that, so I'm going to be very cliche in my answer. That's okay. It's a good answer. I just listened to, I was driving home from Lake Shlan,

and I listened to it on, it's on YouTube. It's on YouTube. So you can actually listen to an audio version of it on YouTube for free. So I did that. And Lake Shalan is a place we should all know about, right? Well, I talked about it in the last episode or two times ago. That would require somebody to listen to you. Okay, fine. I was in Lake Shalan, and it's a beautiful lake in the middle of Washington. And enough about me. I've got a really important question. You know, Brandon clearly thought Green Bay Packer question was the important one.

But, you know, this is the ultimate question, actually. And the question is deep space nine or the next generation, which is better? And that's a Star Trek reference for all of you non-geeks. Yes, definitely next generation. You can't beat that. Nice, nice. And do you have hobbies? That's not part of the famous four, Josh.

You know what, Brandon? You're ruining things. Hobbies. Do you have any? Okay, that's the question. Hobbies. Do you have a hobby? Should I ask it again, Brandon? Don, I'm so sorry. You know, it was come off rude, but it's just, you know, as we said in the beginning, this is actually the second time we're recording this. And, and of course, we are doing it again because somebody messed up, which I mentioned earlier. But, you know, anyway, so I'm a little, yeah. Don, I apologize for Brandon. Josh lets me out of the closet sometimes and I misbehave. Hobbies. Hobbies, yes. Yes, it's actually a good segue from the geeky things because I am actually, I love board games.

Traditionally, when people think of board games, they think of Monopoly and Clue and all that, but those are just, those are not the kind of games that like more the Euro games. Settlers of Catan is probably a more popular one that people have heard on, but there are like thousands of board games out there that are just absolutely wonderful to play. and there's quite a number of groups out there that play them on a regular basis. Cool. Cool. Yeah, I've heard good things about sellers of Catan.

And I don't know what you guys are talking about. It must have a generation gap. It must be. Yeah, old guys don't know. All right. Last question. What do you think, Don, what do you think sets apart the successful investors from those who never seem to gain any traction and get anywhere?

I think the number one thing would be perseverance. It's very easy to give up when you've had a bad day, when you've had a bad week. Your yellow letters aren't getting the responses. People are yelling at you. You're investing in a rental property. You're just not finding good tenants. You wind up with a gutted house two hours north of you. It's easy to give up on things like that.

But if you don't give up, if you persevere, then I think good things are going to come to you. And that's the biggest tip I can give to people that are listening out there is, Sometimes you got to just keep at it, even though you might think that things are challenging because once you climb that mountain, you're going to be at the top. You're going to be looking at things and your view is going to be awesome. Climbing mountains, baby. That's awesome. That's awesome.

Don, I have to thank you for your patience and your perseverance. For playing up with Josh. You know, this being our second time around, I'm so sorry. But no, listen, awesome stuff. great show. Thank you so much for being on. We really appreciate it. Thank you for everything you do on Bigger Pockets. I know there's a ton of people who really respect all the time you take and all the great advice you share. So thanks for being a part of the show and the community and be prepared to be inundated by people who are looking for those 3% deals. Remember, there's nothing to be found in

Milwaukee. Dawn is now on the Chamber of Commerce. All right. Well, thank you very much, John. Thanks, John. Okay. Thanks, Josh. Thanks, Brandon. Yep. Bye. Bye. All right, guys. That was, I don't know. That was a lot of fun. Yes, I was slightly surly. And I was, you know, I'm just mad at Brandon a little bit. Who says surly? What kind of old man says? I'm kind of surly. Yes. Thank you, Ed McMahon. You're welcome.

Sasquatch you. No, listen, guys, thank you for listening. Hopefully you enjoyed it. I thought there were a lot of great tips in there, lots of feedback. I certainly learned a lot about the peer-to-peer stuff. I thought it was really interesting. But listen, if you enjoyed the show, definitely make sure to jump on our show notes at BiggerPockets.com slash show 29.

Leave any comments, questions, you name it. Don or Brandon or I will be there to answer them or respond. And beyond that, just the usual announcement. If you guys aren't following us on Facebook, make sure you do so. It's facebook.com slash bigger pockets. In fact, a couple yesterday, we put out a pretty cool post with a preview of a new feature coming to bigger pockets. And that preview does not exist on Bigger Pockets. It's the only place to learn about this new feature.

and get the preview of it is on Facebook. So we do things like that from time to time. So if you're not following us, you're missing out. Twitter. We're everywhere. We're worldwide, Brandon.

We're on all the networks, aren't we? Yeah. We got multiple area codes. Okay. I don't get that. It's a rap. It's a rap song.

Anyway. Yes. Continue. Yes. Yes, I shall. Otherwise, if you're not on our website,

bigger pockets, it is a fantastic community, as you might have gathered from listening. Our lovely guest, Dawn, has found partners from the show and much more. And so, you know, definitely jump on, engage, get involved, participate. If you've got, you know, if you're looking to promote a property or looking for financing or you've got finance, you know, looking for partners, you can post all that in the marketplace. It's fantastic. Finally, for anyone left listening to us on,

if you guys haven't checked it out yet, definitely check out our recently launched BiggerPockets flipping calculator. I know the show didn't really talk about flipping, but I've got time to talk and I'm going to talk about it. So the flipping calculator can be found at biggerpockets.com slash calc. And it's great. It's really a fantastic tool. Brandon actually did a cool tutorial on the,

calculator and we'll link to that in the show notes as well. With that, I'm going to let you go. Thanks again, everybody. We appreciate your listenership. We'll see you on show 30. And thanks for being here. And thank you to Brandon for screwing up my day. Nice.

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