BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast - 294: Meet Property Management Extraordinaire, RE Investor & Hotel Owner Jesse McCue

Episode Date: August 30, 2018

Are you happy with the current state of your real estate business? If you’re like most people, the answer is no. On today’s show, we interview property management superstar Jesse McCue and dig deep into how he’s became Maine’s top property manager as well as a successful RE investor along the way. Jesse shares how he formed a partnership with a successful business to become an owner of the company, as well as how he bought a 67-unit hotel off of a tip from his electrician for half of its appraised value! You’ll be amazed as he describes a strategy that is “better than BRRRR”—and most importantly, the number one question you need to ask a property manager to find out if they are the right choice for you. If you want to learn how to put fundamental business skills to work in your investment business, this is a show you do not want to miss! In This Episode We Cover: How Jesse was bitten by the real estate investing bug How he turned around a property in 6 months that required 8 years of budgeted rehab money The tactics he uses to hire people to help him scale his business How he made himself invaluable to a rising star and formed the perfect partnership  The questions you need to ask a property manager to determine if they are a rockstar or a dud Tips on buying a motel The “better than BRRRR” strategy And SO much more! Links from the Show BiggerPockets Forums BiggerPockets Webinar BiggerPockets Podcast 234: Tenants, Evictions, & The Dark Side of No Money Down with Ryan Murdock The Surprisingly Simple Reason Why You Feel Stressed (Blog) Rent Manager Property Management Software Buildium AppFolio Books Mentioned in this Show 4-Hour Work Week by Timothy Ferriss The Book on Managing Rental Properties by Brandon Turner & Heather Turner The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life by Alice Schroeder Fire Round Questions What questions Should you ask property managers in an interview to get a feel for which ones are the best? How do you start a Property Management Company? What is the expected turn around for getting a property ready for a new renter by a property manager? When is self managing too much? What are some of your absolute “No’s” when screening tenants? I am about to have my first renter, what are some do’s and don’t that you would recommend? Tweetable Topics: “When you know the people, you know what’s going on.” (Tweet This!) “If you are unhappy, your systems are broken.” (Tweet This!) “Do the things that make you feel light and not the things that make you feel heavy.” (Tweet This!) Connect with Jesse Jesse’s BiggerPockets Profile Jesse’s Company Website Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Bigger Pockets podcast show 294. We did for the first time I had done this. It's like what I call the Burr strategy, but better. So we'll call it better than Burr is... 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, who have benefited from biggerpockets.com.

Your home for real estate investing online. What's going on, everyone? This is Brandon Turner. Today's host of the Bigger Pockets podcast. I guess I could stop saying today's host because I am the host today of the Bigger Pockets podcast. Anyway, here with my partner in crime. Mr. David Green.

How you doing? I'm good. I'm just basking in the shadow of the host of the Bigger Pockets podcast. Well, I would say like today's host instead of like tomorrow I'm not going to be. be the host. I'll probably still be here next week. But anyway, you are Mr. Bigger Pockets. I mean, if you guys ever see Brandon how tall he is, his pockets are literally like three feet long. He's like

Paul Bunyan in person. So yeah, I mean, when I think Brandon Turner. Thanks. I want to be Paul Bunyan when I grow up. That's, that's exactly it. Better than, you know, you and your bigger pockets yoga pants, which we talk about in today's show. So you guys are not going to want to miss that. Trust me. All right. So speaking today's show, I know we always say we have a fantastic. This is a fantastic show. This is a fantastic show. It really is. Today we're talking with actually my property manager on one of my properties, my mobile home park, but he's also a real estate investor. So we don't really talk about him managing my properties. I just, I met him because he's my property manager. But he's also a really legit, awesome real estate investor and one of

the best people at systems I've ever known. In fact, he's started multiple companies that he doesn't have to work inside of, which is super, super cool. He talks about how to find partnerships and business, how to hire the right people. The conversation on hiring is one that could save you decades of stress. I'm not even kidding because it's, if I would have had this 12 years ago, I would have saved the last 12 years of a lot of stress. We talked about how we bought a motel that was less than desirable. That story is fantastic. And how he actually walked away with 100K in his pocket after doing something he calls the quote, better than burr strategy. Better than burr. So anyway, Jesse McHugh is our guest.

today. You guys are going to love it. But before we get to the interview with him, let's get to today's quick tip. Today's quick tip is quit worrying about what you're not getting out of life and start thinking about how you can be the employee or the servant that somebody else needs. We talk a lot on the show today about how as business owners, we are constantly looking for talented people that are willing to do what it takes and help us grow. And when you find that person, you just give them pretty much everything they want. Jesse himself was able to endear himself to a person who already had a property manager company became so valuable that the guy said, hey, I'm just going to make you the owner of this thing. Like, come on in. And then Jesse had a similar situation himself with our friend Ryan Murdoch,

who is like referred to several times as the ninja, the real estate ninja on the show because he's so good at what he does. And Ryan has proven himself to be like so good. They can't ignore you. When Ryan shows up, he gets whatever he wants. There is so much opportunity out there for you. If you embrace the challenge and say, I'm going to get really good at what I do and I'm going to serve someone else rather than asking, well, what's in it for me right up the bat when you don't have anything to offer? So change your mindset and you'll find that success will find you. I love it. I love it.

That's so, so important. And if people did not understand what David just said, rewind that listen to the last minute again because it's fantastic. Did you know your house gets bored when you leave? I can't actually prove that, but it probably misses out on the action, the footsteps, the late night fridge raids. Yeah. When you're gone, your place is basically.

on unpaid leave. It's sitting there in the dark thinking, I could be contributing right now. Your side room wants a side hustle. Even your Wi-Fi is like, we could be networking. You're on vacation, spending money like it's a sport while your staircase at home is fully capable of sending your income upwards. Here's the twist. You can go on a trip and actually earn money. Airbnb makes that possible with the co-host network. If you're away for a while or have a secondary property, you can You can hire a vetted local co-host with real hosting experience to handle it all. A co-host can handle guest communications, it can manage reservations, and keep things running smoothly so you don't have to check your phone between beach days.

That means less stress and more time enjoying your trip. You can relax, knowing guests are taking care of, and your place is in good hands. You travel, your house works. Everyone wins. If you're ready to host but could use some help, find a co-host at Airbnb.com slash host. Do you ever notice how every passive investment somehow turns into a very active lifestyle, active spreadsheets, active phone calls, active stress? Here's a better question.

What if you could buy brand new construction homes, 10% below market value, and the best markets across the country, without making real estate your second job? That's exactly what rent-to-retirement does. They're a full-service, turnkey investment company handling everything for you. In some cases, investors get 50 to 75% of our down payment back at closing, plus interest rates as low as 3.75%. They've partnered with Bigger Pockets for over a decade, helping thousands invest smarter. If you want to do the same, visit BiggerPockets.com slash retirement to learn more. There are two kinds of real estate investors, those who have reviewed their insurance,

and those who think that they have. Most don't realize their coverage wasn't built for how they actually invest. Vacancy periods, rehabs, short-term rentals, or LLC-held properties. These gaps surface only when filing claims. That's why investors work with NREG. They specialize exclusively in real estate investors, understanding portfolios, risk at scale, and cash flow protection. One claim can erase years of returns. If you own a rental property, don't assume you're covered. Have NREG review your insurance with someone who gets investing at NRE.com slash BP pod. That's N-R-E-I-G.com slash B-Podd. Now with that, let's get to today's show with Jesse McHugh.

Like I said, Jesse is one of my property managers that one of my favorite people in the world in terms of managing properties because he's a rock star. at it. And we talk a lot about kind of why he is that and how he uses that in all of his businesses. So without further delay, let's just get into this show. All right, Jesse, welcome to the Bigger Pockets podcast. Good to have you here. Thanks. Good to be here, Brandon. Yeah. And Dave. Oh, and Dave. You know, he counts too. That's actually, my parents were going to name me when I was first a baby was and Dave. Thanks for bringing that up. Yeah, any time. All right. So, you know, like, as I mentioned,

in the introduction. I met you through Ryan Murdoch. Ryan Murdoch is my partner, one of my partners on my mobile home park. And you are currently managing my mobile home park and doing a fantastic job. So thank you very much. You're crushing there. But I find out that you're not just a manager. You're also a real estate investor. And that I know nothing about. All you know is you're like you're the world's best manager. And, you know, so today I'm going to find out the other side of you. So why don't we just, I don't know, start way back. What did you do before real estate and how'd you get into it? Oh, good question. So my first, entrance into real estate was through property management. It was through the search like most young

people of trying to find a career. So I had done some random jobs. I had worked for, you know, the university that I had gone to school. I had done some assistant basketball coaching. And the most serious job, I landed up as a manager for a large resort management company. And like most people had the real world introduction of working the, you know, 70 hours a week for somebody else and started, started just looking for something else. And somebody I grew up with, not grew up with, somebody I knew from my childhood home. I was living in Florida and I knew somebody who had a property management company and he introduced me to an opportunity to come work for him. And that was back in 2009. And once I started working in that trade, I kind of fell in love

with real estate and that's how it began. Nice. Nice. All right. So let's talk about your first deal. What was your very first real estate investment that you bought for yourself? That was a good one. So I didn't have a lot of money at the time. I was younger working as a property manager. And I started getting the itch. I was learning from a lot of my clients, you know, wise real estate investors like you two folks, who I was doing all the groundwork for.

I was learning from them and seeing what they were doing. And I just wanted to get in the game. And I don't remember how I got on it, but I was every day I used to read, the public notices in the newspaper. And I was looking at all the foreclosures and I used to drive by a lot of them. I'd walk through some of them. And then one day, the weirdest thing happened, one of them jumped out at me and it was a property. We were actually managing. And it was a nice three unit building. I didn't know, I didn't know, I didn't know have access to all the financials. So I didn't know that the property was actually in financial distress. Everything looked good on the surface, well maintained, good tenants. And

I went to the auction without the ability to actually buy it, but I still went to it and scraped together the money just to put down on, you know, I think they needed like $2,500 down. It was an easy one. And then me and my partner at the time were the successful bidders and I worried about the money after. So, nice. Yeah. Like the jump off the cliff and build the, what's it, build the parachute on the way down on the way down. Yeah, exactly what we did. So let's fast forward a little bit. Can you tell us where you are now. How many units do you have? What kind of different investments have you accumulated over the years? Yeah. And it's funny. This show made me actually look at it. And I, the other day when I was emailing you, I was off. I actually tallied him up. So now

traditional multifamily, I'm up to 84 units. I think I told you 60. So I just miscounted by 20 something. So just 24 units, whatever. I forgot about that. 24, you know, anything the largest is a 26 unit down to a duplex. So 84 units. And then a nice commercial class A office building where I'm sitting now. This is where our property management headquarters are. So this is a, you know, class A office building. So other than us, you've got law firms, financial institutions, nice building. And as well as a 67 room motel. So now I've gone from sitting at an auction, trying to get a three unit to 84 units, a commercial and a motel. That's awesome.

So I want to dig into the motel because I remember you telling me a bit about the motel last time we hung out. Is that going to be the deep dive today or is that? Yeah. So, okay, we'll save it for that. You spoiled the punchline there. But yeah, that's probably the most interesting one. All right. So I want to get into that later, but we'll come back to that because that is a lot of fun.

All right. So you started picking up these property. That first one, you said, was that a single family house, that very first deal? No, it was a three unit. Okay. It was a three unit at an auction, a boring auction, nothing exciting at courthouse steps. It was in a law firm's office. I'd never done it before.

I was really uncomfortable. I just sat in there and there was only one other bidder and you go back and forth. And now that was it. Do you remember what you did for? Yeah, I do. It was a three unit. And again, one of the reasons I was fortunate was I started purchasing when the market was not what it is right now. So this was 2012.

And I paid 70,000. But it was just bizarre because the person across the table from, me was talking to me about all the renovations he'd probably have to do. And I think he was a flipper. And he and there was, because there was no public viewing of the property. And I was the only one that knew this is a turnkey, nice operation. So there was no renovations to be had. So we paid 70,000 for an up and running three unit building. So it was a, it was a home run. Yeah. Yeah, that's awesome. It just takes, it takes one home run to get the momentum going, right? So once you have one good one, it becomes a lot easier from there. All right. So, so.

you got this first property, you decided that, you know, it's working out pretty well. When did you, you know, I want to go into more properties, but when did the property management business come in? Like how, how many did you have before you started your own property management? How did come out? Yeah, so that started growing. And what happened for me was my business partner now who had hired me, he had hired me with an understanding that he was looking to actually get out of property management. He had maybe 150 to 200 units under management at the time. He's a a successful commercial broker. So he was looking to just focus more on that.

He has some of his own properties. And I think at the time, he was just burned out of property management. And then when I started working for him, I was young and hungry, and we just kept picking up more units. And it went fast from maybe 200 to today. We have over 1,500.

So it's grown quite a bit. So that transition from instead of me someday taking it over, I think it kind of relit like a fire in him. And he started enjoying it again and we have fun. And to this day, we ended up just becoming 50-50 partners instead. And it's been pretty fun. Nice. So, yeah.

All right. So you kind of, you kind of grafted your way into an existing management company, took it to a whole new level. Yeah. And then now the guy is enjoying it as well. Is he still, I mean, he still works in the business. Do you both work in the business or how does that play out? We both work in the business.

I like to tease him that he, air quote, works in the business. But, yeah, he's here every day. and yeah, we're both in the property management business still every day. Honestly, the business has grown to a point where we don't do much day to day, though. Honestly, we have a pretty sweet gig. We love coming to the office. We love being around the people we work with. So we're still here.

But a lot of the stuff that we used to do, you know, taking the calls, chasing tenants, renting, we more both just oversee it. Run reports and make sure that everything's done. That's cool. Yeah, now it's a good place to be. I want to ask you, how did you recognize this is someone I could be a good partner with? What is it about that person you saw and you said, I want to partner with them, I think would be a good team? That's a great question. I think it was just through a series of events, you know, when you get into different situations with somebody and you realize they have similar judgment is you.

So whether it was looking at a new business opportunity, he had something similar to me where we both don't sweat the small stuff. If you're ever going to be in a business partnership, that's the biggest thing I can. and preach is neither him or I ever get stressed or in fights about the small stuff. We both just kind of have a big picture on things. And that was just kind of it. I just found that we never fought about little things. And he had one major quality similar to me where if there's an opportunity, he wasn't scared of it. Yeah, let's go do it.

If there's some crazy guy with the beard from Washington who wants to look at a mobile home park and we don't do tons of mobile home parks, yeah, let's go look at it. Why not? you know, what's the worst that could happen, you know? So we both just kind of had that mentality. We both go to a lot of business opportunities that don't turn into anything, but it was worth going. Yeah. I just love that mentality in general, you know, like this idea of say yes to things or at least like explore every option because you never know what's going to come of it.

I told the story a few weeks ago about the whole reason that I have the mobile home park is because I said yes to coming out to New York to speak at some event, which ended up being a really, really horrible. I guess like my daughter got sick and it was a really like just stressful time because the whole the whole trip my daughter was sick. Anyway, but that deal led to me hooking up with Ryan and that led to connecting with you and connected, getting the mobile home park and all that stuff, right? Yeah. Just because I was open to the opportunity.

But so many people are just, you know, no, I can't directly see a benefit of doing that one thing. Therefore, I'm not going to do it. So anyway, I love having that just kind of abundance mentality. So I guess, David, do you want to jump in? I cut you off there. Well, yeah. Jesse, you mentioned that you guys are both kind of hands off in the business right now. It's sort of running itself.

And I know you also own a cleaning business as well as a property management business, as well as all the units that you own. And I am intrigued by how you've set your business up so that you own a business. You don't have a job and you're working on the business, but you're not working in the business. Can you share with us a little bit about how you guys built this thing so that it's not something that's requiring all your time and attention yourself to make it profitable? Yeah, that's another good question.

I think it's a simple answer that you just have to learn to do everything yourself first. I mean, and that's how I looked at it. I mean, whether the cleaning business, I never woke up one day and said, hey, I want to, I want to have a big cleaning business. It was an opportunity that presented it from property management. So we'd have clients that if you're managing the building, you're still the one getting all the calls, whether it's heating, lawn care, snow removal. and the first time that I was having trouble with the ninth cleaning company that wouldn't clean

the common areas we were supposed to, I hired my own person. I said, you know, screw this, I'm just going to hire my own person. And then you do a good job and then somebody knows about it. And then somebody else asks you, hey, we give us a quote to do it. You go do it. And then I quickly realize, though, I don't want to do that forever, keep running around supervising cleaners. So it's not the easiest thing like anybody with a growing business would tell you. Scaling the business is the biggest challenge. But at some point, you have to be willing to take a financial step backwards, to take, you know, two steps forward.

And that's what we've done. So it's grown to where we have large cleaning accounts that have on-site supervisors. I've got some managers over them. And, yeah, it's grown to where we have over 50 full-time employees just in the cleaning. And, yeah, it got to the point where I ended up looking for a good, like, general manager because needed that kind of help. But again, that's a financial step back for me. I mean, you're not going to pay someone minimum wage to run an operation like that. So I was surfing around LinkedIn and I had hunted a few people and actually just poached some people that were in the

business much longer than me, interviewed some people and found somebody who had been the general manager of a larger cleaning company as well for years. And now he's kind of doing that for me now. So yeah, but that's the challenge. On that note, what have you found successful in terms of, I mean, you obviously built this cleaning business now that has other people running it. You built the property management business. You have your own real estate deals. Like what kind of tips do you have for people that are saying, well, I want to start hiring people. I want to find good people to run my business. What's worked really well for you or what's worked really bad?

Yeah, I would say I put an abnormal amount of effort into the hiring process. The person who does HR for me now, she tells me I'm insane. because I mean, that's all the effort you put into hiring and then everything else works out. I mean, I'll interview as many people as it takes for a position. I'll phone interview. One simple position, it could be a receptionist. And I might have to talk to 25 people on the phone. You might have to interview six people in person, check all the references.

If you're not excited about hiring them, don't do it. Just start over. and I'm pretty insane on the hiring process. And then it pays off, though. If you come to our headquarters here, that's probably what I'm most proud of is the people that are here. A lot of them, I think, are smarter than me.

For example, guys like Ryan Murdoch used to be an employee here. And, you know, I was very fortunate for the time he was here because we have talented people like that. So, yeah, that's awesome. Insane amount of effort into hiring. You're not the first person of heard

to say that recently to me because that's a, when I've hired people, it's usually like, you have a pulse. You know, like, I mean, like, I've hired good people, but like, I would say it's more been by accident. Like, I've rarely hired, like, a few people have hired. And this goes for, anyway, contractors or actual W2. Like, I've rarely hired more than, like, two people ever for one role. Like, it's like, you'll do.

But I've heard that people say, like, yeah, to hire really good people, like, spend an absurd amount of time on that, like, really, like, Devon. So, I mean, how do you, I don't know, is it just like an excitement thing? Like, you like, man, I'm excited. about this person, like they fit everything. Like, because I tend to just go, yeah, I think they'll be fine is what I say to people all the time. Yeah, I think they'll be fine instead of like, they're going to be the best person ever. Or is that what it is?

That you will not hire them unless they're the best person ever. Yeah, I would say the best person ever, unless you just are, this person is going to be awesome. And, you know, that's what helps because if your organization is going to grow, then the people that you have, you get really lucky because you don't, they grow with you. I mean, we have people here that are doing a lot. One of the guys, for example, that's become a, property manager slash leasing agent and has a much more serious role here now. He used to work maintenance for us, you know, and I'm talking cleaning out nasty apartments in the van maintenance.

And as we grew and we could, and we used to only have one full-time leasing person. And I was, and I saw a need for another one. He was an all-star. So we just, we brought him, brought him on board. He's been doing great. Same thing. Person who was being our front end, receptionist person. She now runs all of our homeowners associations. We manage quite a bit of large homeowners associations in the area. And she's rock star at that too. So almost everybody on our team has grown with the organization. So that makes it pretty fun. You know, this, this principle of hiring, I mean, you hit it right on the head, Jesse, is it is extremely laborious and labor intensive. You have to be so picky. My first year at Keller Williams,

I was a rookie of the year for my office. And I found out that I miss rookie of the year for the entire company like worldwide by about the equivalent of four to six houses in my area. If I would have sold four to six more, I would have been the top agent in all of Keller Williams. And I didn't because I spent probably half of my time. Half of it was in production and half of it was actually looking for help. Hiring an admin, training an admin. I've gone through like five people in my first year that I hired, gave a try and they failed. And I learned a ton. But the main thing I learned is just good is not going to cut it. Like they have to be stellar. and I'm thinking of all these investors that have a bad experience and then they quit.

So yeah, real estate investing wasn't for me. The agent wasn't good. The property manager company wasn't what I thought. The rehab guy ripped me off. And you ask them like, well, how did you find him? And they're like, oh, I found them on Yelp. I Googled a name. And it was the first company I saw.

Right. Like these principles apply to everything. They don't just apply to building a business. And you're investing business. You got to talk to a lot of agents to find the one that actually knows how to work with investors. You got to talk to a lot of contracts. to find them when they understand you're trying to do this as cheaply and as quickly as possible.

And you're okay if they have to do this on the weekends or nights or something like that. They don't answer their phone all the time. It takes work to find those good people. But every business, whether it's real estate investing or something else, is built on the people you put around you. Yeah, that's so true. One of the things that I look back on my life, when I look back, like, people ask me, what would you do differently or, you know, looking back under my career? The last like 12 years, you know, I've flipped a lot of houses and I bought a lot of rental properties.

what if I would have spent like four months solid back like 12 years ago like finding a rock star contractor. I mean, just like the world's best contractor and built a really good relationship and paid him really, really well, maybe even brought him in house. Like what like that would have affected the next 12 years of stress and drama. Now granted, he may not have stayed and I would have had to hire someone again maybe later. But the point being like, had I done the work up front instead of just, oh, I found him on Craigslist, that guy has a pulse.

He'll do. If I would have just, yeah, set it up correctly in the beginning. It's like the whole analogy of a, you know, if I could, if I was going to chop down a tree in six hours, that's been the first four hours sharpening my axe. Sharpening the axe. Yeah, right? Yeah. Yeah, I think hiring anybody and this applies to everything, right?

Contractors, yeah, employees, anybody in your life, that work you do up front will pay out dividends for years and years and years to come. Yeah, and I don't want to act like I'm a hiring genius because I've made my mistakes, you know. And it's funny. you look back, I hire someone and I don't realize it all the time that they're not the perfect fit, but maybe six months later after your life has become super stressful and you replace the person and you find the right person, it's like two weeks later, you're like, wow, this really wasn't that difficult. I just didn't have the right person. And it's hard to recognize it sometimes. And I

haven't always done that. But it's when you get the right person in there, your life is just so much better, so much different. Do you have any tips for letting people go? I mean, like, let's say you find somebody, you put them on the bus and you find out they're not the right person to be on your bus. And so, like, what do you, how do you do that? Yeah, I've tried to get better. I don't know who said it, but, you know, all the experts say fire fast, right? I've tried to get better at that because once you've had people with you for a long time, there is no good way to fire them. I mean, you can, it's not going to be fun. You know, you, it's just not. But if you get better, I know, luckily in our office, on the management level. I haven't had turnover, but on the entry level positions, you know,

if you're going to be a custodian or a maintenance person, we've gotten a lot better at firing fast. You know, people have 30-day trials and that's the time to figure it out. And that's the time to watch them like a hawk and just make a decision. And it's tough, but, you know, we have to do it. You know, you just tell somebody this wasn't a good fit and move on. You know, for everybody listening to this, I hope that what you're taking out of it is there are lots of businesses everywhere that need good people. And if you can become a good employee, you can like name your price and you can get whatever you want. I tell my employees all the time that work for me, I want to pay you $100,000 a year. Let me help you become so valuable to me that I pay you that or more, right? That's a,

that's a great point. I mean, I would say that's, that's probably been the, that was the thing in my whole entrepreneurial journey was the guy that I was working for, now my business partner, he had so many things going on. He was an entrepreneurial guy, and I just saw an opportunity selfishly for myself that I could make myself invaluable to this person because he had his hand in so many things, but not all of them were organized well or going as well as they could be. So luckily I was young and I would work, it didn't matter seven days a week, just do what needs to be done. If he had a fire to put out three hours away on some property, the bank wanted him to go take a look at, and he couldn't be there, I would just do it.

You know, no complaints. And when you do that for anybody, I mean, and now I'm in that seat that people that would make themselves invaluable to me, you know, same idea. There's no limit to what they could do professionally here. There's so much opportunity. So much opportunity. If you have that mentality of I'm just going to go do it for them and I'm going to do it better than they did.

And yeah, you'll learn and you'll have questions that you need to learn. But if your purpose is, I want to make your life better, not, hey, I want to be wealthy. You figure out a way to pay me. And I just want to show up and be myself. I don't want to have to learn anything or change anything. That's the problem that I find with most people that say, David, I want to learn from you. Brandon and I talk about this all the time.

When we say, what can you do? And they're like, I don't know. Tell me what you need. That's not what we're looking for. We're looking for someone they can come in and say, I'm really good at all these things. Let me do it for you and let me prove myself. And if you take that humble attitude of I'm going to show you how valuable I am,

I'm telling you, doors open for you everywhere. That's how Jesse got in bed with this partner that he's got. You know, and largely, that's how Brandon and I became friends. You know, like that's how the best relationships are formed is you say, I want to serve this person. And you go in and show it. And they say, crap, I would never want to lose them. I need you now. Right. Here, take, have all this. Have half my business. Have half what's going on. And you create your own opportunity. So I love that. And I hope people take that to heart seriously that. The world is not against you. There's no conspiracy to keep you down. It's actually the opposite. Like there is a huge need for people that give a crap and are going to work really hard to be that great employee. And if you could be that person, you can have anything you want. So Jesse, after that triplex, I know.

we got off a little bit on our front of on each other. What did you do next? Like, what was your mindset and what kind of properties were you looking for after you bought that first? After that, I just, I got the, you know, I got the itch. So that first year, I'm just looking at a list I had right here. I didn't even realize this, this has been a good exercise for me to write stuff down. Yeah. I didn't realize I did three deals that year. And that, so that first deal, I didn't have all the money to do it myself. And that's when my same business partner that I use that I'm with in the management business, I went to him for help financing. And it was a home run. And so of course, he wanted in on it. It was a great deal. And then since then, I don't think him or I knew that we

were going to start buying properties together, but we had fun in that process. And it was a home run. And then after that, we bought another, it was a two unit right after that. And it was actually, so it was the same client. So I was on the lookout after that. So it was one of my clients that their stuff was going to auction. So I bought another duplex after that. And, and, and I was, And then it was great because he had at the time before this lost some interest in, you know, multifamily investing for whatever reason he had stopped doing it. And a bank that we have a good relationship with all in the same year had called him about a really, it was a really rough 16 unit building that they were going to foreclose on.

And the city was close to shutting down the building. And they had reached out to us first to see if we would become the ones in receipts. receivership of the property. And we went and looked at it. And because we had just had fun doing a couple deals together, he said, what about this? Should we talk to the bank about making an offer on this? And I was like, yeah, why not? So that was the third deal all in that year. So that's awesome. Yeah. So I definitely noticed this theme of like, and not just with you, but with a lot of investors, it's momentum, right? Like that first deal is really hard to overcome. You might spend 20 years thinking about getting into real estate or, you know, or a few years or a few months, whatever. But once you

get it. It's like, okay, well, I got, like you said, it got bit by the bug. Now I'm going to go by my next one. This is why we always push people like, I don't know, push people's the right word, but encourage people, just go get that first deal, like get it done. It's not talking about it, thinking about it, wishing you're going to do it and trying to get the perfect absolute home run deal. I mean, you had a home run deal your first deal. But even if it would have been just a base hit deal, it probably would even get momentum needed to go to the next one. Yeah. And then after that, I became spoiled because the property management business was growing. And I was just developing so many relationships that then more deals were coming to me. I started having clients that I had

built good relationships with who they were looking to get out, whatever reason, and I was the first call. And then that's been a theme. And that's kind of the theme of my investment portfolio is the advantage of being in the business where I'm kind of the first person to hear about stuff. And that's just kind of a good tip for anybody. They don't have to start a property management company, but being in the business, whether you're a contractor or realtor, property manager, you know people and you know what's going on. So then I had multiple deals that way. And what was good about that is buying from some of my clients, these were people that had more experience than me. And they actually helped educate me on some of the different types of financing,

the different types of owner financing, them taking a second mortgage or whatever it may be. And the momentum just kept going from there. Well, so let's talk about that. What types of have you used now over these 80 some units? What are some of the different things you've done? So after those, after that first year, I had a stretch in a row of some clients that talked to me about purchasing. And I said, yeah, I'd like to buy the building, but I don't know if I could do it. And we did some owner financing. I had one person who want who it was his decision to do 100% owner finance. He just liked the idea of it. And that's, I guess it helps to have the relationship. but we did 100% financing.

He was retired and he wanted the steady return on his money. So to him, he just liked the, I think we did 5% at the time. So he just liked the 5% return. And to this day, I still pay him on that property. And it's been tempting because I'd actually like, there's a lot of equity there and the market's appreciated. So I'd like to refi, but he doesn't want me to. So I'm, you know, I'm not going to, why?

I mean, why? I mean, it was a good deal for both of us. So I did some of that. And then as the property management business grew and the cleaning business grew, and I was fortunate to be financially strong, I've done more just putting 25% down because properties look a lot more attractive when you have 25% down. So I just like making a return, you know. So do you work with the same bank now every time you buy something? Do you shop around trying to find the very best rate? How do you handle that? Yeah, good question. Primarily the same bank. There's been a second bank that I've worked with. but local banks. I'm a big fan of that.

Relationship banking, so you know your commercial loan officer. And sometimes you might be able to get a quarter point better somewhere else. And that's good for some people. I like working with the same people. They're usually very competitive. And it's easier to get things done and get things done fast. So local banks. Yeah, I totally agree.

I'm like, I generally like don't. And maybe this is a, I don't know. Some people might criticize this, but like I don't even hardly look at interest rate. ever when I'm going for a loan. Like I have, I'm closing on a, on a triplex today. I have no idea my interest rate.

None. I never asked once. And like, I know, I guess like, I know it's like sub five. I know it's below five. And so I'm like,

it's fine. Like, it might make my payment, but it was like, I would rather work with people I like, like banks I like working with and lenders I like working with than get the very rock bottom lowest rate.

Yeah. You know what I find is that the people that are really successful at anything they do tend to have Brandon's mentality. I never hear the people who are just crushing it that are worrying about really small details, like their interest rate or, you know, like, and then you see newbies that are like, they'll talk to 19 different banks to find the one with the absolute lowest rate and they'll go with some online company that doesn't have any customer service.

And like this, I see this as a real estate agent because then something goes wrong and we're trying to get the deal to close and the person lives in India and they're on a different time schedule. They don't answer their phone. And they don't care if the deal doesn't close because you're one of 400 people. and that's why they're so cheap is they're just doing a lot of volume. There's something to be said for understanding what's the 20% of actions

that get you 80% of the results and sweating the interest rates, not one of those things. If Brandon not worrying about the rate gets him another 50 deals over the course of his life, he's way better off for having that mentality and that person who never took action

because they were stuck on those really small details. And I think you just see like running the business that you're running at the operation, the size you are, you probably had to learn the same thing. It's like, yeah, it will irritate me when little things don't get done.

But is it worth, letting that slow me down from growing. Yeah. Well, actually, we paid, it's funny, we had a loan that was 5.75% and I don't think we knew it it for a year. And we like, we casually complained to our loan officer once and he was like, yeah, it's a little high. Let me see what I can do.

And then he brought it down for us a little bit. That's awesome. I'm going to totally try that. So on that note, one thing like, you know, we talk about the interest, another lesson, a huge lesson I learned. And maybe you, if you learned this well or maybe you don't. but I used to look for the lowest insurance as well. I would switch insurance every year or so.

And they told me, you know, shop for a hour. And every year your rates go up, which they do. But like, I all of a sudden had like four different insurance companies with things expiring at different times and I wouldn't renew one. And like once I found out, I went like six months without any insurance on a property at all. And like that kind of stuff like I learned that's just not worth doing it. So I have one, I have one agent now. He handles 100% of my stuff.

And every problem just goes to him. You can actually go back in my. old forum posts, like I'm bigger pockets from years and years ago. And I'm just sitting there and, like, railing about how much I hate insurance. And I think even when we started the podcast five years ago, I used to talk about that. Today, Caleb back home, back home insurance, Manasano, everything. Like, he just does everything. Yeah. I'm the same way. Me and my partner, both, we have an insurance agent. And if I don't like the price, I mean, I know enough now to know what stuff should cost. And if I don't like it, I'll just shoot him a quick email. And maybe he was not on top of it.

and then he'll go back to shopping and around and talking to people. And then he'll get back to me and do like, yeah, you're right. They had the deductible too low on this and too much on this and blah, blah, blah, and gets it down to where it should be. So I don't have time to be on hold with Allstate or whoever for you just got to go to your agent. And you guys talk about that a lot on the show, which I'm a big proponent of when you guys talk about building a team. You know, I've got a good CPA, a good attorney, a good. good insurance agent and that way you're just one quick email away from someone who cares enough

to help you. What Brandon, I do is when we're faced with these problems, we ask ourselves, does this feel heavy or does this feel light? And it's a way of like, if you have a problem that comes up, you're like, oh, yeah, I can fix that and you're excited about it. That's the stuff you should be doing. It doesn't feel like work. It isn't draining you. If you're like, oh, my God, I have to do this again and it's like really a 30 minute or 30 second phone call, that's just not something you should be doing. We all have things that we enjoy and we have things we don't. There's people to do the stuff you don't enjoy.

And if you're doing too much of that, you're going to lose your hunger and your drive and your desire and it's going to cost you so much money over the long term. So that's a question Brandon I will use and we're talking about something. How does this make you feel? And if it's do this feels heavy, like I don't know why, but just picking up my phone to make that call, the phone fills 500 pounds. Okay, let's find someone else to do that. We'll focus on the stuff that we enjoy.

Yes. So I have a question for you, Jesse. what's the worst deal that you've ever done the worst deal so none of them i've been forcing none of them were bad but i do have one that didn't go according to plan it was uh two duplexes side by side and they needed a ton of work so that's kind of a theme for me is finding these properties that are good deals but you got to do the heavy lifting you know yeah so they they needed work and the seller agreed to uh owner finance it because my plan was it was i was going to save my money instead putting 25% down, I wanted him to carry the note so that I could save my cash to put into the

building. And I had this plan for the four units. I think I had calculated like $50,000 worth of repairs, one side of one roof, some foundation issue, heating, and the units were all occupied, but they were really bad. So, but they were paying. So I was like, I had this, I remember I had this spreadsheet, you know, saved. I could probably find it where I was going to have to pay something like $8,000 a year for the, you know, in repairs and maintenance I had budgeted for the, you know, the next six years. And instead, everything on my list that I thought would go wrong in those eight years went wrong in the first, you know, six months. So been there. I put, I put almost $50,000 into the building out of my own money in the first like six months. And looking back on it

now, financially it's good. But that first six months was a real, you know, kick in the stomach. So everything I thought would go. You know, the furnace was old, but I thought it was going to give me a couple years. It gave me a couple weeks, you know. The roof that I thought, I didn't see any major leaks, but it was old. I thought that was going to give me another year. It gave me another day, you know, so all these things went wrong. And then two of the tenants moved out right when I bought it. And I planned on, I think, I was like, well, and they'd been there a long time. So they shouldn't both move out in the first six months, but they did. So then they needed, you know, total rehab. So I'm just sitting there shaking my head and questioning my decision.

So that was the worst one. You know, if you have, and that's immoral to when you buy these no money down deals, they can work, but you have to have some reserves. You know, you can't be over leveraged and then when things go wrong, you have no money. So luckily I had some reserves to get through it. I hated it, but now looking back, if I run the numbers now that I've owned that one for four years, it's all good. But it was a really crappy six months.

So, yeah, I'd be the worst one overall. I found the same as true when you buy these fixer uppers. A lot of times, like I would look at them and think, well, this has got a number of years left. We'll do that later. But almost every time, I just end up having to do it all right away. Like, I don't know, there's just something like the spirit of remodeling takes over the property. And it's like, well, let's just fix everything then at that point. That said, like the properties where I go through and just thoroughly fix them up, I mean, make them all good at the beginning.

You knock out all the rehab at one time. And now you might go years without a problem. I mean, I have properties right now. I haven't even like sent a single contractor over there for six, seven years. Because like it was all done right at the beginning. And those are my best properties typically because it's not wearing me down. Another reason we like the Burr strategy so much. I know all three of us do a bit of that.

Yes. You fix them up ahead of time. You have reduced maintenance and repairs for years. So super cool. All right. So let's go and talk about, you know, it's not often we have an actual property manager here on the show. So I want to pick your brand on a few property management topics. Sure.

And obviously you're not the one, you know, answering phone calls. anymore, but you still know how the businesses run, obviously. You know, you're following your systems. I hope, yeah. I hope in my mobile home park depends on that. So, like, why do you think, why do you think, like, what are the things that separate you and your company from all the other property management companies that are not, I mean, there might be other good ones in your market, but there's a lot of bad ones everywhere.

So what makes a good property manager a good property manager? That's a good question. And honestly, like, I joke with a lot of our clients that we're not that awesome. but everybody else is terrible. And they all agree. I mean, I'm teasing a little bit. I think we're awesome. But I wish I knew why there's so many bad ones because there really is.

And in our area, too. I mean, sorry for anybody who's listening in this area, but you're not very good. And I don't know. I would say that one thing we do is we try to treat, we just have a mentality philosophy that our client, just treat them like you would if it's your own. And honestly, I mean, the property management business isn't a huge. huge cash cow all the time. I mean, not everybody can afford to pay, you know, too much for management. So maybe for us, we're lucky that both my partner and I like the networking aspect of it.

And we both like to invest in properties. And that's a big carrot for us being in the property management business. But I just don't think there's enough people that run it the way they would if it was their properties. And that's just how we analyze each one. And then I don't know, for whatever reason, if it's a industry that not enough modern, high tech, small, smart entrepreneurs have gotten into because, for example, I know a major thing for us in springboarding, the number of units we could handle was adding good property management software. And, you know, I did a sales presentation to somebody yesterday in our office on the, I have a nice kind of big screen TV that I could show them on. And I was showing them an example of like our property management

software owner portal and the different reports they could run and the things they could. see and they were just fascinated by that. And I don't know that enough, it's not that complicated, but not enough people are doing that. Yeah, it's definitely an industry ripe for disruption, I guess. Oh, huge. Huge. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, it's so bad. We have a lot of calls from people that have property two hours away from us that want us to do it. And I'll say no, because I don't see a way on some of them to do it. But they're like, there's nobody in my area and they're two hours away. And they're still asking for help. So it's, there's a lot of opportunity in the industry.

So what do you do if you're trying to find a good property manager, but you don't know what to look for? What kind of questions do you think someone should ask to figure out if they're a Jesse or if they're, uh, everyone else? Great question. I mean, besides the obvious of do you have any references? I mean, it's amazing how just like you said, I mean, it's amazing how just like you said, I mean, trying to find a contractor, how many people don't even check references and, and just

do a little bit of due diligence. What type of properties does their reference have actually talk to their reference? reference and then ask them some questions about how do they handle their maintenance how do they how do they handle their financial reporting i mean so many of them but i know are in this area call themselves you know property managers but it's like a guy in a truck with a lawnmower yeah that's not a property manager i guess i would just uh go visit their operation this doesn't mean you have to be with some big fancy company but i mean do you have the internet i mean that's you know step one, talk to these people, you know, because, and, you know, ask them in particular how they

handle all the little details, just ask them one step at a time, you know, how are you renting the unit? How are you showing it? How are you screening tenants? If somebody gives you a security deposit, what are you doing with it? Where are you putting it? You know, just the little logistics of it matter. Yeah. You know, one thing that really, I'll tell you, what really impressed me when I, when I came to your office. So I came out there to look at the mobile home park, right? Then Ryan took me into your office. And, you know, I love the fact that was a nice office, first of all. Like, it was very welcoming. I thought, okay, well, tenants will like this. That's great. And we walked around. I looked at the property management software management. I was like, okay, well, they know

what they're doing with management. I can go and see reports. That's great. But what really got me was your key room. You know, like, and here's why. Like, you have like this, so like, like, Jesse has this room of like the most organized key system I've ever seen. It's really, really awesome. But like, the whole room. The whole room. Yeah. It's unbelievable. Right. But what I love to it was it told me you were a systems guy. And that's what, that's what impressed me. It's like the problem with is property managers, I believe spend way too much time reading property management books and not enough reading business books. Right. And that's kind of an analogy, right? But like to be good at business, like to own a good bakery, you don't need to

be good at baking. You need to be good at baking. You need to be good at business. To own a good company, you don't need to be a good plumber. You need to be good at running a plumbing business. I really say McDonald's hot, McDonald's hamburgers aren't good, right? But yeah. But we like the systems. Yeah, exactly. And that's what I look for most in a property manager is what kind of systems do they have. And I've had some property manager that I thought would be really great. They didn't, they weren't, they're horrible because they didn't have any systems.

Like they didn't have any, like, everything was like fly by the seat of their pants. Is that a phrase? I just make that up. That's a phrase, right? Anyway, like, they were just like make decisions on the fly, right? And they didn't have a process. And that's like, there's one thing that I tried to communicate when my wife, Heather and I wrote that book, the book on managing rental properties. It was like every single piece of your business should be systematized and processed and documented.

So like you can, I mean, like there are no like there are no decisions made on the fly. Everything is a anyway. So that's what thing that impressed me about you. So good job. Thank you. The key room is awesome. So and that's anybody who's been in property management like like any system you're building, it starts with doing something you hate and it causing you a ton of stress and then just thinking, how can I make sure this never happens again? And for me, that was like the 10th time that I was somewhere with no keys,

locked out with a plastic bag of 106 keys. And I just vowed this moment will never happen again. That's really, that's what all the best systems are created. That's how it was. Yeah. You're so right about that. To go back to David's thing, it was like, does that feel heavy? Like every time when I, because I do the same thing, plastic baggie full of 50 keys.

And I'm like, that feels so heavy and so irritating. and it gets me so angry that like, and I have not said, instead I just ended up hiring property managers because I was like, I'm just not going to do it open doors anymore. That was how it made it light for me. I was like,

I'm never going to open another door again, ever. The other part with systems is a big thing that I've learned is accountability. So you need to know in all these processes how you can track who dropped the ball. And that's not just to get people in trouble. It's just to learn from it. You know,

why did this mistake happen? Where did it break down? So everybody in your organization, should know who's responsible. So if a key's, something as simple as a key is missing, you should have a system in place so you can track who had the key last. You know, was it the guy shown the apartments?

Was it the maintenance guy? Was it the plumber? Was it the person on our front desk? Accountability is huge for systems. Yeah, that's so true. So yeah, I wrote a blog post a couple years ago. I'll see if I can dig it up and put it in the show notes. But it was basically called,

I think what the title was, if you're unhappy, your systems are broke. And it was the basic idea that in any area of your life where like something stresses you out, it's because your system isn't working right. And if you had a system, it wouldn't stress you out. Obviously, that's not true for like, you know, my daughter hates me kind of thing. But like in business area of your life.

Yes. Something stresses you. Your system sucks. And the good news is you can fix it. Yeah. And for property management, going back to your question, David, about what questions to ask. In this day and age, if you have a decent portfolio, I would say the number one question you should ask is what software are they using?

Find somebody who has a good software because then you can have any representation. report you want. You can have days vacant. You can have delinquency, anything you need at your fingertips. And that for me, I know if it was me, if I got to the point where I was traveling around the world, like, you know, you two big timers, then that's what I would be doing, you know. What software? Yeah, what do you guys use? Rent manager, right? We use Rent manager. Yeah. Yeah, I've used that one now. I've used Building. I've used Appfolio. I think I'm liking a rent manager probably the best. Yeah. Because I like your, I don't use it personally, but I use it the the owner portal through you guys through my other Ohio property.

And yeah, I like the way that's laid out. But yeah, I mean, they all kind of work. Another tip for anybody starting off small rent managers, I think the most scalable for cost because you pay per license. So you can, if you're just a one person show, you could still afford the small monthly payment because you just need one license and that it makes it easier to get started that way. I don't know why rent software is so freaking hard to,

understand. I cannot be the only person out there in the world who gets no, I hate it. And it's like, I have to do work to understand what I'm even reading. Like it is the worst user interface. I, I open it up and I can maybe find the property address. And then it's got the, the tenant's name like seven different times with different, different debits and credits. And I cannot tell if something's wrong or if that's the way it's supposed to look. And then you ask your property manager, like, oh yeah, it's all in the statement. Just pull it up and just just read it. And it's like, it's like telling me to go read like a legal form. You know, like I don't know what this Latin means.

I can read it, but my brain doesn't comprehend it. And yeah, whoever solves that problem first of like, this is just normal. You just pull it up and see exactly what you're looking at is going to dominate that entire market. It's so frustrating. I can't be the only one. And we never really talked to it before. I don't think.

Yeah. That's why I would, when you ask your property manager what they're using for software, make sure it's something that's web-based because most of the web-based. because most of the web-based software, like AppFolio is not bad. Brent Manager's my favorite. They update their program each year. So at least it's an improving process. It's not just one old DOS system that's never going to change.

They come up with upgrades. So they'll email you that there's been an upgrade. What's funny about that is, though, I don't think I've ever mentioned those to anybody, but I recently actually in, well, I sort of hired or enlisted for, pay Ryan Murdox. So Ryan's my partner on my mobile home park. But my Ohio property, I have the same problem. Every time I get these reports and I'm like, I got to spend a half hour trying to understand them. And then like, it says repair. And I've no idea with the repair. So every week I got to call the property manager and be like, what was that for? What unit? What was bad?

Didn't we do that already last month? I have no idea if they're ripping me off. I don't know anything. So I hire Ryan. I'm like, Ryan, I just want you to do what you do for the mobile home park. So send me an email every week in plain English. What's working? What's not? And so like, it's like, yeah, the rents all came in. This is what happened. This what didn't happen. And I'm like, it feels light. It feels so good. Like, that's what I need. Do your people in Ohio know what's coming, that hell is coming with them, that Ryan will get to the bottom of it? And he is a real estate ninja. Yeah, I'm looking forward to right. People. Yeah, he's actually going to be flying out there here in a couple weeks. I actually had him fly out there. He's going to meet with the property manager and just,

I was like, I just don't want to deal with that anymore. I'm going to have somebody like who likes doing that work that feels light to Ryan, he's going to go through, I hope so, he's going to go through there and do all the stuff that I don't want to. So I can go buy more mobile home parks or more apartment complexes or whatever, right? Do the things that make you feel light. Stop doing the things that make you feel heavy. That's the theme of today's show. All right, moving on. Yes. All right, so this, we're not quite done with the show yet. We've got a couple more sections left. So the next, I want to move over to the new segment of the show called the Deep Dives. Did you know your house gets bored when you leave? I can't actually,

prove that, but it probably misses out on the action, the footsteps, the late-night fridge raids. Yeah, when you're gone, your place is basically on unpaid leave. It's sitting there in the dark thinking, I could be contributing right now. Your side room wants a side hustle. Even your Wi-Fi is like, we could be networking. You're on vacation, spending money like it's a sport, while your staircase at home is fully capable of sending your income upwards. Here's the twist. You can go on a trip and actually earn money. Airbnb makes that possible with the co-host network. If you're away for a while or have a secondary property, you can hire a vetted local co-hosts with real hosting experience to handle it all. A co-host can handle guest communications, it can manage reservations

and keep things running smoothly so you don't have to check your phone between beach days. That means less stress and more time enjoying your trip. You can relax, knowing guests are taken care of, and your place is in good hands. travel, your house works, everyone wins. If you're ready to host but could use some help, find a co-host at Airbnb.com slash host. People love to call real estate passive income, which is interesting because most of the investors I know are very busy. Busy finding deals, busy managing teams, busy worrying they pick the wrong market. Rent to retirement flips that model. They help investors buy turnkey, new construction homes, often 10% below market value in top rental markets across the country. Their local teams

handle the build, the property management, and the details, so you don't have to. In some cases, investors even receive 50 to 75% of their down payment back at closing, and there are interest rates as low as 3.75%. They've been trusted partners with BiggerPockets for over a decade, and if you want to learn more, visit BiggerPockets.com slash retirement. There are two kinds of real estate investors, those who have reviewed their insurance, and those who think that they have. Most don't realize their coverage wasn't built for how they actually invest. Vacancy periods, rehabs, short-term rentals, LLC held properties. These gaps surface only when filing claims. That's why investors work with NREG. They specialize exclusively in real estate investors, understanding portfolios, risk at scale, and cash flow protection.

One claim can erase years of returns. If you own a rental property, don't assume you're covered. Have NREG review your insurance with someone who gets investing at NRE.com slash BPPod. That's nR-E-I-G.com slash BP pod. Managing properties can feel like a full-on circus. You're juggling vendors, tracking payments, chasing approvals across multiple properties, and maybe a few HOAs, all while trying to keep tenants happy and owners confident.

One delay can throw everything off, and suddenly your day is all clean up, no progress. That's why hundreds of property managers rely on bill to streamline their finances. Bill for property management lets you add all your properties, assign permissions, pay bills, and receive payments quickly and efficiently, without the usual bottlenecks. It syncs with platforms like QuickBooks, Zero, NetSuite, and Sage intact, so your accounting stays aligned. You can automate bulk payments across properties and HOAs.

Choose flexible payment methods like Same Day ACH, International Wires, Card, or Check, and set custom roles in approval policies. There's even a dedicated bill inbox for each property to keep everything organized. Ready to simplify your workflow, book your free demo at bill.com slash bigger pockets and get a $100 Amazon gift card. That's bill.com slash bigger pockets. It's time for the deep dive. So the deep dive is a part of the show where we dive deep into one particular deal and we ask you a series of questions to really get in depth on one of your maybe good or one of your bad deals. I don't know. We won't find out until we get down to depth,

as they say. So we need to get some more puns, by the way, for the deep dive. We'll work on that. So let's get down to it. The first question is, what is the deal? We're talking about the motel, right? Yeah, I think I'll just choose the motel because it's the most interesting and bizarre deal I've done where people might find it entertaining. All right. So what we're called the motel. The motel.

How did you find the motel? Walk us through that. My electrician. So he was a mutual electrician. He was doing all the work for. the owner of the motel at the time. It does a lot of work for our property management company, good guy. And he put us together.

That person was having a lot of issues that he thought I might be some help to. So he basically called me for some free advice. And I was helping him through it, build a relationship. So basically, there was a lot of electrical issues that the city was not happy with there. And the code enforcement was coming down on him very hard. And he hadn't really been through that before. And I've been through that many times. So I just kind of gave him some counsel on that.

And that's how I met the guy. So was this, tell us about the actual state of the motel before you got. I mean, this is good and nice. I mean, this is a, you know, Marriott or this is, you know, not that. I would say the exact opposite of very nice, yes. Okay. Okay. Everything I find requires a little bit of work.

But that's where the deals are, right? Yeah. So this is the hotel that in my previous profession, we would have been doing a stakeout on to catch illegal activity. basically. Yes. Okay. So the property was in a nose dive and you stepped in because your electrician told you

about it. That's awesome. Great job working that relationship. How much do you pay for it? So we paid $500,000. Okay. For how many units was this hotel? 67 room motel slash extended stay.

So maybe this is a good time to ask this question. And like motel is a very different business model, even though they seem like real estate as real estate, but it's not, right? Motels are very different than owning real estate. At least that's how I was assumed it. Is that true? Like what made you want to jump into a motel versus keeping with just rentals? One, the challenge.

It was interesting. And I saw, I mean, I saw nothing but upside. So anytime you have an opportunity to make something better than what it is, I mean, why not? You know? So, yeah, the business model is very different. And what appealed to me was my background at the time, obviously, was property management. And I also, in a previous life, had worked as a manager for a resort management company. So I knew enough about that to be dangerous.

And this place had been running where half the rooms had like kitchenettes in it and a separate bedroom. So they were more like one bedroom or studio apartments. And the previous owner had been running half of the rooms as, basically long-term by-the-month rentals. And that was the cause of his problems because then he was getting into a whole new world. I guess in the past it hadn't been that way. He was doing nightly and weekly rentals. And now when he started doing lots of 30-day rentals, he had lots of code enforcement issues

for the first time ever had to go through eviction processes and did not like it anymore. So enter me. So there you go. All right. Cool. All right. Negotiation. How'd you negotiate? Anything fun happen in that process? Yes. So the negotiations, it was really hard to put a number on it because the city was literally close to shutting him down for not complying with a lot of the electrical because it needed to be upgraded. People's breakers were tripping all the time. The fire suppression system needed to be

upgraded. And how do you put a value on something that is in such a bad spot? You know, I mean, the city was getting upset that the police were there so much. But it's got a nice piece of real estate. It's on a busy road. So when we negotiated, we really just sat in a room together. And keep in mind, backing up, he didn't call me to sell it. He called me for some help on different advice on how to deal with some of these multi-unit issues, which he's now running into.

And from there, the conversation grew to where he doesn't like this project anymore. and then he started looking for other projects. And that's what created the opportunity. He found another motel and another part of the state he wanted to go focus on. So then he said, you know, would you be interested in buying? Sure, why not? You know, like you guys said, say yes. Say yes to things, you know.

There you know, obviously I was skeptical. It was a little bit intimidating, but that's kind of a theme for me, I think, is if it's intimidating or if you're not comfortable doing it, you should move forward. That's a good sign you should move forward and try. Where did the 500 come from? Was that his number he threw out, your number you threw out, how did you come to that? So we sat in a room and I just talked about all my concerns. My business partner and I was with me and we talked about all our concerns.

And we asked, anytime you can get somebody else to throw out the first number, there really wasn't a fancy spreadsheet on this at all. We asked him to start and he said he would take, you know, the key to this, you know, too, is he was looking to make something happen sooner than later. So he said if we were able to close relatively soon, he would take $500,000. And just at that point, our gut instinct with the location of it and the upside, we knew it would be, you know, a lot of work involved in a rough road. But we knew that if you could scoop this up for $500, you know, you can't say no. So he threw it out there and we just said, sure.

let's do it so you realize you need 500,000 dollars how did you come up with that who funded it good question and this is where I learned again the power of actually saving some money and I know a lot of people on the show are big into creative financing and owner financing and no money down deals and all that that's great and I love all that stuff too but if you just keep working hard and whatever you're doing to still work towards you know that Dave Ramsey mentality of building some cash and less debt, you can put yourself in positions. And that's what I had done. So my partner and I, the only way we could make it close that as fast as he wanted

was we ended up paying cash for it. So first time I had done something like that. So we put down, you know, quite a bit of money. So you had to have some savings for something like that. Yeah. Well, you bring up a good point. I mean, I don't want to spend too much time at this, but I'll at least bring it up is, yeah, real estate is not.

I mean, yes, it's a way to build wealth and a way to invest wealth. but like it's not the greatest way to make income. So I say that like if you don't like your job or you're not making much money at your job, like yes, you should invest in real estate. But it doesn't mean you shouldn't also go try to build a business as well or do get a better job or, you know, move laterally over to something else that you can make more.

Like you need to make good money. Or it sure, I should say, it sure helps to make good money. So that means starting a cleaning business and go start a cleaning business, build it up out, be become the best cleaning business, make some money, save some money and go invest in. in real estate. Or go flip houses. That's a business as well.

Like, whatever you got to do, people are like, yeah, I make, you know, $9 an hour and I want to go and retire next year. It's like, that's going to be really tough. So, yeah. Well, if you want a girlfriend, you can find one with a pizza stained shirt and food in your beard, right? Like, it's possible.

You can just go, like, really impress someone with your personality and maybe they'll see through all that. But if that's your goal, why would you make it harder on yourself by stinking and wearing nasty clothes? Like, you could also change your shirt and you'd have. have a lot more luck. That's kind of the way I look at most investing. Like, yeah, you can do it with no money. If that's your only option and you don't have another shirt, okay, but having a good job where you make good money makes it easier to get financing. You'll feel less stress and less pressure to

like hit a home run on your very first deal because you have a little bit of a cushion. And then as you grow, it starts to open up more doors. You know, that's what we see when Brandon and I talk to people is they started off slow and then they built momentum and that led to a cleaning business like we haven't talked about, but Jesse has that and a property management business. And that led to having a key room. And people like Brandon were like, this is the most amazing thing I've ever seen in it. It kind of goes from there, right? So don't, it's, it's easier to find a girlfriend with a clean shirt. That's all I'm going to say. All right. Jesse, next. What did you do with the property once you closed on it? So like most real estate people, we do like getting some of our money back. So the first thing we did was

meet with the local bank and see what we could do to refinance. And it's always fun to refinance. And it's always fun to refinance after you've closed and you own the property. I've already bought it. It's mine. And we talked to them about our plans. And there was a lot of upgrades we wanted to do. And we did for the first time I had done this. It's like what I call the Burr strategy, but better. So we'll call it better than Burr, is the bank was willing to give us a loan based on an appraisal that includes. So the appraisal would be based on all of the repairs. So I call it an as completed loan. So the appraisal goes through and you provide him with quotes from contractors of what you're going to do to the property and takes it into consideration with the quote.

So I mean to the appraisal. So we got an appraisal of it was a little over a million dollars came back on the appraisal. So again, the power of cash. So I mean this person and this person that was selling it, I don't want to make it sound like this person wasn't intelligent. He was a savvy entrepreneur. He just had something else he wanted to do. He wanted to cash out. and he was good with that. He had owned it for a while. And he knew he was giving us a deal.

He was very fine with that. So this was no dummy we were buying from. So the appraisal came in at over a million. The first thing we did was right away, had a list of projects, put over $100,000 right back into it. And then the property was cash flowing positive. We were going to put more money of that from the, so we made back up. In the refinance, they gave us 80%. So a million dollar appraisal. We get a check for $800,000 on a $500,000. $500,000. property. Yeah, not a bad week. That's awesome. That's awesome. Yeah, not a bad day. So put 100,000 right back into it, though. And then did, and then did our thing we always do, clean up the property, get rid of the riffraff, get rid of the previous regime. So the old manager was gone. The old maintenance guy's

gone. Brought in our own people. And actually, to give him some credit, when we first did this, we didn't have time to do my insane due diligence of hiring somebody. So I brought in the real state ninja Ryan Murdoch to run it for a month. Nice. He sat there for a month and unscrewed the place for us while I was hiring. He didn't want to be there forever. So he ran the place while I hired somebody to run it. And from there, the property started cash flowing positive enough that after what we decided

to do was we really haven't taken much money out since then because the cash flow is going back into the building. Yep. But if you do the math, we had 800. we paid 500 put 100 into it. Then we each put 100,000 in our pocket. That's great. So that was fine.

We were happy with that. And now we really are just letting the property. Any free money is just going right back into projects over there right now. Yeah, that's what we're doing on the mobile home park, as you know, as well. Like all the money that we're getting cash flow just gets dumped right back in there. Yep. You know, because we're in a hurry to fix it all back up again. And then like I said, it's like that.

We talked about earlier, right? Get everything running perfectly right away. And you hopefully have years of just unincomboats. beautiful cash flow. That's the dream. That is the dream. So cool. I love it.

All right. So the outcome, that was basically the outcome. So let's go last one, lessons learned. What have you learned throughout this whole process is good and bad?

Two things. I would say the lesson learned was be good to your vendors because all the electrical work that was needed there. You can imagine which electrician we gave the work to once we bought the place.

So be good to your vendors because be somebody that's good to work for because the people in the tree, trade are connect, if they're good at their job, they're connected to a lot of people too. And they know what's going on in the industry too. So that was one thing I kind of learned. I never expected to get a deal from one of my contractors. And he didn't just, it wasn't, the reason he deserves a lot of credit is he kind of vouched for me too, because this person didn't know me, but he trusted his electrician. The electrician had done a lot of work for him

over the years. And he said, oh, this guy, Jesse's a good guy. You want to meet him. So be good to your vendors. And then I guess I kind of touched on it. The other thing I really learned from I never thought I'd be somebody who would pay cash for a property that goes against a lot of, you know, the, you know, using other people's money to get rich stuff that we all like to do. But that was a big, you know, lesson for me and why I since then work hard on saving up more cash too, too, because there may be a deal too good to miss and I'll be upset if I didn't have the cash there to do it. So this was a great example of rock stars, no rock stars.

Yeah. The rock star electrician you use, vouch for you as a rock star. the guy who owned the property sold it to you at half of what it appraised for, and you came out like a bandit because you surround yourself with talented people because you took the time in the beginning to vet and train the very best employees and you set yourself up. So that's an awesome story of how it's supposed to work. Yes, absolutely.

And one more point on before I move on to the fire round. You mentioned this guy, you know, he was a smart investor, the guy who sold it to you. Like he knew what he was doing. And I want to bring up like good deals are not only found from like, motivated like sellers who are, you know, losing their house because of a divorce and foreclosure and whatever. Like sometimes the end of one or the transition from an investor's like one phase of their life into another phase, it's worth it to them to get rid of a property to jump into another one. So like that's what's fun about real estate.

And what another reason why I encourage people all the time to like get together with other investors all the time. Like at least once or twice a month, go to a meet up, meet with people, talk with him, find out what the older or the more experienced investors are doing. They probably have properties that they're willing to unload so that they can move into the next phase of their life and like then it's your phase. You're starting where they were, right? It doesn't mean it's a win-lose.

Like real estate can definitely be a win-win. So cool. I love how that illustrates that. All right, well, let's move on and let's head over to the world famous fire round. It's time for the fire round. All right, let's get to the fire round. These questions come direct out of the bigger pockets forums

that we're going to fire them at you, in a fast way here. Number one, this is just a big general question you could go on for an hour, I'm sure, but how do you start a property management company? Like let's say somebody wants to start one. What are the first couple steps that they should be doing if they want to start something? I would say start small and be somebody's, you don't have to be their full property manager to the scale that we are, but do anything for them, whether that's just doing the renting,

whether that's being the on-call maintenance person, you can strike a deal with anybody. and start small that way. I mean, find somebody who needs some help, don't charge a fortune, and build up a couple references. And in fact, I'll give him a lot of credit, my business partner now, he started doing property management when he was working full-time as a supervisor for UPS. And he was looking to get out of that and become entrepreneurial. So he was doing that while being self-employed property manager. And he started small. You know, he had a few people that he was just, as he likes to say, we tease him. He was just one guy. guy in his car with a briefcase, you know, and he would run around and any of the calls for

the property would come to him. So just start small. We'll take care of a couple properties and do it all. Be the maintenance guy, be the person that rents the apartments and who takes the calls. Perfect. All right. Next question. What is the expected turnaround for getting a property ready for a new renter by a property manager? I'm thinking they're probably asking how much time would it take. Yeah, good question. I mean, obviously there's variables on whether it was wrecked or not, how long they've lived there or not. But I would say if you're a good property manager, it shouldn't take you more than a week to turn something. And if this is, I mean, that would be, that would be a long time for us. I mean, to get it what I call a ready to show. And if you have,

and if you're a property owner and you have nice units, you know that. If you have high rent, nice stuff. We show those things while they're occupied. And we have we have trucks moving out with another truck moving in. And again, it's a little bit stressful. But those those units typically take less damage. If you have somebody who smoked in the apartment for six years and wrecked the place a little bit, you should still be able to turn something in a week if you're organized and get people in there. Now how much is your company charged to kind of oversee that turn? Good question. So that would be part of your management fee. So the management fees, and that's probably a good question for people listening,

what do property managers charge? And I would say I've seen it on the, you're going to be at the low end, probably going to be close to 5% on a low end. And that's going to be somebody who has a bit of a portfolio, you know, not one house. And then you're going to be up to 10% on somebody who has a smaller portfolio. And that just gives you a rough estimate for people to look at. And that's not just us, I think, other the property management industry. and that should be part of your management fees, of them managing the turn other than that you may have a leasing fee as well if they're charging for doing the leasing.

Makes sense. I like this question. I've never thought about this in my life, but I don't know what I would do. So I'm going to ask you so you can help me know what to do if this ever happens. My property management company is screening new tenants. They sent me one that is otherwise qualified, but has a 200 gallon saltwater aquarium weigh in approximately 1,750 pounds. pro, according to the property manager, is that moving is such a beast. It's a huge pain. They're probably going to stay forever. The cons are fairly obvious, including crushing most flooring

and possibly wrecking it if it leaks. What do you do? Would you take a tenant with that big of an aquarium? Long answer, no. All right. Okay. Put put something in your lease, you know, put something in your lease that doesn't allow that. I don't know why. There's enough, if there's enough good renters out there, I I wouldn't deal with that. That's my personal answer on that one. If you were, if you ever, I'm thinking, yeah, I would probably wouldn't either. If I couldn't find a tenant and they were like the only qualified person I'd find,

I'd probably just charge like a quadruple security deposit or something. You know, like, yeah, put down five grand. You get that back, but that's what this could wreck or something. Yeah. And, you know, as you guys know, and you guys do a good job of putting legal stuff on the website for people in each state. So there's going to be state specific laws about what you're able to do in charge. But if the tenant's worth it and they're super qualified,

I'm sure that there's some sort of financial arrangement you can make to protect yourself against that water damage. Cool. All right. I am about to have my first renter. What are some dues and don'ts that you would recommend? That's a wide open question. Yeah, you're going to have to go super basic with this one. So super basic.

Hopefully you screen them. You know, hopefully you screen. Well, how about this? Let me mix it up a little bit. What are some of the common problems that you see with new landlords not anticipations? not anticipating something that could go wrong with the tenant. Sure. I would say, and most of these come from not screening. And when I say that, it's amazing how many very smart and otherwise in their life clients we've taken over for who had decent properties and did it themselves before they come to us.

And when you take over, it's a wreck and you find out that there was just zero screening. You know, they weren't having them fill out on application. They weren't verifying their income. I mean, you can ask people to verify. You can ask. people to provide documentation of their income so that you can make a calculated decision on who you're renting to. Because if you don't do that, the things you're going to find, as you guys talk about on the show sometimes, are the professional renters. So beware of the people that know the system and they know how not to pay. So I guess a good tip, a quick one for people would be, I see this one a lot with mom and pop landlords is don't be flexible on your payment

terms. So treat it like a business transaction. It's not being a bad guy. It's just saving the situation from spiring out of control. I see that a lot of pop's if the rents a thousand, it's okay to bring me 800 at the end of the month and then get me the $217 days later and then $600, you know, three weeks later. Just don't do that. Just stick to a system, be upfront with your renters of how this is going to play out. And this is what we do. I mean, it's a business transaction. So we're very upfront with people on how it's going to work out for you if you don't pay. We're not the bad guys.

We're not out to get you. But we're very clear that in our state, you have to wait 15 days for a late fee. But at the 15th day, you're going to have that late fee. And somewhere between the 10 and the 12th day, you're going to have a notice delivered to you that says if you don't pay in seven days, that this can escalate and go to court. And then if we don't have the payment by the end of that month, if you're not cut up, we will send it to court. And just be upfront with people on what your process is going to be to evict if you don't

pay and then stick to it and don't make it personal. Stick to it. I think everyone who's a landlord right now needs to rewind the last like three minutes and listen to that again because like those are like our two two biggest rules in the world for like managing properties, right? It's like screen tenants and then be fair, but, you know, be a firm but fair is what we say. Be firm but fair. Yeah, firm but fair.

And it'll benefit you if you end up, if you end up, you plan on growing too. And I mean, that's how we have to be as a management business. It's nothing personal. We have to treat everybody the same. We don't make exceptions. Everybody's going to be treated the same and we'll give everybody the chance to get caught up.

But if you don't do what you agreed to do, then we outline the steps that will happen to you. Perfect. I love that, love it. I think I'm actually making a blog post about that soon. Like three, I'll call it three rules for making your management a thousand times easier.

And yeah, it's a screen tenants. I would say manage expectations, which you said, right? Let them know ahead of time and then be consistent or affirm, but fair. Do those three things and you'll be a hundred times better than every other landlord. And that's, and that helps you systematize too. That's how we grow. I mean, in the beginning,

I was micromanaging that stuff myself. The only way you can grow and pass those tasks on to other people is other people who work for us now know what the what the eviction process is. So when tenants call and complain because they were served this late fee or that, they can just politely tell them, this is the process. They don't need to speak with me about that anymore. Exactly. Yeah. This is the, we use this. This is, is a policy all the time. I love that phrase. Yeah, this is what our policy is. Oh, okay. Nobody questions the policy or the fact that I wrote the policy. They just, yeah, they don't ask that. I hope none of the renters are listening so they don't call in the office

and say, can I talk to who wrote the policy? Thanks, Frank. All right. All right, moving on. We got to close this show out here in a minute, but before we do, let's get to the world famous. Famous four. All right, let's get to the famous four, the same four questions we ask every guest every week. Question number one, what's your favorite? real estate related book? Real estate related book. I'll go back to something you said earlier where business books are or something about business being real estate. So I don't have, I've read real estate books, but none of them are as valuable to me. It's just business books that I've read. I would encourage people that are interested in getting into this to read business books as well. So I'd probably

have to mention more regular business books, which I guess I'm kind of skipping to your next question, I think, right, is favorite business books. But, One that jumps out to me that I, maybe because I read it at the good time of my life, I was in college when I read Warren Buffett's book, The Snowball. And that one kind of stuck with me where I was, I had this idea of financial momentum in my head when I was younger. So that just helped me kind of live my life in a certain way to live below my means, to save, to do some of the things that are important for anybody who's trying to become successful. So that's one book that jumps out to me. Another big one. And again, these are ones, I think, because of where.

where I was at in my life when I read them, but I was just out. So I read that in college. I was just out of college when I read Tim Ferriss's first book, four-hour work week. There's a lot of, you know, cheesy stuff in that one, but the big picture of it hit home to me to just kind of, that kind of awakened a little bit of an entrepreneurial spirit in me, too, to look at income differently than just how much can I make for an hour working for somebody else. So that was a good book for me. I recommend for anybody who's kind of stuck or looking to grow or learn a little more in their business life. Yeah, he needs to only work four hours a week because his podcast is like five hours long.

So he needs all that time to be able to interview his guests. I can't disagree with that. Yes. All right. So other than listening to five hour long podcasts, what are some of your other hobbies? Hobbies? So right now, to be honest, four months ago, we had our third child in three years. So, yeah, twins.

So we had twins first. Okay. And then two years later, we had what I call a super pleasant surprise in our life, our third child. Very unexpected. So thank you. Yeah. So our hands are super full right now. And that's one thing we're working on right now is how to get back to some of our hobbies.

You know, that first three months can be pretty insane, as you know. Yeah. But before that, I really enjoyed playing Menzley basketball with a bunch of, other old guys who still think they can play like me and getting still some of the competitive you know side out and exercising so i used to play with some other washed up basketball players and um hardly enough kind of a funny one um my wife got me into hot yoga and i was very against it at first but um yeah it feels great so i'm the only guy in the class 99% of the time but those are a couple of my hobbies yeah not not always

was a bad thing. Number four. It's funny to say that. The first time we went, I said to my wife, I go, where are all the single guys? I mean, this is where they should be, you know? So tip for the single guys out there. Hot yoga.

Hey, David, aren't you single? Yeah. Yeah. I don't see myself into a yoga class yet. You should totally try it. I mean, I'm terrible, David. I'm terrible. So don't, you can do it.

If I get some bigger pockets of yoga pants or like a B on what but cheek and a pee on the other or something like that. Maybe I'll consider it. Yeah. All right. I think we need to do a fundraiser right now. We're going to do a GoFundMe for yoga, bigger pockets, yoga pants for David. All right.

My last question of the day. Jesse, what do you think separate successful real estate investors from those who give up, fail or never get started? I would say that question would be the same for what differentiates anybody who's going to be successful in life. I mean, real estate investing is honestly not that complicated. So to me, it's a mindset. It's the people who are willing to do something different, to do something they haven't done before.

And to like you guys nailed it. I like what you guys talked about saying yes. People that will go do something outside their comfort zone. That's kind of something I preach. A lot of people work hard. I don't think I'm the hardest worker by any means. But one thing that I'm always willing to do is something that I haven't done before. So that's the best way I would answer.

answer that one. Perfect. All right. All right. Tell us where can people find out more about you? Our website is the www.m., Maine, like the state, so main, r-eem-com. And then you can find me on Bigger Pockets, too, just Jesse McHugh. Maine real estate management is the company. It's kind of a long name, but I'm on Bigger Pockets. I chat with people on there. They can hit me up right there. It's a good spot. So. Awesome. All right, dude. Well, this was a ton of fun.

So thank you so much for being a part of our show today. This is super cool. And thanks for doing all the management for me out there in Maine. No problem. Thank you. Keep that going. This has been good. All right, guys.

So thank you so much for joining us today, everybody, for this episode of the Bigger Pockets podcast here with Jesse and, of course, is David and me. If you like today's show, make sure you jump into the show notes at biggerpockets.com. So show 294. You can also, of course, go over to, like, I mean, iTunes or Stitcher or Google Play and leave us ratings and reviews there. But without further ado, David, do you want to take us out? Yep.

This is David Green for Brandon Fly by the seat of his pants, Turner. Signing off. You're listening to Bigger Pockets Radio, simplifying real estate for investors large and small. If you're here looking to learn about real estate investing, without all the hype, you're in the right place. Be sure to join the millions of others who have benefited from BiggerPockets.com.

Your home for real estate investing online. Thank you all for listening to the Bigger Pockets Real Estate podcast. Make sure you get all our new episodes by subscribing on YouTube, Apple, Spotify, or any other podcast platform. Our new episodes come out Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. I'm the host and executive producer of the show, Dave Meyer. The show is produced by Ian K. Copywriting is by Calicoe 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. So use your best judgment and consult with qualified advisors before investing. You should only risk capital you can afford to lose. And remember, past performance is not indicative of future results. Bigger Pocket's LLC disclaims all liability for direct, indirect, consequential, or other damages arising from a reliance on

information presented in this podcast.