BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast - 306: How to Go From a Few Units to Over 1,000 with Monick Halm

Episode Date: November 29, 2018

Are you looking to take your investing from casual to serious someday? Have you ever thought about what it would take to own thousands of units without having real estate run your life? Well, you’re in luck! On today’s show, we interview Monick Halm. Monick’s story will blow you away as she shares how she went from house hacking a duplex in L.A. to owning over one thousand units! Monick’s super simple system for finding others to partner with and invest in her deals has allowed her to scale without creating an overwhelming amount of work for herself. You’ll be amazed at Monick’s super simple formula for using the “three Cs” to find partners, her tips for raising private money naturally, and the effortless way she scales her investing. Do NOT miss her seven step criteria for choosing a new market and how to evaluate an area to find where it is in the market cycle (including which point you want to jump in at). Monick’s story is creative, encouraging, and inspiring to investors of all levels. Don’t miss out on this show filled with practical advice today! In This Episode We Cover: How Monick bought at worst time to get into real estate How she partnered on her first house with a friend and each lived in one side (unique and creative house hacking technique) How she met Robert Helms of the Real Estate Radio podcast and it changed her thinking Her “Three C” system for evaluating potential partners to work with: Character, Commitment, Capacity Her 7 criteria for choosing a market to invest in: Population growth, Job growth , Diversified economy, Landlord friendly, Business friendly, In the right part of the market cycle (rising market), Familiarity How she ramped up her business by getting into syndication Why finding “business friendly” markets will help ensure you have a healthy tenant pool The four stages to a market cycle (and which one you want to look for when deciding when to jump in) How she developed land to create an awesome RV park to satisfy a market with massive rental demand And SO much more! Links from the Show BiggerPockets Forums Become a Guest at the BiggerPockets Podcast The Real Estate Guys Radio Flip or Flop (TV Series) Secrets of Successful Syndication Books Mentioned in this Show Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert T. Kiyosaki Set for Life by Scott Trench Turning Pro by Steven Pressfield The War of Art by Steven Pressfield Fire Round Questions Where to start a syndication? When starting out what was the best way to find partners? Tweetable Topics: “Relationship is very crucial in real estate investing.” (Tweet This!) “Great talent does not cost you money; it makes you money.” (Tweet This!) “Definitely, we’d have not gone where we are now if we were doing this alone.” (Tweet This!) “Your network is your net worth.” (Tweet This!) Connect with Monick Monick’s BiggerPockets Profile Monick’s Personal Website VIP Assets Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Bigger Pockets podcast show 306. Yeah, I'd much rather have like 25%, 50% of a much bigger pie than 100% of a little pie. Yeah. Or 100% of nothing, right? Because if it was almost having to do all by myself, then I would have definitely been limited in terms of what I could do. You're listening to Bigger Pockets Radio. Simplifying real estate for investors large and small. If you're here looking to learn about real estate investing without all the hype, you're in the right place.

Stay tuned and be sure to join the millions of others who have benefited from biggerpockets.com. Your home for real estate investing online. What's going on, everyone? This is Brandon Turner, host of the Bigger Pockets podcast here with my co-host, Mr. David, former prison guard, Green. How you doing, David? I'm doing great. We have an incredible show. You're not even going to talk about prison guard?

Come on. Well, it gets talked about in the show a little bit. That's true. I'm in a much better place in life right now. I don't want to have to go back to talking about prison guard days. I'm hosting the bigger pockets podcast for crying out loud. Full steam ahead here. On the prison note, the reason I brought that up, you guys will listen.

It's towards the end of today's show. And today's show is pretty long. So make sure if you're driving to work, listen to the whole entire thing. Probably one of the funnier moments, I think, on the bigger. Your podcast podcast in like recent memory is when we talk about what we'll call prison hacking. We'll get to it later. But before we get there, David, anyway, what's up to? You've been up to?

You buying any real estate deals? I just closed on one about a week ago. And now I'm focusing more on some of the rehabs that I already have going on. I was able to refinance two more properties and pull money out. I think on both deals together, I only left like $10,000 or $15,000 between each house. and I added about 30 to 40 grand in equity on each one. So I was pretty excited about how that worked out. That was with the Burr method.

And now I'm thinking about some of the stuff our guest talks about. She gets into syndication. She gets into like her seven steps for choosing a market. That was really, really good. She's a lot of actionable advice in today's episode. Yeah. And the three Cs. I love that.

You guys are going to love the three Cs. She talked about raising money. If you guys are looking for like partners or raising money from like private lenders or whatever, like her advice for how to find these people is, some of the best I've heard on the podcast for that. Like really, really good stuff. So listen up for that. Here's the thing about traveling.

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for tax season. You can even automate transfers and move money around without paying wire fees. It's just cleaner. Sign up at baselane.com slash BP and get a $100 bonus. Baselane is a financial technology company and not a bank. Banking services provided by Threadbank. Member FDIC. Let's move on. Now, I want to get to today's quick tip, because I almost forgot it. Today's quick tip is this. Look, we talk about this with Monique later on in the show, but as we're recording this introduction after just recording with Monique. I want to bring up this fact that there are an overwhelming number of males in the real estate investing industry, right? I'm sure you guys have noticed that most of our guests are males, even though I do think we probably ask about

the same number of male versus female. I'd get shot down from female. So my quick tip is this today. If you are a female investor who is crushing it, you've done at least 10 deals, make sure you apply to come on the podcast. Go to BiggerPockets.com slash guest and put your name in there. We want to talk to more female investors. And if you are a male investor, I want to just encourage all the guys out there to remember, like, if there's a way you can encourage our real estate sisters in what they're doing, don't make them feel bad. I mean, we want to make this an inclusive space for everybody, right? So find little ways that you can try to encourage the female persuasion to get into this business because you, I mean, everybody should be able to do real estate. It's the best investment on

the planet. And we want to make sure that everyone's aware of that. So absolutely. And that's really what Monique's mission is in both her business, her life. She's got a lot of really great things I talk about there. So let me, let's just get to that show. Today we're talking with Monique Holm. Monique is a real estate investor who went from doing a few small deals to her first year doing syndication about over a thousand units in one year. It's a crazy cool story.

And you'll learn kind of the mindset shifts that had to happen to get there, how she uses partners in different ways, how she finds markets, how she finds deals, how she raises money. She's just absolutely crushing it. You guys are going to love this. So without further ado, let's get to the interview with Monique. All right, Monique, welcome to the Bigger Pockets podcast. Good to have you here.

Thank you. It's great to be here. Yeah. So let's talk about your real estate story. I know a little bit, but not a lot. So let's dive in. I know you scaled up pretty quickly at one point, but let's go earlier in your journey. How did you get started with real estate investing?

I got started completely. by accident. So I knew nothing about real estate investing. All I'd ever been taught, you know, was to buy your house. So I, you know, as my, my parents taught me about money that you should just go be a doctor, lawyer, professor, engineer. You know, I'm like, that's go to college, get the best job you can and then buy a house. So I became a lawyer. And then after a couple years, I went, oh, I guess it's time to buy that house now. And this was 2005 in Los Angeles towards the top of the last bubble. And even though I had a six-figure salary, I could not afford a house in a decent neighborhood in L.A.

Because, you know, I was looking at. L.A. is crazy. Because L.A. is crazy. And $700, $800,000 is what I was looking for for a house and looking at for a house in a semi-decent neighborhood. So a friend of mine in a similar situation said, well, why don't we buy a duplex? You live on one side. I'll live on the other side. And I thought, well, that's a good idea because I could afford half a house.

And so we went in to look for something. And we ended up, instead of finding a property that had two equal sides, we ended up finding a property that had one bigger unit. It's like it's a big craftsman. And the downstairs is one bigger unit. And then upstairs was a smaller two bedroom unit. And then there was a converted garage in the back. And we both wanted to, we both liked that bigger unit.

So we each took a bedroom in that one, ended up renting out the other units. And then we even had a friend rent out our basement. So we started out like, and then I went, oh my God, these people are paying our mortgage. We're paying our expenses. So I was, I accidentally got into house hacking, not even realizing that was a thing. and so that's how my first for into real estate investing when I met my husband he had a duplex and then we got a single family rental together after 2009 we sold we ended up we lost the property in the in the downturn but we also ended up selling another property and we had money and

we we started to flip flip houses because properties were on sale and we were flipping and And we just learned from those HD TV shows. So it was a lot of like, oh, that looks fine. Let's do that. And after a while, the margins were getting slimmer and slimmer, was getting tougher and tougher to make it work. And we thought, okay, well, let's do, let's get a fourplex and we'll buy and hold. And at that point, I met, that was 2015.

And I ended up meeting somebody who just totally shifted the trajectory of, our real estate investing. So we're trying to find this fourplex in L.A. and couldn't find anything that made any financial sense and happened to meet Robert Helms of the real estate guys radio. So we had a mutual friend who said, you should talk to, you should talk to Rob, my friend Robert. He's the host of this podcast. And he's also done hundreds of millions of dollars worth of real estate investing. Maybe he could give you some advice. And I said, he probably could. So I ended up meeting him in 10 minutes with him just like, totally shifted like a couple big paradigms and changed everything.

So first, so he was asking what I was doing is telling him about the flipping and getting the fourplex. And then I was saying, yeah, we can't find anything that's making any financial sense. And he said, you know, LA is a tough market. I always say live where you want to live, investor. The numbers make sense. And I went, huh.

Yeah. You know, I never thought of that. I never thought about investing outside of where you live. I always thought you had to drive to your property and self-manage it. I just didn't know it better. So literally when he said that, that opened up the world. And then the next thing he said was, and you can get that fourplex by yourself,

but you know, you're limited to your own capital and credit. Alternatively, you could bring a group of ambassadors together and you could get a 100 or 200 unit apartment building. And then he started telling me about the benefits of that. It's like how you could leverage and spread the risks and go further faster. Yeah. And I went, oh my God.

I think my head exploded. I just, I always thought you needed Donald Trump's bank account to do that kind of thing. And I just had no idea that was a possibility for a normal person. So, okay, I want to go unpack all this stuff. This is really good. So first of all, I'll give a shout out to Robert. and the real estate radio guys, like that podcast actually was a huge inspiration for me as well. And in fact, I listened to it so much before we ever started the Bigger Pockets podcast.

Like when I, when I, when I like, you know, became good friends with Josh and I came on board of BP. The first thing I did, I was like, Josh, we're going to start a podcast, just like these guys. Like they were our inspiration. So I will give a shout of. Yeah. If you guys are looking for a good real estate show, listen to the real estate radio guys. They do a fantastic job, really high level stuff. Just very good guys.

We actually need to get them on the show. Anyway, we'll get it. Robert and Russ are great. They became my mentors and they're just really quality people and just, yeah. Yeah, yeah, you need to connect us again. Actually, yeah, I connected with them a long time ago, but we need to connect to again. Maybe I'll bug you for an introduction again and we'll get him on the show because, yeah, super good guys. So, all right, so let's go back to the beginning.

So house hacking this idea, right? You bought this thing. I'm curious. You said your husband when you met him also had a duplex already, right? Yeah. That's funny because I wonder if there's like a thing like, like people who like real estate, like people who like real estate. Like even like you guys didn't know what you were doing, you found each other.

I don't know. No idea. Yeah. He knew a little bit more. But yeah, I was just, it was totally an accident. Even though it was, you know, I had, it was house hacking. I still didn't even put two and two together. Like I could replicate this.

I could do this more. And I was just, I still had in my head like trade the time for money. I'm the lawyer. I just, even though I, I was a miserable. I was miserable as a lawyer. I hated it, but that was all I knew. Yeah. So it just took like, it was like eventually we were doing this.

I was like, oh, this is actually giving me the opportunity to not do that. Great. But that was, I'm not like the sharpest, the sharpest school in the shed. Like it could take me a while to figure it. I was like, oh, I just like accidentally hop into things. It's like, oh, wait, this is cool. This works. That's funny.

I would not as planned. That's funny. as you say, I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed. And you were like, yeah, I just became a lawyer and I was kind of bored. And so I thought, oh, maybe I'll go buy a duplex and come up with the most creative solution I've ever heard where we're each going to own half of it and live in our own half. Like, oh, I'm just not the sharpest tool in the shed. I had to talk to a guru to get started. I think your story is awesome so far, Monique. Like, there's a lot of people that are going to have a lot to gain from what you're saying. Yeah, that's, that's cool. You know, I was actually going to be

a lawyer. I was like, I took the LSAT and like I was like applying to law schools. And then I read John Grisham's book, The Firm. And it was like, you know, like, it's like a fiction book, right? And he just goes over and over and over, like stresses how like horrible being a lawyer is. And I'm like, wait, being a lawyer is not fun. So I started like looking into it. And every lawyer is like, don't be a lawyer. My own lawyer was like, don't be a lawyer.

And I was like, oh, okay, well, what do I do? I guess I'll flip houses. So I would go, okay, so you did the house hack thing. Yeah, good, good. Smart. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Good. Good. I chose the right. My dad still will say to me today. He's like, you know, you could still go back. to law school. I'm like, thanks, dad. I'm doing okay. But walk me through that idea of flipping houses. I mean, where were you doing that at? You were in L.A. flipping? We were in L.A. flipping. And, you know, it's funny since I've found out what the prices are in other markets,

it was like, oh, yeah, okay. We just said we'd sold this property and we had, and we had 600,000 that we could play with. So we bought a few properties. Our first property was just under 300,000, which in L.A. was like, who, that's so cheap. And other markets are like, God, that's really expensive. 1,400 square foot, you know, bungalow. But we just were watching HTTV. We saw all those shows flip or flop and whatever.

And I thought, we could do that. We've done renovations in our house. before. So let's, uh, let's just do it and try it and, and have fun. So we had a good contractor that we'd worked with to do our own, our own homes. And, uh, we, we lucked out. We never lost any money flipping. And I think we, we, we usually made, uh, yeah, 20 to 30% on our investments. And yeah, it was, yeah, it was, it was fun until it just got really hard. I'm really, um, margin shrunk up, yeah. In that market.

Yeah. Yeah, they're kind of this like, uh, ebb and flow in the flipping world, right? Like, like, like, like flipping works really, really well for a while. Like, first of all, it's really hard to flip because there's like, there's, you know, I don't know, the economy is horrible and we were in the tank, right? And then everyone like figures out that flipping actually works. And so then it works really, really well for a short time. And then everyone figures out of the working really well.

So everyone gets into it. And it's then again, really hard to find deals. But they're easy to sell. And then the market. And you can find the deals, but you can't find the money and nobody wants to buy them. And so it's back hard again. So it's like flipping is really good on that incline, right? But it gets.

Yeah, if you find the right market cycle. Right point in the market cycle. And we were in the right point in the market cycle when we started. So what what skills do you think people need to be really good at in order to flip houses? And did you have those? Did you build those? What can you tell us about that? Well, I think, I mean, there are a couple.

things that that make a difference. I mean, first is really being able to understand the market and where it's going. So having a really good sense of where what you're buying at for how much it's going to cost you, just understand the numbers so that you have enough margin that is going to work. And then you have to be really good at putting together a great team because time is money when you're doing flipping because you're not making anything, but you still have to pay for them, pay your expenses. Some, some we did all cash. Others, we got some financing, but you're still paying the financing, paying the property taxes, paying utilities. So, you know, the longer it takes you, the more, the more you're going to lose. So, yeah, you need to have a really great team with you.

So you have to be able to put together the best contractors and they need to work fast. and work well. And then also get a sense of, the question I would always ask is, is this change going to pay, is this going to pay for itself? Right. A lot of people want to go into flipping and make the house that they would want to buy, that they would want to live in, and then they're going to over, over improve the house.

So it's not, you don't necessarily need the nicest materials, the best of, you know, it depends on the area, but you want to make it nicer, but not too nice that you're not going to be able to recoup your investment in the property. So you always want to ask, is this going to pay for itself? That's the same way that Brandon has to figure out how he should be like maintaining his beard. He wants him to be nice, but not too nice to where he like shows up everybody else that comes on the show.

He's in that same struggle that you're at when it comes to upgrading a house. Because if you go too far with it, yeah, then you look like. like a Greek god with a marble chiseled beard. Yeah. I mean, I've been looking at his beard. Yeah. Yeah,

and you get sucked into it. I could have one like that. Like a vortex. That's good. Monique, you said something very interesting. You said you need to find the right partners. And a lot of people are wanting to get started investing in real estate,

just like you. And they just don't know how to take that first step. And in my opinion and Brandon's opinion, and I know yours too now, you know that having a partner is something, something that can bridge that gap. between where I am and getting that first deal. Once you get the first deal, like all the dominoes just start falling in place, right?

Like you met your husband and now the two of you can work together because you each had something separately before. Can you give me an idea of some tips that people should look for in another partner? Like do you have any criteria that you're looking for when you're evaluating with this person be a good partner? And if so, what are they? Yeah, absolutely. Real estate is such a relationship business, right? So who you partner with is crucial. And I learned something from a woman, Beth Clifford.

She's an international developer and kind of a mentor of mine. And she talks about the three seats. And this is something that I learned from her and always follow with everybody I work with. And the three sees are this. So first is character. You want to look for the, what's the character or the person that you're working with? That you have no control over, right? So the character have to be high, high integrity, honest.

They're people that are trustworthy. They're good people. For me, it's important that they are not transactional and not just about the deal and themselves, but really about relationships. So my philosophy is I want to have relationships for life with people. And it's not just about this one deal. I want to be able to do deal after deal after deal. I want a project after project.

I want it be friends. I want to have a relationship with somebody for a whole lifetime and not just like, let's get them in there and then like chew them up, spit them out. And then go next. Right. So they need to be that way as well. So character is first and foremost. And they just need to do what they're going to say what, do what they're, say what they're going to do and do it.

And then actually do it. Yep. Do what they say. Then I look for commitment. So how committed are they to the project? How committed are they, they have, you know, if you say you have a contractor and they like you've asked them to do this work and then they're like, yeah, I'm going to do it. But then they have five other projects that they're also working on. So they're not really committed to you and your timeline. Or you, you know, you have another partner and maybe they're not also committed to the same value. So I, for me, I want to. leave a property and a community better than I found it, not just with flipping, but with every property we have. And they need to have that same commitment to excellence and to leaving something better than they found it and, but and commitment to win-wins as well. So I look for commitment.

And then lastly is capacity. So are they, do they have the capacity to do what you, you're partnering with them for? So if they're contractors and they're excellent contractors, if they are developers and they're excellent developers. If they are, you know, if they're, you're broker, then they're the best broker.

If they're, whatever it is, then that is, they're like excellent at it. They're the best. I've learned that you work with the best. They won't cost you money. They'll make you money.

So I always try to work with the best at, you know, whatever it is that they do. That is so good. That is really good. All right. So, Monique,

what I love about this is when you first started talking about it, I thought we were talking just like business partners, right? We say partners, but in reality, I love that you look at that in a bigger sense, right? Because when you're working with a contractor, you are partnering with that contractor to get a job done. When you're working with a lender, you're partnering with that lender to get a job done. That doesn't necessarily mean just, you know, this is my business partner who's on the top of my business plan, right? This is anybody you work with has got to have those three Cs, the character, the commitment, capacity. Is that right?

Yeah, absolutely. I look for that with anybody. And I guess it's not the legal definition of partner, but if they're on the team, then I consider them a partner in this deal that we're doing. And they need to have those three Cs. I think that's really easy to follow advice for anyone who's asking that question of, well, what do I look for? And it causes this anxiety. How do I know who to partner with? Right. You just break that down really simple. Are they high character? Ask them questions to find out. Do they just care about making money and they're going to? going to take advantage of you or they're not going to hold up their part or are they looking for a lifelong relationship where they don't want to kill the sheep, they want to shear the sheep, get the wool, let it grow back and then, you know, be able to do that again. Commitment, are they, I love your definition of they want to leave it better than they found it, right? Are they committed to doing things the right way and bringing value to the relationship? And capacity, we don't really

talk about that enough, but that's a really big point, right? Like, how good somebody is at what they do should go into you deciding if you're going to work with that person or not. And you said something really smart is like great talent does not cost you money it makes you money and i see that and my job as a real estate agent constantly there's agents who are not very good that really need a deal and their big value is i'll discount my commission more than the other person and you save five grand or 10 grand on the commission and you give up 50 60 70 000 on what you could have made on the house if you had a good experienced agent and it's like that with contractors right you'll get a contractor that'll come in and say, oh, I'm cheaper than the next guy. Use me. And then he goes like six weeks over and your hard

money costs are stacking up and the market turns on you and interest rates go up and you don't get as much for your house because you didn't focus on his capacity, how good they were. You focused on like how cheap they were. So that 3C system, like I bet you could apply it to almost anything. It wouldn't just be real estate. That's really good. Yeah. It's it really is anybody that you want to work with. If you're going to hire somebody, an employee, you look at the three Cs. anybody. And you're right. Yeah. Like you can be like penny wise, pound foolish and try to try to save a, save a buck by going with the cheaper person. And then you end up being screwed. Yeah. It caused you so much more or they're just crap and they don't do it right. And then you

have to go and hire the good person to come and fix what they like what they did in the first place. And so this is definitely made that mistake before. You've got this system where now you're confident fighting partners. You buy some small multifamily deals. You get some momentum going. You kind of understand what you're doing. And then at some point, you've scaled up really quickly because now you're doing some big stuff, right? Can you tell me like what that process looked like with how you scaled up and then maybe how those three Cs translate into the new world that you're operating in? Sure. So it's like I was saying before, you know, I had this conversation with Robert Helms. And I found, you know, he said about bringing groups of investors together.

And I went, yeah, I want to do that, right? That was just like, ding, ding, ding. It lit up in my head. And I went, I went home that night. And I told my husband, like, let's, let's do this thing. Let's learn how to do this. And so we signed up for his syndication seminar. The real estate guys do a syndication seminar several times a year where they teach people that,

how to bring groups of investors together to buy larger properties. And so we went and just loved it. And I thought, yeah, yeah, this is it. This is what I want to do. We started mentoring with them. And we got some other mentors because I realized that if I was going to be taking other people's money and, you know, I had to, I was going to, I was going to, they're going to entrust their money with me. And I really, really, really needed to know what I was doing. Yeah.

So I invested a lot in mentorship and trainings and I think a good at least 60 grand that year and probably more over the course of time to to learn and train. But it paid off. So in that one year, we did some, we did four four syndications. And we did some, we passively invested in some things. and then we syndicated for for deals and we got over a thousand units in that one is that first year wow okay i need to unpack that partnering with other people okay i need yeah i need to impact that first of all uh can you explain to those who don't know what the word syndication means like what is like we're kind of talking around it here what is what is that and then yeah that'll go on from there

yeah so a syndication is basically a group of investors that come together to purchase just a property. And there are usually how it happens is there's a, they're passive investors and active investors in a syndication. So the active investors, sometimes they're called the sponsors, sometimes they're called the syndicators, are the people that will find the deal, bring the investors together, and manage the asset, not necessarily, they're not necessarily property managers, but we'll hire third-party property managers, but we're managing the managers. making sure the taxes get paid and distribution checks get sent out.

So we're managing the asset, managing the investment. And then there are passive investors who pay in to the investment and they'll, you know, say we get an apartment building. That's going to, it's a $5 million apartment building. And we are raising $1 million of equity or like for the down payment and another million dollars for capital expenses. I'm just throwing out some numbers. So we're raising $2 million for this property.

Then, you know, in $100,000 increments, we get 20 people to put in $100,000 each. And they just share in the returns. So the active investors will put it, we'll do the work and manage it. And then the passive investors put in the money and it comes back with friends. That's awesome. That's basically a syndication. Yeah, syndication is really powerful. Because you're bringing together and creating a win-win situation, right?

So you've got people who have money. You know, a lot of times we talk about this thing and I put it in the book that we, Josh and I wrote recently called the deal Delta is this concept. And it basically says that in any deal, you have to have three things. You have to have knowledge to know what you're doing. You have to have hustle. In other words, the person getting things done. And then you have to have money.

But in any deal, you don't have to be all three of those things, right? So what I love about syndication is that it says, hey, I'm going to have the knowledge. and I'm going to have the hustle, but I'm going to bring in other people for the money. And those people are saying, well, I don't have time for the hustle and maybe I don't have time for the knowledge or maybe they have the knowledge, but no hustle, but they have money. And there's a lot of people, especially in today's world, that have money. You know, the stocks, their stocks have done great. Their house has shot up 500 grand in the last few years.

They've got this cash and they're like, well, what do I do with it? So what they do is they, you all come together and the syndicator, which is what you're doing is you put it all together. You make all the magic happen. It's very, very powerful. Now, the downside, of course, is you're sharing your profits with a lot of other people, right?

Well, I mean, yes and no. So, like, most people they have, to say you have 25,000, 50,000, 100,000 to invest in a syndication, but you don't have the whole thing to buy an apartment building. Yep. So you're also able to leverage other,

even as a passive, you're leveraging other people's money to be able to get into it. And then your money might be, making you 10% 12% you know and it's it's without you doing any work it's coming back with friends so

a lot of people are very happy to invest in that kind of deal when I started I thought that it would be really hard to find the money they thought oh gosh you know people why would people want to give me money to do this kind of thing I have the same

fear they're not giving me money it's not a It's not about me. This is what I've learned. It's never, ever, ever about me. They're not doing it for me. They're not gifting me anything. They're doing it because they want their money to grow.

And this is an opportunity for them to grow their money. And they're so happy to have, you know, where it's like a bank account. They're lucky if it's making 1%. The stock market is really, really high. So if you're going to be putting it money now, it's, you know, like you try to buy. low and buy high it's not a good time to buy and you know on average it'll make 7% but it's like it really depends on when you you know that so this i don't i can get it go into the stock market why it's not as good an investment but let's just say that people want to have their money in real property

and they want they want to be making and then they're all the tax benefits too that that accrue to real estate investing and you can get that and even as a passive investor so people are happy to get their money in working. And finding the money is the easy part. It's really, it's finding deals that make sense. That's, that's more challenging. There's something I really like about what this syndication model that you're describing. I know it's easy to get hung up on.

Well, I don't want to bring in investors because I'll give up a piece of the deal. And that means the profit, right? And in any, any deal at all, there's two things going on. There's what you're earning. There's the money you're making. And there's what you're learning, which is usually even more valuable. and because those two things rhyme, it sounds like it has to be wisdom when I say it,

because obviously if something rhymes, it has to be true, right? But in this case, it really is, right? So when you're a passive investor, you're earning money and you're not doing any work and you don't necessarily have to have any knowledge, right? But when you're the person in your seat, Monique, not only are you earning money,

but you are the one who's getting the knowledge. That's probably the most valuable thing in the entire deal. And you're growing in your understanding, in your experience, in your wisdom, and your capacity to now go earn more money in different ways because you got the experience, you built the relationship, you were the one managing it all. And there's way more value in that than just what you're earning, right? So that's something I think people should keep in mind.

Don't just get hung up on a giving away part of the deal. Like I don't like to invest passively in other people's deals as much because I feel like I miss out on the learning. Like he's making the relationship with the broker. He's finding the lender. He's understanding how agency debt works versus private money. He knows what a bridge loan is. All I know is whatever my little like quarterly statement says of how things went and I get my money back

passively. So for those who are interested in syndicating, I think that that's something to consider. You're the one gaining all the experience and that makes it much more powerful for you when you're in that position. Now, for those people who are hearing this and they're thinking, okay, this sounds good. Tell me a little bit, Monique, about what a typical conversation would be like when you're talking with someone's new who could be interested in investing with you. How do you find those people? How do you like bring that topic up? it's obviously you're not standing in line at Safeway and like, hey, you look like you have a Gucci purse. You probably have money.

Would you like to invest in my deal? Right? Like help people understand what it looks like to casually and naturally bring this up. Okay. I will. But can I make a point first about something you just said? You actually can learn a lot as a passive investor. So we started, we got our, we started as passives in order to learn what it's like to be a syndicator.

So we learned by putting, you know, coming into a deal. and being alongside and going, okay, how are they doing this? What are they doing? You actually can learn a lot as a passive. If you have that desire to learn, then I think being a passive is a great way to learn what works and what doesn't work from the active side. Yeah, I think you have to be like actively seeking to learn, right? Like, you have like, yeah, it's a huge opportunity.

Like, I invested in a deal a month ago, two months ago, something like that, somebody's syndication. and I have literally chosen not to learn anything from this. Like I've just been like, I don't want to know what you're doing because I'm busy with this other projects that I'm working on. So like I've chosen not to, but if I wanted to, I could learn. I mean, I did learn a lot just in the process of, you know, vetting the deal and stuff. But like, it's all, what I love about that is that you can choose, right? If you want to learn more about syndication, put money into somebody's syndication and then ask

questions and watch them and learn. Exactly. Yeah. And learn that way. And you should, you need to know enough to invest in the syndication, right? So I would not take money from somebody. This is partially answering the next question you had just asked. But I don't want to take money.

I cannot, like legally, I really cannot take money from somebody who does not understand the deal. They have to understand how it works and what their money is going to be doing. what the risks are because there are always risks with any investment. And so I will spend a lot of time educating my investors or potential investors to make sure that it is a fit for them and that they understand what the deal is and they understand what the risks are because, you know, you can't just put in your, oh, wow, that, like, well, Sheila seems like a really nice person. I'm just going to write her check for $100,000 or whatever, or, you know, and then just go,

yeah, that sounds good. You can't invest that way. You really need to make sure that you understand the deal. And so you're going to learn, you need to learn enough to know what is a good deal for you. I just want to put that out. And so I think the question that David had asked was, how do I find investors? Yeah. And so a few ways.

Most of my investors have actually found. through different real estate groups. And those are the easiest investors to work with because they are educated. They understand real estate. They understand the deal and they understand why they would want to invest in real estate. Not everybody knows why would you want to invest in real estate. I was an attorney. I went to Ivy League school.

I was joking before. I'm not stupid, but I really did not understand real estate or that was something that I would want to look into or try to do. I just had no clue about it. So when you are, and I, when you're talking to somebody who has no clue about it, then it's a much bigger hurdle to try to get them to understand what is real estate investing. What is this indication? Why would they be interested in doing that. So there's a lot of educational steps that you have to take before you can get them, you'll, well, I'm not get them to invest with you. Like I'll be, I'll take their money. And it's a lot easier for people who, you know, are already they get real estate. And they're like, okay, that makes

sense. I get it. I have this extra money. It's in my, it's in my self-directed IRA. I can't, you know, I can't be active with it. I have this passive money. let me invest it with you. So probably 80% of my investors I've met through real estate groups. And a lot of them are syndicators themselves. They just some of your, you know, a lot of it would be self, self-directed retirement account money that they can't put into their own syndications and they'll put in other people's syndications. Yeah. So a lot of them are that way. And then the other 20% have been friends and family. And then also, um, some, um, some, um, you know, people that are, I've met through my group.

So I have a group that I created for women, real estate investors, real estate investor goddesses where I, it's education, inspiration, mentorship and sisterhood for women who want to invest in real estate. And through that group and through women who train and understand syndication, I have, I've gotten, I have investors from there too. So in other words, networking. Like you You put yourself out there You go to local events

You talk with people You teach people You help people And people naturally want to invest with you That's awesome Yeah basically That's it And then I look for the same

Three Cs in my investors As well So they need to be Good character And part of that Is being easy to work with But also just like Honest

and they do do what they're going to say, which is they don't have much to do, but still, like you say you're going to wire the money. Yeah, they better wire. Yeah. Just like, just like, and then like a commitment to the deal and knowing that we are all about helping leaving a property and community better than we found it and not necessarily trying to squeeze out the most money. we do want to make money, but, you know, we're not going to be slum lords or anything like that in

order to do so. So it's not always about how do you make the most buck, but how do you do it well? And then capacity, they just need to be able, like I said, they need to be able to understand the deal. They need to be able to understand what they're getting into. So, you know, and legally I'm required to either have people that are accredited and or sophisticated. So they have to be sophisticated enough to understand the deal. So if they're not sophisticated, I can't, I legally, I can't take their money. Yeah. You said something I think that's very powerful and I want to make sure that we don't skip over it. You said, do you need your investors to do what they say they're going to do? I know there's so many people that are looking for the secret sauce, like how do I get successful in

business? How do I get deals? How do I get agents or brokers or wholesalers to bring me the deal before someone else. I swear if there's one thing I've learned that's more important than anything, it's just do what you say you're going to do. Like, I can't over-stress this enough. You can be the most boring, weird, odd person, but if you say you're going to do something and you do it, people like that. Well, I mean, obviously, people who can't do this overcompensate by growing a beard, right? And it may work at first, but eventually you get exposed. However, Beard will only take you so far. That's exactly right.

Randy, can we tweet that? Beard will only take you so far from OD after today's show. That's our two-do-old coat. Right. I like, so like I found as a real estate agent, the number one thing I can do to screw up getting somebody's business is to say,

hey, I'm going to get back to you on this. I'm going to do this thing and then I don't do it. And it's never nefarious, right? I found for me, it was always when I'm driving in my car. And I'm like, I talk to a person.

He's like, yeah, I think I want to sell my house. I don't know what it's worth. And I say, hey, no problem. I'm going to look that up and I'm going to get back to you with some comparables, right? And then I just get on a phone call. And then I'll use another phone call and my mind goes somewhere else.

And I get back to the office and I totally forgot I was going to do that. And then two weeks later, I'm like, hey, I'm so sorry. I want to get back to you. And they're like, you're a flake, man. They just do not trust you. You cannot recover from saying you'll do something and not doing it. So I had to develop a system where I would get somebody else involved so I couldn't mess it up, right?

I would immediately say, I need you to email me and say, David, can you run comps for me? And I forward that email to my assistant. She puts it on a to do list. Now I don't forget, right? That one little change that made me do what I said I was going to do leads to like closing way more deals. And that's something other investors should understand is if you reach out to an agent and you're like, I want to buy a house. Send me houses that come out. And you make them do this work. And then you don't buy the houses that match your criteria. They're just going to stop bringing you deals completely. So Monique, like it's great advice. Just if you can only take one thing from this show, it's don't make a promise that you're not going to deliver on and don't say you're going to do something and then not do it. You're better off to just not tell somebody that than it is to tell them and then not do it. Something that I also want to make sure that we touch on here that you've mentioned several times is you're investing in, like you said, I live where I want. I invest where it makes sense. And obviously I'm a huge proponent of that because that's the book I wrote. It's about that very topic. Like you should be investing where the numbers make sense, not what's convenient for you with.

where you live. One of the questions I get asked more than anything else is, how do I know what market to invest in? I know my market. I don't know those markets, right? So can you give us a general idea of your criteria for when you're trying to figure out what could be a good market to invest in what you're looking at? Yeah, absolutely. So I look at seven factors when I'm choosing a market. And when a market has all seven of these factors, it's hard to lose in that market. And when a market doesn't have it, it's hard to win. So the first is population growth. So people, people are moving in there and the population is growing. You have properties, you need people to live in your properties or you need people to work in your properties. And so you need the population is growing.

You're likely to have tenants. Hand in hand with that is the second factor, which is job growth. So the people are coming. They often come because there are more jobs. But the people, the people, people that are there will have jobs. They'll be able to pay to rent your properties. So job growth. The third is a diversified economy. So you don't want to be in that one factory town, right? That one or even that one industry town.

It might be have like several factories, but it's all like that one industry. And then that one industry is devastated and there goes all your jobs. And Detroit. So it has to be pretty diverse. You want lots of different types of industries, lots of different types of companies, big companies, a really strong, robust, diversified economy. So that's number three. Number four is landlord friendly. You are a landlord.

And so you want to be in a market where it is easy to be landlord. I live in Los Angeles. Los Angeles is not very landlord friendly. It is so tenant friendly. And then, you know, but we'll contrast that where we have a building in Dallas, right? So Dallas is very landlord-friendly. In L.A., if I have a tenant that stops paying, then it could take me upwards of nine months to get rid of them because it's just really hard to have somebody to have a tenant evicted, you know, even if they're not paying rent. Contrast that with Dallas, usually within three weeks, they could be out.

So when you still have to pay your mortgage and you still have to pay utilities and you still have to pay property taxes, the difference between three weeks and nine months can be the difference between you keeping your property and losing it. So landlord friendliness really helps. And then business friendliness is number five. So a business friendly market, A, is more likely to have the job growth and diversified economy. But you are a business as, you know, when you have real estate. And so that can be tax, that has to do with the taxes and it can have to do with regulations. And it just is easier to do business there. So personally, it's easier for you to do business in that market, but also other businesses

will be more attracted to that market and that'll contribute to job growth. So that's number five. And number six is the market cycle. So there are four parts of the market cycle. A market is rising. So it's, it's grow, it's really growing in jobs and population. And it's like it's on, it's on the rise. Then another cycle is hot, like booming market.

So it's, it's kind of gotten there already. And it's just hot, hot, hot. There is a lot of action going there. But it tends to be on the, on the expensive side. And because it's just very hot. And then the next cycle is a declining market. right it's on the the population is going down the the jobs are going down and so on the decline and then you have a stable market so it's not really rising or falling it's just stable and steady so i like to

invest in a rising market that's when you're most likely to find the best deals when it's hot you deals can be found generally that those are more about relationships if you have good relationships you might be able to find deals but it's that's the most challenging and then declining obviously doesn't have the other market factors you need. And then the stable market, you could, you could do too, but it can be hard to make that one grow. So I like a rising market. And then last but certainly not least is familiarity. So you or one of your partners really needs to be incredibly familiar with the conditions on the ground. Because you can say, okay, Dallas is a great market, but not all the neighborhoods in Dallas are equal. So some, some places are really chic and she,

she and they're, they're class A and then other places are like war zones and you don't want to be there. And then, and then even between, like, you could be in a decent market, but you're in the, I mean, decent submarket, decent neighborhood, but you're in the wrong block. Yeah. Or you're on the wrong street. And sometimes that like the difference between being a one block versus another block can be the difference between having a successful investment and an unsuccessful investment. So you need that familiarity and that level of familiarity with the market. And all of those things contribute to a successful investment for me. That's really, really good. The seven factors for choosing market. And in case you guys are listening right now, anybody listening

and didn't get to write that down, you're maybe driving, just go to biggerpockets.com slash show 306. Again, biggerpockets.com slash show 306. And we will actually, we'll list those out there as well. And of course, have links to, you know, everything else we're talking about today. But I was to make sure, if you're driving, don't, you know, text and drive and try to write the stuff down. So, really, really good stuff. Yeah, finding a market. So go into that. Can you tell us a little bit, you know, that first year, you said the first big year of syndicating, you bought four properties and over a thousand units during that year. So where are these located? Where are some of the markets you found success in? And what are these properties? Are they multifamily? Are they commercial properties?

What are they? So the first one we did was a mobile home park, actually, in Jacksonville, North Carolina. And then we had some passive investments in Atlanta and Dallas. And then we syndicated two apartment buildings in Albuquerque, New Mexico. And then we got another, we syndicated a development project in Lake Charles, Louisiana, development of an RV park, or course housing RV park. And so all of that happened in that first year. That's cool. So mobile home park.

I did not know that. Like I bought one recently and I really, I really, really like mobile home parks right now and just kind of digging them. What made you want to go with a mobile home park? So it was about finding the right partner. So we found, I just, I had met a friend through being out networking who is big into mobile homes. And he had several and he was doing another one.

and asked if I wanted to sub-sindicate the park with him and said, yeah, let's do it. I like mobile homes. I like that they are, I like that you, actually, I like the parks. I like that you can own the land, but not necessarily own the home and the tenants will own the home. And that they tend to stay a long time. And they are really, it could be good cash cow properties. So I was sold. That's awesome.

Yeah. Same reasons. I like that a lot. Okay. So you're finding deals by finding partners, right? Is that the kind of the primary thing? You're working with different people who can. So would you say your role primary focuses on the money raising side or what would you say like you, like your favorite part of the thing that you do the best is in these deals? Yeah. It's more on the, it's more on the money raising side.

So that we do have. So on the Albuquerque properties, we have been running those. deals managing the assets more. But on the other ones, we've been more on the money side and investor relationships. Yeah, that's awesome. And again, like it just shows when you get these larger deals, like if you're talking about like these large, you know, you did a thousand units in a year, it's okay to like you bring in people who are really good at certain things. Like what's their like their, what is their, I know you call it a genius or whatever? Like what are they really good at? And you're really good with, you know, for example, that part of things. Maybe somebody else is

really good at finding a mobile home park or they're really good at, you know, you know, you know, whatever it is that people are good at, right? So that's the beauty of a syndication. You bring together really top-level people to work together. And who cares if you split, you know, the deal two ways, three ways, four ways. Like at the end of the day, if it's a big enough deal, you're probably better off than doing it by yourself. Would you agree?

Yeah, I'd much rather have like 25%, 50% of a much bigger pie than 100% of a little pie. Yeah. Or 100% of nothing, right? Because if it was almost having to do all by myself, then I would have definitely been limited in terms of what I could do. Definitely would not have accomplished. I don't know.

I may have gotten that fourplex. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Definitely would not have gotten anywhere near where we went if we were doing this alone. So yeah, I'm much happier to get a smaller piece of a much larger pie. I think that there's some wisdom packed into what you're saying that involves like a mindset shift that experienced investors. that are doing deals have understood. And newbies that are trying to figure out

how to make their way into real estate haven't quite got, right? So Brandon has this analogy of if you have a lot of tools on your tool belt, you can tackle a lot of projects in a home renovation. So you're not confined to all I can do is paint cabinets. So I have to find a house that has everything great except for cabinets, right? If you've got all these different tools, you can be more flexible and flexibility, it builds wealth. Do you have more options, right?

And the same would be the case for, like a professional sports team that has a lot of different offensive weapons. They can do a lot of different things. And I think a lot of newbies, they start off just thinking, this is what I'm comfortable with. And I'm just looking for something that meets this little scope of what I can do. Like, I have this one hammer and I have to find a house that only needs nails to be hammered in. And that is not how the good investors think. What they think is what resources do I have available? And how do I use those, right? Like, that's how the best coaches would think as well. last year we ran the ball a lot,

but this year my running back got hurt and we're not that good. Our offensive line doesn't block very well for running, but I have some great wide receivers and a really good quarterback. Let's find a different strategy to put an office of game plan together that takes advantage of my weapons. And they adapt to their environment. They don't try to find one thing in the environment that would adapt to them.

And it's like that when you find a partner. You could start off thinking, I want to flip houses like what you're saying, Monique. And then you come across this partner who's very wealthy and knows mobile home parks, but they just don't want to put time into it. And you realize, wow, I just got a great wide receiver. What place can I run that would get that person the ball and help our team win? And your whole business model shifts based on the talent that you have. But you learn a whole bunch.

And now you have that in your tool belt. I understand mobile home park investing. And you find another person who's a great contractor and trying to get their business off the ground and they're going to give you great deals or maybe do the construction work at cost so that they can have a part of the deal. And you're like, heck, yeah, I'll go flip houses because my remodels. half as much as the next persons, right? That's how business actually gets done my successful people.

And as you're listening to this, that's what I want you to understand is don't try to force your round peg into a square hole. You got to go get a square peg if that's what you're looking at. Like Monique has understood, I live in L.A. I'm working really hard to find one stinking forplex. I do not like wasting my time. I'm a lawyer.

My time is worth a lot of money. I'm smart. Why don't I just go where there's a bunch of round holes for the round peg that I have that I can make it work with. She comes up with her criteria for choosing a market. She shares it with us. Now you can go to where it makes sense to invest. And that's just kind of what I want people to understand about why Monique was successful. She knows she's smart, but she was flexible. She said, well, I'll take what the resources I have available to me are and I'll go apply them in a way that makes sense. And now she's building wealth and doing some huge deals. And I just, I have a lot of

respect for the way you've gone about this. I think you're doing it really well. And a lot of people should be encouraged. If you think like Monique thinks, then you'll have the same success that she does. Wow. That was like the longest analogy I've ever heard. Yeah. Sorry. What I really want to know is tell us what one of your deals looks like, right? I'm really curious to see how you put one together. So if it's okay with you guys, why don't we move on into the deal deep dive and dive deep into one of Monique's deals? Deal deep dive. Wouldn't it be great if your house plants paid rent while you were out of town? I mean, they've got the whole place to themselves. lots of sunlight, zero responsibilities.

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All right, let's get to the deal deep dive. These, or this is the part of the show where we dive really deep into one particular deal that you've done. So, Monique, do you have a deal in mind that you want to talk about today? I do. I want to talk about the workforce housing RV park development deal. Oh, that's cool. All right. Like Charles, Louisiana. Yeah. Perfect. Perfect. All right. So let me, let me go through these seven questions. Me and David can kind of go back and forth, I guess. I'll go first. What kind of property? I guess that's pretty obvious you just said it, but I'll ask it anyway. What kind of

property was it? It's actually really interesting because this property was we don't own the, we don't own the land. It's actually a land lease that we have a 15 year lease on with option to extend to 20 years. And, but we're, we got a, we got the land permitted for a RV park. And this is a, this is in a market where there's a huge amount of development happening. So maybe that's not maybe. There's a hundred and 18 billion dollars worth of new construction projects happening in Lake Charles right now. And so there's tens of thousands of construction workers coming into that market.

with not enough housing. And a lot of them are highly paid construction workers. They get, they're making $80, $100,000 a year. And they have a per die. And they like to take their per diem, get a RV and then be in an RV parks. They can pocket some of the money. But there's all of the RV parks in that area are 100% full. And there's tens of, like there's tens of thousands more people than there's spots.

So they, we, we had this, our, my partners got this land leased and got it permitted. And we, we were able to, um, to develop this park. That's cool. Very nice. I really like where you're going with this. Okay. How did you find this deal? So through relationships.

So I met the developer at a conference. Just, you know, we kind of dated a little bit. Like I got to know each other. I was able to assess like his character and, you know, like the three Cs. And just thought, okay, he and our other partners on the ground, two incredible women developers down there. And so we all met and thought, okay, this is a good fit. And we like, we love the project.

We love them. And it's like, okay, we're going to raise, raise money for this project. So that's how we found it. So speaking of money, how much. How much was, now this might be a little different because it's a land lease. I mean, you're renting the land. But how much, tell us the numbers of the deal. Okay.

So we're renting the land for $15,000 a month. And the development cost was, we're $2.7 million. And we syndicated the debt. So we syndicated all the money to develop the land. And we, it was, it's an interesting way of organizing this. particular deal or structuring the deal. So the investors are have a debt interest at first. So they're they're actually being paid 6% on their money while we're we're about to open in two weeks. So it's still been in the development stage. But they're they've been able to get

interest on their money. And then once their interest is paid off, which would be within three to four years of our doors opening, then they convert to equity. Okay. And then they, So they'll get their money plus 6% and then it converts to equity. So that's how that deal is structured. Awesome. Awesome. Okay. Go ahead, Brandon.

No, you take it. You take it. You said, you were starting to go. I was going to say, how did you negotiate it? Like, tell any negotiation stories in that, in this deal? So, yeah, there was, so in terms of the negotiation, there were negotiations about, like, the lease and the development.

And then negotiating. how we came into the project a little later, right? So at this point, they already had the land permitted. So it was about negotiating what, how do we, how do we fit into the deal? So it was partly it was a certain acquisition fee for the money we brought in, plus a percentage of the deal on the back end. Cool.

Okay. Now, you mentioned a little bit about that you funded it with syndication debt. Was there any other kind of funding that you used for something other than developing the land? So the money was, yeah, it was all for development. So we had to bring in the utilities. And we put in a general store, a little, an office and a laundromat into it. But mostly it's just it's like a glorified parking lot. And actually, I really like that because the people that are leasing are not our tenants.

So it's really, it's a parking lot laws that govern. So people don't pay. They just get towed. There's no, you know, they don't have to get. Yeah. I like the easiest eviction ever. Yeah. Yeah.

You know, they call the tow truck and off their towed and that's it. So that's kind of cool. But the money was pretty much just for the development. Plus, you know, a couple of the, the, the, ease and then we set aside a certain percentage for interest payback as well. So that people, you know, often when you invest in a development, you don't get any money until the development is done and complete. But the way it was structured is that the investors were getting 6% since day one.

Okay. That's cool. So then what's the plan? I mean, normally I say what did you do with it, but this is in process. So what's the plan? Like, we kind of combine this one and the outcome. Like, what's the next 5, 10, 10, 15, 20 years look like with this deal? Yeah. So the, um, when we open this coming month, I don't know when when this is going to

broadcast. Maybe we'll be open by the time, uh, the podcast, uh, is, is out. But it's going to, it's, it's actually almost 100% pre-leased. So our doors will open. And we, we have it set up so that the 70% of the profits goes to pay back. the investors until their money is converted until they're they're all paid back plus 6% and then it converts to they convert to equity and then it's 50 50 at that point and our plan is just to hold it for 15 years and then if it's still going strong in 15 years and we'll we'll do another we'll extract our option for the next five years after the that. Everybody should have their money back within three or four years. So then it's just

infinite return. It's just cash flowing. And it's a very highly cash flowing property. So it's really nice. All right. Well, what lessons kind of last of the deep dive? What lessons have you learned on this whole deal so far? So the first is relationships. Relationships are everything. Our relationship to get into the deal. But like most developments, there have been some development delays. We were supposed to open in the spring. Various things have happened with utilities and neighbors. So it's it got delayed until November. But one of the main things that we have going for us there are relationships on the ground. So really great relationships with the city council, with the planning commission, with, you know, it's just the relationships that we've had allowed us to get the, get the permit in the first place.

nobody else has had, has been able to get a RV park permit since, since us a year and a half ago. And it's just everything is about relationships, especially there, but I think in real estate in general, your relationships are, what is that? Your network is your net worth. They're everything, especially with development. And then the next thing is, you know, that you can be creative and how you structure. a deal. You know, a lot of our investors, they, they just want, they wanted their money to be able to work for them. You know, they don't necessarily want it to be put away for two years and not get

anything back. And so you can structure the deals in such a way so that you can meet everybody's needs. So, okay, your money is in it, but you're still making 6%. And then it opens up and then you're making, you know, 20 plus percent. So it can, you can be creative and how you structure. So that, those are the, the two main lessons I got from that deal. That's a really good point. The relationships are what's going to make money. I was talking to another female investor, Rizaline, she's in the Bay Area here, and she owns a couple properties and kind of house hacks them and gets, she basically only has to work like a third of the time because she has so much money coming in. And she reminds me a lot of you. And she talks a lot about how there's a lot of women that are afraid to get into investing because

they think they don't know enough. They're going to be taken advantage of by a contractor. They don't know how the numbers work. They think because they're a woman, no one will take them serious. But I would say that there's probably an argument to be made that women in a lot of ways have a natural advantage when it comes to developing relationships. Like you're just better at it a lot of the time than guys are. We're kind of brought up to not do that. So once you grasp that, like, that's actually an asset that will help you as a business person and put it into play, you can turn it around from thinking, I can't do this because I'm a woman to. I'm going to do this better because I'm a woman. So I wanted to ask you a question that,

be a little odd, but it's still something I think about all the time. Why do you feel like more women don't invest in real estate? Yeah, I've thought about that a lot because, you know, when I went to my first, that first syndication seminar and I was like, yeah, I love this. This is amazing. That's how you really build wealth. I, you know, maybe at a 120 people, nine women were in that room. And most of the real estate events I go to is very, like the numbers are like just like that. It's, you know, 90, 90 plus percent male. And I think that there are a few, few reasons. And you touched on one of them. I think it's fear. But I'll say the first one, though, is that women don't, a lot of women just don't know that it's an option for them, like me at the beginning. I just,

it's nothing. Nobody ever taught me or told me anything about real estate. I just always learned. you go to school, you get a job, that whole like rich dad, poor dad thing, right? I just, I had like middle class dad and mom, right? That's all I learned. And so I just didn't even realize that universe was out there. So that's, I think a lot of women are in that boat. And then the second one is they may know that it's out there and it's a possibility for them, but they don't know the how of it.

They don't know what steps they need to take. And so the how is what keeps them paralyzed, even though they could go to bigger pockets and learn. And there's a lot of information out there. But, you know, get figuring, like having it broken down for you and being guided, I think, you know, it helps a lot. But a lot of women just don't know where to go exactly. And then there's, they may know the what and they may know the how, but then this fear keeps them from going, this fear that they're going. this fear that they're going to be taking advantage of, this fear, that they're going to lose money, this fear. And I think that the antidote for that is community and sisterhood and relationships,

but having, you know, mentorship and support and models and seeing other other people that look like you that are doing it and that are successful. And I can say, yeah, here, I've, I've done it. And I can show you how. And do you know of a community meant for? women, business people and real estate investors that you can recommend. How funny you should ask me that. I actually do. There's one that I started called Real Estate Investor Goddesses just for that. Because as I was going around, I realized that there just were so few women in the game.

And I don't think communities like yours are amazing. You guys have so much information. And obviously it's not unfriendly to women, but a lot of, it's just there are a lot of men that they see. And a lot of women just don't see women that look like them. And they're just not sure that it's for them and they feel intimidated. So having a community that is all women where we learn together, where we support one another, to sisterhood. I call it my antidote to the old boys network. It's our sassy sisters network.

So we can support another work together. Also, we are still working with the men, but just having this community to lean back on and learn from and be supported by. So that's what real estate investor got. Real estate investor got us is all about. That's awesome. So last question before we move on. What do you see the future look like for you? Like, where do you more syndications, bigger deals, smaller deals?

Like, where are you headed? Yeah. I just more and bigger. but doing more on the investor side and having just being a conduit for investors, especially women investors and deals. So really helping people who have money to invest, find the right deals for them where their money can grow and do what they want it to. That's awesome.

Love it. Love it. All right. Let's move on to the next segment of the show, which we lovingly refer to as our Fire round. It's time for the fire round. All right, let's get to the fire round.

These questions are direct out of the Bigger Pockets forum. So there are real life people asking real life questions and we're going to fire them at you. Number one of the fire round. Hi, Bigger Pockets. Can anyone point me to a direction? Where do I start a syndication? Like, I know it's a very general question,

but like if they're just like, They're like, okay, I'm going to syndicate. What do I do first? Who do I talk to? Get educated first. Okay. You need to, I mean, it's not necessarily something that it's not going to be your first deal, I'm assuming. You're going to have some education, you have some experience in your belt.

But when you want to get syndicated, you need to get educated. And I would recommend where I learned from the real estate guys and going to the real estate guys radio. They have a syndication seminar. Secrets of Successful Syndication, which is a really great place to start. Syndication has a lot of legal requirements. You can't just go out and take people's money. You're going to need legal support. You're going to need mentorship.

You're going to really need to know what you're doing. I would not do it without getting the right lawyers, the right team in place, and knowing exactly what you're doing. You don't want to take anybody's money without knowing what you're doing because you could win yourself free rent in a penitentiary. There are a lot of legal requirements. So make sure you really get educated and learn before you get started. I have a really, really good idea.

That's really good, by the way, but I have a really good idea. The next book that David, David, you and I should write a book together. And Monique, you can help with it. We're going to call it, we're going to call it jail hacking. It's about how to get financially free by committing and a felony. that the government takes care of you for life. Financial freedom. This is, why have I been working so hard?

Word for the whole rest of time. Yeah, you would never have to work again, at least not for more than like nine cents an hour. You may have to work. Making license plates. This might actually be the perfect partnership to do it because Monique can be like, here's the strategies that you should use to syndicate. You are a lawyer. Yeah.

Brandon can handle like, let me show you how you can. can market while you're in prison. And I can be like, hey, I was a deputy. I worked in jails. This is how you avoid getting shanked while you're doing it, right? Like we can hit every topic and jail hacking could be. Well, I'm thinking, David, you were a cop and Monique, you were a lawyer. And I was just causing trouble.

So the three of us should figure out how to get life in prison without actually doing any real damage. So this is best selling book. All right. All right. We're doing it. Great idea. It could be the sequel to Set for Life and Carcuration for Life. How did jail hack your wife?

of financial freedom. I like this. Indicate cigarettes. It would be so good. We're going to do it. A lot there. All right. Thanks. We're doing it.

Next question, Monique. When running the numbers on a multifamily deal, any suggestions on what average appreciation I should consider? I've heard inflation has been around 3% for the past 100 years. So should I just use that? Okay. I think you need to look at the market. So I look at the historical.

data in that particular market and, you know, look at it over the past five, ten years. And I just use the historical data, but it is a market specific. Yeah. I can't give you like a. You can't say use 2%, 3%. Yeah. I think that's the best answer. Yeah.

It's market specific. Look at the data. Very good. Cool. All right. Number three, I love this one. How do I find a mentor? No one seems to want to talk with me.

That's like a real problem though people have, right? Like they're excited. They're new. They're young. And like they just can't find anybody that wants to actually like spend all their time talking real estate and teach them what to do. How do I find that mentor that's going to teach me everything? Yeah. Right.

So usually instead of thinking about like yourself and how they can help you, it's often helpful if you can think about how you can help them. Right. It's like there's somebody that you want to work with. You want to learn from. You think, how can I add value? to them. So some mentors, you, they'll, little, you can, they'll mentor you, but you just have to pay for their mentorship. So you're adding value by paying for it. And then other times maybe you can go, okay, you do this? I found a deal. So I will, I will bring you the deal, give you a cut, a big cut,

maybe even the majority of it, right? And you just, and I'll learn from you while we, while we do this deal together. Or, you know, you find out what they, need what they're you know what what would be helpful for them and then see if you can bring bring something to a table so um you know some people will just give for no reason but they're not going to give a lot of time generally because people are busy but if you can think about how can I add value to them then that that that'll be the best way to get them to help you i love that you said that like like no matter what like value is exchanged in a mentorship and it might be your pain for it That's where some people pay $10, $20, $50, $100,000 for mentorship.

And some people find another way to pay for it. Maybe it's through Starbucks on a small scale or maybe it's through, you know, helping that person relive their childhood. You know, who knows? Like there's something that has to, like there has to be a reason for both parties to want to go do something. And I think the question itself, you know, nobody wants to talk to me. I think you hit the nail right in the head. Like they're looking at from the wrong perspective. Like I keep asking everybody to, you know, teach me everything they know.

Well, of course. Like, why would they want to waste their time? Yeah. Just be other focus. So, you know, what I, what I've learned from my mentors is it's never, ever, ever, ever, ever, about you. Like, really, if you can make it about the other person and think about how can you serve them? Or what's the Zig Ziglar quote?

You can get anything you want as long as you help enough other people get what they want. So really be thinking about, like, how can I help other people get what they want? And then you'll be able to get what you want. Okay. So last question of the fire round, I actually want to ask each of you. And I'm just going to expand on the one that you just responded to, Monique. Give me an example of the wrong way to approach somebody looking for a mentorship so that our listeners can avoid doing certain things. Yeah.

Okay. So I don't, I don't know you, but here, I have this. I heard your podcast and I like you. And I have this deal. and here's this like a 30 page deal that I would love for you to analyze for me. And, you know, and let me know if I should invest in this. It's just going right into like here. Like or.

Here's a job. Please do this job for me for free. And then I'll call you my mentor so I don't have to feel guilty about asking for this. Yeah, exactly. Because isn't it great to be a mentor? Yeah. You love giving back. It's like, yes.

And. That's funny. That's funny. I'm going to go with the, I've had this a few times. Like, you know, the random email that's,

hey, I'm wondering if I can pick your brain, first of all, which is the phrase, right? I want to pick your brain. I live three hours away from you. Can we meet halfway?

I love that one. I'm like, no, I'm not going to drive an hour and a half or a cup of coffee. Like, no. I don't have a car right now.

Can you drive the hallway? No. No, no. Yeah. It would literally be cheaper for me to mail you the Starbucks car that you were going to buy my coffee. To drive all the way there to meet you. Yeah, to pick your brain. My favorite is when they're like, hey, I want to bring value to you.

So tell me what you need and I'll see if I can do it. Yeah. And like you're now putting responsibility on me to figure out what are you good at? And how can I train you for free to do something that I would have saved time had I done it myself? So that's very good. Like, don't be that person. that wants to develop a relationship and you put the onus on the person you want to mentor you to figure out how to do it.

Like put the onus on yourself to figure out what you're good at, what you can bring to the table and see if that's something that will work for them. Yeah. All right. I love it. All right. Well, that is the end of our fire round. Now it's time to head over to the last segment of the show, which we call our

Famous Four. All right, let's get to the Famous Four. These are the same four questions we ask every guest every week. And we want to see what you got to say, Monique. Number one, what's your favorite real estate related book? My favorite real estate related book is probably the rich dad, poor dad. I like the little, the classic. The classic.

It got me. Well, yeah, it helped shift my mind a lot. So yeah, the little purple book. Great. What is your favorite business book? My favorite business book is going pro by Stephen Pressfield, which is sort of business, sort of artistic, but you read it. It's short, but it kicks your to kiss. So I've read the first one, right?

I've read The War of Art by Stephen Pressfield, which was, it's in my top three books of all time, I think. It's so good. It's great. But turning pro, turning pro is, it's even like you'll read it and it's so good. And then you're going, I'm going, like, like, out. Like, out. Like, I, wow. It just beats you in the head with what you're not doing.

But in a good way, in a good way. It's brilliant. That's awesome. I'm going to totally pick it up today. Okay. Tell us about some of your hobbies. I am a yogi, so I love yoga. And world traveling is probably my, that's my, that's my, that's my favorite thing to

just hop in a plane and go somewhere. Favorite location? Favorite location? Well, Thailand is one of my favorite. places in the whole world in Paris for different things in Buenos Aires, but also now Sydney, because my husband's from there, my in-laws are there, and I'm just, I love going to Sydney. Super cool. I've not been to Sydney on my list. You need to. Go, go when as soon as you can. All right. What sets apart successful investors from those who give up, fail, or never get started?

mindset it's really it's how people think you know their beliefs about themselves their beliefs about money their beliefs about just what what they can accomplish and deserveability you know ultimately if somebody feels that wealthy people are bad or money is bad they're not going to do what they need to do in order to become wealthy if they think that they are not deserving some way fundamentally, then they're not going to be able to ask or, you know, go get into those relationships that are crucial because they're going to think, well, you know, why would anybody want to work with me? So it's really about helping to, like having the right mindset and it can be shifted. But if you feel like, oh, I couldn't do

that because no one's going to want to work with me or, you know, or any of that. If any of that comes up, then it's a, you have a mindset issue. That's so good. Yeah. Well, cool. All right. Final question of the famous four. Where can people find out more about you? Really the fifth question of the famous four. Yeah. It should be the famous five.

I know. It doesn't flow as well. Anyway, where do people find you? They find me. The best place would be to go to real estate investor goddesses.com. And that's for the ladies. Go to real estate investorgottesses.com. And you can find me there.

And for anybody else, else who wants to find me just in the investor side, you can go to vip dash assets.com. That's my investment syndication website. Awesome. All right. Well, good deal. Monique. This has been a fantastic interview.

It's been a lot of fun learning from you and kind of hearing your journey and your story. So, you know, can't wait to see where you head off in the future. And I admire what you're doing, you know, quite a bit. I mean, the fact that you're doing syndication is super cool. The fact that you're inspiring women across the world. I know you mentioned earlier you have like this mission. to help a million women achieve that financial independence, right? Like, that's just so cool.

So keep it up. You're doing awesome. Thank you. Thank you very much, Monique. This has been great. And one of my favorite podcasts that we've done. I appreciate you being on here. And with that being said, this is David Green for Brandon, the overcompensating beard

turder. 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.

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