BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast - 32: Luxury House Flipping, Finding Deals, and Discovering Your Niche with Will Barnard

Episode Date: August 22, 2013

Many house flippers focus on small, cheap properties – but on today’s show we look at the other end of the flipping world: luxury house flipping. Our guest today, Will Barnard, is currently flipping multimillion dollar homes in the Southern California market, but the lessons and tips he shares can help any investor in any stage of the game. Will shares his story of how he got started with real estate investing and built up his business that has covered buy and hold, land development, flipping, and more. This episode covers a wide variety of topics that are sure to entertain and inform – so sit back and enjoy! We’re really excited to bring you this interview. Read the transcript to episode 32 with Will Barnard here. In This Show, We Cover Working with family when starting out The infamous occupant from hell… The transition from low-end flipping to high-end flipping Where Will believes the market is going When the 70% rule applies – and when it doesn’t How to find comparable sales for unique homes When to use architects and interior designers The crazy story of the “Seven Figure Spread” flip Working with Real Estate Agents And more! Links from the Show Forum thread about the recent Gmail changes  Will’s Occupant from Hell Story on the BiggerPockets Forums The House Flipping Calculator on BiggerPockets DocuSign Ink App EchoSign How to Negotiate: 7 Real Estate Negotiation Tips by J Scott Books Mentioned in the Show Trump Style Negotiation by George Ross Real Estate Finance and Investment Manual by Jack Cummings Tweetable Topics: “Simplicity is key. Buy right … that’s where you’ll lock in your profit.” (Tweet This!) “Real Estate rules are guidelines, not hard and fast. They are not silver bullets.” (Tweet This!) “Everything you do in real estate- it’s all about the negotiation.” (Tweet This!) “There are a lot of hurdles in real estate. It is a roller coaster ride.” (Tweet This!) “Experience is the Best Educator.” (Tweet This!) Connect with Will Will’s BiggerPockets Account Will’s Website: www.BarnardEnterprises.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Bigger Pockets podcast, show 32. You're listening to Bigger Pockets Radio, simplifying real estate for investors large and small. If you're here looking to learn about real estate investing, without all the hype, you're in the right place. Stay tuned and be sure to join the millions of others who have benefited from biggerpockets.com. Your home for real estate investing online. Hey, what's going on, everybody? This is Josh Dork and host of the Bigger Pockets podcast. Today I am here with my co-host, as always, Brandon Turner.

Hey, Brandon. Hey, Josh, what's up? You need some hot tea, buddy? I might. Do you hear it in my voice? You don't sound too good, man. I don't know. I woke up with kind of a scratchy voice. I kind of went to bed with one too.

That's all right. I'm a whiner. I'll get over it. A little bit. As Queen once said, the show must go on, my friend. Queen? Show must go out. Thank you.

The show must go out. Yep. Yep. The show must go. Can we continue? Please. Yes. Anyway, yeah, man.

Well, I'm sorry you're feeling sick, but we're all happy that you're here for this episode. So let's move on. It's going to be a great show, and we'll move right into the quick tip. All right, today's quick tip. Gmail. Lots of you guys are using Gmail. They made a major, major change recently, and just want to let you guys know about it. Essentially, what they did was they took your inbox and they said, hey, we know your inbox

better than you do, and we're going to break it up for you. So they took all your mail and they broke it up into a bunch of different tabs, including promotion tab. I don't remember what all the different tabs are. But essentially, if you've got newsletters that you like and that you follow, those are probably now not going into your gym. email inbox. They're probably now going into your promotions tab or one of the other ones. We've got instructions on what you can do about that. If you actually want to see things like

our newsletter appear in your inbox or our notifications and other stuff, you literally will go to one of those messages in your promotion tab, drag it into your inbox. It'll say, do you really want to do that from now on? You say yes and you're done. Again, we've got a video, link to a video and instructions in the show notes. So definitely check those out at biggerpockets.com slash show 32. But that's today's quick tip to ensure you get all the important newsletters and email you want to get through Gmail, not just ours. Definitely want to check out this post that we put together on the forums. That said, we're going to jump right ahead and get into the show. Like I said, today we've got Will Bernard. Will's a friend of mine. He's been around

bigger pockets for a really long time now. He is, he runs a company. called Bernard Enterprises based in Southern California and has experience in almost every aspect of real estate investing, including spec building, fix and flip, rehabbing, wholesaling, landlording, short sales, land development, notes, and on and on and on and on and on. So we definitely are going to want to cover all that stuff today. And we're not going to get into detail into all of it, but he's got a ton of wisdom. So definitely pay close attention. you're going to learn a lot.

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Before your next acquisition, review your insurance. Talk to NREG and get investor-specific coverage from specialists who actually understand real estate at NRE.com slash BPPod. That's N-R-E-I-G.com slash BPPod. With that, let's bring him on. Will. Welcome to the show. Good to have you.

it going fellas it's going good yeah yeah real good i'm doing better than brandon though you usually are yeah that's how it is actually weren't you guys both of you complaining right before we uh started recording about how sweltering hot it was and i just want to say it's it's 72 and there's a light breeze here i'm doing well right now you two are so nice for you brandon yep yep all right man so southern california real estate that's what you're doing today let's let's let's go back a little bit what did you do before you got into the into the game um well uh i started out um as a young age i was i've always been an entrepreneur so i've kind of had that entrepreneurial spirit and i started my business at 20 years old i ran an offset printing company and i did that

for over 10 years i still do a little bit of a little bit of it on the side when i was a boy yeah when i was a boy. So while I was doing that, I had an interest in real estate and I really, really wanted to get going on that. I really enjoyed it. So around 2000, I was out looking at houses because I wanted to buy them, fix them and sell them. And at the time, the only thing I knew about in order to how to take it down was to go to a bank and beg for money and get a loan. And at the time, I didn't show a lot of income. I was self-employed. I'm trying to not show income, if you would, as a as a business owner. The IRS isn't listening.

Don't worry about it. Thank God. Thank God. So anyhow, I didn't think I could get a loan and I never pulled the trigger. And so fast forward four years later, 2004, I finally said, you know what, I've got to do this, come heck or high water. And so I pulled the trigger and I started learning everything I could about real estate. I was when real estate events. I was reading books.

I was perusing the internet, found BP. in 2006, I think. And that was a huge jumpstart for me as well. And the rest is history. I've been doing real estate ever since, and I'll never go back to anything else. Nice. Nice.

All right. So let's talk about the very beginning of the real estate career. How exactly did you get started in terms of deals? So let's walk through that first one that you did. Certainly. First several deals were all buy and hold. They were all done with partners, and I had very little to none of my own money in the first several deals. And all of those deals were all out of state, mind you.

Texas, to be specific. Nice. How did you find Texas? Do you have family there or something? I did have family there, and I did talk to my aunt and uncle and tried to get familiar with some of the areas there. I initially was interested in the San Antonio area, and that's where I did end up investing. my first seven or eight deals were there in San Antonio. But it wasn't because of family.

It's because I researched the market. And it was a very stable market. It was growing. I saw opportunity for cash flow. And so that's why I went on after that area. And how did you end up deciding, hey, I'm going to go in with partners and start doing real estate that way? Because I didn't have my own money to buy $100,000, $200,000. our houses so I needed partners and so that was my avenue. Okay and you found them by doing what?

First partner was my father, my mother, so family. I'm a big, a lot of people we've had this discussion a million times on BP. Some people say never do business with family. Some people say you got to do business with family. I'm of the opinion that if it's possible you should do business with family but you should also do it right and I think what sets me apart where you hear the horror stories of doing business with family is that they don't protect the other family member or somebody else in that relationship is somewhat shady I don't happen to have that situation and I always protected the assets as if they were all a hundred a thousand percent line so there were never any issues right right right gotcha okay so you so you started you had

some family, they came in, they were your backers, and presumably you handled the rest of the business. You got the money and you did everything else. Precisely. They funded it. I found the deal. I analyzed the deal. We closed. Then I placed tenants, fix, do everything I needed to do. And I ran all the finances and all that stuff. They just supplied the money. How did you structure that then? I mean, did you offer 50-50 or was it just case by case. It was 50-50. We formed an LLC in Texas, as you should always form your entity in the state you're doing business as, or register an entity as a foreign entity doing business in that state. Anyways, I did that and we were 50-50. So my father was 50%

owner of the LLC, and I was 50% owner of the LLC. Okay. Yeah. And you know, a lot of people complain they don't want to be a partner because they don't want to lose half the deal. But I I would say like it's better to have 50% of a deal than 100% of no deal. And I mean, a lot of people just say, yeah, I think it's, I love partnerships. I love them. I use them almost. True words, we're never spoken. Now, if you can get away with keeping 100% absolutely. But if you can get 50% of something, 50% of something is, like you said, better than 100% of nothing. Yep. Yeah, definitely. So let's talk a little bit more about this partner thing. So you kicked it off. You partnered with family. As you've kind of come along, have you continue

you to use partners to finance your business or did you eventually just stop doing that? I did partners up until, well, I still do partners now, but going back, I did partners up until about 2010. After that, everything, because I switched my business from Texas, I got rid of everything. I sold all my rental properties. I own no rental properties at the moment. I do own notes. Anyways, all my business moved to Southern California when the market changed. And that's when I started doing rehab flips. And other than one partnership, everything was done all me 100%. However, in the past year or so, I've been doing some really, really big deals.

And I've been doing a lot more deals than I used to. I used to do one at a time. So now I will, on occasion, bring in somebody who's got money and they'll finance a deal. And I'll bring them in actually as a partner. But I'm very choosy on who I picked to do that. They're very experienced like I am. Gotcha, gotcha. Okay. No, that's great. That's great. Yeah. Cool. I know we want to talk about those bigger deals, which we'll definitely get to.

But before we do, I'm wondering, like, you mentioned on the forums one time about a property that you're having a lot of trouble with. I think you call it your tenant from hell story or something like that. I'm wondering if you can, what you can tell us about that story. Yes, the infamous occupants from hell story. That is a very long story. story on BP and it's a very long story in my life. That started with a what should have been a grand slam deal. I bought a property two and a half years ago, end of February, and it was subject to. So it had an existing first mortgage with Wells Fargo. I took over that loan. Subject two means you're buying the house, the property transfers title into my name or my business entity, but the loan stays in the previous owner's name. So they're still ultimately responsible for the loan.

That's a subject to purchase. I then brought in about $45,000, $55,000 in change in capital to close the deal. So that's all I had in the deal. And then the idea was offer the occupants cash for keys to walk. And then I'd get in there, rehab it, fix it, and flip it and walk away with a home run deal. As it turns out, the occupant claimed a challenge title, claimed to be married to the party that sold me of the property. Never was. Um, anyways, long story short, I've been two and a half years now. I've owned this property. I have yet to step foot in the property. I've never seen the inside of this property. And I've owned it for two and a half years. Wow.

I spent tens of twenties of thousands of dollars in attorney's fees and I'm not done. Wow. That's crazy. That, that is crazy. It is a very sad story. It's very unusual. In fact, my attorney has talked to numerous attorneys. I've talked to probably 10,000 people between BP and communities I speak at. No one's ever heard of it. It's basically a punitive spouse issue, which is a legal term, and no one's really ever heard of it. And the only reason my attorney ever heard of it is because it was on the bar exam. At least he was paying attention while he was studying. He was paying attention. But no one's ever dealt with a punitive spouse issue. It's something that's never dealt with. And that's where I'm stuck in family court, but I can see some

light at the end of the tunnel. I'm very close now. Wow. Wow. Wow. Well, that's certainly an unusual event. Now, does that change your mind at all on doing a sub two? Or is it just one of those things that happens and you move on? I think it's one of those. I got bit by a shark and struck by lightning all in the same day. So I wouldn't say that, um, I'll be more careful next time and I'll have some things that I will do to protect myself from that. I'll have further disclosures, further due diligence. But in this case, there was really no due diligence I could do. I researched the property was her sole and separate property.

Everything on title was clear. So I did everything I could do. Do you still expect to make a profit after this is all said and done? Or do you think that's gone by now? I'm sure that's gone. I'm praying to God that I can walk away. away, get my private lender paid back, pay off the first, and somehow recoup the money that I put into it. And if I can walk away with a zero-sum game, I'll consider that a home run.

Nice. In this scenario. Yeah. If this would have hit somebody without the financial capabilities, it's like your first or second deal. I mean, it could have potentially ruined somebody. But thank God, I, you know, I had the resources to get through it. Yeah.

Yeah. Wow. Unbelievable. Well, you know, to those people listening, you know, you have to be prepared for anything. And this is, this is unfortunately something that has come up. And it really was out of your hands. No matter, you did your homework, you did your due diligence. So you couldn't have expected this. Yeah. You're absolutely correct. And just a quick disclaimer, I don't want this situation to discourage or scare or add more fear to anyone who wants to do a sub two or wants to get into landlording,

by all means you have to pull the trigger, you have to take action. More millionaires and billionaires are created through real estate than any other vehicle.

So don't let this shy away from sub-toos are a great way to get acquisitions with very little money down. Yeah. Yeah. Well, let's talk a little bit

more about the buy-and-hold strategy. You did that for a number of years. Was there, were you the manager or were you outsourcing that to a property management company since you were doing it at a distance? How did you handle it? Because it was at a distance, I had literally no choice but to hire property manager. And that was a learning experience all in itself.

I did have what I thought was a good property manager. And it seems like every property manager that started out with me was good until six months later or a year later. Speak to the choir, baby. Speak to the choir. Exactly. We've all experienced it and dealing with property managers. You have to manage your property manager and you have to screen them like nobody's business. Do you have any tips or advice on that? I know I've fallen for the same issues. I've had the same problems and I do everything and I can to help people be careful in screening folks. So what are your best tips there? you know if if you're going to invest out of state my my opinion on it is if you're going to do it go all out and do it and in which case because go big or go home um so if you're going to do it

by one or two you're not going to get rich off that you're it's almost more hassle than it's worth my opinion um so my suggestion and one of my very close friends also a BP member he owns a lot of out of state property and i believe the way he did it is the right way to do it. He bought a lot of them. He bought a lot of them at once. And he bought them in partnership with somebody with boots on the ground there. New the market, managed them and has a vested interest. So he's not just a property manager managing your property. He's the owner managing the property. And thus, you create a partnership that you're both in line with the same focus. I think that is key. I don't believe all property managers are in line with your prerogatives because they get paid

When tenants move out and move in and when the repairs need to be made, that's so it benefits them when things go wrong. You want nothing to go wrong. Obviously it's going to go wrong, but you want limited things to go wrong. And when you have a partner that's managing the property, they have the same way of thinking. Yeah, yeah. That's great advice. That's definitely good advice.

A lot of people look at property managers, the same way that they'll look at agents. Hey, an agent just cares about the transactions. You know, they make money if you buy. They make money if you sell stockbrokers. They don't care if you're making or losing money. They just want the transaction fee. A lot of managers are like that. A lot of agents and a lot of brokers are the same way.

So that's fantastic feedback. Yeah. And I guess if you could find another option, if you were going to go big and you're going to get 10, 15, 20 doors, another way to do it possibly would be to find, and this could be risky, but a newer property manager, somebody who started out on their own,

or maybe they've managed with a big company and now they've gone out on their own and they're hungry to get doors, maybe you bring them in as a partner so that they're in line with your goals. Give them, incentivize them, in other words, to keep the costs down. And ultimately, you may pay a little more out of it,

but at least they're operating it as the business as you should be operating. Yeah, yeah, that's awesome. Let's go talk a little bit about flipping in a high-end area because again, I flip houses sometimes that are, you know, $15, $20, $25,000, $30,000, you're flipping houses that are a bit more than that. But to get there, he actually probably started smaller, didn't you? Yeah, I didn't start.

Not to get you off Brandon or anything, but, you know, maybe we should work our way up to the luxury flips, you know, from the beginning. What do you think? Is that a good idea? Sure. I think that's a great idea, Josh. So how did you get into the luxury market then? Let's talk about your transition upward.

Okay, so to talk about the transition, I'd have to talk about where it started, I guess. And back in, as you know, we had the bubble burst. And 2007 here in California, the market started declining and all of a sudden and quite rapidly. And 2007 and eight, it took an absolute beating here in California as it did. Las Vegas, Nevada, Phoenix, Arizona, a lot of the Florida markets, Ohio. Basically across the country, but some of the markets really got hit hard because they went up so high. California was probably one of the worst because it went up so high, so fast. In 2004, you could buy a house here and six months later, it would have increased in value by 100,000 with you doing absolutely nothing, just holding it for six months.

So it was just artificial. So anyways, when it crashed, everything really changed. And when I saw the change, I saw an opportunity. And so I decided, you know what? I need to move my focus from Texas buy and hold to buying here in Southern California in my own backyard, which then gets rid of my managing property managers problem from across the nation and dealing with tenants and so forth and so on. I loved it. So I didn't sell everything, man.

I just started focusing here on rehabs. And I bought a house, one of my first acquisitions. for rehab flips here in Southern California was just north of 300,000 on the acquisition. I could, I don't remember, 60, 70 grand into it. And I turned a really, really nice profit. I then repeated the process multiple times the following year in 2010 and just really started building my business here. And that's when I decided, you know what, I'm going to sell my real estate in Texas and do

100% here. Hey, so I used to live in SoCal, Cal, where do you find a thing? $300,000 house in that market? Oh, all over the place, all over. The San Fernando Valley, Santa Carita Valley, even in L.A., you find houses 300,000. Now, again, we're talking from 2009 to we're in 2013 today, so things have changed. They've gone down, and then they've gone back up, and they're going up right now. Yeah.

So 300,000 today right now is going to buy you a 1,200 square foot, three-bed, two, bath in an older neighborhood. It's about all it's going to get you. But there's still deals to be found is what you're saying. There are still deals to be found. However, rehab flipping is so popular because, you know, it's been on TV. You have the gurus. You have BP, who is a big proponent of real estate investing.

And there's hundreds of thousands of members and all of a sudden, real estate is popular throughout the country. And so you have all these people saying, hey, this is a vehicle that works. I want to get in it. So we have so much investor competition, particularly at the low end levels, the $100,000 to $500,000 level, and especially the 250 to 350 level here in Southern California. If there's any deal that pops out, it's got multiple offers because there's so many investors out there. And then you tack on all the wholesalers or want to be whole. sellers and they're making offers and it's a mess. So it's very hard to compete in that level, in that price point. Do you feel like all those flippers that are buying those up like crazy? Are they

still making a profit on all them or are they paying too much and do you think they're losing out? I think it depends on their strategy. I think a lot of the strategy right now kind of goes back. It's a mix between rehab flipping and the buy and hold for short term like everyone was doing in the bubble. I think they are seeing that the market is appreciating and they're like, okay, if I can buy this now for this price, fix it up, place a tenant for about two years, then refix it up to the retail and then dump it, I'll make a ton of money. So I think there's a lot of this buy, hold, and then flip. So they're overpaying because that's the only way they can get in, but they're hoping to make it up on the appreciation side. And I think that's a crazy strategy.

I mean, I think that's, I think, you know, hoping for appreciation or hoping that the bubble kind of continues, because I will say that we're definitely getting into bubblish kind of territory. And I think it's just a dangerous strategy, particularly for newer investors who may not have the understanding. And I also, you know, worry that when you have a situation where there's a property that that goes into multiple offers and it starts getting frenzied. People who don't have the experience are going to be the guys left holding the bag and ending up with the properties. And they're like, oh, wait, everybody bid me up. Now I've got this property. I didn't stick to my numbers. Now what do I do? Right. And now they're in trouble. I agree. We're going to have a bubble. One of my friends, Aaron Norris, his father is, Bruce Norris, is highly respected here in Southern California. He is pretty much the god as far as, data and research and where the market is going. And I listen to everything he says. I go to every time when he speaks and I get some insight from him. I see it coming. I see another bubble coming, as does he.

We don't know when that's going to explode. And it's not happening for the same reasons that it did in 2006 and 2007 and 8, but it is happening and it's going to blow up. Yeah. Yeah. And so do you have any advice for people who may, be in your market or other similar markets that are experiencing these frenzy situations. I mean, my advice is set your number, stick to it, and walk away if the price goes above it.

I mean, it's pretty simple. But do you have anything else beyond that? Actually, simplicity is the key there. And it's exactly that. It's buy right. Whether you're a buy-in holder or you're a buying flipper, buy right. That's where you lock in your profit. and then you have your cushion if something goes wrong.

So, like you talked about how people are overbying and the market's heating up. Eventually, it seems like in every market, every time this happens, the flippers are the kind of the ones left holding the bag at the end, the ones that, you know, pay too much for property. I mean, the same cycle, it happens and we see it time and time again. So I'm wondering, what are you doing, like personally to prevent against that happening? You know, like, if you pay too much for property, the market drops 20%, all of a sudden you're in trouble. He's not paying too much for the property, Brandon. Exactly. I'm not doing too much for the property A. And I don't think it's the flippers who get left holding the bag. I think it's the speculators. Yeah, I guess. Yeah.

Yep. You're right. What's the difference? I mean, you know, I think some people might think of themselves as investors or flippers or buying holders, but really they are speculators. So what would you define a speculator as? Well, like in 2005, 2006, you grab a real estate map, you have a monkey close your eyes and you throw a dart at the map and you buy whatever property lands on. And six months later, you make 100,000 for doing nothing and having zero IQ. That's just basically luck or speculating and whatever you want to call it. That's not investing. No. Investing is crunching numbers, performing due diligence, knowing your market, having strong. strategies, both entrance and exit.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, but, you know, but the counter to that is if a monkey goes and actually closes your eyes, it might be kind of cool. It might be. Yeah. You would like that. I know you'd like that.

Yeah, you know, I mean, I've never really hung out with a monkey before. So, yeah, maybe one of these days. I hang out with a monkey every day over Skype. But, um, oh, oh, oh, gosh. That was almost as good as my knock-knock jokes. Oh, no. Which I won't bring up. let's get back thank you for sparing us brandon all right so tell us about your first flip so you went

you went from being this this buy-hole guide to the to a flipper so tell us about that first flip deal and then we'll kind of scoge forward to this luxury thing that your your uh your friend brandon wants you to talk about right well actually what led me before i even did the i didn't go from buy and hold to flip i actually started doing uh land development and and spec building in texas before I went to flipping, that really gave me the good background for rehabbing. Because building from ground up and then rehabbing, it's somewhat similar. It's different, but it really gave me my start so that when I did my first rehab flip here locally, I already had experience.

Plus, I did flip one over there in Texas. Well, I had flip a couple of them, and some of them were rentals turned into flips. Gotcha. Okay, so then let's let's, you know, you're killing me, man. I had an order. I had an idea of what I was going to do. And we got to go back now. Right, so back to this land development stuff. Tell us about that. Give us kind of a very

quick overview and preview of what that looked like and why you started doing it. Sure. Well, at the time, I really liked the Texas market, and I'm a numbers guy, and I love to look at properties and crunch numbers. And so I got the idea of purchasing dirt and developing it. So my first purchase was a four-acre parcel. I turned that into it. I turned that into, to 13 duplex units and then I sold off all the lots and made pretty good amount of money on that and I brought in partners for financing on that. My parents were financed a good portion of that and they made great money on that. So I did that and then we started buying an individual lots and building houses on them and we started building duplexes and fourplexes, small apartment

buildings and did whole communities. So what does somebody do to buy up a piece of dirt and develop it. I mean, what's entailed? I know that's, it's a whole podcast in its own right, but, you know, maybe you can give us the 30 second overview of what that looks like. Sure. Well, I mean, a simple thing is it's very similar to buying a house. You're going to look for dirt and you're going to do your due diligence. You're going to run your numbers. You're going to see what the cost is to develop that dirt. And then that in itself has a bunch of due diligence things, which is checking for environmental reports and getting geological reports. So much is going all the way to the fire department figuring out how much, how many

fire units they need on the street. And what the pressure is, if there's enough pressure to deliver that. So there's all kinds of little things and intricate things in your due diligence to do. But other than that, it's really pretty simple. It seems complicated, but it's really not. It's like buying a house. How did you learn about that? Just did it. I didn't, I never read a book. I never did it before. I never talked to anybody about it before. Just decided, hey, this looks like a good thing to do. Okay, okay.

Jump on in and get your hands dirty, huh? Yeah, that's it. And that's, you know, experience is the best educator. Yeah, that's awesome. Got it. That's a good tweetable topic I can put in the show notes. For those who wonder what the show notes are, that is biggerpockets.com slash show 20. 32.

It's show 32. Get it right, Brandon. 32. Yeah. I had to quickly try to. It took you guys 31 weeks to get me on the show. It did. It did.

Wow. You know, and we really should have had you as number one. Well, I mean, I'm so sorry that apologies. You know, we'll write you an apology check. No, no. You saved the best for last. And I'm sorry, everyone, this is the last show. All right.

Not, not really. All right. Let's move on. That's kidding. BP Nation. Thank you. BP Nation. By the way, that was, that was, if you guys have seen that

on the forums. That was Will's term that he started using and now we use it all the time. Yes. Yes. Thank you. Actually, you're not allowed to use it without paying me. That's funny. All right. So, back to the meat. The meat in potatoes. I love it. Yes, here we go. How do you find properties? What are you doing

right now to find them? Right now I have agents who are out searching and then I search myself on the MLS. I used to, from 2009 to about 2012, everything was, for me, was nothing was on the MLS. It was all about relationships. I've preached this on BP to my heart's content. And I was a strong believer in relationships, and that's what worked for me.

I would build relationships with asset managers who would disposition REO properties for the banks. I would have top REO brokers, and they would, send me deals, I'd go look at them, I'd run my numbers and I'd say, here's what I could pay, let's make an offer. And if the BPO comes back and it works for the bank, then they'd shoot in my offer and it would never hit the MLS. Well, they started changing the rules and changing the things, and that went away. So while relationships are still important and you should still build them, I'm not getting the off market before or never hitting the MLS deals. The only way to get that that I know of today is direct marketing to motivated sellers.

And are you doing that? I am not, but I'm just about to ramp up a huge campaign to do that. I'm going to be partnering with good friend Sean Watkins, also a BP member. And he is the king, the god of direct marketing. So I'm looking forward to that. Nice. Nice. Nice.

So what's your plan? Are you postcards or yellow letters? How's that going to look? We'll probably do both postcards and yellow letters and whatever. Whatever he uses and whatever's working for him, I'm not going to reinvent the wheel. I'm going to do what he does. There you go. That's awesome.

And that's really good advice, actually, is don't try to reinvent the wheel. I mean, there's a lot of successful people out there, and everyone on bigger pockets is really open about what they do. I mean, you guys know from the podcast. I mean, people tell everything. So, yeah. Find out what works and just copy that. For sure. There you go.

So, but again, the MLS is where I'm. getting most of my deals. That is, and it's a mixture between that and everything is off the MLS, but it's a mixture between me finding them and agents finding them and then bringing them to me. Can you go into maybe what these properties are? I mean, are you finding that you're putting offers on properties that are brand new to the MLS or are these properties that have been sitting around for 30, 60, 90 a year? What kind of properties are you picking up? Both. Some of them are first day on the market and I'm first in and hopefully, you know, lock and load it really quick. Most of them are ones that have been sitting in the market that were priced either too high and then they had a price reduction or they went into escrow and then backed out and they went back from pending back to active.

A lot of them are where they're just completely thrashed. Those are the ones I love. I do not shy away from everyone likes the, you know, slap the... Lipstick on the pig. Yeah, exactly. Lipstick on the pig. Thank you. But I prefer the bigger rehabs. They take longer and you can call it more risky.

I have a different definition of risk than a lot of people. But that side's the point. The thing is, is the bigger rehabs, there's more money in my opinion. You can add more, create more value with the bigger. rehabs. And they scare away the rookies that can't take those on. So I get in the door a little bit easier than the rookies do. Okay. So on a typical flip, everybody talks about the 70% rule, right? You purchase the property. In fact, we did an interview about the 70% rule, I believe. Oh, no, it was about ARV. But, and Brandon will point to that fun little interview that YouTube on

the show notes. At show notes at biggerpockets.com slash show 5.2. No, 32. I did it right this time, John. So 70% rule says you know you buy a property for 70% of the after repair value minus repairs on these higher end properties are you looking at those numbers or are the 70% rules still apply? How does it work? The 70% rule does apply but not always. It depends. I always tell people rules are guidelines and they're not hard and fast. They are not silver bullets.

I just posted this, I think, yesterday or last night. The thing is, you can buy it 75% and do great. You can buy it 77% and make money. But you can also buy at 70% and lose money. So it depends on your situation. It depends on the investment itself. Here's one of my rules, guidelines, if you will. If you are going to buy at the 70% rule, you are in most markets going to do perfectly well.

Except if you start getting under the 100,000 acquisition or exit prices and below where the after you repair it, the value of the property is $100,000 or less, 70% is going to make you very little to no money, if not a loss. You've got to use the 65% rule or maybe even the 60% rule when you get under the low, lower properties. And then when you get into the super high end stuff, like the $3 million properties, you buy it 70%. you'll probably make money. You will make money, but your cash on cash return might be so small compared to the risk that you took.

In the time, it might not be worth it. You might have to use a 65% rule on a multimillion dollar project. Gotcha. That's really good advice. You have to take the rule into consideration and make adjustments accordingly. And the only way you know those adjustments

is by running numbers over and over again and taking experiences, from people like myself or others or yourself, if you have them, and knowing what works here and what works there. Gotcha. That's great. Thinking about wholesaling or flipping your first property, but not sure where to start. The truth is, deals don't just fall into your lap anymore.

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That's Dominion Financial. Check them out at biggerpockets.com slash dominion. Again, that's biggerpockets.com slash dominion. How do you comp those higher-end properties? I know a property in a 3-2 neighborhood is pretty easy, but when you've got these higher-end deal, there's a lot of intricacies, right? There's a lot of things that really, you know, that stand out, you know, the gold bathtub, right?

Does that add to the value? Does it take away? You know, you've got the infinity pool. Is that good? Is it bad? Are there any tips on comping those higher-end properties? How do you comp high-end properties? Well, how does the turtle cross the road very carefully?

So you are very careful in comping because- Wasn't it the chicken? Whatever. It doesn't matter. Be careful if you're crossing the road. Comping a multimillion dollar property, typically these properties are larger in lot size, and they're typically not conforming. And what I mean by conforming is in a regular neighborhood where you have 50 or 100, three-bed, two-bath, 1,200 to 1,800 square foot houses. In multimillion-dollar properties, you can have one that's 5,000 square feet, one that's 2,500 square feet and one that's 10,000 square feet. So none of those three are comparables. But in the

luxury market, you still have to use some of them to get them because there's not going to be your three solid comps that are model matches because there's no such thing as a model match. So it is a real art form comping luxury market properties. That would be a show in itself to go into that. That's a long explanation, to be honest. All right, cut it, cut it down to 30 seconds. What's the basics? Well, the basics are just like a conforming property is you're looking for the closest you can find. And when you're looking in a conforming property, you're looking within a half a mile typically. In the luxury market, you're going out a mile or even two if you have to because the properties are so big.

So that is okay, as long as they're in the same type of area. You want to take close attention to adjusting for square footage, adjusting for amenities, pools, guest houses, lot sizes, horse facilities, any other amenities that they might have. And then you would want to take into consideration one property might be on a main street or close to it. And because a lot of these big properties are and some of them are way tucked up in the hills or something like that. So you make adjustments for that as well. And then finally, view. View is a huge factor in price. You can have a model match, and one house could be worth $300,000 more just because it has a view of the ocean or views of the mountains.

So you have to factor in all those things and make adjustments accordingly. That's great. That was helpful. Awesome. Awesome. All right. So what kind of upgrades are you doing on these properties? What are you finding are getting you the best bang for the buck on the higher end deals?

On the higher-end stuff, I'm pretty much gutting the inside and starting new and rebuilding the inside of the house and doing every new finish I possibly can. The reason being is most of the stuff I'm buying, it's either an REO or a short cell and it's already thrashed. It's already outdated. I love walking into the house, beautiful area, beautiful exterior, beautiful grounds, and walking into a house with a tub. the pink tile tub. Oh, yeah. You know, the 1960s, the wood paneling on the walls, the dark, dingy, old outdated crap, that's, that's, that's money, money, money.

I love it to see that stuff because I turn that into beauty. And when it's done, it sells. So you're like an artist. You're not even a flipper. You're just an artist. Yeah, almost. It is like that. You know what?

It's funny you mentioned that. I almost considered like trying to take an interior design course because it's that complicated. And as I go from one property to another, one's a Spanish med, one's a English tutor, one's a traditional, one's a modern contemporary. And your finishes have to flow with that. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. And if you mess that up, you're going to mess up your buyer's pool. So you've really got to pay attention to what finishes you put in these luxury houses and what the people that are looking in that area what the majority of them are going to like.

Now are you using an architect to help you with working the inside or are you doing it on your own? No, I don't. Architect would be if I was changing floor plan dramatically. I've moved walls here and there, taken out a wall or flipped one.

I don't need an architect for that. I do that myself. Interior designers? I've hired interior designers just to come in. Ultimately, I have realized that they're just people with opinions. And I seem to work really well with my agent who also happens to have an interior decorating background.

And so between my choices and what I think should go and then her opinion back, we're a great team. And everything seems to flow and work. And it's work for me. You're going to get a lot of hate mail from interior designers, by the way. Probably. That's right. Well, now we're talking about the luxury flip here.

You have a post that's, you know, it's one of the longest posts on Bigger Pockets and about the seven-figure spread flip. Can you tell us about that? Absolutely. That is my baby right now. That is my bread and butter. And I bought that property. I was in escrow at the end of 2010, I believe, or was it 11. Yeah, 2010 on that.

And the bank who owned the property made misrepresentations. represented that they owned the whole property, which consisted of slightly over seven acres, horse facilities, river, stalls, et cetera, et cetera. And as it turns out, when they foreclosed, they made a huge mistake when they did the loan. They only encumbered the house portion of the property. So when they foreclosed, they were only able to foreclose on the house portion. But when they sold it marketed it. Yeah, sweet to who?

The guy that got foreclosed on. Talk about bank air in your favor, collect $200 and pass go. The guy got free land and then encumbered it and sold it. So bottom line is we were in, I said, well, you can't sell me the whole property, so you've got to reduce the price. And they wouldn't. They're like, buy it at this price or what? I said, BS, so I filed a lawsuit for misrepresentation. So long story short, we finally settled out of court.

I got the property for the reduced price that I wanted. Including the land? No, they can't sell me the land. Right, right. Okay. So then I got in contact. with the attorney of the owners of the land and offered to purchase the property. We negotiated back and forth. I got the price that I felt I was comfortable paying, bought it as a separate

transaction, and now I have since then pieced the entire property back to its original size. So now it's the entire property again. And then I've been rehabbing this thing for like a year. I've had a tremendous amount of problems with the city on this property. When I bought the house, It was down to the sticks, down to the studs. The only thing on there was the roof. There was like maybe two or three walls with drywall on it. I'm almost done. I'm about two, three weeks away from finishing this thing.

So I'm really excited. It's really close. It's been a long process. But it's going to turn out to be really, really good. I'm really looking forward to having the final. I'm doing a whole video series on this as well. I had the before stuff done. I had some during stuff done.

I just had some more during stuff done. And then I'm going to have the final once it's staged. That's awesome. I will be posting that on BP in that thread, of course. Okay, well, so, you know, Brandon introduced this as the, quote, seven-figure deal, and I think, you know, I think the loyal listeners would be mad at me

for not pressing and pushing your buttons a little bit and asking you, you know, if this deal is going to turn out to be a true seven-figure deal. So in the end, you've got a couple weeks left after all the nonsense with the buying the two lots and the time it's taken and put this together, are you going to end up over seven figures? Absolutely. That is fantastic.

Well, I will expect a check donation to pick a box in the order of 5% when all is said and done. I see. What did Josh and company do to run that platform? You know what? I don't know. I just thought it'd be a nice gift because you like me so much. Silence. Sit.

No, that's exciting. That's awesome. Actually, as Josh knows, I've been a donor on BP and a longtime member and moderator and definitely will be donating again. Because BP has been a huge part of my education, my growth in my network. You know, the old saying, your network is. equal to your net worth. And I was just busting your chops about that, man. Oh, I know that.

I know that. I do know. But for anyone listening, I'm, I'm, yeah, Willa, will has been on the site for years and years and years and years and years. And we know each other and we've hung out. And so, yeah, it's not like I'm just busting the chops of somebody I just met here. By the way, when's the next in and out of a hookup, man? We've got to get that going.

We do. And obviously Will's. buying. So, that's awesome. Next time I'm in Southern California, probably somewhere around the holidays, Christmas time, we'll do it. Well, I'll make the deal. You buy the airplane ticket.

I'll buy the burger. Nice. Yes. That's a good trade. Nice. Well, I drove by the seven figure flip back when I was down in Southern California. And I didn't get to go inside that one. But I went inside one of your other properties, Will, and it was awesome.

It was awesome. Did you sell that one yet? The other one that was down the street? Well, it's actually in escrow. I'm still in the middle of the rehab. I've completed all the demo. We've got the floors installed. We're painting as we speak.

We're building the kitchen cabinets as we speak. I'm probably a good halfway done with that. But it's been sold since demo phase, which is really amazing to sell a multimillion-dollar home before they even see the finish work. But they saw some of my finish work down the street on the seven-figure spread deal. They know what I do and what I will be doing. and my taste, and so they locked it up, and we're in escrow. That's awesome. Okay, well, that's awesome, man.

That's awesome. All right, so we're going to, you know, we're starting to come to the close of the show, so we're going to go to our fire, fire, fire, fire round. Yes. Oh, that was kind of, that was awesome. Thank you. Yes. So the fire round is where we hit you really quickly with questions,

and you give us brief answers. Most of these questions come from the bigger pockets, forums. So these are all questions. that people have asked on the site. So, Brandon, why don't you kick it off? All right. Brick house, do you paint it? Is it possible or a bad idea? Wow, brick house. We don't have brick houses here in California because they'd crumble. That's very popular in Texas. I never painted over the bricks. I have seen them paint them white and other colors. I prefer to leave the beauty of the brick. But if they're totally thrashed, if you're

trying to go cheapo, then paint them. If you really want it nice, I would replace them. I'll tell you what. In Denver here, there's a blonde brick is really, really popular. It's been around. I guess it's from the clays here or more of a blondeish color. So they built with blonde bricks back in the 50s and 60s and so on. And a lot of out-of-towners hate it, hate it, hate it. So the flippers, at least where I am in the neighborhoods around me are absolutely going and painting it, painting the brick. So it really, I guess, does depend on where you're at. But, all right, so what kind of appliances do you put in? Obviously, I'm guessing probably stainless on the high end, but are you going, you know, on these million-dollar houses, are you putting in like the $20,000 wolf refrigerators that are like super wide or, you know,

what are you doing there? Yes, on the luxury stuff, like on the regular stuff, the three 300, $400,000 houses here. Everything was always still stainless steel appliances. But over here in California, you don't have to supply refrigerators. It's not typical. So I never would. I would do everything but the refrigerator, washer and dryer. It would be the range stove oven, dishwasher and microwaves.

And on the luxury stuff, though, you have to. But they're not just a slide-in refrigerator. They're the built-ins. And they're the double wide. They're the 48-inch and larger. the ranges are larger. You're doing vent hoods every time. So, yeah, it's high end,

and we're talking $20-something thousand dollars for your appliances. Yes. Wow. Wow, that's crazy. That's awesome. When buying, how much do you usually plan on

for closing costs? Do you have a percentage or a hard number you use? Closing costs as far as the acquisition is concerned? Yep. Acquisition costs are so low because typically here on locally, it's primarily customary for the seller to pay title

for each party to pay half of escrow, their portion. And so really you have escrow, some recording fees, a couple of little small junk fees. And everything else is prorated stuff like your taxes and insurance. It's all prorated. I don't count as closing costs. I count them as holding costs because you're paying taxes in advance to hold it.

So the closing costs are so minute, even on a multi-million dollar property, I don't have it. I just, whatever the figure is, I plug it in. Got it. So I don't like use percentages or anything like that. There's no rules of thumb. I just take the actual from the HUD.

Here's my cost and I plug it in. Got it. But the rules I use, like if I'm using the 65% rule or the 70% rule or the 75% rule, that already takes into account those minor closing costs on acquisition and your closing costs on exit. Okay. Perfect. All right. Cool. All right. So have you, how do you, I'm sorry, how do you find a great real estate agent? And do you have any tips on working with agents once you do find them? Yes. Today it's a little bit different than it was several years ago. So I'll kind of go with what I would do today because that's more relevant. I would suggest that you contact, as many agents as you come in contact with, you should talk to them.

you should probably work on agents who have a decent amount of experience. They're not rookies. And the best thing to do really is to form that immediate quick relationship. Get them to like you. If they're not going to like you, or are they going to give you the deal other than anyone else they've worked with over the past X amount of years. So you really have to get in there by proving something and getting them to like you.

And what I do is I prove them, hey, a conversational goal is something like, Hi, Mr. Mrs. Agent. Name's Will. I'm a real estate investor. I'm a real one. I'll throw a joke. I'm a real one. I'm not one of those guys fresh out of a guru camp and I'll try and get them to laugh.

And then I'll go in to say, I can prove it. You're welcome to look up my company. You can see all my closed transactions. And I kind of go there. Now, if you don't have that background, obviously you can't say that. But you can figure out something else to say to joke with them, make them like you, and to get into the door and give them a reason why working with you is going to be beneficial to them.

Well, because a lot of people take the line of, what can I get? What can I get? It's no, what can I give you, Mr. and Mrs. Agent? Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I was going to make a joke there, but I didn't get the opportunity. You know, Will just kept going. Story of real life, Josh.

Yeah. Sorry to give me. Oh, man. I feel like E. I can tell you a joke. Knock, knock. I'm just kidding. All right, Will, have you ever been robbed specifically your property sites?

Yes, one time knock on wood. For extra effect, Will knocked on wood. Yeah, I actually did because I don't like that to happen. I was lucky in a sense that they only took one item for whatever reason. They took my slide-in range and stove, but the brand new dishwasher was there. The microwave was there. I don't know why they didn't take it all. Either they ran out of time, they heard something.

They came through the back door. I happen to have a personal belief that it was an inside job. It was one of the workers, somebody who was there and knew the area, and were just after that one specific item. Got it. Got it, got it, got it. All right. So what about wholesalers? Do you buy from wholesalers?

And what would you want to say to potential wholesalers? I can say that I'm still a virgin that I've never bought a wholesale deal before. come on bring on the joke i i just you know what advice would i give the wholesalers um i would say add value please stop looking on the mLS locking up a deal at or just below ask price and then sending it off to me at or above ask price you've added no value whatsoever you've done no due diligence no research, add value. And you add value by being a good negotiator, by finding that deal. And a lot of people, there's some misconceptions.

We were having this conversation on BP. Somebody was asking about how do you wholesale off the MLS? And I gave some intuition and whatnot. And then one of the responses was, so I guess it's like thought of as bad in the industry to buy off the MLS as a wholesaler. And they missed the point entirely. It's not bad to buy off the MLS. MOS. It's bad if you do it wrong. It's perfectly fine to do a wholesale deal off the MLS, but add value.

Yeah. Yeah. That's awesome. So get a good deal. Get a good deal. Yes. Know your numbers. Learn what the exit value is, the true exit value, not some inflated you wish you could get price and learn how to do evaluate rehab costs. You don't have to be down to the nickel or the dime. You can be within several thousand dollars, but don't say 25,000 when it's 50. Yeah. Yeah, that's true. And that's hard for a lot of people, but. But it's really not. If you put in a little bit of effort, it's really not.

That's really good advice. And one thing, if I could just jump in here and plug something real quick, the Bigger Pockets has a calculator. It's a house flipping calculator. I think it's pretty awesome. It helps wholesalers or flippers be able to look at all the numbers and figure out actually what a good deal is and what a good deal isn't. So anyway, if you are, I haven't tried that out yet,

just go over to biggerpockets.com slash kelk. and you'll be able to play with that. So next fire-round question, equity partners. How should people structure them? Oh, again, very carefully. Involve somebody that you're familiar with. Don't take on equity partners that are strangers you've never worked with before, don't know. That would be one.

Two, I would highly recommend you have everything drafted and drawn up by an attorney. don't try and legal zoom it there's a lot of intricacies there's a lot of things that can happen he can die you could die you could both die who dies first what happens if one goes bankrupt

who's responsible for this is more a death bankruptcy whatever but you have to cover your basis is my point and you're not going to be able to do that on your own without having legal knowledge and the background in such contracts so get an attorney it's part of doing

it's a cost of doing business. Yep. Yep. And that's, you know what, and that advice is probably advice I would, I'd pass on to any and all investors. You know, if you think you're going to get into real estate investing and can skip on paying attorneys, you're, you're crazy. I really think that a prepared investor who takes their business seriously has, has legal counsel prepared from the very beginning. Right.

Yeah, you're, you're just looking for trouble if you don't. It's like buying a house. why would you skip the home inspection? I know, I mean, I know inside and out a house, but I don't skip the inspection or the termine inspection. Why? Because it costs hardly nothing compared to the grand scheme of things. It's cost of doing business.

Yeah. All right. So final, final fire round question, which wasn't really that fiery. Well, it was fiery, but it wasn't that fast. Any tips on using an iPad as a real estate investor? Oh, my goodness. I am in love with my iPad. I knew that.

That's why I added this question. That's like, I don't know, that's the best thing since sex. Can I say that on the air? Sure. I mean, the iPad literally took me and my office wherever I was going. My office is now wherever I am. Recently, I was in Hawaii and I'm sitting off the deck overlooking the ocean on my iPad, logging into bigger pockets.

I can work from wherever I'm at. When I'm at the job site before, years ago, I had my phone. It was a smartphone. I finally got the smartphone. and I could do little stuff there, but it was so small, and it's hard to do. With the iPad, I get all my emails easily readable. I send in back and forth. I could sign real estate docs.

If I get a contract coming in, I can sign them. And not just docusign, but there's better programs out there. There's like a, it's called, actually it's docusines, docusine ink for the iPad. It is fantastic. I can sign all my docs and send them back. I don't have to use paper, pen, and I can do it in the field. That's awesome. Well, your wife is going to be a little.

little upset if she listens to the show. So now we've pissed off interior designers and your wife. But your listeners are going to be really happy about all the great advice you've given. Well, I hope so. And DocuSign is great. There's others like EchoSign.

There's other products out there. I use EchoSign for all my signatures. But I know a lot of real estate folks use DocuSign and various others. So that's great advice. Very, very good advice. Well, we've got to get the close of this thing. I know we could keep talking

and talking to you, but instead we're going to just get to the famous four. I thought you were going to jump in on that well. I'll leave that stuff to you guys. All right. So Will, what is your... Holy cow! Okay, I'm sorry, I have to interrupt

this show with an important announcement. Dead seriously, this is live. I got a text from my wife telling me that Duncan Donuts is opening up in Denver. I kid you not, it is important enough to interrupt the show to tell you. I am such a huge Dunkin' Donuts fan. There aren't any in this entire city. And the fact that there's one opening up, I'm ecstatic. So thank you, Duncan Donuts, for listening to my chanting.

Josh, how much did you get paid for that? A and B, I can't believe that was the excitement. I thought you had like some great, fantastic multi-million dollar real estate. And it was about donuts? Duncan Donuts. And there was no payment made whatsoever. I will plug them till my death. I love that company. I love my love me. All right. Famous Four.

Let's get back to it. What is your... Sorry, guys, put up with it. What is your favorite real estate book? My favorite real estate book. Oh, I would say my favorite real estate book is probably Trump-style negotiating by Mr. Ross. George Ross is an attorney for the man, Mr. Trump, and he wrote a book on Trump-style negotiating.

That's probably one of my favorites because I believe everything you do in real estate, it's all about the negotiation because that's where you make your money. You negotiate a better price, you make better money. You negotiate better product on your rehab materials. You make more money. Everything's a negotiation, and that really, and it's not just real estate. relate to anything, really. Yeah.

Yeah. And I tell you, Jay Scott's got an awesome, awesome, awesome article on negotiation, and we'll point to that from the show notes at biggerpockets.com slash show 32. We'll also point to this and the other books. But yeah, it's definitely one worth worth checking out. And I do agree on negotiation. So great tip. Favorite business book?

Favorite business book? That actually is all. also a real estate book and it's called real estate finance and investment manual. It was written by Jack Cummings. It is a monstrosity of a book like 500 something pages. I have the revised and expanded version. It's everything from finance to how to analyze deals and investments. It is like the Bible for me, but it's really, how should I say, complicated. It's got all the complexities, so that's why I enjoy it. Nice, nice.

Cool. And what about hobbies? I know you've got kids. What do you do for fun? Fun, yeah. The fun thing for me is I still play ball. I play softball a couple times a week. I play tournaments on the weekends.

In fact, I'll be up in Tahoe in a couple weeks playing a tournament in Tahoe. So that's my love since I was negative six months old. I think my mom has a picture of me playing baseball on her tummy. Nice. So that's my biggest love. And then, you know, with the family, we go out on the boat in the summer. We go up to the cabin and Big Bear and go snowboarding in the winter. And spent a lot of time with the family going out.

Nice. We'll come out to Colorado and we'll go skiing. Absolutely. I'm looking forward to that. Yeah. I've never boarded over there. Nice. Yeah.

Yeah, it'll be fun. All right. Last question. What do you think sets apart the investors who do really, really well and succeed from those who don't, who just kind of disappear. Oh, great question. I've always been of the belief that those with the drive and the determination and the, I'm not going to give up and quit, I'm going to go full board no matter what, those are the ones that succeed.

And the ones that get up there and because they think they're going to either make easy money or maybe they don't think it's going to be so easy, but they give up because there's a lot of hurdles in realistic. Let's face it, it is a roller coaster ride. both physically and emotionally. And if you don't have the wherewithal within side of you to get through that, those are the ones that don't make it all the way. Cool. That's good.

That's definitely good advice. I've got one last question for you. You've been around. You're longer than most people we've interviewed so far on bigger pockets. And I think you are a pretty good test study of how to use the site. So maybe really, really, really fast. you can just tell people how they can jump on Bigger Pockets and use it to their benefit as a real estate investor. Absolutely. I'd be happy to, Josh. Bigger Pockets has been a huge part of my investing career.

And when I started out, I didn't have bigger pockets. Had I have, I might have been able to avoid quite a few investing mistakes, including some that I made acquisition side in Texas for buying holds. I would say that some of the mistakes I see often are people that are coming in there and they're asking for things and they're looking for things. And one of the things that I noticed was by being part of the community, asking questions and answering questions and getting to know people and becoming colleagues with people gives you exposure. Then when you need something and you ask for it, you're more apt to get it because people already have that relationship with you and hopefully like you. Use BP as an educational source as far as reading, but don't just leave it there. Get involved. Get involved in those forums. Get involved with colleagues, talk to colleagues.

I have a number of friends. I consider very close friends that are BP members, and quite a few of them I met on BP. A lot of them I've invited to local real estate clubs, and now we're even closer friends because we hang out together in person as well. So use BP as your entire real estate. It could be a resource for money, for funding, a resource for friends, a resource for deals, a resource to sell your deals, a resource to get an attorney, a resource to get a better idea on how to do a certain rehab project, whatever.

Even people with the grandest of experience in real estate can learn from other people on bigger pockets. So staying active and utilizing that site for all those things would be my advice. That's great. That's great. Awesome. All right, man. Well, listen, Will, it's been a lot of fun. I think, yeah, I think we're going to have to do a follow-up. I know Brandon and I have actually talked about that. Thus are, we've done 32 shows with 32 individuals, actually some were just he and I.

But, you know, there's a couple people we want to bring back, and you're certainly on the list. So stay tuned for that down the line. And that's it. Thanks for being a part of the community for sharing everything you've shared. And obviously we're looking forward to hearing about the close of the million dollar house. Right. Well, thank you, Josh. Thank you guys both for having me. I had a great time.

And hopefully we'll do this again. Awesome. Thanks, Will. All right, guys, that was Will Bernard. I thought that was really fantastic. A lot of cool stuff that we haven't really spoken about previously with other flippers and wholesalers. and I don't know, Will does pretty much everything as we said and as we talked about. So hopefully we've exposed you to some new ideas and things.

Thank you very much for listening. As always, if you are not already doing so, please make sure to check us out on Facebook at facebook.com slash bigger pockets, on YouTube at YouTube.com slash bigger pockets. If you want more YouTube videos, let us know, by the way. We definitely want to be putting more out. But let us know what kind of videos you want us to do, and we'll do our best to make those happen.

Otherwise, if you're not on Bigger Pockets, of course you want to join up today, get involved. Being active on Bigger Pockets gives you exposure to guys like Will. I mean, he's on Bigger Pockets every single day. He's got thousands of posts now, I think. And, you know, he's there to help out, as are the rest of us. So definitely get involved and active. and that's that's really about it

by the way Will has 10,204 posts in bigger pockets 10,204 posts that is a lot of time spent helping other people yeah that's awesome and you know the the thing about that is not only is he helping other people

but he's helping himself he's building credibility and that's awesome 10,204 holy smokes wow wow All right, guys, well, that's about it. If you haven't left us a rating, a review, or anything like that on iTunes, hopefully you'll jump on iTunes and do that. We definitely appreciate all those ratings and reviews.

If you love the show, jump on the show notes. Let us know that. Tell people. Spread the word about the podcast on Facebook, on Twitter, LinkedIn, everywhere you can. We're trying to build this show up, help more people out. So hopefully you guys can help us do that. Thank you so much for listening.

I'm Josh Dorkin. Sign it 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. You're 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 Calicoke 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.com. The content of this podcast is for informational purposes only. All host and participant opinions are their own.

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