BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast - 349: Multifamily Flipping and Due Diligence Tips to Save Thousands with Nathan Tabor

Episode Date: September 26, 2019

Apartment flipping from one of the best in the biz! On today’s show, Brandon and David sit down with Nathan Tabor, a well-known multifamily investor who has done 26 multifamily flips in less than 10 years! You will love this informational and oftentimes hilarious episode, where Nathan shares some fantastic advice on how to flip apartments for big returns, what to look for in a deal, and which five incredible pieces of due diligence every investor needs to know. You’ll also love his straightforward direction regarding questions to ask the county zoning department, great advice for raising money, and some mind-blowing insight into who actually owns fire hydrants! This show is a very fun listen with tons of talk about dealing with rejection, finding the niche that’s perfect for you, and applying information you already know. Nathan's story is sure to change your mindset and confidence when it comes to taking action in your life. Make sure you listen today! In This Episode We Cover: How title insurance works How to check with the zoning department to make sure you don’t get burned How to file a claim for title insurance His fantastic advice for due diligence checklists His advice for finding your niche The benefits of niching down How to find your passion and inner focus How to handle the fear of rejection The key to applying information you have in your life already How to flip an apartment or apartment complex Advice for raising money How to understand what a cap rate is Why multifamily may be less risky than single family And SO much more! Links from the Show BiggerPockets Forums Brandon's Instagram David's Instagram BiggerPockets Signup Joe Fairless Denver Conference Loopnet BiggerPockets Podcast 345: “Vivid Visions” and 90-Day Sprints—Brandon’s Approach to Mobile Home Park Investing (and Life!) Up Movie Google Business Template Apartments.com Forrent.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Managing properties can feel like a full-on circus. You're juggling vendors, tracking payments, chasing approvals across multiple properties, and maybe a few HOAs, all while trying to keep tenants happy and owners confident. One delay can throw everything off, and suddenly your day is all clean up, no progress. That's why hundreds of property managers rely on bill to streamline their finances. Bill for property management lets you add all your properties, assign permissions, pay bills, and receive payments quickly and efficiently without the usual bottlenecks.

It syncs with platforms like QuickBooks, Zero, NetSuite, and Sage intact, so your accounting stays aligned. You can automate bulk payments across properties and HOAs. Choose flexible payment methods like Same Day ACH, international wires, card or check, and set custom roles in approval policies. There's even a dedicated bill inbox

for each property to keep everything organized. Ready to simplify your workflow? book your free demo at bill.com slash bigger pockets and get a $100 Amazon gift card. That's bill.com slash bigger pockets. You just realized your business needed to hire someone yesterday. How can you find amazing candidates fast? Easy. Just use Indeed. When it comes to hiring, Indeed is all you need.

That means you can stop struggling to get your job notice on other job sites. Indeed, sponsored job posts help you stand out and hire the right people quickly. Your job post jumps straight to the top of the page where you're ideal candidates are looking. And it works. Sponsored jobs on Indeed get 45% more applications than non-sponsored post. The best part, no monthly subscriptions or long-term contracts. You only pay for results. And speaking of results, in the minute I've been talking to you, 23 people just got hired through Indeed worldwide. There's no need to wait any longer. Speed up your hiring right now with Indeed. And listeners of the show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your

jobs, more visibility at Indeed.com slash rookie. Just go to Indeed.com slash rookie right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. That's Indeed.com slash rookie. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring Indeed is all you need. Here's why savvy real estate investors are obsessed with bonus depreciation. It lets you take that rental property or commercial building you own and depreciate most of the cost against your income. legally, 100% IRS compliant. That's instant cash flow improvement. Cost segregation guys is the number one firm nationwide, specializing in identifying these faster depreciating assets in your property.

They've completed tens of thousands of studies across all 50 states from remote cabins to apartment complexes. So if you own investment property, this is a no-brainer. So visit costsegregationguise.com slash BP for your free proposal and find out how much you could save this tax season. This is the Bigger Pockets podcast show 349. So I'm a compulsive flipper. When I buy real estate, my intent is to sell. So when the economy goes the way it's going right now, I sell everything I have. When the economy goes back down, I start buying, renovating, and I'll sell, but normally I hold until that economy starts to go back up a little bit, and then I sell. 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 Braden Turner, host of the Bigger Pockets podcast here with another incredible episode

of the Bigger Pockets podcast with my co-host, David Green. What's up, David Green? you doing. What's up, BT. I am doing fantastic. These shows are getting better and better. I'm actually excited to go back and listen to this one, even though I just heard it. Yeah, I know. There's so much good stuff in today's show. Interview a guy named Nathan Tabor. Nathan's a guy I met at a conference. He's a rock star. Talks all about how he started investing as an accident. Like, it wasn't even thinking about real estate and bought an 18 unit apartment, his first deal. And then the tragic story of what

happened on his second deal. Listen for that. He talks about how having one five-minute conversation could have saved him from losing like 150 grand. He talks about being a compulsive apartment flipper, which is kind of a cool niche, something you guys will probably like a lot, why the riches truly are in the niches and in niching down. If you're brand new to real estate,

this might be the most incredible advice you've ever heard he gives today. It talks a lot about due diligence and how all the money he's made or lost really comes down to how well he's done due diligence. And then finally, like, he gave me this piece of advice later in the show that literally like was like just genius.

And I'm actually going to go try to resurrect a deal that had died on me using this piece of advice he gave me in the show. So this would help anybody as well. So we'll be sure you listen for all of that and more today on this episode of the podcast. But before we get to the interview with Nathan, got a couple quick housekeeping things to do. First of all, let's get to today's quick tip. All right, very simple quick tip today. Look, a lot of you guys out there listening to the show are awesome.

You know, there's a couple people who probably aren't. But most of you are. Because if you think about it, if there's like a million people who listen, what percentage of them are murderers? There's probably a percentage of you, weirdos out there. Anyway, going back to most of you are great people, you should be on bigger pockets, but I know that many of you do not have a bigger pockets account yet. Guess what? We are having a discount on a free BiggerPockets account.

It's not just free. It's still free. It's still free account. So go make your free account. So you go to BiggerPockets.com slash sign up. That way we'll know that you came from the podcast. Go to BiggerPockets.com slash sign up if you've not yet done so. and join the community of over 1.4 or 1.5 million real estate investors.

And with that, we got to get to today's show. I got nothing else to say. David Green, you got anything to say before we get into this thing? Yeah, make sure that this is when you listen to twice and think of who you can send this to so that you can have a conversation about it. I think Nathan breaks down apartment complex investing to such a simplified point that if you have any interest in doing it, you can do it. And you need to get some accountability in your life so that there's other people asking you,

hey have you made any progress with this yeah yeah nathan's a rock star so with that let's get to the show all right nathan welcome to the bigger pockets podcast man good to have you here hey great to be here thanks for having me on yeah so last time we talked it was that i believe we were at joe fairliss's best ever conference out in denver and that's that's the conference right i went to a lot of this year yes all right so we were there you were speaking uh i was speaking there and i just remember being like blown away with everything you had to say and at the time i was like man we got to get this guy in the show and it's now taking this long to get you because apparently you're a big deal and we're we're honored to have you so dude i'm excited let's go through your story on on how did you

get into real estate like why real estate investing what were you doing before how'd you get into it yeah so honestly i got into real estate through a mistake um serial entrepreneur i've been involved in used car lots and sending a billion emails building websites nutraceutical companies and i was sitting in my office and a gentleman walked in and said, hey, I have an 18 unit apartment complex. I'm literally driving up and down the street trying to find someone to buy it because the bank's getting ready to take it. Wow. So I ran the numbers.

Had never, outside of buying my personal home had not been done any real estate. Ran the numbers. I was like, well, you know, from a number side, this looks pretty good. But I went to five banks that I had banked with before and all of them said no. It had massive deferred maintenance. It had occupancy issues. But I ended up going into a community bank who did 100% financing and 100% renovation in 2006. Oh, wow.

So 2006. So this was right before everything went to the toilet. Yes. And so I ended up buying that 18 unit, bought a 12 unit behind it, renovated it, started leasing it up and sold it through LoopNet. In eight and a half months, I walked away with 220. $23,000. Wow. That's not bad for your first deal. And not knowing what I was doing. Was that luck? Was that luck that the market just helps you out there? Or do you think you learned very quickly? Well, a little bit of knowing numbers from the business side, being at the right time,

the right place, getting 100% financing, 100% renovation, which doesn't exist anymore. Yeah. And then at 2006, the market was still really hot, basically about where it is now, where people were just buying whatever they could get a hold of. Yeah, definitely. It was kind of nuts. So what did you do with that 223 then? So I took the 223 and put it into the second deal that I lost $150,000. Okay.

I took my pride britches and my greed goggles and went into the second deal and missed that the zoning was not right. I was told by three different professionals, oh, this is zoned exactly the way it should be. went to close on it, went to pull my building permit, and it was like, oh, you've lost your grandfather. It's like, how, why? And they said, oh, well, the property divided five years ago and the setback is 40 feet instead of 25 feet because there was another building beside of it. So it took 18 months.

At the time, I didn't know. It took 18 months to unwind all of that. Wow. And 150,000 extra dollars. And I could have avoided all that if I had made one five-minute phone call to the zoning department, instead of, you know, trusting the surveyor and the appraiser and an attorney and just said, hey, can you send me a letterhead letter saying this property is zoned right? So I don't ever buy any other property now without first verifying the zoning.

Can you define what setback means in this case? So setback is how far when you build a building or home, commercial apartments, how far the buildings have to be apart from each other in case one catches fire? So they were too close. And so what did that prohibit you from being able to do? So that prohibited it from being grandfathered in, which means I had to bring it up to current code, which meant that building had to be torn down or I had to remove my building back 15 more feet. I didn't own the other building.

And how did it come to the attention of the zoning department that it was not up to code? When I went to pull it, I guess it had been marked in their database that that that proper was separated. Therefore, since it didn't meet the 25 foot, the 40 foot setback that it was only 25, it was flagged in their system that no building permits could be given on the property. Okay. So one, you try to do the right thing by getting permits and then you got burned for it. Can't say you're the first person that's had that experience before when dealing with. I never get per. I'm talking. No, that's just kidding. Yeah. I mean, it's just the lesson of today's today's episode brought to you by Nathan. Never get purpose. Forget all the legal, forget all the, you know,

just do it until you get called. Exactly. If there's one thing Nathan has to say, it's break the law at all costs. Thank you, Nathan. It's been great having you on here. Great. I'm going to make a call to my cop buddies. We're going to be knocking on your door.

Yeah, don't contact me when you get thrown into jail or anything like that. Okay, but this is awesome stuff. I mean, we're jumping right into some really good content right away because as a real estate agent, this comes up all the time. Do I have to get permits? What does it mean that somebody else didn't get permits? This whole permit thing is very confusing. Someone can write an entire book about it, but they never will because then they'll be on

the hook to get sued when something goes wrong for advice they gave. And nobody would read it. Yeah, that's true because it would tell them, yeah, that's funny. All right. So if you had called the city zoning department, you would have found out, A, this property is not grandfathered in. So we will not release permits for it. And B, if you buy it, we will make you bring it up to code.

Is that correct? That's correct, which meant tearing down half of the building or buying the other building and tearing it down, updating the parking spaces. because when property was built 40 years ago, you had to have in North Carolina one parking space per apartment. Now it's 1.75 or something like that. I mean, it opened up a whole can of worms of issues that I wasn't going to have to deal with.

Now, had that happened and you had found this out, that doesn't mean you don't buy it, but it would give you quite a bit of leverage to take to the seller and say, hey, you got a problem here. Right, because that then put it, it would have put it the pressure on them to, you know, solve the problem either by reducing the price or, you know, yes, it would have been their problem and not mine. And that's why I wanted to bring it up because I don't want listeners to hear this

and say, oh, God, I better never buy a house. What if this happens? It's if you had just done this step before buying it instead of after, it would have changed the entire negotiation. So for somebody who we're giving advice to, this is how you should do it. Can you tell us, A, how would you have found the number to call and then B, what questions would you have asked? Well, and that's an excellent point. This is not said to discourage anybody. This is said to encourage people. You just Google your local, you know, it's normally county. So whatever county you're in.

So I'm in Forsyth County, Forsyth County zoning department. Sometimes cities will have their own zoning, but most of the time it's county related. And then you just call or you go by. And I don't ever take anybody's, you know, verbal. I want it in writing. Because they'll do that for you. They might charge you five bucks. but you want to have it in writing because then if there's ever an issue, you have something to fall back on.

Hey, you told me on this date that this met this zoning requirement. So let's say I'm talking to the receptionist that answers the phone and she tells me, oh, yeah, yeah, you're fine or whatever the case is. And I say, can I have that in writing? And receptionist, Bob, doesn't want to do that or he doesn't know how to do it. How would you ask for it specifically? Is there a letterhead from the city that you would request a supervisor to send it in? Is it just an email? Yeah, if somebody, if the person answering the phone says,

I'm not sure if we do that, I always say, well, may I speak to your supervisor? Or can I speak to the head of the department? You'll finally get to someone who knows how to issue that. But I've actually never ran into that problem. I've never called a county and someone said, oh, no, we don't do that or I don't know how to. It's normally like, oh, yes, give me an hour and I'll get that over to you.

Yeah, that's cool. Come to California, my friend. You will find new levels of apathy that you've never seen. I thought we were not going to talk politics on this. I was going to say the same thing about Hawaii. So Hawaii is like you go to the, I literally went to the county once and there's like, yeah, it's going to be six months.

Just like, does it really take that long? No, it just takes six months just for us to issue you a permit. Like to issue you a permit. I'm like, like, how do what do people do? They don't get permits. Like, that's like the lady at the county is like answers. Like, yeah, it was basically like nod, nod, wink, wink. Don't get a permit.

Don't worry. Like, how do you work in this kind of like world? Like, yeah, anyway, crazy. Hawaii, California. You know, this is one of those issues. This is one of those topics that's really boring. That's really like, oh, do I really need to do that? But I mean, in my career of, you know, $52 million worth of buying and flipping apartments,

this is where you, you know, make your money or lose your money. Yeah, that's a good point. This is where the mistakes are made. These are the things that trip you up that once you buy the property, it's on you. You know, I went to my attorney and you have title insurance. So I go to my attorney and say, oh, I have title insurance. She's like, great. I need a check for $25,000 to start the lawsuit.

Because title insurance companies, they don't just pay you once you have a problem. You have to prove that that problem existed and that some, else made a mistake, a surveyor, a appraiser or another attorney, you have to prove they made a mistake before they'll pay. Wow. Yeah. So just because you have title insurance does not mean they're going to pay you if there's an issue.

So if you don't mind, let's break that down a little bit. Okay, explain what is title insurance who provides it and what is the procedure for if you feel like it's, it's been violated? Yeah. So title insurance is provided by, you know, an insurance company and it's that you're buying this property and it's free and clear of other deeds, encumbrances, liens, any type of issue that you would come into the boundaries. So if you're buying two acres and this is the survey that lays out the two acres, but then you close and it's only an acre and a half because a surveyor, you know,

somebody made a mistake. It's basically this covers if there's an issue that you've been told everything is okay with this property. But then you close and there's this encumbrance or there's this lien out there and they missed it. It's their responsibility to cover it. Beautiful. After you prove to them that they have to cover it. And that's the little caveat in this,

is it's not just, oh, I have this insurance. It's like, you know, if you have a claim at your house or on your car, you have to prove to them that this is covered. So you want to buy a property. and what I guess what you're describing would be because we come up with this all the time when I'm representing people as a real estate agent, they have no idea what happens during the title process. But if I'm going to buy your house, Nathan, and you never paid a plumber who did some work on it, he could go get a judgment against you in small claims court to where there's a lien on your house for $10,000 for the money that you never paid him.

So when that house sells, he has to get $10,000 out of that sale. And the company who is like the title company who's managing that, would see this and make sure he gets paid $10,000 so it doesn't go right into your account. And when you get title insurance, you're having a company scan the public records and other records of who may have put a lien against his property. Does the person selling it actually have the right to sell it? Are there other owners involved in this that didn't sign off? They could come back and sue the buyer and say, hey, I never agreed to sell you that house.

I had a part ownership in it. And if they make a mistake, you then open a case because they provided you insurance to say, And mistake was made, I deserve to get paid. But what you're saying is that the burden is on you to prove somebody made a mistake. It doesn't just automatically your money come. Well, I give you an example. I had a $100,000 loan that I invested in and I secured it with a piece of property. The attorney put the information together, filed it, and I didn't catch that he had,

instead of like 7001, he put 5,001. Well, that person who I'd loaned the money went and sold the house. I didn't get my $100,000. And when I found out the house had sold, I went and filed a claim against the title insurance. Because the attorney had made the mistake. Well, I had to get an attorney to go after the title insurance saying, this was not our mistake. This was the attorney. So the title insurance company, it costs me about $22,000 for my attorney.

The title insurance paid me. I paid my attorney and then the title insurance company went after the attorney who made the clerical error. But when I contacted them, they just didn't say, oh, yes, we see the mistake, which was blatant. Yeah. I had to prove to them that their policy had to cover this issue. Yeah, fascinating. I never, I never even thought that. I always just kind of assumed, I guess, like, yeah, you call up the title insurance company and you're like, hey, I got a claim and they're like, you know, farmers. They're like, oh, no problem, buddy. And they get you a hug and they write you a check for your car that you just, Like it's definitely not that easy. It sounds like. Yeah. I mean, I don't know for, you know, if it was $2,000, they might just, you know, ink it out.

But if it's probably getting into the five or six figures, they're probably going to want, you know, some information on it. So would you have to hire an attorney to represent you in that case if you weren't as knowledgeable? Yes, because they, you know, the way people are today in industries like that is even with an insurance company. If you have a fire, I've had multiple fires, you know, they come out in the price they give to you. It's like you can't even buy the materials for what they want to pay you. And it ends up having to get an attorney who writes that threatening letter. If you don't do this, this and this, we're going to have to take you to court. This is really good information.

And we dove into some really good stuff right away. But I don't think we actually asked you what you're doing today, what you own. Can you kind of give us a big picture story of, you know, we know how you bought your first property, but what do you own now? What does your portfolio look like? Yeah. So I'm a compulsive flipper. When I buy real estate, my intent is to sell.

Two years ago, I had seven complexes, 399 units. Today, I only have one 12 unit and it's in a partnership with a nonprofit that does transitional housing. So I'm also a commercial broker. So when the economy goes the way it's going right now, I sell everything I have. when the economy goes back down, I start buying, renovating, and I'll sell, but normally I hold until that economy starts to go back up a little bit, and then I sell. Yeah, so you're flipping, your flipping apartment complex is the same way people flip houses, but you're trying to time the market as much as possible to make sure you're out and in at the

right times. That sounds like a good summary. Exactly. You know, here in North Carolina, you know, class C property, 40, 50, 60 units, normally would sell around 38 to 40,000 a door on a normal economy. They're selling for $55,000 and $60,000 a door right now. Yeah. To outside investors. So it's crazy. But when the economy goes down, people can't sustain that, you know, amount there.

And they'll have to sell those complexes. I buy my average, you know, costs per doors, 15 grand with, you know, six to 10 grand per unit to renovate. So I'm in them 33, 34. and then I'm selling at 43 to 45 a door. Wow. Do you still own anything now or have you sold everything? I only have one 12 unit complex that I own right now. So since that first deal you bought where you made 220 and then sold it or lost money in the next deal,

how many have you flipped? I've done 26 complexes since 2006. So $52 million worth of property I've bought and sold. Awesome. Now was your plan the whole time to buy them, turn them around and sell them? or was your plan to buy them and hold them and then just kind of see what the economy did and make your decision from there? Well, you know, the way I got into real estate kind of, you know, a mistake wise,

I just got into it on the side of flipping. You know, I bought that one, renovated and sold it. And I had other businesses that, you know, was able to, you know, I had to absorb the tax side of it. But once I got into the flipping, I realized, you know, there's a big market out there of people who want to have real estate. multifamily, but they don't know how to do renovations. They don't know how to do stabilization, but they're willing to pay someone to do that.

So I found my niche. Interesting. How'd that work? How'd you set that up? You know, once you get out there and I've seen you've been doing a lot of trailer parks, once you start getting into a niche and people know, well, brokers only make money one way. They make money when properties close. So if you, if you're having a hard.

time finding properties, you need to show a broker that you have the ability to close. Show them you have, you know, bank financing. You have, you know, investors with money in the bank. So once I became known as, hey, this guy can not only is he looking for deals, but he can close deals, then, you know, the deals start flowing in. You know, people start calling, hey, I got this pocket listing. This guy wants to close in 30 days or less. What can you, what can you offer them? And that's the situation you want to be in as an investment. where people are calling you saying, hey, I need to get this off my plate. What can you do for me? And so that's where I've spent a lot of time on relationships, building it with brokers,

with inspectors, with surveyors, people who fix HVAC. Hey, if you hear anybody say, hey, I'm tired of this property. I'm about to pull my hair out. I won't out. Give them my card. I've had people call me up and say, I'm interested in selling. I go meet with them. And they're like, well, I'll way I didn't buy the property three years later. Eventually everyone's motivation changes. Right. Situations change. Well, let's say that we want to put ourselves in the position to do what you just did.

What are some things that somebody needs to line up so that they can show I can close on this deal? Yeah. So the number one thing on that is, you know, defining what your niche is. Because if you're trying to find something, you have to describe that. And I equate it to walking into Baskin-Robbins and ice cream. If you walk in the door and say, hey, can I have a scoop of ice cream? You just created about 50 different questions. What flavor?

How many scoops? You want it in a waffle bowl, a cone, a cup, small, medium. You've created so. But if you walk in and say, hey, I want two scoops of cookies and cream in a waffle bowl, you get what you're asked for. So the number one thing is to find, you know, what that niche is. Second is then if you don't have money. So you're not, you know, and I didn't grow up with money. We grew up like the average American family, probably even below that.

So if you don't have money, then you've got to figure out how are you going to get it? Bank financing, private investors, hard money. Most people today, 80 to 85 percent statistically of people who are involved in real estate, probably listening to this, they don't have a business plan, they don't have an investor packet. So their ideas, they go up to people, they go up to their dad, their mom, a family, a friend, an investor, somebody at the gym, say, hey, do you want to get in a business? involved with me, I'm going to invest in real estate. You know what that person's thinking that just heard that?

Like this person, you know, yeah, I'll get involved with you. And then they never do. But if you go up to somebody and you hand them a page or two page and say, hey, I want to invest in the south side of town. And I'm looking for, you know, deals between $400,000 and $600,000. And I'm looking for things with high deferred maintenance and high deferred occupancy, or deferred occupancy, I mean, occupancy issues. and I need to raise $100,000.

Now you've given them something to think about. Yeah. Well, I think it takes some faith to be able to operate that way because most of the time, especially inexperienced people or what we call newbies, feel like if I niche down too hard, I'll miss an opportunity. Like a great deal could have come along

and I miss it because it wasn't exactly what you described. You know, I do want prelines and cream, but man, I would have loved a really good scoop of cherry flavor. And if I said, this is only one I want, I'll miss it. And what you're saying is what I hear every experienced person say is you have to change that thinking to understand the more specific you can get, the better your odds of success. Because you're planting an idea in somebody else's head to kind of make them an employee of yours. They're now working on your behalf to find what you want. And if you don't make it simple for that person, you're not going to get the result.

Yeah, well, David, you're a broker. Who do you call when you find a deal? The person that I know is actually going to buy it. And you know that because they've told you who. they are and what they do. Yep. And they've shown you the ability to close. I tell people, if you're going to write an offer, especially if you're going to undercut

people, I've offered a million dollars for a property that was listed at two million. People were like, you're crazy. I was like, yes, but I put together, you know, the contract, but then I put together a bank statement. I put together a commitment letter from the bank. And I put together a reason why I was cutting their price by a million. And this is when fax machines still were in use. So this is about 10 years ago.

I faxed the offer over, about 30 pages of stuff. 15 minutes later, the fax machine rings, and it's the offer signed. No counter. Wow. They accepted it because I showed them I could close, and then I told them why I had reduced the price. And most people, they get into that mindset. And I get there too, like, well, if I narrow my specs down to this, I'm going to miss deals. but if you don't narrow it down, then you don't ever get anything done.

You don't ever get investors involved with you. Don't get banks involved with you. You don't get brokers involved with you. And then you just sit there and spin your wills. Yep. You know, I see this in other parts of life too. And I'm only saying this because I think it'll make it easier for someone who doubts to believe it. If your friend came to you and said, hey, can you please set me up with someone?

I'm tired of being single. I want to find somebody. And you knew if I bring this person the wrong. girl or the wrong guy, they're going to blame me for it. Right? And it's going to get messy. So there's a lot of at stake. It's very similar to I have a listing and I'm trying to figure out who's going to buy it.

If that buyer backs out, the seller's mad at me. They're blaming me for why I said you should go with this person. The first thing that someone will do is they'll start saying, what kind of girl or guy do do you want? How tall should they be? What do they do for work? What do they like? What are their interests?

What are their belief systems? You immediately start niching down as much as you can to make sure you don't set them up with the wrong person because your reputation's at stake. And it works just like that in real estate. And if we can kind of see that the jump between those two pieces, it makes it a lot easier to communicate your needs to the people that you're meeting. And that's an excellent point because people do that in there, you know, if you're going to go buy a car, normally you go saying, I want this color.

I got this much money. I mean, here's the other thing that really defines out is money. I can tell you real quick what. your niche should be based on one question. How much money do you have or how much money can you raise? Yeah. Because in commercial real estate, it's 20 to 30% down. So you want to do a $500,000 deal?

You better have $100,000 or raise $100,000. And that defines what you can and can't do. And so we define these things out in our lives of who we want to date or what kind of car we're going to drive or where we're going to live. you know, Brandon, you just moved out, you know, into Hawaii, you looked at and said, you know, this is the area. You know, this is how close I want to be to this or this is what. And then ultimately, it probably came down to, hey, this is what my budget can afford. Yeah.

Because it comes down to the money. But real estate investors are one of the worst people that I see that say, hey, what type of real estate do you do? Well, I'm not really sure yet. I'm just trying to look for a deal. Yeah, which is crazy to me. Yeah. How long you've been looking for a deal? I mean, a guy, though, he's paid $85,000 in education over the last 10 years.

I said, oh, how many deals you done? He said, none. Yeah, that's crazy. But it's true. And I think the idea of niching down, this applies to anybody, whether you're in commercial, residential, you're trying to buy your very first duplex or a house hack or a first rental. You want to flip one house. It doesn't matter.

Like, getting specific with your criteria. I talk about this on Bigger Pocket's webinars all the time is, like, getting real specific with exactly what you want. Not only does it help you actually, like, stand. out to the brokers because now they're like, oh, this guy clearly knows what he's talking about because he's he's not saying, I'm looking for a deal, but I'm looking for a duplex in the south side of town somewhere between $80 and $135,000. And here's my prequalification. Not only does that make you look good, but when you niche down, you become an expert much

easier at that thing. I mean, try to be good at everything. You're going to be horrible at it. But if you're only focused on duplexes in the south side between 80 to $135,000, like, that's not hard to become an expert. that you can find every duplex that sold the last year or year or two you can go and walk a bunch of duplexes you can get walk the neighborhoods because you know exactly what the neighborhood is so again not only are you looking better at other people but you are better at your job so then you can recognize

hidden opportunities that nobody else does because everyone else is a general about and you know generalist so like I mean if I'm going to go into a town like I'm going to go into Kansas city and go try to compete right now like I don't know anything about Kansas City so like but if I like was like I'm going to buy in this neighborhood of Kansas City and I fly in there and and I learn everything I can. I mean, that's how you become an expert at a certain thing is by niching. And later on,

expand, fine, but niche down first. That's the brilliant point on this. You don't have to stay in that niche. You can get out of that niche at some point. But if you're trying to get started or you're trying to grow, you've got one or two or three deals and you're trying to grow,

then grow that niche until the point that you can get to the point of changing that niche and moving to the next level or site. sideways or whatever, but until you become the master of that one niche, you're not going to be the master of anything. Yeah. That's so good. I mean, that's exactly what people, like, that's how you satisfy the fear of missing out with niching down is just start with a niche and expand from there so you don't miss out on

opportunity. Don't start general. And then as opportunities come your way, try to immediately become the expert in that, whatever deal that was. Yeah. And then put it in writing. And this is the number one thing after that. And Brandon, you and David, you all probably run into this.

this as well. You meet people who they have their niche. They're really passionate about it, but they don't have any plan. They don't have anything in writing. And there's something about it. I don't know what it is in our society or the mindset. That it's just somebody just, even if they have a one page, it's like, wow, they took the time to put this together. Yeah. Brandon actually has something really good to say about that. His life's changed in the last couple months because of that very concept. Do you mind sharing that, Brandon? Your vivid vision. Oh, yeah, my vision thing. Yeah, sure. I mean, basically what I did is I read this book called The Vivid Vision by Cameron Herald. And it really talks about, and I mentioned this a few weeks ago on the podcast as well back when we talked about the launch of the intention journal from Bigger Pockets.

But I mentioned how like this vision, this idea of a vision is not so much like where like it's not like I will earn $5,000 per month by this date. Like that's a goal. And that's fine to have a goal. But a vision is like or you could look at it as a business plan, whatever you want to call. Like I basically took a business plan and I made it into a newspaper article. what it looks like for those who are watching the YouTube video. It's on my wall. How do I angle this upward?

There it is. I cannot angle this. Anyway, I basically made it into a, like, I took a business plan. I turned it into something that was fun to read. So it's like a newspaper article. But it's essentially what it is. It's a business plan.

This is what we're buying. This is how we're going to buy it. This is where we're going to look for deals. This is what our team looks like. This is what the media thinks about us. This is what, like, all these things, because now I have a very clear, I have clarity on where I'm headed to.

And so is that kind of, Nathan, what you're getting at? I mean, like having, It doesn't be a newspaper article like I wrote, but just having a plan. How has that changed your life and your business? Yeah, everything. I mean, like beforehand, like I was literally like I had to take my own advice. I mean, for years, I tell newbies on bigger pockets all the time.

Hey, you know, get focused. Get specific. It doesn't only matter what you choose. But then for a while I was kind of like, well, I'm, you know, I kind of want to do this and this would be fun. And every podcast episode, I listened to somebody. And like, I mean, yeah, I was buying some deals, but I wasn't become, I was, I was open to whatever.

I was a generalist. When I made that, like, it took. takes so much of the emotion out of like, oh, but I really want to do self-storage. I mean, I love self-storage. I would love to do it. No, it's not my niche. Like, my niche is mobile home parks. That's what I'm doing.

And I'm going to become the best mobile home park investor in America. Like that, because that's all I'm doing. And so, like, having that clarity. But then here's the thing that I find most fascinating is how when you have that clarity and that business plan, whether it's, you know, a creative one like this or whether it's just like a nice, you know, pamphlet. It doesn't matter. Like, once you have that clarity, you know, it's how it's just a nice, you know,

clarity, everybody else suddenly around you gets motivated as well. So everybody's like, oh, man, I'm on board with that because this guy knows what he's doing. And like, there's a certain energy that comes with it. So yeah, it's been huge for my business. And, uh, yeah, have you seen the movie up. I have not seen up. The little animated movie. It looks good. Rosie hasn't gotten quite that age yet. Yeah, yeah. Well, what you're describing there. The same thing happened in my life, you know, when I wasn't organized, when I didn't know what I was doing, it was kind of like that movie up where the dogs to always squirrel. Yeah.

And then here comes a deal. Oh, I can make money here. And, oh, I can make money here. And you chase so many different things, but you never get anything done. But you work 80, 70, 80, 90 hours a week. You're tired. Everybody around is your family, your friends are aggravated with you because you're always on your phone or your computer,

but you're never getting anything done. Yeah. But then when you start niching down, it's like you find this passion, you find your drive. And then the people who come along, whether you know them or not, they're like, oh, hey, I know Brandon. He does trailer parks. I saw this deal. I can send it to Brandon. Yep.

And you become known as that person. You can change it eventually. But it redefines you who you are. And then it helps define you out to everyone else so they know this is. this is the type of real estate he or she does. Yeah, on that note, I always tell people like, it's the analogy of a job. If you go to somebody and say,

I'm looking for a job, most people are like, well, good, you know, good for you. I'm proud of you. And that's about where they leave it. But if you go to somebody and say, hey, I'm looking for a job at a mid-sized company between 100 and 300 employees somewhere in the greater Detroit area,

that is a CPA-related job on Yama, now all of a sudden, everybody, what do they do they start thinking, hmm, do I know anybody that would fit that role? Do anyone that would help them? Like, when you get specific, people want to help you achieve your goals because they're so specific. And so the same thing. Like you said, people know I'm the mobile home park guy.

I get a mobile home park lead, like multiple leads every single day from people just send it to me because they know that that's my thing. So the question is, why do people not do it? That's a good question. I don't know. I mean, I don't know. I mean, maybe the fear of missing out, yeah. Missing out or the fear of actually doing it. I mean, like, oh, I want to do this.

You know, I want to go to the gym. and work out. But then when it comes time to do it, it's like, oh, no, I'll do that later. Yeah. Okay, so what's your advice for somebody right now who's listening to this? And they're in that spot. They're saying, you know what? I've been listening to these podcasts now for months, maybe years.

I've, you know, dabbled maybe in a couple things and maybe tried to analyze some deals. What's your advice to them, like, talking directly to them? Like, what should they do right now? I mean, immediately, you know, stop all the meetings you're going to, all the networking, everything for two or three days and sit down. And within less than an hour, and if you don't have a template, Google business plan template, investor packet template. There's free things out there.

And there's courses you can buy. But find something. And within a day or two or three, write down what that is. Commit to do that. I'm going to be in mobile home. I'm going to do raw land. I'm going to flip single family. I'm going to do multi-file.

I'm going to do this. and until you get your first deal done, you don't change that. You stay on that course until you get it done. Yeah. You sound exactly like Brandon right now. I just feel like, is it something about being super tall

that just makes you guys think this way? Maybe it's supposed to be really good looking. Clearly the handsome factor. Clearly the handsome factor. I can't grow a beard though. You look like someone took an app and got rid of Brandon's beard and gave him a normal, respectable haircut,

not this stagosaurus spike that he has. I did get my hair. I got my haircut today just for this podcast. Well, that's awesome. We Brandon can't say the same. All right. I was going to get a haircut later today, right? I was going to get it.

I'm going to get it tomorrow maybe. Do what Nathan just said. Don't do anything until you get your haircut. Just sit down and meditate to whatever it takes. Hold on, hold on. And don't pull permits. That's clearly what Nathan said. No, I want to add one more thing here.

So this is a I'm a big believer. And again, I've said this before, but I'll say, it again now. I think one of the reasons people have such indecision on, like, they haven't made up their minds and niche down. They haven't just decided like this is what they're going to do. Yeah, I think it's fear of missing out. But I also think it's because everyone's looking for this mythical like, this is my destiny, my purpose. I haven't discovered it yet. It's there. And they're out of beach with like they're like, you know, like we live in Hawaii here. There's all these people go out there with their old like metal detectors, right? And they're

going back and forth on the beach, trying to find this hidden thing that's there somewhere. and it's not there. I mean, like, it's just not there for most people. For most people, like, ask yourself the question. That's what I advise anyway. I'd love to know your thoughts, Nathan, but I say, stop asking what was already buried on that beach that I'm trying to uncover and change the question to what would be awesome?

What would be cool? What would be exciting? Like, and then, I mean, instead of thinking of as a beach you're trying to find buried sand, think of it as a canvas that you get to paint. What are you going to paint? I mean, here's my thought. It's a choice. It's a mental mindset.

I've got a little plaque in my other office. It says the answer is always no until you ask. And the reason I married a woman who is way better than I am and better looking and all that is because I asked her out. And had I not asked her out, she would have never said no or yes because I wouldn't have asked her. And I think people are afraid of being told no. And if you're being, if you're afraid of being told no, real estate's not the place to be. Yeah. Because I've been told no by investors.

I've been told no on offers. I mean, I could go down through a whole list, but I don't count my nos. You know what I count? My yeses. Because you can't raise money without being told no. Not everybody is not, and most of the time,

it's not even about you. Most of the people I've asked to invest with me that said, no, do you know what I found out after I asked the right questions? It wasn't a no to me. It was a no because they didn't like the risk in Class C multifamily. They wanted something secure.

They wanted something that was guaranteed, you know, just right on class A deposit my money. And so I had to find people who had the same goals that I did as investors. They liked the higher return, but it came with a higher risk as well. Yeah. So I think most people are afraid of being told no. They don't want to be confronted with failure. That's so true. Two funny stories about that.

first one in a college. I made the comment a few months ago on the podcast that I asked my wife out four times before she found the agreed to go out with me. That's actually slightly misleading. She had to remind me of this. The first time I asked her out. 40 times. It was,

I was too much of a whim to officially ask her out because I didn't want to face rejection. So as you reminded me, my asking was, I really like you a lot. I really like hanging out with you. What do you think? or hey, we need my friend. We should hang out more.

You know, I really like being with you. And I can't have a crush on you. But like I never had. And it wasn't until like the last time I came to her. She would like, and she had to be like, Brandon, just freaking ask me out. Like stop being a little girl and ask me out. And like that's how it like, oh, okay, well then I asked her out.

So there is that. Like I think I don't like being rejected. I always say that real estate's like high school prom. It's like just rejection left and right. And you have to just accept that. It's a numbers game. And then secondly, I got rejected. About a year and a half ago, I asked a couple of people if they had invest in a deal with me.

I was trying to buy a mobile home park and they said no. And these were like friends of mine. And I was like, they're probably listening right now. But I was like fairly crushed. I was like because like I'm a high eye personality. I like my, you know, I like people liking me. And I took that as they don't like me. And it really hurt.

Like I mean like and I was like I don't want to ever raise money again. And so for the next year I didn't raise money for anything at all. I didn't I didn't go because I was like deep down. I felt like I don't like to be rejected. that I hate that feeling of rejection. And I told myself this lie that I'm not good at raising money. Well, as it turns out, neither these guys had any money at the time. Like, they weren't saying no to me.

They didn't have money. And now recently I started this fund that's now, it should be closed by the time we launched this, but I started this fund. And I raised like, the entire fund was $5 million. I raised all about $5 million with like no work whatsoever. And so anyway, they aren't, like you said, they're not always saying no to you. They might just be another situation. The reason you raise that money is one, you asked and two,

you had a niche. Yeah. You raise that money for a specific type of investing. Yep. So the people who didn't invest, it wasn't about you, it was that they didn't like that type of investing. Yeah. That's not personal.

That's business. That's so good. Oh, well, you know, people who have made money and have money are normally really smart about their money. They're not just going to give it to you. They want to know what you're going to do with it, which is the written plan. Yeah. And compare that to Brandon's story of asking us.

Heather. She was, it wasn't money we're talking about, but she was good with herself. She knew she was in demand. She knew she could date anybody that she wanted, right? Like Heather lived her life the right way and had a lot of options and could be picky about who she dated. And I think the lesson of Pilate of this is when you're going for a worthy goal, like dating a girl like Heather or buying a really good deal or raising money, if you try to hedge your bet against the rejection and you become wishy-washy and watered down, you are almost guaranteeing that's what you will get. That's why you had to ask her out four times and she kept saying no, because you didn't just say, I like you, I want to go out with you.

What will it take for you to say yes? Had you done that, Heather probably would have been like, okay, I see something in my like. I like that boldness. I like that directness. Maybe I wasn't thinking about him before, but now he's on my radar. And even if she had said no and you felt rejection, the second time you probably would have got it.

How many of us are doing the same thing? I want to get into real estate, but I don't want to lose money. I don't want to make a mistake. I don't want to fail. I want to get that promotion at work or whatever the case is. But we're hedging our bet. And so we're getting in our own way. Nathan, go ahead.

Well, you don't have the confidence. Brandon finally had to have the confidence to go up. No, I mean, that's nothing bad. I'm not saying that's the same way. I met my wife in D.C. And, you know, the second time we met, I called my dad. And I was like, you know, I think I just met my wife. And he's like, well, nine months later we were married.

That's awesome. But I had to have the confidence to go to her and ask. And the same thing on asking for money or submitting an offer, you got to have a certain, whether you internally you have it or not, but externally is confidence. And that's putting things in writing and going and doing it and executing it. You know, you could have, you, Brandon, you could have been like, hey, I want to ask my wife out.

But until you did it, she can't say yes. And I think that's where most people are stuck is that they want to do it. but they just, they haven't, and they know they've listened to bigger pockets and they've taken court, they've been to conferences, they know what they should be doing, but they're not. And this is where I really break it down in my life. There's knowledge and there's wisdom. Knowledge is knowing how to do something. Wisdom is applying said knowledge.

So if you know you should be eating right and you know you should be exercising, and you know you should be taking care of your health, but you don't, you're not applying said knowledge. Yeah. And the same thing happens in real estate. You know there are certain things you should be doing and how you should be doing it, but you're not. Therefore, you're not going to get the results that you want.

That's so true. So I want to shift gears here a little bit. I mean, we can talk about this stuff forever, but I want to get to a little bit of, you mentioned apartment flipping. And I want to talk about like, how does somebody flip an apartment complex? So I want to go through some of the nitty-gritty. Imagine I've done some real estate. Maybe I bought some single families, some small.

But I'm like, you know, I want to flip an apartment complex. I want to buy something with the plan of making it worth more and then resell it. What are my steps? What do I got to do? Go to the gym a lot. You got to get those muscles. All right. Oh, no.

Okay. On the flipping side. So the first myth or thought is immediately in people's minds when you say apartments, they think multi-million dollars. Well, there's apartments out there that are four units and six units, seven, eight, nine. Their apartment deals out there for a couple hundred thousand dollars. I've seen apartment deals be at the same price as a single family home. So the first is just to look at it from a realistic side,

just because it's apartments doesn't mean that you need millions of dollars. That's the first thing in this. The second is kind of knowing the system and understanding and looking into, most people get scared off on commercial real estate because they don't know what a cap rate is. So they immediately like, oh, cap rate is very simple. I mean, it's the comps. You know, if you're doing single family, I tell people, if you look at single family comps and they're all $150,000 in the area, the cap rate's the same.

If that type of apartment's selling for 8% cap rate, then you just run the numbers. But the cap rate is an arbitrary number. It's not that cap rate is negotiated between the seller and the buyer. It's not preset. It's not what the, you know, the seller's asking, but what the buyer is willing to pay and somewhere in there they come together. So don't let the money, the amount of money you need or cap rate scare you all from.

And then it's really just putting that plan together and saying, okay, this is what I'm going to do. I think personally and professionally that there's less risk in doing multifamily than there is single family based on one thing. If you have a $250,000 home and you're renting it for $1,500 a month, how many sources of income do you have?

One. One, yep. If you have a four unit complex that you paid $60,000 a door for and you're renting each of them for $600 a month, you have four sources of income and you're making 60%, 70% more on this $250,000 investment than you are on this $250,000 investment. I don't know why people build portfolios of 20, 25, 30 single family homes that are rentals that are 30 miles away from each other.

Why not just go buy a 25 or 30 unit apartment complex? Good question. David, what do you think? You have a lot of single families. What do you think? Well, the answer to why somebody would do that is because it's easier to find a single family that's a good deal than it is to find a big multifamily. It just takes more time to find a multifamily deal right now. More than 30 single families?

Yeah, well, more than one single family. But what happens is because they're easier, I just end up scooping those up as they come along. It doesn't take a concentrated effort like it does to go. Like I'm learning to analyze multifamily and look for those deals right now. It's much more labor intensive than just, hey, David, here's a good deal. I already know how to buy it. I can analyze it in three minutes and I can have an offer written. But what happens, I think the point Nathan's making is you end up with the mess I have,

which is a herd of 35 cats that I'm trying to keep moving in a direction. and I got to hire all these people to help me, like, put out all the fires that pop up and collect all the money. And honestly, I've mentioned this before, but maybe never on the podcast. What will make me sell this portfolio is nothing logical. It is the fact that trying to keep track of 35 different mortgages, property taxes, HOA fees, utility bills, going through nine different bank accounts and the complex spider web that creates is just emotionally draining to the point it's not worth it for the wealth.

And I'll sell them on. I'll buy the apartment complex. So that's a great point, Nathan. I do think the multifamily is incredibly more efficient. But it's a much bigger investment on the front end to learn that asset class, to develop relationships with brokers. You're going to do a lot of work in the beginning before you get that payoff. Yeah.

So, I mean, like with you, you're already in it. So it's kind of like, okay, well, I'll keep it. But if somebody's starting out and they don't have any rental houses and they don't have any multifamily, I'd at least look to the duplex. Yeah, yeah. You know, get the two unit. I teach this thing called the stack a lot where basically saying like if you start small

like start with a single family house or duplex just don't stay there forever how do you go outside your comfort zone go with the fourplex next then maybe an eight unit then a 20 unit then a 50 unit scale up to where you're outside your comfort zone but you're not in like danger zone

you're not like going from one to a million units but scale up get outside your comfort zone a little bit and then in that you know whether you're doing single family or multifamily is knowing the you know knowing the terminology knowing the systems, and most people don't get to know that because they're like, oh, I've never done that.

Therefore, I can't do it because I don't know. Well, I mean, if that's the case, then you're never going to do single family because you don't know everything until you start doing it. I still don't know everything about multifamily. I still have things that come up, but that's why you ask people. That's why you listen to bigger pockets and, you know, participate in the forums and buy books and do that because you're always learning. So don't let, you know, oh, I don't know, keep you out of either single family or multifamily.

Okay, Nathan, so you sold me. I now want to be a multifamily investor. And I am making you, you my coach, you're going to teach me what to do. We're assuming the first thing you've told me is, David, you got to learn it. You got to learn how it's valued. You have to understand cap rate. You have to understand NOI and the relationship between the two. What's the next step you would give me?

And then the corresponding steps after that to get into flipping apartments. So then the next is your niche. So I've got this much money or I can raise this much and this is the area I'm interested in. Then you just start reaching out to commercial brokers. And if you can add a commitment letter from the bank or you can show them that you're serious about this to get that first deal done is really going to help that speed that process alone. The next is just identifying properties too, just like you do a single family. Half the properties I've found that I've bought, I've just been driving around in neighborhoods that I want. want to buy in and see an apartment complex and write the person handwritten note or call them and say, hey, if you're ever interested in selling, here's my information. Yeah. The next is then knowing the due diligence side. And whether you're in single family or multifamily, due diligence is more than just looking at some paperwork.

It's especially in the multifamily side, when you're doing, you know, re-renovating four units or eight units or 12 or the most I've ever done at one times, 121, you're, you're you're dealing with a lot of toilets and a lot of flooring and windows. There's a whole other aspect that comes into play there. I'd like to actually go there. Let's talk due diligence for a little bit because this is something that when I saw you speak in Denver that I just was blown away by all the different things you've covered in knowing due diligence.

So like first of all, for those who don't know, it started very beginning, what is due diligence? Like, why is it so important? And then what are some of the items that people should be aware? of. Yeah, so due diligence is the time period you go under contract. You've put your, your earnest money down, and you have a time period, normally 30 days. It could be 15, it could be 60, that you have to inspect the property, look through any paperwork, you know, check the zoning. And if you decide not to move forward with the property, you cancel your contract and you get your

earnest money back. So this is your time to kind of peek underneath the hood and see, is this something I want to move forward with. And so some of the obvious stuff is like, I'll say I'm buying a single family house or an apartment even. I'm going to get an inspection. Okay. I have an inspection you can see. I'm going to get inspected.

That's a good idea. What else is there? Yeah. So, you know, the zoning, the tax value, when's the last time assessment was done on the property? You're going to look at any of the insurance costs. You're traditional. What's the roof look like?

What does the windows look like? Things that you, It was the parking lot, what school zone is it located in? What can you rent the property for or what can you sell it for? So then you get into one of these, well, if I'm buying this for 100,000, how much renovation does it need? And what can I sell it for? Can you make any money? And if you miss any of those numbers, the only thing that is cut is your profit.

Yep. So if you don't run your numbers, I always tell people, be very conservative on your income. Like go as conservative as you can and go as liberal. on your expenses. So you've got, you know, a really tight deal. So if you're wrong on something, you have plenty of room to adjust that. But a lot of investors, they go in and they're very liberal on their income and very conservative on their expenses.

And then they wonder why they lose money on the deal. Yep. It's because like their motion gets involved. They really want to close this deal. And so they say, you know, I know average rent is only 500, but I bet we can get 650. I'm sure we can. Well, then you better go to Apartments.com or Forrent. or one of those and see what everything is renting for in that area.

Because whatever it's renting for, you might get $25 or $50 more, but you're not going to add 30 or 40%. Yeah. But see, that's the same thing with comps with single family. If houses have sold for $150,000, what is your house going to sell for? Close to $150,000. It didn't matter what you do to it. It doesn't matter if you put marble flooring in and all types of great, you know,

solid wood cabinets. Your house is only going to sell for what it's worth in that area. area. Yeah. So I have five main things I look at in due diligence. There's a lot more, but do everything in writing. Between brokers, between buyer, seller, anything that you're doing, if you have it in, it just is in verbal, expect problems.

Okay. Yep. Second, you know, be organized. Don't always have to be looking for. Oh, where's that report or where's that file, whether you're cloud-based or, you know, you've got your document, your file cabinet. Make sure everything's in a nice, neat order, so you don't have to spend time looking for everything. You know, that's a really important part of the due diligence.

I hate to say this this way, kind of on the third one, is whether I like them or not, I don't ever trust a seller. Yeah, yeah. Something personal. It's business. Yep. But I assume they're lying about most everything, if not everything they've given me. I bought apartment complex before where the rent rolls said $28,000.

a month and I bought it and collected $7,500 the next month. Wow. And anybody listening to this, rent rolls are useless. Everybody talks about, oh, get certified rent rolls. A rent roll is only a regurgitation of what's on the lease. It has no bearing on does that person actually pay that amount. A rent roll simply says that person should be paying that amount. And, you know, bank statements.

You got to get those bank statements to verify that. run your own numbers. I don't trust other people's numbers. I want to put my own expense and income sheet together. I want to do my own evaluations on my numbers. Insurance numbers you can get called on because if somebody's deductible is $25,000, but your bank requires $5,000, guess what happens to your insurance numbers? Yeah, it's going to go crazy different. You're going to go crazy. It's going to be different. So you've got to run your own numbers in it. Yeah, one of the one of the, one of the, and we'll go back to your list here. one of the mobile home parks that I'm in contract right now for. Yeah, their numbers was like $4,300 for insurance. The cheapest we can get anybody is like $11,000.

I mean, that's a massive difference in insurance. But had we just accepted their numbers, now it makes me wonder, are they really getting $4,300 or is that just not true? I don't know, but I know I can't get $4,300 now, so we'd adjust our numbers because of that. So if you miss that $7,000 mistake, at a 10% cap rate, you decrease the value of your property,

70,000 dollars. Yeah. Yeah. So when you're buying in that due diligence period, then that's one of those you've got to go to the seller and say, okay, look, you know, yours is 4,300. Mine's 11,000. So you're either going to have to, you know, buy what it is or adjust the number. Yep.

And ultimately in the last, you know, is verify, verify, verify and verify. And this is the question I love. So I ask both of you, who owns fire hydrants? I would guess the city. So I wouldn't have thought to ask this, except for I heard you ask this question in Denver. So when I was trying to... You're cut out of this thing. Yeah, I will cut out of it.

Only one of us here is honest. No, but this saved me a ton of time. So anyway, a ton of money. Go ahead. Well, so the assumption is, and in due diligence is you've got to lay aside the assumptions. I assumed that in most 99.9% of the people I've ever asked assumed that fire hydrants are owned by a city, a town, no municipality, somebody other. But in single family or multifamily, fire hydrants can be owned by the property owner.

And you have to look at the deed. You have to look at the HOA. You have to look at the paperwork and see how about a 66 unit apartment complex called for the inspection on the fire hydrants because the insurance company needs it and get a call back from the fire marshal saying it's $75 per fire hydrant to inspect them. And I was like, why would I have to pay? I've done that 15 times before. I said, why would I have to pay for these? He said, oh, because the city of Winston-Salem doesn't own them,

you own them. And I immediately called a friend who did that. It was going to be $88,000 had I had to replace that system, all the piping and the four-fired hydrants. Thankfully, they, the inspection went, you know, great, and they were in good working order. That was an $88,000 bullet that I missed. Yeah. Yeah. Same, actually, similar thing. We, we're inspected out well as well, but yeah, when we were touring the park, we were like, I asked the question, hey, who owns his, who owns his, who owns is fire hydrants and the guy was with the, I think the city probably does. Let's check that out. Nope, we do.

Like, we're going to own. Where do I send my consulting bill for that one? Yes, you can send that right to, my name is David Green. You can send it right to my office. I think my assistant Krista can handle it. Why would you, why would you ever think in a realistic world, why would you ask about fire hydrants? Yeah.

I mean, it's just something you don't think about. Yeah. But in doing this due diligence, if you're going to be successful at this, and I tell people in my opinion, having done as many deals, the money I've lost has been lost in due diligence, and the money I've made has been made in due diligence.

So good. And I mean, I've caught where electrical meters are owned by power companies, and the power company had to pay to replace them. I mean, there's all kinds of things in due diligence that goes beyond just looking at leases or looking at expenses and contracts and that, you start diving into due diligence.

And if you can become an expert at due diligence, you can really rock the real estate world because you can negotiate with the seller on why the price should be less, which makes you more money because you're not having to cover that after the fact of purchasing the property. Yeah, so good.

So good. Well, Nathan, this is awesome. Good, good stuff here. I'm wondering, like, what do you typically do? You find something, I mean, like, when do you retrade or when do you go back and renegotiate with the seller? Like how much of a discrepancy in your mind is it worth going back to? I mean, if, hey, we found out that there could be a, you know, whatever, $2,000 thing. Is that big enough to go get concerned about or is it $50,000?

Depends on the size of the deal. So, I mean, if you're, you know, a $100,000 deal and you find $2,000 or $3,000. Yeah, I mean, you can go back and negotiate. Maybe if you're in a $2 million deal and it's two or three thousand, you're going to have to decide, you know, is it worth rocking the apple cart? I don't really have a rule of thumb, but I mean, I start getting into the three or four percent more than what I thought. Okay.

Yeah. So if I'm in a million dollar deal and it's 20 or 30,000 more because I've found things that, you know, rotten flooring underneath toilets, things that you don't see on the first, you know, go by, or, you know, you find out that the air conditioning. units and they people will do this. They will order new outside cages, take off the old ones and put on new. So when you look at them, it's like, oh, those are new units until you look down in there and they're all old. Yeah. So when you get into that, and I don't ever go to an owner and negotiate a reduction without having it in writing. So when I sit down, I want to say,

okay, look, I found this. This is going to cost me 50,000 more than I thought. This is going to cost me this. This is going to cost me this. And, you know, at first glance, these were acceptable until we went into the due diligence. Yeah. And, you know, sometimes they reduce. Sometimes there's negotiation. Sometimes they say no. And then I have to decide after I run my numbers and I'm having to absorb that extra cost, is it worth going forward with the deal or not? And that's one thing that trips a lot of people up. They feel like if they put this time in and they back out of a deal, they're somehow losing. Yeah. Well, if you go forward with it, you're definitely going to lose. But just because you put something under contract and just because you do the due diligence, doesn't mean you should close on the deal. Sometimes you should run away.

That's such a good point. In fact, I just had a call this morning with my performance coach. And I told him, so we had eight mobile home parks under contract. we backed out on a portfolio of three of them because there was some concern like with the septics and they wouldn't let us inspect them. And it was like, they're like, just trust us. They're fine. And we're like, we're not going to trust you. Like it got weird.

Right. So we backed out. We said, it's not worth the risk for our investors for us, whatever. And so I told my coach, I said, yeah, we lost three of the deals. He goes, did you lose them or did you make the right choice at the right business decision? And you chose to back away from something that was a bad choice. And I was like, yeah, you're right. I didn't lose anything.

Like, we made a choice. Yeah. I mean, that's part of doing this business. That time that you put into it is time that had you going forward with that. Yeah. I mean, you could have lost a ton more. Yeah. There's that there's a thing in psychology.

I can't remember what it's called like sunk cost or whatever. Where people like the more time you have invested in something, the less chance somebody will ever like back out of it. It's not just a real estate thing. It's just a human nature we tend to. Even though like it's just a fall. It's like a logical fallacy in our heads. Like just because you spend more time on something doesn't mean that you should didn't do it. Like, that's stupid.

But we do that all time. I've been dating this person for five years. I can't break up now. We might as well marry. There's so much invested in it. We get the same training as a real estate agent where we'll get like a buyer that's just wasting our time. They want to get on our car every weekend and drive around and look at houses.

You find the house they want. They never buy it. You get sucked into this thing. And I started thinking the same thing. Well, I've already committed two months to this person. I got to get something out of it. But what they train us to do is you don't have a bad buyer. You have a lead generation problem.

Because if you had four other good buyers that were wanting to, to get in your car. You'd have no problem kicking them out and going with one of the others, right? You didn't want to fill your funnel up. And that's why you were able to get rid of that one, because you had seven others that you could pursue. I was so confident I could turn the marketing machine back on again because I know how to lead you. And if you didn't, I bet you the pressure to try to make that deal happen. The conversations would have been completely different. Well, worst case scenario, let's say that it is bad. Can we still make it work? That's exactly how that conversation goes. So that's why Brand is always talking about his lapse funnel. You right? You know, like you fix that problem.

not by looking at the very bottom of the funnel and saying, well, I've already pushed it all the way through. How do I make it all the way? You just say, I just need to turn on the spigot at the top and have more coming down. And that usually means dealing with rejection and being told no and all the things we're trying to avoid. But you either pay the price to put stuff in the top of the funnel or you pay a much bigger price by pushing stuff through the bottom that shouldn't make it. Yeah. And that's an excellent point. You know, with those people who ride you around on the weekends like that, David, you know what you do with them? you refer them out to your biggest competitor. The one you hate the most.

The one you dislike. That's funny. Hey, Brandon, your point about the three group there who said, oh, trust us. Here's a way to find out real quick when somebody says that. If you want to try to stay in it, say, okay, I'll trust you. But this is a, let's say it was a $50,000 fix. Yep. I'll trust you.

But at closing, we're going to put $50,000 over into escrow. And if this doesn't break or this whatever is going on for a time period, at the end of that time period, if everything is good, you get your money. That's a great point. And you'll find out real quick if they're being honest with you or not. Because if they're honest, and that holds the deal together. Yeah. So they have to wait 30 days or 90 days to get their money. Yeah.

I tell that people with rent rolls. If you think something's wrong with a rent roll, we're collecting $10,000 a month. but you can't prove it and the bank statement says six we got $4,000 that you're short on the month put $48,000 in an escrow account $4,000 for each month and the end of the each month

if you've collected your full $10,000 the seller gets the four. That's so good. I love that strategy and everything in life. Every time someone tries to paint you into a corner and guilt you into something that you think is wrong, don't fight back, don't get angry, just switch it around and say,

okay, we'll use your logic and your assumptions. And if they're wrong, then you pay instead of me. What, you don't trust me, right? That's exactly how you do it. And then you don't get angry. You don't get frustrated. And you find, or they have to face their own claims. When they're just saying, no, you should trust me and move forward.

They're not being held accountable or responsible for anything. When you switch it around and say, okay, we'll put money in an escrow. And your assumption or your claim to me was that everything's fine. If you really believe that, you'll have no problem putting this money in escrow and giving it to me if you're wrong. And then you find out like what was really underneath, right? That squeeze will reveal what was inside. Yeah.

And if they get mad about it and they immediately like, oh, no, I'm not going to do that. They're lying. Yeah. I mean, they're just, because there's no reason for someone to get up that upset about it unless you just called their bluff. Yeah. They're saying, I want you to risk your money on my claim, but I won't risk my own money on my own claim.

Yeah. That's what that is. Oh, funny. All right. Well, that was really good. Yeah, that definitely probably. And maybe I'll even go back and see if I can't try to pull that into the deal and see if that will maybe help us get through it.

So this was all worth the time right here. Where do I send that consulting? I mean, David, we did this all wrong because I'm a real estate age. I could have referred to you and we'll. Yeah. See, like now it's not just you and Brandon that have something in common. Nathan, you're just really good at making people like you. That's the Southern accent.

That's what it does. I don't think it hurts. That's it. That's it. Yep. All right. Well, let's go and see how well you respond to these. This is time for the deal deep dive.

All right, Nathan, this is the part of the show where we dive deep into one of the properties that you've recently bought or maybe something you did in your past. Maybe it's a really good one. Maybe it's a really bad one. We just want to dive deep in and get the details, the dirty details of the deep dive. So you have a deal in mind, something that we can pick apart and we're going to ask you a bunch of questions about it? Yeah. a 56 unit deal in Winston-Salem. In Winston.

All right. That was my first question is what kind of deal and where was it at? So, David? Yeah, how did you find this deal? So it had been on and off a loop net for five years. Wow. So I've seen it listed, taken off, listed, taken off, but never a price reduction. Interesting.

Well, how much were they asking for it? They were asking $2.25 million. 2.25 million. That's a very good memory. A lot of twos in there. A lot of twos. I can't spell, I can't spell, but I can remember numbers. How did you negotiate that price? So I did a little research.

I was like, this is weird that this property keeps coming on and off. So I just went to the tax records, pulled up who owned the property before I haven't called anybody. Found out that it was owned by a elderly lady who lived in Florida. Her husband had used to own it. he had passed away. And when he passed away, she moved. And from what I could tell, there was no family members, you know, in or around the area. And so I stopped by there and just said hello and found out it was being managed by a local

management company. Okay. So then what did you do? What did you actually get the price down to and what did you buy it for? And then how did you negotiate that, like that discount? Yeah. So this is the one when I went and looked at housing complaints. So before I even contact a broker, I want to kind of know what the picture is.

You know, where does it stand with the housing complaints? What type of issues are there at the property? I always tell people, when you drive by a property, single family or multifamily, and you see that landscaping's not done and the roof looks like a grandma's quilt, it's got five different colors of shingles, and there's duct tape on windows, doors are different colors, cars are broken down. There's normally a financial issue. They're not keeping the property up.

So I saw that there were issues going on. So then I know numbers-wise in my area, what's going to cost to do H-Fact, roof, windows. So then I built my budget out. What was it going to cost to renovate the property? Now, this is where I've even contacted a broker because I want to see if my numbers are going to make sense. What's the property going to rent for upon completion? And, you know, I come out with a value that this property is going to be worth somewhere. upon two years of stabilization worth about 2.9 million.

But it needs a little over a million dollars worth of renovations. And I know as a flipper, when you start leasing up a property, your property, even though it hits 90% in three or four months, it's not worth a property that's been stabilized for two years. It's worth a little less because it doesn't have the history. So I was like, okay, I ran my numbers back. I always run my numbers backwards. I start out, what could it be worth?

conservative, what's the cost, the property cost, what's the renovation cost, and then what any, if I sell it sooner than the two years, what kind of discount am I going to have to give for that? So I get this property at 2.6. They're asking 2.25, and these a million renovations, numbers don't work. So then I start, okay, I just, I took their purchase, their seller's price and put it to the side and said, okay, what would my numbers have to be for me to get involved with this? And this is how I run 99% of my deals. I don't even look at their price they're offering. They're asking for it. I put that to the side. I run my numbers. What could it be worth? What would it be worth if I flipped it early? What's my any holding costs? What's my renovation cost? And then what do I want to make off of

this deal? Once I put that together, you know what the number I have at the end? The number I need to purchase it for. Yep. So I came up with a million dollar, a million 20,000 was the offer. Wow. This is the one I faxed over. So I was at 1.2 million less than they were asking. Crazy. And that's the one they just took. They took it. They accepted it. Wow. But I had everything lined out. I had everything detailed. This is how much the roof was going to cost, the windows, the holding cost, you know, because when you buy a property like that, I mean, there's a time you've got to your mortgage and your interest and your principal in taxes and insurance and you don't have cash flow coming in.

You've got to have some way to cover that. I put all those numbers together and they took the offer. Wow. That's cool. How did you fund this deal? So that deal, when I get into this, I already have banks or private investors lined up that say if you find a deal in this area that meets this criteria, we'll lend this much money on it. So traditionally how I do that with my deals, you know, a bank construction loan to take the property out with 20% down.

It's normally like an 18 month interest only note that's convertible over to a three or five year note. And then eventually if I look at, you know, sometimes I'll put things into Fannie Mae, non-recourse, assumable, that then someone can come along and assume the Fannie note. Okay. So then what did you do with this property then? So once, you know, purchased, they accepted it. We had a 30-day closed, did my due diligence, make sure I was right on everything. We went through and closed.

The property was 80% occupied and 20% paying. Oh, wow. So the first step, the first step was to evict 60% of the folks there. And had you worked those eviction numbers into your numbers before you bought it, did you know it was economically vacant to that degree? I knew, I knew it was that severely. So that was a line item when you sent over your fax. Like this is what it's going to cost me to kick everyone out that's not paying.

Right. And cover the cost of my holding costs. Wow. That's happening. Do I get people in there to pay to cover my just general expenses? Yeah, I think a lot of people don't realize that. An empty apartment is actually better than a apartment with economically paid it where people aren't paying because you can't renovate it until they're gone.

And you've got to pay to get them gone. And you're still having to make that mortgage all the time. it's almost better if it's not full at all. It's much simpler at least. Here's a side note on this that comes into play here and others. When I contact someone like that, I immediately ask like, you know, where are you in your leases? Because if you have a 12-month lease, you can't raise their rent. It's harder to evict, give notices.

So I tell people, look, if you don't have leases, fine, I don't care. Please do not go out and sign a bunch of leases with people. Yeah, you want to pick your tenants. You don't want them to. Yeah, right. Well, it's harder, you know, if somebody's there on a month to month, you can give them a notice to vacate. Yep. And, but if they have a 12-month lease, now you have to wait for them to violate their lease before you can evict them. And you have to take them to court if they fight it and you have to spend legal fees and time. Yeah. Yeah, more energy, more money. I mean, it just, yes. So, you know, please don't go out and sign a bunch of leases.

When I'm representing my clients and they want to look at buying a place that's already occupied by tenants, I always tell them, look, there's a very good chance you're buying an eviction. You're not getting an apartment with somebody already paying rent. Because if they were paying and doing everything they're supposed to do and it was going smooth like you're thinking, the seller probably wouldn't be looking to get rid of it. More likely than not, that's when you decide to sell is when the headache just becomes worth or more than what the upside is to you. So, you know, go ahead, Brandon.

In my area that I'm in, I would rather buy 100% vacant because a property, a single family or multifamily, if it's in financial issues, that means, maintenance has not been done on a timely manner. Yeah. That means things are broken and not been fixed. That means people are mad and upset. And just because you buy it, all of a sudden, they don't change their mindset. They're still mad and upset.

Yep. And rightfully so. But now you've got, not only do you have to fix the issues, but now you've got to fix somebody's mentality. And I, you know, I'm not a trained psychologist. So that's not going to. So I would rather have things, you know, I bought complexes before where people there were paying as great. But I just went in.

I evicted everybody. I evicted everybody who wouldn't I evicted them because just I needed to, not only did I need to clean up the apartment, but I needed to clean up the tenant mentality. Because it spreads when one tenant starts complaining to the new person that moves in and then they start looking at it from a negative mentality because that's what they were told. And I mean, anything can become ridiculous when you hear other people talk about it all the time. I mean, there's nothing in the world that people can't find to be a victim about or upset about if everyone's telling them, can you believe that they make us pay for our own trash? That's ridiculous. Like, blah, blah.

Well, what if every other apartment complex in the area does the same thing? You'll still look at it from that perspective. So I think that's why is you either a victim all or you put in the line item, a psychologist. It's going to have to meet with everybody there and try to turn their minds around. One or the other, right? Yeah. Okay. Awesome.

So next question. What was the outcome of this deal? So ended up renovating it. getting it stabilized, put it into a Fannie Mae note, had it for two and a half years, and ended up selling it for $2.75 million. Wow. So what was the profit on that? So the profit outside of the cash flow was a little over $650,000.

Wow. That's awesome, dude. And see, here's another side of this. When you're running your numbers, banks want what the market value is. So market value to replace an HVAC is $5,000. So when I go get to my loan, I'm getting a loan based on a $5,000 expense. My cost is $3,200. Yep.

So I'm able to take my renovation money and get back most of my down payment. That's awesome. Well, what did you learn on this deal? I learned on this deal that if you're going to cut someone and you're going to cut them deep, make sure you've got a really good reason for doing it. Yeah. Because I'll get offers where people, you know, they just send over this letter of intent with a generic name, property owner. When I contacted this person, I put dear miss, I can't remember her last name.

I made it very personal. I told her the story. This is where your property is. This is what's going on with it. This is what it's going to cost to do it. So that was the first time I had ever done that way. And I learned that if you're going to be successful in this business. business and you really want the opportunity to close a deal, the more work you can put into that

story of how you can close, what it's going to cost you to close, all of that, the better off, the better chance you stand of closing that deal. That's perfect. All right, dude. Let's head over to the last segment of the show. We're going to skip the fire round today and just go direct to the world famous. Famous for. All right, Nathan, these questions are the same questions we ask every guest,

every week. And we're going to throw them all at you right now. But before we get to it, we got to listen to Jay Scott and find out what's going on this week over on the Bigger Pockets Business Podcast. Hey there, Brandon and podcast guests. This is Jay Scott, your host of the Bigger Pockets Business podcast. This week on our show, we have a fantastic guest. We have David Hoffeld, author of the book, The Science of Selling. And David spends an hour with us talking all about the research behind being a great salesperson. He gives some amazing tips for how you can improve your sales and how you can shift your mindset to be a better salesperson. So tune in on Tuesday for our show and now back to your famous four. All right. Now we can get to the questions of the famous four. Number one, Nathan,

favorite real estate related book other than maybe one you've written, because haven't you written one? I have written. I was going to say, but my answer here is any book written by Brandon. Yes. Look at this. I mean, oh, thank you. That's the nicest thing I even ever said. You were going to send me 20 bucks for the way. I wasn't 20 per book you recommend. So now you get like a lot of it. No, I enjoy you.

My first book that I ever bought, I don't know if I have it. I don't have it in my office, but was the commercial real estate investing for dummies. Oh, okay. That's fun. The 2005 or six. And it was a good base because it just, any of those things, it really went into the business plan, an investor packet. It wasn't really in depth.

It was more just, hey, this is what you need to know if you're looking at this. Yeah, that's really, I actually like the dummies guides, the idiots guides,

the, you know, although I really like those because they usually do a pretty good job. Just for a baseline, just for a foundation. They don't give too much in depth. But it's just kind of,

if you want to know kind of a, and course, I didn't have anybody at that time that I reached out to. But I do like your books too. Oh, thank you. I'll take a good job on that. Thank you.

He clearly likes books for dummies, so of course, he likes your books for. Just kidding. Brandon's actually one of the most prominent authors in the real estate of us. I think you're still the number one book on Amazon when you search real estate, right? I think so.

Oh, yes, he's the number one book in all of real estate. That's the power of bigger pockets, though. And like, there's a reason why I beg to write the book on rental property investing. Let's be honest here. Like, everyone loves rentals. And I was like, I got to be the wrong to write that book. So it's less me.

than it is the niche NBP. Wow, what a humble brag. I'm a humble guy. I'll accept it. There it is. All right, Nate, what is your favorite business book? This might be unique for some people, but I really like the Bible. Oh, there you go.

And when you look at it from a stance of how do you treat others, how what's your perspective on money, how you handle a conflict, whether you're religious or not, there's some really good information in there. And for me, for a long time, I got really focused on money. And I realized when my focus was just money, I became a really miserable person. Yeah. And I had to back up and regear and say my focus has to be my faith and my family and my internal. Because what's the purpose of making a lot of money if nobody likes you? Yeah.

Well, you clearly rectified that because you're very likeable. Well, thank you. I was going to say the whole like, yeah, 20 bucks there right there. I'll get the whole like, you know, what good is it to gain the whole world and lose your soul? That's one of my favorite lines and like all, like all of the Bible and all of like, what good is it to gain everything like if you lose your soul in the process. You know, you would be hard pressed if you took any self-help book, religious or not, you can find that principle somewhere in the Bible.

And I don't say that to offend anybody. I don't, you know, it's just my own personal faith. My next is the thing can grow rich. Napoleon Hill. Yeah. Especially the first couple of chapters where it's just, you know, organization, getting your mindset right. I'll be 46 tomorrow, actually, on the, no, the 29th of this month.

And it really has come down. Life is about a choice. You know, you can choose to be happy or you can choose to be miserable. You can choose to spend your time doing this or not. And the thinking grow rich has some good thought processes behind, you know, what are you doing with your life? And do you have a purpose? Do you have a goal?

I like that, especially in today's culture where we're often being told that there's nothing we can do and things are against us and society is against us and the government owes us everything. Just to remember that you choose what you want your life to be. And there's nobody here stopping you from doing the things that you want to do is very empowering. And often when you talk to someone who went from lack of success to success, what they did was they just chose to do things different. Like Brandon gave an incredible piece of advice.

If you're sitting around waiting, what am I supposed to do? You're actually saying it's the universe's job to tell me what my role is so I can go do it. And he said, change that. Go say, what do I want to do? And make that the goal of what your life is supposed to be. And it's really just empowerment. That's good advice. The idea is David Green and taking my incoherent ramblings and putting them into a nice package.

Good job, David. Thank you. I'm glad I can contribute something to this podcast. Okay. What are some of your hobbies? I love boating. I love going to kind of deserted areas and looking for shells, sand dollars, little, you know, shark teeth, things that are kind of harder to find.

I spend a lot of time with my family. I actually love my wife and I love spending time with her. And I've got a really cool 14-year-old daughter who I get along with great. And then I play quite a bit of racquetball. I hope my wife doesn't, I hope my wife doesn't listen to this because she's always like, you're a gym rat. I was like, well, not really because I'm not actually, I'm at the gym, but I'm more playing racquetball.

That's the one sport Brandon Turner actually knows. I know that sport. I'm not that good. I mean, I can hold my own against like newbies, but I want to play Nathan. We need to come up with some, maybe we have some, you know, live bigger pockets,

charity challenge or something. That's a good idea. You got to come out to Maui and we'll play at the Y here. There's only one racquet ball court on that. Well, there's two, but one's at the hotel you can't get to you. There's one public at the YMCA. you and I will throw it down.

Sounds like a plan. You know, he's bringing you to his home court. I'd be very wary of that. He's like, you've got to fly all the way across the Pacific Ocean to come to this specific place. There's going to be booby traps, all kinds of stuff. Well, see, I have a strategy in racquetball. If somebody's beating me, I just start aiming at them.

There you go. If you hit someone once or twice, then they just, they get out of the way because they're skin. Yeah, that's it. I just, you know. That's funny. Yeah, I have so many welts all over my, but I've had so many welts all over it.

So, yeah, I hear you. All right. My last question, what do you think sets apart successful real estate investors from those who give up, fail, or never get started? Not taking no for an answer.

You're going to be told no. The people who have been successful in the real estate have figured out how to take that no and either change the plan or find someone else to implement the plan with because if you just take no

and say, oh, well, I can't do this. I'm going to go home and stop trying. That's what has happened to a lot of people in real estate. When you're told no, no to your offer, well, you go find another house and make another offer. You're told no by an investor. You go find another investor.

So I think that's really the quality or the trait that you'll find and people have been successful in this is they haven't stopped when they've been told no. Yeah, really good. Good stuff. Nathan, last question from me. can people find out more about you? So people can find out more about me at nathan tabor.com.

And that's N-A-T-H-A-N-T-A-B-A-B-A-B-A-N-V-V-O-R dot com. And on that website, there's kind of a landing page there. And I'm involved in numerous things from real estate to a ministry that I do some podcast stuff with and that and all kinds of other stuff. But that's a good landing page that people can find out. And I've got to actually have a free book on a e-book on how to find finance, fix, and flip apartments. Oh, awesome.

Yeah, you have a very nicely designed website. I was actually just thinking that earlier. I was like, what a good design. Like, I needed something like that. Well, I built that. So thank you very much. I appreciate that. Oh, look at you.

You're on it. I'll just own a website company in my serial entrepreneurial days. Ah, that's cool. Yeah, well, you got it. All right, dude, this has been fantastic. Really, really good. I love everything you had to say today. They do diligence stuff.

I mean, everything about, like, niching down. We covered that. We covered, I mean, so much good stuff. The idea that every property has a number. Like, I hope people take that away from here and know, Like just, you know, don't be afraid of rejection. Everything's got a number. Go out and find that number.

Go after deals. And again, fantastic show. So thank you, Nathan. Hey, thanks, David. I appreciate it. And Brandon, I appreciate it. And appreciate you guys. Let me be part of your podcast today.

Thanks, David. You want to take us out? It was great to meet you. He is Nathan T-A-B-O-R. I am David Green 24. And Brandon is Beardie Brandon all on Instagram. Let us know what you thought of the show. Let us know what you'd like to see more of.

We love to talk to you guys on there. That being said, I am David Green. for Brandon married his fairy tale Turner. Signing off. You're listening to Bigger Pockets Radio, simplifying real estate for investors large and small. If you're here looking to learn about real estate investing, without all the hype, you're in the right place. Be sure to join the millions of others who have benefited from biggerpockets.com. Your home for real estate investing online. Thank you all for listening to the Bigger Pockets Real Estate podcast. Make sure you get all

our new episodes by subscribing on YouTube, Apple, Spotify, or any other podcast platform. Our new episodes come out Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. On the host, an executive producer of the show, Dave Meyer, the show is produced by Ian K, copywriting is by Calico content, and editing is by Exodus Media. If you'd like to learn more about real estate investing or to sign up for our free newsletter, please visit www.biggerpockets.com. The content of this podcast is for informational purposes only. All host and participant opinions are their own. Investment in any asset, real estate included involves risk. So use your best judgment and consult with qualified advisors before investing. You should only risk capital you can afford to lose. And remember,

past performance is not indicative of future results. Bigger Pocket's LLC disclaims all liability for direct, indirect, consequential, or other damages arising from a reliance on information presented in this podcast.