BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast - 50: Getting Started and No Money Down House Flipping with Mike Simmons

Episode Date: December 26, 2013

On today’s episode of the BiggerPockets Podcast, we sit down and talk about the best ways to get started with real estate investing, as well as some killer tips for investing without using your own money. From picking a niche, overcoming analysis paralysis, and a lot more – our guest, Mike Simmons, will share his story of overcoming obstacles and becoming a full time house flipper in the Metro Detroit area. Mike has a great story and an incredible strategy for flipping houses using no money of his own, so whether you are brand new or have been investing for years – you don’t want to miss Mike’s creative advice. Read the transcript for episode 50 with Mike Simmons here. In This Show, We Cover: Overcoming “shiny object syndrome” and “analysis paralysis” Losing $1000 on his first “almost deal.” Finding contractors without losing your hair Dealing with Detroit investing Why Mike had to evict a squatter who broke into his property Finding good deals in any market Using social media to attract private money Using partnerships to get started or to grow How Mike structures partnerships Should you start with wholesaling? And a whole lot more! Links from the Show BP Podcast 012 : Wholesaling and Marketing with Sharon Vornholt BiggerPockets Success Story Forum Tenant Screening: The Ultimate Guide The BiggerPockets Hard Money Lender Directory BP Podcast 047: Apartment Complexes, NNN Leases, and Commercial Real Estate with Joel Owens Books Mentioned in the Show Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki The Art of the Deal by Donald Trump The Millionaire Next Door by Thomas J. Stanley Wealth Attraction for Entrepreneurs by Dan Kennedy Tweetable Topics You can read for days – and never do anything. Get out there and DO something. (Tweet This!) Work with a Realtor who knows you and knows your business. (Tweet This!) 50% of something is better than 100% of nothing. (Tweet This!) Connect with Mike Mike’s BiggerPockets Profile Mike’s Website and Podcast: JustStartRealEstate.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Bigger Pockets podcast. Show 50. You're listening to Bigger Pockets Radio, simplifying real estate for investors large and small. If you're here looking to learn about real estate investing, without all the hype, you're in the right place. Stay tuned and be sure to join the millions of others who have benefited from BiggerPockets.com. Your home for real estate investing online. Hey, what's going on, everybody? this is Josh Dorkin, host of the Bigger Pockets podcast here with Brandon.

Hey, everyone. This is Brandon co-host of the Bigger Pockets podcast here with Josh. Wait, are you making fun of me? I would never make fun of people. I am respectful of all. That's not true. That's not true. Yeah, yeah.

All right. All right. Well, listen, happy holidays to everybody listening. And we got a really, really good show ahead. we've got a really fantastic interview and we'll get into that in a second but before we do we've got our quick tip

yeah today's quick tip listen to the whole show guys if you're new especially listen to the entire show we know that these things could be a bit long sometimes but we definitely want to encourage you

to make it all the way to the end because there's definitely some amazing stuff in particular in this show there's a lot of really juicy advice at the very end so if you're the type who listens for five minutes and thinks that you got it all and you know it all

well you certainly don't and you're certainly missing out so make it to the end guys everyone's like that's a lame quick tip. It was a lame quick tip and what was with that voice man you sounded like you were going to kill somebody I was adding

emphasis to that Okay, you're not being Batman again, are you? No, I'm not going to be Batman. Come on. Okay. All right. All right. Well, before we introduce our guests, I want to encourage you guys as I do every week to jump on the show notes at biggerpockets.com slash show 49. And come and ask our guest questions or just let them know that you listen to the show.

You know, our guests put a lot of time in into just being here and giving you guys advice. and they love spending the time to answer your questions. They really do, and they get a lot out of it. So, you know, jump in and let them know how you feel about the show. Otherwise, of course, if you guys have not left a review or rating on iTunes yet, I really want to encourage you to do so. We're at 524 reviews, and we'd love to see that number get to 1,000 by tomorrow. By tomorrow, 1,000.

Let's double a year's worth of work. By tomorrow. By tomorrow. We're doing it. All right. Yes. So jump on iTunes. Let the world know what you think of the show.

Leave an honest review there. We're not going to bribe you to do anything. That's not how we roll. But come and do it. All right. Leave us some feedback. And we appreciate it. With that, it's time for the show.

This is the big show. What? I don't know. I used to watch wrestling back in the day. a guy named Big Show. This is a lot about you, Josh, that used to watch wrestling back in the day. And it all makes sense now. It's all coming together.

Come on, Brandon. You did not watch Hulk Hogan in those yellow spandex back in the day. I was like four years old. Yeah, yeah. All right. So for today's show, we're going to sit down with a guy named Mike Simmons. Mike's a real estate investor from the great state of Michigan. He started flipping houses back in 2000.

and Aiden has some really keen insight into the best ways to get started in any niche of real estate. Mike's also a really funny guy, so I think you guys are going to love this show. And, you know, as somebody in Michigan, we're going to have an interesting debate later on. So stay tuned. You ever head out on a trip, lock your door, and think, cool, my most valuable asset is now doing absolutely nothing. Because while you're off traveling, your home is just sitting there. Quiet, empty, not contributing, which feels like a missed opportunity, can

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you start wondering if you should have opened a savings account for snacks. So wouldn't it be great if you could have, actually earn money while you're traveling. Well, you can. Airbnb has something called the co-host network. While you're away, you can hire a vetted local co-host with hosting experience to help take care of things, communicating with guests, preparing your space, managing reservations, everything runs smoothly while you're off making memories. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at Airbnb.com slash host. You've upgraded how to buy properties, but did your insurance get the memo? When investors start scaling, insurance can't be an afterthought. Most policies were designed.

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Talk to NREG and get investor-specific coverage from specialists who actually understand real estate at NRE.com slash BPPod. That's n-R-E-I-G.com slash BPPod. And with that, why don't we get the show going? Mike, welcome to the show, my friend. Good to have you. Thanks, guys. Good to be here.

Awesome. Good to have you. Let us begin at the beginning. What kind of investing do you do? Begin at the beginning. I am going to begin at the beginning. I was born in a small town. No.

Maybe not that beginning. No, I won't go. I'll go pretty far back, but I'll make it. it quick because it's kind of it's me it's relevant how I got started even before I bought my first house. I was an adult working in the working world and you know I was approaching my 30s and I thought you know I don't I don't want to work the rest of my life that's not really my goal to work you know and I was kind of doing the math too going okay I know what I make I know my bills are I don't make kids I have and at the end of the day I'd have to live to be like 180 to really be

to retire. So, so I started looking online and I thought, you know, my first inclination was the stock market, maybe day trading sounded cool. So yeah, I got online and started really researching stocks and stock market and what the terminology was. And I found every time I got on there and started like trying to research stocks or just the stock market or how do you even go about this whole thing, I would always end up on like NFL.com or ESPN.com because what I found after, Yeah, exactly. What I found after a few, a few, you know, jons out into the real estate, I'm sorry, the stock world is, I hated it. It was boring. It was God awful. It was like reading insurance novels. It was just, it was the worst. You're wrong, by the way. I was, I was, I was a stock trader for a while. So I did it. Fascinating, exciting, fast pace, crazy and you'll lose your ASS if you don't know what you're doing. But you have a.

boring personality to be a stock trader. Well, luckily I got bored by it because I'm sure I would have lost my A-S-S-I-2. Yeah, I just, it just didn't excite me. I just couldn't. I tried. I wanted to get into it so bad. It seemed like a cool thing, but I just couldn't get into it. So anyways, when you go online and you type into Google or at the time, Yahoo or whatever I was on, and you type in investing, you will get stocks and stock trading. and that kind of thing, but inevitably, you'll also come across real estate investing. So as I was scrolling down and trying to look for a stock site that interests me, I came across real estate investing sites and real estate investing people out there that are online and pushing their wares and things like that.

And it really piqued my interest. I realized that I just couldn't get enough of it. The more I read, the more interested I was. And I just, it sort of built early on it built that way. I developed a liking. for it or a real interest in it. Now, the people that I was reading and things, a lot of times it was kind of salesmany and, you know, kind of bad that way. But, you know, it at least planted the seed that I at least like this whole thing called real estate investing. And then, you know,

you move on from there. And we can jump to maybe my, you know, when I really got involved. Well, and you know, as much as like, you know, we, we like to make fun of, you know, the gurus and those who, you know, are, you know, selling their wares and all that. But I mean, you are right, like a lot of us are in the game because of them. So whether or not, you know, whether or not their tactics are terrible and their upsells are terrible, when we are, a lot of us are, you know, they're responsible for our, you know, future success. So there's something to say for that. Not that I'm saying that, you know, I love them.

But, you know, Josh, what do you thoughts? That's what I thought. Anyway. Yeah, I mean, sometimes they plant the seed. And that's really what it was. They planted the seat. And I really dodged a bullet because I talk to people and I hear a lot of stories. about people who, you know,

unfortunately spent thousands and thousands of dollars on kind of BS systems before they realized that they were taken and then they move on and do the right thing. I didn't do that. I was far too cheap to spend that kind of money. So for me, it was just a lot of reading and that kind of thing. Yeah. Gotcha.

Gotcha. All right. So your interest was piqued and then what? Then I did what a lot of people do and what I really advise people not to do is I started reading. and then I thought flipping houses sounded cool, and then I thought buying holes sounded cool, and then, oh my God, there's wholesaling.

And what is the least option? And I started just running toward every shiny object that I saw. And what I basically did was I just created this paralysis, my analysis, and I started learning a little bit about everything, but I didn't really know much about any one way of doing it. So to answer your question, Josh, I sat on the sidelines for years, really. I sat there for probably four or five years before I really took the first,

real step into real estate. I just allowed myself to get too caught up in the reading and analyzing different processes and models. Gotcha. So, and on that, you know, I don't think the reading is bad. I don't think there's any fault in that. I think the issue comes in being, and this is going to come off as as a negative on you, but it's not meant to be. It's, you know, on the indecisiveness, the inability to narrow down those options. to one option and then focus exclusively on that option, work it, and then once you kind of figure it out and get your thing, get it going with that, then potentially moving to the next and to the next, would you say that's fair? Yeah, it's totally fair. It took someone,

someone had to tell me to focus on one thing. Forget about everything else. Pick one that you think that you might like and really, really apply yourself. Someone had to actually like basically have an intervention and tell me I had to do this. Otherwise, I might still be just reading and look at the shiny objects. I don't know. It seemed like how do you focus on one thing? There's somebody making money with this and that. And this guy says, and the problem is everybody talked to you has their own opinion, right? So it's tough to focus if you're talking to all kinds of different people who are doing all kinds of different models. You get swayed and they're very, you know, some people are persuasive. They say, oh man, wholesaling is where it's at. Why would you

flip a house? Why would you want to have, you know, tenants? You need to wholesale, man. You buy the houses, you never had to do anything. And then the next guy goes, well, what are you talking about? If you flip it, you make all the money. Why would you wholesale it? Keep these houses and flip them. It isn't that big of a deal. And then, of course, other people go, that's not investing. You need to buy and hold for the long term. And I kept getting pulled in different directions because luckily I was in a mastermind, a real estate mastermind, like a local one, a physically, like one where you go to it. And there was a lot of really knowledgeable people, people doing some good stuff and really knew their thing. But every time I sat down and talked to the next person who really knew what they were talking about,

they really knew what they're talking about in their specific way of doing it. And then the next time I went, I would sit by some other guy who was really helpful and really great, but he was convinced his way was the best. And it was really tough for me to focus, you know? Yeah. And that's a problem that I'd say the vast majority of people who are probably listening to the show are dealing with. I'd say the vast majority of, quote, real estate investors, you know, those guys who say, I'm an investor.

I just read a book. Yeah. You know, it's something that a lot, a lot of people face. And it's good to hear that, you know, it's something you went through because, you know, hopefully it gives people some hope that, that, you know, if you do narrow down your focus and start working at that one thing, then you can find your way. You know, one thing in the ultimate beginner's guide to real estate investing that we put out like a year ago, one of the things we talk about in there is how in real estate there's a whole lot of different niches and then there's a whole lot of different strategies you can use within those. So all together, when you combine them all together, it's, you know, like you said, flipping, wholesaling, buying hold, whatever, lease options, subject to. I mean, these are niches and strategies that when you combine them, there's like hundreds of ways to make this work. And every one of those, you can find somebody on Bigger Pockets who's succeeding doing it. And so, it's shiny object, exactly like you said.

Hey, really quick, what was that? It was called the what, Brandon, the ultimate? The ultimate beginner's guide to real estate investing at biggerpockets.com slash UBG. Okay, there you go. Yeah, you know, it is, it is, it is, it is like bigger pockets that actually is a tremendous, tremendous tool, tremendous resource, but also a source of so much good information. You could literally read and read and read and read and read for days and never get out there. At some point, you have to, I hate to say it, you have to click off. You have to hit that little X.

No! All right, I take it back. Just keep reading. because no get out you're right you have to get out there and that's what I wasn't doing I you know at the time there your website wasn't around but I was you know on different forums and boy you can find a lot of really bad information too that's you know part of the problem you start going down the wrong road every once in a while and it takes you some time and talking to people to figure out you know you're kind of going down a path that isn't really going to be successful so yeah I mean so I mean basically I did that I I learned a ton of

But, you know, the best way to learn is to go out there and do it. I would venture to guess anybody you talked to in real estate who's successful will say they didn't really know anything until they did their first couple of deals. And you learn a ton by getting out there and doing it. And that's how I've learned most of what I've learned. I'm not a, you know, I'm not a super big book reader. I don't devour books on real estate. But I get out there and do it and you just learn a ton that way. Yeah.

Yeah, definitely. Well, let's talk about that. Let's talk about your first deal. How did that first deal come about what was it? Okay, well, the first house, I'm going to talk about the first house I ever got under contract first. It wasn't my first deal, but it's important because I started investing in real estate or I at least made the decision that I was going to pull the trigger and really do it in 2008, right? It's like one of the worst times in the world because house prices were plummeting. And so I put an offering on a house. I got the courage up to put an offering on a house. And I got the money from a very local. small bank, very, very small local bank. And they approved me. It was all set up. We had a contract. We're waiting for closing. And the bank went out of business. Like literally was gone one day. Yeah. So we had, we put down. They have all the stickers on the door saying this is going to shut down by

the face. Yeah, four clothes. Yeah. Actually, I looked in it. I bought it. It was a good deal. No. Yeah. No, they went out of business. And I couldn't find anyone else to fund the deal in time. and I had put $1,000 earnest money down, and long story short, I lost it. And I thought, oh, my guys, the end of the world. I just lost $1,000, my first adventure out into real estate. And I just lost a ton of money. And the funny thing was is four months later, I bought a house one street over for half the price that I was going to pay for that house.

So you can imagine when I finished rehab, by the way, it was going to be a fix and flip. When I would have finished fixing it up and try to flip it, you could imagine what the house prices would have been like I would have lost way more than a thousand dollars I mean it would have been a disaster so luckily I didn't get that first one I like I said a couple a street over a few months later I bought my first deal we used traditional mortgage financing we went to a bank got a mortgage and then you know we had to put the down payment down obviously and then we used our personal funds my wife and I to do all of the rehab so we basically took all of our chips and symbolically pushed them to the middle of the table and said,

we are all in, here's all our money, we're going to try this and we think we can do it. And we learned a lot, and I'll be happy to tell you the things we did right and wrong there. But at the end of the day, we made money. And it was really, really good. It was one of the best deals we did for quite a while, actually. All right, let's hear it. What did you do? Well, let's hear what you did right, and then I could pick on you what you did wrong.

Okay. Well, what we did right was we didn't over. rehab it, right? We didn't go in and do what some new investors do and they think if I were living here, I would want granted, and I would want expensive fixtures, and I would want, you know, they overdo it for the area that they're in, and then they realize they can't make money because they just spent way too much on rehab. Now, it was our money, and it was all of our money, and there was a very definite end to that pile. You know, there was a number that we were going to stop rehabbing no matter what. So we had to budget within that. And we were smart enough and we had enough

context to know that we should go to open houses around the neighborhoods and in that community, look at the other houses, find out what our competition is basically, and then make sure we're a little bit better than that, at least a little bit better than that, but not light years better than that, just better than that. So whenever someone goes to look at our house and you know they're going to go look at other houses that day too, they're going to look and the houses that we bought, that one in particular was like a 3-1 brick with a basement in a garage. It's a decent little house, good price. But when people go look at other houses, like that or in the neighborhood, they're going to see 1950s kitchen. They're going to see,

you know, carpet covering up hardwood, this nasty carpet. So that was our competition and we knew that's what we had to beat. So it was pretty easy in that neighborhood, just put in new cabinets. They didn't have to be the best cabinets in the world. As a matter of fact, I think we went to Home Depot and got off the shelf cabinets, but they were new. And it made the house better than every other house in the neighborhood. We refinished the hardwood floors, paint. I mean, it was really a basic rehab, but it worked out really, really well for us. Because We didn't go overboard. Did you do the work yourself or hire it out with a contractor?

We hired a contractor. Okay, so we want to get into what we did wrong now. Hired a contract, what did we do wrong? Yeah. Oh, my God. What didn't we do wrong? So the first thing I did wrong was I went on Craigslist and I said, looking for a contractor, to renovate a house, gave him my phone number and guess what happened?

My phone blew up pretty soon my voicemail was locked up and it was just, it was a mess. answering calls from all these guys that wanted to go right then and look at it. So I set up appointments to talk to six different contractors. And I set them up so that I would have an hour with each one and then a half an hour buffer in between in case it went a little long. Right. So you can do the math. I was there forever, right? So I thought the first contractor had come in, I talked him for an hour, a little buffer in case I'd go to the bathroom or go get something to drink or whatever. Then the next like appointments with professionals, right? So I was there for. That's a lot. That's a lot. That's the first problem.

I was there for like 10 hours. I talked to two contractors. The rest of them were no-shows. I was furious. And I said, I am never, ever, ever, ever going to do this again. So here's one little tip for you. Maybe people do this, but I had to learn the hard way. I do when I'm looking for a new contractor, I have one now that I love.

But when I need a new one, I will make an appointment with six contractors in one hour. And they all show up at the same time. I walk every one of them through one time. And if some don't show, who cares? If at least one person's there, it's worth my time. And that way they see that there is competition. There's a sense of competition there that they are bidding against other people that are real. And that's how we found some really good contractors along the way.

But some people have said it's rude. Don't do that. It's rude for me to sit there for 10 hours too. Yeah. So I was going to ask about that. I mean, I don't think it's rude. I think it's just a matter of using best use of your time. I'm curious if you've experienced a situation where these guys kind of, you know, there's a lot of machismo in that space, right? So is there any kind of beef? Was there any battles between these guys ever?

No, I didn't have any problems. I mean, I show up first, obviously, and I've got everything organized. I make a bunch of different copies of the work order or the scope of work. I hand it out. And I walk, I just lead it through. I lead them through. And when they're done, I basically say that's it. Please give me your, you know, send your quote to me in the next couple of days. days or whatever. So I don't give them a lot. They don't, they're not standing around drinking coffee, and eating donuts and hanging talking or otherwise there would be problems. And that's something I found going back to my, I only really have like one or two things I did right. I have a lot of things I did wrong on my first house. So we're going to spend more time there. So anyway, so I didn't do that in the first one, right? I stayed there for 10 hours. I found a contractor. And the way I picked my contractor was he was about my age. He seemed like a pretty cool guy. Somebody I could get along with. someone I would probably, you know, enjoy talking to. I thought that was the way I should go.

I'm going to pick someone kind of like me. Someone I, you know, I kind of like and he seemed like a good, good dude. This is for a book club or for you? Yeah, I know, exactly. No, I was just, apparently I was looking for friends at the time. Turns out worst contractor ever. I mean, the work he did was all right. It wasn't great. At the end of the day, he didn't pay the electrician. Her $1,000, it was an electrician company. He didn't pay him their $1,000 that, for the work they did. Of course, I paid him for that. And believe it or not, this is going to shock you. So hopefully everyone's sitting down and ready and rested for this. He didn't answer my calls when I tried to find out what happened with the contractor and why he didn't pay them.

So, no, yeah, I feel bad to this day. It makes me cry a little bit. Yeah, he didn't call me back. I couldn't get a hole. He fell off the face of the earth, whatever. So I called the contractor and said, listen, this is what happened. I already paid for the work. And their response was, as it well should be, that's fine. But we didn't. get paid and we need to get paid. And our only recourse now is to put a lien against your house and you're not going to sell it unless you pay us. And I was like, good Lord, this is my first house. I'm like, come on. All right, maybe I can figure out a deal. So I talked to the person and they agreed to cut it down to $600 from $1,000. Oh, that was really nice. Yeah, really nice.

Didn't have to do that, by the way. Did not have to do that. So I'm going to chalk it up to negotiating skills and we'll put that in the area of things I did well. Since I feel like there's not enough in that column. But yeah, I talked to them and they agree to cut it down. So I just cut my losses, paid them and moved on. Yeah. Wow. Wow. Wow. Well, that's definitely something to learn. Now, how would somebody go about avoiding that? Right. So, you know, you're paying a GC and there's there's subcontractors underneath that they're responsible for paying. And of course, if they don't, you're on the line, which, which if you don't know that guys who are listening, that's the way the world works.

So how do we protect ourselves from these guys not paying their subcontractors? It's pretty simple. It's called a release of lien and you make your general contractor sign it and all of the subcontractors need to sign this release of lien basically saying that they are not going to put a lien against your house for non-payment as long as you pay. And obviously you pay with checks. Don't pay with cash.

You know, don't do some of those things that people do where they get burned. You know, make sure it's all above board. I've had contractors say, oh, you know, can you pay me in cash and, you know, whatever reason. They have a ton of reasons. And I just say, I'm really sorry. I can't do it that way. Everything has to be with a company check. We're all going to sign a release of lien. And I have my contractor sign like basically an agreement before they get started about how the work's going to be done. And it spells out everything, the scope of work, how they're going to pay their subcontractors, how the release, you know, the release of funds are going to go and that kind of thing. So you do it

with contracts, unfortunately, or paperwork of some kind that stipulates certain things. And a release of lien is the thing that we learned on our first flip there that you have to do. Otherwise, people can come back and say you didn't pay them. And that's just the way it is. Gotcha. All right. So what else did you do wrong? Well, you asked me, yeah, I know.

There's more. Believe me, there's one. Well, you asked me who did the work, right? So I'm going to say this. I'm not a carpenter. I'm not a builder, a finished carpenter, anything like that. We didn't do the bulk of the work. but we did think that we could do certain things that were like manual labor that, you know,

didn't require a ton of skill. Like, we thought it would be a good idea to scrape the paint on the back of the house and repaint ourselves. That seemed like a good way to save, you know, $200 or what it was. Sounds like a good Sunday activity with the family. Yeah, sounds like a, yeah, my wife and I went out there with putty knives and I scraped about a one by three foot area and was cussing and saying this is ridiculous. How much did we save again?

what exactly was this going to cost us? And yeah, I think we actually didn't even finish. We just said, you know what? We'll just pay him to do this. This is insane. It's taking all day and it's ridiculous. The other thing was there was a basement, like I said, and we thought we can pay in a basement, no big deal.

And we did. It wasn't the end of the world, but it took us way longer than it were to take in the contractor. We held him up a little bit because we weren't done with certain things and just little things like that that we thought, you know, we're saving a 200 here, 100 there, 300 there. but what really you do is you're just adding so much time to the job that doesn't have to be there. And, you know, the idea when you're fixing a flipping house is to turn them as quickly as possible. You know, holding onto them for six months to work on them isn't the way to go. And we were going into the Christmas season, too.

So had we known more, we would have been even more concerned about getting done with the job faster because we ended up selling the house like December 10th or something. It was horrible. And we held it for too long and, you know, made all the job. those mistakes. We talk, okay, so the next mistake. I'm just running through them now because you just made me, you made me realize. I'm such a screw up. No, this is horrible. This is good stuff, though. People need to know. I mean, it's things that a lot of people do. So we got, we found a realtor. I don't even remember how we found this realtor. She might have been recommended to us. And I said, I want to sell

the house and I want to sell it quickly. What, what do you think is a good? And by the way, I didn't do my after repair value too much. Not like I should have at least. I kind of got lucky a little bit. But I should have known what the house was going to be worth really very well myself before I got too far into this. But I trusted her and said, what do you think it's going to be worth? What should we put it on the market for? And she gave me a price. And I said, all right, I don't want to hang on to this forever, though. So make sure we're not being too, you know, aggressive with this price.

And no, no, no, no, I think we can get it. Well, long story short, it took us like four months to sell it. It was, she priced it so high. It was a complete joke. I mean, she was trying to make a big commission, I guess, and maybe trying to do us a favor by making us a lot of money. But you know how it goes. If you overpriced the house and then it sits there for a month, now you've got a house that sit there for a month and nobody knows why it's not selling and they have to assume something's wrong with it. And you go down that road.

And that's kind of, we were chasing our tail the entire time. We would drop it by $5,000 and then we drop it. And then you got a house that keeps dropping in price every other week. And then that creates a stigma. And it was just kind of a bad deal from that point of view. But we still, you know, I live in Michigan. So the house we bought for $40,000. You live where? In the great state of Michigan. Oh, this is going to be fun, really. All right.

Continue where you're going. We're going to have to move on in a second. Yeah, yeah. Okay. So in Michigan, you can buy a house for $40,000. At least in a way, you could. Buy $40,000, my friend. I said Michigan, by the way.

I'm being state-specific, not city-specific. I don't know what city you're talking about. So we bought it for $40,000. You know, we put like $15,000 into it, sold it for like $85. And, you know, we made 15,000. It was a good deal for us. It was a good first deal. You know, we didn't have any partners, so that was good, right?

We weren't splitting it with anybody. And even with the high price point to begin with and what we ended up getting for it, we did all right. It was fine. We just should have priced it lower. We probably could have made more if we would have not priced it quite so high to begin with. Yeah. That's like, gives bad flashbacks to my early flipping days.

I think every flippers had that experience. Yeah. So, so. So let's stop for a second here. Hold on, hold on. So you're, you said you're from Michigan, yeah? Yes. Okay.

And Michigan's a great state. I love Michigan. Never been there. Love, love the state. Oh, this is so condescending. What do you love about it, Josh? There's nothing, you know, the people are great. The landscape is gorgeous.

You know, the industry that it, wait, hold on. What do you drive, Josh? What do you drive? I drive all Japanese, baby. Okay, all right. Then I don't have a point. Go ahead. I'm a Honda Toyota man.

So if American cars were better for crying out loud. Okay, I just lost a third of my audience. Yep. Okay, so you're, now are you in, it's, what is it, Detroit. Are you in Detroit? I am, I'm not in Detroit. Oh, man.

Do you invest in Detroit? Yeah, we can go there. too. I have invested in Detroit. I have, I have, I have, I have, I have some stories for, I have some Detroit stories for you. Okay, so, so this is, let me just, let's just do a segue here. This is show 49 of the Bigger Pockets podcast, and for about

48 of the previous shows, uh, in some way, shape, or form I have implied or, or directly bagged on the great city of Detroit. The word is mock. You've mocked. I haven't mocked. I have not. I listen. I listen. I've listened to a ton of your shows, right? You crowbar in shots at Detroit.

Even if there's nothing to be said about it. You'll talk to people and go, where are you from? Chicago. Isn't that near Michigan? Isn't that your exploit is? So let's get to this. Let's get to this whole discussion because I think it's a discussion that needs to be had. And we'll keep it really brief. And then we'll move on. just because I get so much grief from people for my little crowbar. I'm going to represent Detroit now. Do it. Do it. All right.

Here's the deal. So people are always out there saying, you know, you can find these. Okay, let me stop and circle back. My issue with Detroit is this. The city, the industry, everything's kind of going the wrong direction, has been for a long, long, long time. You know, they want to raise, I don't know, how many properties do they want to raise thousands and thousands of properties that they're trying to just like literally destroy because the economy and everything else is, there's such a problem.

My issue is people are out there trying to get unsuspecting, unknowing, unknowing real estate investors, quote unquote, to come in and buy property in Detroit. And, you know, it really concerns me. And they is obviously a big they. It can mean one of lots of different folks, but tends to be. some of the unseemly folk who are doing it. And, you know, yeah, you can buy a dollar property. You could buy a $50, a $1,000, a $5,000 property.

And, you know, if you could get the rents and if you can actually get somebody to live there, you know, certainly you can make some money. But, you know, it scares the crap out of me that people who aren't aware think, oh, I could buy a super cheap property. Cool. Well, cheap doesn't mean, you know, it's cheap. expensive doesn't mean cheap. So that's my biggest thing with Detroit.

And Detroit really acts as a representation of all those other cities around the Rust Belt where, you know, the cities are kind of going in the wrong direction and where people are trying to get, what I think is a lot of suckers into to buy property that are potentially going to be big fat losers in the long run. So that's my take. And it's really out of, you know, a worry for folks more than anything else. I have nothing against Detroit.

I'll say it now. I really don't. Wait a minute. How are you going to take back everything you said? I haven't said, squad. No, no, no, no. No, no. Click.

Oh, we just lost Mike. Sorry, everybody. Next guest. No, no, no. Okay. All right. Let me address that. Here's, all right.

So in real estate, there's a lot of people, like we talked about early. There's a lot of people that would purposely lead you a straight. get Detroit for a minute, just in real estate in general, right? Buy my course, $5,000, zero value in it. It's all full up. It's garbage. So then you turn and say, you know, real estate investing is for schmucks and it's for swindlers and I'm not going to invest in real estate. It's no good. Detroit is the same way. Detroit has really bad areas that you should never, forget about investing or buying a house. You should never drive through them. They're just not areas that are safe to be in. there are areas in Detroit that are not bad.

And I know that's going to get a chuckle, but I'm telling you, I did invest in Detroit for a very short period of time, had an idea. It didn't work out so well, and I'll tell you why. Chuckle. Yeah, it didn't work out so well.

It didn't work out so well for a lot of the reasons why you're talking about. Was the idea really quick, because I'm going to predict your idea. Here we go. The idea was you're going to buy an entire block, and you're going to go in there and clean up that whole block because you could buy the block for,

like, you know, five, 10,000 bucks. And you'll have the clean, safe block and everybody, there's good comps and everybody's happy and safe, right? No, I'm not that ambitious. I had that idea once. No. No. I mean, here's the thing with Detroit.

And I suspect it's a lot like this with a lot of big cities. I mean, Detroit gets a bad rap and a lot of it is deserved. And some of it's not. There are good areas of Detroit. There really are. To be general, you know, the west side. the northwest side. There's some very nice neighborhoods. I drove through them for a year. I drove through them and looked at houses and they really were nice. Now, there's areas of Detroit that are

really, really bad. And the problem with it is, you're right. I could go and buy a house for a dollar, for $1,000 for $5,000 and try to pawn that off on somebody for $10,000 and move on. And there are people who are doing that every single day. There really are. There are areas of Detroit where you can buy a house. The problem is if you're buying it for $5,000, you can go ahead and make the logical leap that in an assumption that it's a bad area. It probably is. And if you're buying a house for $5,000 and you don't think it's a bad area, go visit the house at night and look around and see what's happening, right? If there's a lot of bad stuff happening, then you know you bought a bad house. But there are houses in an area, there are areas of Detroit that are family, blue collar areas where

people are investing and they're doing all right. I know people who buy and sell houses in Detroit all the time. The problem is, I'm not from Detroit. That was my number one mistake. I don't know the areas. Now, I partnered with a guy who is from Detroit and did know the areas, but still, he grew up there. He doesn't live there. Now he hasn't lived there in 15 years. He still doesn't know enough about it. And the bottom line is we had a lot of problems, right? The problems that you would associate with Detroit. We were in decent areas, but it is what it is. It's a unique area. It's a unique area to try to invest and it takes a certain kind of investor like I said I know people who do invest Detroit and they are successful and they're not they're not bad guys they're not doing the wrong

thing but they understand the city they understand how to rehab a house they understand what you have to do during your rehab you have to you have to watch the house you can't in Detroit you don't leave houses alone for a week at a time and expect nothing to happen something will happen but the bottom line is too there are people who want to live in Detroit and there's people who can't afford to spend $100,000 in a house and you're not you're not you're not you're not you're not you know you're not doing anything wrong. They want to live in Detroit. They're looking for a nice neighborhood with a house that is in good repair and it's safe for their family. And if you can provide that, great. If you're selling them a house that's in a crack neighborhood and they have little kids and you're selling to them for way more than you should, yeah, you're a bad guy. But that's not all that happens there. And I think that's a good point. You know, all joking aside, you know, people legitimately want to live in Detroit. People either because they have to or because they want to. And, you know, it is unfortunate. And, you know, for me, it's really more, I'm a big political guy.

And I think it's a big political commentary on kind of the state of the state, so to speak. And, you know, it really is saddening to me more than anything to see, you know, one of our greatest cities in the country. And frankly, one of the greatest cities in the history of the world in terms of industry, you know, see such an utter and horrifying collapse. and you know, I think I think investors can play a very important role in Detroit. But I don't think it's for the newbie. I think, you know, investing in an area like that is really for folks who have a, what you said, you know, have an experience level, have a really deep understanding of the city who get, you know, the demographic trends, who understand, you know, that you can't mess around.

And like you said, I mean, you know, if somebody new coming in goes to flip a house, has all their materials locked away in there and they come back, it's gone. You know, I mean, it's, there's, there are a lot of problems that Detroit has. And it's not only in Detroit, but, you know, I think we just, people just need to be cautious. And I think it's a place for the experienced investor to focus versus newbies. Yeah, you're absolutely right. You have to know what you're doing. It's a very specialized market. I mean, I've had break-ins of how.

that I'm flipping in the suburbs, in the nice suburbs, it happens. Sure. It's just, it might be a little more frequent. And you tried, that's all. I had someone break into a house. Actually, just a quick story. It's someone breaking. We did a rehab.

Very nice rehab. Completely done. The next day I went there to go look around and the keys and everything. I had the keys. Keys not working in the door. What's the problem? Look in. Somebody clearly has been in there.

I call my contract because those aren't even the, those are not the locks I put on the door yesterday. They're different. somebody came in, took off the locks, re-keyed it, put a new lock on, moved in. I called a lawyer and said, okay, so here's the deal. I've never experienced this before, but here's what happened. He said, yep, I know what you're talking about? You have to evict them. I said, what do you mean I have to evict them?

They moved in, they broke into my house and changed the locks. And they're like, now you have to evict them. I mean, that's just the process. And it took me 90 days to get them out. So I had the same thing happened in St. Louis. I had evicted somebody from a unit in a building. They had broken into the adjacent unit, changed the locks. I had to evict them out of that unit thereafter.

So this is, I mean, and that's one of the reasons why I tell people really, you know, especially in lower income areas, you've got to be careful, you know, because a lot of that stuff happens. And it's unfortunate. But, yeah. I'm in a mortgage. There's like vacant houses in my neighborhood. You know what? I mean, like I said, I think this happens in other cities. I don't have experience in other cities. But in Detroit, there are people who just go from house to house to house to house and they get evicted. They break into another house. Unfortunately, like Josh was saying, there's a lot of houses that need to be torn down. And there's a lot of just bad areas where the houses are abandoned because the neighborhoods are so out of whack that nobody wants to live there. So people just break in and that's it. They live there for three or four months. And they just do that every, you know, every three or four months, they move around. And that's how they live. hopefully somebody listening to the show is is somehow related to the the folks in power over there and maybe they learn a thing or two about uh you know how screwed up things are and and and can start doing it i i know there's a lot of forward thinking folks in there now and i think they're trying to

drive a lot of industry and i think uh there's there's a lot of really exciting looking plans to be honest i mean i've seen some really cool stuff where they're really trying to turn uh detroit into this very very progressive green city, but it's going to take, it's going to take a lot of work. It's going to take a bloody fortune to do. Maybe if we, well, I'm not going to get into my politics. Yeah, you know, it's, I can't, I definitely can't defend the city itself and the decisions that have been made over the years. I can't. It's tough. I've lived, I grew up about an hour south of Detroit, and I now live a half an hour north of Detroit. And when I was growing up,

nobody went to Detroit. You, you just, there was nothing. there to go do. Nobody wanted to be there. We went, you know, I lived on the border of Ohio and in Michigan. We'd go to Toledo. That was where everybody went. And now that I'm an adult, I'm living north of Detroit, we go down there for Tigers games, baseball games, and Lions games. And the area around those stadiums is actually pretty nice. You can really have a nice day and enjoy yourself, good restaurants, but you can't venture too far out. It's just not a good idea. Yeah. Yeah. So you are, you're flipping in kind of the outskirts of Detroit, right? Is that, that's kind of where you're what your strategy and location is now?

Yeah, technically it's called Metro Detroit in this area. So when someone says, I live in Metro Detroit, I real estate invest in Metro Detroit, what they're saying is the suburbs around Detroit. Okay. All right. And those different. So why don't we jump back into that if you guys are done with your little debate. No, I just, and, you know, really quick.

It's tough to defend, but yeah. And I was, listen, I mean, I'm glad to have somebody on the. the show who's who's from there and and because I really do think it's important that we we talk about it um you know it is an important city in this country and I think you know it is reflective of other uh cities potentially as well and you know even though I bag on it it's I do so because it really is representational of other stuff so uh I'm glad to hear that uh all my bagging is is correct oh man that's how we just wrapped it up it's my show I have to go outside, Josh.

I have to travel around, all right? Okay, so Mike Simmons is a big fan of Detroit. Don't target him, guys. Come on, the tigers are great. Let's go back to your deals. You're flipping primarily, correct? I mean, that's your... Yeah, that's...

Yeah, I have one rental. I got it, you know, kind of gun to my head, kind of a thing. I got remarried and it was a house that I owned. I couldn't sell it because it was completely underwater. and I have tenants and I basically took the first tenant that came to me with the money. And it was just like everything that you can do wrong on a rental I put on to you. Nice. Now, what I didn't realize was until really not that long ago is I got someone in there and

they're covering them working and everything. And I always thought this is the worst situation. Bad tenant. I'm not charging enough. It's the horrible like numbers wise. It's horrible. I'm making $300 a month on this rental. It's actually not a bad rental.

If you look at it that way, it's just I didn't really screen the tenant too well. So getting that money each month, I'm earning every bit of that money. Nice. Nice. And primarily flip, yes. And listen, you're not alone in that either because, you know, I think there, well, the reason bigger pockets exists today is because I am you. You know, I made every friggin mistake in the book.

And then I made it again. And then I made 20 others. And, you know, I don't want other people to go through that. And that's why the show is around and that's why the site's around. And so, yeah, don't feel bad. Yeah, a lot of people go through it and we all kind of suck it up and either we lick our wounds or we get the hell out. Yep. That's how we learn. So I've learned a lot, obviously. Yeah, no.

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lending practices hold you back. That's hostfinancial.com where your property's potential meets unlimited financing. So where are you finding your deals? Is this marketing, MLS? What, you know, what are you doing? It's primarily MLS. I do, you know, I do have bird dogs basically who are out there. They're not out there every day. There's a lot of people that are in real estate that know what I do. And I, you know, create a network of people that kind of throw deals at me here and there when they see something comes up or, you know, they can't handle it for whatever reason, don't have the funds, don't have the time, they'll push it my way. But honestly, the vast majority of the deals that I get her through the MLS. I've got a, I work with a realtor, one specific realtor,

who really knows my business, knows me. We have a high level of trust in each other. And he sort of gets it. So he pushes a lot of things my direction and lets me look, because he knows I'll look at him immediately and I'll make an offer on the spot if it's a good deal. So, you know, we work very well that way and I do use him pretty much exclusively. Okay, so say that again because I think that's something that people really need to be paying attention on. You know, in order, I think, to be taken seriously and in order for other professional real estate investors to really consider you, you want to be able to and you have to be

able to act quickly. Is that correct? Yeah, there's just no way around it, especially if you're using the MLS to find houses. you have to act very, very quickly because if it's a good deal, there's a lot of other people looking at it. And like I said, in Michigan, house prices aren't what they are in California and some of these other states. So a lot more people have gotten into, you know, quote, real estate investing because they had an extra $40,000 sitting around and think they can do it. So you have a lot of people making a lot of offers. And if you're not quick and you're not

the first one there, you know, a lot of times you just miss out. So yeah, being fast is key. And that creates some problems too in that, I mean, for a new investment. somebody who's just getting started, the key is to go fast, but the key is also not to screw up and do your numbers wrong. So how do you reconcile that for a new investor? What kind of advice can you offer for somebody? How do they do it quick without screw up? They don't have time to go, you know, post it on the bigger pockets, forums, debate it for a couple days. I mean, how do you, how do you do that? I guess my number one advice for someone in that situation would be find a mentor, find someone who's doing it and can give you some advice and show you how to, working the numbers really. isn't that hard. It doesn't take that long if you know what you're doing. So it's not like I go into

houses and I pull out a spreadsheet and I have to do these advanced calculations. It's pretty quick, but you need to find a mentor, find someone who can kind of shortcut some of the mistakes that you're going to make right off the bat, the real easy ones and work with them and maybe just shadow them for one or two deals and just watch, observe, maybe help if you can. But I would say don't try to, like right out of the box, don't try to do it all by yourself without talking to anybody and think you're going to figure it out. You will totally screw it up. And by mentor, you mean find a successful real estate investor in your area who's willing to take you under their wing versus spending $10, $20, $30, $50,000 for a mentor. Yeah, exactly. And really, they don't even

have to do a lot. I mean, there's a real estate investing club in most cities. So find one that's close to you. Go there, go to a couple of meetings, try to, you know, identify, talk to people, obviously network, identify some of the people who are the players in your area, and maybe just take them out for lunch and just ask them some questions and ask them some of the things that you need to be aware of and what are the pitfalls or what are the things that you know I'm going to do wrong. Like, these guys know exactly what you need to do when you're first starting it out. They need, they know how to calculate the numbers. They can show you how to calculate the numbers.

Like I said, it doesn't have to be rocket science. And I know I've listened to people on your show who are engineers and things and they have very sophisticated algorithms for how they're going to be. buy houses and that's great. But when you're just buying one or two, you know, or your first one, you really don't have to make it that much of a science, but there's numbers that you have to be aware of. After repair value being huge, I mean, that's, that's huge. You need to know what it costs, if you're going to do a flip, you need to know what it costs to rehab the house, right? So if you know what you can sell it for and you know what it's going to cost to rehab it, and you can

calculate a couple of other things like the realtors commission and maybe some holding cost. and then you know what you have to pay for it if you want to get a certain profit. So they can work these basic numbers through, but I think you need to sit with someone who's done it and just pick their brain. That would be the number one thing. That's great advice. Great advice.

So while we're talking, my ADD getting the most of me, unfortunately, and I decided to go look up some information, and I've got to just digress for a second here. No, you're going to be really pleased about this. All right. So I found a really cool article in Business Insider, and hopefully we can, we'll point to it in the show notes. It's all about things going right for Detroit.

And I just wanted to kind of make sure everybody knows that I'm equal opportunity here. The car business is booming. Housing prices are up year over year, 19% as of March of this year. Housing starts have seen gains 11 of the past 13 quarters. Payrolls haven't seen a negative month since April 2010. manufacturing growth has outpaced national average every month since March 2010. Local household finances have improved 11 of the past 13 quarters. Cities saw 68% increase in hotel night stays from 2012 to 2013.

And on and on and on. There's actually a lot of positive things happening right now. That place sounds like a utopia. That sounds awesome. I love it. I'm moving right now. Yeah. Anyway, so it's true. Things are on the upswing. I know because I buy and sell houses, so I do realize that the house prices are going up and the industry is picking up. And there's definitely a lot of good things. I'm not going to say that Detroit's the greatest place to invest. Matter of fact, the city is a very, very, very difficult place to invest. If you don't know what you're doing, but Metro Detroit or those of us who are in the suburbs around Detroit, I mean, it's probably like most other suburbs around the country. It's just, you know, nice neighborhoods and in good places to invest.

Yeah, that's cool. Sorry to jump into that. I felt really bad. You made me feel kind of evil. No, don't feel evil. Well, so let's kind of move forward really quick through a couple other things. Can you potentially walk us through a typical flip? How are you paying for it? How much are you spending on rehab?

What are you selling it for? That kind of stuff. Yeah, sure. So like I said, here in Michigan, I mean, I always imagine people listening in other states. And I know you're in Denver, right, Josh? Or Colorado. Okay. Yeah, I've lived everywhere, though.

Except Detroit. I don't know what the housing market's like there. That's it. I'm going to get you a little place here. I'm just going to spend $5,000. Yes. And I'm going to get your place right near downtown. Right here downtown.

And I'm going to let you spend a week there. As long as you buy me a $5,000 matching gun to go with it, we're good. Yeah. So you can buy real estate relatively and expensively here. So our typical buy-in, in my market that I work is it started off like I said around 40,000 when I first started investing.

It's probably closer to 50,000 now. We have to spend to buy a house. We're spending... Is that for the lot or is that for the lot or is that for like just the bathroom or is that the entire house? That is the entire house. Yeah. Great deal, huh?

No, that's not bad, yeah. So 40, I don't know, like 50,000 buy-in. Now, the houses that I'm buying are like a 3-1, 3-2 maybe, brick ranch, 1,000 square foot garage and basement. I mean, pretty straightforward. So 50,000 buy-in, we're going to spend 15 to 20, probably closer to 20 on the rehab and sell it for usually around 110, 115, somewhere in there. That's a pretty typical deal. The way that I financed my deal, The first deal I did, like I said, we got a mortgage and we went all in with the savings and paid for everything ourselves.

What we did right, oh, in the right column, I forgot. I didn't finish that. It just occurred to me what I did right. I didn't mention it. So one thing we did really, really well was once we had that first house going, we hadn't even closed on it yet, but we sort of had an idea that we were going to make money. We thought it was going to go all right. We started going to these real estate groups and these clubs and our mastermind that we were in

and just talking to everyone, telling everyone what we were doing. We started a Facebook at the time. They were called fan pages. I think they're business pages now. But we started one of those and got on there and started posting video, posting pictures, talking about what we were doing and just putting ourselves out there as much as we could, anywhere we could. And based off that networking and putting ourselves out there and putting videos up and doing tours of the house

that we had renovated like before and after type stuff, we had people start approaching us and saying, hey, you know, we like what you're doing. You guys seem like great people. It looks like you did a good job. We have a little money. We'd like to invest. You know, how do we get this going? And we sort of felt our way through the process and made some mistakes.

We did a few without any contracts at all. Just here's, you know, $80,000. Wow. Let me know what you make. And then we started getting a little bit more professional. Can you give me the phone numbers? Those folks who politely gave you 80. Yeah.

Well, luckily we're honest people and it all went well. But, you know, then we started getting a little more professional. And when we found a house and got on the kind of, We would actually create basically an investment portfolio for the house where we'd show them pictures. We would go through the list of what we were going to do to it, show them the comps for the after repair values. And we kind of created basically a little kit for each house that we did that we could present to investors and show them what we were going to do. Just a little bit more professional. But that's basically how it started, just networking and talking.

And then, you know, word got around and we started getting asked to talk at these local real estate clubs and get up on stage and speak. And then, you know, as soon as you do that, you get a little bit of, you know, extra credibility and people, more people would approach us. And pretty soon at the time, we weren't, we weren't doing very much. We were getting more money than we could use. We kind of, unfortunately, we had money sitting on the sidelines that we just, we couldn't, we couldn't use it all. Yeah. Well, that's an awesome like tip too is just by getting out there and telling people what you're doing. I mean, I say that a lot. Like, just tell everyone what you're doing. Talk about your business all the time. I mean, don't be. I mean, don't be.

annoying, but yeah, and people, if you're doing a good job, people are going to be attracted to that. People are attracted to success. Hey, I'm Brandon from bigger pockets. Yeah, I mean, you know, it's true. And the thing was is I'm not a real network guy. Like, I don't love going to things and talking to people I don't know. And it felt kind of braggy at first. But if you do just get out there and start talking to people, I mean, I know people that do way more than I do in real estate. I mean, they're just, they're just killing it. And nobody knows about them. And they're big, they're number one complaint is, I can't find enough money to do deals. But if people knew how good they were at what they were doing and how much money they were making and how many houses they're flipping

and how, what a great professional job they're doing, people would trip over themselves to get to them to try to get on board and be part of that. But they don't like networking. They just kind of do everything in a bubble and they're doing great. They're killing it, but nobody knows. Yeah, Brandon and I have a lot of discussions about real estate investors and every, every day. And, you know, one of the things that we really end up always back on is, you know, there's a lot of real estate investors who think everything's good. And for them, it probably is. But he and I both argue that every single investor has wants and needs of some kind. We've all got some kind of needs. You know, if you're going to be a successful investor in real estate, no matter what, at some

point in time, you're probably going to end up needing more funds to help you grow and continue to grow your business. And so, you know, my quick plug is, you know, we've got the bigger pockets marketplace. It's biggerpockets.com slash marketplace. And, you know, just post your needs and wants. I mean, if you're a successful investor and you're killing it and doing great things, show people, you know, show them in our success stories area. Let them know that. the more you do that, and we'll link to this stuff, we'll link to the success stories in the show notes, and we'll link to the marketplace, but the more you can demonstrate to other people that you are successful, that you're doing a good job, the more attracted other people are going to be to you. So, you know, it's not a matter of bragging. It's a matter of, you know, this is how you build a business by telling people that you're doing well. You know, they don't know otherwise. So do it and make sure to put it out there because when you put it out there, it circles back. Now with that, though, how do you do that if you're just starting out? You know, a lot of our listeners are just starting out.

How do you brag about or talk about or whatever? How do you build up that reputation when you have no reputation? Don't lie. Yeah. What we did is we went to our local real estate investing clubs. And you know what? There's a lot of people there who are just talking about real estate and they show up every month. And it just seems like they're doing stuff, but they're really not.

They're just talking about it. And they just like the environment. and they never really get out there and do anything. But there are a lot of people, or some people, I should say, not a lot, but there are some people at those clubs that are really doing great things. And at least in my area, investors show up to those clubs. People who want to be in real estate, maybe don't have the time or the inclination or the knowledge to actually go out and do it, but they have money. And they want to hook up with people who know what they're doing and know what they're talking about. And I'm telling you, that's how I have found most of my private money is just doing

exactly that. And I know people who have had great success, they just bump into a guy and they start talking. It turns out this guy's got money and he really wants to invest and he likes what you're doing. But if you never go to these things, if you never network, if you never talk, if you never discuss what you're out there doing, they don't come to your door and look for you. You have to go out there and make yourself available. Yeah, that's true. So I have one more question kind of involving the raising money thing. This is a question that people ask all the time on the forums. And it's a state-specific and it's a case-specific thing. So I know you're not giving legal advice here. We're not lawyers and we don't play one on TV. But how are you structuring

your partnerships? Are you doing LLC's corporations or how do you manage that side of things? Well, I mean, I have my business is an LLC. But as far as structuring the deal, the financing with the private investor, when I started out, I had the philosophy. And the philosophy was basically told to me, and I've heard you guys say it, 50% of something is better than 100% of nothing. So what the advice to me was, listen, you're new, you haven't really done that much. If you find someone who is willing to partner with you and you can give them 50% of the profit and they will put up all the money, then do it. So I created pretty quickly a large pool of investors who were willing to do just that.

So what I have been doing for the last few years is pretty much 50-50 deals. However, I do have a few investors that will work on a rate of return. That's just what they're interested in. They want a rate a return and that's fine. And I'm trying to kind of branch out. I got kind of spoiled for a while because I had a lot of investors and I had more money that I could use and but they were all 50-50 deals. So now what I'm trying to do is find other avenues and other investment means where, you know,

maybe it's a little bit, you know, more profitable on my end than just a 50-50 every time. But I still do a lot of 50-50 deals. Can you explain what a rate of return is for folks who may not understand? Yeah, sure. Like, it would be someone who says, all right, I have $100,000, right? The deal is going to be, let's just say, it's a little expensive for my area because I'm near the D-town word. But I can get a house for $40, but let's just say I had to pay a crazy amount like $70,000. And it was going to cost me $30,000 to rehab.

And somebody says, I have $100,000 that I'll loan you. But I want a rate of return. I want 10% on my money. money. And basically you're paying them a just simple interest 10% every month until you pay them back. So if you if it takes you six months to renovate the house and another year to sell it, you're probably not going to make out better in that situation. But that's just what you, you know, decide on before it starts. So basically it's a monthly payment, a simple interest, monthly payment, rate of return each month. Got it. So in that 100,000 example, if it were a 10% rate of return,

is that 10%. So I'm paying $10,000 month one. or am I paying $10,000 spread over the amount of time it takes? Yeah, it would be spread over the amount of time it takes. So there's no guarantee that it's going to get to that $10,000. If you buy the house and sell it within three months, well, that's great. You're not going to end up paying as much as you would if you held onto it for a year. Gotcha, gotcha. And do you put each house and each partnership into a separate LLC, or do you run it all under your business LLC?

I run it all under my business LLC. And basically what we do for our investors, is we're signing a private mortgage. And the way I structure it to protect them is I give myself a time frame. I basically commit to a time frame. And usually it's six months just to be fair to everybody. So by the time I take their money on a loan, I have six months to sell it. At the end of the six months, they're within their rights to foreclose on the house.

They can take the house from me. If I take forever to sell it, if I just hold on to it, you know, I say I'm going to borrow your money. no payments. Let's make that clear, too. I make no payments. They pay for the, for the cost of the house, the EMD, the rehab, everything. Everything comes out of that money. So it's basically, we have, we have a couple of different contracts. One of them is a mortgage, and then we have a joint operating agreement that we sign, right? So each one, we have a joint operating agreement. And then we have a loan for unsecured, which would be the rehab amount, right?

The money we're going to use to fix it. So there's three documents, and then at the end of that six months, we have to pay them back in full plus 50% of the profit where they can foreclose on the house. Yeah, and that's, I got to tell you, I mean, that's pretty balsy of you to offer that out. And I think, you know, I think what that does is that makes you very attractive for private money investors. And I think for folks listening who are thinking of kind of getting into this and borrowing people's money, you know, you said something that really struck me. And, you know, I think I've heard that from the vast majority of our guests who do take private money.

And it's your job, your goal is to make your investors feel at ease. And I think I can't, I can't press upon it enough that that's probably the most important part of the entire thing. Would you agree? Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, I don't know if it's just the area I'm in or the people I'm dealing with. A lot of my investors are also fairly, you know, savvy when it comes to real estate investing. They don't go out and do it themselves, but they understand it. They're in the circle, so they sort of get it.

And a lot of them want to know the first question, especially when I was new. So these contracts in my system was set up basically when I was new. And I just, I'm not afraid of it because like you said, I guess it's a little ballsy, but I've never had anyone foreclose on a house because I get it sold and I'm aggressive about buying. I'm very, very aggressive and very, very into the rehab management too. I've gotten that down and I'm very comfortable with that. And I don't go over my timeline. I don't go over budget and I get the house to sold because it's just, I'm very aggressive in that end of it. So for me to offer that six months or whatever, you know, foreclosure clause,

I'm fine with that. Yeah, yeah. Well, that makes sense. I love the partnership thing. Again, like you said, you're giving away some of your profit, but I know it's pretty much the same way I structure mine. Though I really like what you said about not having payments during the time when you're flipping.

That's kind of a neat way to do it. You split the profit at the end 50-50, but you make no payments in the meantime. Yeah, I mean, there's just zero. We get all the money up front too. I mean, I don't get releases. I get the, you know, they buy the house obviously, and then whatever we're going to use for rehab. I get that all at one time. And then I decide how to, you know, dole that out to the, to the contractor. So yeah, it's very convenient. You're pretty much doing these in with no money down.

I mean, essentially, right? All these new. I mean, yeah, no, yeah, I have none of my money into the deals at all. I've not put up any money into any deal since the first house I did. That's awesome. That's awesome. So it can be done, people. It can be done. Why don't we, why don't we move on a little bit to, I guess a little bit more of the starting out stuff. We want to talk about when people first get going. So I'm wondering if somebody's listening to this show who has not done any real estate investing yet whatsoever, what is the first step that they should do? I mean, they don't even know what field they want to get into. What should they do to get started? I think the first thing they need to do is get educated. And it's a really slippery slope because

of what I talked about. We talked about at length what I did. I spent too much time getting educated, but I think the bottom line is anytime you're going to get into something like this where you're going to be spending a large amount of money and maybe somebody else's money, you better know what you're talking about and you better know what you're doing. So I would say get on, you know, I mean, not to plug, but over bigger pockets is just a great place. It's a wealth of information and you should get on there and start reading and figure out what excites you the most and start reading about that and really educate yourself. And then the next thing would be, like I said, find a mentor, someone who's willing to sit down

and just give you some guidance. I mean, you guys both know if someone came to you and said, I'm going to start investing in real estate. I'm going to do it. You can't stop me. And I'm not going to ask anyone for any help. I'm just going to go out and find a good deal, throw money at it, and I'm going to go for it.

And you know that they would probably likely fail if they did that way. So if you could sit down with them and just spend 20 minutes, half an hour, you could probably save them so much time and so much money. I mean, a half an hour isn't enough, but even a half an hour, you would probably get them out of so many jams that they don't have to get into. So just finding somebody who knows what they're doing and talking to them and befriending them. Don't be a pain in the butt. Be friendly, be personable, try to be charming. Don't be fake and don't ask for everything under the sun.

Just listen. Just ask them some questions and let them talk to you. You know, and I think, you know, I'm going to put out a plea from the flip side here. There's so many of us who listen to the show and who are out there, so many people who are doing well. I'm going to challenge you if you're one of those folks to step out of your comfort zone and reach out and find somebody who's new and who doesn't have the chops yet and help them out. Because you'll actually be amazed. You'll probably learn something yourself from help. helping them. And, you know, it's, we all started from somewhere. Everybody started at the very

beginning and everybody's made mistakes. And if you can help, you know, one person out, I mean, we could all better the community that way. Yep. I totally agree. I think a lot of people are willing to do that, but you're right. I mean, we get so caught up in what we're doing, we don't think to necessarily stop and help someone. But, you know, if someone just comes up to you and says, hey, I really want to get into this and I don't really know what I'm doing, just give them moment of your time. Well, and I think part of that comes from this mindset, which is a false mindset. I think it's a false mindset of the competition. I'm helping my competition. And, you know, in some ways you are. But in the end, you know, especially in real estate, your competitors are going to be your deal

flow in many, many cases. If you do it right, you're going to work with these guys. So, you know, I think it's a mindset thing. Yep, I agree. I agree. And a lot of people do look at this competition. I really don't either. Even in my local market, I swear I've gotten more back from helping people than I've, you know, lost. It's never negatively affected me. I've never had an issue with that. So you help people and they just, they want to help you back.

And you end up, you know, like you said, deal flow, perfect example. That's the kind of thing that happens. So do you think then that flipping is a good ideal to get into when you're first getting started? Because that's what you did. Or would you advise somebody to start somewhere else? It's a good question. I think you can really screw up worse when you flip houses right off the bat. The problem with wholesaling when you start off,

and I've listened, like I said, I've listened to a ton of people that you guys have talked to, and I've heard vastly different opinions on this. But you talk to someone named Sharon Vornholt, and she said something I thought made a lot of sense. When it comes to wholesaling, you have to know how to buy right. you have to know how to renovate, or at least you need to know the cost

to renovate a house. And then you have to have someone to sell the house. Do you have to know what it's going to sell for at the end of the deal? You have to have so much already under your belt in terms of knowledge. I think it's very tough to start off wholesaling, personally.

If you don't have the connections, you don't have people who want to buy, you don't have people who want to sell, and you don't know how to renovate a house and what it costs, I just don't see how you can really do it. I know you've had people on who said they've done it that way,

and that's how they started, and I believe it. I just, it seems hard for me. I do think that flipping houses are, is a good way to start, honestly, especially if you just get a little help from someone who's done it before. Now, it might be easy in my market to say that because the amount of money we're talking is not astronomical. So for me, that was a good way to start.

If I lived in Southern California, I don't know. Maybe that wouldn't have been a good way to go. Maybe it would have been cost prohibitive. I wouldn't have been able to do it. But in my area, fix and flip is probably a great way to start. Well, that is a really good point right there. it's not going to be the same for you as it is for Josh, where Josh's neighborhood, houses are going for a million dollars or $500,000 and you're 40.

So in a different area, different methods work for different personalities. So it's kind of a blending of those three things to try to figure out how you should get started. Yeah, and I enjoy the managing of the contractors, dumb as that sounds. I like managing the project. I don't know if I enjoy managing the contractor, but I enjoy managing that process. I like the timeline thing, and I like having a budget and a timeline. and seeing how close to that or how much better I can do than that. I enjoy it.

I kind of thrive off of that. See, I don't like that at all. I'm the opposite. I don't like the managing the property, but I love finding the deals and managing the tenants. I don't mind that part of things as much. So it's just, yeah, different personalities. I love that.

So wrapping up here, before we kind of get to our final rounds, what is your plan for the future? Do you plan on just flipping continually? you have one buy and hold, you plan on doing more of that. Where do you see yourself in the next few years? Yeah, ironically, I do plan on doing a lot more buy and hold next year. I do flips now, like I said, you know, I'm not getting any younger and I'm starting to realize that if I ever want to, you know, be able to retire or have some time to myself where I'm not working all the time, the only way to really do that in my opinion or the best way to do it is with buying whole real estate. So, you know,

flipping is great, but I've got to be there every day, right? I've got to be on top of it. It's a full-time job. I am going to do a lot more buy-and-hold in 2014. That's my plan. So I'm just going to be a little smarter about it. You know, tenant screening and that kind of thing that I didn't do with the house that I currently have. I'm going to be a little bit more methodical and systematic about it. And yeah, that's my goal for next year is to do a lot more buy-and-hold.

Nice. Nice. And Brandon wrote a really great article on tenant screening. That's pretty thorough. I don't know if you've read it already, but we'll link to it in the show notes. And it's fabulous. Great. Yeah. That's something I have to share. That's a skill that I don't have that I need to sharpen. Yeah. Right on. Right on. Well, cool. Oh, go ahead, sir.

We do have a short link for this. BiggerPockets.com slash Tenant Screening. We'll actually go right there. Okay. Awesome. Anybody cares. All right. Well, why don't we get to the... It's time for the fire round. Those sound effects are fabulous, guys. It's like George Lucas is working on this show. This is how we do it, man. You've got to raise the bar, right? Yeah, there you go. All right, these questions all come from the bigger pockets forums.

These are questions that real people are asking, and we want to know your advice. So we're going to fire him at you. You can fire him right back. Number one, you hire a bad contractor who doesn't do the work right, for whatever reason. You fire him, and now he's threatening to file a mechanics lien. What do you do? Perfect question. I know, that's a tough one to start with.

Is this a question that I? put up there? Did you guys look for my questions? Well, hopefully people are listening to the show and they're going to have people sign a release of lien before they even get started. That's key. The way you get around legal problems in real estate, in my opinion, or the way you avoid

a lot of problems in real estate is with paperwork contracts. People sign things up front. You have agreements that you can present. Other than that, I would say you should never pay your contractors with cash. It's very difficult to prove that you paid them when you pay them with cash. So, you know, use business checks or at least a check of some kind that's traceable. And I would say have them sign off on everything you're paying them for.

I mean, don't hand money to anybody that isn't in the form of a check and that they're not signing something that's stipulating what it is they're taking the money for, what's been done, what are you paying for, that kind of thing. Come on, Mike. Yeah, I'll charge you 75% of my rate if you're in cash. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, that's all right. I'll pay the full rate. I've had that, too, where it's going to cost you less if you use cash.

Yeah. Not really. Not in my experience. It costs me more. There you go. There you go. All right. Next question. Is it worth it to texture walls on a flip? Texture walls. Funny. I had a good experience with that, too. I don't texture walls on a flip. And I didn't even know that texturing walls was desirable until one of my contractors in the past did it without asking me. I saw it. I saw that he did it. And honestly, I thought he did something that made it look cheap. And I like went ballistic. I like blew a gasket. And then I got to I left the site and I turned to one of, I called one of my friends that was in real estate. He had been flipping houses for a long time. He really knew stuff. He was somebody I kind of, he was sort of a mentor to me. And I said, can you believe what this guy did? He textured these walls. It looks like, you know, bleep. And I'm so pissed off. I'm going to fire him. I was just so beside myself that he did this house this way. And he's like, dude, call.

down. People love that. I pay extra for that. I was like, really? So I went back and said, you know what? I thought about it. I'm going to let it go. I'm not mad anymore. Don't worry. Just don't do without asking me. And he said, so it was, it was funny. But I don't do it to answer your questions. But I hear people like it. Yeah, definitely. I like it. I need to actually texture my bedroom one of these days. Just texture your face. Here to yours. I did shave. No shave November is over. Look at this. Thank God. Oh, my God. to talk to this guy. They were like owls coming out of his face. They got to live somewhere. They've got to live somewhere.

All right. Next question. Should a house flipper get their real estate license? I don't have my real estate license. So it would be kind of hard for me to say that they should. I don't think you need to. I don't think it's all that important personally. If you want direct access to the MLS, if that's something that really excites you, then you probably should. I don't think it's a good use of my time to be trolling the MLS and that kind of thing. I have a realtor that I love. He does a great job for me. He's very timely.

He shoots properties at me. He'll do anything I need him to do that I can't do as a non-realtor. So, yeah, I don't think it's important personally. But I'm sure a lot of people are yelling right now. Nah, no, listen. You're wasting so much money. I don't think it's a waste. I have a very good friend who flips houses in my area.

He went and got his real estate license. He thought it was a good idea for him. I just never felt like I needed to. Gotcha. Gotcha. All right. Great. Well, this question's perfect for you. What do you look for in a neighborhood, Detroit? Sorry, I had an itch. I look for a declining economy and entire street blocks that I can buy for what's in my pocket.

What's important to me is that every house in the area that I'm in is essentially was built in the same timeframes, the same era, very similar houses. So I'm buying a lot of three ones with a basement, a garage, brick ranch. And there's so many houses like that in the areas that I buy houses that there's a very predictable after repair value. And that's really important to me. I don't want to be in an area where every house is unique and it's on a weird road and it's sort of out in the country. It's very hard to predict the prices of those houses, what they're going to sell for. I like to be in very predictable neighborhoods. And the neighborhoods that I work in are very densely populated, you know, very run-of-the-mill thousand-foot ranch houses.

And I just know with very little research exactly what it's going to sell for. So it kind of speeds up the process of sifting and sorting through houses. Okay. Yeah, that makes sense. All right. Next question, Josh, you want to take it? That was my question. Was it?

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No problem. How's your nap? Do you wake up? Yeah, I was petting my... cat. All right.

What? My cat. It's keeping me warm, my feet. All right, next question. What are your... All right, next question. I'm going to get to this. You realize that 16,000 people or 17 or whatever the heck we're at these days now know that you're sitting here, heading your...

Yeah, whatever. All right, next question. What are your thoughts? Let me... Next question, what is your opinion about hard money lenders and flipping houses? I have never used a hard money lender to flip a house. I think they're fine. I think there's a place for them.

The deal with hard money lenders for me is usually you're making payments while you're flipping the house and the amount of money that you're going to have to pay them at the end of the deal is probably going to be more than what it would be if you just partner to somebody and split the profits in my in my estimation. So I just, you know, and there's tons, there's paperwork involved there too. Like, it's almost like you're going to a bank, but getting a worse deal. So I don't usually go to hard money lenders for that reason. I, if I can't move extremely quick, like I can with a private lender, then I'm just going to go ahead and get a mortgage and pay way low, you know, interest rate, a lot less of an interest rate

and not have all the all the points and things. So to me, it's like it's between private money and a bank, mortgage, but it's like the worst of both worlds. It's not fast and it costs you a lot. There you go. There you go. Well, if you are looking for hard money lenders, we have a directory of hundreds of them on BiggerPockets at biggerpockets.com slash hard money lenders for anybody listening. And I just crapped all over them too. Sorry about that. That's all good, man. I mean, listen, different strokes for different folks. You know, you want to vet anybody, whether it's private, hard money or even traditional and see what works best for your situation.

So just because I think Detroit sucks doesn't mean that it does. Oh, that's great. I can't wait to hear your next show when you talk nicely about Detroit. I think you've turned over New Leaf. I think with, I got that article you sent, by the way. I saw that you sent it during the show. I got that. And I'm going to, I'm going to post it on bigger pockets.

You should. I'm going to get that out there. You should. I want, I want to hear the change of heart. I have a change of heart. I mean, I think that's really positive. Like I said, there's a lot of, a lot of good things happening. but stop interrupting me on my fire round, okay?

Geez. All right, fire around. Final question. Do you use a smartphone to help you run your business? And if so, how? Oh, man, I'm all about the smartphone. Yeah, actually I do. Well, obviously, I'm using it for texting and emailing like everybody else.

But, you know, that's a lot of it. There's a lot of emailing that goes on in real estate investing. So tons of emailing. I have created some just fairly simple spreadsheets that help me work through. some of the numbers when I'm in a house that I'm looking at. And I basically create them in Google Docs and I open them through Google Docs app and can plug in some numbers real quick to help me just sort of sort through some things. So yeah, I use my smartphone for that. Every, you know, a little bit. I don't use it a ton, but I get on Zillow once in a while and use that just to do

some double checking on certain things and see what's out there. But yeah, I use my smartphone for almost everything to answer your question. But specifically for the business, I have created some spreadsheets that I use when I'm going through and evaluating the flip and what I'm going to spend. Right on. Right on. Cool. All right. Well, with that said, it's time to wrap this show up, although I am so saddened by it. But why... I'll come back to him. Yeah, sure, sure. Speaking of sure, we're going to bust out the... Famous Four. Our Famous Four are these questions we ask everyone as you know. So question number one, what is your favorite real estate book?

I'm going to bum Josh out. I know he gets so bummed by a lot of the answers. I really don't get bummed. I sound bummed. Just because I sound like I haven't gotten through puberty. Doesn't mean I'm bummed. I would say, you know, probably the one that had the biggest influence on me was rich dead, poor dad. So I know that's a little bit of a cliche. It's a bummer. You guys got to figure out a way to ask this where you say, what was your favorite book? but you can't say. Yeah, exactly. Rich, dead, poor dad, I'll throw this one out there too. This will be a little bit of a curveball that most people will probably snicker, but it did. I don't know if it's a business book or more of a real estate book or a little both or maybe neither, but the art of the deal. I liked it. It was a book that was motivating to me and I thought it was really cool and it just sort of got me, it just like rich dad, poor dad. I mean, it just sort of got me thinking along, you know, that line of real estate investing. Obviously, I'm not buying houses or apartments in Manhattan. and flipping buildings there. But it was a book that I liked that had an influence on me.

That's Donald Trump, right? That is Donald Trump. Art of the deal, yeah. I read that a long time ago. I don't remember much of it. Right. It's an old book. Yeah.

Yeah. I actually really enjoy reading, like, I read one of Donald Trump's newer books. Most like entertaining read I've ever had. Like, it was just hilarious because. Well, he's probably one of the greatest self-promoters in the history of histories. I mean, he really is, you know, and that's, at least I'd argue his, you know, a lot of his business today is certainly in, in that promotion, the branding and the promotion versus the real estate, but certainly, obviously, he's doing real estate. So, so, so, so that's a,

that's a good real estate book, Art of the Deal. I actually really enjoyed it as well. What, uh, what about favorite business book, uh, that's not, uh, art of the deal? Not, uh, the, any, any of the, uh, band book list for, for Josh Torney. I like the four, no, just kidding, I won't go there. Three hour work week. Exactly. Yeah, you still on page 27, by the way. That's the last I heard.

I am. All right. I like a book called The Millionaire Next Door by Thomas Stanley. That was a cool book. I liked that. It had a lot of influence on me. It was kind of eye-opening some of the concepts in there that I hadn't really thought about. I also do like to read some Dan Kennedy stuff.

I don't know if you guys read him at all. But I have a book called wealth attraction for entrepreneurs. It's just one that I read recently of his that I really liked. So just a cool guy, motivating guy. You know, he's a lot of books out there. The No BS series basically is what he writes. So, yeah, I read some of his stuff. Right on, right on.

Very cool. And what about hobbies? Do you do anything for fun? I don't know, like skateboarding through downtown Detroit at 11 o'clock at night. Yeah, it's a game we call, kick someone out of the car in Detroit and see how long they last. I'm kidding. For hobbies. You know what?

Actually, I don't know if it's a hobby. It's something I've been involved in my whole life. But I'm actually a 4-3 black belt, and I used to run a full-time martial arts school. And I'm still involved there. And there's a school with my name on it still that I don't necessarily run. But it bears my name. And I go there and help with testing and some promotional stuff there. Nice.

Nice. I was going to say that. Yeah, Joel's like a third degree black belt. Oh, yeah? Yeah, we got to get you two actually kicking each other's butts.

And then Brandon Turner over here, my fabulous co-hosts, who likes to pick fights with people twice as size or more skillful than him. I would have to hopefully be more skillful because I'm not twice as size. I guarantee you that. And I'm also,

well, he's like eight feet tall. Oh, okay. Yeah, so I'm definitely not. I'm definitely not. 15 foot tall people, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, plus I'm getting old. I can't do that anymore.

All right. Final question of the famous four. What do you believe sets apart the successful investors from those who never really start? I think the thing that sets them apart is they take action and then they keep taking action. To me, that's the beginning and the end of what it takes to be successful. You don't have to be incredibly smart. You don't have to be born into money or anything like that. But you have to take the first step, which is scary as hell.

And then you have to keep doing it, even if things don't go perfectly at the first time. So action and then consistent action. That's it. Good. Good. Some tweetable topics in there. Awesome. Well, listen, Mike, it's been enjoyable.

I think this is a historic episode. I think lots of people are going to stop tuning into bigger pockets. How many people have we alienated so far? Well, there's only like 16 people who live in Detroit. So it's probably not happening. That's great. All right. I'm still buying you that $5,000 house and you have to come and live in it.

Yes. You know, that would be a serious challenge. I'll do it. I'll do it. I'll do it. I'll do it. Exactly. Downtown.

I'm going to give you a bottle of water and a pocket knife. Let's see what you do. That's awesome. That's awesome. All right, man. Well, listen, it's been a pleasure. Lots of really, really good tips and feedback and your story is fascinating. Everybody's got their own unique story. It's so cool to just see how we all kind of make our way through this world. How can people find out more information about you? Where can they reach out to you at? They can find me at, I have a website called Just Start Real Estate. They can go there and check. check me out. They can email me at Mike at just start real estate.com. That'd be a good way to get a hold of me. And you also have a podcast, yeah? I do have a podcast, ironically called Just Start Real Estate and basically just, just, you know, it's for people who are just starting out, really. I'm trying

to give advice to people like you talked about the challenge, right? Just trying to find people and talk to people who really haven't done much of anything or even nothing and answer some of those questions that keep people, you know, make them too afraid to even get out there and get started. There you go. Well, awesome. Listen, thanks so much for being on the show. We really appreciate it. Awesome. I have fun guys. Thank you.

Yeah, thank you, Mike. All right, everybody. That was Mike Simmons. Hopefully you guys enjoyed the show. There was a lot of really, really, really good stuff in there. And we definitely appreciate Mike taking the time for being here with us.

As we've said a couple times, if you've got questions for them, check them out on the show notes at biggerpockets.com slash show 49. Otherwise, definitely make sure to connect with us over on the various major social networks, Facebook, Twitter, Gplus, LinkedIn, and Pinterest now. We're trying to share some cool stuff over there as well.

And we are sharing and engaging over on these networks with things that we're not doing on Bigger Pockets. So definitely make sure to follow us and connect with us on those various places. Otherwise, of course, you want to also connect with us on BiggerPockets at BiggerPockets.com in case you missed it. and you should do that. And why should you do that, Brandon? I don't know. Yeah, why do we pay this guy? You should connect with this on bigger pockets

because you're going to get a whole lot of value out of it and you're going to meet guys like... Oh, yeah, that was it. And you're going to learn a thing or two and you're going to build your network and we'd definitely encourage it. So if you're not interacting, if you're not connecting, or even if you have a profile

and you don't do anything with it, just take some action and start connecting. So that's it. I enjoyed it. What do you think, Brandon? Merry Christmas, my friend. Merry Christmas. Let's wrap it up.

Don't shoot your eye out. Do it. Wrap it up. All right. This is the Dog Gary, my friend. This is the Bigger Pockets podcast. This is Josh Dorkin signing off. Dang.

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