BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast - 51: Small Multifamily Properties, Working a Full Time Job, and Training Tenants with Mike Sherwood

Episode Date: January 2, 2014

On today’s episode of the BiggerPockets Podcast, we cover a huge range of really important topics with real estate investor Mike Sherwood, including investing while holding a full time job, working with a partner to grow quickly, getting started with a small multifamily property, and a lot more. Mike has invested in the Buffalo, NY for several years now, doing both rentals and is getting into fix and flip, so he has a ton of insight for both those just getting started and for those with a lot of experience already. This show has so much good information and helpful tips for any real estate investor, this is going to be one you’ll want to listen to over and over just to make sure you get all the great nuggets out of it. Read the transcript for episode 51 with Mike Sherwood here. In This Show, We Cover: Buying a small multifamily to live for free The secret to living next door to your tenants Training your tenants When is an emergency an emergency? Managing your own properties vs. hiring a property manager Tips for working a full time job AND investing on the side Finding good deals on the MLS How Michael found a partner to invest with Legally structuring a partnership for real estate Ways to systematize your business The key to finding partners on BiggerPockets Flipping houses while working a full time job Links from the Show Tenants: Customers or Scum? (Training Your Tenants) by Peter Giardini The Real Estate Agent’s Ultimate Guide to Working with Investors Rentecdirect.com Online Property Management Software list from BiggerPockets BiggerPockets Keyword Alert System BiggerPockets.com/meet The BiggerPockets Rental Property Calculator Tenant Screening: The Ultimate Guide Books Mentioned in the Show The eMyth Revisited by Michael Gerber Landlording on AutoPilot by Mike Butler Four Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss Start Small, Profit Big in Real Estate: Fixer Jay’s 2-Year Plan for Building Wealth by Jay DeCima Building Wealth One House at a Time by John Schaub Tweetable Topics “Establish guidelines upfront with your tenants to save yourself a lot of trouble.” (Tweet This!) “I wish there were more agents who understood what investors want.” (Tweet This!) “You can make any real estate deal look good with 80% down.” (Tweet This!) “The most important thing in a partnership is being able to constructively handle differences.” (Tweet This!) Connect with Mike Mike’s BiggerPockets Profile Mike’s Website: www.CandMRental.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Bigger Pockets podcast, show 51. 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 Turner

with our first show of 2014. What's up, Brandon? Happy new year. Happy new year to Josh and everyone out there. How are you guys doing? Oh man, doing good, doing good. You know, 2014, time for some big things to happen. You know what I'm saying? There you go. There you go.

Well, listen. All right, so 2014 is often running. We're very excited about it. And with that, let's just get into this thing and start with our quick tip tip. 2014 quick tip. Here it is. Today's quick tip is to head over to the Bigger Pockets new member introduction form.

And if you have not yet introduced yourself to the community, I want you to do that. Yes, we've said this quick tip before, but I wanted to add one more thing to that. I want to let you know that it's really important to share your goals with folks. And I think one of the cool things that you can do with your introduction is let us know your goals for 2014 in that introduction. And of course, if you've already left an introduction in the past, help the community go and greet three new people today and welcome them to the forums. The more people you greet, the more people you connect with, the better your network is, and the more opportunities you have.

So make it happen, get out there and do it. So there it is, there it is. With that, why don't we get to the show? Of course, this is show 51 of the Bigger Pockets podcast. You can check out the show notes at biggerpockets.com slash show 51. today, guys, we've got as our guest, Mike Sherwood from the Buffalo, New York area. Mike's an active member of our forum and one of the co-authors of a new Bigger Pockets community book that's due out in the next couple weeks. But we'll tell you more about that in the weeks to come.

That said, Mike is going to share some of the lessons he's learned about partnering, getting started, investing while working a full-time job, a very popular topic, and a whole lot more. So definitely pay close attention to this one. There's also a ton of really, really awesome content. So definitely listen up. And of course, Mike's a good guy. Most investors spend more time chasing deals than reviewing their insurance. But a quick coverage check can be fast, easy, and one of these smartest ways to protect

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Mike also told me yesterday that when we call him Michael, it's as if he's in trouble. So I told him that we would call him Michael whenever he's in trouble and we'll call him Mike whenever he's not. Michael. There we go. All right, let's kick this off. All right, Mike, so what kind of investing do you do? Mostly do buy and holds, multifamily buildings. And now we're just starting to get into some flips and to do some property management.

Nice. And where are you? Where are you located? I'm actually located in Buffalo, New York. Are you originally from there? From downstate, Binghamton area. I don't know if you know downstate. Downstate would be upstate, you mean?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, downstate. No, really, like, you know, the real New Yorkers, those of us who come from civilization, look at those places as upstate, otherwise known as the boonies, the country. Yes, from the sticks. I am from the sticks.

That's what I've been told. He's a rural guy. No, that's awesome. All right. Obviously, I'm from New York. So, you know, I can give you grief. So you're from upstate. You're now in Buffalo, which might as well be Detroit.

Yes. Come on. You always beat us up. You know, we had a couple episodes ago where we had a, I had my Mia Culpa and all as well with me in Detroit now. Yeah, sure. All right. So you're buying whole guy who's starting to get into other stuff. Tell us how you got into it. Why did you start with real estate? We started in real estate back in 2006. Basically, I bought a duplex and wanted to do kind of what Brandon always talked about. Hey, it's always great to start with the duplex. You get to, you know, be a little bit of a landlord and at the same time, get somebody to pay your mortgage for you and pay all your bills for you. So I kind of dabbled in that and I decided to keep going.

Nice. Nice. So what actually intrigued you to get into real estate in the first place? Like, was it just, you know, you read a book on it or, you know, I don't know, some crazy uncle told you to do it? No, actually my grandparents got me into it. My grandparents owned a duplex, a top-down duplex, and they lived in for years. And I basically told my grandmother, I said, hey, I want to make money while I sleep. Nice. That's a sense that I started. Yeah, it's essentially how I started. No, that's awesome. That's awesome. My grandparents. Oh, awesome. Awesome. Take a shot. My grandparents did not invest in real estate, though, you know, that's all right. I learned from Josh Dorkin. So there you go. I'm almost as old as my grandmother. I was going there.

I was going to make that joke, and you totally ruined it. All right. Score one for John. Score one. All right, we're moving on. So you do, you still do multifamilies primarily because, you know, you started with Duplex. I mean, is that? your ultimate plan? I mean, you're a multifamily investor?

Or is that just because that's as far as you've got so far? Mostly, I want to build on multifamilies. I want to continue by them. I just find that, especially in Buffalo, buying multifamilies makes the most sense. Just because the numbers make the most sense, when you think about the expenses and the overhead, it just makes the most sense to have the most stores. Now, to go to like bigger stuff, like the apartment buildings, down the road, we might go that way, but I feel like there's a lot more to that.

Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. I mean, I'm a huge multifamily fan. I think everyone knows that by now. So, you know, anyway, well, let's talk about that first deal a little bit more. I want to dive into because I love talking about first deal. So your first one was a duplex. How did you actually get that? Like, what did you do for financing and how did you even find the property?

I actually called a real estate agent. And basically I said I was looking for a duplex. And I wanted something that was close to work. And, you know, I was able, that was before the downturn. Okay. So the financing and, you know, I know doc, you know, you could do all the loans. It was very, very easy. The whole process took maybe less than 30 days.

It was very quick. And then I basically just put 3% down on it. So it was one of those FHA loans. Okay. Oh, nice. Yeah. So you did the FHA and you did an owner occupied. You lived in half and you ran it out the other half, yeah?

Yes, that's true. That's true. So what was that like? I mean, as somebody who, you know, suddenly has a tenant, you know, next door. Tell us about that experience. Well, I learned very quickly not to allow them to knock on my door at all hours because literally that's what they tried to do all the time. Yep. I've been there.

How did you do that? How do you train your tenants to not knock on your door? Come out with shotgun. Get off my porch. No. Basically, what I did is actually the person that was living there was the daughter, of the original owner. And he lived in New York City

and he basically, you know, wanted to get rid of the property. So she would constantly knock on the door and what I decided to do is I just told her, hey, call me. Call me if you have problems. And then what happened is she would constantly call me instead of knocking on the door. So what I did is

is just say, hey, if it's important, leave a voicemail because a lot of times they'll just, they'll just constantly want to, you know, yeah. Yeah. I had a tenant once called me at like four in the morning. I might have said this on a way earlier show, but like 4 in the morning tenant calls me and says, there's water all over my kitchen. It's going everywhere. So this is like my first rental property, my duplexer. Did you tell her to turn the sink off?

I run over there. I run over there and the drain or the, yeah, the drain line underneath it coming down. She knew that was a problem, but she wanted to do dishes at 4 in the morning. So she wanted me to come over to fix her sink at 4 in the morning just so she could finish doing her dishes. And so I walked over, I shut the water off and I walked straight out again. I said I'll be back in the morning. And that was the last time. That was the last time I've had to do a middle of the night call because, yeah, you have to set those boundaries or else they will.

They'll take advantage. Yeah. They will take advantage. All right. So tell us, I mean, tell us about the numbers on that first property. You know, what, I know, Buffalo, you know, I give grief, but Buffalo is a good market in terms of affordability. You know, economically, we'll have another discussion. I'll start transitioning from my Detroit haters' clubs.

to the Buffalo Hater's Club. But, you know, not going there, man. Don't goad me. All right. So talk about, you know, talk about the numbers on the duplex. Yeah.

Actually, I remember the numbers very clearly. The deal was actually listed at 58,000. I put in a offer of 49,000. And they countered, of course. And they came back at about, I think it was like 52 or 53,000. $1,000, and that's about where we settled.

Was it on the market a long time? Yes, it was on the market for about two years. Oh, wow. Yeah, it needed a roof really bad. Gotcha. Okay, so you get this thing, and what kind of money did you have to put into it? I found a guy that did a little bit of work on the side, and he worked, you know, he was just trying to make a little bit of work.

extra money and he did my roof for, I think it was like $5 or $6,000. So wasn't that bad. Gotcha. And what did the other half rent out for? The other half rented out for $5.55. Okay. So you're pretty much living for free then, right? I mean, except for the expenses when they come up. I'm assuming. Yes. Yes. There you go. Well, that's, there it is. I mean, I think that's the end of the show. I mean, you know, ultimately, I think people who don't get into real estate for the purpose of getting crazy rich, I think a lot of people that we hear about are like, well, you know, if I could just find a way to live for free, that would be the ultimate thing.

I don't want to have 25 properties. I just want to be able to kind of get by, save some money, and live for free. And that's perfect. I mean, if you can cut all those expenses out, that's fantastic. So it's a good start. Yes. Yeah. I think the whole FHA, you know, a duplex thing, which, you know, I talk a lot about,

I think it's such a good foundation to build on because if you do it right, you can live for free, which then helps you be able to save for future down payments for other properties. It helps train you on how to be a landlord, like learning those things like telling your tenant not to call you every time there's a problem, not to knock on your door, things like that. I think that stuff is fabulous. Yeah, yeah. So is there anything, you know, Beyond the, hey, call me, you know, and don't bang on my door, are there any other issues that have come up with living next to your tenants that maybe you could tell the listeners and ways that they can kind of better deal with them?

Yeah, actually, I have another story. I have, there's parking that's actually out in the back. This property didn't actually have a driveway, so it was like a behind alleyway parking. And so what actually happened is I got a call around 2 a.m. in the morning. There's snowy outside. Wait, it was snowy. This is Buffalo, right? It doesn't snow in Buffalo. We had about two feet of snow.

So I get a call at 2 a.m. in the morning. I actually did answer it. And what actually happened is she got stuck in the back area, the back driveway area because the local town had not plowed that at a back area. because they're plowing other areas. So literally, here I am 2 a.m. in the morning, helping her push your car out. That doesn't seem to be a landlord responsibility, right?

No, no, no, no. It's not. So after that, I basically told her, because she did something very similar again, and I basically told her, you know, look, you got to do this on your own. You got to find somebody. So, yeah, she wasn't very happy with that.

Okay, so as a landlord, you are not the, you know, help me because my cat ran away kind of person, correct? You kind of have to create a separation. Yes, yes. You got to definitely create a separation from your tenants, definitely. Gotcha. Well, I think that all goes back to the whole, like I said earlier, training your tenants.

Yep. I think people get offended by that term tenants do anyway, because it sounds like you're saying like training your dog. But no, it's like you have to teach them how to be a good tenant so that it doesn't overtake your life. I think most landlords who fail, they fail because of their own. like inadequacies at managing tenants. Like it's not the tenant's fault.

I think majority of the time it's the landlord's fault for not setting those rules and not training their tenants correctly. Absolutely. Absolutely. I agree. And, you know, we've got a post from a number of years ago from, I think it was from Pete Gardini.

And we'll point to it in the show notes, which, by the way, can be found at biggerpockets.com slash show 51. And it was all about training your tenants. And I know we did actually have a bunch of people who got pissed off by, by the term. But, yeah, I mean, I think that's exactly it.

You know, up front, if you can, you know, basically create or establish a set of guidelines, rules and regulations, here's the rules of the road, here's what we do, here's what we don't do, and make it very, very clear, you're going to save yourself a lot of trouble. Yes, yeah, yeah, definitely, definitely. Now, do you have, do you have like a crazy, hardcore detailed lease? that includes a lot of that stuff now, or how do you typically do your training, Michael? Mostly, I mean, yeah, we do have a pretty good lease now

that kind of outlines, you know, as far as like when you should call certain things, lockouts. You know, Charles, actually my partner, he does most of the day-to-day handling of the tenants now. And he's very good at that. I mean, he's been a manager at his company for a number of years, so he's very good at managing people. So honestly, I'm a people person as far as, you know,

being friendly and being nice, but he's more like being able to deal with the tough stuff because sometimes, you know, it gets frustrating. So he's, he's very, very good at it. Yeah, yeah. You know, I think there's a, there's a book out there called, what's called Landlording on Autopilot by Mike Butler. And it's one of my favorite books on landlording. And I'll link to it in the show notes. But one thing he talks about in there is setting up your tenants with a, what's he call it? I don't remember, but a rent talk. That's what he calls it. So when you actually sign a lease, not only you sign a lease, but he actually has like a 30-page document that he goes through with his tenants and says like, you know, basically training

them. It's a 30-page manual on how to be a good tenant. And he actually sits down with them and goes through every page of this thing. And I kind of do a version of that now. I don't go quite as, you know, hardcore with 30 pages of some kind of book. But essentially, I think the idea is, yeah, if you can just train them correctly, you'll be much better off later on. And I think that's a great idea. And I think the key to that is literally as you go through it, initialing, having your new tenants perspective, well, there'd be new tenants initialing every single page as you go through it. And you want to provide them a copy of that packet with them signing it so that if they come back later, say, oh, I didn't know that. Well, you signed it. Yeah. Like even a page that said like,

here's what an example of an emergency is. Here's what an example of not an emergency is. If you're doing dishes at four in the morning, that's not an emergency. You know, like just spelling those things out, a lot of tenants just don't know and they don't care and they don't think about it. So I think it's a good idea. It's funny you say that because as far as emergencies, actually on my wife's birthday, I had a tenant call me at 12 a.m. and basically say, there's water. There's water everywhere. There's water all over the floor. And there's water in the basement, you know. So here I am. I'm freaking out. And my wife, you know, she's already getting ready for bed. And she's like, you've got to go over there? Yeah, I got to go over there. So I get all the way over there and the tenant opens the door

and it looks at me, surprise. And she says, well, what are you doing here? I said, well, you told me you had a big leak. And she's like, oh, well, I didn't mean to disturb you. And it was just very, it was ridiculous, very ridiculous. She had done similar stuff like this a couple of times to my partner. And so anyways, actually what happened was there was a leak from the toilet in the actual unit that was leaking down. We had a guy in there a couple days before replacing the toilet in there because it needed to be replaced. And of course, he did a terrible job of actually installing the toilet.

So there's water running all over the place. So, I mean, that guy was a bad contract. It was terrible. So I called that guy up and I told him I gave him a peace of my mind. But my wife was not happy about that at all. But I could see that as an emergency. I mean, toilet water running into your unit from another unit sounds kind of emergency to me if I were a tenant.

Well, actually, what was actually happening is it was running in from the bottom unit into the basement. So the basement, it was actually leaking into the basement. And it was a unfinished basement. And literally,

it was a trickle. Oh, okay. I mean, she heard it. She heard it through the wall, and she's like, oh,

I hear it. And then she went in the basement and she couldn't really see it. And she's like, there's water everywhere. There's water everywhere. And I went down there. There was like no water.

Oh, it was free of ridiculous. So it sounds like you're self-managing all your properties. Is that correct? That is correct. Yes, we do self-manage all of our properties. Gotcha. And is there a reason for that versus hiring a manager? Or what's your take on that? Well, what we actually decided, when we originally formed the partnership, Charles and I, we decided that I would do a lot more of the fixing. He would do more of the tenant management. And, you know, we eventually decided we wanted to outsource all the fixing. So nowadays,

for the most part, we actually met somebody through bigger pockets, a general contractor. And he's been handling pretty much all of the maintenance on that side. So pretty much all I handle is a lot of the turnover of the units and, you know, help Charles out with some of the tenant management. And then just kind of big picture stuff, kind of expanding our business. Gotcha. Gotcha. All right. And so you're finding your deals on MLS.

Is that right? Yes, MLS. Yeah, pretty much exclusively. I actually just became a real estate agent, licensed real estate agent a couple months ago. And prior to that, we had a person we were working with in the north towns, as we call it, in Buffalo. And it actually took us a while to educate you're on what was a good deal. So, you know, I always say that I wish there were more real estate agents that understood what investors are looking for. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, I probably don't need to plug this. going to. You guys should check out my ultimate real estate agent's guide to working with investors because if you're a real estate agent, yeah, read it and if you're not a real estate agent, go give it to your real estate agent. Just email it forward to them. It'll make your investing life

much better. So, yeah, well, cool. So, oh, go ahead. I was going to say absolutely. I mean, in a lot of cases, they just don't understand the numbers that go along with that. They really don't, they really don't understand the numbers. They'll send you a duplex and they'll be selling for $150,000.

and, you know, the rents are, you know, $500 a month and I can look at that and say, yeah, I don't, that's not even close. Not even close. Yeah, no, I agree. So what made you want to get your license? I guess, you know, we talk about that on the show a lot. So why did you do it and do you recommend other people do it? Yes, I highly recommend it.

I mean, just being able to get access to the MLS, it's amazing. The information, the detail, I mean, I'm a big data junkie. Part of my actual full-time job is I actually do, you know, look at trend analysis and, you know, kind of look at the market. So, like, for me, the MLS was like a no-brainer. Yeah. And you have a full-time job then? Yes, I do. Yes.

I actually work at a bank. Okay. Oh, cool. What do you do at the bank? I actually work in the commercial banking. I actually deal with a lot of the incentive process and sales process. I actually do a lot of programming for that. Gotcha.

Okay, so you're another one of our working a full-time job while real estate investing on the side guys. Absolutely. Which is awesome. So how then, how do you do your kind of maintenance issues? How did you when you were working and your tenants would call you in the middle of the day? How would you have handled that?

Or how did you handle that? Well, originally they're mostly calling Charles and Charles also has a full-time job. So it was the same thing. We tried to split it in the beginning. But as we got bigger, Charles was mostly handling it, mostly because his work was okay with him at least taking calls. And a lot of cases, if it was an emergency,

we would just deal with that after work. Gotcha. Okay. Got it, got it. And then in terms of being able to jump on potential deals, obviously because you're working, you don't have the opportunity to kind of plow through different, new listings in the middle of the day, right?

That's correct. Yes. Yes. So for you, though, it seems like in that market, and correct me, if I'm wrong, you're probably dealing with more listings that are old than listings that are brand new, hot and fresh. Yeah. During the time when we first started, it was very much like that. In the last probably year or so, it's got very, it's definitely heating up. It's becoming very, very competitive for multi-families in Buffalo. So how can somebody who's working a full-time job then have the ability to scour those deals during working hours

and get to potentially even see them without kind of taking time off of work? Yeah. Well, kind of what I recommend is partnering up or finding an agent that you can really work with that will really be able to kind of find those properties and pre-screen. them. I know when we first started out, we had an agent that would basically go look at a lot of these properties before she would send them to us. And, you know, once we kind of educated and taught her, eventually she knew exactly what to look for for us. Yeah, that's good. Well, you know, let's maybe dive in a little bit more on that partnership thing because that, that I think is something

that a lot of new investors, you know, hear a lot about. But it's kind of hard to actually know, how do you get started? How do you find a partner? What is a good? partner, all that thing. So let's, let's talk about first of all your experience with that. How did you find your partner? I actually lucked out. I met my partner through a mutual friend. And, you know, I kind of brought the idea to him and I said, hey, you know, I'm doing this kind of real estate stuff. Would you, would you be interested in it? And, you know, I started to show him the numbers and basically educated him from the beginning to, you know, to where we are now. And, you know, he basically, you know, grabbed right on and we just, we just went with it. Okay.

Okay, cool. And how do you guys structure it? Are you 50-50, I'm assuming? Or is it per deal? No, it's 50-50. I mean, as my wife likes to appropriately call it, it's like another marriage. So you've got like some kind of business LLC, whatever it is, and he owns 50%, you own 50%, is that pretty much it? Yeah, for the most part, that's how most of our deals are structured. Well, actually, which brings up a question. So are you doing one entity per deal? Or are you, do you have one entity between you that you use for all the deals? Well, we have one deal that is actually a commercial property. So that one we actually put into a partnership.

And the rest of the deals, it's kind of, you know, more using residential mortgages. And we basically have some legal documents behind the scenes that kind of help out with that. Gotcha. Gotcha. Okay. So you found him. He's a 50-50 partner. What does that mean?

What are your roles? I know you alluded to it earlier, but if you could kind of clear, like who brings the money in, who does what? Well, initially when we started, we both brought in the same exact amount of money. And then as we've kind of been growing, Charles actually has access to a LMA, which is basically a line of credit against a stock account. And we've been using that, and we've basically been paying that off as we've been kind of expanding and growing our business. And so he tackles more of, you said earlier, he tackles more of the direct managing the tenants and things. And you said you're more big picture, right? Yes, yes.

What does that mean exactly? Well, as far as, you know, systematizing our business, we're kind of trying to come up with better ways to do our business, do our books. I actually built a lot of models when I worked in my previous job in the bank. and I want to make things more efficient. I'm all about that. And a lot of stuff that was said in like the e-myth and some other books. I mean, that's kind of what I'm thinking about

and also saying, hey, how are we going to grow our business? We're going to partner and network with other people and try to figure out how we can grow our business. Okay. And do you have any good examples of things that you said systematizing your business, you know, e-meth kind of things? What are some examples of what you guys are doing?

Well, actually what we're doing is we're using a application called Rent Tech, Rent Tech. And what that actually will do, it does a lot of the accounting work. Charles does most of the accounting work. We do have a couple of folks that help us out and pitch in with that. But on the actual system, it has a lot of stuff that will actually post directly to Craigslist. And it actually has a ticket, like a trouble ticket system. So tenants can actually put in entries into the system and it'll send us an email

that tells us that, hey, you know, somebody's reporting an issue. Gotcha. Gotcha. And why did you choose those guys versus, say, like an app folio or one of the other online property management platforms? Well, I just, when I talked to the customer support folks and the sales team, I mean, it just felt like they had a better product and they were continually developing because actually what I was looking at, I was looking at this stuff on their website

as far as, you know, how frequently they were making updates. And it seemed like their product was continually, reinventing itself. So I kind of wanted to go with them. And a lot of the other applications, you know, when you're starting out, they were very expensive and we just couldn't afford it. Gotcha. Gotcha. And we've got a link to like a whole slew of online property

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Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at Airbnb.com slash host. All right. So what about, you know, you said modeling. You had talked about, yeah, I get the systematization through these platforms. But what about modeling? What are you doing there? A lot of what I was initially doing was I built very similar profitability models to like what you guys have built. with the buy and hold calculator. I actually remember the original investment calculator back in 2006 or before that you guys had that was actually on the site. There was one there.

Well, I swear there was. I swear there was. There was something there. There was something. Yeah. So anyways, you know, I basically worked with Charles and I kind of, it was explaining the different principles of, you know, of investment. And, you know, in the beginning, he was kind of, you know, we were kind of confused on, hey, you'd look at a property and the return, you know, would look good because you're financing it.

And, you know, I really want to focus on telling investors that when you're looking at, you can't just look at how you're financing. You've got to look at the actual performance of the property. That's extremely important. Financing, excuse it. I'm sorry. I was going to say, yeah, you can make any property look good if you put like 80% down, right? Right, right.

That's a good tweetable topic right there, Josh. I'll throw that one up on Twitter. Well, it's true. I mean, well, we had an old user on the site years ago, Mike O. Some of the folks who've been around bigger pockets for a long time are probably familiar with him. And, you know, his big thing was, you know, he was a big 50% rule guy. And he basically said, you've got to run the numbers like it's 100% financing,

which is, you know, essentially going to make those numbers the worst possible numbers. and if the numbers work out with 100%, then you know you're in a good position. So, you know, suddenly putting your 20% or 10 or 30 is, you know, is icing on the cake. Yep. Yeah, I do the same thing when I look at a value. I always figure, you know, I like to say I want $100 in cash flow per month per unit minimum.

I like to see more than that, but that's my minimum. And that's figured with 100% financing. So, you know, if I can get $100 per unit, you know, $400 on a 4plex, with zero down, it's probably a good deal for me. So if I put 20% down, it's going to be more than that. It might be 5, 6. And that's usually following the 50% rule.

Yeah, yeah. I'm a fan. I would say that a lot of the deals that are here actually are actually more profitable than that. So I usually look at a lot of the cap rates. That's what I'll end up doing. Gotcha. What kind of deals are you getting there? I mean, I would presume you're probably getting two to two and a half percent deals over there.

Is that about that? Yeah. That's about right. Yeah. Yeah. We're actually one of our most profitable properties. It's a four unit. It brings in maybe $6 to $700 a month.

Each unit or you need or cash flow? No, total. It's cash flow. Okay, cool. Yeah. Yes. So that's cool. No, I don't know New York.

How far away is this from New York City? You might as well be in, like, you know, California. Well, I know, but how long does it take the drive that? Yeah, Buffalo to New York, six, six hours, yeah. If you're driving fast. You can actually get to Canada just as. quick. Okay.

Well, it's right next door. The reason I ask is because you know how I always say that within driving distance of every major city, I firmly believe that there's good places to invest within a couple hours. So it's not New York from there, but I'm sure there are places within a couple hours in New York City. But apparently Buffalo is not part of that. Well, I mean, Upper New York is kind of, it's like its own world, man.

It's totally different. It really is. So, you know, all my good, all my good red state friends are hating me right now. Well, hey, going back to the partner thing, what do you think makes a good partner? How could somebody that's listening to this show find a good partner to work with? Well, I think the most important thing in a partnership is being able to come to an agreement. And when you do have disagreements, you've got to be able to constructively work them out without basically pushing each other's buttons. Charles is a very easy kind of going guy.

I'm a little bit more of an aggressive kind of guy. So most times when we're dealing with issues, I tend to be the one that gets excited. He's very cool and collective, very collective about stuff. So, you know, I think, you know, just trying to, you know, look out there, go through bigger pockets. You know, just go to some of these real estate meetups as well. And that's where you can really find some of these partners.

Yeah, you know, that's a really good idea. And I think people overlook that sometimes maybe on bigger pockets. The idea that by engaging on the forums and by asking questions and answering questions, that people start to see you and then you may very well find your next partner or lender or whatever, just on the site just by being involved. You don't have to be an expert or a pro. Just be involved and you never know who's going to end up working with you. Happens all the time.

It does. Absolutely. Absolutely. I totally agree with that. Actually, I actually have had quite a few people in the last. couple months I've been contacting me just because I've been setting up the bigger, you know, the bigger pockets meetups, just kind of trying to bring people together to just talk about things. Yeah. So I've been having a lot of people that, you know, new investors that just

want to, you know, hey, I want to take you out for a coffee. I just want to pick your brain. I get that all the time. I probably get that once or twice a week and I'll just get a new person I'll ask me and ping me from bigger pockets. So it's great. So are you, Michael, are you that you running the unofficial Buffalo meetup? Is that, is that you? Yeah, I guess I'm running it. I guess I would say that. I mean, I do have a lot of help from other people. I mean, I don't like to take all the credit. At the same time, you know, we have a lot of new people that will come here to this meetup. And, you know, guys like me, you know, we've been doing this for a little bit. So we tend to be able to talk about and dominate. So at the same time, I want to allow these new investors just to kind of step up, ask questions, or just bring something. and be like, hey, I want to talk about this topic. And, you know, just ask questions, be like, hey, what do you guys think? I don't know anything about this.

Teach me about this. Just to kind of to grow and be able to expand their capabilities. Well, let's talk about this a little bit because, you know, it's kind of a semi-recent phenomenon. You know, it's something we tried to instill years ago and it never really happened. But recently, you know, this year alone, dozens and dozens of meetups have kind of popped up, bigger pockets meetups have popped up. around the country. And for me, it's awesome. I mean, that's like the coolest thing possible

is to see our people organically setting up their own made-ups and literally creating these kind of get-togethers with no agenda, not necessarily no agenda, but there's no sell agenda, right? It's not about pitching. It's not about selling. It's about people getting together, networking, educating each other, and hopefully doing deals and doing business together. So I'd like to hear why did you guys kick this one off? And, you know, maybe how do you run the meeting? Well, I think the main reason why I wanted to put it together is because I wanted to kind of give back and give the opportunity that I didn't have. Because when I first started, I mean, yeah, I had bigger pockets, but I didn't know anybody locally.

And there weren't people that were reaching out to me to try to help me. So I kind of want to be there to help people to say, hey, there's this group. help you. And it's not just me. It's all these other people. And to kind of be able to grow and and to be able to help them as well. So I think that's important. And, and, and, oh, go ahead, Brandon. Well, I was going to say, a couple weeks ago, I don't know, maybe a month ago now, we redid on bigger pockets of the meat page, which is bigger pockets.com slash meat, M-E-E-E-T, not meat as in your steak. And, well, I was going to say, a good, a good thing people can do it. Go on there. Find out all the people in your local area. Send them a call of your request and say,

hey, we're thinking about getting together for a local meetup, are you interested? You know, those kind of things is like, we're not talking about a complicated, you know, process here. This could be as simple as, hey, you guys want to get together for, you know, a steak dinner, coffee or whatever. So I'm a huge fan. Absolutely, absolutely.

Actually, I'm actually looking to go to Toronto in the next couple of months. And while I'm up there, I would love to, if there isn't one, or if there is one, I would love to reach out to some of the folks up there and just say, hey, you know, because there's a lot of investors in Toronto that want to get involved, but they have capital, but they look in their market and there aren't deals or they need more money. So Buffalo is a great, great place for them to look.

Yeah, and that's just another benefit too is by hosting these meetups, these kind of informal things, is you kind of become seen as a connector and people may end up working with you or whatever. And I think that's great. Yeah, so yeah, when you do that Toronto, definitely, you know, hit me up, put it on the forums, let everyone know. I'm going to also be in New York City here in January, I think 14th. I think we're going to try to have a little BP meetup there also.

So those in the New York City area, yeah, keep an eye out on the form. Make sure you have a keyword alert set up for your local city. So when people like Michael, you know, organize a, see there you are in trouble, Michael. When Michael set up when people like Mike set up a meetup and he writes, hey, we're going to have a meetup in Buffalo. If you have Buffalo set up as a keyword alert, you're going to get an email. and you can jump into it. Nice.

Tell us about the meetings themselves. I mean, you know, there is no pitching. There's none of that nonsense. So how are you running the meetings? Like what does a meeting look like? Is it just, you know, hanging out over drinks or food and just everybody kind of independently chatting amongst each other? Or is there any kind of structure?

No, there really isn't any structure. And we more like to have it just, hey, we come together. We'll talk about different ideas, different investments, and just to kind of have it very informal. We usually have it at like a steak restaurant or, you know, a bar that may have like a big, you know, banquet facility, you know, a room that we can kind of, you know, get together and talk. That's a little bit quieter. We actually just mostly recently had it at a Greek restaurant in a separate area and that was really nice. Giroz.

Jairos. Yes, gyros. Yeah. Awesome. So, I mean, that's why we want to, you know, kind of kind of do that to help people out. and not have an agenda because I feel like actually not to say anything bad, but I went to a local meetup that there's a real estate investment group, and I felt like it was very pitchy, and I don't like that.

I want something where there isn't a hidden agenda. Yeah, yeah. And I think that's why these things are exploding, because, you know, I think unfortunately, you know, these, a lot of the real estate clubs that are out there, you know, I think regardless of the pitchiness, I think there's value in real estate clubs, but I think a lot of people have really grown tired, and hopefully Bigger Pockets has played some role in instilling that you don't have to put up with that.

But I think people are getting tired of the pitchiness, you know, the constant trying to sell me stuff. And, you know, the cool thing about these meetups is it's just guys like you and me and anyone else who doesn't really care to have that, who just wants to meet local folks and learn and, you know, work together. Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely.

You know, one more benefit of the local meetups, just by meeting local investors. You find local areas, too. Like, we had a meetup out in Portland a few months back. And one of the guys mentioned that he was investing like half hour south of Portland. Now, Portland, for those who know, like, it's very, very expensive. I mean, a house is very spendy. We talked about with Tucker on episode 22, where he talked about,

he's buying these, you know, houses for four. or $500,000, flipping them for a million or more. I mean, these are expensive areas, but like half hour from Portland, there's these areas where you can buy a fourplex for $120,000 or less. And so these people, like, were that from the Portland area, had no idea you could buy them that cheap within a half hour drive. So, again, that's just the benefit of meeting with local investors as people, you get ideas and you get locations.

Yeah, yeah. And, you know, Brandon, you earlier talked about the keyword alerts. And, you know, as I sit here and I'm looking at Michael's recent posts, I could see, you know, they all have Buffalo. A lot of them have Buffalo and Rochester in them. And I'm assuming you probably have set up keyword alerts for things like Buffalo, Rochester. So when people on Bigger Pockets are talking about things pertinent to you locally, you can jump in and get involved and start to meet those local people. Absolutely, yes. That's actually what I do. I always do that. Yeah, that's awesome. That's awesome. Cool. So let's transition a little bit.

You said you're kind of transitioning from the buy-and-hold space into flipping. How did you come to that conclusion that you wanted to do that? And how on earth are you flipping houses while you're working a full-time job? Yeah, actually, we decided we wanted to flip houses to be able to come up with cash infusions, to be able to buy more multifamily properties. because as you know, when you do the flips, you get large capital that comes back to you. So that's why we decide to do that. Gotcha.

And how's that going? I mean, have you flipped any yet or are you still in the planning stages? We're actually in the process of finishing up one right now. We have it listed on the market. Hopefully we'll be selling it in the next couple of weeks, and we'll see how it goes. And then maybe we'll do another one. Nice. Can you kind of walk us through the numbers on that?

yeah actually we uh we we bought the place for uh 89 000 uh it actually sat on the market for about six years whoa wow wow that's insane i don't think i've ever heard of a property on the market for six years no me either yeah it was uh yeah it was an a rio um it had been sitting for a while the person um you know got foreclosed on and it's been sitting for very very very long time on some bank's books. Wow. So I think if I remember right, I think the value that they had out on the on the actual property was about $250,000.

Holy cow. Yeah, a crazy, crazy market we used to have. So you bought it for, you said, 89? 89, 89. And what did you end up putting into it? We end up putting in about 30 to 35. Okay. And what are you hoping to, like, what are you hoping to sell it for?

About 179. 185, somewhere in that range. That's a nice flip. Yeah, yeah. That's pretty good. That's awesome. That's awesome. So I know I, well, let me jump back to my previous question on the full-time thing.

I know both you and you and Charles are working. How do you run a flip while you're working? I mean, it seems to me like something that'd be extremely challenging. Yeah, actually we met Dave, David Niles through. bigger pockets and he's a general contractor and you know he's been doing this for a while he actually was a general contractor in the more of the residential field before and he kind of transitioned to doing flips and you know we met him through BP and you know we we kind of put it together and here we are that's cool how awesome and how you know how has the experience

been for for you guys and you know how much of you enjoyed that versus the buy and hold and do you think you're going to continue to do it for cash infusion or you might even start doing it just because it makes money yeah um yeah actually we're we're we want to you know continue to do this and uh you know we'll we'll we'll see how it goes you know and down the road i forgot the question i'm sorry i think you answered it yeah that's good so our last question on the flip then. I'm wondering, how long did it take you then from beginning to end? Because this is your first flip, correct?

Yeah, this was our first flip. Originally, we were thinking we were going to close in under a month, and basically the bank or whoever owned it was sitting on it. So it took us an extra, probably an extra 45 days on top of that. So probably by the time we get done, start to finish, it's probably going to be about

six to seven, maybe eight months, somewhere in that range, just because of how long it taken. Okay. Okay. And I lied. I said that was the last question on the flip. Now I want to have one more. How did you fund this one? Through the LMA, through the funding we had. We actually brought on Charles's brother as a, as it looked kind of like a silent partner to help us with some of the funding on the deal. And David actually did all the work, all the rehab. That's how we were able to continue to work full time. Dave's focus was basically on getting that place, done full time. Gotcha. Gotcha. That makes sense.

Cool. Hey, before we get to the next segment, I just had one last question myself. And that's, you know, I guess what would you say you're, we all make mistakes throughout the process. And, you know, I think you had talked about like, yeah, letting your tenants knock on your doors at six in the morning or whatever. What would you say, I guess, the biggest mistake you've made so far as an investor has been. And what did you learn from that? Yeah, actually I would say our biggest mistake was we had some tenants in one of our first properties that Charles and I bought together.

And they basically were saying, yeah, we'll get you the rent, we'll get you the rent, we'll get you the rent, we'll get you the rent. And Charles and I were like, we're just starting out, we're like, oh yeah, it's okay, it's okay, you're a little late. Three months later, they still hadn't paid. Yeah, it was really, really bad. And they ended up, we ended up having to evict them, kick them out. and it was a very nasty process. They were not happy about it, obviously, but we were not happy about it losing, you know,

essentially what was probably about three to five months worth of profitability, and we've never done that ever since. I mean, that was a really bad idea. Right on. And how do you screen just to kind of follow up on that? What's, you know, what's your process or general process? I mean, in general process, we kind of use the, you know, the bigger pockets guy

to screening tenants. We kind of look at the income. We focus on that. We focus on good references, you know, stable job. We also do, you know, a background check. We just started pulling credit reports recently. You know, basically group all that together. That really helps us get a bigger picture about the tenants.

The other thing I do is I look in their car. You do their car thing. Okay. Yeah, I do the car thing. I look in their car. I've actually had tons of people that have said they rate themselves a five for cleanliness and I go and look in their car and there's Burger King wrappers and you know tissues and

I don't think so. Brandon he must have turned you down for your he probably would turn me down. I actually I mean my car is actually perfectly clean because my wife drives the car it's my truck that really has the problem packed to the brim with tools at all point I don't know all the time anyway nice cool all right well let's let's move forward to

It's the next segment of the show. It's time for the fire round. All right, fire round. These questions all come from the Bigger Pockets forums. Question number one, I'm going to fire at you. Knob and tube wiring. What do you do when you encounter that in a potential property? I don't buy it.

Oh, really? You just flat out won't? Yeah. I just won't buy it. Oh, really? You won't? Okay. Well, that's, I mean, believe or not, Brandon's perplexed.

He said a lost the word. No, I just didn't expect like a black and white answer. Yeah, usually it's like, well, maybe if it's this or that. I like black and white answers, but. Yeah, actually, Dave does most of our inspections. And usually when he sees knob and tube, he's like, yeah, I don't want to deal with that. And, you know, the guy that we have that does some electrical work, you know, he doesn't like to do it. It ends up not being so good.

I actually do. I buy properties with Nab and 2 because most of the properties out here have it or a lot do. Most have been updated, but I'll inspect it and make sure everything's working good and it's clean and functional. And I always hear it's okay as long as you don't disturb it and mess with it.

But yeah, I try to update it when I can, but I don't know. Anyway, that's why I was a little bit like... Don't move into Brandon's rentals, guys. Yeah. It's a lot more common than you think. I have renovate my habitube. Sometimes I'll fix it and hopefully nothing ever happens. You don't need to fix it.

The electrical, I mean, like, they say it is functional. It works just fine as long as like you don't mess with it. You know, it works. Kind of like a spastic siding, right? Like, it's okay. It's functional. Yeah. Hey, you know, I was riding, I was riding my horse and carriage to work the other day.

And I was thinking to myself. All right. Next question. What would you recommend for first rental property? Obviously yours was a duplex, but what would you recommend it? Duplex or a single family house? Duplex. I mean, if you're in Buffalo, definitely a duplex.

Just because it's, you know, you can kind of find out, you know, whether you really want to be a landlord. Because, I mean, you have to check to see if you're going to be a landlord first. Because so many people get in this business and they try to be a landlord and then, you know, they get too deep and they're like, you know, they want to sell out. They want to get out. So, yeah. Okay. Next question.

Tenants are asking me to pay for their. negligence. Like they busted a hole in the wall, they clogged their sink. What do you do? At what point do you work on in their stuff? In what point, don't you? I mean, if it's like a hole in the wall, usually I tell them, you know, we will do it, but we're going to charge you for it. That's usually what we end up doing. We actually had a crazy, crazy plumbing issue just happened not too long ago with an eviction. So I don't want to get too deep. into it because I know this is a fire round. But, you know, essentially what happened was the guy had some folks over and they clogged the toilet and they called me and they said, hey, you know, my toilet is

clogged. Can you come, can you come fix it? And, you know, I had, Dave actually went over there and checked it out and it was completely plugged because somebody flushed something down it. And actually in our lease, it states that if you are negligent, you're responsible. So the guy freaked out. The guy freaked out and I said you're going to call Plummer and he's like, oh, I don't have the money. And so basically he went to the basement, took a giant and I know I can't confirm this, but I'm pretty sure because I saw where they actually hit the pipe. They went to a cast iron pipe basically took like a giant wrench and it. Dong, just like that. It went dong right against it.

And there's a giant, believe or not, I could actually send you the picture. There's literally, it looks like you can see it. And I get a call from the guy and he says, oh, I just want to let you know there's a leak in the basement, Mike. Oh, man. It was crazy. Dave was there. Dave saw the guy we met from BP and he was just floored.

He could not believe it. That's awesome. Now, hopefully you have your move in, move out inspection. You have photos of the place so you can obviously demonstrate that it did not look like this prior to the dong of the cross-office. Correct. Yes, that's correct. I mean, we went and tried to get a judgment, and we actually did get a judgment. A big problem is, like some of these tenants, it's hard to track some of them down.

You can't collect, yep. Yeah, yeah. Well, that's the price you pay, I guess. It's part of the game. Yep. All right. So, you know, I've inherited $150,000 and I have pretty bad credit. How should I invest?

I would say you should partner with somebody. I mean, especially if you have the money, find somebody who has good credit that can help you qualify for mortgages. You know, set up all your legal stuff. Definitely consult, you know, your legal and accounting professionals just because I can't stress that enough. I think that's very important. Set that up and, you know, use that capital and buy as many houses as you can. Don't just buy one. Buy as many as you can with 150.

Spread that out. Nice. I would want to add to that that. I think a lot of that question would depend on why. Why the bad credit? You know, if it's medical bills because there was a bad thing, that's different than somebody who just is terrible at managing their money. Yes.

And so, like, if somebody was absolutely terrible at managing the money, I would say, you know, don't invest in real estate. Stick that money in the bank and figure out how to clean up your life first and then invest in real estate. But that's my addition to that. Can you be nice to me, Brandon? Sorry to me to make fun of you. Yeah, you know.

All right. next question. A house you buy, you know, a rental, and it's covered with paneling, like the ugly brown stuff. Do you paint it, replace it, or leave it for your rental property? I guess it really depends on how bad it is. I mean, I have seen a lot of that in Buffalo. You get the brown paneling. It looks like wood. Some of it's not too bad. If it's really bad, usually I just paint it because you're removing it, you do not know what's behind there. That's the scary part. I feel like you open Pandora's box when you do that. Yeah, I agree 100%. Awesome. Awesome. All right. Here's a question that's pretty appropriate for you. My water pipes just froze. What do I do? Call Palmer. Ah, there you go. I want to add a story to this real quick. So last night, my wife went to Starbucks meet with some friends. And, you know, this was the big freeze that we had like in Western Washington. We were, you know, super cold. Anyway, I decided just, you know, just to be safe. I want

to drive around just to check out some of my vacant units, make sure there was no problems. So I got over to one of my houses that was that was empty. And I could hear it from like when I got out of the car from probably 30 feet away. I just heard just this gushing water. And so I ran I ran over to it, looked under the house, just kind of pop my head under. And one of the like a one inch water line going in had completely blown up because some, I didn't do it, but somebody had put, you know, there's plastic cheap water line in there. Anyway, just completely shattered. And I don't know how long I've been like that at least probably eight hours of just pumping out water. So, yeah, I got a little bit of a mess to take care of here in the future.

But it's empty, so I'm not in a major hurry. Nice. That's awesome. That's awesome. All right. So I actually did want to ask you, and this is non-fire round, but, you know, being. You're wrecking things. You know what?

Whatever. It's my show. My show. It's his show. All right. So you're in Buffalo. I mean, you're in one of the most miserable places on planet Earth. And so I'm just wondering, you know, the cold-related issues, you know, are there any others beyond the, you know, just making sure, you know, external pipes are shut off, sprinklers are drain, that kind of stuff?

Yeah. I think the biggest thing with that is just, you know, make sure you check on your heating units, make sure they're all good. Surprisingly, knock on wood, so far, we haven't had anybody call and say, hey, we got, we got, we got, we, We got a leak or we got heating issues. So it's been good. What about snow removal? I used to have Reynolds in the Midwest and the law said if we went and shoveled the snow but there were still a little bit of ice and the tenant or anybody on the sidewalk slipped

and fell, you're responsible. But if you left the snow, didn't touch it, didn't try to shovel it and somebody fell you're good to go. Are there any kind of like weird laws like that? that up? I haven't, yeah, I haven't heard of that. I mean, we do actually have snowplow service and, you know, snow removal and they do put down ice, but, you know, or the stuff that, you know, will dissolve the ice, but I, yeah, I don't think we have it up in Buffalo. It's one of those crazy things that you would probably discover what happens and knock on what I hope that never happens.

Yeah, for sure, for sure. Cool. Well, good stuff. All right. Well, why don't we, why don't we start wrapping this up and get to the famous four. All right, well, cool. Well, what is your favorite real estate book? I actually have two that I really like. Start Small, Profit, Big, and Real Estate, J.P. DeSema. Ah, I have another book by that guy. Good book.

Anyway. Yeah. Yeah. And then the other one would be building wealth one house at time, which is John W. Schwab. That is a good one, too. Awesome. All right. What about your favorite business book?

That's my friend. I just take your question, Josh. No, whatever. Just go ahead. Go ahead. Well, Josh isn't going to like the answer, so. You know, it's all stick. What page is?

Okay, so the answer is four-hour work week. The next question is, what are your hobbies? The answer is, oh, I spend time with my family. The next question is, you know, what investors do to elevate the bar? The answer is, oh, they just stick through it. End of interview. Thanks, guys. No, I think

Mike's got some better answers here. Let me re-asset. All right, Mike. What's your favorite business book? For our word, three. Nice. It's a good book. It's a good book.

It's a good book, page 27. All right, what is, Josh, why don't you take the next question since I stole yours? Oh, whatever. I'm done with you. What are you doing for fun, man? actually I was telling Brandon the other day I actually play badminton oh nice like actual badman not like backyard badman so

it's competitive it's very very competitive um you know I travel for tournaments and stuff like that my wife will go with me and I have lots of friends at play so so I got to tell you one of the one of the strange events I like watching in the summer Olympics is is Batman it's it's like It's crazy. Those things, those, what are they called? The little net things that you whack. Oh, Shuttlecock. Oh, yeah. Shuttlecock. What'd you call it, Brandon?

Isn't that a birdie? What's a birdie? Yeah, they called it. Yeah, I thought. I remember that from high school. Come on. All right. So the bird, yeah, those things go fast, man. That's a tough game. It's intense, yeah. Especially, you know, for me, somebody who's a little bit of a bigger guy, it's definitely tough because most of the guys I end up losing to are these 100-pound, and so can wet guys that are, you know, six foot, you know, three. I just can't compete with them.

They're, they're machines. Nice. I would love to, love to watch you play one of these days. Next BP meetup. There we go. There you go. Final question. Mike, what do you believe sets apart the successful investors from those who just give up and fail?

I just think you need to be persistent. And I also think that you need to continue to drive and be excited about it because if you kind of like lose your enthusiasm for what you're doing in real estate, I feel like those are the people that kind of fizzle out. So I think it's important to stay passionate. Yeah, that's a good answer. That is a good answer. Predictable, but it was a good answer.

Michael. All right. Awesome. Yeah, no, I think that's great. I think that's great. Well, so listen, it's, it's been great having you on the show. Definitely, definitely appreciate. it. I love hearing that you're part of running the local meetup. That's fantastic. And anyone

listening, hopefully they will reach out and connect with you at that meetup. And I guess the last question is really, how can people find out more information about you? Where can they connect with you? You could find us on bigger pockets. And, you know, we have a website as well. You could find that in the show notes. What's a link? www.cNMrentel.com. CNN? CNN.

Charles and Mike. Oh, I thought you worked for Ted Turner all of a sudden. Cool. All right, CNNRental.com. Check it out. And Mike, thanks so much, man. We definitely appreciate the time. Thanks, guys.

Appreciate it. All right, everybody. That was Mike Sherwood on the Bigger Pockets podcast, Show 51. Check it out on the show notes at biggerpockets. com slash show 51. As you can tell, Mike is quite the knowledgeable fellow. He's had some awesome experiences, and hopefully you've learned a thing or two. If you have, definitely jump on to iTunes and leave us a review not only of this show, but

pretty much all the 50 preceding podcast. And that'd be great, leaving us some kind of rating and or review. We'd appreciate it. otherwise of course jump on the show notes and and ask any questions you've got for mike uh beyond that listen we want to thank you guys again this is 2014's first show we're super excited about the year to come hopefully you guys are enthused and looking forward to jumping in on the community hop on the forums get active on the blogs on the bigger pockets blog do something um and uh you know start meeting people start networking and and making things happen uh of

course, we, as we always do, remind you to check us out on Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, a great network, and LinkedIn. Make sure to follow us on all those networks. And otherwise, we'll see on Bigger Pockets. Thanks so much for listening. I'm Josh Dorkin. Signing off. You're listening to Bigger Pockets Radio. Simplify Real Estate for investors large and small. If you're here looking to learn about real estate investing, without all the hike, you're in the right place. You're to join the millions of others who have benefited from BiggerPockets.com. Your home for real estate investing online. Thank you all for listening to the Bigger Pockets Real Estate podcast.

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