BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast - 575: Killer Cash Flow with This “Tenant-First” Section 8 Rental Strategy w/Joe Asamoah

Episode Date: February 24, 2022

Section 8 BRRRR investing seems like a niche within a niche. To start, you have your classic BRRRR strategy (buy, rehab, rent, refinance repeat), a method that many real estate investors have used to gain vast amounts of equity in short amounts of time. Then, on top of the BRRRR, you have section 8 rentals, which many investors stray away from. Both of these investment strategies can be thought of as “advanced” rental property investing methods, but combining them can almost automatically guarantee you phenomenal rent, for years (if not decades) to come. One investor known for his expertise in both section 8 rentals and BRRRR investing is Dr. Joe Asamoah. Regularly, Dr. Joe may be the smartest person in the room and he really shines when speaking about the often forgotten benefits of section 8 rentals. While many investors simply think of D-class houses and D-class tenants when accepting section 8 vouchers, Dr. Joe disagrees. His theory is simple—Find C or D-class properties in B-class neighborhoods, and rent to A-class section 8 tenants. The payoff? Very long-term tenants with guaranteed rent whose lives you can benefit directly. And Dr. Joe isn't just hypothesizing about this—he’s been doing this for decades and may be why he has tenants who have stayed with him for over twenty years, paying rent every month, on time. In This Episode We Cover: Before and after photos of Dr. Joe’s most recent section 8 BRRRR rental Renovation hiccups when doing large renovations/BRRRR deals The “bedroom-to-cash-flow” ratio that makes section 8 a lucrative choice for investors How to find the highest quality, long-term tenants in your investing area Building multiple exit strategies out of one property for maximum cash flow and equity gain The most common BRRRR risks and how to mitigate appraisal and tenant headaches And So Much More! Links from the Show: BiggerPockets YouTube Channel BiggerPockets Podcast 356: 30+ Rentals (in a Pricy Market) Through BRRRR and Section 8 with Joe Asamoah BiggerPockets Podcast 498: Real Deal: BRRRR Deep Dive w/ Joe Asamoah (Pt 1) Zillow Craigslist AffordableHousing.com (formerly GoSection8.com) David Greene's Instagram David David Greene Real Estate YouTube Channel Robert Abasolo's Instagram Robert Abasolo's Robuilt YouTube Channel Robert Abasolo's TikTok Check the full show notes here: https://biggerpockets.com/show575 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Bigger Pockets podcast show 575. All those calculations, ROI, cash on cash return, and so on. All those comes to zero. If you don't have a tenant is going to pay you. If you don't have a tenant who's going to take care. If you have a tenant who's going to trash your property, destroy your property, not pay you, give you drama. And you have that revolving door where they stay for a year and then they've gone.

And so all your calculations goes to naught if you don't do this part well. What's going on? everyone, it is David Green, your host of the Bigger Pockets Real Estate Podcasts here today with a phenomenal episode with our returning guest, Joe Asimaw. Now, Joe is a Section 8 expert. So if this is your first time listening to Bigger Pockets, I just want to let you know, you're in the right place. This is the show where you can come to learn how to find financial freedom through real estate.

We do that by bringing on different guests, highlighting different topics and explaining different strategies from people that have done this well, so you can learn from them. and achieve the same success that they have. Today's guest, Dr. Joe, is a repeat guest, and he's going to be explaining the specifics of a property that he bought, rehabbed, rented out, refinance, and is now in the process of repeating. But he's doing this specifically with Section 8 tenants.

He gets rent that's guaranteed. He can have his pick of the litter when he wants to choose who he wants to rent to. He gets to make the strategy work in an appreciating market instead of chasing after cash flow in somewhat sketchy markets. It's a great story. It's a great strategy and we are excited to bring it to you today. All right, today's quick tip. Take a notice that we have done things a little bit differently on the podcast here.

We are trying to bring you as much detailed information as possible. I love it if you'd go on YouTube and leave us comments to let us know what you think about what we're doing. In particular, we recently did a show with Andrew Cushman, who's my multifamily investing partner. Now, Andrew and I break down our system for how we identify, screen, do our due diligence, on and then close on multifamily property. And we give you the exact steps that we have put in place to pick the right ones. And then we actually just put one in contract very recently, like not too long after the show happened using the same system.

So go there if you would like to learn exactly what multifamily investors do. You'll get a ton of information similar to what you get if you paid at a boot camp but without having to pay. And then Rob Abas Solo and I do the same thing. We have episodes coming out about how we identify do the due diligence on and lock down short-term rentals. We break it into the exact steps that we're taking, how we choose the location, what type of property we're to go after, what type of financing we're going to get all the way down to the rhythm of our meetings and what we talk about in those meetings to make sure that we stay on track. I'm trying to bring you guys into my world and show you how I do work with my partner specifically so that you can benefit from it.

So please let us know if you like this type of content, if you appreciate it and if you'd like to see more of it. Be with me today to take down this awesome interview is my good friend and co-host Rob Abas Solo. Rob, how's it going? Howdy? Man, I'm excited. I'm really excited about this interview for a very specific reason. I think what I really have always appreciated about bigger pockets and just the real estate community is how people attack the same problem differently. And everyone has so many different creative solutions to everything. That's definitely encapsulated by Joe and the way he really took on this renovation. I mean, a complete glow up. I don't know if we're going to really talk to the befores, but I got a sneak peek of the befores of the transformation that we're talking

here. And it's a night and day difference. I mean, he really, really changed every aspect of this house in a way that not only makes it look beautiful, not only does it increase cash flows, but it also brings tenants that stay for a very, very long time. He kind of discussed a 25 year tenant. And that, I mean, that is, for me, that's unheard of. If you just did the numbers on how much money you save having one tenant for 25 years, like if you figure every two years, you have a turn, you have vacancy, you have repairs that have to be made, like, that's probably I got to be thinking like $50,000 to $100,000 that he's probably saving with this strategy. And no one really thinks like that.

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And listeners of the show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at Indeed.com slash rookie. Just go to Indeed.com slash rookie right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. That's Indeed.com slash rookie. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring Indeed is all you need. Rob, any last words before we bring in Dr. Joe? Yeah, pay special attention to what he did to actually transform this, which is a whole basement renovation. And it really just drives home the point that when you're a real estate investor, it's very important to see a property for what it is and what it isn't. And Joe really just, you know, he took the space and he really made it

his own. And man, I'm, I'm proud of him, man. No, I'm just kidding. No, it's really great. It's very inspiring. So a lot of lessons to be learned today. Oh, one last thing. If you're listening to this and you're listening on the podcast, not on the YouTube. If you can, if it's safe, not if you're driving. Look us up on YouTube and watch this episode there. We have some really good before and after pictures of the rehab that was done. And if you see the before pictures, you sort of get into Joe's head as what he saw when he looked at the property that made him think this is the one I want to buy. And that's what we really are trying to do today is we're trying to get you into the head of our guest looking from their perspective so that when you're looking at properties,

you know what to look for. So go follow us on YouTube. Watch the video there. If possible, if not, check it out when you get home. Dr. Joe, welcome back to the Bigger Pockets podcast. How are you today? I do fantastic. Dave. Thanks a lot, Rob. I'm amongst geniuses here. This is an inside joke. Inside joke. Y'all had to be there before. It's all good. Yeah, I made a comment about how, because Joe Osama here is a doctor that everybody tries to talk smarter than they really are when they're in the presence of a doctor.

And I was asking him, like, if everywhere you go at every cocktail party, people just try to use seven syllables when one or two would have done in the word. And so we were jumping into that. Now, Dr. Joe here is so popular. We brought him back for a third episode. If you want to be caught up to speed on the story of Joe Osama, you can check out episodes. 356 and 498. Now, Dr. Joe, you are known as a sort of Section 8 specialist. I don't know if you consider yourself that, but that's how the BP community sees you. You're probably the biggest name here when it comes to why rent out Section 8. In episode 498, we had a deal that you

bought and you were in the middle of rehabbing it. I believe you had the roughin that was finished and so like none of the finishing work was done, but now it's done. And we're actually going dive in really deep today on this particular property and how this strategy works. So if you don't mind, could you give us a like a brief rundown of how you bought this property, how you found it, and then what your vision was for what you wanted to make of it? Sure, yes. And essentially, the strategy is as follows. I try to buy C or D properties in B neighborhoods and rent a tenants. You got it? See it. And so that's the gist of it all is that you, you kind of buy houses that's bad condition or something's wrong with the house in a good

neighborhood and you rent to the top tier tenancy you can find okay so in this particular case this is a house in the B neighborhood in Washington D.C and there was something wrong with the house it was pretty okay but pretty not great the greatest condition it was a three bedroom one bath house okay and I bought it for 55,000 that's just over half a million dollars and in D.C. area that's the way it is In other areas may be higher, but this is an expensive market here. Anyway, I bought this house at 555. There's a three-bedroom one bath.

At three bedrooms, the house would not cash flow. And therefore, the only way I can get cash flow, because it's so expensive, is to increase the rent. And that's the beauty of Section 8. Is that Section 8, if you add more bedrooms, you get a higher rent. And so the only way the numbers could work here was to add two extra bedrooms, to make it from a three-bedroom to a five-bedroom. and to turn the rent from $3,700 to $5,400.

Okay, so at $5,400, I can cash flow. At $37, I'm breaking even. Okay, so that's the gist of the Section 8 strategy, is how do you turn a non-performing asset into the appreciating cash-flowing asset? And so that's what we're doing here. So in part one, pretty much talked through the design, where I did the two bedrooms, which is in the basement, and I added another bathroom in the basement,

and we'd done the house was permitted, So we had the ruffing, we did the ruffing plumbing, the HVAC, the electrical, you know, and sort of the framing. All that stuff was done as part the first, what's it called, session. And we left it whereby the house was ready for roughing inspection. So we're going to get the first lot of inspections. We called in the city, and the city inspectors came over, and that's where we left it. Awesome. Well, you kind of briefly cover this at the beginning with some of the numbers.

But just to take a step back, can you refresh us? What did you purchase this for? How much did renovations come out for what is it worth now before we jump into this to give us a little bit of context? So I bought it for $5.55. It was listed at $6.75. This is a listed property. Okay. So I know people say you can't get deals on the MLS and so forth. It's the same here in Washington, D.C. You can't find a deal anywhere. This was listed at $6.75. Okay. And I was able to negotiate it down to $5.55. Okay. This is in the B neighborhood. And so the deals are out there. You just have to create them. You have to have relationships and you have to be able to differentiate yourself from other people. In fact, seller had another offer at 585, and they chose mine, even though mine was lower. Okay, so it's 555 is what I purchased before. The original estimate for the rehab was 175,000. That's what I estimated going in here. I'll have to spend about 175,000 new kitchen, new bathrooms, new bedrooms in the basement, and pretty much redo the house, new systems. And so that's the initial as is going in estimates. And I'm looking forward to

reveal how inaccurate I was. But what was a surprise, though, because the market is so hot, I'm sure it's everything everywhere. I was expecting an ARV over about 850, but we had the appraisal coming at $900,000. So the appraisal came in higher than what I estimated, and even since then, how's on the same block and I'd go from $9.25,000, $950,000. I feel like that doesn't happen as often as I like it to, but I'm always super jealous when I see an ARV come in higher than expected. I'm sure David can probably relate to that, given where he is. That's a very good point. In the Burbank, one of the things I talk about, because what you're describing is what you want the after repair value to be, because that's what the amount that

you can borrow against the property will be based on. But what I like about what you're doing, Joe, is you're not only looking at the value of the property ARV. You're actually looking at the rents after it's been finished. So you saw this as a three-bed, property, it would rent as a certain amount on Section 8, which would not be enough to cover your mortgage or at least make a profit. So other people would just move on from the property and say it doesn't work. But you said, like you said, I have to create a deal or make a deal. You realize if I can add two bedrooms to this, I could bump the rent up.

Can you give me a rough idea of what the bump would be from three bedroom to five bedroom? It's always $1,800. There you go. That could be a difference in making it cash flow and cash flow in a healthy way. So you figured out, hey, I can add two bedrooms in the basement. and then it's going to go for this much, and then the value of it's going to be even higher because I fixed it up and the ARV went up from what I thought.

Now what a deal would be that everyone else passed up on looks really good for you. And that's what we're going to highlight is kind of getting in your head and seeing it from your goggles. So other people when they're looking at properties can see something similar. So if you don't mind, Rob's got some pictures here. If you guys are not listening to this on YouTube, consider checking out and watching today's show on our YouTube channel so that you can see the before-in-acture pictures

that we're going to be showing of what was done to this. property and how value is at it. I saw the before pictures here. And honestly, I was very stunned at what you were able to do with the place. It's amazing. It's so the curb appeal really is unparalleled, I think, for what it looked like before. So can you talk us through a little bit of the transformation that you did on the exterior here? And, you know, for those listening at home, again, it is going to be on YouTube. But, Joe, if you wouldn't mind, just giving us a little bit more color in the description here for those listening on the podcast. Yeah. So we have. We have a lot of it. And so we have a little bit have a particular color scheme I use for most of my houses. It's modern. It's very attractive,

and it gives that first impressions when you're walking down the block. So you're walking down the street, all the houses look okay, and then you see this house. It sparkles, it's modern, it's sort of inviting. And so that's what I want to do is to make sure that, at least from the street level, it looks great, it looks engaging, and then it's going to attract people to want to go inside. The landscaping looks pretty decent. And not a whole lot of spent on the landscaping. In this house, I did put a front porch. If you look at the before, there was no front porch. And in the final, there is a front porch there as well. So the idea is that it's appealing. But the important thing I do want to stress is that I'm looking for somebody who's going to go in here

and stay here a long time. Okay. Five, 10, 15, 20 years. Okay, that's my end game here. And so I look at the neighborhood as well, the street, the area, the access, you know, proximity to schools, transportation, recreation, all those things. These are things which I look for in addition to the numbers as well. It's really amazing what a coat of paint can do to a house because before it was kind of a red sort of color, and then you went in and changed it to this gray color. It kind of looks like it was the original look of the house

whenever it was first built. That is a popular sort of modern color scheme around here, and it's very inviting. It's got it pops. The door is what we call the blue inked door. It pops. And so we have three color schemes on the exterior. Also, I do want to add, though,

what we did here is quite creative. You may not be able to see it on this one. I'm thinking ahead that in the future, if I do sell, decide to sell this house, it's going to be an expensive area, and therefore, whoever buys this house will probably want to implement the house hack strategy. They're probably bigger pockets.

So we do create an entrance on the front. So if they wanted to rent this, the basement as a separate unit, it'll have his own entrance on the front, also have his exit in the back as well, in the basement and therefore the family or whoever buys this house could live upstairs and have a self-contained unit downstairs. So that's another strategy that we implemented here. I was kind of looking ahead and said, okay, since we're going to renovate the house anyway, what can we do here

to differentiate this house if I decide I want to sell in the future to a possible buyer? And if we can inform them that they could use the basement as a separate income dwelling unit, then it sort of makes it more attractive as well. Yeah, awesome. So take us inside the house, you know, you really did knock it out of the park or the exterior, but, you know, looking through the photos here, the inside has actually gone through quite the glow up or the transformation itself. Yeah, the first thing you'll notice when you come in is it's an open plan concept. Probably the first thing you'll see is that you see furniture there. And you probably say, what is this? I've never seen a rental where there's furniture there. And again, the idea is that

I want to differentiate my house from competition. I'm trying to get. A quality tenants, A tenants, okay? And so the A quality tenants have choices. They can go to Dave's house. They can go to your house, Rob, and they can go to my house. I'm trying to differentiate my house from yours and Dave's. Okay, so I try to stage my home and so it makes it very, very appealing when they walk through that front door. So what you can see here is an open plan concept whereby the walls that were in the original have been taken out. We relocated the kitchen from this original place to a new place, right sort of towards the center. And we have a very, very inviting space.

And we have vinyl flooring. As you can see, we have a very nice kitchen. We have granite countertops, stainless steel appliances. It's a nice home. For a voucher holder, this is unbelievable. Okay. This is something that never in their wildest dreams, would they ever feel that they'll get an opportunity to live in this neighborhood

in this type of home? And the A type tenant, this is a dream come true for them. And this is, if they don't get this house, they'll never see something like this again. So, you know, I hope this is making sense. Now, for a new investor, they don't have to go through all of this. Okay, this is a bit more advanced. But what I'm trying to do here is to make my place inviting such that I can attract the quality tenant I'm desiring. Yeah, because, I mean, staging isn't particularly a small cost.

I mean, I know a lot of realtors that some stage their houses when they're selling it, some don't. And there is an immediate ROI for something like that, right? If you stage a home and you get a lot more offers that you can get into bidding wars, there can be more money that's captured from the sale of the property. It's not really something that's done very often with long-term rentals in general, right? No, I think I'm the only one I know of who does this. Again, I've done the calculation.

It makes sense for me. I'm not getting, whoever moves into this house, the tenant that moved in, her intent is to be here for 15 years. Okay? So I'm not going to stage this house again for another 15 years. So if you sort of amortize that cost, it's insignificant. So to me, it's money well spent to attract the type of tenant I'm looking for. Okay.

As I said before, I've been through this so many times, so many markets where we are all vying for this top tier tenant, the tenant who's going to pay their rent, the tenant who's going to take care of the home, the tenant that's not going to give you any drama, and the tenant that's looking for a long place to stay for a long time. We're all vying for that person. And there's nothing worse, and I've been through this before, whereby you got a house and you don't get that many applications. And now you've got to sort of pick between okay versus, okay,

but I need to pay my mortgage. And I don't want to get into that situation. I want to have multiple choices, multiple applicants. So that's why I do this. It pays itself off over time. Yeah, so I also wanted to talk a little bit about the rehab here. I mean, obviously, this is really nice. It's a sparkling listing. You knocked it out of the park. It feels very homey. The journey to get here, I got to imagine, was probably, you know, pretty long and strenuous, is my guest. So can you tell us about any of the problem areas that might have occurred, you know, during the rehab? Is there anything that that was kind of a thorn in your side or anything that didn't go according to plan? Well, first of all, you know, this is a fully permitted house. So it took a bit longer to get the permits from the city. Normally it takes a few weeks, but it took us a lot longer. It took us over almost five weeks to get the permits through. So that was the first setback. The second thing

was that, you know, in terms of after we did the renovations, some of the walls that we thought, you know, we could sort of salvage. We could not, so we had to do some additional repair costs there. The price of lumber went up. So that sort of blew some of the renovation cost out the window. And, but the important thing is that we had good contractors. and we're able to manage that process. So, you know, the key, I think, is that if you're doing a project like this, you want to make sure that you manage the relationship with your contract because there's so many moving parts here.

And so I usually meet with my contractors every week. We discuss what's going on with the project, any issues that's going on, any problems that we're encountering, and solutions. Okay, we meet at my home, we provide food, we provide lunch. But the idea is to build trust, build a relationship such that the project can keep moving. I think that's been really the key to the success of this project. And that's probably something which I would recommend for all the bigger pockets community. It's take time to screen your potential contractor, develop a good scope of work,

which documents exactly what it is that you want to do, get several quotes as you can, and try to work with that contractor from start to finish. If you have a problem, try and work it out. Obviously, if you can't work it out, then you have to move on and maybe get somebody else. But the key to my success on this project was having good contractors and working that relationships. And therefore, as we went into problems, we're able to reduce those problems and keep moving forward. So, Joe, as we wrap up the rehab part of this project, I know that one of the heavier parts of that rehab was the basement. You know, that's a very scary thing to take on, especially when you look at the before photos.

There's vents and air ducts and furnaces and all that kind of stuff down there. Tell us a little bit about the process that goes into that, some of the pain points, and maybe some of the requirements that are needed to actually put bedrooms down in a basement. Sure, good question. I mean, there are legal requirements for a bedroom in the basement, and there are essentially four of them. So when I first go into a house for the first time, I'm thinking through my head, can this basement meet those requirements? And there are four are as follows.

One is the height. It's got to have at least seven feet height, okay, from the floor to the ceiling. That's number one. So if it's six and a half feet, then you can't make it into a basement bedroom unless you dig, okay, an extra half a foot. You follow me? So you've got to have a certain height. That's number one.

Number two is that it's got to have what we call egress windows. It's got to have two egresses. Egress is a way to get in and a way to get out in the event of an emergency. So it has to be two forms. Typically, there's a window. As you can see here, there's a window here. That's a form of egress. That's not just any old window.

That is what we call an egress window. So it allows somebody to get out from that basement in the event there's a fire that's closing that front door. If you see the door on the side there, that's the second form of egress. So there are two egresses into this bedroom, one to get in through that front door. And if that door is blocked for whatever reason, then they can escape through that window. So that's the second form. The third form is that it's got to have a closet, a place where you can store your clothes and so on. So we always put a closet in the bedroom like here.

There's a door there to the closet. And the fourth thing is that it's got to have electrical outlets, at least two electrical outlets. So they're the four requirements for a bedroom. It's also got to have a minimum of 70 square feet. Okay. So you can't have the closet there and say that's the bedroom because it's less than 70 square feet. So the bedroom has to have a minimum of 70 square feet. So they're the requirements for a code.

And so once you know that, you can plan that as part of the process. process, a plan that as part of the renovations. So this is really good. So let's say you're, you're looking at a property, you're walking it with your realtor, you go, ooh, look at this basement. And this is where like all of us, Rob, me, everyone, we start picturing in our head. We turn into like this like automatic architecture program. We're like, the bedroom would go there.

Where's the plumbing? Okay, there's the plumbing. How would I run it to a bathroom? And what you're telling me is there's four things you're looking for as far as section eight regulations to be considered a bedroom, minimum of 70 square feet. has to have a closet, two electrical outlets, and then there needs to be a way to get, two ways to get out of the basement, a window and a door out.

Now, does every bedroom need to have a window or just two for the area? No, every bedroom has to have two forms of egress. Okay. Now, the other thing is that, again, it's just for code. If there's a fire and, you know, the door to the room is blocked. Yeah. Then what? Okay.

That's right. So you've got to have a second form of exit from there. And this is a tricky part for some people in certain areas. It's an egress window means that it's got to be big enough whereby somebody can get out. Sometimes these windows in the basements are real small. Okay. So it's not big enough. So that technically is not an egress window.

So in order to make it a legal bedroom, people advertise this bedrooms all the time. But I'm just saying legally, technically, it's supposed to be a certain minimum size. I just ran into this problem myself on a deal that I'm doing where the property has a big covered patio. And I was going to enclose that and make it into a living space to have its, to have its own little unit. It already had the bedrooms. The problem is that enclosing the patio would block the window of one of the bedrooms. So I wasn't able to do it because I didn't know that of the four.

So this is very valuable information. And believe it or not, those of us that are experienced real estate investors still make mistakes and still have to learn the hard. sometimes for all the little nuances that are involved in this. I'm shocked, David. I thought you never made mistakes. Hey, we learn the hard way so everyone at home can learn the easy way. That's exactly right. It's not that I'm dumb.

It's that I will care so much about our listeners that I wanted them to learn from my mistakes. We're doing it for you at home. Not my ignorance, but my benevolence that made that mistake. But also, the other thing is that if you have two, we have two bedrooms in this basement. So we also put a bathroom in the basement. basement because before there was only one bathroom upstairs. So, I mean, in the 1930s, 1920s, when this house was built, it was okay to be in the basement and go all the way to the top floor to go to

the bathroom. But in 2021, 2022, people expect not to go to two flights of stairs to go to the bathroom. So we put another bathroom on the basement as well. Well, I'm sure that had to do with increasing your ARV also. That's good to highlight, right? If you can add the bathroom in the area where people are, the appraisers know that that makes the house worth more. Yes. Yes. And as I said, on this of the basement, we made another exit as well in the front. So that way, in the event, we decided to sell this house, whoever buys it can use the basement as a separate unit. Right, right. The house hack, the house hack, right? Yes. It's all the rage right now. So can you break it down for us a little bit, Joe, on the largest cost that was spent on this? Was it the basement or was it the main level?

Like, where did most of your funds go into this project? It's kind of, the basement required a new bathroom. And whenever you add a bathroom in the basement, you're going to have to break the floor and run new pipes, okay? Because all the plumbing system ultimately get down to the basement, and they then connect to the main city services. So if you're putting in the bedroom, sorry, a bathroom in the basement, you have to take that bathroom where it is and connect it to the existing plumbing system, which means that you have to break the floor, you have to connect to that. So that can be a little bit expensive. And this house, this is a Washington, I think this house is built in 1905.

Okay, so it's pretty old. So we decided we wanted to replace the electrical. We wanted to replace the plumbing. And we also replaced the heating system from a radiator to a central air. So systems were the most expensive part, new electrical, new plumbing, new HVAC. And then obviously putting bathrooms was a little bit expensive and so on. So again, I made a decision to spend the money now. I have great contractors.

They know how to do all these things. They have the technical know how to do this. Do I spend it now or do I just do the day and minimum to get through and then deal with it later on? I just made a business decision that I'd rather spend a little bit more money now. And that way I don't have to worry about it in the future. I think that's the right move. I really do.

A lot of people do go into these, you know, into projects. I see it all the time where they want to, you know, do half of it now. And then they're like, I'll do more of it later. And, you know, maybe I'll do it in six months or a year. And what they don't realize is once there are tenants in place, it's a lot harder to go in and do any kind of rehab. And with you, Joe, I mean, with your portfolio and with how you're scaling up and how successful you've been, the more time that passes, the more valuable your time becomes. And so by putting this off another six months, you're burdening future, Joe, with something that you could just deal with now with a little bit more effort. I think so as well.

It just makes more sense to just do it now, given them with spend a little bit more. because technically the money is made in the bedrooms. Okay, I don't get any more money by making a nice kitchen. I don't get any more rent by having a nice bathroom. I only get the extra rent because of the bedrooms, okay? But since we're going to do this work now, I'd rather just do it now and be done with it. There's a lot of wisdom with what was just said with you're taking the burden off of future Joe. In fact, most people, I think, don't understand that if they like things about their life

right now, it's probably because of decisions that they made three to five years ago, right? Maybe two to three years ago. If there's things that they don't like about their life, it's usually because of decisions that you already made, and this is the consequence, right? And it's that always trying to make one decision to get out of the thing we don't like that causes problems. And so I just want to highlight that, Rob, you said some incredibly wise right there. The cost of doing this rehab will be more in the future than it is right now with the way

inflation is going. The difficulty of it will be way harder when there's a tenant in there. You're going to have to go find another contractor who's going to do a small job who doesn't want to do that versus the contractor you already have on the site, doing a big job, and you're just adding this onto it. Everything about it makes more sense to do it right now. And then Joe's life will be better in the future. My mind's racing to all the things that I'm like, oh, I don't like this part about my life. And I'm like, well, that's because two years ago I started doing the wrong thing. And now I'm stuck with it right now.

But future David doesn't have to live like that if I make decisions differently. So thank you both for sharing that. Yeah. We got to watch out for future us, you know. It's the most important version of us. Scarier. The future of. It's, you know, it's just, it's just easy to do it that way.

Just do it now. Your capital expenses are done. You don't get many calls from the tenants. You know, the plumbing is bad or something's wrong with this. And so you don't have those issues because everything is new. And you get high customer satisfaction. They tend to be happier with the property, which means that they stay longer. higher ARV also when you go to do the refinance.

Higher ARV and higher quality tenants, happier tenants in the long run, which I think is probably going to be, I mean, that's obviously your strategies. So can you tell us a little bit now walks through the rent part of the borough here, right? The actual getting the tenants, the selection, marketing to your tenants. And obviously staging is a really big component of that. But can you tell us a little bit about your process on that too? Sure, yeah. So at this point, the renovation is done.

The house is staged. and it's looking good. Okay, so the first thing I've got to do now is transition to the rent stage, which I've got to go and find a tenant. Okay, I have to advertise. I got to market. So I start off with taking professional quality photographs and videos, like similar to what you just seen here,

and make sure that, you know, they reflect the property. I usually contact the housing authority, because I like to rent to vouchers holders, and ask them, where do they tend to, send their voucher holders to look for properties. Okay, it could be ABC, it could be Zillow, it could be Go Section 8, it could be Craigslist, whatever. I want to know where they tend to send people. I want to make sure I advertise there, okay, and I advertise everywhere else.

What I'm finding is, for some reason, Zillow is, it's very good. I get a lot of success. So I advertise in the key places where I know my client base is likely to look. That's number one. I've got great descriptions of the property. I focus on all those emotional, you know, language, which appeals to the kind of tenant I'm looking for. I always say Section 8, welcome. I always say if you are looking for a great landlord, you have found him or her.

I always try to. Yeah. I love that. And I always say, if you are a great tenant who's looking for a quality house and a quality area, whether renting for a quality landlord, then look no further. Ladies, Mr. Wonderful. You're looking at them. Exactly.

And so that's the adverts, okay? So it's the marketing. Again, I'm trying to differentiate myself from my competition. And the competition is out there. And so on. So the advertiser is good. And then at some point, people will call. And I have an assistant that takes the calls.

Okay. And she does the initial pre-screening to make sure that the person's qualified in terms of the vouchersized in terms of the rent. And that's all those basic questions that people ask. Where is it? How many bedrooms does it have? What school is it nearby? You know, blah, blah, blah. All those questions, my assistant takes those. And then we schedule what we call open houses. We are in COVID. So it's kind of changed a little bit. But I do open houses versus what some other management companies or some other landlords do, which is they do everything virtually. They essentially, you can fill an application online. You can go to the house online, you know, physically to the property.

you know, whatever they want to do and so on. They don't need to see the actual tenant. I'm of the opinion. That's okay. But I like to showcase the house, answer any questions, get to answer any, you know, any issues that the tenants may have, explain the qualities of the house and also showcase to them who I am, what kind of person I am, and, you know, what kind of landlord I'm going to be, and what separates me from my competition.

I tell them that many of my tenants, they for. 5, 10, 15, my longest tenant is 25 years now. Yes, I regularly have 17, 18, 20 year tenants. And to a person who's used to live in a bad house in a bad area with bad landlords, that is music to their ears. And that's some stability that they're craving for. And I like to be able to explain that to them up front and, again, differentiate myself. And then if they like the house, I have to see in the house that I give them an application form. I have an eight-page application. It's very detailed, it's very intimidating.

They ask a lot of questions about the individuals. And once they complete the application, then I will then start the screening process, which is a whole other discussion, which I'll go through in a second. What if your CRM actually did the hard work for you? I know, crazy. Re-simply lets you pull seller lists,

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I really respect that you want to get in there, get your elbows dirty. And is that the phrase? I don't know. It's the phrase right now. Get in there, roll your sleeves up and actually meet your tenant. So how is that really panned out? I mean, do you have a pretty good rapport with all of your tenants? And do you feel like actually meeting them face to face and being there from the start,

has really drastically improved, you know, the vacancy of your different units? Well, here's the key. This part, in my opinion, is going to make or break the burr. Okay. Your decision on who you select, because if you make a mistake here, all those calculations are ROI, cash on cash return, and so on, all those comes to zero. If you don't have a tenant is going to pay you. If you don't have a tenant who's going to take care.

If you have a tenant who's going to trash your property, destroy your property, not pay you, give you drama, and you have that revolving door where they stay for a year and then they're gone. And so all your calculations goes to naught, okay, if you don't do this part well. And that's why I place a lot of attention into the screening and selection, because it's been the key to my success. Some people are saying, 25 years, 18 years, what is you lying? No, it's not lying. It's a strategy. It's understanding who your customer is, what they're looking for,

and taking the time to screen for that. And that's essentially where I put a lot of... I go to this. This is the part which I do the actual showings. And I take the applications, and I have an assistant that does the initial screening. And we check for things like landlords' references, current landlord, previous landlord. Oh, first of all, we check for the ID. When somebody comes into, I mean, let's just say, for instance, you, Rob, you show up at the house. I don't know who you are.

You could be Dave and you could fill the application as Dave. I wouldn't know. And so you're pretending to be Dave when in fact you're Rob. And, you know, and if I don't ask for your ID, because that's another thing. If I ask for your ID, that usually catches people in that game. You may say, Dave is your landlord when in fact he's not. There's a lot of things that tenants do to try and get over. I'm not saying all tenants do that.

I'm not saying some tenants do that. I'm just saying that that's what happens. And I've been through those experiences before. And so I place a lot of attention on the screening process to make sure that we contact the current landlords, previous landlords. We do the background searches. We do the credit checks,

but not just the credit check, but also the eviction databases. I found that some quality tenants, well, just call them professional tenants, they pay their car note and their credit cards. And so when you do a credit check, everything looks good. But the reason why their credit is good is because they're not paying their rent.

And most landlords check the credit, but they don't report to their credit bureaus. So although you may have a good credit score, you may not necessarily be paying your rent. That's where the eviction database searches come in because that's, you know. So it's very intense in terms of the screening process. And then finally, I do make an appointment to go visit their home. That's pretty controversial. I get it. But it's something which is the key to finding out how your house is going to be in three months is to go to their home.

And you may think that why would they give you that opportunity to go their home? They will do that because I have a product, as you can see, that is very unique. It's in high demand. It's low supply. So it's a pretty thorough application screening process. An eight-page application, that's a lengthy application. I mean, that definitely would weed out a lot of people, I'm sure. But, you know, you have the proof here, right, with a 25-year tenant.

David, how long have you, what's your longest tenant? I'm kind of curious that you've ever had. Is it close to 25 years? I don't know. Definitely not that. But my property manager would know better than me. I don't keep track of that. What I wanted to ask you, Joe, would be how many tenants would you expect to go through this process with before you found the right one?

Okay. In this particular house, we had, this is COVID. Okay. In a space of a week, we had eight applications. Applications now, not showings, not calls, but applications. People who went through this ritual, which I've just described, and decided to put their money down for an application. So we had eight applications, and then we started a screening,

and it came down to three. Five fell by the wayside. Part of that screening process, I visited three homes, and selected the family as a result of that. So I started off with a lot of applications and ended up with a funnel, and whereby some fell by the wayside and I got the best one at the end. Now, when it comes to the renting or the refinancing, what are some problems that you've encountered as you've been trying to do this

that maybe you didn't expect that you can give us a heads up to look out for? The renting and the refinancing, on the renting side, I mean, people lie. And, you know, Donald always the truth. I mean, they want the house and they'll do what they got to do. to get it as much as possible. And that's the reason why the screening process is thorough is to weed out those folks.

And so that's also, it's people lie. On the refinance side is several. The ARV in this house was higher than I expected, so it wasn't an issue. But it could be an issue for, when I first started out, I didn't understand the concept of seasoning. Okay, when you do these birds.

Seasoning is when you buy a house, and there's a time lag, a time lag between when you are on title to when you can refinance again. The particular lender I went to go through, they don't have those seasoning requirements. Other lenders will have three months, six months, 12 months, which means that now you've got to hold on to this asset until you're able to refinance. That's one thing which I've learned. The other thing is that the appraisal. I mean, the refinance is when everything comes to play.

You've found the house, you've renovated the house, you've found the tenant. All rows leads to this point where you're trying to recoup your money. Okay, this is where you're going to realize that your business was actually successful or not. So the appraisal may go undervalue. You know, I've had that. So now what? What do you do now? I have a strategy for that, sort of make sure that I document before the appraisal comes.

The improvements that were made to the house. I show the before and after. Okay, and I have some comps, which I put it all in them nicely. three-leave binder and have it available for the appraiser when they come. Therefore, again, it differentiates me from other investors. It tells this appraiser that this guy knows what he's doing. It sort of lets them know that, yes, this guy's different. So that's what I do in terms of. So that's the appraisal side. It could go under value. And if you does, then you're going to have to decide, what do I do? Do I need to keep more money in the house or do I need to get a partner or something?

or maybe go to plan B in terms of the exit strategy. What about you, Rob? Do you have any issues in those two areas that you can enlighten us with? On the appraisal side of things? No, just whether it comes to getting the tenant or doing the refinance. Just things that went wrong. Like Joe, I think that's a really good point, that not every lender is the same. Some have seasoning requirements of six months.

Some have no seasoning requirements. And that never gets brought up because the only question most people ask is, what's my interest rate? Or maybe what are my closing costs? They don't look at the big picture. that's a really smart thing to ask is like, well, how long would I have to wait before I refinance it? Do you have anything like that, Rob, that you could share? Yeah, I do. I do. Yeah. I always tend to dig myself in a hole because I always like to build

like weird, random things like tree houses or tiny houses or anything. And so for me, it's kind of self-inflicted pain here where I'll go out and build a tiny house and try to go and do a refinance on it. And then my appraiser will say, hey, there are no comps for this. And I actually had to go back and forth with my bank and say, listen, here's what it was built for. Here's what the appraiser said. So the appraiser came back and actually gave me a really good ARV on it. I think they praised it at $276,000. I had built it for $165,000.

And then the bank was like, yeah, we don't really buy. We don't buy that a 300 square foot tiny house is worth that. So they made a second appraiser come out. And they appraise it at like $175,000. And I was like, no, no, we're not going to do this. We're going to send one more appraiser out, which I'm really honestly to this day, surprised that they even listen to me because most of the time the lenders do, you know, they kind of dictate everything.

But I really fought for this. I needed this, right? And when you need something, you make it happen. And, you know, I was like, let's get one more out there, one more. And they were like, okay, fine, if you shut up. And then they did send out a third appraiser. And it appraised to the dollar that I needed it to get all of my money back. So I can't say for certain that that will always work because I do always fight my appraisals

when they come back, I'm typically unsuccessful, but now having some success, I will always be the squeaky wheel, right? I will always fight for what I think a property is worth. I went to a scenario whereby this is when I flipped to home, I bought it, you know, rehabbed it and sold it, well, had the appraiser come in. And the appraiser, we agreed with the seller, you know, what the price was, and the appraiser came in lower. And so now what? the buyer didn't want to cough up the difference. And so is on me. So what I learned from that is that I don't want the appraisal process to be crossing my

fingers and hope for the best. Hopefully I get a nice appraiser. So sometimes what I do is I have my own appraiser come in beforehand and give me an appraisal. And therefore I have appraisal and I put in my back pocket. I don't use it only when necessary because sometimes when you try to contest an appraisal. An appraiser may not buy into the comps. But if they see another appraiser, another appraisal from a peer, then they may consider that. It's almost like a doctor. You go to a doctor

and you want a second opinion, you go to a nurse. Another doctor is not going to think highly of the recommendation of a nurse. However, if they get another recommendation or another doctor, then it's the same peer level. And therefore, they may consider that. So that's why I sometimes do is to have a secondary appraisal just in case I need it. And I want to contest an appraisal that was done by the buyer and things like that. Rob's that guy that will build a like a gymnastic park for squirrels in his backyard and then go to the appraiser and be like, you don't understand. This is worth $50,000.

That's exactly how you get yourself in the mess. I'm always like, excuse me, sir. I put my life savings into this. Yeah. Look at there's nothing like this in the world. Like the way that these squirrels can run around in the backyard. It's worth a lot. But you'll get people that say, hey, David, if I add an ADU, how much will that add to the value

of my house? If I put in crown molding, how much will that add to the value of my house? The sellers are always looking at it from that perspective. And the piece to take away from this is it depends on what the other houses around that have those assets are worth. The appraisers need data. And if data does not exist, then it might not be worth anything. You might spend $150,000 on an ADU that they give no value to because no other houses have

80Us. And they don't know if it matters. Or if you're in like San Francisco and they know, man, a house with an ADU is worth a lot more because there's so much demand here. You might spend 150,000 and they give you $400,000 of value for that thing. So I think that's very wise to like to send your own appraiser in or to talk to an appraiser independently and say, hey, if you were looking at this home, what are some things that you would look at and maybe work with your contractor based on that information? I mean, because yeah, at the end of the day, it's a pretty small expense, right?

Five to seven hundred bucks to have a pretty educated opinion on what the final. project outcome is going to be. So I guess actually that's a pretty good segue here. Joe, we kind of understand some of the initial numbers, but can you just take us through here where everything netted out? So I think you said ARV was around 900,000. So correct me if I'm wrong. But I kind of am curious about that. And then cash flow. What is this property like this cash flow for you now and some of those details? So after the tenant was in, then started the refinance process. And I was able to document income. And therefore, that will allow for the refinance. So I did the refinance.

I got a local lender, a local commercial lender. This was bought in my entity. It wasn't bought in my personal name. So I refinanced it in my entity as well. So we got a local commercial lender as opposed to the family main lender. We're able to get an interest rate of 4%. Wow. It's a commercial loan.

You know, it's 4%. It is what it is. You do pay a little bit more for commercial loans versus residential loans. That's pretty good on a commercial loan on investment property. That's not bad at all. Yeah. I'll take that. You think so?

Any day. Well, a lot. I was getting 3.45 before. Anyway, that was a before. All right. I don't need to brag. Okay. Hang on.

Rates have got up, Joe. And you got three and a half percent on a conventional loan most likely. It was probably Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, which meant you got to take that six-month seasoning period. So this was a strategic move where you gave up maybe half a percent on your rate to be able to get your money out faster, recycle that capital. You will definitely make more in the long run with that strategy. I just whining.

I get it. 25 is a commercial loan. So it's amortized over 25 years. It's a five-year fixed. So every five-year, they kind of readjust and so on. The principal I borrow all 700K, which works out about 78 or 79% loan to value, which is not bad for a commercial. This lender, they normally go higher. I've gone up to 85% loan to value on the commercial, which is very, very unheard of, but they normally do.

But this time round, due to some changes in the bank, we're able to get about 79% LTV. So I was able to borrow $700K, and the PI turns out to be $3,695 a month. That's the principal interest. The insurance on this property is about $2,000 a year, which works out to about $167 a month. The taxes is about $4,500, which works out to about $3.75 a month. So annual taxes and insurance annual is about $6,500, which break it down on a monthly basis, works out to be $542. Okay? So the PITI, principal interest tax and insurance, is 3695 plus 542, which works out to be $4,237 a month.

Okay? So the PITI is 4,237 a month. The rent is 5,462. Therefore, the gross cash flow is 1,225 a month. That's the gross cash flow. Obviously, there's some expenses that you incur on a daily basis. I manage these properties myself. But you can knock off, you know, even if you knock off four.

or 500 bucks a month for expenses. You're still cash flow in, you know, five or six hundred a month. But that's not really the key here. The key here is that I've got $200,000 worth of equity from day one. I'm in the B neighborhood, which is going to appreciate in value. I just want to hold this asset for five to 10 years. Such that I'm going to write that appreciation. That's it. That's the gameplay here. Well, what does Section 8 rental rates do over time, Joe? Like what, how much would you expect them to go up every year for a property like this? It varies. Typically, it's around, you know, from 1.8 to 2 to 2 and a half percent annual increases. It just depends on, you know, the dynamics of the area. So, so on. So their rent does increase. It may not be as rapid as a market rent, but it does increase. But what's more important to me, see, the rent here is 5, 462, okay? Nobody, no market renter, in my opinion, is going to be paying 5,462 a month for 5, 5,000. 10 years. At some point, they're going to say, this is crazy. Let's go buy our own house. Okay. So you're not going to have that stability where you will get that with a voucher holder,

because they're not paying, although the rent is $5,400, their portion may be significantly less. So they're in a very nice neighborhood for a lot, you know, maybe $4,500, $600, $600 a month, $700, $800,000, hundred bucks a month. So in that sense, they want to stay there a long time because their rent is based on their income. And if their income stays the same, then their rent portion stays the same as well. So in terms of stability, I don't want turnover. And I can get that, even though these high rent values and still have tenants who are going to stay five, 10, 15, 20 years, which would not be possible with market renters. Unless you disagree. I mean, you know, feel free to disagree if you think that people will pay $5,600, $6,000 for five, 10 years.

No, I wouldn't disagree on that. I think, well, first off, you could just look up what the comparable rents are if it's not Section 8, and I would imagine they're lower than what you're getting. That's the first thing I would think of. Second is that what you're describing, so I have all these, after doing this for a while, I've sort of put together these principles that I operate by. And Rob has to hear about them all the time, whether he likes it or not. I'm like a grandpa who just won't stop talking about it.

I'm here for it. One of them is that there's this pattern we see where as the value of a property goes up, how much you can get for rent goes up with it. So you start with like a terrible property, terrible condition, really low price, low rent. As the properties get better and more desirable, the rents go up too. But they don't do that forever. You hit a point where the value keeps going up and the rents just stop. And people ask me, why does that happen? How come I can't rent out my, my $7 million property for the 1% rule, right? Why can't I get $70,000 a month? And the answer is because if you could pay $70,000 a month, you would go buy your own house and you wouldn't do that, right? There's a pool we play in as landlords where the price point has to be the place that somebody can

afford to pay rent, but not so high that they would just go buy their own property. That's why it's very difficult to make money in luxury real estate. If you need cash flow, that's how the short-term rental game has kind of changed the game because now we can finally get into expensive properties and make them work in a sense as an investment property. But that's what you're describing is, yeah, no tenant that can afford that would ever stay renting for 15 years. They would do what you're doing. And so that's very wise what you're looking at. And I'll also just add a cherry on top that you didn't say, if somebody thinks they could make more doing it a different way, they might in the beginning, but they would not over the long term. The amount of money that we

spend every time a tenant leaves and we have to fix a place up and we have they can see and put a new one in and pay the property manager company, half of the first month rent, that adds up to be insanely more than whatever little bit you could think. Like, you're playing the smart game. It's sort of like I think of that story of the tortoise and the hair. A lot of people look at real estate. Like, I want to go invest in Midwest, Indiana, because I can get a 20% ROI right out the gate and they're looking at that hair that just shoots out and says, look how big my cash flow is.

But over a long period of time, the house needs so much work. The tenants are always leaving. It's such a hassle that you realize you don't keep. making that money. It goes away. Whereas the tortoise just continually plods along. You're not making mistakes. You're not bleeding. The property's going up. The appreciation is happening. And the next thing you know, you look back five or ten years down the road and the property's got a million dollars in equity and the cash flow is way higher. And you can refinance it and buy four or five more properties and you don't have a headache. Like you're doing it the right way. And that's just what we want to highlight.

It doesn't have to be the Section 8 way. But the principles that you're operating under in this Section 8 method are the right way to invest in real estate, in my humble opinion. Oh, thank you. No, it's true because a lot of people don't realize the cost of turnover. It is a month to two months typically, sometimes three months lost rent after all is said and done. So if your rent is, let's say, let's just keep it simple, $3,000 a month, a turnover is, this is the cost of the, you know, you got to clean it, you got to paint it again, you got to advertise, there's no income coming through. your time, all that stuff will come into about at least a month, probably two months or more. That's $6,000 bucks gone, okay? And if you don't contain that, you can't have that every year, every two years, because you make no money. The cash flow that you make gets wiped out every time

there's a turnover. And that's what I realized is that I couldn't sustain this business unless I had long-term tenants. And therefore, in this high-price market, the other way I could get it was the strategy which I'm sharing with you today. What we would like more than anything is when you go look at your next house and you're walking it and you're trying to figure it out, look at it through Dr. Joe's eyes, look at it through Rob's eyes, try to look at it through my eyes. We want you to see what we're seeing. And then the right decision becomes clear.

So thank you very much for sharing your perspective as well as this deal, Joe, and your time. I appreciate you. Any last words before we get out of here, guys? If you want to follow me on Instagram, I'd love to connect with people. DR Joe Smoa, DR, Joe SMO. I do a wealth way. I'm trying to encourage more people to do what I'm doing. My goal is this year is to provide housing for 50 children.

Children, okay. Not me, but also teach other people such that they can provide housing for 50 children. And so that's my goal. The more people I can teach and, you know, show them what I do, hopefully we can make money, but also do good, make a difference in people's lives as well. So that's my goal. And I love to be able to share this knowledge with people. But I do have a wealth Wednesday at 7 p.m. Eastern time on Instagram.

So you can check me out there as well and so on. I got some good news, Joe. I think this episode is it. I think you're going to hit your goal with this episode because I think a lot of people will, well, we'll have a pretty big pivot from probably the path they were going on just to kind of pursue some of the things we learned today. So we do appreciate it. David? Thank you, Rob.

I can be found at David Green 24. So follow me on Instagram. I'm starting to do a little bit more Instagram live and putting together some more content. Thank you. I'm on it. As soon as I see it, I'm like, here I am. Rob's been kind of walking me through how to stop being an old man and get on YouTube and even TikTok, believe it or not. Brandon scared me to death by telling me about the horrors of how addictive TikTok is. So I'm committed to making content, but not actually like consuming content. So if you want to get your life clean and you want to get off of TikTok and you need to detox, follow me on there.

How about you, Rob, where can people find out more about you? Oh, you can always find me on the tube, the YouTube at Rob Bilt. Instagram, Rob Bilt, and then TikTok. You can find me if you want to consume the content and be victims. What's your name on TikTok, Rob? It's Robbilt. It's just to add a note to Robbilt because, yeah, we won't be laborer this one in this episode. Someone stole my handle. Someone stole your name.

All right. Well, thank you both very much for joining me today. This was a really good time, Joe. If you guys would like to listen to the rest of Joe's interviews, please check out episodes 356 and 498. They will give a lot more context into this one. If you wonder, why did we just jump into this and get into the details? It's because we've already kind of covered the big picture on some of those shows. So check them out.

Also, if you weren't watching this on YouTube, you missed out. So consider following Bigger Pockets YouTube channel, watching the videos that are on there. You can see the before and actual pictures. You can see the basement that Joe saw when he made the decision. This is the property I want to buy and get an idea of what you could look for. And then your mind will start going into, wait, where's my egress going to be? Where can I put the window? Where's the door going to be?

Do I have room for two electrical outlets? Is there 70 square feet? Do I need to bring a measuring tape with me when I'm walking a home? And is there room for a closet? Those four things that were shared. And then as always also, please leave us some comments. Tell us what you thought about the show, what you liked, what you wish you would have asked us more. We do read those.

And for the reasonable ones, we make every effort to accommodate them. When people criticize my hairstyle, I'd just let that go. Yeah, make everybody happy. Hey, me too, man. Don't worry. All right. Well, thanks again, Joe. really appreciate you. This is David Green for Rob the fancy aristocrat Abasolo, signing off.

Thank you all for listening to the Bigger Pockets Real Estate podcast. Make sure you get all our new episodes by subscribing on YouTube, Apple, Spotify, or any other podcast platform. Our new episodes come out Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. On the host and executive producer of the show, Dave Meyer, the show is produced by Ian K, copywriting is by Calicoe content, and editing is by Exodus Media. If you'd like to learn more about real estate investing, or to sign up For our free newsletter, please visit www.com. The content of this podcast is for informational purposes only. All host and participant opinions are their own.

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