BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast - 607: Multifamily Q&A: How to Start, Scale, and Succeed in Apartment Investing w/Andrew Cushman

Episode Date: May 10, 2022

Is multifamily real estate investing as complicated as investors make it out to be? If you’re Andrew Cushman of Vantage Point Acquisitions, you’d probably argue that although multifamily has a bit more complexity than single-family rentals, it’s still, by all means, profitable for the everyday investor. In the early 2000s, Andrew didn’t know anything about pro formas, apartment underwriting, or the best type of mulch to use on large-scale landscaping. Now, more than a decade later, Andrew has been able to lead his team in acquiring, syndicating, and repositioning over 2,500 multifamily units. He’s here with David Greene to answer live questions surrounding anything and everything related to multifamily investing. He gives stellar takes on the current state of the market, how rising interest rates will affect multifamily investing over the next few years, and the best way to increase your ROI (return on investment) on a multifamily acquisition. You don’t need to be a large-scale apartment investor to take away some golden nuggets from this episode. Even if you’ve never thought of investing in multifamily, Andrew frames multifamily in a way that’ll have you wondering, “could I buy that apartment down the street?”  In This Episode We Cover The five most important factors to understand when looking at a multifamily deal  Multifamily debt and equity, plus how they dramatically differ from single family rentals How to use pro forma calculations when underwriting a deal and protecting yourself from overinflated profit numbers Whether or not today’s rising interest rates will cause a sell-off of multifamily properties The easiest improvements that will dramatically boost your ROI on a multifamily property What rookie investors get wrong about finding good deals in today’s market  And So Much More! Links from the Show BiggerPockets Youtube Channel BiggerPockets Forums BiggerPockets Pro Membership BiggerPockets Bookstore BiggerPockets Bootcamps BiggerPockets Podcast Submit Your Questions to David Greene The 3 Cs to Achieving Success as an Investor GoBundance BiggerPockets Podcast 170: The Journey From Flipping Houses To Owning 1470 Units BiggerPockets Podcast 279: How to Find Overlooked Opportunities in a Hot Market BiggerPockets Podcast 586: The 8 Steps That Will Stop You From Getting Burnt on Multifamily Deals BiggerPockets Podcast 571: Is This Deal Worth My Time? The 6 Crucial Steps to Vet a Multifamily Deal David Greene Meetups David Greene Team Book Mentioned in the Show: Raising Private Capital by Matt Faircloth Connect with David: David’s Instagram David’s BiggerPockets Profile Connect with Andrew: Andrew’s BiggerPockets Profile Click here to check the full show notes: https://www.biggerpockets.com/blog/real-estate-607 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Bigger Pockets podcast show 607. That's one of the beautiful things about multifamily. In single family, you buy a house and the average price in that market goes down 30%. Well, yours probably went down 30% too. In multifamily, you're valued on the net operating income. So if you're a really good operator, you can still increase the value of your property in a flat or down market, even if everyone else is struggling. So that's one of the really cool things. And that's part of why, again, with caveat, it's somewhat okay to pay a little bit for the future

performance because it is something that's in your control. What's going on, everyone? This is David Green and I'm your host of the Bigger Pockets Real Estate podcast. At Bigger Pockets, we want to teach you how to build financial freedom through real estate. We do that through formats like this podcast where we bring in experts on specific topics like my good friend, Andrew Cushman, who is here with me. Today, Andrew and I will be co-hosting this one. We invest in properties together. Andrew's the best multifamily investor that I know. I call him Hawkeye from the Avengers because when this

guy lets an arrow go, he never misses. In today's episode, we do a deep dive into multifamily apartment investing with a specific bent towards how to make it work in this hot environment while interest rates are rising. Andrew and I tackle several difficult questions and I think it came out really good. Andrew, how are you today? I'm doing it really well. Yeah, that was a whole lot of fun. We talked about a lot of stuff. You know, is it okay to ever pay pro forma value for a multi-family apartment? We talked about, you know, how do you find deals in today's hot market? The low-hanging fruit's gone. So how do you get up to that one that's hanging on the branch way up there that no one can get to? And then we talked about some ways to add value that maybe some people haven't thought of

before. Yeah, this was very unique. I thought you gave some answers that I have never heard anybody else say. And the guest asked some really good questions. So make sure you check this one out and listen all the way to the end because Andrew gives some fantastic advice of how you can add value to multifamily property that I can almost guarantee you've never heard anybody say before. It's very creative and very insightful. We're going to talk about pine straw. And I won't explain what that is. You need to go to the end and listen. That is the word of the day. When you hear Pines Straw, make sure you pay attention. Today's quick tip, consider going to BPCon.

Open registration started and you can go to biggerpockets.com slash events to get your ticket. I will be there. Andrew might be there. My co-host Rob Ava Solo will be there. A lot of bigger pockets, personalities will be there as well as a lot of members, probably some of the people that you heard on today's show. I've never, ever, ever seen a sad face at a BP con in my entire life.

It's just a lot of people having a really good time, learning a lot of fun stuff and having a great time. Like, you always learn something at an event, but it's often like a brand muffin. Just who really wants to be eating that? This tastes really good. This is fun and entertaining at the same time. So do not miss out. These events will sell out. Get your ticket there.

Events like these are also a way that you can meet other people that will help you in your business. And too many people underestimate the value of helping somebody else and then learning from them in that process. Yeah, we're actually looking for someone to help us right now. So if you're listening to this podcast, you're probably someone who has a general interest in real estate. So that's the base requirement. But we need someone on our team who would make an awesome investor relations manager. So if you've got strong organizational and system skills, you're detail-oriented, your strong communicator, then reach out to us. Just go to vPACQ.com.

and there's a we're hiring tab on there and fill out the application. And we look to hopefully add another BP community member to our team. We just hired a BP community member this week. And we're looking to do that again. There's no better people out there than the BP community. That is right. And if you like what you hear from today's show and you want to invest with Andrew and I, you can go to invest with Davidgreen.com.

Register there. Credit investors only please, but we are still raising money for an apartment deal that we are buying. and it's a really good one. Have you ever lost a DSCR deal because the financing just took too long? Red flags popped up late. The lender needed more time.

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Fast, simple, reliable. That's Dominion Financial. Check them out at Bigger. Biggerpockets.com slash dominion. That's biggerpockets.com slash dominion. If the new year means getting rentals back in order, listings are a good place to start. Avail. Part ofreletor.com makes it simple to list a rental for free and get it in front of millions of renters. One listing, one click, posted across 24 top rental sites. Avail even helps generate listing titles and descriptions to save time. More visibility means fewer days sitting vacant and

getting your property rented quickly. It's a fast, free way to find renters without the usual hassle. Get started at A veil. That's A-V-A-I-L-C-O-Bigger Pockets. 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 and even improve your property's cash flow. As the months get colder, frozen pipes, icy walkways, and seasonal wear and tear can increase the likelihood of claims.

And traditional insurance companies aren't always built to handle these claims quickly or smoothly. That's why more real estate investors are turning to steadily. They focus exclusively on landlords, whether it's a single-family rental, a burr-builders risk policy, or midterm holiday guests. You get fast quotes, flexible coverage, and protection for property damage, liability, and even loss of rental income. Now is the perfect time to review your rates and coverage. Get a quote in minutes at biggerpockets.com slash landlord insurance. Steadily, landlord insurance designed for the modern investor. All right, without any further ado, let's get to our first caller. Whitney Bowling, welcome to the Bigger Pockets podcast. How are you today?

Hey, doing good. David, how are you, man? I'm pretty good. I'm excited. I got my buddy Andrew here with me today, and he's my, I'm kind of putting together the investing Avengers, right? So Andrew's like Hawkeye. He's the sniper. He just does not miss on anything that he does. So you'll get some really good advice today. What's on your mind? What do you got for us? Awesome. Yeah. Thanks for having me on. So, you know, I'm an investor out of Phoenix, been listening to the show a long time. Got some single family rentals going right now, some condos, some single family homes, but ultimately looking to try to make the transition into a multifamily right now.

And being in Phoenix, I've built up a decent equity position. I feel like the timing is right. But I just wanted to try to see, you know, in making that transition, what are some of the top five things that, you know, don't stick out in researching single family that might stick out when you're looking at multifamily. That's really good. Andrew, you want to start there? Yeah, top five things.

I mean, I could probably list off about 50. But I'll try to narrow it down the five that come to mind first. One is learning, committing the time to learn how to underwrite a multifamily. It's definitely a lot different than a single family where you're looking, okay, you might start with an ARV or after a repaired value and then work backwards to determine, okay, what can I pay for it and what's my mortgage going to be and my expenses and then, is my rent going to cover that? You can do that pretty simply on a small Excel spreadsheet or even sometimes the back of a napkin once you get good at it in single family.

Multi-family gets a little bit more complicated, especially as you move into the bigger stuff, where you've got, you know, 80 units, 100 units, 200 units, and you have things like, you know, ongoing, like vacancy factor. You're going to renovate in many cases and raise rents, but it's not 100% out of time, right? You buy a house, you fix it up, you re-rent it, boom, you're done. Well, if you've got 100 units, you're not going to renovate all 100 units the first day you move in. You have to plan on, well, how do I schedule that? How do I account for the fact that maybe I'm going to do eight units a month for the, the next 12 or 14 months. And then just all the other factors that go into underwriting.

What do you do with, you know, how do cap rates affect things, right? How do I determine a going in cap rate and then what do I put for an exit cap rate? How do I underwrite the cost of debt? You get into things like not only management companies, which you typically have with a single family, but then also actually having staff that are dedicated to the property. So one of the biggest things is just learning how to underwrite. And every operator that I know does it a little bit differently. So the key is to either purchase or develop or borrow a template for underwriting multifamily and then get to learn that and then maybe develop your own down there.

what I did. This was not something I was going to figure out on my own from scratch. I'm not the creative guy. So I literally hired a mentor, got his underwriting spreadsheet, and then have built it out to far greater over the last 11 years. So the number one thing is learn how to properly underwrite. There's courses. There's books. Find a mentor. Partner with somebody who's already in the business. You've got to learn how to underwrite properly. Or if that's totally not your thing, partner with somebody who's already got that nailed. Underwriting is number one. The second big thing, I would say, is really important to commit to learning about as you move

into multifamily is the debt is far different than what you're used to dealing with in a single family. In a single family, you might just go get, you know, FHA 30-year amortized loan, boom, you're done. Everything's good. Don't worry about it. In multifamily, and in a lot, and I should define multifamily. We're talking commercial-sized multifamily, five units and up, right?

And so in commercial-sized multifamily, the loans, number one, they're typically non-recourse unless you get a bank loan. So that's a benefit, meaning recourse, meaning they're not going to come after you. So you really need to understand recourse versus non-recourse. And then they also have things called bad boy carve-outs, which means if you commit fraud, then they can come after you no matter what. So you have to commit to learning all the different types in terms of debt. And then not only that, but just how does it work in terms of your property. So again, if you get a single family house, in many cases, you'll slap a 30-year loan on there, and you're good for as long as you want to hold it. In the commercial world, your loan is typically only good for five, seven, or ten years.

There are exceptions to that, but in most cases, you have to pick because this is to me a five, five-year loan, seven-year, ten-year, maybe 25 if you're going bank or HUD or something like that. So the second big thing to commit to learning is definitely how multifamily commercial debt works. It's very different than the single-family world. A third thing is, and this kind of piggybacks or parallels with that, is matching that debt with your business plan. One of the biggest mistakes that we see people making, even experience. people is not properly matching your debt with your business plan. So if you buy a house and you put a residential mortgage on it or a duplex or even a fourplex, you can basically sell that and pay it off

anytime, no problem, right, under in most circumstances. In the commercial world, you can't necessarily do that. We have what's called a prepayment penalties, which most people probably, you know, kind of understand what that means, meaning if you pay off the loan too early, like you said, you said this is a 10-year loan and two years in, you're like, hey, I want to pay this off, the lender says, great, but you're also going to owe me 10, 15% of the loan balance as a penalty, which is huge. We also have yield maintenance, which is effectively the same thing, meaning the lender wants to protect their yield, and if you pay off the loan early, they're going to make you pay them extra interest in advance. And so if you plan on holding a property for three years, you probably don't want to put 10-year fixed debt on it,

because when you go pay it off, you're going to have a huge penalty. So the third key thing to commit to learning and understanding is how debt affects your business plan. It definitely has a lot more strategy and thought to it than you typically have in a single family world. A fourth thing is, you know, we just talked about debt and the loan, right? And typically your lender is your biggest partner in any deal. the other half of that is where's the equity piece going to come from? So commit to learning the equity side. And if you're now, if you're just putting in your own money into deals, it's pretty simple. You know, you might be putting in 30% or 35 or 40% of whatever the total

cost is. But if you're taking money from outside sources, which of course is syndication or, you know, raising money from investors or partnering with other people, commit to learning the legalities and the rules around doing that. It's actually not that complicated. Most bigger pockets listeners could probably pick it up in a day and have a really good handle on it. But it's one of those things where if you do it wrong, you can get into a whole lot of trouble. And there's lots of people out there doing it wrong right now. And everyone's getting away with it because the market's been fantastic. But the minute something shifts and deals start to go bad and someone complains the SEC, if you didn't follow those rules, you can be in a world of hurt. And once they find out that you did one deal

wrong, what they typically do is they will ask you to open your kimono on every single deal you've ever done. And they don't limit it. They just, they say, all right, if we're looking into Andrew or Whitney, we're going to look at everything they've ever done. So the fourth thing would be learn if you're taking outside money make sure you're doing it right and again this isn't something you don't need to become a syndication attorney or an SEC attorney uh you just hire one that that knows what they're doing to keep you keep you protected um and david before i jump in number five is there any any anything that you would put in the top five that maybe i've missed or that you would add to that or the only thing that i would have added and i don't think i can sum it up as

concisely as you were, so I won't get into it. But the idea would be with residential real estate, we have rules of thumb that we tend to follow. So when you see something that is close to the 1% rule, you're like, ooh, I should probably look at that. Or when you see a property with more square footage but the same price as other homes in the area or that's listed lower, like the comparable sales is a much easier way to sort of establish a baseline of value. So when something falls outside of the norm of what you're used to seeing, it catches your attention, you look into it. anytime you're changing asset classes, one of the first things you want to do is try to figure out what that baseline is for that asset class and what's falling outside of the norm so you can

key in and then implement everything that Andrew's saying. We just take for granted how many deals are out there and that you do not have the resources to analyze all of them. So part of being good at this, like what Andrew has it said, but I know him, so I see him crushing it, is his criteria are so incredibly defined that he subconsciously gets rid of 98% of what kind of. comes his way, he doesn't even look at it. And all of the efforts he's giving are on 2% of deals that could actually work. And if you don't learn how to do that, you're going to be like me at jujitsu. You burn all your energy in the first 90 seconds and then you get your butt kicked for the rest of it because you've had to learn how to be efficient. It's an important part of business.

Yeah, that's actually that was the next thing I was going to say. So thanks, thanks, David. That's perfect. Is define exactly what you're looking for and then learn how to go find it, right? And so when we talked about that in some of the previous episodes of how to screen markets, and then once you screen for the market, how do you screen those deals and just take a hundred and whittle it down to two that are worth your time? So that would be, that would be the fifth thing. So great question. Yeah, that's great. Andrew, I appreciate it, man. Whitney, did you have any follow-up questions or any clarity you wanted on anything? I think just in terms of the loan piece of it, you know, that's kind of where the biggest hurdle is for

me and trying to understand the structure behind a five or seven year loan, I just am not exactly clear on how that works. So when they say a five or let's just say a seven year loan, right? And you could maybe do that with a, you know, a bank or agency, so Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac. Could be a bridge loan. Most bridge loans are five years, but the principle is the same. Typically what that'll look like is, let's say, you know, you've got a seven year loan. You might have two years of interest only, right? So you're all, you're not paying the principal down. You're just paying the interest. And then the remaining five years, you're going to be paying interest and principal. But what they do is they'll amortize it over 25 or 30 years. So in that sense, it's very much like a residential loan in terms of the amortization, except you just can't keep it for 30 years like you can with a residential loan.

when you get to year seven you have to pay off that loan you can do it through either refinance sell the property or if you know you've been you've come into a lot of cash you just pay it off right so you have to pay it off in whatever year that loan comes to term so it can be again year five year seven something along those lines so that's how they're structured and then something else that's negotiable and when i say negotiable it's not just like, oh, I want this. And they'll say, okay, fine. You often will pay for these things, meaning you can pay a higher rate or you can pay a higher fee in exchange for some of the things I'm about to talk about. And we're actually in the process of doing this on a deal right now where

we are paying a slightly higher rate on a seven-year loan in exchange for the ability to pay it off early in year three without having a big prepayment penalty or yield maintenance. I'm going to say, okay, well, Andrew, why would you do that? Because it increases your rate a little bit. We are in a place in the market where the fundamentals of multifamily are rock solid. However, we do have increasing rates, right? The debt markets, it's not inconceivable with everything that's going on in the world right now that something could spook the debt markets over the next couple of years,

or the economy could go into a recession. There's just, there are risks out there that really weren't as prevalent just a couple of years ago. And so we want to have, and this gets back to, I think it was point number two, or point number three, about matching your debt with your business model. We're paying a little bit higher rate to be able to exit early just in case there's some market force that dictates, hey, it's best for us to get out now rather than hold for seven years or vice versa. That's why we're not getting a three-year loan. We don't want to be forced to get out in three years, right?

Many bridge loans, it's a 25-year amortization, but you have to pay it off in three years, right? Well, what if in three years we're in another March of 2020 or fall of 2008 and the debt markets are just locked up and not available, right? You don't want to be in that situation. That's how you lose money in commercial real estate, is being forced to sell or refinance at a time when you really can't or shouldn't. And so you take the debt structure and work it to your advantage. So that's kind of generally how it works as you know, you've got, it may amortize for a long period of time, but then, you know, you can pick a menu of, they literally will give you, in many cases, a matrix. It says, all right, if you want a five-year term, here's your rate in other terms, one-year I.O.

If you want seven years, we'll give you two years of I.O. And your interest rates a little bit higher. If you want 10 years, we'll give you four years of I.O. And the prepayment penalty goes away in five years and whatever the other terms are. So that's how they structure it. And it's like a menu. Whereas with a kind of residential mortgage, correct me from wrong, David, it's been a while since I've been a residential. It's basically like, hey, here's your rate.

It's 30 years. This is what we're going to give you. maybe you can pay a point to lower the rate a little bit, but that's kind of it, right? And then also another thing you can do in multifamily that can be really beneficial, especially if you don't have as much equity or cash available, is you can do lender-funded renovations. So if you're buying a property and you've got to do $800,000 in renovations, many cases the lender will not only give you, let's say, 75% of the purchase price, they'll give you 75% of that renovation budget.

and then you spend you you you do the work the contractor invoices you you send that to the lender they release the funds right so that's another that's another piece of the structure to factor in so any any of the follow-up questions or hopefully that help a little bit or yeah that definitely helps i just want to try to understand you know with the rising interest rates and things kind of moving rapidly i don't want to be stuck in a situation where i can't refinance or you know i'm stuck with a higher interest you know i to me that is the biggest risk to the multifamily market right now and to a lot of deals that have been done over the last two, three years is we, I think it was 2021. 70% of deals were done with bridge loans, right?

At 75 to 80% LTV. Well, when they go to refinance or sell a couple of years from now, if rates are still significantly higher, many of those loans aren't going to be able to refinance out because the debt coverage ratio won't be there. What I mean by that is the net operating income won't be enough to cover. the new debt load at a much higher interest rate, and those deals are going to run into problems. So, real quick, how you mitigate that is, number one, going with lower leverage. Our last couple of deals, we just went in at 60 and 65 percent LTV, right, just to make sure

we had that extra room. That's the biggest way to mitigate it. Number two, a whole other discussion, but, you know, there's fixed rate and there's floating rate with multifamily debt. How we are in floating rate actually typically is cheaper. However, what we've been doing recently and for the foreseeable future is we will get fixed rate debt, but then make sure that we can either get a supplemental loan, which is the equivalent of getting a second mortgage and pulling out cash,

or going back to our previous discussion, we can pay it off early, right? So that way we're eliminating the risk of rates going way up on us. We know, hey, we can ride this thing out for seven or ten years. But if everything goes to plan and it works out really well, we can still pull cash out and give that back to investors. Right. So that's how you work with the structure of multifamily debt to still do deals in an uncertain environment, but not increase your risk. And it's all about, I mean, there's so many creative ways to do debt and equity in multifamily deals. You just have to adjust it as the

market adjust. And that's some of the ways to do that. Yeah. I mean, that's exactly what I was looking for. So I appreciate it, Andrew. Oh, awesome. Thank you. All right. Thank you for that, Whitney. Before we get on to our next caller, I want to make a comment about people that have invested in somebody else's syndication with rates going up because there is risk. Now, one of the things that Andrew and I have noticed is a lot of deals have been put together by more amateur. They haven't done as much. And they kind of just shoot from the hip.

They're raising more money than they should be. They're paying more money than they should for the property. They're not experienced with the management. So their operating costs and ratio is higher than it would be with the more experienced operator. And while we've had just the best bull market we've ever seen, you get away with playing sloppy. But rising rates is one thing that is very impactful on multifamily housing because your debt plays such a big role in making the numbers work. So if you invested with someone who wasn't that great at doing this or wasn't that experienced,

the odds of you being okay are higher if you got in the right area. If you went in an area where rents have been going up and demand has been going up, You should see an increased NOI, even if the operator didn't do a great job. And so, therefore, you can afford the higher debt service that comes with the higher interest rate. If you chased after really high returns and you didn't get into a great area and you didn't get in with the great operator, your money might not be that safe. So moving forward, one of the things that I'm telling people is don't chase the highest return possible when they say, hey, we can get to 20% IRA. And you say, well, that's better than a 16% IRA. I'm going with them.

A lot of people got away with that for a long time. This is not the time to be doing that as the Fed is continuing to increase rates. And people are moving at a faster rate across the country. Like after COVID, that sort of jumpstarted this entire idea of, I want to live where I want to live. I don't want to live where I'm stuck. What could have been a great deal in New York five years ago is now not looking like a great deal. Rents aren't going up. It's hard to get people to want to live there.

People are leaving that area. Now interest rates are coming. So in my opinion, when you're going to be investing in someone else's syndication or with a partner, safety should take a priority over top end return. In a bull market, you could be a little riskier, chase after those big returns. In a bear market or a potential bear market, you want to put a higher weight towards safety as opposed to just pure maximum profit you can get on your money. Thank you for that, Whitney.

Appreciate you, man. All right, Pete, can we get you in here? Hey, guys, how are you doing? Good. Thanks for being here. What question do you have for us? Longtime listener, first time caller. So I appreciate you guys doing this.

I'm a real estate-friendly financial advisor up in the Seattle area, and I've done about 14 burs over the years with varying levels of success, as I'm sure we can all attest to. But I've been trying to transition into the multifamily space for about a year and a half or two years now. And what I'm consistently seeing is that it seems like, against the adage, you make your money going in, it seems like the pricing is based more on the pro forma numbers or pro forma NOI, so to speak, rather than on the current numbers. And I'm trying to figure if this is just symptomatic of the hot market and how I should be thinking about this, you know, because I don't

want to give up that value at opportunity, but I also don't want to sit on the sidelines forever. That's a really good one. And that is definitely something that is a constant struggle. And I would say it's always something to consider, but as you alluded to, it is very much a symptom that has been aggravated by the current market. So, you know, when you hear the stories of an apartment complex traded for a two and a half cap in a place like Atlanta or Dallas, which are great markets, but historically not two and a half cap markets, right? That's, you know, a two and a half percent cap for that, that's L.A., that's San Francisco, that's New York. So when you hear that a property traded a two and a half cap in Atlanta and you're like, what the heck are they thinking? This is

exactly it. What it is, is it's somebody paying today for tomorrow's performance. And you'll see the brokers will advertise. They'll actually put it in print. And I think this is going to start going away soon, but they'll put it in print, hey, this is a two and a half cap, but you can get it up to a four cap if you do all this work, right? And that's the value add. So the answer to this to me is double-sided. One is this gets to don't get overly caught up on going in cap rate, right? Because some of the best deals that we've done historically, yeah, our going in cap rate was between zero and two. And in some cases, it was even negative. The property was losing money when we bought it. But there was enough value add there to make up for it. On the other hand, Pete,

like you said, you do not want to pay the seller for all the work. that you're going to do. And so the answer lies somewhere in the middle, right? If you're looking at marketed deals, odds are there's going to be someone out there who'll pay that seller for all the work that the buyer is going to have to do, and you're probably not going to get that. You know, what we found is when we work with, you know, off-mark, either some cases directly with sellers or in most cases it's a broker bringing us an off-market deal where there's not this competitive like bidding environment that gets everyone hyped up and like, I'm going to win this and I've got to win this. And, you know, my investors haven't seen a deal. I have to get something.

And that leads to exactly what you're talking about. What you are aiming for is an environment where you can, and this is like a one out of a hundred type of thing right now, but it is still out there. Whereas you work with a seller who, where you can have a, a reasonable and, you know, non-hyped conversation and negotiation on the, you know, over the deal. And so that was, so that we closed one last month where it was, it was very similar to this, where we, a broker just connected us directly with the owner of the property. He had built it and developed it himself. He had a high, he did have one off market offer. just someone had like literally called them and and flown down and looked at the property and gave him an offer. And he was getting ready to sign that.

And the broker who connected to say, well, look, these are we, you know, you should really let this one other group at least come visit. And so I went down and literally was there within an hour toward the guy, got the deal and made him an offer and got the deal and eventually got the deal under contract and closed. And it was one of those situations. I don't remember what the going in cap rate is, but the going in cap rate, it was low. I mean, it's probably somewhere in the, I think it was right around four. And this is for a 2011 construction property in a, you know, larger tertiary market in Georgia. And so on the surface, that might not make sense. Well, why would you pay a four cap for that?

Well, this guy, his daughter was running this large, almost 200 unit property all by herself, not doing a bad job, but just way too much work for one person. no website, no marketing, no nothing. So when you're in that situation, you know how you keep it full? You don't raise the rents, right? You don't want turnover because you don't have time for that. And so they hadn't raised rent since 2019. And we actually own another property about a mile away in that market.

So we know for absolute certain, like, holy cow, the rents on this are incredibly low. So we took our market knowledge and we went and looked at every other property in the market and we said, all right, this property as it is today should be renting for $200 more than it is. Like without doing any work, it should automatically be $200. And so we look at that and say, all right, we'll pay somewhere, you know, we'll pay a call it a four cap because we know this market and we have very high confidence that, we can get it up to where it should be. And then, you know, at that point, it's like a six or a seven or something really high. And the seller, all he wanted was just a reasonable offer on where his property was today, right?

So, you know, would I like to buy it at a five cap going in? Yeah, of course we would. But it had such a clear value add that we are willing to pay just a little bit more. And to me, that's what that, that's where the, that's where the, that's where the, the, the workable middle ground lies, right? In today's market, very few sellers are just going to, you know, give you a killer deal on a property. But this property, I think we're buying it was like 120, 60 unit or something like that. We have a very, very clear path to like 160 to 180 unit in a very, in a very quick near future. So, you know, we can pay him 115 and we know we can very easily get it significantly above that. That deal works. And so the key to, you know, know, what you're asking about, hey, you know, I don't want to pay today for tomorrow's performance.

Number one is, and this is we talked about this with the last caller, is really knowing your market and your property and diving into the data so that when you say, you know what, I can pay just a little bit more for this now because I will be able to get it to much higher value. You do that study, do that analysis. You can go into it with the, you know, with the confidence of a four-year-old in a Batman shirt, right? I mean, just like, going to do this. I've got this, got this nailed. And that's really how we look at that.

So any follow-up questions or hope that helps? Yeah. So on that one, in terms of the underwriting, it sounds like, you know, you're talking about a happy medium between kind of the underwriting of what the CAPA is today or the NOI is today versus the pro forma numbers. So you're kind of trying to find the medium between that. but if they're starting out at the pro forma numbers for their asking price, usually it's the expectation is you need to come down from that a little bit.

And if they're not ready to do that, I guess they're not ready to do that. And maybe you need to move on. Exactly. Yeah. Which gets into your point, too, about, you know, the source of these leads. You know, if you're going to go to the market, you're probably going to see somebody trying to value it based on pro forma income numbers. But if you can get directly to the seller.

Yeah, I mean, you said that more concisely than I did, right? I mean, that's really what it comes down to is you can't, You're absolutely right. You cannot pay today for 100% of the work you're going to do. It's got to be somewhere well below that. And you have to have high confidence that you're going to get there. Now, you know, five, ten years ago, you could pay for the absolute dead bottom of what it is today. And then it's all on you.

It's just got to be a kind of a reasonable, you know, spot in the middle. And also, I would say, you know, it's common to say in single family you make your money when you buy. In multifamily, that's really not true. In multifamily, you make your money through operations. That's how you make your money. And again, we're assuming you bought the right asset, the right market, all that stuff we've talked about in other episodes. But you make your money in solid operations and increasing that operating income by increasing

collections, decreasing expenses, all those things that go into it. And that's one of the beautiful things about multifamily. In single family, you buy a house and the average price in that market, market goes down 30% well yours probably went down 30% too in multifamily you're valued on the net operating income so if you're a really good operator you can still increase the value of your property in a flat or down market even if every even if everyone else is struggling so that's one of the that's one the really cool things uh and that that's part of why again with caveats it's somewhat okay to pay a little bit for the future performance because it is something that's in your control

makes sense. I like your question, Pete. I'm going to provide the same answer, Andrew gave, from a single family perspective so that people who are used to that investing asset class, which is a little more common, can understand the principle we're trying to make here. When we say you make your money when you buy, it's based off of an understanding that you cannot rely on appreciation, which is a single family concept, like other homes selling for more in the area, pushes up the value of this home.

and so it drags it all up. Commercial properties, multifamily properties, are not quite, they're not as simple as appreciation. If someone buys an apartment complex across the street from you and pays more, it doesn't automatically make yours the same value. It depends on what rents you're getting, how well you're operating at the net operating income

or just a profit at the end of the day is how you base it, all right? So there's certain times where you make your money when you buy is more important than in others. So part of it could be the time, like the market in general. So 2010, prices aren't going anywhere fast. It's very important that you get in under market value if you want to get what we call a deal.

2013, prices are kind of starting to move forward. You still want to be below market value, but maybe it doesn't have to be at 80% or 70% of value. If you're at 90% of value, it's still a pretty good opportunity. Then you have 2022 or 2020, rampant inflation, very irresponsible fiscal policy by our country, fueling fires everywhere where we've literally had buyers that two years ago had a house appraise at 550 and they had an under-contract at 560 and they walked away and said, I'm not going to overpay. And two years later, it's worth 780, right? Like, that principle doesn't age well.

It ages like milk, not like wine, right? So I like what you're saying. And that is how we should be looking at it. But we can't be so rigid that we don't understand the overall macro principles that are at play and how they affect how we operate by these principles. So to Andrew's point, if I had a chance to buy a single family home in Gary, Indiana, that I did not think would be appreciating much at all, and I could get it at 95% of ARV,

I would have to wait 10, 15 years before that started to make a lot of sense for me. Okay? But if I'm buying it in South Florida, in a suburb outside of Miami, that's the next big thing to go off, I could pay $10,510% of ARV, but in nine months it might have appreciated much more than that, right? So in single-family investing, the time you wait is equivalent to commercial investing, the effort you put. Those are the two resources that we measure. There's only so much you can do to make a house worth more in a single-family sense.

You have to wait. But in multifamily investing, the effort you put into it can have a significant impact on increasing the value. So what you're looking for is how do I get maximum NOI for minimum effort? Like any deal will work if you just stare at it all day long and constantly talk to people and market the crap out of it and just study all day long. You turn it into a job. But that's what we're trying to avoid. So that's what Andrew's getting into is it's okay to pay over what it is worth in quotes.

If you see a very clear path to value at that is not a lot of effort, right? That's easier money than if you're paying more than what it would be worth on paper. and it's going to be like walking through sand or mud to try to get there. Does that make sense? Yeah, it does absolutely. I appreciate the insight. And on that same note real quick, Andrew, do you see or David, do you see anything changing with rising rates? You know? Yeah, that's, I do. Definitely. One, already we're starting to see overblown seller expectations kind of get rained in a little bit. And David, I think we see this in the single family. too is you'll hear like media say oh prices are coming down no no no no that's not happening it's

just crazy hey i'm going to charge 20 i'm going to sell for 20% more than the guy down the street who did last month that's that's what's going starting to go away is it's like is sellers are saying okay well the property next to me traded at a four cap so i should get a four cap too instead of saying well now i'm going to get a three cap because that's one month later that is starting to go away the buyer pool is thinning out a little bit, whereas, you know, six months ago, we might have had we actually have two properties listed for sale right now. We're two couple of six months ago, we might have 30 buyers. Now we've got 10, right? So still a good buyer pool, just not the, not the feeding frenzy that it was. And that's what's happened so far. Going forward, I see,

I'm kind of hoping for things like hard money going away, right? Five years ago, you had 30 days to do your inspections, and then you had a financing contingency, meaning if your loan blew up at the last minute, oh, well, you know, seller has to give you the money back and you're out. And then, as you probably know, Pete, since you've been listing to BP and checking out deals, now it's like, all right, if it's a million dollar property, we want, you know, $100,000 non-refundable deposit day one. Like, that money is the seller's almost no matter what. As the market shifts to a more balanced buyer-seller market, I think that will start to go away. candidly, I kind of hope that goes away.

That's one of the things I'm looking forward to as this market shifts. And then the third thing is, you know, I don't, well, I don't see in most good markets, significant valuation declines for multifamily, right? For that to happen, there's going to have to be a whole lot of motivated sellers. And that's tough to see right now because most sellers, if they don't get their price, they're just going to hold, right? Most multifamily making so much money that it's like, well, if I don't get my price, I'm just going to keep it.

I mean, that's how our portfolio is. It's, you know, 35% LTV and, you know, rolling off all kinds of cash flow. If we can't get a good price, we're just going to keep it. So I don't foresee, like, a huge decline in pricing, especially with inflation going up and replacement costs going up and all of that. But I do see the market shifting to be a little bit more balanced between buyers and sellers, which for those of you who have been out there for the last five years, like, I can't get a deal. It's going to get a, I think it's going to start getting.

getting a little bit easier. Not easy, just easier. And the final thing I want to add in terms of what I think might be changing is a lot of people took out really high leverage bridge loans in the last couple of years. Seventy percent of transactions were done that way. And if rates go up too far and stay that way for a couple of years, there actually might be some motivated sellers who can't get out of their bridge loan that's due next year or the year after. And that's where savvy investors that, you know, like all of us, can come in and get a deal and not pay for future performance. So those are some of the things that we're seeing now, and I think it's going to lead to. Sounds good. I appreciate that. And I can pick your brains all day and I keep asking questions,

but I'll stop there. Appreciate it, guys. Thank you very much. All right. Take care, Pete. Thank you, Pete. If you want a short-term rental, here's something worth knowing. Not all landlord policies are built for your type of property. And with holiday bookings, chilly weather, and higher guest turnover, having the right coverage is more important than ever. Steadily offers insurance designed specifically for short-term rentals, covering property damage, liability, lost rental income, and even unexpected issues like bedbugs.

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Because we're friends. He knows my book. It's a bigger pocket book, whatever. He didn't mention my book. And that's okay. And that's okay. I still love you, Andrew. But my book is raising private capital.

If you want to hear more about raising equity from investors, check out the Amazon bestseller, Bigger Pockets book, Raising Private Capital. Well, hey, at least we know we're not going to ask the question about how to raise capital. I will not. That'd be great. I'm looking to get started in raising money, Andrew. I want to talk to you about that. No, man.

I want to talk to you guys. As you may know, I'm leading the Bigger Pockets multi-family boot camp. And it's been going great. We just concluded our first one. And we got another one coming up, which we can mention here. But I get a lot of recurring questions, guys. And I wanted to bring those questions here to you guys to discuss boot camp questions that come up on a regular basis and just get your take.

I'll accept my answers to these things. But I love to hear what you guys think. to these recurring questions that a lot of folks that are looking to get into or expand in a multifamily have. What do you guys think? Let's do it. Let's do it. Okay. You've already, both you've already heard these questions, right?

But I'd love to know what you think. Number one, I'm a new investor, and I'm having a problem finding deals. And, you know, I'm going to the deal tree, and the deal tree is not yielding fruit right there, right in my hand. I'm not able to just pluck a deal right there off of the tree. And good deals are hard to find, aka how do I find good deals? What are your tips to finding good deals in the multifamily market? You know, if you're looking for deals in the deal tree these days,

you're going to have to get a six-foot tall step ladder, one of those extendable fruit pickers. Yeah. And aim for the very, very top of the tree. And then you might be able to get something. So cut the tree down. Or just cut the tree down. There you go.

Like that story, the giving tree, right? You know, you pick the fruit and then you just cut the whole thing down. That's the worst tree ever. Oh, that's a sad story. That dude is a jerk to that tree. I feel so, yeah. Anyway. So, yeah.

Now, you know, when we talked about the previous, number one, I think the fruit on the tree is going to start regrowing a little bit lower in the future. So that's the good news to everybody. Yes. But doesn't mean it's going to be, it's going to be really easy. You know, how to find deals, number one, I see a lot of people make the mistake of like, oh, I'm looking at a deal in Indiana and I'm looking at one in Boston and I've got this one down in Florida. Like, they're just all over the place, right? Just anything that shows up in their email inbox is something they're going to look at.

So number one, pick a geography and stick to it. And when you pick that geography, pick one that has the right tailwinds for multifamily, population growth, job growth, strong median incomes, you know, all those things that we talked about back in, I think it was episode 571, right, of how you pick a market and sub-market. So the first thing is be very firm and decide on this is where I'm going to look for deals. The second thing is decide exactly what kind of deal you're looking for. Are you looking for 20 units or you're looking for 200? Are you looking for 1960s value add?

Are you looking for 2010 construction that you just do a, you know, paint it and call it good? Nail down exactly what you're looking for. That does two things. Number one, that helps you quickly processed everything that comes into your inbox. Right? Like at this point, I literally probably get 50 properties emailed to me every single day. Some of them are repeats, but literally 50 or more a day. I can delete 49 of those because they're the wrong areas.

They're the wrong size. They're the wrong age. They're, you know, tax credit, all these things that we don't do. And I can get it down to one and this is the one that we need to look at. So clearly define what you're looking for is that you can do that. So you're only spending time on deals that fits your investment goals in your investment criteria. And that's kind of what Brandon talks about his crystal clear criteria, right?

So now, once you have your crystal clear criteria, this other benefit of that is you make sure that all of your relationships understand your crystal clear criteria so that all the brokers you work with, all the, maybe if you're dealing with wholesalers or any source that deal that you work with, make sure that they understand that criteria. So if you're looking for a 20-unit property in, you know, Dallas or Fort Worth that was built between 1990 and 2010, right? And you keep looking at those. And every time a broker has one of those, you talk to that broker and you give them feedback and you look at so that after, you know, six months or whatever, that broker talks to a guy who's owned it for 10 years. And he's like,

yeah, you know what, I might consider selling it. That broker goes, oh, Matt is the guy for this deal. And they just calls you and says, hey, I'm going to send you this off market deal. Let's see if we can just put it together. And I think it's a great fit for you. This guy might sell if you get on the right number. That's how you get the off market deals that are really good deals and that you're not necessarily overpaying or getting into bidding wars. That's really the key to doing it in these markets is knowing where clearly where you're looking, what you're looking for. and then building the relationships to not only bring you those deals, but so that keeping those relationships fresh and active so that when that deal pops up,

whoever sees it thinks of you first, that's that, that is how we get 90% of our deals. That's brilliant. Thank you. I think that is great advice. I would say that's better than the advice I'm going to give, but because Andrew took, because Andrew took the best donut in the box,

I'm going to try to be like, well, this one's like kind of crumbling, falling apart, but it's better than... I got the chocolate sprinkles one. That's it, man. And I got like the plain, like there's no glaze or there's no topping. It's just like the boring donut that I don't even know why they make. It's just the bread, but for some reason they make them. And even a more weird reason people buy them. That's what I am, that donut that has no topping.

So here's the advice that I was going to give. Andrew's advice is better. It is safer and it is going to build you wealth better. If you can get the better deal by just working harder to get it, yes. There's also a scenario like where I'm saying, your strategy kind of has to adapt to the market itself. So when you're in a situation where prices are just solid, rigid, they're not going to move because demand has gone down or you're in a market where it's like that, you have to be extra careful when you buy. When you're in a market where a reasonable person would expect that demand is going to continue to increase and maybe supply is constrained. So the deal that Andrew and I are buying together right now, they can't build there.

It's incredibly difficult to get any real estate. It's landlocked and there's a buttload. That's a technical term of Americans that are moving into this city. So as we see demand increasing, we see supply as restrained. It would be almost an act of God in order to see that not happening. In those situations, it's not always about the price. It's about like interested earlier, the management. And in today's market, you need to ask yourself, where do you have a competitive advantage?

Do you have a contractor that you know that can do the job for, 80,000 and you're being bid 150,000 by everyone else. Well, your competition's probably getting a $150,000 bid. So if you can get someone you know that you trust that can do that work, you can pay more than somebody else and still get a good deal. Now, in this case of the deal, we're putting together in Fort Walton, we have management that is already there that is already managing other properties and we believe we can do it much more efficiently than other people. So that deal makes a lot more sense for us than it would be for someone else. So long story short, Yes, beat the bushes, turn over the rocks, find the deals before they hit the market.

But even if it is on market, if you have some kind of competitive advantage that allows you to operate it cheaper or better or add value in ways other people don't see, that's a good plan B. That's awesome. And I want to, here's what I tell people. And I'll sum it. I'm going to sum up both what you guys said with like, here's my icing on the top of the cake that you guys just baked right there, is that, yes, pick a market, drill down, have your crystal clear criteria, have your unfair advantages, the contractor that can do it for cheaper or

whatever. And you obtain those things. You drill into those markets. You build those relationships by going to the market in person. Yeah, I cannot tell you how many people I've talked to in the boot camp and in my travels. And people say, man, I really want to buy a deal in Columbus, Ohio. I love that market. I've done my research and my homework. That's my, that's my jam. I want to buy a market, buy a deal there. And I'll say, okay, great, how many times you've been to Columbus? I've never been there. I'll say, well, okay, then you, and I'll bet you'll never do a deal there because you've never, you know, that that is the bottom line. If you're going to choose a market, the way you're going to build that unfair advantage, the way you're going to meet that contract, they can do the job for 80 grand instead of 150s, go to that market, go to the local Ria, meet them on bigger pockets, you know, meet the broker that's going to truly send you off the market stuff.

whatever it is. Build that unfair advantage by traveling to that market and networking yourself in person, look at people dead in the eye and buying them a cup of coffee and sitting down and chatting with them face to face. Anyway, so that's what I tell people on finding deals and you guys nailed it as well. So good stuff, but that is far and away the most common question I get from those that are trying to get into or expand into multifamily is finding deals. It's a tough market. I get. You know, all three of us still, you know, we don't connect on every person. pitch that we swing at either. And that's just the nature of the game right now. You're not another way you find good deals is by you look at a lot of deals.

You know? Yeah. It's not easy at all, but it is absolutely worth it. That's a good point. What I've been telling the agents on my team when we talk about this is that things are either going to be easy on the front end and hard on the back end or easy on or the other way around. There is no situation where both ever happen. So what we see right now is that just about everybody buying real estate is making money. A lot of that's not because they're so great. It's because of inflationary pressures pushing things upward. So then everyone runs to that market and they go, oh my gosh, everyone's making money in real estate. Let me do it. It's why a lot of people are listening to a podcast like this. The market is awesome. Well, as the inherently in that

scenario means it's going to be harder to get into it. There's other people that ran there and that's why it's good. And when you see the opposite like 2010, when it was very easy to get in, you heard a lot of people that didn't want to do it because the back end looked like it was going to be rough. And so you just have to accept that this is the way life works. If it's easy when you first get there, it's going to be difficult. So I tell the agents that's like working with buyers. It's not hard to find a buyer that is willing to work with us right now. Everybody, all the buyers want to work with us, but there's no houses to sell them.

So you get the buyer client. It was easy. And then the job is super hard to put them in a contract. It's very difficult to get sellers. And so no one wants to do it. They're like, oh, but sellers, they're so demanding. and they want me to interview against other agents and they call me every day. And it's just, it's easier with buyers.

Well, yeah, but you get a listing. It's almost guaranteed to sell. It's easy on the back end. So that's just something in life that I have learned. Don't forget that because everyone hears talk of real estate is exploding. But their expectations when they get to the party is that it's easy to get in the door. It's not. That's why it's doing well.

So like you guys just said, you got to look at more deals. You have to look for advantages that other people don't have. You have to have a knowledge base that other people. that's literally because multifamily investing has been making people so much money, but that's why you want to do it. So just expect it's going to be hard when you get there. Yeah. You know what it is?

It's like saying, man, those guys at the CrossFit gym are in such good shape. I want to look like that. And then you get there and you're like, whoa, this is so hard. Like, what's the easy workout? Can I do that one? Right? And then if you go do the easy workout one, you don't have the benefits of the CrossFit workout, right? Like you look the same.

Yes. Yeah, right. There you go. It's hard work, as you said, and it is, but it's worth it. And that's how you get the shredded body. That's how you get the awesome portfolio. That's how you get the lifestyle that real estate can yield is through a ton of hard work. And yeah, it's hard.

You know, most of it's fun. Sometimes you've got to pluck out thorns, right? You know, as where Zan Andrews, sometimes it gets tough. But it's actually fun sometimes, too. And, guys, interesting time to bring this up. Speaking of cross-red gyms, and thank you for that analogy, David. BiggerPockets and I who put together a phenomenal boot camp that's going to make you into the shredded real estate investor that you want to be their shredded multifamily investor. It is the BiggerPockets multifamily boot camp.

You guys can access that by going to BiggerPockets.com forward slash events. BiggerPockets.com forward slash events. Seats are limited. I believe that the registration closes down on May 15th on that. So check that out now. And it's something you guys can join. in on it is a 12-week program that's participated in by hundreds of other real estate investors you can network with. You can form small subgroups, accountability groups. There are folks that have

gotten together and done deals together from the last boot camps. If you want to meet people that are like-minded, that have drank the Bigger Pockets Kool-Aid as you have that are willing to get out there and do the Capital W work that Andrew talked about. The Bigger Pockets Boot Camp is a great way to meet people, get the tools for myself and my team that's going to make you successful. And as, as David said, join the CrossFit Gym of multifamily Rolstit investing that is the Bigger Pockets multifamily boot camp. See you there, guys. Yeah. You know, our first question today was the five things to commit to learning. You'll learn all those things at Matt's boot camp with BP.

Hello, Jake. I am so glad you could join us on the podcast. How are you, my friend? I am fantastic. David, Andrew. Good to see it, man. So Jake has had to wade through the swamp of scheduling craziness. then a bunch of technical difficulties that he had to fight his way through as well. He's also buying really good properties at a really hard time. And Jake is smarter than just about everybody that he comes across. So he's got that Elon Musk thing where it's very hard to communicate with people

that are not him because he has to figure out how to get like a 3D perspective into a 2D brain. He often has this problem when he talks with me. And yet in spite of all that, we've got him here on the podcast. Jake Harris, thank you for joining us. Well, thank you for having me. It's a fun, pleasurable, nice Friday. I just realized you look like you definitely could be my brother. We have the same head and beard thing happening right now.

I think we go to the same barber at least. That's probably true. So what do you have for us? How can we help you today? You know, so I develop some multifamily and the construction are doing real heavy value-ad multi-family deals. And we're seeing a significant, you know, challenge coming in. A lot of projects that are kind of blowing up from interest rates. We have supply chain issues, material that's just not available for many, many months. So, Andrew, you'd mentioned earlier some questions about,

you know, your competitive advantage of operations or really, for, depreciation items that you have when you're moving into a market. So what I'm looking at is the interest rates are making it so that some buyers will no longer be able to buy houses and they're going to be renters for longer time periods. Supply will not be coming online because they're getting blown up from longer time periods, you know, permitting issues, supply chain, all that. So there's not going to be new supply. And there's now a big swath of new renters that were trying to be homeowners that have now been pushed back into that renter bucket. So what are some of those operations that you've seen or the technical details of, you know, the operations

and forced appreciation on that multifamily value ad that you've seen that's been most successful, given somebody like me that's trying to get into that space. I've never really done the value add to your thing. I've always just built the project. All right. Good questions. And, you know, you bring up a lot of things that are 100% true and I think get forgotten is it's very easy for a lot of us to be like, oh my gosh, interest rates are going up.

sky's going to fall. Everything's going down. Cap rates are going up. It's the end of the world. We've got to, you know, we just, we got to get out and just, and go back and I'm going to go work as a Walmart grader. And that's not, that's not the case because there's other factors. Like you said, Jake, as interest rates go up, that makes it that much more difficult for people to purchase a house. What are they going to do? They're going to go rent apartments or they might rent a house, but either way, they're going to be, they're going to add to the demand of rentals. And then as again, something else that you said, it is getting harder and more expensive. to build new apartments. And same as you. I've seen development deals either blow up or get delayed by years because of the supply chain issues and because of rates going up. So that's, you know, taking off the supply side. So that increases the demand for rent. Well, it doesn't increase the demand. But, I mean, the existing demand is harder to satisfy. Therefore, rent, you know, it goes up. And then the properties that do still manage to get completed, they have to charge that much higher rent just to get the property to pencil out. And so as new properties come online with sky high rents, it has a tendency to drag the entire rest of the market up with it. And so, yeah, there's the negative effect of, okay, higher interest rates make it harder as a buyer to maybe underwrite an apartment complex.

but it also creates all those other positive factors that you just brought up. And so that leads to, well, okay, if I don't either if I'm not able to or I don't have the education yet to take on the risk of development, what do I do? And okay, well, yeah, that's the value add aspect. And so where we're finding the greatest value add opportunities right now, and I'll try to go in order of decreasing risk to increasing risk. And what I mean by that is execution risk, right? So the context of the question is, is operations. What is you, what is under your control? How do you adjust your operations to create value? And there's, you know, the risk is,

well, are you able to execute that? And so the lowest risk, in our, in my opinion, one of the lowest risk value add strategies in the one that actually is quite abundant these days. We're finding, it's not easy, but it's out there. We're finding amazing opportunities in this is that many property owners, for a variety of different reasons, have not kept up with this dramatic rent increases of the last 18 to 24 months, right? So I mentioned a couple of questions ago, a deal that we closed last month, where the owner of it is a beautiful property built. It's only 10 years old. I mean, high, high level finish is a great, great asset.

but they had not moved rent at all, like not a dollar in three years. So that is what basically we call loss to lease value add, meaning, you know, the real market rent for a two-bedroom at that property should be $1,100, but they're leasing it at $800, right? So they are losing $300 a month to that lease. that is the once you once you do the analysis to confirm that that's the case that is your lowest risk highest return value ad strategy is coming in with with good management good marketing um you know all the things that go into pulling renters to your property um and and just leasing it for what it's worth right so bringing the property up to with its current market rent um like

that we call that, some people call it a management play, but it's also just, you know, taking advantage of loss to lease. That is by far our best return risk ratio value add that we, that we find. And it is very abundant right now. It's more abundant now than it has been in the last eight years, in my opinion, because there are quite a few owners who just did not keep up with the big ramp up and rents that we had the last few years. And an additional benefit of that, And another thing that makes it a low risk activity is you're not counting on market appreciation to create value. You're just saying, hey, I'm just going to get it up to where it is today. So if rent growth were to go to zero and flatline for the next three years, your value-ad strategy still works because all you're counting on is just getting it up to where it is now.

Right. So again, it's very low risk. It's very typically not capital intensive, right? You're talking about a website. You're talking about marketing. proper, you know, staff to handle leasing and all that. It's very low capital intensive. So that's another benefit of that. The second one that we're finding is very effective in today's market, is adding simple amenities, such as, you know, dog parks, playgrounds, grilling stations,

outdoor gazebos. If we buy a property with a pool, we'll go in and put beautiful new pool furniture, stuff where, you know, if you've got a hundred unit or even a 20 unit property, you know, if you rehab one unit, your return on that investment is from that one unit. If you have a 20 unit property and you add nice landscaping or a nice dog park, the return is times 20 because that affects all 20 families that are living in your property. And so those, that's the next thing that we're finding is the lowest capital expenditure and the highest impact in the lowest risk is, I would call simple amenities. Again, the dog park, the grilling stations, gazebos, all that.

And then also in the exterior is just make sure your property looks nice. Seal and stripe the parking lot, right? And what that is, that's when they come in, they put the black tar on it and then they let it dry and then they put the, you know, paint the white stripes. It's not that expensive, but has a huge visual impact on the property. And when a potential resident comes in, they go, wow, they take care of this place. look how fresh and clean this looks. Landscaping is, in our experience, one of the best returns on investment also, and also I think it's one of the most ignored aspects of property, especially with multifamily.

We spend a lot on landscape, and we get a huge return on that. And it's hard to quantify, like exactly is it $37 per, you know, zellia bush or, you know, whatever. But no one cares how the inside of your units look if the outside of your units look, if the outside looks crappy because they're never going to see the inside because the outside looks crappy. So landscaping and some simple exterior improvements are, I'd say, number two. And then number three is light to moderate interior value add, especially if you're buying properties that are, you know, 10, 20, 30 years older. We find we're getting huge returns on simple things like tile backslashes. You know, it might cost, you know, if you do it with your own labor,

it might only cost $300. If you have a vendor to it, it might cost $1,000. And you can get $50, $100 rent increases a month, right? That pays for itself in a year. If you're in the South, in the Sunbelt, like a lot of listeners are, ceiling fans. Add ceiling fans to the bedrooms. And if you can, the living room, that is huge in places like Florida and South Texas and along the Gulf Coast.

Think of things that people touch and see every day. You know, lighting fixtures, door knobs, you know, again, those high, traffic high-touch things that really aren't that expensive to replace. We'll go into a property. That one that I talked about was built in 2011. They had very simple faucets in the kitchen. I mean, beautiful kitchens, granite countertops, nice cabinets, real wood, cherry wood, all this stuff. And then just like a faucet that belongs in a bathroom. So we're putting in the nice, like, goose neck faucets where you can pull the little sprayer out and, you know, spray the kids to get them out of the way or, you know, wash dishes easily, all that kind of stuff. You know, a couple hundred

installed, but a huge impact. So those are the, I'd say probably the top three things that come to mind in terms of executing a business plan and operations. And I'll pause there in case you want to do not have any follow up or any additional comments. But there's, I mean, there's also just kind of ongoing operations things, but those are the first three big things that come to mind. Yeah, that's great advice. I mean, obviously, I don't think I've thought about that. The landscape being something that return on investment to every single unit. You know, the percentage of increase versus and actually maybe some of those just raising the rents. You can raise the rents a lot more just by doing some of that landscape.

You know, with that, if you're doing, you know, maybe the question is, is like, are you looking into like zero scape or things that have, lower expenses on some of your landscape when you do that, meaning less water or mowing or, you know, expenses and trying to drop some of those ratios as well? Or do you get into that technical detail of that when you're coming in and enacting a landscape plan? We do. Most of our markets, zero-scaping doesn't really apply because we're in the southeast where it rains a lot in most years. But what we do do is we'll go through. So, it's funny if anyone who's own property in the southeast it's probably familiar this where it's called pine straw it's where your your landscapers come in and they rake up all your pine needles and they charge you to do that.

They take it off site. They package it up and then they sell those pine needles back to you as pine straw. And they put that down in all the flower beds and basically it's like a cheap mulch. And that's really common in places like Georgia, the Carolina is in Florida. But there's a cost of that. It's like four and a half or five dollars a bail for that pine straw. If you've got a large property, that adds up to thousands of dollars a year. So one of the things we've been doing and had a lot of success with that goes along what you're talking about, Jake, of not only does it have a one-time impact of improving the look of the property, but it has an ongoing impact on your NOI, which is, you know, there's a big multiple applied to NOI, is we look at things like, okay, there's these flower beds and we have to pay for pine straw or mults twice a year. If we pay a little more up front and change that over to stone or lava rock or something similar, then that

ongoing expense goes away. It saves on watering. You do it once and it's good for five years. You know, you want to make sure you don't put something, you know, in a high traffic area where kids are going to throw it through windows. But other than stuff, other than stuff like that, yeah, absolutely, we look at, can we eliminate irrigation? Because irrigation leaks. It, you know, it costs when you irrigate. There's, there's problems, there's maintenance costs on that. So, yeah, absolutely, when you're looking at, you know, your upgrades and your operations, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's the you're considering not only the one time cost but the ongoing and so yeah that's a great example that you brought up so one of the things and i'm going to maybe add on to a little bit

more dynamic of questions so in some of our projects we are you know charging for um internet you know bulk bringing in fiber doing some things like that and then we're getting you know batch uh or wholesale rates that were then charging to tenants with some of these value add projects that you have or call it the is that a possibility. Are you doing that as well, you know, versus some of the new construction because we're, have open and empty walls, it's pretty easy to do that versus a value add. Hey, how can I get more internet charges or, you know, charge back? And that's five bucks, ten bucks a month and times 12 months, times,

many units. I mean, that's a very good toggle of NOI and a five cap, you know, represents hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars in very incremental ways. Yeah, it's funny you bring that. I literally signed one of those agreements about 20 minutes before we started this podcast to do that very thing. So the short answer is, yeah, absolutely. So, you know, like you mentioned, it's a little easier when you're building the, you know, building the thing to put whatever you want in the walls. We do try to avoid. stuff where you've got to go in and cut open lots of walls and all that can get really really expensive um but as an example the agreement that i signed today it's for a company well they will come in at their expense

and they will lay fiber optic throughout the entire property it's you know and at no cost to us in fact they actually pay us a they pay us a fee for the right to do that and then that gives our property incredible internet speeds and then it's up to that provider to market to the the residents. It's not exclusive. The residents aren't forced to use it. I tend not to like stuff where we're forcing the resident to do something and take away their choice because I know as a resident I don't like that. So we prefer not to do that with our residents. But it gives that provider the exclusive right to market to our residents. So they still have the choice, but only one person's going to be directly marketing to them. And then it's set up on a revenue share agreement.

So, you know, for every dollar that comes in, we get X percentage of. of that. And so every quarter, we get a check from the, you know, the internet provider who laid the fiber optics. And that, like you said, that goes straight to the NOI. And then you apply a four or five or whatever, a cap rate to that. You just increase the value of your, of your property quite a bit. Another one we've had pretty good success with is washer, dryer leasing. We, you know, If you look at surveys of tenants and renters over the years, consistently the top amenity that everybody wants is in-unit washer-dryer-drier connections. So they don't have to walk through the heat or the rain or the freezing cold

to go to the laundry room and then find out someone took all eight units and left their crap in there since this morning and it's just sitting there, right? So everyone wants their own washer-dry-dry connections. but some people don't want to drag around the actual unit. So what we'll do is we will lease them for maybe $35 a month and then have that company come put them in. And then we give residents the option to lease them from us for maybe $55 a month. So there's a $20 margin there. And, you know, like you said, times 100 units or 200 units or even 20, that adds a lot of value to your property because that goes straight on the NOI.

some of the benefits of structuring that way is if the unit breaks, it's not our problem, right? The company at least, they come fix it. If the tenant moves out and the next tenant doesn't want a washer dryer, we don't have to move those things to figure out what to do with them. The leasing company comes and does that. So that's a very easy, beneficial arrangement. On some of our properties that only have one story, we actually will buy the units ourselves and then just lease them and it pays off in sometimes less than a year. so that's a pretty good return on investment. But yeah, those are two that we definitely, that we do regularly.

And there's others along those lines that you can do. Awesome. Yeah, those are some nice. I haven't thought about that. Wasters and dryers, little nuggets like that. I mean, an extra $20 a month times 50 units, times 12 months, times, you know, at a four cap, you know, boom, look at that. Well, you know, in another really easy one that's like almost $0.

dollars preferred parking right paint you know just just just have your maintenance guy go out with a couple of stencils and some paint and number of few parking spots uh that are right in front of units and say hey 15 dollars a month you get your own preferred parking spot that's that's almost like free revenue um you know if you know i don't recommend doing the entire property that way because it can be a nightmare to manage but if you do a select handful it's it's almost like free free extra income awesome jake thank you very much for joining us also i should mention i know jake from a group i belong to Go Abundance. If you want to get to know me, Jake and Andrew, who are actually all in that group,

you should check out Go Abundance because it's a good time. And there's a lot of smart people there. And as you can see, if you join, you'll become better looking like Jake just by joining right there. So thank you very much, Jake, for being here. Andrew, also, thanks to you, my man. This doesn't feel like a podcast when we do it with you. It feels more like a masterclass.

This is what people usually pay money to get taught and you come on and you don't hold anything back. You give a lot of actionable stuff. So everybody that's out there, send Andrew some love. Andrew, if people want to get a hold of you, what is the best place to find you? And how can they help you in your business? Yeah, first course, connect with me on bigger pockets. LinkedIn, I'm on there as well.

And then the easiest way to get direct connection is just if you search vintage point acquisitions, you should easily find our website. It's vpacq.com. And there's a number of ways to connect with us on there. And anybody who happened to listen to our episode, episode number 571, I mentioned that we were hiring an analyst, and that person came from the Bigger Pockets community. We just, we're adding another Bigger Pockets member to our team, and they are phenomenal, and we're super excited about that. And we're going to do that again.

We are actually now looking for a full-time investor relations manager. So if you've got strong organization and system skills, you're detail-oriented, your strong communicator, and you have a general interest in real estate, which I'm guessing you do if you made it this far into the podcast, please go to our website, click on the little, I think it says we're hiring tab and apply there. And we hope we can add another awesome BP community member to our team. That would be great. There's a lot of talent out there in BP that wants to get deeper into real estate. So if that's you and you know you have something to add, please do contract, Andrew.

If you are looking to invest with us in the deal I talked about earlier in Fort Walton, we are still raising money for that. You can go to invest with davidgreen.com. register. Unfortunately, this is only for accredited investors. People always get mad at me when I say that. That's not my rule. I would prefer if it didn't have to be that way. That's the SEC's rule. And this is me trying to stay at a prison by saying that. So don't get mad at me. Get mad at the SEC or whoever it is that makes those rules. And then you can find me online at David Green 24 on LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, pretty much everything other than TikTok where I am official David Green because somebody stole David Green 24. And maybe. maybe they stole David Green 1 through 23 while they were at it. I'm not sure. But hey, we want to hear from you. So if you'd like to be featured on a podcast like this,

you want to come in and ask your questions, whatever it is. Please go to biggerpox.com slash David. Leave your questions there. We will get you on one of these Seeing Green episodes. We need good questions. We had great questions today from people like Jake. So please, we want to hear from you as well. Last thing is please leave us a comment if you're watching this on YouTube.

It's really easy. You can hit the like and the subscribe button at the same time. and then go down there and tell us what you liked about the show, what you liked about what Andrew said. If you'd like to have Andrew on more, what type of stuff you'd like us to talk about. We look at those comments, so does our producer,

and we make shows based on what we see people saying. So please don't be shy. Get in there and let us know. Andrew, any last words before we get out of here? No, I really enjoyed this. This was fun. I feel like I should be asking some of these guys questions myself, especially Jake here, but this was a good time.

I enjoy it. All right. Well, thank you. everybody listening go listen to another episode if you've got some spare time and if not stay tuned for the next bigger pocket show this is david green for andrew hot guy cushman signing off you intend to do a whole metaphor i love it yeah i can make an analogy out of anything it's literally the only reason i'm on this podcast i don't think i really know anything about real estate i want to compliment you were rubbing off on andrew by the way happier than a four-year-old and a batman t-shirt not bad not bad thank you thank you that was awesome

But out there with some things aged like wine, other things age like milk. That was awesome, too. I wrote both of those decks. I'm stealing both of them. Isn't a block of cheese really just a loaf of milk, if you think about it? All right, we're way off topic. Thank you all for listening to the Bigger Pockets Real Estate podcast. Make sure you get all our new episodes by subscribing on YouTube, Apple, Spotify, or any other podcast platform.

Our new episodes come out Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. I'm the host and executive producer of the show, Dave Meyer. The show is produced by Ian K. Copywriting is by 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. Investment in any asset, real estate included involves risk. So use your best judgment and consult with qualified advisors before investing. You should only risk capital you can afford to lose. And remember, past performance is not indicative of future results. BiggerPockets LLC. disclaims all liability for direct, indirect, consequential, or other damages arising from a reliance on information presented in this podcast.