BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast - 68: Being a Superhero House Flipper, Investor, and Team Leader with Mark Ferguson

Episode Date: May 1, 2014

Today on the BiggerPockets Podcast we sit down with real estate investor Mark Ferguson to talk about his adventures in flipping and renting single family homes in the Colorado market. Mark is truly a real estate superhero: managing a real estate sales team, flipping houses, making offers, being a landlord, and writing about real estate all while working less hours than the normal employee (all while also having twin toddlers at home!) Mark has truly mastered the art of delegation, team building, and using systems to stay on track and find success in his business – and he shares all his secrets with us today, so don’t miss a second of this incredible show! In This Show, We Cover: Should you get your real estate license? Tips for buying properties on the MLS Using electronic signatures to get more deals Why Mark doesn’t buy multifamily properties How to find a niche and strategy for your investment business Finding the “sweet spots” in your market Working with Portfolio loans When should you hire an employee to manage your rentals? Why Mark chooses to pay off his loans Finding and managing contractors How Mark decides if he’ll flip or rent a house Finding time to fit in all the busy parts of life The team members who help Mark work less than 40 hours per week Why Mark wants to buy 100 houses How to invest when the bank says “no.” And lots more! Links from the Show BiggerPockets Success Stories Forum Five Tips to Get Great Deals On the MLS (Including Buying Houses on Friday…?) by Mark Ferguson The Real Estate Agent’s Ultimate Guide to Working with Investors BiggerPockets.com/meet How Life Coaching has Helped Improve My Business and Life by Mark Ferguson Books Mentioned in the Show The Millionaire Real Estate Investor by Gary Keller The Millionaire Real Estate Agent by Gary Keller Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill Tweetable Topics Take care of your real estate agent and they’ll take care of you. (Tweet This!) When looking for good real estate deals, speed is the name of the game. (Tweet This!) When investing in real estate – no one is going to do your job for you. (Tweet This!) Make goals – and then break them down into actionable steps to accomplish them. (Tweet This!) Connect with Mark Mark’s BiggerPockets Profile Mark’s Website: www.InvestFourMore.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Bigger Pockets podcast, show 68. You're listening to Bigger Pockets Radio, simplifying real estate for investors large and small. If you're here looking to learn about real estate investing, without all the hype, you're in the right place. Stay tuned and be sure to join the millions of others who have benefited from biggerpockets.com. Your home for real estate investing online. Hey, what's going on, everybody? This is Josh Dorkin. House that the Bigger Pockets podcast here with my

grouchy co-hosts, Mr. Brandon Turner. What's going on, Grouch Pants? What's going on, Josh? I'm not grouchy. Today is like the best day we've had in the world out here in Washington. It's like 80 and sunny and perfect. I'm not grouch on a day like today. So that's why you ditched work. That's why I left to go to Starbucks. Yeah. Nice. Yeah. No, but I do miss. I do miss the wonderful weather that we had down in California as well. That was wonderful.

Yeah, it was all right. You know, the wonderful, it rained almost every day. It rained for like an hour. You don't know what rain is. No, it rained, man. You don't know what rain is. Okay, listen, you know, Captain Depressive. Let's get to this thing here.

All right. So for those of you guys who don't know, Brandon and I were in Southern California. We were actually invited by Google to speak on their campus on the topic of real estate investing. And I think it went really, really well. It was a big honor. It was exciting to be there.

And I think we did well for ourselves. What do you think? I think so too. I think so too. Thank you, Jordan, for inviting us down. That was great. Yeah. Shout out to Jordan.

Jordan. Yeah, I liked it. I thought it wouldn't perfect. So I really liked the food. That was probably my favorite part. They like give everybody like free food. It was incredible. They do, which is cool.

But, you know, it was all right. It was all right. Maybe it wasn't as good as the Noki that we had at some authentic Italian place. that you put me to. It was not. It definitely was not. But it was good. I mean, I would not turn it down if I were offered it again.

I wish more companies offered free food for lunch for their employees. Clearly, you have an ax to grind, Brandon. All right, man. Well, we'll listen. Let's get onto the show here. Before we do, today, we've got a really good quick tip. Yeah, we got a quick tip for you guys. So today's quick tip is this.

Share your success stories in the bigger pocket. success forum and we'll be picking upcoming guests for the Bigger Pockets podcast based upon those success stories. We're going to link to the success story forum in the show notes at biggerpockets.com slash show 68. So whether you just did your first deal or your 100th deal, let us know about it, share it with the community, what went right, what went wrong, maybe a little bit about the journey. And if we like your story, we will reach out to you and see if you want to jump on as a guest here on the Bigger Pockets podcast. Otherwise, sharing your success story is really great for one other thing, which is building

credibility for yourself. As you share your successes and people hear about them, they realize you're out and about you're doing things, you're making it happen, and they're more inclined to want to work with you. So if you want more people to work with you, tell everybody about what you're succeeding at, tell people what you're doing right, and they're going to want to work with you. So make it happen, share your stories, share your successes, and that's today. quick tip. Cool.

Cool. All right. Well, let's get on to the show. Yeah, yeah. All right. Cool. Well, listen, today we're going to introduce you to somebody who you probably already know, real estate investor, Mark Ferguson.

Mark has been a contributor on the Bigger Pockets blog for a while now and is a real estate, I don't know, what do you want to call them? Like a semi-superhero or something or other. Yeah. doing a lot of stuff in real estate. He's flipping, landlording, running a real estate sales team, writing on his blog and on the bigger pockets blog. And he does all of it in less than 40 hours a week, which is supposed to be impressive to me, isn't it? Yeah. What was the last time you worked 40 hours on a week?

Never. You're like 90 hours a week. So imagine doing everything you do in 40 hours and having two little kids at home. I got three little kids at home and I do it in 90. Well, I well. What are you going to do? Okay, so Mark is a superstar. He's rocking it. And of course, today we're going to talk with him about how he does it all and also cover his journey towards his ultimate end-all be-all goal of buying 100 homes. Did you know your house gets bored when you leave? I can't actually prove that, but it probably misses out on the action. The footsteps, the late-night fridge raids. Yeah, when you're gone, your place is basically on unpaid. leave. It's sitting there in the dark thinking, I could be contributing right now. Your side room wants a side hustle. Even your Wi-Fi is like, we could be networking. You're on vacation, spending money like it's a sport while your staircase at home is fully capable of sending your

income upwards. Here's the twist. You can go on a trip and actually earn money. Airbnb makes that possible with the co-host network. If you're away for a while or have a secondary property, you can hire a vetted local co-hosts with real hosting experience to handle it all. A co-host can handle guest communications, it can manage reservations and keep things running smoothly so you don't have to check your phone between beach days. That means less stress and more time enjoying your trip. You can relax, knowing guests are taking care of and your place is in good hands. You travel, your house works. Everyone wins. If you're ready to host but could use some help, find a co-host at Airbnb.com slash host. A lot of property managers think their job is answering tenant emails and coordinating repairs.

That's not the job. The job of a property manager is protecting and growing your operating income and earning your trust while they do it. And that comes down to three numbers, occupancy, delinquency, and net promoter score. If those numbers slip, your income slips and your trust slips too. And most PMs don't hold themselves to performance standards. They focus on activity, not outcomes. Mind is different. They obsess over the metrics that actually grow your cash flow.

Go to mine.com slash show me to see how mine performs and get a month of management for free. Because if you're going to hire a property manager, hire one that manages your investment like an investment. Most investors spend all their time talking about their high level returns. But that's not the number that actually matters. What actually matters is what you keep after taxes, and that's where multifamily real estate quietly stands out. With built-in advantages like depreciation,

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Learn more at biggerpockets.com slash bam. So why don't we get to it? Mark, welcome to the show, man. Good to have you here. Thank you guys. I appreciate you having me on the show and I look forward to it. Awesome. Well, let's get started.

Why don't we start at the beginning? Because as Julie Andrews tells me, it's a very good place to start. Oh, my God. Did you really? How did you get started in real estate investing, Mark? Wow. Well, I was, when I was a kid, my dad, he wasn't really an investor so much as a real estate agent. And I used to sleep below his desk

when I was three years old and he'd be working in the office. So it was kind of my predestined. Well, to be honest, when I went to college and through high school, I never wanted anything to do with real estate. But I got out of college, had a degree in finance, could not find a job. This was 2001. and I said, hey, I'll go home. I'll work for my dad for a summer. Then I'll go find a real job. And that summer turned into 13 years of real estate. So.

Nice. And then my dad was a good summer job. Oh, yeah. It was great. My dad primarily sold houses as a realtor, but he also did a few fix and flips. And that's the part that I really loved doing. And it progressed from there.

and I bought my first long-term rental in 2010. Nice. So when you got into the business, what did you start doing? Did you start it as an agent? Yes. You know, I first started helping him with the fix and flips as well.

So he taught me, you know, where he bought them, fixing them up, you know, the real basics of it. And then while we were doing that, I got my real estate license.

And I started selling real estate. I think it was September, and I'd graduated in May. So pretty soon after I graduated, I started selling real estate. And I never really liked selling real estate that much. I liked the fix and flip. Nice. Yeah. Been there.

So did you start, you said you got your first long-term rental in 2010, but you also flip houses. So did you start flipping your own houses before that or was that after that? Like, what was your first deal of your own? my first deal of my own was that long-term rental in 2010. Okay. Because up until September of 2013, my dad and I worked together. So we flipped houses together that whole 12 years.

Okay. And then my first fix and flip was September of 2013 when I took over the entire business from him. So what was your role when you guys were working together? Do you pretty much do everything? or did you have any specific thing that you were doing? It progressed through the years from maybe looking at houses and driving by them to at the end I was almost doing everything. So I would find houses for us to buy.

I would coordinate with the contractors. I would put them in MLS. I would take pictures, pretty much everything at the end I was doing. And he supplied the money. Nice. Sugar Daddy. Yep. That's awesome.

And then ultimately you said you ended up taking over the business from your dad. Yes. Okay. Oh, right on. That's great. So let's go back a second. Let's talk about being an agent. Do you recommend others become an agent?

And if so, why? If not, why not? Yes. I do. Even though I didn't like being an agent when I first started out, I think the biggest problem was I was trying to follow what my dad did. and his business plan, not so much my own plan. And I never liked cold calling people. I never liked doing open houses, trying to reach out to new people to get business.

And then once I found my own niche, which was actually REO and HUD homes, I loved it. I could not get enough of it. And from the investors standpoint, man, it saves me so much money. It's ridiculous how much money I saved by being a real estate agent, buying, selling homes. and I know I get way more deals because I'm an agent because I can act so fast. Well, let's talk about that because this is something that people who listen to the show a lot know that I talk about that I've taken the class twice to get my real estate agent license and I still have not actually taken the test yet.

Something always comes up. Like the first time it was I decided I was going to flip house. The second time I decided I was going to be a blogger on bigger pockets instead. I think it's fear or failure maybe. Not fear. I'm like, oh, it's like two grand. a year to hold my license and I'm not going to be an agent. I won't make that back.

But then every single year I've kind of regretted it thinking I would have made 10 times that back by being an agent. I don't know. Maybe I undervalue what my potential was at the time. I didn't think I was going to buy as much real estate as I did. I don't know. So let's talk about like convince me, Mark. Like you say you can do things faster by being an agent.

How is that? What do you mean? Well, first off, if it makes you feel better, I've been around real estate my whole life and I failed my test twice. before I passed it. Oh, there you go. Mostly because I thought, hey, I know this.

It's no problem. I didn't really study. Not a good choice. But, you know, the questions they ask, you know, at the bottom of page, you know, 324 of the book, and they want to know how many centimeters it is between A and, yeah,

there's a lot of like real silly little questions that they ask. I wouldn't really feel too bad about that. I tell people, the questions they ask are meant to try and try and try. trick people. They're not meant to teach you about anything. They're meant to trick you. But yeah. No, so, but acting fast when I get deals, I buy, I'd say 95% of my properties off MLS. And when a property comes onto the MLS system, you know, I check it probably five to 10 times a day for new listings. And as soon as I see that price, it's like, okay, that's a good deal.

I can set up a showing. I can go look at it. And I can have an offer. submitted in less than two hours. So for me, I know that's probably my last three deals I got because I acted so fast. A couple of them were listed on a Friday. And for some reason, I just wrote a blog on Bigger Pockets about this. I got nobody else made offers until the Monday when I already had it under contract because they took the weekend off. So just, I mean, acting fast, I think is just a huge benefit.

I read that in your article, and I'll link to that in the show notes at BiggerPockets.com slash show 68. But in that article, you mentioned the Friday thing, and I thought, that's genius because it's so true. Everybody's like, by like Friday morning, everyone's checked out, especially if you're self-employed and the investors, they're all golfing or whatever. You can get an offer on a Friday and try to negotiate it on the weekend. You can, I mean, I thought that was a genius idea.

Yeah. Yeah, that's happened. I think my last two properties, I made an offer, these, they weren't listed, Friday morning, but actually Friday afternoon. And I'm dragging. I'm like, I don't want to drive 30 minutes to go see this house. But it's such a good deal. I'm going to, I have to do it. So I went out there, saw it. Like, okay, you know, had my assistant write up the contract. I signed it on docket sign. We had it to them the next day. They counted us. And I accepted. And they told me, hey, we had five more showings today and expecting at least one offer.

So you better accept this quick. I'm like, yeah, no problem. There you go. And, you know, acting fast is something that not only as an agent, but as an investor in general, you need to be prepared, right? I think a lot of new investors seem to find themselves losing potential deals because they're not ready to act fast. They don't know how to analyze properties.

they're not prepared. And when a good opportunity comes up, it takes them a little bit longer, which is totally understandable. But that's where the experience comes in and gives you the chance to scoop in and make offers on better deals more quickly. Yes, for sure.

And I always tell my agents and I have a joke where it doesn't even have to be an investor, but even an owner-occupant buyer, when they're first looking at a house and they see a great deal, we always say it takes at least one because almost everybody waits a couple days

talks it over with their family, talks it over with their lender, and it's gone. And it takes them that one deal to realize you've got to act on those good deals immediately. You can't wait two, three days for it.

You've just got to go for it. Sometimes it takes more than one, but usually at least one deal. Yeah, for sure. Just this morning there's a friend of mine on Bigger Pockets who sent me a text message like we met on bigger pockets, sent me a text message saying,

hey, there's a new triplex just came up in your town. I don't know how he saw before I did before my agent did. But anyway, I reached out and had an offer in this morning by like 10 a.m. Because I knew like it was $40,000 for a triplex. Like it brings in 1800 a month. It's so absurdly good that it's going to be gone with, it'll be gone by noon. I mean, I haven't heard back yet.

But, you know, like I had to get in quickly because in today's market where those deals that are just, you know, really, really good deals, They're gone in a heartbeat. So if you're not quick like that, you'll just miss out on them. So that was why you were late for work. Got it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Great deal if you get that one.

It would be, yeah, I don't know what the inside looks like, but I put a contingency on it, you know, inspection and I'll go check it out later. But whatever, we'll see. Nice, I think. I'll let everyone know how it comes in the next couple of years. Yeah, we'll see. Yeah, there you go. Cool.

All right, Mark. So let's talk about buying properties on the MLS. You know, I think a lot of people are struggling to find deals. on MLS. What gives you the advantage? Is it just your market? You're up in Greeley, Colorado, which is a farm country. It's what's at about two hours north, an hour and a half north of Denver. And is it just by virtue of where you are or are you doing something different than most folks that we hear from complaining? I think our market is really similar to other parts of the country that see the huge competition on MLS. Last year in the Greeley area, there's about 100,000 people in Greeley.

And we're actually an hour north of Denver, not an hour and a half. Oh, so sorry. I mean, you know, what happens is for those of you who are not from Colorado and you don't know how this works, when we get a windy day here in Denver, it starts smelling like cow manure. And what we say is we're like, oh, man, it smells like Greeley. I guess a storm is coming because it means the winds have gone around the mountains, started heading south, past Greeley where all the cow poop is, and basically, you know, comes down here and delivers it to us in Denver. So our weather is typically determined by the stench from Greeley coming

down to Denver. That's what we say about Tacoma. We call the Tacoma aroma. Nice. Yeah, when the wind's blowing the right way, it thinks up Western Washington. So, okay, it's an hour north. I stand correct. All right. But let's see. A year ago, we had, I think, 1,500 active listings on MLS in our Greeley Evans area, which is actually a suburb of Greeley. And this week, we had 250. So our inventory is just nothing. Owner occupants can't find a house to buy, let alone investors.

So it's not like we have a special market where there's an abundance of MLS deals. It's just being able to find them to act quickly and convince the seller that you're the best buyer for that house. And are they mostly, are they REOs that you're buying? Or are they private sellers? Or what kind of people are telling you? They're a mix of everything.

Our REOs are way down as well. Really, really few REOs, very few short sales too. I do have one REO under contract now for a fix and flip. And I've had three short sales under contract for six months that I don't know if they're ever going to go anywhere. We'll see. But most of my deals lately have been regular sellers or estate sales.

So how does it need work or people that just want to sell them fast? Yeah. And Denver's really tight too. I mean, the market here is crazy. I mean, there's nothing, nothing on the market. So the flippers I know in town here are all, they're all scrapping. I mean, they're really struggling to find any, any kind of opportunities. Hey, I have a question about if somebody is not an agent, for those people, you know,

maybe they want to become an agent, maybe you've convinced them, but they're not yet. How can they best work with their real estate agent? Like, how would you work with a client best to get those deals quickly? Because, I mean, real estate investor is not the only client for a real estate agent. So how do I convince my agent? Why did my friend from BP call me this morning before my agent called me? Why wasn't my agent calling me at 8 this morning instead of... That's a great question.

So how do I get him to do that and other people? Right. That's a great question and hard to answer. I'll be honest. I am the wrong agent for those investors. You know, I'm not going to be the one sourcing out deals to my investors either. really it's not always a bad thing to find a new young agent who's hungry and is looking for that deal. For one thing, they probably have time. If you're dealing with an REO agent or a big agent

who's doing a ton of deals a year, they're not going to be sending out deals the second they hit the market. But if you've got an agent who's only working with one or two clients and they need that commission check to live, they'll be searching MLS every day. As soon as they find a deal, they may send it to you. You know, you still want to make sure they know what they're doing. But when I was first starting out in the business, that's how I got my clients. When I was searching MLS, I wasn't searching for myself. I was searching for them and just doing everything I could to find them deal so I could get paid a commission check. I also think it helps to take care of your agent,

take them to lunch once in a while. If you want them to submit a bunch of offers for you, especially if they're low offers, you need to make it at least give them something back that says, hey, I'm not just using you to submit all these offers that will never get accepted. I do appreciate your work. That's a good idea.

Yeah, especially, you know, take them through a nice steak dinner versus McDonald's, right? Yeah. Right. I mean, it really is a good tip. I mean, I kind of like feel like I need to take my agent out, right? Because I mean, like, my agent, like he does stuff. I probably always have that impression of like, well, he works for me because I'm giving him all his commission.

But at the same time, he's putting a lot of offers that I know will probably never get accepted and that, you know, chances are. So I'm going to do that. I'm going to do that. I didn't mean to actually throw my agent under the bus earlier either. It was like 8 a.m. when the BP guy told me in 9 a.m. when he did when he got in the office. So, you know, that was pretty good on his part. But just in case he's listening, you know, the show, I got to make sure he knows I love him. But, but, but I mean, truth be told, you know, how many offers are they writing versus the commission check? And, you know, Brandon, you're a savvy investor, right?

I mean, you said on previous shows that you don't even have to call your agent and get on the phone. You text them, I want to put an offer in. Here's the price. And they write an offer. So, you know, you're not wasting their time. And, you know, if you write 10, 15 offers and one of them closes, they've probably spent as much. if less time with you than they do on a typical buyer, don't they? I would imagine so, yeah.

I mean, this morning is a good example, right? And this is something, Mark, you brought up a little bit ago. When you're looking at a property, you do the electronic signature, and you can offer in the field immediately right away, and you can make it happen quick. So that's a tip. That's a tip I would throw out there as well, that if people want to work with an agent quickly, like you said,

find an agent that can do electronic signatures. Like exactly this morning, my agent emailed me, then he called me, and then I texted them back. because I was talking with you, Josh. Oh, yeah. How about that? Yeah, somewhere in that process, like he emailed me over the offer. I emailed it back to him. And within, you know, it took 15 minutes for us to have an offering.

So, yeah, that's my tip to piggyback on your tip there, Mark. I think, Mark, that's probably, you know, that would explain why people should look at, you know, agents who are technically savvy, right? I mean, if you've got an agent who's still, you know, working with paper docs and doesn't get social media and just doesn't get the speed thing, They're probably not the best agent for investors, right? Right. One of my agents was working with another agent,

and she was emailing her a contract, and she didn't hear back for a day. And it turns out the other agent didn't have a smartphone and checked her email once at night. Oh, man. And it's like, if you're working with an investor who wants to submit offers and speed is the game, not only is she probably not going to be able to submit that offer very quick,

but if the seller comes back and says, hey, we have another offer, or hey, we have multiple offers, you may not even hear until another offer is accepted. And right now, so many sellers or agents are using email primarily. They aren't even calling people anymore. So yeah, your agent has to be tech savvy.

And I think, you know, to that, I think that's dangerous too. The email thing, that's assuming that somebody's going to be sitting in front of a computer when you email them and, you know, it reminds me of a story. I had a lunch meeting with a guy and I went and I showed up and the guy never showed up. And I'm sitting in the restaurant. It's like, you know, seven minutes after we were supposed to meet and I start going through my email.

And he had sent me an email like a half hour before we were supposed to meet and said, hey, I'm not going to make it. Instead of calling me, instead of texting me, he emailed me. And so I showed up and I'm sitting there. and I'm, you know, I was, I was livid. You know, I mean, that's not the way. Were you throwing food? I threw food at everybody in the restaurant.

Yeah, I was like a petulant child. No, I mean, but, but. I think a lot of people just don't get it. They still don't get it. Like, email is great for communication, but there's a lot of stuff that has to be done through texting or a phone call. And, you know, the same goes for somebody

who's slightly less savvy. Yeah, they have to start getting to the email because people expect it. Yeah. And whenever I make an offer on a house, I'll email it in, and then I'll always follow up with a call, or I'll have my assistant call them, make sure, hey, did you get this offer?

Talk to them. Do you have any other offers? Get as much information as they can. So, yeah, I never depend on just an email or just a call. I always try and do both. Confirm and verify, right? Exactly. Yeah.

All right. So real estate agents, you know, should they, be investing in real estate as well, or should they just be doing this commission thing where they're selling properties and making that 3% from deal to deal? Well, they should be investing, of course. I mean, if you think about it, real estate agents are self-employed. So they have no benefits. They have no health insurance.

They have no 401K plan. It's all up to them to bring. provide their own retirement, their own savings, which I think is how a lot of agents get in trouble. But I think buying rental properties is the best way to provide retirement, especially for a real estate agent. Yeah. They have the tools already and everything already lined up. So this seems like it's easier for them to make that transition. But I mean, I know probably, you know, 30 or 40 agents in my area that I, you know, maybe interact with on a, you know, a semi-regular basis.

and I know two that own real estate, like that own rental property. Why do you guys think that is? I mean, I'm really, really curious about it because when I was an agent, I wanted to invest and I was investing, you know? And so I don't really understand why more agents aren't jumping in to become real estate investors, particularly given the access. Maybe it's just the lack of knowledge or maybe they don't have money and don't realize that you can get into the game without cash.

Well, a lot of cash. Yeah. I would say the same statistics with agents I know as well. I mean, maybe one out of 20 invests. And I don't know why either it's so low. I think it might be, it's just, it matches kind of the general population. Of people who actually save money and invest themselves. Most people don't save money.

They don't invest. They just kind of live paycheck to pay. check and assume things will work out. Yep. Makes sense. I think that's a really good way looking at it. Real estate agents are just people like general. They don't realize that they could actually be an investor like their clients are.

But I know a lot of real estate agents, they say they want to invest. I hear that all the time. But so does the general population also, right? They watch the flipping shows and I say, man, I'd like to do that. But then they don't actually. So I think probably this is a good time for me to plug that we actually have a guide for real estate agents. It's free.

It's online. It's just a massive epic long blog post called the ultimate. real estate agent's guide to working with investors. Working with investors. Yeah, you can get it at biggerpockets.com slash agent guide. Yeah, if you're a real estate agent, check it out. It teaches you how to work with investors like us. So anyway, why don't we move on?

We talked about your first deal was a rental property. Can we actually kind of dig into that a little bit? You said it was in 2010. What was that first property? What it looked like and what did you buy it for? It was a small cookie-cutter. two story built in 2005, I believe. And I had just, I'd wanted to invest for probably two years, but I had problems saving up for the down payment. You know, I was going to 20% down route.

Finally had my money saved up, been searching for a deal. This one popped up. It was in a state sale. I made an offer on it. I thought it was a great offer. Waited for response. the agent calls back and says, hey, we accepted another offer, sorry. Like, you guys never told me there were any other offers. I would have offered a lot higher. So I wasn't real happy, and I let the other agent know that. And three weeks later, he calls back and says,

hey, the other contract fell apart. Do you still want this for your offer price? I said, of course. Like, okay, I'm not going to tell anybody else it's yours. So I ended up, yeah, I'm like, sweet, it worked out better for me because I would have paid more if he told me there were other offers to, start with. But I don't suggest other agents deal that way. So I bought that for 969, I believe. It needed about

$2,000 in work, just a little bit of paint, some fixtures, and some appliances, and I ended up renting it for $1,000.50 a month right away. right now to show you what our rents have done. We just re-rented it for $1,300 a month. And I think we had seven applicants in the first day. Wow. So, yeah, we might have been able to get more than that. But, and it's, yeah, it's been a great rental.

It did, really got hit by a massive hailstorm over the summer. So that house had $12,000 in damage from the hailstorm, new roof. and it had vinyl siding, so two sides of the house had to be recited. Insurance cover all that. Exactly. Yep, that's what the insurance is for. Okay, well, good deal. Yeah.

Hey, you know, Mark, you had talked about the agent, you putting in the offer and not hearing back and, you know, later finding out that there were other offers in. Is that something that's typical of agents? Are they performing, you know, are they doing their job by doing that? or is it really something where they're supposed to let everybody involved know that there's other offers in? And ultimately, the final question is, what can investors or traditional buyers even do to improve that line of communication to make sure they don't find themselves in a situation like you were where you're putting in an offer and you're just kind of, okay, sorry, you lost it. Well, I didn't have a chance to even fight.

Yeah, so in Colorado, our listing contracts have a spot where you mark. I will notify other buyers if multiple offers are received or if we have other contracts. So technically that agent is supposed to tell each person who submits an offer if they already have a contract or if they get more contracts on the house. I would say most of the time agents do notify buyers that there are more offers every once in a while. they won't. Usually I notice it's kind of a lazy agent, someone who just wants to get the deal done and move on what you can do about it. I mean, whenever I submit an offer, I always say, hey, please let me know if you have any other offers or if you get any more offers just to reiterate. It's very important to me that, you know, I might be willing to raise my offer if you get more

offers on it. There's not a whole lot else you can do except hope that agent is acting ethically. And of course, report them if they're not. Yeah, and I don't know. I mean, you can report them. I don't know if there's a whole lot that will be done in that situation. Probably not. But you can try. Yeah, right on.

No, I think it's one of those things that a lot of people don't realize that it's part of their job to actually do that. And so if they're not, you know, you need to know how to handle yourself. Right. And they're doing a disservice to their seller as well. Oh, yeah. I mean, they could be costing them thousands of dollars by not telling other buyers. there's multiple offers on this house. Absolutely.

Absolutely. Well, cool. Good advice. Yeah. Well, hey, let's move on and talk more about the Reynolds. I know we kind of want to focus on two aspects here, flips and rentals. So why don't we start with the rentals since we are already talking about that first one? So first of all, do you mind me asking how many rentals do you have so far, like since that first one?

I have 10 total. So I just bought my 10th one last month. Nice. Right on. Congrats. And what kind of are these all single family? Are they multifamily? They are all single family.

Okay. Is that because that's what the deals have or is that all you buy? So far, that's all I buy. I am open to great deals, whether they're single family or multifamily. I don't know if it's a Colorado specific thing, but multifamily in my area has worse returns than single family. So it's just a no-brainer to me. Part of that might be because I can get better deals on single-family homes. There's more of them. You know, there's more distressed single family homes, more estate sales.

The multifamily, there just aren't that many of them. And very few ever come up for sale. Hey, Mark, you mentioned a couple times estate sales. And you said you find those on the MLS. Can you, for those people who don't quite fully understand what that is, explain what an estate sale and how would they actually find that specifically? Right. Yeah.

Well, estate sale is where the owners of the home have passed away, and the home is transferred possession into their heirs, and they now are selling the home. And to be honest, all of the estate sales I have bought, I did not know were estate sales until I had my contract accepted. So there's really nowhere on MLS that says estate sale or distressed sale. It's just one of those things where it's a great price. And I made an offer that I found out, oh, that's why it was such a great price. They wanted to sell it quickly. Gotcha. Makes sense.

You know, the thing you mentioned about in your area, multifamily doesn't make sense. I think that's a really important point we should touch on here, is that every area is different. I mean, people oftentimes want to pick a strategy based on what they heard on the bigger podcast or what they read in a book. But the fact is, sometimes certain strategies do not work. multifamilies work well in my area. Single families work okay. And in your area, it's opposite of that. So I think it's important for people to just know that every market is different.

Try to figure out what works in your market and make a strategy fit with where you live. Good advice. Thank you. Thank you. So do you have any tips on how can people figure out what their market? If they're not an agent, how do they know what's good in their market and bad in their market and what's their local area like? They've just got to get out there and look at houses.

you know, there's really no shortcut. You can look on Zillow. You can look at listings online, but you've really, you've got to get out, look at houses, look at Craig's list to see what rental rates are. You know, just you've got to get out there, get in the market, see what's for sale, see what's selling, and then try and match that up with what rent rates are

and kind of make the numbers, you know, once you start figuring out what certain properties rent for, you can figure out where those sweet spots are that rent for the most compared to what price you have to pay. Yeah. I don't think there's any shortcut to just getting out there in the market. And that's, I mean, that's all part of the job, right? Being a real estate investor, do have to understand your market. You know, you should be able to walk into a house and say, okay, well, this, this house is

overpriced or this is underpriced. I mean, you should be able to just without even thinking, you know, know what the comps are on any property that comes up in your farm, which is kind of the area that you're focusing on, right? Exactly. And going back to the real estate agent aspect, a lot of them don't invest themselves. So you can't necessarily rely on them to tell you what a good investment is if they aren't investing themselves. It's something the investor themselves has to know and has to figure out. Yeah, and I think that's another thing that in the agent guide that Brandon had mentioned, you know, we really want to get that the hands of every single agent out there because we felt that thing with information about how to invest, how to analyze deals, how to work the numbers,

all that stuff. You know, when new investors rely on a real estate agent who doesn't have the knowledge, they can put themselves in a dangerous position. Yes. I just talked to an investor today who started fixing fixing, fixing, fixing, flipping homes with a realtor who told him what deals to buy, what they'll be worth, and he ended up losing $20,000 on one deal. Because, yeah, I don't know

either the agent didn't know what the values were, or they just wanted to make a sale. Yep. But yeah, you've got to, even if you trust your agent, you have to be able to confirm his information. I think that's a really, really, really valuable tip of that.

You can't just rely. I mean, like, you can't have any, when you're a real estate investor, nobody else is going to do your job for you. Like, even if you have people on your team, which I know I want to talk to you about because you're like the master of having good teams, but we'll get to that. So, but even if you have good people on your team, you still like nobody's going to do your job for you. And I think that's just what it comes down to. So very cool. Well, why don't we talk about funding? How are you funding?

You've got 10 properties. First of all, I thought there was a rule that said you can't buy more than four. And so how do you have 10 and how are you funding them? There are no rules. No. No, when I first had four properties, I went to my bank and they're like, you can't lend on more than four. That's a rule. They said that.

I'm like, that doesn't make any sense. So I started looking around researching and it may be a rule, but it's a rule for individual banks. There's no law. There's no lending guideline that says you can't have more than four loans. But most of the big banks, Citibank, they won't. lend on more than four properties. So what I did is I found a local lender, a portfolio lender, which means they keep the loans in-house.

So they lend their own money. They don't sell the loans to investors. They keep them in-house. They can lend on as many properties as they want. They still have to follow guidelines, you know, the laws, but they're much more flexible on who they loan to, how much they loan. and I can get more than 10 loans. They told me I will be able to get as many loans as I want

as long as I can still qualify for them. Nice, nice. And we've talked about it a couple of times on the Bigger Pockets podcast before, and I'm a huge fan of portfolio loans. I've been using them the last few properties I bought because it just works. And people wonder,

so why don't we ask this question, I'll ask you, and even though we've covered it in other shows, but how do you find a portfolio lender? How do you find a guy that will do more than 10 properties? The first thing you do is you ask everybody you know in the real estate business. So investors, real estate agents, title companies, other lenders, just ask them, hey, what bank are investors using to get their loans?

Because many people, they won't have any idea what a portfolio lender is. They won't know what that term means. Yep. But they'll know who investors are using to get their loans from. So if that doesn't work, check your local banks, local credit unions, call them up. Again, you might have to ask for their commercial loan department, tell them what you're looking for. Don't just say, hey, I want a portfolio lender because they might be a portfolio lender and not know that term themselves. Yep.

That's good advice too, by the way. Yeah. And then, you know, you can always search online too. type in portfolio lender for your state and see what pops up. It might take a few hours of searching, but it's well worth it if you find one. Yeah. Another just tip that people can use to find portfolio lenders

that people have done for me is they sent me a PM, a private message on Bigger Pockets, because they knew I was investing in Weston, Washington, said, hey, Brandon, where are you getting your loans from? And I say, oh, this is the bank I use. This one's good, too, and here's another one. And it took me 10 seconds to reply to that private message. So, I mean, things like that,

you just go to biggerpockets.com slash meet. You can find people in your zip code or your area and then just find somebody who's active who looks like they know what they're doing and ask them who they're using. I mean, those referrals and those recommendations can be great. So anyway.

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Well, hey, all right. So what kind of condition are the properties in, the rental properties when you're buying them? They vary greatly. Like, that first one I bought was pretty good condition. The next one I bought needed $18,000 in work. Oh, wow. So it was paint, carpet, kitchen counters, landscaping, had a fireplace in the basement where the chimney went up through the master bedroom closet.

So that was pretty safe. Put your clothes next to a chimney. So we took that out. Needed quite a bit. So I love the ones that don't need the work because it takes less cash, but usually the great deals are the ones that need the work. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Cool. Well, so what are you doing in terms of management? Are you managing yourself or do you have a property manager? I managed myself until September. Okay. So when I took over the team from my father, I actually hired a new person on my team and one of his jobs was to learn how to do property management. So I kind of helped him out and he is now handling, I'd say, 80% of the work.

So does he work for your company? Is he worked for you or is he an outside property manager that works for lots of different landlords in your area? Nope. He works for me. He's on my team. He only does property management on my properties. Right on. So he has a lot of other tasks. He's a real estate agent as well. So it's just kind of a one part of his job is managing those properties. Right on. And what point do you think it's okay for somebody to do that, you know, hire somebody in-house versus outsourcing to a, to a, uh, third party. You know, if I didn't have him doing other things for me, I don't think it would make any sense

at all to hire him just for property management. That's a good question. Put you on the spot. Come on. Yeah. In-house, boy, 50 single family properties. I don't know. Multifamily, it might, hmm, I'll think about that more.

Right on. Right on. Well, at some point, you need to be generating enough. to be able to pay for them. I mean, that's ultimately probably the right answer. Figure out how many units you have, how much you're paying a PM. And if it's coming close to the salary of a potential property manager in-house, I guess you could just replace and try and hire someone.

Right. That would be my thought. My tip with that is what I did is I scaled up small or I'm scaling up small. So when I had too many properties that I could handle on my own, I hired, oh, my wife took over instead of doing a lot of it. then when it got too much for her just to handle, we hired a part-time assistant to help, and that's working anywhere between five and 20 hours a week. And as we get more and more properties that we're looking after, we'll get more and more hours and maybe another person

eventually. So you don't have to have a full-time in-house person immediately. You could do part-time. Yeah. That makes sense. All right, cool. Well, how about what kind of cash flow do you look for in a rental property? You know, my real basis has been five, $500 a month is what I really want on my properties. I know a lot of people see my numbers and say, I don't understand how you can possibly get $500 a month cash flow when you bought it for $100,000 and you're renting it for $11 or $1,200. But one thing I like to point out is Colorado has some of the lowest taxes in the country. So, hey, seriously, quiet. On my last property I bought, I paid 90, $39,000 for it. And my taxes are $362 a year. Wow. Wow. Yeah, that's crazy.

Yeah. And Colorado. That is, that is not Denver taxes. No, that one's really low. I don't know why that one's so low. But yeah, usually they're around $5,600 a year on a $100,000 purchase on my rentals. Nice. Yeah, that's much better. That's about half what I'm paying. So, cool. So you want five, is that after, I mean, paying everything out Is that kind of gross or is that your net cash flow? No, I look at that as my net. So after paying taxes, insurance, my mortgage and expenses, I've also been really lucky to have very, very few vacancies,

but I still do factor in percentage for vacancies and maintenance. But I've been pretty good at hitting that figure over all my properties. What about like CAPEX? Are you figuring that into the cash flow equation for yourself? Or now? No, I'm not. Okay. Okay.

So, I mean, if we were here to spread that sucker out over 30 years, we're looking at different numbers. You might have new roof in 20 years or something, but. Yeah, I mean, I am taking a percentage of, for maintenance. I don't know exactly if it's high enough. I usually do 10 or 15% of the rent. I usually fully repair my properties before I rent them. So to start out with, there's usually not much.

Of course, there's always some surprises. Yeah. But they should be pretty close to that over the year. And other factors, I'm paying off properties. I paid off my first property this year so that increased the cash flow significantly on that one. That was actually my next question was, are you paying off these properties?

You are? Okay. Why is that? Why are you not just letting them, like, you know, I mean, people argue that point all the time on bigger pockets than elsewhere. The smarter to pay off your properties completely, kind of the Dave Ramsey approach is get out of debt completely

or leverage to the hilt and, you know, rock as much leverage in mortgages as you can. So why do you choose the payoff of rentals? Well, to start with, I love debt. I'm not going to lie. I love debt because it makes me more money. I can buy a lot more houses by getting loans and I can paying cash. The biggest reason I,

what I do is I take my cash flow from all my properties and I use it to pay off one loan at a time. And in a perfect world where I knew I could get unlimited 30, fixed rate mortgages for the rest of my life, I wouldn't pay a dime extra on any property. I would just collect cash flow. But like you said, you know, right now my portfolio lender said they'll loan on as many properties as I want. I don't know if that policy will be there forever.

They could change it next year. They could go out of business. If something happens and all of a sudden I'm stuck at 10 mortgages, I can't buy any more properties. So it's kind of just a balance of trying to, you know, keep a small amount as mortgage as I can while still purchasing as many properties as I can. And then I'm not relying on my cash flow to buy new properties. I have enough income to do that. So it's really a specific strategy for my situation. I don't know if it works well for the majority of people out there. the mortgage interest deduction play into your equation too? Because does it make sense to hold on to,

you know, have some kind of note to be paying off so that you can write off the mortgage? Or is that just kind of an irrelevant part of the equation for you? I've never understood that logic because sure, I get a write off the interest on the mortgage, but if I'm not making that mortgage payment, my income is going to be much more than the tax savings I had with that mortgage payment. So I'm making more money if I don't have a mortgage payment, even though I'm paying more taxes. So to me, that does not have any effect at all in my strategy. Yeah, I mean, the math should be pretty simple. Are you making more money?

Or, you know, when they take your taxes out, which is bigger and you go with the strategy that's going to net you more cash in your pocket, right? Exactly. Yeah. Right on. So we've been talking about these rentals and it's interesting. Lots of tips and advice there. want to transition to flips.

So how are you funding your flips then? Are you using the same portfolio lenders? Are you using partners? Are you using hard money? What are you doing there? I am using the same portfolio lender. So it's kind of a mixture. I've heard some awesome deals out there.

People are getting from portfolio lenders for their flips. Mine is not, I think mine's a great deal, but it doesn't finance as much as some other loans would. So I am able to do 75% of the purchase price with my portfolio lender. And their rate right now is 5 and a quarter on those loans for one year loan. I think it's one and a half points. So what does that mean 75% of the purchase price? So you buy a house for 100,000 it needs 20,000 and the after is 150.

Let's just use a simplified example. What is that 75%? How does that work out? It's $75,000. So I can't factor any repairs. The ARV is not considered. It's just how much I pay for the house. Okay.

So if I pay $100,000 for it, they'll loan me $75,000 on it. And the rest of the money you're coming out of pocket with. Right. And I have, my sister actually provides me with some private money. It's great rate. I think she's charging me 6%. So I use that. And then I've over the years saved up kind of a bank.

bankroll, I like to call it, to, yeah, fund repairs, fund down payments, take care of all the other expenses. Gotcha. That's great. Okay, here's a question that I ask a lot because I struggle with it a lot. How do you find, and how are you finding good contractors? Oh, it's tough. We actually had to stop using one recently because he just lost touch with his workers, but

we generally use a general contractor who will handle most of the repairs and himself. And this guy was great because he knew the light fixtures, the paint colors, the everything we did. He knew it. We barely had to talk to him for what to do in a house. But then he ended up having some health problems, hired a couple new guys who didn't know what they're doing. He wasn't at the properties. He wasn't keeping track. All of a sudden, I'm going out to a property eight times thinking it's done and the work isn't done yet and the work is done just horrible. So it's really a constant struggle to find great contractors who won't gouges you on prices. Recently, I just hired a new contractor who I found through Home Depot.

And the way I found him was Home Depot has their contractor where they'll do work for you. And I called them up, say, hey, can you give us some bids on some properties? And I'm like, okay, sure. The guy shows up, says, you know, to be honest, we're going to be more expensive than local contractors, but we can do some stuff cheaper. I said, all right. I'm like, do you know any contractors? And he said, I can't recommend any,

but I can tell you who comes into our store at 6 a.m. every day. And he gave me a list of three guys. I'm like, awesome. That's similar to Jay Scott's advice from his episode, which is be at Home Depot at 6am and see who shows up. Yep. Yep. Great. Awesome.

Yeah, that's great. Cool. That's great. Well, what about managing those contractors? Like, if you're managing a flip, Are you actually personally doing that? Do you have somebody on your team that does it? Or how do you deal with the day-to-day?

My wife actually does a lot of it. Oh, cool. So she loves to see the houses and decide what to fix, what to replace. So she does a lot of the day-to-day picks out materials, decides how much needs done if it needs granite counters or if it just needs, you know, regular cheap Home Depot counters. So she does a lot of that. she um you know our contractors text so she'll text them tell them what what she wants so she does a lot

of that and i am also going to start having another one of my assistants help her out with that too because we're starting to get pretty busy on that end right on that's great so where then are the holes right you said this one contractor just wasn't doing their job and what you know how often i guess do you need to be visiting a job site, particularly with a new contractor, until you can be comfortable, you know, until you know that they're kind of on the ball. They're doing what they're supposed to be doing. Do you have to show up every day, you know, three times a day just to make sure you're not getting robbed? I mean, what do you need to do? You know, I don't think you have to be there that often. I think the most important thing is to always get a bid beforehand. So always have

a written bid, make sure everything is in writing. Everyone's on the same page. They all know what is expected to be done. And then, you know, with a new contractor, I'd say two times a week, although I doubt I would go out there that much. But to be safe, I would say two times a week to make sure that things are being done in a timely manner and they're done correctly. I mean, it amazes me how often things will be written down that don't get done. Yeah.

Wow. Yeah. Yeah. I tell you, I mean, I don't think there's a chance in hell I could wait, go twice a week. I mean, I think personally I'd be there every day until I was comfortable, but that's just me being me. What about you, Brandon? What would you do with a new contractor? How often would you be out there?

I don't know. A couple of times to get them started and then... Yeah. Yeah. You can usually tell pretty quickly, I think, what kind of contract is they're going to end up being. But I don't know. It's a struggle for me constantly. I never...

Well, it's a struggle for everybody. It's a struggle for everyone. Yeah. You guys, we're not alone. I sometimes feel like this is like support group, you know, like bad contractors anonymous or something. Oh, man. And then we all get slammed by the contractors.

And every time we talk about this stuff, you always get the contractors. They're like, oh, I do a good job, man. Yeah. We can't afford that guy. So that's the problem. Yeah, you're charging six times retail, right? Yeah.

All right. So what about selling the flips? Yeah. Are you prepping them for sale before, before you're done? Are you listing them while you're still working on them? I know a lot of the lot of flippers go and first do landscaping and curb appeal before they even touch the inside just to get people excited in the neighborhood. What's your what's your theory on selling these things? In our market I put them in MLS and that's no. We I have put up you know for for sale by owner sign

kind of at the end of the rehab just to see if we get any calls. and we can sell it ourselves without paying a commission. And really, that's the extent of it. I don't have any real secrets or tips to getting it done early. I really should work on that myself because that's probably my weak point. Do you stage them at all? I don't stage them at all. Gotcha.

I've staged probably half of mine and the other half I haven't. And I don't know if I've seen a difference. It's too hard for me to tell, like, you know, statistically am I seeing them sell faster? I don't know. Who knows? Like the ones I don't stage and they take a long time to sell, like I look back, I'm like, well, I should have staged. But then other ones I don't stay

and they sell right away. I'm like, I don't know. Anyway, what about final question about the flipping is what is the minimum profit that you usually look for in a flip? Actually, I have two more questions. Sorry, that's not the last time. But the first one is what is minimum profit you look for? I usually look to make at least

25,000. So, my sweet spot right now seems to be in the $70,000 to $100,000 purchase price range. So I'm looking to make at least 25 hoping for more. And lately we've been averaging about $35,000, I think, profit. That's great. Not bad, yeah. That's great.

All right. My last question about the flipping then is how do you actually decide if you're going to flip a property or rent a property? Oh, great question. my criteria for renting is actually much stricter than for flipping. And it boils down primarily to the location. I want to be in the best rent-to-value ratio location I can find. And I'm lucky that that happens to be within my hometown in Greeley. And so I want houses in Greeley.

I'd love to have them needing as little work as possible. and I prefer houses that are as new as possible, although most of them are about 30 to 40 years old, but I try to stay away from houses older than 50 years just because maintenance can really creep up on you. And as far as the flips, I'm just, my main goal is to meet that 25,000 profit, and I'm going probably a 40-mile radius around my town.

You know, I look at the age, but it's not nearly as important to me because I'm going to be selling the house. The repair cost isn't as important because once I sell the house, I'm going to be getting that money back. You know, with a rental, the only way to get that money back is to refinance the home. So it's, I'd say there's probably a, boy, four to one ratio of flips to rentals I buy. Okay.

That makes sense. I mean, I think that is important to define your criteria and you can be a lot more strict with the ones that are, you're going to hold for a long time. I mean, I have some of my older rental properties. They're just irritating because they're 100 years old. So, like, things are constantly breaking a lot more than my newer property. So I think that's a good age is definitely an important thing to look at.

Definitely. Cool. All right. So, I mean, look, it sounds like you do a lot of stuff. You're busy aging. You flip houses. You're a landlord. You blog on your side.

You write for bigger pockets. Oh, my God. I'm getting tired of saying. You engage. You know, you're connecting on the forums. You got a wife. How do you have time to do all this stuff? I also have twin two-year-olds too. Wow. All right. Crazy time. Busy, busy, busy, busy, man. Well, the first thing I'll say... Like a super investor. I probably work 35 hours a week. So I am not... Just with your real estate agent job or everything. He's talking just about the twins, Brandon. I would say everything real estate involved.

So my rentals, my flipping, my house selling. I work 35 hours a week, maybe another five hours blogging and writing, which isn't as much a job for me as it is kind of a hobby and something fun to do. So, I mean, the key is having a team. There's no way I could do a quarter of what I do without people to help. And I'm just a strong advocate of as soon as you, you can hire someone to help you with tasks that you don't like doing, the better your life is going to get and the happier you're going to be.

So what does that look like for you? I mean, we now you've got the guy who's the property manager who's doing a couple other things. Who else is on your team? Who do you work with? And what do they do? What are their roles? Right.

So I have nine people on my team. So let's hear. One. Three. them are just real estate agents. So they work with buyers and sellers. They don't really help me with my business. They do their own thing. I pay for some other expenses and get a cut of their commissions. So you're a broker as well then? I'm not. Well, technically I'm a broker, but I'm not the broker of my own office. Okay. So I've got a broker at your office who these

agents are working under and you as the owner of the company gets a collect, the piece of the commissions as a result. This is starting to sound sexy here. Hold on. Yeah. So the broker is over all the agents. And within, so pro-realty is where I work. Within pro-realty, you have agents or you can have a team too. So I have a team that's under that broker. So everybody on my team, those three agents,

if they sell a house, it technically goes through me and I get paid and then pay them after I get paid, if that makes sense. Yeah, yeah, got it. So they don't really, they aren't working individually for that broker. They're on my team and I'm working under that broker. Okay, yeah, that makes sense. So I have another full-time assistant who is the first assistant I hired. She's been with me four years, I think.

And so she does, she started out helping me with EPOs, which are broker price opinions. do a lot of those for banks and REO companies. He's great at that. She helps me with valuations. She is also licensed. So she does a few of her own deals a year. Helps with expenses, just a lot of different things. So then I also have another full-time assistant who handles contracts,

paperwork, dealing with the title companies, helping out with some of my ARR. and HUD's putting houses in MLS. So he was my, basically my dad's full-time assistant, and now he's turned into my full-time assistant as well. So he's the one who writes contracts for me whenever I see a great deal. And then I also have the person I hired who helps the property management. He is also kind of the team manager. So he helped me set up payroll. He got us all legal as far as taxes, keeps track of what's going on with the team, our numbers, how many houses we're selling. He's also a licensed agent, also does the property management, and then he also helps

out with the blog side too. He was actually worked at my portfolio lender a few years ago and helped them with their website. I went to college with him, so we've been great friends for a long time. and then my cousin helps with accounting and another cousin helps with drive-by inspections on homes and then my dad is still on our team too as an agent. He doesn't do as much now but he still sells a few houses. Okay, very cool, very cool. And that's something that I struggle with a lot and I think a lot of investors do

and that's the whole idea of a team and building, getting people to do work for you. So do you have any tips for hiring, making that first hire? How do you know you're hiring the right person? I know right now bigger pockets is hiring. So I'm sure Josh is probably interested as well. How do you know you're putting in the right? I am interested.

This has been impossible. It's really hard to find good people to work for you. I got to tell you. I mean, you know, Brandon, I don't know why he's still there. No, I mean, Brandon, I just got like I count my blessings that we found Brandon. and some of the other people we've got, but, you know, finding new people is, it's just so tedious in my business. And I know, you know, it's got to be the same.

I've been really lucky that I've found great people. But the first thing I always do is ask around other agents, anybody I know in the business, you know, who's looking for work? Do you know of anybody? And my first assistant was actually working for my sister, who used to have a property management company. but no longer does. So she was kind of phasing her out.

She needed more work. So I interviewed her. My sister said she was awesome. So that was a no-brainer. And she's been great. Another person, another agent had said this person was looking for a job. They've been in the industry for a long time. Very computer savvy.

I interviewed them. They've worked out great. So, I mean, I haven't done a whole lot except ask people that I know. who's looking for a job. Yeah. And I think word of mouth is probably the best way to find somebody. Oh, yeah. So definitely cool.

All right. Well, I really actually, I would love to spend like an hour just talking about building a team, but we don't really have time. So let me move on to the last question I have here in kind of our main section of questions before we get to the fire round. And that is, what are your long-term goals with real estate? I know something about 100 houses you've written about. Can we talk about that? Yeah. About a year and a half ago, I really got into goal setting, planning my life, just writing everything down.

And it really just boosted my whole career and everything. But my biggest goal is to buy 100 single family homes by January of 2023. So my first goal when I started buying rentals was to buy 30. And I figured, hey, this is doable. You know, I can buy three a year for the next 10 years, no problem. you know, it seems like a good goal. Then when I started to look at it, it's not really challenging me

if I knew I could reach three houses a year. That's what I thought, man, I've got to bump this up. I made it 100 houses. I have no idea how I'll do it. But if I've got that huge goal, maybe I'll figure it out. Nice. And so you're pushing yourself. I mean, it's, it's, you, you have these attainable goals

and then you've got these quasi-onattainable goals. And you're using, you know, you're looking at the realistic ones, ensuring that you're meeting those and then setting these kind of tougher goals and saying, hey, you know, if I really kick butt, I can get those. Exactly. Yeah. And I think, I mean, I can see how I improve my business almost immediately, setting those huge goals and taking over my father, you know, from everything was something I had in the back of my mind for a few years, but never they had the guts to approach him about it or really figure out how to do it. And then once I started going through this kind of transformation,

is like, you know, I can really do this. And I talk to him and he's like, you know, I've been thinking about it too. I think this is a good time. So it worked out great. That's cool. That's cool. Now, do you, are you one of the, like, you recommend writing your goals down? Do you think it's okay just to have them in your head?

I mean, when people are planning their goals, how should they do that? You've been through goal training. I know with like, what was it, a Jack? Something. Canfield. Yeah, Jack Canfield. Yeah. So, like, what do you recommend people for setting goals?

What should they do? I think you should write everything down, really. not just because you see it, but like it's weird, but the actual act of writing it, it's like it burns it into your brain. And you think about it while you're writing them down, you start imagining them. It's just, I think it makes a huge difference when you write them down. And just being able to review them too. Part of our goal training was to have a hundred and one goals. And it's really hard to think of that many goals, even little ones. And so it means, makes you think of really everything you want in your life.

And a lot of those things are small things you forget about. And when you write them down, you can go back and review and say, oh, hey, that's not so bad. I could do that today. Yeah. It's really cool. I'm going to toss up this challenge just to everyone listening is I want to encourage everyone out there, like, to just go and write down one goal, like something that's important in their life. Go write it down or go on the bigger pockets forums and start a thread just as my goal is.

Well, we have a goal. We have a goal forum. We do. Just for that. Yeah. Yeah, so go ahead and do that. Go this week. Go write one of your goals are, you know, a big goal.

So, yeah, very, very important. I think goals are very important. So let's move on. It's time for the fire round. All right, this is the fire round. These are questions great from the forums. So I know, Mark, you are pretty, you're pretty, you're pretty involved. You're pretty involved in the forums.

I'll finish my sentences, figure out where to put those commas in. You are pretty involved in the forums, so you probably have seen a lot of these. But first question, what is one piece of advice that you would offer to newbies? Set your goals first, make your goals, and then break down your goals to steps you can take that create action. So, I mean, so many newbies want to get started are all gung-ho about investing, but they never actually physically do anything to get started. So I think just list steps out that you can do, go talk to a real estate agent, talk to a lender, visit a house, just get out there and do something so that you're physically in the game.

Do something. Yeah. Do it. That's great. All right. I'm 23 years old, good income, good credit, and just bought my first rental. But I cannot get approved for another rental property. How do I keep moving forward when the banks keep saying?

No. Keep talking to more banks. Because if you've got good income, good credit, and you've only have one rental, there's going to be a bank out there that'll finance you. It may have to be a local portfolio lender. It may even be a big bank. But if you've got the money and the credit

and your ratios are okay, you should be able to do it. Yep. Right on. All right. All right. How do I comp a property? In other words, how do I determine the value on a property?

that I know is a tear down. Well, that's a good one. Oh, I guess you would comp out the lots. So try and find vacant lots in your area that are similar, and then you'd have to subtract the tear down cost from that. Okay. Yeah, I think that's a fair way to do it. I'm not sure what the right answer is,

but I think that makes a lot of sense. Yeah, yeah, right on. All right, consistent late payments. So you've got a tenant, and they're constantly, paying late? Is it stupid to keep this person? I mean, ultimately they end up paying, but they're just always late. Yeah, I've dealt with this a little bit. And I think the first thing you have to do is be in constant communication with them. So every couple weeks even, you know, call them up and say, hey, just want to make sure your rent's going to be in. We started sending statements every month

to people who are late just to remind them, you know, this is what's due with late fees. If they're to be late, make sure you charge late fees so that people actually have a penalty if they're paying late. Otherwise, what's the point? They're just going to keep doing it. I struggle with that because it's hard to try and do some of those things. But in the long run, it's going to be better for both you and the tenant if you stick to your guns. Yep, yep, I agree. I have a tenant right now who's been with us for three or four years now. But about two years ago, he got off somehow on his rent and he cannot seem to catch up no matter what he does. So every month he writes us to checks, one for like half

of it, and then another one he post dates the check for two weeks later or a week later. Yeah, because he gets paid weekly. A week later and then includes the late fee. So I've been getting an extra $50 a month out of this property every month for the last year and a half or two years now on this. Some people would say I should just kick him

out, but he's so regular with it and it's easy. So I don't know. It's not a black and white answer, I don't think. And so I, yeah, anyway, do that in there. Why don't we move on? Yeah, let's move on to the last section of the show we like to call the Famous Four. All right, the

Famous Four. These are questions that we ask everyone and we're going to fire match you. All right. First one. What is your favorite real estate book? I would say the millionaire real estate investor by Gary Keller for investors and then I'll throw in the millionaire real estate agent

by him as well for real estate agents. They're both awesome books. There you go. Somebody just recommended the other day that I read the millionaire real estate agent, even though I'm not an agent, said it'll just improve your business in just all regards, no matter what business you're in. They said it would help. So it's on my list now. And I'm actually surprised. I think that's the first time the Keller books have been recommended on the podcast. I could be wrong. Investor was very

early on, but it's been a long time. But never agent, I don't think. Yeah. Interesting. Cool. All right. What about your favorite business book, non-real estate? Think and grow rich. That's just, that really got me started. My whole goal and positive thinking and just my whole kind of transformation. It's a great book, old book, but a great book. Right on, right on. What about hobbies? What do you do for fun besides, you know, pull your hair out with your little two-year-old twins? I love golf. So I probably play once a week. I love cars. I've got a few cars. I love working on them and trying not to break them too much when I do it myself. and then yeah my family just I spend a lot of time with my kids and my wife and just have a lot of

it's important to me to spend as much time as I can with them right on right on very cool very cool all right final question for me what do you believe sets apart successful real estate investors from those who either give up or just fail kind of a common theme but goals I think if when I first started real estate I had no goals I had no road map I was just kind of doing it to see what happened, and it didn't get me very far. Once I started having goals, writing them down, and breaking them down into actions I could take, things just exploded. Awesome.

That's great. That's great. Well, where can folks find out more about you? Well, a few places. Like you said, I'm active on bigger pockets. I've got a profile on there. You can send a colleague request, email me there. I also run a blog on investing at investformore.com.

And that's invest, F-O-U-R-M-O-R-M-O-E dot com. And that just kind of played off the whole getting more than four mortgages play. I always wondered what it was. Okay, perfect. Yeah. So I've talked a lot about my flips, my rentals,

and being a real estate agent on that blog. Right on. Right on. Well, listen, man, we really, really appreciate having you on the show. And of course, as a blogger on bigger pockets and all your contributions on the site, I think it's a pretty good formula for success. Being active and engaging in the community, I'm sure has led to some opportunities for you. So, yeah, yeah. That's great. And so thanks so much. And we really appreciate having you on the show. For those people who are interested, can ask Mark, any questions. questions you've got on show notes at biggerpockets.com slash show 68. Mark, thanks so much. We appreciate having you. All right. Thank you very much. All right. Thank you, Mark. All right, guys, that was Mark Ferguson with a ton of really, really good information about everything from flipping to buying and holding and being an agent and working with agents and finding contractors.

So hopefully you guys enjoyed today's show as much as I know Brandon Nid. I did. I'm going to actually call up my agent and ask him out to go get some lunch at a fancy restaurant in town. Oh, there you go. See? Yeah. Nice job. Mark Ferguson, all the real estate agents who service real estate investors are going to thank you for the fine dinners that they're going to be taken out to. There you go. There you go. Yeah. Well, listen, guys, thanks as always for listening. Check out the show notes at biggerpockets.com slash show 68. Jump on Facebook, Twitter, Gplus, LinkedIn and everywhere else online and make sure to follow us and keep up with what we've got going on. And of course, be sure to join us on Bigger Pockets. And you two can interact with

wonderful guys like Mark Ferguson who are there helping out interacting and doing their part to help make you successful. So thanks for your time. And we'll see you at show 69. I'm Josh Dorkin. Signing off. You're listening to Bigger Pockets Radio. Simplifying real estate for investors large and small. If you're here, looking to learn about real estate investing. Without all the hype, you're in the right place. Be sure to join the millions of others who have benefited from biggerpockets.com. Your home for real estate investing online. Thank you all for listening to the Bigger Pockets Real Estate podcast.

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