BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast - 744: Seeing Greene: How to Create Cash Flow & Cutting Costs On a Home Renovation

Episode Date: March 26, 2023

What’s the key to escaping the rat race in 2023? Do you need a rental property LLC for every property, or can you put multiple in one? And how do you create cash flow when housing prices are so high...? For the everyday real estate investor, it can seem like profitable rental properties are getting harder and harder to find, and financial independence is slowly slipping away. And while many would give up on their pursuit for early retirement, time freedom, and autonomy over their schedule, we’re here to give you the knowledge you need to hit your wildest investing goals in 2023. We’re back with another Seeing Greene, where your agent, investor, broker, and system-building savant, David Greene, answers your real estate investing questions on the spot! In this episode, we’ll touch on rental property LLCs and how many properties to put in each one, what to do when home prices are high, and cash flow is low, the “new build BRRRR” that could create crazy equity gains, and a smarter way to shop for landlord insurance. All that (and much more) is coming up, so stick around! Want to ask David a question? If so, submit your question here so David can answer it on the next episode of Seeing Greene. Hop on the BiggerPockets forums and ask other investors their take, or follow David on Instagram to see when he’s going live so you can hop on a live Q&A and get your question answered on the spot! In This Episode We Cover: Where to buy your next rental property and how to create cash flow Setting up your rental property LLCs and how many you’ll really need The build, rent, refinance and repeat BRRRR strategy that could produce massive equity Why bigger is better and the reason you should ALWAYS shop for rentals with more rooms How to provide value to your mentor (even if you don’t have real estate experience) Landlord insurance and when a commercial policy trumps individual coverage Building systems for your real estate business and a practical way to start systemizing TODAY And So Much More! Links from the Show Find an Investor-Friendly Real Estate Agent BiggerPockets Youtube Channel BiggerPockets Forums BiggerPockets Pro Membership BiggerPockets Bookstore BiggerPockets Bootcamps BiggerPockets Podcast BiggerPockets Merch BPCON2023 Listen to All Your Favorite BiggerPockets Podcasts in One Place Learn About Real Estate, The Housing Market, and Money Management with The BiggerPockets Podcasts Get More Deals Done with The BiggerPockets Investing Tools Find a BiggerPockets Real Estate Meetup in Your Area David's BiggerPockets Profile David's Instagram David’s YouTube Channel Work with David Top 10 Real Estate Markets for Cash Flow in 2023 The BiggerPockets Guide to Landlord Insurance Sign Up for David’s 2023 Scottsdale Goal Setting Retreat Book Mentioned in the Show: SOLD by David Greene SKILL by David Greene SCALE by David Greene Click here to listen to the full episode: https://www.biggerpockets.com/blog/real-estate-744 Interested in learning more about today’s sponsors or becoming a BiggerPockets partner yourself? Email advertise@biggerpockets.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Starting point is 00:00:00 This is the Bigger Pockets podcast show 744. I'd rather see you buy a 5-2-5 or a 5-3 and rent the rooms out individually. I'd rather see you buy a small apartment complex of 7 to 8 units and rent that out than just go buy a 3-2, especially new construction. If you're in this expensive market in Colorado, you can't go buy a new construction home, pay market price and try to make that work as a rental. You're going to lose money. You've got to do something more creative. to find a property that has square footage that can be added, square footage that can be converted to get three units out of one unit. You got to try a lot harder to make this stuff work in
Starting point is 00:00:39 today's market them before. And I think you're probably seeing that. What's going on, everyone? This is David Green, your host of the biggest, the baddest, the best real estate investing podcast in the world, bigger pockets. We're here today with a seeing green episode where I share my insight and knowledge on questions that you are listeners ask, one of the only podcasts where You, the listener, gets involved in the show. If you'd like to be on the show or have your question answered, go to biggerbox.com slash David, where you can submit your questions there.
Starting point is 00:01:08 Today's show is awesome. We get into his new construction, the path for RE in 2023. How should LLCs be structured? Do you need one LLC or several if you have more than one property? When a contractor's bid comes in too high and the deal doesn't work, what can be done, as well as a very lengthy and detailed answered from me, on how to build, develop, and evolve systems in your business to help you. Make sure you stick around all the way to the end because that's a really good question
Starting point is 00:01:36 that is asked and I put a lot of effort in the answer and I'm excited for you to hear it. Before we get into the show, I've got a quick tip for all of you. Vet your team to make sure they know a wide swath of knowledge in their industry and not just one piece of it. So often people go to a lender at Wells Fargo or Chase Bank or an insurance person they found online and they say, I need something for my rental property business, for my real estate investing business. The person goes, oh, this is what we do? And they're like, what about this? What about that? I don't know. I don't know that. Right. Reminds me that scene and meet the parents where he wants a nice bottle of wine to take to his in-laws house because he's meeting him for the first time.
Starting point is 00:02:12 And he says, what's your most expensive bottle? And the guy says, mums. It's like a $5 bottle of wine. And he goes, well, you have anything more expensive? And the guy says, well, you could buy a lot of mums. That's how you get a lot of comments from a loan officer, a insurance broker, a real estate agent, a construction person, a handyman, like they're everywhere. They don't study the business that they're getting into. And those are not the people you want to work with. This is why I start companies and educate my employees so that they have a wide range of knowledge for different loans, different scenarios that will work. I don't want to say loopholes, but different ways that we can get you financing where other letters say, I don't know how to do that. I'm just giving
Starting point is 00:02:50 up. We don't. Look for that. ask a lot of questions of the person you're working with, and if they can't answer them, they don't know how the industry works. That's not the person you want to talk to. You could also use a bigger pockets agent finder to find an agent in your area that is a bigger pockets member. Use the same process with them. Don't assume just because they're on bigger pockets that they're a good agent. They might have never sold a house or they might have only sold new construction homes and they've got 75 houses sold on their resume, but none of them are a resale. You want to make sure the person you're working with has a wide degree of knowledge. That was not a very quick
Starting point is 00:03:22 Quick tip. That was actually a very long quick tip, but it was very important. So I hope that you all heard it and take it seriously. 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,
Starting point is 00:03:57 whether it's a single-family rental, a burr-builder risk policy, or mid-term 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.
Starting point is 00:04:16 Steadily, Landlord Insurance designed for the modern investor. Managing properties can feel like a full-on circus. You're juggling vendors, tracking payments, chasing approvals across multiple properties, and maybe a few HOAs, all while trying to keep tenants happy and owners confident. One delay can throw everything off,
Starting point is 00:04:36 and suddenly your day is all clean up, no progress. That's why hundreds of property managers rely on bill to streamline their finances. Bill for property management lets you add all, your properties, assign permissions, pay bills, and receive payments quickly and efficiently, without the usual bottlenecks. It syncs with platforms like QuickBooks, Zero, NetSuite, and Sage intact, so your accounting stays aligned. You can automate bulk payments across properties and HOAs, choose flexible payment methods like Same Day ACH, International Wires, Card, or Check,
Starting point is 00:05:09 and set custom roles in approval policies. There's even a dedicated bill inbox for each property to keep everything organized. Ready to simplify your workflow, book your free demo at bill.com slash bigger pockets, and get a $100 Amazon gift card. That's bill.com slash bigger pockets. Okay, we're going to shift gears for a minute
Starting point is 00:05:28 to cover something important, especially for new landlords. The shows often talk about getting stuck doing everything ourselves and the cost of sweat equity. The key question is simple. Is my time better spent elsewhere? I use a tool that cuts down
Starting point is 00:05:41 on a lot of landlord hassles. And the wild part is, It's just $12 a month. It handles rental screenings, rent collection, maintenance requests, and accounting, all in one platform via a mobile app or desktop. It saves me time in tenant communication and keeps me organized for tax season. It's called Rent Ready, and you can sign up for a six-month plan for just $1 with promo code BP 2025. Pro users get it for free because we believe in it. Just sign in through your pro account to get started.
Starting point is 00:06:07 Rent Ready helps ensure on-time rent with auto reminders, keeps communication professional, and lets you post listings to multiple sites. Check it out at rentready.com slash bigger pockets. That's rentreread.com slash bigger pockets. All right, let's get into today's show. How's it going, David Green? My name is Jordan Ray. I'm actually a local real estate investor in the Memphis, Tennessee market. I own a real estate company that I started earlier this year with the idea, of course, to replace my income and walk away from being a truck driver, which is when I'm in right now. I'm in my truck. I enjoy truck. driving but I also enjoy real estate and I also enjoy my family and I would like to be able to
Starting point is 00:06:49 spend more time with my family and and also build a generation of wealth of course like most people do when they get into real estate so my few questions that I have just two questions first question I want to know when you have multiple properties I have one right now it's a cash cow by the way but when I get another one when I'm trying to figure out is if I should put it in my LLC then I currently have the first property in or should I get another LLC and how you go about doing that? Because to me having multiple LLC seems like a lot of a lot of work as far as taxes go Well, I like to do my own taxes. I'm really good at doing my own taxes. I'm really good to do diligence So I prefer to stick that way until it becomes too much to handle so right now one property, maybe two properties
Starting point is 00:07:39 I feel like the taxes are not going to be complicated at all My second question would be, do you wholesale and if you wholesale or if you know who wholesales, what their favorite way or your favorite way to market to get leads is. I currently, you know, I've been doing a lot of cold calling and postcards, and I'm actually about to start trying Facebook ads because honestly the cold calling just isn't working. Postcards are working. I'm getting calls back, but I'm not. I haven't necessarily generated any leads yet.
Starting point is 00:08:16 I've been on and off trying to wholesale now for about six months. I haven't closed the deal yet. I've gotten quite a few of them under contract. And at first I was good at getting properties under contract. And then it flipped around and then I got good at finding cash buyers but not getting one under contract. So I'm trying to dial this down to combining it too. And I feel like I'm getting pretty close, but I just wanted to know your opinion on. that yeah so I appreciate all your help if you if you can answer my questions
Starting point is 00:08:51 and I really look forward to seeing my video on your bigger pockets podcast thank you for your time and have a great one all right Jordan thank you for your question I can answer the second part really quick I don't wholesale I don't do that I don't I'm not like I'm not gonna say it's immoral but in generalize don't like the model. It's skirting lines of legalities. It is rarely beneficial for the seller of the property. Wholesalers will always tell you that they're working on a deal that's win-win. And sometimes I do think that happens. But the majority of the time, I think that the seller would make a lot more money if they put their house on the MLS where everybody could see the property and other investors
Starting point is 00:09:31 would have access to more inventory versus when they just sell it to a buyer's list and a guy like me gets instant access to those properties that I buy all of them. And your normal investors just don't get to see them. So I'm not really a huge fan of the wholesale model. The people who come to me that want to make money in real estate, I'd rather sell their house for them and get them as much money as I could than just get them a quick sale and some investors are going to make money. Now, the first part of your question I can't address here. Do you use an LLC per property or one LLC for all properties? This is a good question because not many people understand the complexities of the LLCs. It's typically looked like an LLC is safer, so just own your property there. It's complicated and
Starting point is 00:10:11 it's not always safer. Okay, so I have a lot of LLCs. I typically have several properties per LLC, but it becomes a headache to try to keep these all together. I pay 75 grand a year to CPAs to try to straighten it all out. It's terrible. Like me alone and paying someone's full-time salary, which I guess if I think about it, I'd be better off to hire a CPA who just was my full-time employee than pay that. Maybe I need to look into it. But what I'm getting at here is CPs are hard. They're expensive. They're hard to manage. You have to. have to file with them every single year. Like there's a lot that goes into this.
Starting point is 00:10:46 So don't just think the LLCs are a magic pill that's going to solve all of your problem for your properties. What you want to try to do is mitigate how much equity is in any one individual LLC. So you don't want to have four properties completely paid off in cash in one. And then other LLCs where properties are leveraged at 80%. You want to split it out so each LLC has a limited amount of equity because if you are sued, they're going to go after the equity in the LLC. which is why you don't want it all in one.
Starting point is 00:11:13 Hope that helps with your question. Thank you for your service. Keep on, keeping on, and I hope that you find a way to get out of the truck driving job and into a job you like more. All right, our next question comes from Katie McGregor in Las Vegas. I'm an active duty military. When I got to Las Vegas,
Starting point is 00:11:27 I bought a small condo with a conventional loan while I built my first home with a VA loan. Now, three years later, I've gotten my real estate license and decided to sell the condo, which I 1031 exchange into two more rental properties and recouped my initial investment. next I sold my primary. Now I'm living at my friend's house and need to buy another place.
Starting point is 00:11:44 My question is in this market, how many properties should I go for? I can reuse my zero down VA loan, which is a great benefit, about $120,000 in the bank, but most of the deals I'm running in the local area with zero down and my current interest rates leave no cash flow. So worth doing? Should I buy a fourth property as well or wait for the market to settle a bit more? Thanks. Okay, this is a really good question.
Starting point is 00:12:05 First off, I would say, no-brainer, use your VA loan with zero down to get yourself into a house actually can have your own home. You might spend a little bit of money. You might come out of pocket some, but that's okay because owning real estate over the long term is worth if you have to lose money for a couple years, just to have a place to live. It's still way cheaper than paying rent or owning your property. So that's a no-brainer. You need to buy a house to live in as a primary with your VA loan. Now, the rest of the money that you have, $120,000, I don't think you should ask the question of how many houses should I buy? The right question is, what's the best way to deploy $120,000 into real estate. Now, there is no rush. That's what's awesome about this. You don't
Starting point is 00:12:42 have to go put that money into play. Like for years before, prices were going up, rents were going up. You had to deploy your capital because of inflation. There was a lot of pressure on us. That's been temporarily slowed as rates have gone up. So there isn't as much pressure on you to go invest that money. So I would settle in and I would wait, but I wouldn't wait for the market to tank. I just wait for the right deal to cross your path. If you're telling me that current interest rates leave no cash flow, you got to look at different properties or different strategies. Maybe you're looking at two units. You need to look at three units. Maybe you're looking at single family homes and you need to buy a house that has an ADU or two ADUs. There's a way to make properties
Starting point is 00:13:17 cash flow. Maybe you're going to have to buy a property and Airbnb, the main house and live in the ADU yourself. There's different creative ways that you can look at this. But my advice to you would be, don't just go cookie cutter. Well, what worked before is going to work now. When you bought that condo is a different market. You could get cash flow. though you got appreciation. It's a harder market now. So combine taking your time with looking at deals creatively and when the right one comes along, jump on it, but don't feel pressure to jump on it before that. I don't think that anything's going to turn around anytime soon to where you're going to miss out if you don't buy a house tomorrow. All right, from Sali and Hayward. We're getting a lot of Hayward
Starting point is 00:13:53 people coming in here. I always talk about the Red Chili's a restaurant in Hayward on Mission that I love. We're getting a lot of people from there. So that's cool. If you're in the Bay Area, if you're in California at all, reach out to us. I'd love to talk with you. I'd love to get to know you better because these are my stomping grounds. All right, let's see what Sai Lee has to say. Hi, David. Thank you for listening to my question. My name is Cy Lee. I'm from Hayward, California. I've been investing in Michigan for past three and a half years. My question is regarding long distance rehab project. Last month, I purchased my seventh single family rental in Michigan. It's my second birth project. I got It's from four different general contractors.
Starting point is 00:14:36 All of them are very well known and well recommended on local FP groups. I have worked with two of them, two GCs on my previous projects. So I have some experience with them. This is a typical renovation project, a dated house that needs an uplift, flooring, paint, bathroom refresh,
Starting point is 00:15:00 light fixtures, HWAC, etc. So I've been listening to other investors on podcast and YouTube's. They do this kind of rehab under 30K, 35K. But I budgeted about 45,000. But the bids I got from GCs are 70K and about. So my question is, how can I cut cost without compromising quality? I take pride in providing quality products to my tenants. But 70K rehab cost is too high to justify the rent.
Starting point is 00:15:42 So any word of advice, thank you for that. And thank you for taking my call. All right, Sally, this is a really good question. And when you're in a situation like this where you have to cut costs but you don't want to cut quality, you're going to have to give in somewhere. Now, for you, that would be managing the project yourself. you work through a general contractor, you're paying the contractor to basically manage the project and find the subs. They're not always doing the work themselves. So you pay them a certain amount of
Starting point is 00:16:12 money to do the plumbing. They go find a plumber that does the work for less than they got paid and they keep the difference. They're in a sense, they're a project manager who has the pieces that are needed. If you want to cut them out of the deal and the GCs are all giving you bids of 70,000 but you think it can be done for 45, you're going to have to go find the subcontractors yourself. You're going to have to go find the plumbers, the painters, the, a handyman that can do the renovation stuff like the bathroom light fixtures, the HVAC, if you find those people yourselves, you can do this. I just want to caution you, it's trickier than you think. This is why most people use a general contractor. If you go out there and try to find these people yourselves, they might lie to you, they might
Starting point is 00:16:50 take your money and not finish the job. This is the problem that you're going to get stuck in. So one way that I mitigate that risk is I pay them after the job is done, or maybe I pay them a third of the money that they're asking for, and then I pay them the rest after I verified the work's complete. But again, they might tell you the work's complete. You're going to have to send an independent person there to make sure the HVAC work, to make sure the paint was done to make sure things are done to your liking, especially if these are out of state, that could get tricky. Your only other option I could think of is if you could find a person who lives in an area where wages are lower and fly them into that area to do the work. Now, the problem is Detroit,
Starting point is 00:17:24 Michigan's not really like Malibu here, okay? This isn't Beverly Hills. The people there already aren't making a ton of money on the wages. So that $70,000 quote might be just the going rate for what this work is going to be. The only other thing I can think to say is when I get in these situations, I look for ways to cut costs in the areas that are least likely to affect the deal. So you probably don't want to cut the paint because you get a lot, a bang for your buck on that. You probably don't want to cut the light fixtures because those are relatively cheap. But some of the other stuff that you're talking about, maybe the flooring, maybe you leave the flooring in there. into a cheaper flooring than what you were thinking because that's expensive both the materials
Starting point is 00:18:03 and in labor. The bathroom refresh. Maybe you don't upgrade the bathroom. You just upgrade the light fixtures. Maybe you just make what you already have nicer and so you do less work to make up some of the work in the budget there. That might end up being your best option. Thank you for the video. Keep representing Hayward and let me know how it goes. All right. At this stage of the show, I want to make sure that you guys will like, comment and subscribe to our YouTube channel, especially comment. I want to know. What do you think about the show so far? do you like these seeing green episodes? We're going to take a minute to read some comments from previous episodes that you
Starting point is 00:18:35 are listeners have left. You can see what other people think. From Shaka Boom, Oh, 1. David, I love your show. But words I hear too much on your show are one duplex and two duplex. Something I never hear you talk about is buying land and building. I would love to hear your thoughts on investing in land and building the ideal single family home with ADU, which I'm going to do.
Starting point is 00:18:55 I know it will be a lot of work slash learning, but I think the outcome could be great. Well, shockaboo, the reason I don't talk about that a lot is I've never done it. And I try to avoid things that I don't understand. It's incredibly complicated compared to just buying a house that already exists. We just heard our previous question about how to manage a contractor, and we saw how that can get out of hand where the bids get too high. It gets even worse when you're building it from the ground up. Tons of things go wrong you weren't expecting.
Starting point is 00:19:18 You're borrowing money from banks where they're expecting work to be done. You're working through permits. There's so many moving pieces here. It can be very easy for this to take way too long and lose a lot of money. Now, I'm not going to discourage you from doing it because if you've already decided you're going to do it, I'm assuming you've got some training, some expertise, some background in this area that makes you think that you can do this better. But for people that are getting started investing in real estate or have a small portfolio and want to grow it, the average listener that we have on this show, the avatar person that's listening, this could absolutely bankrupt them financially. I know a lot of people that try to build speck houses and lost a lot of money, including some family members of mine. So that's why I don't talk about it as often.
Starting point is 00:19:57 but if you know what you're doing, you can make money in real estate in every way. All right. Our next comment comes from Rubiatt Khan. Where would David Green live if he ever left California? Ooh, this is really good. I've enjoyed my time in Florida. I've been visiting South Florida to look at some of the projects I have going on down there. I don't think I could live in Southern California because I just cannot stay in traffic and things moving slow and it's everywhere.
Starting point is 00:20:23 I enjoyed visiting the Smoky Mountains. Oh, I know. I'd probably be Scott still. I really like when I visit Scott. So I like the heat, especially the dry heat. Heat doesn't bother me. I go running when it's 100 degrees, hiking when it's over 100 degrees all the time. I love it.
Starting point is 00:20:36 I can't do cold. I have cold air-induced asthma. That happens when I exercised. My windpipe freezes up. It's really hard to breathe. I can't stand it. And just being cold sucks. So I would definitely live somewhere where there was sun.
Starting point is 00:20:48 And I'd probably vacationed to Hawaii a lot. All right. Our next comment comes from Hagi 2013. Thanks for outlining videos. They're easy to navigate, and for that, I'll give 10 likes. Yeah, shout out to Nate Weintraub and our production team who help you know what topics we cover by adding in the little breaks on the YouTube timeline there. They got to sit there and do a lot of work, so thank you guys for doing that. And our last comment comes from Unio Brainwave Music app, who says,
Starting point is 00:21:16 Today is a very lonely day for some reason. So to counter that, I'm saying hello to as many people that read this post. Hello. I hope you all have a better day than how it started, even if it started really well. Well, if you guys are also feeling lonely, it might be that you need some community in your life. And at BiggerPockets, we're here to provide that. So check out our website, BiggerPockets.com,
Starting point is 00:21:34 where we have a forum where lots of people answer questions and ask their questions, as well as meetups that are in your area that post on the website, go meet some other investors, and get involved in a community. All right, we love and we appreciate all your engagement. So please continue that. Leave me some comments on today's show to let me know what you think about how we're doing here. And remember, if you want to be featured on this,
Starting point is 00:21:56 show you can go to biggerpox.com slash David and submit your question to be put on the show. All right, our next question is a video from Leon Quintana. How's how good one? All right, my name's Liam from New Orleans. All right, I want a construction company and um my question for you is I want to burr the new construction. So I'm able to build houses, duplexes, single families for a lot cheaper than what they sell for on market, even though the market's the bet. I want to build a duplex, run it out, do a cash out refi, take the money out, and build another one. This method allows me to never run out of money.
Starting point is 00:22:38 If I take the liquid that I have now and just put down payments on a bunch of rentals, I would eventually lose money. So what do you think about burying new construction? All right. Well, Liam, that is how the burr method works. The only thing that's different is you're talking about. about building instead of buying and rehabbing. So this would be build rehab, rent, refinance, repeat.
Starting point is 00:23:03 It's kind of funny. It's a little bit different there. And I'm not going to discourage you. I'm just going to say you got to understand how the building process works. If it is true that you can build a new property for significantly less than what people are willing to sell them for, this might be a new wave with real estate investing. Okay. Like if sellers are not willing to drop their price and enough new properties are built and sell for less than what the existing inventory is, that would force comps to come down and it would help the market correct. The problem is I just don't see enough investors learning how to build and becoming proficient at doing that in the period of time that we would need to push prices to come down.
Starting point is 00:23:38 But if you've got some background, if you've got an in with a home builder, I think this could be cool. Just make sure you know what you're getting into. Okay. there's a time that I looked into doing the same thing. I was going to build a bunch of properties in Jacksonville, Florida that were fourplexes. I had the land picked out. I had the builder. I had a lot of conversations.
Starting point is 00:23:57 And I realized, thank God, before we got into the project, that the zoning would only allow us to build one door per, like, square mile. And I was looking at buying like 10 miles of 10 square miles of land. I could only put 10 houses, but I planned up building 50. So I was going to do what you're doing. I was going to build two or three fourplexes, refreeplexes, referex. finance them out once they were repraised, put that same money into the next four and just build my own subdivision of fourplexes and have my own rental community, kind of like apartment complexes. And then I found out at the last minute, zoning was not going to allow me to do that.
Starting point is 00:24:30 That's what scares me. There's a lot of little things that can pop up like that that you don't realize when you don't build often and you can run out of money very easily. So I would definitely recommend talking with a home builder who has done this many times before and can guide you through the process before you commit to doing this new home construction. All right. Our next question comes from Paul in Utah. Paul says, I invest in Kansas and I currently have seven doors from a triplex and a four single family homes.
Starting point is 00:24:59 I am a long-term buy and hold investor and I plan to get 10 to 12 doors total. When I was getting insurance set up on my most recent rental property, the person I was on the phone with mentioned that I am getting to the point where it could be a better option to get a commercial insurance policy for all my properties than individual properties on each one. I haven't really heard this before and I was hoping to get to David Green and bigger pocket thoughts on this. What pros and cons should I be aware of any companies that I should reach out to or avoid? I called one local insurance broker and they seem pretty confused when I was asking about this. It's so funny you say this because I'm in the process of launching an insurance company right now.
Starting point is 00:25:32 I believe we're going to call it full guard insurance and it's going to be providing insurance to landlords. Now I've run into a couple issues where I have had pipes break when I was in the middle of construction, issues with short-term rentals. I bought property, and it turns out the quote I was given from the insurance company ended up being way lower than what they quoted me once the property was purchased, and it ticks me off, and that's when I go start businesses. So in a couple months, I will probably have a lot more information to give you about this once I've dove into that business. Now, it doesn't get talked about a lot, so I can't give you a ton of information about this. What I can say is that this is not a bad idea. If you can get one policy that will cover
Starting point is 00:26:09 everything, I think that's good. As far as the local insurance broker, he's called the wrong one. If you call and you ask about it and they say, I don't know what you're talking about, call someone else and keep calling until you find a person that neither knows. Or they say, oh yeah, we don't do that, but here's why they can educate you in the process. Guys, in general, when you're trying to find an insurance broker, a mortgage broker, a real estate agent, and construction person, whatever it is, if you ask them questions and they don't know, That usually means it doesn't fall within their specific wheelhouse and they just do the same things all the time. And no one's good at something that they don't do a lot.
Starting point is 00:26:44 You don't go ask a professional skateboarder about snowboarding because they don't do that. They skateboard. They're going to have to learn the hard way how to be good at snowboarding. You wouldn't hire them to be a coach just because they can skateboard. You need to take people the same way. If you're reaching out to someone on my team, if you're reaching out to someone on bigger pockets, if you're reaching out to someone that a friend referred you to, ask a lot of questions and make sure that they are confident.
Starting point is 00:27:06 and competent in the way that they answer those questions. They should have a wide range of knowledge or at least the broker they work for should have that. It is a huge red flag. If you ask your lender about a DSCR loan, a bridge loan, a HELOC, any of these other loan products, and all that they can say to you is, uh, we just do conventional. I don't know. Get away from that person. That's not the person that you want to be sort of overseeing, managing, directing, guiding you in your journey. You need a person that is familiar with those products and can tell you which one works best for you, which is how I try to train my staff and what I look for in different agents that I might be working with. Most investors spend more time chasing deals than reviewing their insurance.
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Starting point is 00:30:10 Just go to Indeed.com slash rookie right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. That's Indeed.com slash rookie. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring Indeed is all you need. Our next question comes from Kayla. Kayla Wright in Nashville. Hi, David. Thank you for reading my question. I'm a freelance marketer who recently started working directly with the real estate investor who has acquired 76 doors in the Nashville area since 2020. In exchange from my marketing services, I receive a 5% payout of total profits on the flip property aspect of the business, which is a new venture on top of the multifamily rental, which is 76 doors. This has been a great opportunity for me to learn the real estate landscape, set goals for myself for my own real estate journey,
Starting point is 00:30:57 and build a strong relationship with the investor. My investor partner has also agreed to offer an extra 5%, so 10% total of profit. itself flips if I find the properties myself and bring them to him. For added context, I work full-time in another job, but I'm hoping this opportunity will help start my journey as an entrepreneur. My question for you as an investor is, what can I be working on aside from education that will be beneficial to my investor partner? As one of the first employees, what ways can I truly help him ramp up his flip business and stand out? I'm currently working on the website, but he has expressed interest in my helping with other investor relations and other sides of the business
Starting point is 00:31:30 as well. The podcast has helped me immensely. Thanks again. What an awesome question. question. I love this, Kayla. All right. So I was thinking when I first started hearing this that I was going to give you some warnings about what to avoid, but I don't know that that's necessary. You're asking a really good question. What can I do to help this person with more? Guys, this is honestly how you're going to learn about real estate investing. It's not by finding a mentor who's just going to teach you stuff. It's about finding a person that you can bring value to and help them and you learn from the experience of doing it for them. Okay, that's what you're really looking for. Not how does someone teach me how to sell houses. You go find an agent that already knows how to sell houses and you do all the work
Starting point is 00:32:07 for them that they don't want to do and you learn from doing the work. That is the best way to learn anything is from actually doing it. So working on the website, that's a great idea. My guess is they look at you like a marketer so they're thinking of marketing stuff that you could do. But what if you have more skills than just marketing? Okay. Do you have bookkeeping skills? Do you have project management skills? Can you learn what their workflow is and help them by calling the different people that are supposed to be doing stuff and making sure those people did what they were supposed to do, as well as asking those people, what do you need to help do your job better and finding ways to solve that. Many times people like me that are managing a lot of stuff,
Starting point is 00:32:43 give an order or an edict, I want you to go do X, and that X somehow falls by the wayside, and I don't even think to go check in on that until two months later when I needed it done, and I say, where's X? And they're like, oh, it's halfway done. This happens all the time. I don't have a lot of people in my companies that take responsibility for making sure the stuff gets done. if you could be that person, you can do anything. If you could just learn to be organized, if you could learn to do follow up, if you could create a to do list of everything that person has,
Starting point is 00:33:09 like make yourself their personal assistant, and then follow up to make sure everyone's doing things and ask that person a lot of questions, you will learn a ton. So I have this model that I teach the new people where imagine water falling into a bucket, okay? And the water that falls into the bucket is the stuff that needs to be done on the job and the bucket is the person.
Starting point is 00:33:28 So as that bucket fills up with water, They have tasks that they need to complete. And their job is to get the task done, which is like draining the bucket before the bucket overflows, which is they ran out of time and they fell behind on stuff. Okay. One way that we help is we put a hole in the bottom of the bucket where water drains to a person underneath them, which could be you, which is another bucket that catches all the stuff that comes down.
Starting point is 00:33:51 The benefit of that is the person who's doing the initial work where all the water's coming down, they're getting all the learning. But if you can put yourself underneath them, if you can take over some of the responsibilities and do the work, you benefit from the same learning that they don't need anymore. So something they already know how to do comes in. They pass it down to you. You do it for them. They didn't need to learn.
Starting point is 00:34:11 They already know. But they still get the benefit of it getting done. You get the benefit of the learning and it becomes a mutually beneficial relationship. So my best advice when anyone is in your position is to quit running away from responsibility. Quit looking at real estate as a thing you can do so you don't have to be responsible. You don't have to grow. You don't have to learn new skills. welcome responsibility, run to responsibility, jump in and say, I want to do as many things as I can for this person as possible, and only commit to this stuff that you are willing to be responsible for the outcome for.
Starting point is 00:34:41 If you do a good job with little, you will be given more, and this is how you're going to learn. Great question. Hey David, I got a question for it. My name is Mark Orbison. I'm an agent slash investor here in northern Colorado. I moved here about a year and a half ago, bought a new construction home. And ever since then, I've been ringing out in a Verbo, three to four nights a month. And after two years of doing this, I'll be able to offset most of the mortgage come next year during tax time. So my DTI is going to improve probably about a thousand a month. And so I'll be looking to buy again. Like I started really late in 2021. So that's why the DTI isn't going to go up as much as if I had rented it out. You know what I mean? Two-year. full-time, but it is what it is. So I'll get a thousand bucks extra on my DTI next year. So I'll be looking to move again. And so the next one, since my first loan was on a VA, next one I guess would be FHA. But my question is, if I'm eventually trying to get out of the rat race and get out of the W-2 job, how do I make that happen in this Colorado market the way it is with, you know, average prices being a 450 to 500, you know, unless we see some kind of real estate crash or something like that, which even then, I doubt prices are going to go down here that much.
Starting point is 00:35:45 The only idea I've had is that to go ahead and start buying in Greeley, Colorado. The issue there is that I work at Broomfield, so that's probably about 45, probably about an hour commute. So like, do I just bite the bullet and drive an hour or two from work? Or, you know, so I buy a duplex in Greeley for, say, you know, 475, 500. Or do I continue purchasing single-family homes where, you know, you can get a new construction 3-2, no basement for, say, 425 down close to like Brighton or near Firestone, something like that.
Starting point is 00:36:16 So do I focus on Duplexes up in Greeley or do I focus on single family home closer to Broomfield? Probably where there's, I say, more demand. And so, like I said, I'm eventually trying to get out the right race to get out of a W-2 job. And so I'm just trying to figure that out. Like I said, this market's way different. I come from Hamilton, Ohio, where my first house was $9,000,
Starting point is 00:36:35 and I put 25 into it. I had like 30 all in. I eventually paid it all off, had my house free and clear. But out here, $30,000, that wouldn't even get you a shed. I mean, it might get you like a $1,000. 50-year-old rundown trailer, but that's it, like nothing that's even close to even be inhabitable. So it's just different out here in this market. I'm trying to adapt and do what I can. So just help me out, man. Appreciate your service as a cop. And I'll look forward to what you have
Starting point is 00:36:58 to say. All right, thanks, man. Bye. All right. Thank you, Mark, for your question. This is some good stuff here. First off, I think you're probably realizing the reality is getting out of the rat race is going to be harder than what it was eight to 10 years ago when prices were a lot lower. Demand was a lot lower. and competition was also a lot less to. It's just the reality is it's harder to get out of the rat race with real estate than it ever was before. So I've come to look at real estate investing as a supplement to my wealth building, not as necessarily the foundation upon which I will rely on my income to come in. And I think most people, there's a handful of people that don't fit that
Starting point is 00:37:31 avatar, but most people probably would be better off if they looked at the same way. And then if we have another big economic crash and you got a bunch of money saved up, that's when you can buy a lot of properties that will function to replace your income at some point. But we don't have control over when that happens. And it seems like every time we hit a recession, we just print a bunch of money so that never comes about. And that's caused a lot of inflation, which has made the cost of living go higher, which is ironically made these assets even more expensive and harder to get. So let's talk about what you can do. I don't like the thought of going to an area with less demand. I also don't like the thought of getting a new construction three-two. Three-toes are not
Starting point is 00:38:06 rental properties. Okay. In 2010, in 2011, I could buy a 3-2 as a rental property. Or if you get a screaming good deal on a property, like from a super motivated seller, you can make it a rental property. But even then, if you look at the return on equity, on the price you'd have to pay to make that deal cash flow, you'd be better off to buy it, sell it, move that equity to something that's like a 6-3, like 2-3-2s with that money as opposed to one. Those are not meant to be rental properties.
Starting point is 00:38:37 Those are meant to be houses people live in that can. be made into cash flowing properties, but they're not designed for that. I'd rather see you buy a 5-2-5-5-3 and rent the rooms out individually. I'd rather see you buy a small apartment complex of 7 to 8 units and rent that out than just go buy a 3-2, especially new construction. If you're in this expensive market in Colorado, you can't go buy a new construction home, pay market price, and try to make that work as a rental. You're going to lose money. You've got to do something more creative. You got to find a property that has square footage that can be added, square footage that can be converted to get three units out of one unit. You got to try a lot harder to make this
Starting point is 00:39:16 stuff work in today's market than before. And I think you're probably seeing that. So I'd advise you on the duplex route over the new construction, but can you get something in the middle? Can you find something in the area that you like that could have more units in it than what you're seeing? Could you get a new construction duplex or even better, a new construction fourplex? Can you talk to the builder and say, could you build me a four unit property? Is the zoning going to allow for that? That would be pretty cool. I bet if you get four units, you could actually probably make it work. And maybe you've got to have several conversations like that with different builders or different renovators to ask like, what could be done for the price that I've got to get more than one unit?
Starting point is 00:39:54 That's why most properties are not cash flow. Because you're analyzing a house with one unit and a couple bedrooms. You're not you're not analyzing an apartment complex or several units, which is what you need if you're going to get cash flow. So good luck on that mark. I know you're in a tough market out there. Your last option could just be invests out of state. If you know the Ohio market, like you mentioned, maybe you go back out there and you buy some other properties and you keep putting your money there until we have a crash and you can actually find something in Colorado that works for you. All right. And our last question comes from John McKee out of Fairfax, Virginia. David, you talk about putting systems in place to help grow your business. What does that look like
Starting point is 00:40:30 and how did it evolve? Can you give me some examples of these types of systems? and how they made you more efficient. Oh my gosh. First off, great question. Second off, concisely worded. And third, you asked it in a great way. Not only what do they look like, but how did they evolve? Because that's the only way to answer this question.
Starting point is 00:40:46 You got to talk about what your first system looked like and how it grew. Because none of you are just going to go plop down a system and say it's done. But that's what everyone explains it. You listen to Alex Hormosey or you listen to some of the other online gurus. Like, you need a system. You want a business, not a job. You're like, okay, okay. let's do it and then they explain how it works and you think you're just going to go wave a magic wand and you have a system you don't what you have is like a first step out of 700 steps that will become a system and so asking how it evolved is a great way to phrase this let's talk i remember being in john's position here i had a talk with kyle rakey who's now the chief operating officer of the david green team helps me put a lot of the events together that i do the retreats that i run he helps run the youtube channel he kind of does a lot of different things and i
Starting point is 00:41:33 I remember saying I keep hearing people tell me that I need a system. I don't freaking know what that means. Like, I get the concept of a system, but how am I supposed to execute it? Is there software I'm supposed to buy? Like, am I supposed to write it down on a notepad? Paint a picture for me of what this looks like. And I was so frustrated because I knew what I needed, but I didn't know how to get it. And Kyle came back to me and he's like, okay, so what all you need to do is open Google
Starting point is 00:42:00 drive and open a folder about whatever you want to make and then make subfolders inside the folder with the other pieces and then use Google documents to type out the instructions. And that little piece of information unlocked what my brain was looking for, okay? I'm like Forrest Gump. I'm not a smart man, but I know what love is. And I needed someone to just paint me a picture that I could get like, okay, that's what I needed. I can run with that.
Starting point is 00:42:26 And I just went nuts. Like I became a systems guy because I had that. little spark that started me. So hopefully me answering this question can be that spark for a lot of you. Let me give you an example of information that I teach real estate agents and how to build systems because I did a very good job of systemizing the job of a real estate agent. Then I did a very good job of systemizing the role of a loan officer. Once I had that, I could hire people for the one brokerage, for the David Green team, for whatever else I'm doing, and they knew what role they were going play. But before I could do that, I had to build the entire thing out. So I'm going to give you
Starting point is 00:43:00 an example of that. And then I'm going to show you a screenshot from my phone that shows you how one of the systems works when I'm combining both agents and loan officers together in one system. All right. So if I was going to take a listing, which is one of the easiest things to systemize because like buyers are crazy and they're very emotional and you've got to do a lot of different things. It's harder to systemize that. It's like hurting cats. It can be done. But poof, it's work. listings are much easier. So what I started was I made a list of everything I had to do in a listing.
Starting point is 00:43:30 And the goal of the original list is just to not forget. Your system starts off by eliminating errors of omission. You're just trying to make sure you don't forget to turn the insurance on in your rental property. You don't forget to have automatic withdrawal set up for the mortgage payment. All of these like getting the utilities turned on. It's easy, man. I bought lots of houses and then realize, oh my God. No one turned on the air conditioning.
Starting point is 00:43:57 We don't have utilities and the property manager showing it to a tenant. The house is 105 degrees. Like this happens sometimes when you don't have these systems. So it's just a checklist. Okay. Here's all the things that have to happen when I first buy a rental. Here's all the things that have to happen when I first list a home. So like I have spreadsheets now where my employees, every time I buy a house, has a
Starting point is 00:44:17 column of all the stuff they got to do. All they get the utilities turned on, get the auto pay set up. here's a link in the spreadsheet that will go to the Google Drive folder where we will keep the insurance, where we will keep the mortgage statement, where we will keep the information if we ever need this on a later date because you always do. So for listings, it was like order a sign to put in the yard. Have the photographer go take pictures. Have a lockbox put on the property. Get a spare key from the client.
Starting point is 00:44:43 Make sure the listing agreement is filled out. This sounds obvious, but you just start by writing down all the obvious things you need to do. Okay. And I probably had a list of like 15 things. And when Krista was hired, my first assistant, that's what she worked on. Now what would happen is we would realize, oh, we forgot to, what's a thing you might forget on a listing to do? Like you got to put it in the MLS, right? So maybe we would forget to get a certain form filled out that we needed to put it in the MLS. I would look at where in this series of 15 things that step should go. And I would just go into my Google Doc. I would, you know, step 12, I would hit enter, and that makes 13, and I'd put that new thing.
Starting point is 00:45:23 And every single time we made a mistake, someone came to us and said, this needs to get done, and it wasn't on the list, it added to the list, it added to the list. And it went from 15 things to 50 things. That's how much stuff is actually being done. And some of those 50 had sub points, right? So get the listing agreement signed, would then turn into, give a copy of it to the broker, give a copy of it to the escrow company, right? Like all of these things would start to apply.
Starting point is 00:45:50 So you didn't have a little sub points, but you still just have a checklist. Okay. On a Google Doc, under a Google folder with the property's name, which is in a folder that says listings. Okay. It's that simple. Now, at a certain point, I realize there's these things can be clumped into stages. Okay. So I broke my list of 50 things or 75 things into four different stages.
Starting point is 00:46:15 The first was pre-listing. Okay? So this was all the stuff I needed if I was going to go to your house to sell your home. So I would have a comparative market analysis run by my staff. They look at every active pending and sold home that was on the market. I showed them by sitting with them, here's how you call every single person, every agent that has an active and a pending sale. And you ask them, how many offers are you getting? Where are the offers coming in?
Starting point is 00:46:43 Do you think you price too high? And then I would teach them how to build a business. report because no agent just wants to tell you that. And so before I went to a listing, this is the work I would do. I don't show up to sell your house and just be like, here's what we should sell it for. I've done some research. I know. These houses are listed at 700, but they're selling for 780, so we don't have to list that low. We can come in at 765 or something, right? Or these houses were listed at 850 and they're just sitting there. They're not selling. The agent says they're about to do a price reduction of 775, so we don't want to copy that person. I had all this information and I had notes. Their house looks like this. Your house looks like this. Your house looks like this. Your house. looks like this. These are the best comps. I would have them do that. Then we had these like David Green Team folders made and we had these pens. I don't think I have one around, but they looked kind of like this, but they were red and black with our logo and the name. And Krista would put the get the folder, put the pen. We had a marketing pamphlet. We still do called the blueprint that explains to sellers, all the steps that go into selling a house as well as buyers, all the steps
Starting point is 00:47:38 that go into it. She'd put the comparative market analysis. She'd put a copy of the listing agreement. we have a pop socket that goes on like the back of a phone like one of those things that you can hold it with that was branded. We had all these like goodies that we would bring and all that would go in a folder. And then I would have an iPad that I would bring with me is that's what I would give the presentation on. Okay, I know this is a bit of a long answer, but I'm showing you guys a level of detail that goes into the system. And then all of the steps that were needed for me to be able to sell to get the listing signed were in this document. Up to the point where there's even a reminder for Krista to put the address in the account. of my phone through the computer that was linked to it so that I would just get a three o'clock
Starting point is 00:48:18 listing appointment. You got to go to this address and there'd be a reminder of 30 minutes before that would say like put the thing in your car. Because as you guys noticed, I forget to turn the light green. I would forget to grab the folder out and get to the listing appointment. It was bad. Okay. And then Kristen knew that she needed to be on call when I was on a listing appointment. So if I was there and you were like, well, David, I mean, I know you have a team, but I really want to work with you. How do I know that I'm going to get good service? And I'd say, let's try this. Let's call Christa right now and see what happens. And I would call and she'd like, hi. Like, hey, Kristen, can you do me a favor? Pull up this house on the MLS or pull up this house on
Starting point is 00:48:52 Zillow and can you tell me what the house is around her selling for? She'd like, no problem. And she'd pull it up like, oh, there's three other homes that are all pending for sale and no other active homes. I'm like, there you go. Now we can see exactly. Do you want me to call one of the agents and ask them a question? And they're like, wow, you've got this like dispatcher that's just ready to jump in. After that, I had a list of stuff that we would do after the listing presentation was signed, but before we went active. So this would be getting the picture scheduled, getting the lockbox put on the door, getting the sign in the yard, having cleaners go to clean up the house, double checking to make sure that homes didn't come on the market that were competition that
Starting point is 00:49:27 we didn't know about. They would check that every single day. I'd have staff that were given tasks to do this. You see how detail-oriented that we're getting into this thing? Making sure that the information of the home was uploaded into the MLS, even though we didn't go live. We wanted it there ready so that for one, if some reason we wanted to go live earlier, we could just click a button we were at the last minute, taking two and a half hours to get the information ready. And the client's like, why is it the house listed? I want it live. And then we had stuff once it was listed, but before it was in contract that was on that list. That'd be the next stuff that comes up. Checking in with the client every week, checking in with all the agents to get feedback of what they
Starting point is 00:50:01 sent. Krista would call every single buyer's agent that showed one of my listings and asked for feedback, what they thought, and what their clients thought, and we would get that information to share with our clients who were letting us sell their house. Then once it went in contract, a whole new stuff. The title company needs the contract, the lender needs the contract. We need to start a timeline of making sure that the buyer's lender is doing their job. So what would happen is properties would fall out of contract because the buyer couldn't secure lending. And I practice extreme ownership. So instead of saying, oh, well, nothing we could do, I'd say, you know what, we should have called their lender to make sure that everything was good instead of relying on
Starting point is 00:50:34 the buyer's agent who lies. So it became a part of that thing for Krista to call once a week and check with the lenders of the buyers who are buying our listings. This is not my job. This is the other agent's job, but I would do their job because I needed that deal to close. And if they were like, yeah, the person's not giving me their statements, the person's not getting back to me. They won't let me pull their credit. I knew something was going on. So when the agent was like, oh yeah, everything's fine, like it's going along pleasantly. But I know that they're not submitting the information that they needed to to their lender. Maybe they're looking at other houses. Maybe they're thinking about backing out. And I would go to our clients and I'd say, I think we need to pull the plug on this buyer and
Starting point is 00:51:11 put it back on the market and get another one. But what if we lose them? We've already lost them. They just haven't said that. This is what no other agents are doing because they don't have these systems. Then once the house sold, there was a whole other stuff. Like making sure that the stuff got taken out of our client's name and put into the buyer's name, making sure all the furniture got moved out of the house, making sure that we marked it in the MLS that is now sold. Is it pending? Making You sure all the paperwork needed to be getting to the broker, went to the right broker, making sure we got the client a gift, making sure we put a testimonial up on social media. All of this stuff, you cannot rely on your brain to tell you.
Starting point is 00:51:44 You have to do all of it. And it's the same way when I buy a rental property. It's the same way when I hire a person to work in the teams. You've got to systemize everything. Now, everything I just told you, okay? That's not enough. That's just the checklist. What we then took was we took the checklist and we moved it into our CRM called
Starting point is 00:52:01 brevity and we created auto plan. So what would happen is that chunk of the list, get this stuff ready for David before he goes to the listing presentation, was put in the CRM and saved as an auto plan. And Krista would check a box that would say like one, two, three, main street pre-listing presentation or whatever. And it would automatically populate a series of reminders to tell her, this needs to be done, this needs to be done. And then we could assign it to another employee. So if we had a listing coordinator, Krista would put the information into brevity, check the box. The listing coordinator would get a reminder of the 12 things that had to be done to get me ready to go.
Starting point is 00:52:38 Okay. And then after the stuff was signed, we would come back and she would check the next box that would say, like, listing preactive or whatever we called it. And then all those reminders that were in the Google Doc automatically go to the right person on the team and now they know with all that they need to do all those steps. And Kristic or me can look and see are they doing their job? Are they checking things off? Is it going where it needs to go? It was beautiful, right? It took all the memory out of it, which is how we got to the point that we could sell 50 homes with like a handful of admin staff at a time.
Starting point is 00:53:08 Like I had 53 houses and escrow at the peak with like three or me and three other admin as well as just the agents. And it was running beautifully. Okay. This is how systems need to work. Now, obviously none of that happens right away. And we still refine these systems because occasionally something goes wrong that we never anticipated and we go.
Starting point is 00:53:27 add something to the system to say, okay, now we have to add this in here or we need to take something out that doesn't happen anymore. That's how it involved in one area of my life, just a real estate agent. And I put a lot of the stuff in the books I wrote for Bigger Pockets sold skill and scale, which you guys can buy at the Bigger Pockets bookstore if your agents. And if you're investors, this is stuff I teach to other people with like the spreadsheets I have, like offers written, offers accepted, closed, closed under rehab, clothes and eating furniture. like all the different stages of when I'm buying properties so that Krista and I and whatever admin we have can keep up with it. This is why I tell you guys real estate is work. It's not like,
Starting point is 00:54:07 oh, I bought a house and I've done. You still got to do a lot of stuff. And these like systems are what's so powerful. So thank you, John, for letting me go on a 15 minute explanation of how systems are born and evolved. I could do an entire podcast about this, maybe an entire series of podcasts because they're so important. And as you're listening, I just want to remind you, don't expect to get it right on try. Systems are evolved, just like John said. They are developed. They aren't just something that boom, you snap your fingers and say, hey, can I have your spreadsheet of all your systems and think you're going to be done? It's not like that. All right, everybody, that was our show for today. Thank you so much for joining us on today's Seeing Green episode. I love doing these,
Starting point is 00:54:45 and I love even more that you guys are submitting your video questions as well as your written questions for me to answer. Please remember to take a minute to leave a comment on the YouTube channel as well as like, share and subscribe and let me know what did you think about today's show. You can follow more of me at David Green 24. I'm on social media everywhere as well as YouTube. And if you want to meet in person and you're too shy to submit a video, go to David Green24.com slash retreats where you can check out ways that you can meet with me. We can talk about real estate. I can help you in your journey. We can get to know each other. And we can form that community that is so necessary for people to get lonely. Thanks a lot, guys. Bigger Pockets has lots of content out there.
Starting point is 00:55:25 out another one of our videos if you have some time. And if not, I will see you next week. 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.biggerpockets.com. The content of this podcast is for informational purposes only. All host and participant opinions are their own. Investment in any asset,
Starting point is 00:56:23 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. Bigger Pocket's LLC disclaims all liability for direct, indirect, consequential, or other damages arising from a reliance on information presented in this podcast.

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