BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast - 80: Smart Rental Property Investing, Getting Your License, and Investing For Retirement with Jonna Weber

Episode Date: July 24, 2014

Today on the BiggerPockets Podcast we are excited to sit down with a Jonna Weber, a buy-and-hold investor and real estate agent out of the Boise, ID area. Jonna is a great example of how anybody can and should invest in real estate! In our conversation, we cover a lot of ground on how to use real estate for retirement and why real estate is a better avenue than the stock market. We also cover why an investor might want to become a real estate agent, how to find investor-friendly agents, what to look for when purchasing an investment property and much much more! In This Show We Cover… How anyone can invest in real estate Why would an investor become an agent in the first place? The importance of running the numbers with someone else Why investors are the best clients for an agent to have The hardest part of being a landlord How to get longer leases out of your tenants How to use BiggerPockets as a resource to manage your own properties Creating an “in-house” property management company for only your own properties Financing how-to’s Using cash flow to build cash reserves Real estate vs. the stock market Investing in real estate for retirement How to be safe as an investor and agent What to check for during your due diligence process On market deals vs. off market deals How to find an investor-friendly agent And a TON more! Links Mentioned in the Show: BP Podcast 006: Investing While Holding a Full Time Job with Arthur Garcia Landlord on Autopilot by Mike Butler The Real Estate Agent’s Ultimate Guide to Working with Investors  BiggerPockets’ Keyword Alerts The BiggerPockets Ultimate Beginner’s Guide to Real Estate Investing The BiggerPocket’s Weekly Webinar Books Mentioned in the Show: Art of Non-Conformity by Chris Guillebeau  Buy and Hold Forever by David Schumacher Tweetable Topics: “Managing your own properties is short term pain for a long term goal.” (Tweet This!) “It’s not an emergency unless it’s ACTUALLY an emergency.” (Tweet This!) “If you can run your numbers with someone else, it will help you avoid the shinny object syndrome.” (Tweet This!) Connect with Jonna: Jonna’s BiggerPocket Profile Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Bigger Pockets podcast. Show 80. 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. What's going on, everybody? This is Josh Dork and hosts to the Bigger Pockets podcast.

here in lovely, beautiful Denver, Colorado with my wonderful host, Brandon Turner. You said that I had to look out my window. I saw that. Because I'm like, it looks kind of dark and dreary right now. But it's just, you know, it's typical cloudy and not raining though. So we're good. We're good. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, you're back in Colorado because you were gone for like a year. I was gone for, I spent four days in Steamboat Springs, Colorado. which, if you are unaware, is an amazing little town. It's a ski town, about three hours outside of Denver. Such a cool place to bring the family. You know, amazing stuff to do, cool hikes and alpine slides and hot springs. It was awesome. We took a couple days. And then... Rub it in. Yeah, well, you know, last week I was in San Francisco, which is the other end of the scale, which happens to be probably one of the most disgusting cities on planet Earth. Wow.

Yeah, you know. You just lost like a thousand listeners right there. They don't like me anyway, the guys in San Francisco. So, no, it's, it's, um, I like San Francisco. I like San Francisco as a city. I like the infrastructure's okay. Like the city itself is cool, but walking around that city, I've never been. And I've, I've traveled to some pretty weird, you know, interesting cities around the world.

I've never been to a dirtier, more disgusting city. It's, it's, every, streets stinks of urine. You walk around. There's like gum and litter all over the place. You know, everybody's outside blowing cigarette smoke in your mouth and in your face. It's just, I don't know. I thought it was awful. I was really, clearly I'm not pulling punches here. But I mean, San Francisco, you got to clean up your act. I mean, seriously, when when people come and visit that town and they see how disgusting the streets are, something's not right. I don't know. I don't remember that.

Maybe you hang out in the shady spots, though, and I, you know. I don't know. It was dirty. It was dirty. So I'm back and here we are. And we've got a pretty cool, pretty cool show for today. This is for show 80 with Jana Weber. And John is a buy and hold investor and realtor from the Boise, Idaho area. She's the owner of, as she, I think likes to say, two hands full of investment properties. And she brings a lot of great. experience as a landlord, an investor-friendly real estate agent. And there's some pretty decent insight to come ahead. Well, you know, one thing I really like about the show, you know, we recorded this about, you know, an hour ago. But one thing that I got out of it that I think people were going to love is that her methodology behind her investing is so simple and almost like boring. Like I think she would say boring, right? Yeah. She's not doing like these crazy, weird like things and all these like negotiation tactics and strategies and marketing. I mean,

She's building massive wealth through very simple, straightforward, classic real estate investing. I love that. I love it. So it's a good reminder to kind of break down to just look at this is how it's done when you want to build wealth for retirement. Like they're planning retirement and this is how they're going to get there. And I love it. Oh, I agree. I agree.

I mean, there's, you know, it doesn't, real estate can be complicated and you can make it complicated. And you can do all sorts of fancy tactics and techniques. But you can also really just do the basics. You can really just kind of simplify it and, you know, buy and hold. There's not much more to buy and hold other than learning buying buy and hold. But, you know, it's pretty simple. So definitely encourage you to listen. Before we get to the show really quickly, I want to talk to you guys about today's pro-benefit of the week.

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Yeah, that's it. Well, let's jump on to the show. Jana, welcome to the podcast. We're really excited to have you. Thank you. This is a privilege. I really enjoyed the podcast, every single one of them. And this is just wonderful to be here. Awesome. Awesome. Well, the pleasure is all ours. It is. So in prepping for this podcast, you had mentioned to me that you were like the investor next door, right? You were the typical American family. What did you mean by that? Well, what I meant by that, and I know that there are so many different types of investors out there. But I've got two kids where I work.

part-time and I have a husband with a very busy career and we got kids very involved in sports. We're going every place all the time and we invest in buying holds on a part-time basis in a very simple, methodical fashion. So what you're saying is anybody could do what you're doing. I believe anybody can do something with real estate and make a difference in their retirement. Sure. Yeah. Yeah.

No, that's great. Well, I know Brandon and I talk a lot about this topic. I think it's something that most people probably are listeners at this point. anyone who's listened to our show realizes that anyone can do it. But I was just in California. I was in San Francisco for a week at a conference of real estate agents, which is why talking to you is kind of interesting. And what I found fascinating was most of the agents I talked to you were like, I don't know, can I do it? Can I do it? Can I be investing? You know, and I was like, anybody can do this. This is really something that anybody can do. You just got to figure out the basics, get the financial education to understand. what you need to do and how things work and take it from there. So I'm very happy to be talking to you about this. Thank you. Me too. This is great. So how did you get started? What got you interested in the first place? Always love real estate. I always love looking at houses. And it's interesting. When I go back 10, 12 years ago, it was my husband that actually started looking at the

idea of investing in property. And at the time I was working some. I had two small kids. maybe one at the time. And we always liked looking at real estate, but my husband was the one I had the idea to actually go in and look at purchasing some. And we bought two properties in the 2000s. And the first one was just a little townhome. And it did not cash flow. It paid the mortgage. And we still own that town home to this day. The other one was actually a primary residence we have that we turned into a rental property, which in this instance was not necessarily a great idea, because it not only did not have cash flow, it had negative cash flow. Fast forward to 2011, and the market was in free fall, or so it seemed at the time, and the sky was

falling, and I saw the prices around us, and I can't pinpoint to the moment when this happened, but the idea got planted in my head, what if we let go of that one investment property that's losing money on a monthly basis and turned it into something that could actually make us money for retirement? And that's when the true investing career started. Gotcha. Gotcha. So were you an accidental landlord?

Was it just like a work move or was it you guys wanted a new house? Because a lot of people, I think, find themselves in a position where, hey, I live somewhere and either A, I have to move for work or B, I just, I'm done with this house. We need to move up or move down. And, you know, that decision comes, do I rent it out or do I sell it? Exactly. It actually was a work-related move. And rather than sell it at the time, we were emotionally attached.

We didn't know if we wanted to come back to it and we just started renting it out. Gotcha. Gotcha. And then I've got another question. So you're up in Boise, right? Yes. Okay. So in 2011, was Boise getting shocked? You know, because I feel like the market kind of started to turn around a little bit before that. But was it just because, you know, every market's different, of course. So I'm just nervous. You know, it might have been late 2010 that I started looking. We definitely didn't make our first other purchase until 2011. Okay. But Boise was, it reached its lowest point in the year 2011. It went, we were biggest foreclosure places in the nation. It was pretty bad here.

Gotcha. Gotcha. Gotcha. Okay. So you've got these two properties. You dump the old one to pick up some new ones and actually, you know, get out of a big fat loser and start picking up some winners. So what was the final impetus that did that for you? How did you guys get to that much? mindset were like, you know, you held on to this thing for a long time. I mean, you literally held a losing property. About four years longer than we should have. Right. And, and, you know, I'm not saying this to pick on you, but that's crazy. Don't do what we did. Don't do what you did. But you're not alone. I bet you, you know, the tens of thousands of people listening, you know, I know, I know there's a lot of folks who are sitting there holding onto losing properties. And so what is the mindset, right? Is it maybe one day it's going to turn around? Maybe we'll see some appreciation. Maybe I'll get ahead of this and you're just kind of holding on forever. Yes, exactly. It was hard to look back in what we could have sold it for in 2006, 2007 and just see it go down, down, down, down. But at the meantime, it was so far beyond even making a break even proposition having a renter in there. And we weren't in a position. At that point, we didn't even want to move back to the property.

Yeah. So at some point, you got to cut the cord. And I think that's the hardest part. I mean, I know I've had to sell property that, you know, went the wrong way. And, you know, it's hard. It's this challenge. You have to get yourself over, oh, man, I'm going to get out of this much lower than I got into it. Yeah. But the calculus is, you know, oh, my God, I'm losing all this money every month.

We'll shoot if I hold on for, you know, another six months and it doesn't go the other direction. I'm in deep trouble anyway. Right. Exactly. We started penciling it out and didn't look, it didn't look favorable. I got you. Well, one of the hard things in that, in something that I deal with, like, I have one property that it was my primary residence.

We fixed it up as an investment, but then we ended up moving in. We moved out a little bit later. And now the thing loses money every month. Like, it was just a bad deal. I didn't really know what I was doing. It was like my second property I ever bought. And I would love to sell that thing, but I can't because I'm underwater in it, right? So I lose money every month and I'm underwater.

So I just can't sell it. And granted, I could take the loss. could take probably a $20,000 loss. So that becomes the question where Josh, you would probably be more inclined to say you should sell it and take the loss and get out of it, where I'm more of the thinking like if I'm losing a hundred a month, let's say I'm losing an average of a hundred a month on it. I kind of figure in the long run, it's kind of like a forced savings plan for me because I'm paying down the mortgage every month.

I'm getting the tax benefits. I'm getting the other things. It's like I have a savings account that I'm putting $100 a month in every month and adding some stress in. So I mean, that's kind of how I look at it. I don't know. I mean, I think ultimately for me, the math on it becomes, am I losing money every month? I don't see it as a forced savings plan. I see it as a forced losing plan. And I see it as I could take that loss and talk to your accountants, of course, and I can use that loss to pair off any gains that I have on other investments. And the question is, do you have any equity? Well, obviously not if you're upside down. So you've got no equity. So are you paying out of pocket to dump this thing? And if so, you know, that's when it gets a little bit trickier. Yeah, if I had to pay 20 grand to get rid of it, $100 a month, where does that make up for it?

I mean, that's 1,200 a year. That would be a lot of years. Well, that's the challenge. I mean, the challenge is upside down in terms of like, hey, I put 40 grand down and I'm going to burn through, you know, I'll walk away with nothing or I put nothing down, which in this case, I believe Brandon is probably your situation, right? Yeah, I didn't put anything down on this one. Yeah. So that's a lot harder decision. I'm okay with walking away with equity.

I would have a hard time too walking away if I had to pay $20,000 at closing. That would change the math dramatically. And I'm guessing, John, was that what the case was for you? Did you lose your equity or did you actually have to pay out of pocket? You know what? We actually had a little bit of equity in the house. And that was huge, that we were able to do that and made that decision that much easier. But I can see it's just a fine line.

You have to look at your personal financials. Yeah. Yeah. And I challenge, like, anybody who's listening, I'd love to hear, we'd love to hear from you. If you're listening, this is Show 80, the Bigger Pockets podcast. The show notes are BiggerPockets.com slash show 80. If you've dealt with this situation where you're upside down, because I know Brandon wants to hear from you, if you're upside down, not only in equity, but also just like actually upside down on the property itself. And you've had to make the decision on whether to unload or and pay out. out or to just kind of hold on. I'm sure we'd love to hear from you and see what, you know, what you're dealing with. And I don't know, maybe you guys can all get together and bang your

heads and figure something out. But it's really painful for a short time, but it's just like ripping a band-aid off. And then you get a move on and it feels better. Yeah. Here's the, I don't know what you call it, theory or methodology that I've used to justify. And this may be changing because I'm about to kick out the person that's in that house for like the fifth bad tenant in a row. So you're going to be really, really, really upside down. Yeah, it's very, it's changing very fast. But here is my always my theory. Maybe this will give us some encouragement to people. If you bought a bad property in the past, which almost every real estate investor at a time will do it. Let me, let me actually backtrack. When you're

playing Blackjack, the game of Blackjack, I said this on a very early podcast, like one or two. If you're playing Blackjack, there's a strategy that a lot of people play that if you lose, you double your bet. And then the next hand, if you lose, you double your bet. And then the next hand, if you lose, you double your bet again. If you lose again, you w bet. Eventually, you will win and you'll get all of your losses back. So what I call that is like, like on investment property that's bad, don't kick yourself in the, you know, in the backside because you're, you know, screwed up, but use it to double down on the next one, right? So just do twice as good on the next one. So if you're losing 100 a month in cash flow, what I did it, I went out and bought a,

I think it was a fourplex that made like 800 a month in cash flow. Well, great. Now I'm only down 700. You don't have to show off. Well, you know, I mean, like it's like the lessons you learn in the early ones, double down and just do a better deal. Now I'm no longer losing 100 a month and now up 700 or whatever, you know. So that's just another way to look at it is, you know, use your failures as incentive and as motivation to do better next time. Which John, which John did here. Exactly. You know, so now we're out of that, you know, out of that loser and now we're picking winners. So tell us about the next phases here. What was what was the strategy? Well, it didn't come quickly. I had some stops and starts and got scared and stopped and then almost started again, stopped. And it did take me, it was a good six months before we owned a next property after we sold that one. I have to do a 1031 exchange or anything like that. So that was simple. We weren't under a deadline. But it was scary to take that first step because I had messed up in the past, so to speak. And I did a lot of searching, a lot of searching. Got as far as getting some offers, that some

properties, but finally that one appeared about six months later. Okay. So the path at this point was we want to buy and hold, correct? Yes. Okay. And had you guys set a criteria? I mean, what was the process for you, right? I don't think we talk enough about kind of the buildup.

You know, we talk about paralysis analysis, but in terms of planning, was there any planning? Well, for whatever reason, we were always strategic about wanting to find something that we would feel comfortable living in ourselves. So we were definitely looking for higher end. I felt comfortable with people, but I wanted to be working with clientele that I was comfortable with and showing the homes alone and all that goes with that. So the other criteria was being close to where we live now, which was within like a five mile radius. So we tightened our search up considerably. And we wanted a single family home.

Gotcha. So single family within five miles. What kind of price range were these in? I don't even know your area. Like, what's your area look like? Yeah. Nice middle class. Well, that's so subjective middle class.

But under 200,000. Between 150 and 200,000. And that's Boise because, you know, some neighbor, you know, if you're in San Francisco. Right, right. Yeah, 200,000 gets you like a four by four, you know, jail cell. And we know the area so well. In fact, I used to teach school in the area. And those types of things are really important.

And I like being able to be proud of what we're showing and feel good about what we're offering potential tenants. And I think that's important, right? Because we have some rental properties that I don't want my wife. Not that I don't let her, but I don't want her and she doesn't want to go and show by herself. And I'm not, I don't like that. I mean, it bothers me that I have to go show a unit because I don't trust the neighborhood to be nice to my wife. You know, like there's only a few that I like that, but I don't like that. And yeah.

And I walked away for some really good deal. I didn't mean to interrupt it. I walked away for some really good deals. Looking back, I thought I could have done something with that property as far as a flip or something, but it was just that that lack of comfort that made us stick with what we were planning on. Well, I think that's smart. You know, we don't talk a lot about safety, but I know we've had a bunch of articles over the years on the site about just being smart and being safe as an investor.

And I know you're an agent as well. and I know that's something that agents tend to talk about a little bit more than investors. And I think we probably should cover the topic a little bit more. It really is important. I mean, there are some bad and crazy people out there and bad things happen to folks. And if you feel uncomfortable, why do it? You know, why put yourself in a position where you don't feel safe just to make some cash? I don't believe that that's a great idea.

Now, granted, you know, not everybody. I may feel completely safe in that neighborhood. So again, it's a subjective thing. Sure, sure. And I do say appreciation. I know that we are not to invest for appreciation, so to speak, but it does play into it because these are areas that there's a lot of growth in our community where we're investing and the potential is there.

So that's part of the factor as well. And I think, I mean, that's an interesting topic is the idea of do we invest for appreciation versus cash flow? And for those people who don't know what we're talking about, obviously cash flow is a monthly income that comes in. Appreciation is hoping that prices go up in value. And that's why we say we don't invest for appreciation, at least most investors. Right.

Yeah, but it is a really nice thing. If you can invest hoping to get appreciation, nothing wrong with that, right? And that's what you're doing. You're buying nice houses and nice areas that hopefully will go up in value. And that's where, I mean, that's where a lot of wealth is actually built is in the appreciation more than just the cash flow. So that's cool. Right.

I think it's a combination for us. Yep. So let's talk about a big picture, a quick, kind of step back and say, what is the, I mean, you're buying single family house. Is that correct? Not multifamilies? That is correct. I do have a condo and a townhome, but for the most part, yes, single residence is no multifamily.

All right. So what are you doing with these? I mean, is it you just buying them indefinitely? You'll hold them for the next 50 years or do you have a plan to trade up? Or what are you doing? How is this going to accomplish your goals? Well, I think that's part of the reason that we're moving. so slowly is because we're being very methodical and every property we're buying, I do have the

intent of holding indefinitely at this point. Or at least, you know, in the foreseeable future. Did you plan on living off the cash flow then eventually? Is that the goal pay them off, live off the cash flow? Or is it to live off the cash flow now enough to quit your jobs and retire? That's a great question. No, this is a retirement. This is, you know, I can understand real estate more than the stock market. That's the way I like to put it. And it's something tangible that I can touch that I can have impact on. So think of it instead of funneling money all into the stock market, it's a way that we've chosen to invest for retirement. And at one point, they will be paid off. And yes, that cash flow will be come in handy.

You know, it's funny. When I'm talking to people who are thinking about real estate investing, that's usually how I kind of explain it to them. You know, I ask about stocks and reading balance sheets and examining companies and how they're doing. And, you know, most people that you talk to probably own some stocks. And if you ask them if they can tell you how the companies are doing and to tell you what's been going on, they can say, yeah, Apple's great because it's, you know, got these cool products. But, you know, what are the numbers? I don't know. Yeah. And so the average guy really is incapable of reading a balance sheet is incapable of examining. And, you know, stocks and bonds, they're complicated. There's a lot going on. And, you know, there's a lot of moving parts.

real estate is fairly simple in comparison and the average guy can really figure out the numbers fairly easily. There's just a little bit more work involved most of the time. Exactly. Exactly. I liken it to, you know, you've got $30,000 to put down on $150,000 house. You take that $30,000 investment, put it in 30 years later. Even if you don't have, if you have zero appreciation, you've got $150,000 asset, plus

cash flow in perpetuity. So to me, it's kind of a no-brainer. So at very least, your tenants are paying your mortgage for you. At the very, very least, right. Hopefully you have cash flow on top of that. Yeah, hopefully we have a lot more. But yeah, so that's a nice thing about real estate, right? Is there's so many avenues in which it's cool. Right. There's like the appreciation, there's the cash flow, there's the taxes, there's the loan pay down. There's all those things combined. And the more you can get in one deal, the better you can do, generally speaking. So we hope to get the most of those. you start actually cash flowing. It's fun.

Yeah. So speaking of cash flow, I mean, what do you typically look for in a deal? Are you shooting for, you know, a certain amount per unit or per building or what do you look for? It's pretty straightforward. If we can clear a good $300 a month after all expenses, then I'm liking the deal. Okay. So it's a very simple criteria. I just break it down as simply as that. And these low interest rates the last few years have been very helpful in that regard. Yeah. And getting us in and great low payments. And rents are, rents have been going up in the meantime. So it's working out for us. That said, you know, you're asking if we're living on cash flow, absolutely not. Every bit of cash flow right now is currently being reinvested. Okay. I was actually, that was my next question. Yeah. I was going to

wonder what you're doing with the cash flow. Yeah. So you're not, are you paying off the properties then when you say reinvested? Are you actually saving up for a down payment for the next property? Yes. You know, it's been up until recently, it's been reserves for each property. As you know, you know, as you get more and more properties, the lenders want more and more reserves shown for every property. So that's been a work in progress. And then, yes, it will go toward future properties. At this point. Right on, right on. So is your plan then? Because again, this is another thing that I don't think we've touched in this is show 80 and 80 shows. You've got to. You've got to. this cash flow. You got this money coming in. The first plan was to put it into reserves, build up cash to have an account in case something went wrong, right? In case you need it. For the lenders, for lenders, you need six months. As you know, principal insurance taxes. But beyond the lenders, I mean, your roof falls apart in six months. If you don't have cash, you're in trouble. So, you know, building up those reserves is certainly important. So is your strategy build up reserves

for that next property or the property you're in or the, I guess the next property until you're at a point where I guess the lenders feel comfortable and then build up the down payment to acquire that next property. And once you've got the down payment, you've already got the reserves. You're all good and you jump in. You got it. Yeah. Okay. That's the plan. And I think that's a good strategy for anyone listening and wondering, hey, what do I do? You know, I've got a little bit of cash, you know, maybe enough to pick up the first, but I don't quite know how to go about raising money for the next one. I think that's a great way to go if that's what want to do. So how are you financing these? Are you, are you past how many properties, I guess,

do you have at this point? We've got a couple handfuls. Okay. And it's up into this point, it's been traditional financing working with smaller banks and credit union. Okay. Okay. Cool. And those, oh, then you go ahead. I was going to say, are those portfolio lenders or those, you know, are they requiring 20% down? Is that typically what you're doing on these? actually 25% down once you get past four properties in my experience and we're starting to look into the idea of portfolio lending at this point we haven't had to utilize that yet but um i'm i'm gathering resources for how that works nice well for those people who don't know portfolio lender is a lender so real let me just explain it real quick for everyone um a normal lender like a normal bank

will sell their loans up to fannie mayor freddie mac these big government pseudo institutions right so they sell their loans up and so because of that the lender has to fit every borrower into this box this perfect box they have to be exactly this this debt to income this loan you know whatever down payment a portfolio lender doesn't sell their loans up to or at least some of their loans they don't sell them to fanny may freddy mac they keep them on their books which means they can be more flexible they don't have to fit you know you into a square box they can fit a round peg which most investors are a little bit of a round peg into that square box that is what a portfolio lender is for those people don't know. And you can find them. Arthur Garcia talked about that in show

six. If you haven't listened to BiggerPockets.com slash show six yet, do it. It's probably our funniest show we've ever done. He talked a lot about how to find them. So listen to that. But really, every community has them. You just got to make a lot of phone calls. So anyway, aside, I just wanted to explain that. Yeah. I brought up some great, great topics. I think those were really helpful to me. It's just the fact that lenders, they want your business. So ask for it. Yeah. Yeah. I'm working through a couple different portfolio lenders right now, and they can be great. So, yeah, I was curious, because they stop you. A lot of lenders will stop you at four. And then some lenders will let you go up to like 10 or whatever it is. And after that, it gets even more difficult. And that sounds like where

you're out right now. And so you talked about finding portfolio, correct? Right. Yes. And some of the, I know one credit union in particular I'm working with does those. And so I'm talking with them right now about how that works. But for our experience, credit unions have been a great way to go. especially going up to 10. Okay, cool. Are you managing all your properties yourself? I am. Okay.

So you take care of all the phone calls and stress and drama? I do. We actually made some changes this last year so that we can scale up and created a little property management company. Just for the portfolio. I'm not managing other people's properties. And it's working out really well,

just simplifying and getting everything squared away as far as keeping track through QuickBooks and really systemizing so that we can scale and not feel overwhelmed. But I actually enjoy the management. Yeah. Well, so let me harp on this a minute. This is something you're doing that is awesome that I don't think we've really spent a lot of time on. And it's something, one of my biggest mistakes, I mean, really hands down probably my biggest mistake when I started out real estate investing was not planning for property management. So when I took over, I thought, well, I can, I can manage myself. I'm a young guy. I can handle doing everything myself. So I started

at the beginning, and there's nothing wrong with managing your own properties. But it's the idea of you can't scale indefinitely or you can't scale very big if that's your only plan. So the fact that you are conscious of that right now and you're saying, look, I want to scale this business. So let's figure out how to do that. I think that's so important to do early on is to sit down and say, how do we, you know, and the way you're doing it is by creating your own kind of in-house property management. And that's what me and my wife are doing as well. finally now after years, you know, we're trying to make that scalable. Yeah, otherwise it's tough, right? You want to switch over your property management and then you can't because you don't have

the cash flow and you don't have the system in place. So anyway, I commend you for that. That's awesome. Well, it's a work in progress. Well, so did you decide to do that because there wasn't an appropriate property manager in town or why did you guys choose to do it? Was it because you thought you'd hold on to more cash by managing yourself? What was the decision to self-manage? Good question. you know, it just came, we've kind of grown so slowly. It just kind of has come along organically that I would just manage. And I will talk about this, but I changed careers a little bit a year or so ago and became a realtor. So I've got the flexibility. It allows me to do so. So we haven't had the big discussion, we haven't had the big discussion on whether or not we're

going to hire someone because we're just pretty comfortable doing it ourselves at this point. Although there are some great companies in town and that might change at some point when we are empty nesters and want to travel more. Right on. Right on. And in terms of self-management, are there any things that you've found to be particular headaches or any tools that you've put into place to help you manage the properties beyond QuickBooks? Oh, yeah. MbP has been so helpful for that. I've learned so much in the last few years. It's been incredible. And just having all the forms in place, having strict criteria for the applications, knowing exactly what my rental requirements are, putting them in writing so I don't have to backpedal and explain why someone isn't going to

qualify for a property and just having the procedures in place and putting them in writing and making sure that we can follow through with everything that we told our tenants that we're going to do. Right on. So training your tenants and, you know, following up when you have things that don't go exactly as they should. Right. Yeah. Right on. Do you have any crazy, I mean, like, do you have crazy tenants or because you have nicer properties? Are they all, you know, real good tenants, do you not have drama? I, come on, we all have drama.

A little bit of drama here and there. Actually, the most drama I ever had was in that primary home rental that I told you about that we sold. And we had some problems with late rents there and pets that weren't supposed to be living there. But never had an eviction and had very good experiences. I really have a lot of respect for our tenants and they're good people and hopefully the feeling's mutual.

So what do we do when we have a tenant? that brings a pet in or a human in that doesn't belong? Well, it helps if you're not in a desperate situation. You know, that was the rental property I talked about where we really needed that payment every month. There probably would have been an eviction there if I knew then what I know now. Okay. At that time, it went largely ignored, but it would not be that way today.

Gotcha. So what would you say if you're talking to, you know, your hairdresser and she says, hey listen, John, I've got this rental property and somebody's coming in here. Yeah, and they're like, well, no, but I'm in a desperate situation and it's horrible. That's hard, right? You're in a really tough bind and you want to throw somebody out. How does somebody overcome that? How does someone actually?

Well, your experience, right? You're saying back then you didn't want to do it because you knew you were in a really tough spot and you were desperate and you didn't want to get rid of them. But now looking back, you're like, oh, I definitely would have if I had the experience. So how do you overcome what was stopping you back then beyond the knowledge that it's probably a bad idea to hold on to somebody who's violating your lease in some way, shape, or form? Right. Well, you just got to remember it's a business.

It's a business and that violation is potentially affecting. There's so many factors involved, but it could really hurt your bottom line. And you need to look at it as a business and look at the potential for a good renter down the road in your property. and we love, like everyone, I believe, but we love those long-term renters. So, you know, that's the, I guess, backtracking, that's the biggest thing that I could emphasize is look for that long-term, happy tenant.

Are you doing, in terms of long-term, are you doing two-year leases or anything beyond a year or as long-term a year lease? You know, I have just in the last year, I started implementing 18 or 24-month leases, depending on when the leases come up, because, of course, you'd like your leases to end in summertime. And that's working out really well. And a couple of times I've offered like a $20 to $25 incentive monthly if they sign 18 to two-year lease. And that's worked out really well. People seem to like that. Interesting. So why do you say we want, like, why is a landlord do we want summertime our units to go vacant? Why is that?

Well, I think most likely applies more to all of us that experience snow in wintertime. But that's just when people move. And a lot of our students, single-family homes happen to attract families, and that's when a majority of people are making a move. In Boise, too, we're experiencing a really large influx of out-of-staters coming in again from other states, and the phone calls really pick up both for real estate and for wanting to find places to rent, and they're all coming in in the June-July timeframe, it seems. Do you think any of that has to do with the oil boom up in the northern states, or is that just, you know, Boise is suddenly attractive despite... everything that has to do with Boise.

Not that I have any bad things to say about Boise because I was there once and I liked it. It was all right. Boise is great. You know, Californians, there are so many. We love you. I was born in California. But it is a lot.

I think, you know, with the rise in property values across the countries, particularly in the West Coast, there's a lot of uptick in people getting out and moving up to Idaho a lot for a lifestyle choice as well. Interesting. Gotcha. Gotcha. 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.

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Check them out at biggerpockets.com slash dominion. Again, that's biggerpockets.com slash dominion. So what do you think is the biggest challenge in being a loan loan? Hmm. Doing things when it's not convenient to do them. You know, when you're just settled in for a date night or a family movie or out with friends and you get that phone call you don't want to get. And it's just, you just got to remember it's short term. It's short term pain for a long term reward and keep your eye on the goal.

And you do realize that having a property manager would alleviate lots of that. I'm just, I'm just saying, you know, that is not you. You are the property. It is the property. Yes, it is. And that said, I am trying to be more concerted in outlining business hours and so forth. But there definitely are those calls that still come in late Friday evening. Yeah.

And that's a great thing. So let's talk about that. You're outlining business hours. Well, what do I do? I'm your tenant and my shower is not working appropriately or, you know, my toaster oven is too toasty. You know, and I'm calling you at 9 o'clock at night and I want an answer. And I'm not going to stop until I get one. Well, I discern what an emergency is, and that is really outlined in our lease as well.

An emergency is fire, flood, water running everywhere. And if it's not an emergency, usually it can be taken care of for the next business day. There you have it. I mean, I think that's perfect. That's what landlords probably need to know, especially those that self-manage. It's not an emergency unless it's an emergency. And your lease really should spell out exactly what that is. It may be different for you.

I mean, you know, maybe, I don't know, I can't come up with some scenario, but, you know, maybe some people have a better leniency on things, but I'm guessing fire and flooding is probably not one of them. Yeah. No, yeah. And it may work when you're a new landlord, the first one or two properties, but once you start to scale and you're getting the multiple phone calls, you learn to outline those. Hey. They're where I'm available. You know, it's funny is just when you said that about the emergency thing, I thought, my wife and I have been. well, my wife has been putting together what, uh, what's called like a rent talk the last few days. Um, this came, the concept came from Mike Butler's book landlord and an autopilot, but basically

love that book. Yeah, love that book. Isn't that great? So landlord and an autopilot by Mike Butler. In that book, he mentions sitting down with your tenants when they move in with a, what he calls a rent talk. It's just like a flip through like book that you create of here's like the 20 most important things. It's like a slideshow, right? But on the hood of a car, you're just showing them and stuff. Anyway, so I to set my wife a message and just said on Skype here that said, for rent talk, what is an emergency? Because that is so important, right? Like, if you can go over that at the beginning of the lease and say, look, here's what an

emergency is. I mean, because the lease is like, I mean, my lease is 25, 30 pages long, like, with all the addendums and everything. Yeah, it's crazy. There's so much in there. I mean, because, like, the lease itself is four pages. But then there's so much, like, extra stuff. And then all the state forms and all the federal forms and all that.

So everything gets, I mean, tenants have no idea what they're signing 10 minutes after they sign it, I feel like. Even though we go over it. So anyway, the rent talk is like, here's the most important thing. So that's what we're going to add now just because you said that. What is an emergency? I'm going to add that to the rent talk. Nice.

Excellent. Yes. There you go. There you go. Hey, so I asked you about the challenges. What about the greatest part of being a landlord? What do you like best? Well, I truly like forming the relationships.

Just being able to serve the tenants, make sure that they're happy, provide them a safe, comfortable, cheerful place to live. And I like the business aspect of it. You're very much a small business owner when you're a landlord. or just an investor in general and growing your business and forming your business model and discussing it, planning, goal setting. If you're involved with your spouse, it's really fun. For us, anyway, it kind of took something that was a hobby, which is loving houses,

and turned it into a big part of our investment strategy. It's rewarding. That's great. That's great. All right. So you talked about this transition to becoming an agent. Why on earth would you decide to become an agent? Not that there's anything wrong with it to all those agents that are listening.

Just asking. You know, it's funny. You played a part in this, Josh. Oh, my goodness. No. You did. I'm not guilty. It was the bigger pocket summit in 2012 in your hometown.

Yes. And I was sitting in a seminar. And I believe the speaker was Jeff Brown. Jeff Brown. Jeff. I'll out to Jeff. The bald guy. He, I was really inspired by his talk.

and he was talking about Boise, Idaho, and the future of Boise, Idaho. And he said, if you all don't know Boise, Idaho, now you will. And he was a big believer in our market, at least from the stage that day. And everyone was writing down Boise, Idaho, Boise Idaho. And I looked around and I didn't find another attendee from Boise, Idaho. Nice. And wheels just started clicking. Along the same time, I had some family members that we lost to cancer in the last year or two.

And it was just that life change kind of time that comes around in your life a few times if, you know, if you change careers and start thinking about why you want to do something different. And at the time I was teaching school, which was wonderful and rewarding in its own right. But I am very entrepreneurial and really like working for myself. And those two things kind of came together, both of them in 2012. Gotcha. And I pursued my license. Wow, wow, wow. So first off, you could blame Jeff Brown on Boise, Idaho.

don't blame me. But okay, and I am sorry about your loss as well. Oh, thanks. But I'm glad that we inspired this move here. So you've got your license. What was the goal? What are we going to do with the license? Are we getting a license to get, you know, to not pay commissions on, you know, the sale of a property?

Are we getting a license because we want to service other folks as investors or just traditional consumers? What was the idea? It's a combination. I will say I wasn't so much to get my own deals, although that's really helpful, but I've worked with a great agent for years that's been very helpful with our other acquisitions. Yeah. And I had quite a bit of service with that. But mainly, you know, it was, I can only do so much. And as our property management grew and our kids grow and their involvement in sports and that sort of thing, I wanted something with flexibility. And I'm utilizing real estate commissions in a way that some people might wholesale or flip to earn extra cash. as a day job to further fund our mission.

I think it's a great idea. I really do. Especially because your primary focus is investing now, you know, you're so familiar on the day-to-day basis of what's going on in a given market. And that's really the job of the agent. And that's actually what confuses me, to be honest. You know, as I mentioned earlier about this whole thing with agents, yeah, we wrote this ultimate guide, ultimate agents guide to working with investors. Yes, I love it.

And we'll link to it in the show notes. And hopefully we've got a lot of agents listening to the show right now because most agents don't really understand a few things. One, investing isn't that tough. And you, too, as an agent, can start doing it. And two, as an agent, an investor client, is the best kind of client you could possibly want to have. You know, a lot of them shy away and say, well, you know,

investors throw all these lowball offers out. And, you know, they're scummy. And, you know, there's all this bad, juju around investors, but what the secret is, and you know, here's the billion dollar 97 secret that the gurus won't tell you, so to speak. An investor client, you get one good investor client, they do five, 10, 20 deals, 50 deals a year. You don't have to market. You don't have to sell. You don't have to promote. You form a relationship and you're there for them and you're doing the work and you got those

commissions coming in and it's a beautiful thing. Absolutely. You got it. That's what I'm definitely finding to be true. And I love it because I'm in my wheelhouse. And I love looking with people that can see beyond a pink wall or, you know, an outdated water heater. And we move on and we make a great deal. And it's a win-win. So what are your, oh, go ahead. I'd go crazy if I was showing, like, I'm not an agent, but if I was, I'd go crazy showing somebody who's like, you know, I just don't like this house, this bathroom, this wallpaper. Uh-uh. I'd be like, just fix the wallpaper. You're like, that's how my mind works. I'm like, stopping stupid and like, you know, hit him upside the head. And there are fabulous realtors that fill that niche. There's plenty of wonderful realtors that will work with a retail buyer. Well, I had two rounds as an agent working with retail buyers and that didn't last long. So how did somebody find you?

I mean, how do I as a investor find an investor-friendly agent like yourself? Well, a lot of my clients to date have been found through bigger pockets. So I would suggest getting on bigger pockets tapping into your local market there and looking there first. At the very least, at the very least, if there isn't anyone that jumps on that is actively involved on bigger pockets, so you're going to get some referrals. I've even utilized that for resources when I need referrals for other markets for potential clients that are looking at other markets. And BP's been just a wonderful resource that way. You know, if I could jump in and just say it like, I mean, here's something that I know a number of agents do, and I think you do it as well. And it's so smart. It's so smart. So what they do is they set up keyword alerts, which you can do for free at biggerpockets.com slash alerts, put in your city name in there. So you might put in Boise or boyce or then when a new member joins the site and they say, hey, I'm brand new here. I'm from Seattle or I'm from Boise. You as an agent get this email notification in your inbox or on your phone if you're a pro member. And, you're a you can be the first one to welcome them. You're not pitching them. You're not trying to, you know, whatever. It's just, hey, welcome. You know, I'm glad to have you here. I live in the area. You know, you know, whatever. It's just, it's networking, right? But you become the first person that they see. Like, I don't understand why there isn't a million real estate agents with, on bigger pockets with keyword alert set up because it's probably like the cheapest best marketing, I think a person could do. So if you're an agent. As long as they're not, you know, as long as they're not being scummy. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's about building relationships. But if you can get in there and just greet people and, and, and start building relationships. It's like the coolest feature ever. And speaking of that, might as well to say this,

we just introduced a couple days ago, keyword alerts, I mentioned those. You can now have like multiple keyword alerts, like a combination of words. So you could do like flipping and Seattle. So you'll only be notified when the words flipping in Seattle are both used in a forum post.

So that's a brand new edition. And we're going to have a negative keyword alerts as well. So for example, which is I'm excited about, I can have a keyword alert for Washington, but not for DC. That way, when people will say Washington, D.C. I don't want to know about Washington, D.C.

I only want to know about Washington State. So anyway, that's coming in the next week, hopefully, or two anyway. So, keep it out for that. So anyway, enough. That's bigger pockets alerts. Again, biggerpockets.com slash alerts. So I'm getting back to the agent thing. If I am a, I mean, Josh kind of touched on this, but I want to know a little bit more of,

I mean, I'm just getting started. Let's say I'm brand new to real estate. I'm really excited. I want to get started. I mean, what makes you as an agent want to work with me? Because, I mean, there are so many wannabes that are coming out of the guru festival and they're all pumped

up and they want to start throwing in a million offers. Why would you want to work with me as an agent? What would make me appeal to you? That's an awesome question, by the way. Oh, thank you. It is. It is. What I need you to do is be specific

on what you're after. And I'm happy to guide and to provide feedback. But you need to know what your strategy is going to be or at least have an idea in mind whether you're going to go multifamily, single family, what you're qualified for as far as financing and how you're going to finance that property. And then we can get to work. But I do get a lot of email correspondence and even through BP just saying, hey, I need a deal. What do you have for me? And that's great. I am busy as well.

And I just, I need something a little bit more to go on to point you in the right direction. I think that's great. And I think that's probably the challenge that the agents all face. The challenge is they don't want to deal with tire kickers, as they're called. They don't want to waste their time with time wasters. And so first off, the responsibility of an investor is to be prepared and is to know what you want. So if you're coming off a seminar or a class or whatever the heck it is and you're just like, hey, I want to make money in real estate, you know, you don't have time for that. No agent's going to have time for that. You need to. You need to. You. You need to be a seminar or class or whatever the heck it is. You need. You. You need to. You. to dig in, figure out what your criteria are, where you want to invest, what exactly you want, what you need. And then if you approach an agent, go in with that specific set of information, you're going to increase the likelihood that they're going to want to work with you. On the other side, as an agent, obviously, you need to be vocal about that to potential clients. You know, I'm not going to take anyone, I'm not going to show you 17 properties until you know exactly what you want. I'm not going to show you one property until you know what you want. But I think

the key there on the agent's side is also the education. You know, the agent has to be educated and has to understand the basics, the absolute basics of real estate investing. And if you don't understand the basics of real estate investing, you have no business whatsoever in showing income properties of any sort to investors because you're the one who's going to be responsible for putting people into bad properties. And ultimately, I actually do hold agents responsible for that because I think, you know, you have a lot of people who come out that are uneducated in how things work and what cash flow is and the basics. And if they come in and they go to an agent that doesn't know what they're doing, an agent helps them to buy a property, they're really not acting in the

best interest of that client. So what I recommend, two things. One, for the agents listening, Our ultimate beginner's guide, it's free. It's biggerpockets.com slash UBG. We'll link to it in the show notes at biggerpockets.com slash show 80. And it's literally the basics of real estate investing. It's an amazing guide. And two, the agent's guide that I mentioned earlier, again, it talks about what investor mindset is,

what they're looking for, talks about the formulas, the basic math. The stuff that you really just need to know, there's not a lot. It's probably a couple hours of reading, and you're pretty good. So that's incredible resources out there. Yeah.

And so, you know, hopefully anyone and everyone listening, you know, you guys are sharing these resources with your agents. And if you don't have an agent, you're looking for one, you know, spread the word on this stuff because these resources really are very, very good and can help educate and train agents to become better agents for you as investors. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah.

All right. So where are you finding your? properties. Is everything on the MLS? A couple of have been happenstance through friends, a couple of deals, investor friends and things that didn't quite meet their criteria. But other than that, yes, they were all through the MLS. And different circumstances, a couple of foreclosure, short sales. My first property we purchased and turned around and purchased in

2011 was actually a new build from I think 2007, 2008. They built just after the market started to crash. rented it out for a few years. The renters kind of trashed the property and the, they just wanted out. The original people that had built the spec just wanted out. And so it was a traditional, very quick sale. Okay. And so it's just been a variety. Got you. Okay. All right, that's cool. So when you look at a property, what kind of metrics do you use to evaluate it? You already said earlier you want the $300 cash flow. But is there anything else? I mean, do you like try to figure out your return, you know, your ROI or your IRA or any of those things? You'd work

through those? I do. It's more of an art than a science, you know, maybe just because my mind doesn't quite work in that way. My husband is extremely good at that. And so we, although I'm the one actively involved in our business, we work through all those numbers together. And I, we don't sign off in anything unless we're in agreement on whether the numbers work and if it fits our criteria because it's easy to get kind of shiny object syndrome and go, oh, what about this? This is, you know, great over here, but it may not quite fit what we're looking for. We need to talk that through. You know, that's a tip right there that I just want to emphasize that you just said is

amazing. It's great, right? So if you always run through your numbers with somebody else, like you're always going to have another person, whether it's a spouse like you have, a spouse, a spouse, or if you have a business partner or if you've got a mentor, like, you know, some local investor you can get together with, whatever that is. Like that is so powerful because like you said, it helps you avoid the shiny object syndrome and jump in on the bandwagon because you heard it on a podcast or whatever.

it helps you stay grounded in knowing what you're doing and is doing is right. So very cool. And on the flip side of that, trust the numbers. In the very beginning when we got started, there were some deals we walked away from in 2011. Looking back, we should have jumped on. And we all have those stories. But the numbers were there. But we let fear get in the way of moving too quickly at that time. So I would say trust the numbers on the flip side too. And if it's a good deal, don't be afraid to act if it fits your criteria. That's cool. Well, Last thing before we head to the fire round, I just want to throw out there. We mentioned that we were doing webinars on Bigger Pockets now.

So if you guys want to come to a webinar, I'm doing one this Thursday, usually every Thursday I try to do one. But I'm in basically the whole webinar is on how to find properties, how to analyze properties, and how to finance properties, whether you've got millions of dollars or no money at all. So if you guys want to come to the webinar, just go to BiggerPockets.com forward slash webinar and you can sign up for the newest webinar. So yeah, people can check that out. I'll probably mention that in every show now. Anyway, yeah, check it out.

You can come to Bo and R. I can show you how I analyze properties. So actually, last question before we go to the fire round, what does your future look like? If you crystal ball, like, what do you see yourself? Is this just every year you're going to buy another property or two forever? What do you think your future looks like? We're on the two to three property a year track at this point. Future looks like.

I've got kids that are sixth grade and eighth grade, get them through school, get their college funded. And at that point, that's when I think about maybe turning over. to a property management company and traveling a little bit more. We'd love to travel. But future definitely lies in real estate as far as a career for me. Fantastic. Fantastic. Cool. Well, let's move on to... It's time for the fire round. All right, these questions come straight off the BiggerPockets forums that you can get to at biggerpockets.com slash forums. And this is where we're going to throw some questions at you and I know you'll do fine.

Curve balls. Here you go. This is the only part I was thinking about. Oh, stop. All right. Number one, do you think off-market deals versus on-market deals makes much of a difference? And first of all, how would you explain it? Maybe you can, if you want to try to clarify, what does that even mean?

What does an on-market versus off-market deal? An on-market deal, in my perspective, as a realtor, would be something that's on the MLS. Okay. And an off-market is something perhaps is found. either by marketing to sellers directly or working with a wholesale or to pick up a deal. Okay. So what you say? Should you focus on one or another? Does it not really matter? Starting out, I would probably concentrate my efforts in one way or the other, at least to find that

first deal because there's so many different directions to go. And I am a promotant that there's always some sort of deal on the MLS. They're not all gone. They might be a little harder to find than they were three, four years ago. But they're there, particularly working with an aggressive realtor that knows what deals look for. Great. Nice. Nice. All right. Here's a good one. Is there ever a time? You ready? You ready for this?

Yes, I'm ready. Is there ever a time that you would rent to friends and family? Now, keep in mind that we've called all your friends and family and told them to listen. So you're on the spot right now. Sure. That is a tricky question. In the right circumstances, yes. in the right circumstances. But again, it needs to be outlined with everything in writing and make

it consistent with the other rentals. Gotcha. I think that's a very good answer. I personally would never. However, if forced to at gunpoint, I would require a full written lease that filled up every criteria that I would require with any outsider as well and probably would have like six or seven additional addenda, you know, requiring non-disclosure to the family. and, you know, all sorts of fun things because, you know. With that said, I would not borrow from personally. I'm not going to borrow from friends or family. Okay.

Or vice versa. So Josh, fire on question for you. Yes, sir. Your close family member, let's say your brother or, you know, I don't know, someone really close, their house burns down. They have nowhere to go. Do you rent to them for, let's say, you know, three to six months? I would let them, I would, uh,

That's a great question. Geez. I would. If it were my close family, immediate family, I would definitely not do three, six months, not a chance. Love you, but no. You know, I'd give them, I'd give them a couple weeks to transition, but I'm not going, you know, no way, man.

Come on. I need my space. I can't, I can't do. I'd help out. And Jenna, you would, I would help. You know what? I would help them find another. place. But yeah, I'm, I don't know. Everybody's throwing eggs at me. This is awful.

Yeah, what an awful person. Well, John would. So we all like her. So, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's not true what they say about me. Some of it's true. All right. Next question. What is the most important thing every investor needs to check up on during their due diligence process, like when they're going to buy a property? What's probably the most important thing to make sure they check up on? So one thing that I would encourage every investor to do is to really know the surroundings of the property you're going to buy. Case and point, I once owned a property where they tried to put a huge natural gas fired power plant in the backyard.

And if I were in escrow on that property, I would definitely want to know about it ahead of time before closing. Yep. It's kind of outside the box, but that's something I think about. Yeah, I don't want one of those in my backyard. I didn't either. I'm just saying. Hey, well, while we're on it, maybe I can, maybe I can ask, how do you find, how does

the new investor find out about those things that are going on? Great question. Do you have any good tips for finding out that, you know, there's a power plant going in the backyard? You know, it's always good to talk to neighbors. That's a big point. Talk to the HOA if there is one involved. I like to ask if there's any drama going on, anything I need to know about related to the HOA

and things that are impacting them. And usually the property manager that manages that HOA will start talking. Calling the city or the county is a great resource and talking to planning on going as far as look at the comprehensive plan. In some instances, it depends what's developing around you. but if you've got open fields, open area, it's always good to know. Okay. I think that's probably one of the better tips that we've also had, you know, research the property

you're buying. You know, I can't emphasize that enough. Yeah, if you're not aware of what's going to be happening in around the area in the next, you know, five, 10, 20 years, you need to know it. Because you're not going to predict everything. But at least if you have kind of an idea of the master plan of what's happening in and around, where you're at, you can plan for it. If you're not aware and ignorant of it, well, you can find yourself in a situation that you weren't prepared for and that's, that's never good.

Well, so next question, do your tenants pay for their own water, sewer, garbage, electricity, why or why not? For the single families, yes. Because that's the expectation here in Idaho. that's pretty standard with what a lot of property managers do, and it just keeps it simple. And a lot of them with single families, you find particularly in the price point that we're in, have been homeowners. And they expect that. And it's not a big deal. Cool. Yep.

That works really well except for when your local utility company or city decides to make landlords force them to pay the water like one of my local towns does. Yeah, that's just crazy. So irritating. I just want to put it. Time to unload some property in that town, Brandon. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I just set up my own little, you know, billing department and I just billed them for it. It's just one more step, irritating.

Anyway, let's move on to the world famous. Famous for. Famous for. I'm not even going to go there. Oh, come on now, John. You know you've been waiting for 79 shows to participate in the famous four. Hey, I did a Bigger Pockets meet up in May here in Boise. And we did, I went around and made it.

everyone do their four. It was pretty fun. That's awesome. That's awesome. And by that, of course, you're talking about you use BP to organize a local meetup in town, correct? Yes. Awesome. Lots of fun. Yeah, cool. Yeah, we encourage that BP does not sanction these. We don't get behind them. We don't finance them. They're not something that bigger pockets puts on, but our users are all around the country. If you're unaware, are putting on local meetups of real estate investors, if there's not other kinds of meetups in town. And it's a great way if you don't know investors and you're not aware of groups where you are, use BP to put together a local get-together of investors. It's a good tool. Yeah. So, cool. All right. Famous four. Number one, what is your favorite

real estate book? All right. My favorite real estate book is, I'm going to hold it so I get the name right. Buy and Hold Forever by David Schumacher and Steve Dexter. Great classic points. The concept of buying home. This is a new book. Nobody's ever said that. I worked on that, but it truly is one of my absolute favorites. Oh, cool. Cool. Yeah, I'll link to that and the next one in the show notes. So the next one is what is your favorite business book? Favorite business book is the art of nonconformity by Chris Killibow. Yeah. I love that book.

I don't know him personally, but, you know, great book. I did meet him once here for a book signing, but he's such a great guy. But the biggest concept that I think relates to real estate in this book is he tells the story about how he figured out he could either buy a brand new SUV or he could travel to every country in the entire world. And I equated it to, oh, we could have a brand new SUV or I could get a rental property. And we drive old cars, but we invest in rental properties. So, good book.

That's great. And I'm surprised, just surprised that you didn't say the four-hour work week. And the reason because I was kind of prepping for this podcast, as I mentioned earlier, I had actually traveled last week to San Francisco. And here's a whopper for everybody. I am no longer on page 28 of said book. I am now on page 150. So, you know, it's a long book.

Yeah. You know, it's not quite a full one-flight read. But, yeah, there's, it's all right. It's all right. I'm, you know, I still have some issue with it, but overall I think it's all right. And I've had two people this week already. Literally people are berating me every week about reading this book.

It's the weirdest thing I've ever seen. But like whether it's on Twitter, on bigger pockets, people are like, Josh, when are you going to finish? When are you going to finish? When are you going to finish? So I'm getting closer, guys. All right. I listen to it on audio. That's always an option. Nice. Nice. All right. Hobbies, you've got a nice family. It sounds like real estate is this great focus of yours. But what do you do for fun?

We travel. We just did two and a half weeks in Europe in June. Bucketless trip with the kids. Sports. My son's really football, basketball. My daughter's basketball. And they've gotten me into NFL football watching in the falls. And there's a lot of football. a lot of basketball and travel when we get the chance. Fabulous. Cool. All right. My final question. John, what do you believe sets apart successful real estate investors from those who fail,

give up, never get started, whatever? Working through the fear that comes and the negativity from others. I still at times have had sleepless nights, not sure of a particular deal that I'm working on. But that's that adrenaline, too. It's I kind of feed off of it. It's fun. So working through that fear, getting past that first hurdle, that first investment is huge. And then also, you know, just overcome, replace those negative comments from friends and family

that some might get with an hour of BP, let's say. That helps a lot. There you go. We're the therapy network for wannabe and newbie real estate investors. You can get on and say, oh, it's my people. They understand. Yeah. There you go.

That's great. That's great. Well, John, we really, really appreciate you taking the time before we let's you go. Where can people learn more about you? The biggest place right now is through Bigger Pockets. Look me up on Bigger Pockets. Say hi and we can connect. I am working on a website and some other things, but I'll have all those links on my BP profile eventually. And we'll point to the profile from the show notes at Biggerpockets.com slash show 80. Well, John, thank you so much again. We really, really do appreciate you coming on board and sharing your story and giving us some tips and

feedback and we'll look forward to seeing you on the site. My pleasure. We'll talk to you soon. Thank you. All right, guys, that was Jana Weber. As our guest here on Show 80 of the Bigger Pockets podcast, simplifying real estate down to its essence, buy and hold investing, keeping it easy, nothing too complicated and really starting to make moves for herself and build up a great portfolio. So we're really excited for Jana as she continues to.

grow her portfolio. You know, one thing we didn't talk about in the show that I wanted to bring up real quick was, you know, people, I mean, I'm a big fan of Dave Ramsey. I'm a big fan of, you know, maybe not a huge fan of like Susie Orkman, but just like financial, like those financial people, I like them. I think that they're onto something by people don't need to set aside a lot. Like, what's that one guy, Stephen Bach, I think his name is automatic millionaire, right? Like, if you set aside just a little bit of money every month over the course of 30 years or

20 years, that money can grow into incredible, you know, amounts. So she kind of takes that approach with real estate investing. Again, she's not trying to do super fancy, full-time investing strategies. She's just getting a good return on investment that's going to give her an incredible retirement someday. So that's what I loved about the show. And I wanted to make that point. And I forgot earlier. So I'm throwing it now. I think that's awesome. I think it's awesome. All right. Well, if you're listening still, and we hope you are, definitely be sure to keep. up with what we got going on on Bigger Pockets. If you don't have a membership, jump on today, create a free membership, or of course, feel free to explore our paid options as well at

BiggerPockets.com. Beyond that, definitely, definitely make sure to follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Gplus, LinkedIn. Now Pinterest, we're sharing stuff on Pinterest all of a sudden, my goodness. But, you know, we like to share our content through various channels. And we'll do different deals and kind of fun stuff through these individual different networks as well. So if you're active on any of those, definitely check us out. But that's it. Get out there, make it happen, learn something today, connect with somebody new this week, and want to wish you lots of luck, and we'll see you next week on show 81.

Thanks for listening. 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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