BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast - 86: House Hacking Your Way to 97 Units (While Holding a Full Time Job!) with Cory Binsfield
Episode Date: September 4, 2014Today on the BiggerPockets Podcast we sit down with Cory Binsfield, a multifamily rental property investor who comes from Duluth, MN. If you ever feel like you don’t have enough time to inves...t in real estate, wait until you hear Cory’s story. He currently owns and manages 97 units himself while still working a full time job. Today he teaches us how he does it and also touches on a variety of topics related to getting started, house hacking, investing in a college town, and being a master of creative finance. This show is packed full of valuable tips so make sure to grab a pen and paper for notes, and let’s get to it! In This Show We Cover… Starting out with an investment that makes your wife cry How to use a VA Loan CreativeFinance vs. Conventional Finance The ins and outs of investing in a college town The SWAT team that descended on Cory’s property Mistakes, mistakes and more mistakes! Why partnering may NOT be a good option after all How to personally manage over 97 units while working a full time job How to build a solid team that can put out the fires while you chill on a beach in Mexico Networking as a “lifestyle” Owning a frat house What to look for when buying a multifamily Why real estate is better than other retirement options The most helpful technological aid in Cory’s business And a whole lot more! Links from the Show: Why I’m Not a Flipper-Don’t Kill the Goose! by Cory Binsfield How to “Hack” Your Housing and Get Paid to Live for Free by Brandon Turner The BiggerPockets Tour Books Mentioned in the Show: The Millionaire Real Estate Investor by Gary Keller The Shareholder Letters by Warren Buffett Tweetable Topics: “Networking is a lifestyle.” (Tweet This!) “There’s not a single path to success in real estate.” (Tweet This!) “You don’t want a “good” life, you want a “great” life.” (Tweet This!) Connect with Cory: Cory’s BiggerPocket Profile Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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This is the Bigger Pockets podcast, show 86.
You're listening to Bigger Pockets Radio, simplifying real estate for investors large and small.
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What's going on, everybody?
This is Josh Dork and host to the BiggerPock.
podcast here with my co-host, Mr. Brunter.
What's up, Brandon?
How much? How you doing?
I'm good, man. I'm good. It's good to have you here as my co-host.
Thank you. Thank you. I'm still on the road. I think last week was in North Dakota, wasn't I, I think.
And then this week now I'm actually in Minnesota at my sister's house. So if you hear little kids yelling in the background, that is why she's got four little ones.
It's awesome. That's great.
I love being an uncle. I love getting an uncle. I love getting a good guy. You're a good guy, man. It's awesome. That's great.
Well, listen, we've got a really cool show today with Corey Binsfield,
and we'll talk about that in a second.
But, you know, all's well with us.
Bigger Pockets is rocking and rolling.
We just brought on a brand new community manager and lead editor,
Alison Leung, and she's fantastic.
And hopefully everybody will jump in on the forums and welcome her and greet her.
She's rocking.
So definitely say what's up to her.
Otherwise, that's all I got for you.
We're just working away, growing and making moves.
Before we introduce, Corey, let's get to today's quick tip.
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All right, guys.
So let's bring them in.
All right, Corey, welcome to the show, man.
It's great to have you.
It's amazing to be here.
Amazing.
Amazing. You listen to the show, right? I mean, you're a fan.
I have listened to every podcast.
Awesome. Awesome. That's exciting.
I love having, I love having, you know, podcast guests on here because you know what to expect, kind of, but hopefully we can still throw some curveballs at you.
Hopefully. Hopefully. The one thing, you know, one of the reasons we wanted to bring you on today is because you started a, I don't know what we've called a debate, a debate on bigger pockets in the past couple of weeks. That's been kind of fun.
Yeah. We'll get to that, I'm sure, today.
Okay.
But, yeah, I mean, it was good.
The debate is very, very good.
So I think...
We like debate.
We like...
We like...
We don't want...
Listen, the beauty of what we do is this.
There is, despite what the gurus will tell you, there is no one way to do anything.
I totally agree.
There is no right way to...
I mean, there's approximately a right way.
But there's not like a single way to get anything done.
And there's room for different theories and different ways to go about doing things.
And I think that's one of the beauty, the most beautiful things about bigger pockets is
we encourage that. I want to hear your opinion and the opinion of 10 other guys with similar
opinions so that the listener can then go or the reader could then go and make their own judgment
on which path to take. There's not a single path to success in real estate. Yeah. All right, cool.
Well, let's get into your background. Let's talk about who you are, how you got started,
what you do. So, you know, you are a real estate owner. You own property. You own rentals.
When did you start doing that and how did you get going?
Okay, I started in 1998.
I came back from San Francisco, moved back to my hometown after watching my brother make a lot of money in real estate.
And I was a little bit envious as well as for some other reasons.
And I pretty much said, if my brother can do it, anyone can do it.
I know.
I got four brothers, so we don't know which brother it is.
So this is perfect.
You'll know.
So it ends up that I spent, had to rebuild my business.
You know, I still growing a business at the time.
but Fortune is able to plunk it down in my hometown.
And I knew that because cost living is lower, smaller town, easier to buy real estate.
I mean, you know it is, Josh.
You're from a big city trying to buy your first income property where I was living
at the time, San Francisco is just not going to happen.
Yeah.
Now I could have.
Well, not in San Francisco, but, you know, I mean, within an hour or two, there's certainly
plenty.
I had an offer to get a property in San Francisco, but.
she basically said marry me and you'll get all of this.
And there was a saying from my dad that was just ringing in the back of my brain.
It's like, if you marry a money, you earn it.
And I was just like, yeah, I don't want to do it that way.
Let's go back to that.
I mean, how much money are we talking here?
If I would have married her, we would inherit a lot.
Well, not really inherited.
Her dad was a huge real estate master and he ended up moving to Hawaii.
and um but he had this beautiful duplex up on knob hill and it was just it was incredible it's
probably worth maybe one or two million dollars wow gotcha and that was like an extra property
he had that was basically he was going to give to his daughter they could get her started out so
so you did anyways long you didn't marry her super long no i didn't marry her but she's a sweetheart
so if she's listening which i doubt she's a sweetheart nice nice okay so you
didn't do that. So what happened after that? You moved. Is that when you moved to where you live
right now? Yep. I moved to my back to my hometown, Duluth, Minnesota here. And I ended up
Duluth. Duluth. Hey, it was just voted number one city by Outside Magazine. Really? It is a great
city. I mean, I spent many a weekend up there in Duluth when I was growing up. I grew up in
Minnesota. You know, I wonder, I wonder if bigger pockets votes up a sit like, can I, can I,
can Brandon and I just say like, you know what? Vote up Podunk, Washington.
Yeah, we're going to just vote out.
And I wonder if people start quoting it.
Hey, I live in pot.
Oh, POTO, that was voted the number one place by Bigger Pockets.
That's a funny idea.
I think you guys should do a vote on the best rental market in America.
We should do that.
We're just going to decide and it will be so.
We'll get a ton of press.
You know, and New York Times will publish Bigger Pocket says this is the best rental market in America.
Great.
That's how I'm going to get my property sold.
Yes.
We're going to make the market nationwide the best one.
This is a great plan.
Corey, this is amazing.
Well, I'm hoping this gets promoted.
So more people moving to my town.
They raise the prices.
Exactly.
Exactly.
That's how it's going to.
Isn't that like rigging, price rigging?
Does that create an unfair advantage?
Josh, that's the beauty of real estate.
You can price rig.
Yeah.
There you go.
It's not like the stock market.
Let's not go there.
Okay.
All right.
All right.
That's the advantage of real estate.
It's not a regulated market when you think about it.
Yeah.
It's have high barriers of entry.
Sure.
And because of that, it's not as liquid as a market.
Right.
And, I mean, anyone can buy real estate, but there's not the SEC coming down your back saying you can't do that.
Oh, that's not completely true.
But, I mean, the SEC can come in if you're doing things that violate the SEC.
And you can do that in property.
You can certainly do it.
If you're raising capital at a totally different animal.
Yeah.
So let's get back. Let's give back to you. We lost, you know, this whole thing. So this woman and then she's going to give you millions and you say, you know, I don't want to marry you. I want to work hard and marry somebody else, which is good because marrying for love is certainly the way to go.
That's right. You know, if somebody had walked up to me and said, hey, when you marry me, you'll be a multi-millionaire. I too would have probably turned them down because I'd do something like that.
I'm an idealist, Josh. Oh, man. Oh, man. All right. So what was your?
What was your first deal? How'd you jump in?
First deal was, she was my fiancé at the time.
And I had been studying real estate for years.
And my first deal was a crappy triplex.
It was a for sale by owner.
And I called, called up, you know, there's a phone number posted on this property.
And I just called the guy up and said, hey, how much you want for the property?
And he says, hey, bring a 12 pack of beer and we can talk.
And so I ran to a liquor store, got a 12-pack of, and literally drove up to his house,
and we sat down and did the deal on a napkin and drank beer.
And then after I was pretty buzzed, I drove home and told my fiancé, we just bought a property.
Oh, geez.
And the next day, I rushed to the lawyer's office, and I said, is this legit?
I go, I have it in writing.
It's on a napkin here.
And he's like, well, yes, but let's see if he follows through on it.
And that was my first deal.
Wow. So you did the deal on a napkin. You drank and drove. What else did you do wrong in this first deal? Oh, I didn't tell my fiancé what property we bought. Okay. And you bought a property without talking to the boss. Exactly. Gotcha. So check, check, check. Don't do that. That thing go over too well, by the way. Yeah. I can imagine. All right. So I brought it over to the property. I put my arm around. Are you guys ever see a fan?
family vacation, the Griswold's National Lampo.
Brandon, do you know what National Ampoon's vacation?
I know what it is.
I'm just checking.
I'm a child of the 80s.
Okay.
So I'm feeling like Chevy Chase, you know, I put my arm around my wife's shoulder.
I go, honey, we're going to be rich.
We just bought this property.
And she just starts bawling.
I mean, there's everywhere.
And I am so stupid.
I go, oh, honey, and I give her another hug.
I'm like, those are tears of jewelry.
right? And she violently shaked her head. She's like, no. And that was my first deal.
So what do the numbers look like? It was this ugly triplex? I mean, was it falling apart? How much work did it need?
It wasn't falling apart, but it was pretty nasty. I mean, I got it for a 5,000 down. Speaking of IRAs, I took 5,000 out of my IRA and I was able to do it through a first-time home buyer exemption. So it's penalty-free.
and then I got on a contract for deed for like $35,000, I think.
And I had to pay it off over 10 years.
How long ago was this?
This was back in 1998.
98.
If you were listening, you would have heard that.
But yeah.
I was doing my nails.
I'm sorry.
Clearly.
So, all right.
So this Triplex as a first time homeowner,
presumably you bought this to live in one of the three units.
I lived in one unit.
And then I went to Home Depot, bought a big orange book and said,
Okay, I'm a handyman.
And I had no clue what I was doing, and I started fixing it up.
That is a great book, by the way.
That is exactly how I was.
The orange book.
Yeah, the orange book from Home Depot.
I bought my first house, went to Home Depot, got the book, and I was a handyman.
The problem was my wife knew I wasn't a handyman.
I had a job.
I have a job.
I'm wearing a suit, you know, and a suit and tie, and everyone thinks, Corey, Mr.
professional.
And it's like, that dude can't fix anything.
All right. So you, so you, and now I wasn't listening.
So what was the final purchase price?
It ended up.
It was, let me think about this now.
5,000.
Oh, it was 39,000 was the final price.
5,000 down.
$34,000 contract fee, is that right?
Yeah.
Okay, so 39K, you're living in one unit with, with your wife who's, you know, choking you.
Yes.
The other two units, they were presumably unoccupied when you first purchased it?
Yep. I had to bring in new tenants. I rented the basement apartment, which I'll never buy a property with a basement apartment ever again.
I rented that to a buddy mine. And then the upper unit was a two-bedroom and I just put an ad. Well, back then they didn't have Craigslist. So I put an ad in the newspaper.
All right. So you did what Brandon likes to call House hacking.
Exactly. And Brandon, you wrote an article on House hacking. Didn't it?
why don't you talk about that really quick.
All right.
I wrote an article on it.
I think about show 86.
On the show notes,
we'll have a link to this.
It's called,
yeah,
it's called how to hack your housing
and get paid to live for free.
And it's the same idea you're talking about
buy a small multifamily,
live in one of the units, rent them out.
It's a good way to jumpstart your investing business.
And yeah,
we'll link to it at biggerpockets.com
slash show 86.
Read it.
And anyway,
what are your thoughts on that, Corey?
Would you do that again?
Do you recommend people do that?
Do you think that's crazy?
What are your thoughts?
House hacking.
Josh is going to laugh.
Brandon, I think you'll agree with this.
I'm still house hacking.
Oh, yeah.
Good.
Really?
But now I live in a really nice duplex and a really nice neighborhood.
And you're not 20 years old anymore.
You're a slight.
I mean, you've got a year's older.
Yeah.
And you're, that's great.
I've got a birthday next week, guys.
I'll just say it.
I'm going to be 50.
I'm 50.
50 years old.
All right. So you're 50 years old. You've been house hacking since 1998.
And I don't have a problem with that. I wouldn't do it today because I got lots of little ones running around.
And, you know, I have two kids. I know where you're coming from there. But it's a big house.
Yeah. So. All right. So you don't. Everyone has to. I'm not judging you. I think it's awesome. I think house hacking rocks and being able to offset your own expenses by by having your home via rental property is.
fantastic.
And now my wife is now
my ex-wife and she never
agreed with the house hacking concept.
She should have gone with the rich chick, man.
Yeah, I think guys,
listen to the boss because
she has to
be in on your strategy.
Well, and I think that's a really important point that, right?
So, like, a lot of people tell me they want a house hack,
they want to do that, but their wife, fiancé,
whatever, doesn't want to.
Don't do it.
Exactly.
Don't do it.
I would say, yeah, don't do it.
Not do it.
Yeah.
I agree.
Yeah.
Hey, Corey, can we jump back to something you were just talking about?
You had talked about never, never, never wanting to rent a, to have a house with a basement.
Let's talk about why you would not want to own such a property.
Okay.
Not with a basement, but a basement rent.
No, basement apartment.
Yeah, yeah.
Okay.
What I have found is a basement, basement apartment attracts a certain type of tenant.
Creeping people?
Not really, it's creepy.
Or people that are going through a really tough time in their life.
I'll say it creepy.
They're cave dwellers.
They're just like, they're weird.
They're like gamers that stay up all night and drink lots of mountain dew, you know?
I mean, it's just like, it's like, wow, go for it.
Are you making fun of me, Corey?
No, but the big thing as a landlord, I'm all about ease of management.
And I've found the basement dwellers, that place has a, the turnover is nuts.
you're constantly re-renting it.
Yeah.
Interesting.
Because if you live in a basement, you meet a girl, the girl goes, I'm not dating you,
you live in a basement.
So then the guy moves, you know, or vice versa.
Gotcha.
Actually, I never had a girl live in a basement.
So there you go.
Interesting.
I've never, wait, yes, I have, but they left.
Yeah, I have one basement apartment right now.
It's kind of like a daylight basement.
It's the one that Ben Labovich, if people remember back, I don't know what episode,
last time we had Ben Labovich on the show.
Is that Waldo?
Yeah, Waldo, right?
So, yeah.
We talked a lot about this property I was buying it.
It was a triplex.
I got it for $70,000, big, ugly purple thing.
And he called it Waldo because it stood out like, you know, it was ugly and I don't know.
I have a basement apartment there.
Ironically, out of the three units, we need to do another show with Ben at some point and do like a year later.
Oh, yeah.
I love Ben.
Yeah, yeah.
We need to do like a year later on how this property turned out.
But here it's great.
It's a, I still swear it's a great investment.
That said, I've had two evictions on that property out of three tenants we've had in there.
And the basement apartment is the only.
one that hasn't given me an eviction yet.
The other two units have I haven't.
Hold on.
I'm going to do this just for my buddy, Ben.
I told you so.
No, that's a terrible Russian accent.
Hello, this is Ben.
I told you so.
Here's a Ben.
How cool is that?
I love that.
Oh, Ben.
I love Ben.
By the way, I bought his course.
Oh, did you?
You can teach an old dog new tricks.
Yeah.
All right.
There you go.
So, okay.
Ben said that.
He said the exact same thing, that basement apartments, because they're weird, because houses like that attract the wrong type of people.
So I will concede that you and him are correct in that.
I still don't regret buying the property, but I do recognize that the people that we've attracted have been difficult.
And I blame that on the fact that I didn't rehab it before moving them in.
I thought, well, you know, it's ugly right now.
I'll paint it in the summertime.
We'll make it look nice in the summertime.
Well, that was a mistake because the only people we attracted were people okay with a big ugly person.
purple thing. Today looks beautiful. Both tenants are gone. It's beautiful. We're getting re-rented
right now. But it's been a, what, nine-month stabilization process. And that's what I'm going to
about, is this show about you? It is about me. Seriously. All right. Gosh. People want to know. People
want to know. It's a continuing drama or saga. Anyway, all right. Back to you. Okay. So first
property, 98, and then it was a grind. It took me probably another two years to get the next
property.
Okay.
And fortunately, my wife moved into the next one with me, and she's getting a little antsy.
So I bought a nicer duplex, lived in that one, and then from there, I started leapfrogging.
I would buy, hold, refi, cash out, and then go into the next one.
And my goal at the time was I just wanted 10 duplexes, and I'd be set as my theory at the time.
Kind of like a John Schaub or whoever the guy is.
Yeah.
You know, buy one house at a time, and you get 10 homes.
And I said, forget homes. I want duplexes. And I'd have 20 units within 10 years. And that's how I got started.
So did you hit that goal?
Yes.
How many do you have now? I'm a unit total.
I'm up to 97 now.
Okay. That's nice. Gotcha. So you're at 97 units.
You know, really, really quick. A couple things. So are you self-managing or do you have a manager?
I set up my own management company.
Okay. So you're doing that, you know, 100% you.
Yes.
Do you have any employees
or anything like that?
Yeah, I've got,
basically I have like 1099
part-time employees.
Gotcha.
And they handle everything.
Okay.
I'm like the conductor of the orchestra.
Got it.
So 97 units and you're working a job as well, correct?
I mean,
and it's not only a job,
but it's your own business, right?
Right.
So you have your own business
and you're doing all this.
So, you know,
I guess I can't,
I can't really complain anymore
about me not being able
to acquire new units because,
you know.
Oh, gosh.
When you complain about,
being a business owner.
It just goes right over my head.
I'm like, really, Josh, come on.
You have to work on Christmas, Josh.
I'm sorry, your employees want the day off.
I know.
There you go.
See, look at that.
That's crazy.
They get the day off.
How about that?
Give Brandon a race.
Oh, this is a good guy.
I like this.
Wow.
Wow.
Wow.
Really?
I'll give you your 20 bucks later, Corey.
Listen.
All right.
Listen.
All right.
So 97 units is not an insignificant number.
to be self-managing, acquiring new ones, and running a business on the side.
I mean, how do you do it?
In the beginning, I was working my tail off.
I wouldn't recommend this to most people.
But if you are passionate and you say, you know what?
Because I'm a type of guy, I'm like, when I do something, I'm all in.
I used to be a former airborne ranger.
So in the rangers, they taught us, you don't just go, you don't go into it.
You go 110% on anything you do.
And so my theory was, I'm not going to buy one or two properties and be happy.
If I'm going to do this, I want to turn it into a steady income stream and I'll be set for life.
And that's pretty much what I did.
But going back to your comment, Josh, I always work in 12, 14 hour days.
Yeah.
You know, you get off work and then throw on some grubby clothes and all of a sudden you're playing landlord and handyman and showing places and you got old beat up truck.
And, you know, you're just you're working it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So it's not easy.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You said you don't generally recommend that, you know, having to power through like that
necessarily.
You know, the thing that stands out to me is it shows that you were willing to hustle, right?
Like if you want something bad enough, you'll work at it to get it.
And, you know, I know people from time and time to say, I want to get into real estate,
but I don't want to do this or that or this or that or whatever.
Right.
You know, but I mean, then how bad do you really want it is kind of what I like to tell
people like, do you really want it?
You know, I want a rental property, but I don't like to actually do any work and I don't
have any money and I don't want to do anything and I don't want to like okay well you know
something's got to I totally agree you've got to pick your goal and you just have to say I'm going
to complete it and failure's not an option that's the other thing I learned in the army you know
and so gotcha cool got you gotcha got you gotcha okay so power through hustle
creative finance creative finance no ball math I mean we got a we got a lot of things
happening here to kind of get from one place to the next.
I've had every loan out there, Josh.
Well, that's great. I want to hear about it. So you had this first property, the first
duplex, you know, you got the first homeowners.
Okay, that was a contract for deed, the first one.
Yeah. The second one was an FHA first-time home buyer.
I got in for like three and a half percent down, something ridiculous to low.
And then I don't know why I's thinking about this, but for some reason I thought I couldn't
get a VA loan on a duplex.
And then one day I'm talking to my banker, he goes, get a VA loan.
So then I bought my primary residence with a VA loan.
And the whole time I kept buying more and more properties, you know, doing the side hustle.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, let's, you know, I think we've talked about VA stuff briefly.
So maybe we could really glance over it.
I know we did a show with James Vermillion.
And I thought that was a really, really great show.
I don't remember which show number it was.
But he, I feel like he was in the Air Force.
James, a good guy.
I think it was Air Force.
Was like New Mexico?
He's down there somewhere.
No, he's in the south.
He's in the south.
Kentucky, I think, or something.
Anyway.
Anyway, so VA loans are for veterans, obviously.
Right.
And maybe, you know, for any veterans that might be listening,
maybe you could kind of, you know, give the goods on how a VA loans,
VA, oh, man, how a VA loan works.
And is there any advantage to that as it comes to,
income rental state. Oh, geez, I can't talk today. Income real estate. Let me make a little disclaimer.
I'm not a mortgage broker. Okay. But at the time when I got mine, I found out I could buy either a
single family, duplex, triplex or fourplex. So if I were to have to do it all over again,
I would have to use a VA loan to buy, let's say, a fourplex and hack my house. Now, you have to
live in the house. So it's like a first time home buyer loan, you know, with FHA. You have to live there.
But there's nothing stopping you from, let's say, you buy a, you know, a decent single family and you want to rent it out down the road.
You want to, you know, leapfrog into a nicer home.
Yeah.
You know, you buy that.
And just because there's a VA mortgage on it doesn't mean you can't rent it out.
You just have to live there a couple of years and then say, oh, I'm moving.
I'm getting a big house because I just had, you know, two or three kids.
I need a bigger place.
So can you?
I was going to say, I think a lot of people don't realize that is that you, you don't have to, when you move out of a property to rent it, you don't have to get a new loan.
And maybe that's basically to, yeah, it's probably basic to us, but maybe we don't say that enough.
Like, yeah, people I think are confused by that.
Well, here's another thing.
I don't people realize about the VA loans.
You can use them more than once.
That was going to be my follow-up question.
Yeah, I didn't know that.
So I used the VA loan twice to buy two separate properties.
And to this day, one of the duplexes that I moved into still has the VA loan on it.
And now, is a VA loan, do you get close to that 3.5% or how does the VA?
Oh, my God.
It's ridiculously cheap.
It's almost zero down.
Okay.
Including closing costs.
Now, you'll still pay, you know, something in closing costs.
But the interest rate on the mortgage is wonderful.
Yeah.
You know, it's low.
Yeah.
And it takes, I think my last VA deal was like a $200,000 duplex.
I probably got into it for $5,000.
Well, why not if you, I mean, you have 97 doors, probably, I'm going to guesstimate 30 to 50 properties.
Why not use V8?
VAL loans on all them?
You can only use it once, and it has to be your primary residence.
Like once at a time.
And then once you sell that loan or refinance it, you can get another one, right?
No, you have to live there in the property.
So you live in the property, but then you can move,
can you then acquire the new property with a VA loan saying I'm moving into this new
property?
You could, and you could keep moving into new property.
Yeah, that was, okay.
I found, like, the last time I did it, my banker said, hey, I need a letter,
stating why you're moving because they're not just going to let you move with this loan.
Okay. So it's not as simple as it sounds, you know, just getting one after that. There's a process.
Now, and a good loan officer will tell you how it works. Okay. But that was my big aha moment.
It's like, hey, I can use my VA loan again to get into something at basically, you know, almost nothing down like a Robert Allen deal.
Now, can anyone, can anyone get a VA, I mean, you would need to be a veteran.
presumably, but would you just get it from any mortgage broker? Do you have to go to a specialized VA broker of some sort?
I would say all the mortgage brokers can do them. I mean, they have to be approved, but most mortgage
brokers can do VA loans. I just went to like a big bank. That's where I got mine.
Okay. I guess to anyone listening, ask around, ask if they do VA loans if you're a veteran.
And if they can't, then they can't. You move on to the next banker and maybe they could help you out.
Exactly.
So let's go, I guess, now we're talking about financing. So you've done VA, you've done FHA, you've done owner, you know, carryback. How are you financing them today? I mean, with 97 units, most people are like, oh, I have four properties, I'm done. How did you get over that? And what are you doing today to buy properties? Okay, today, well, what happened was because I got that VA, right now I have 11 conventional mortgages. So 10 conventional plus this VA. So I always shut out of the market. And that was probably one of
the most frustrating experiences I ever had.
So that's when I said, I have to go into multifamily.
And that's where I built a relationship with a number of local banks,
you know, like regional banks.
I didn't have to go to a Walmart store, you know, like Arthur or something.
I'd have to find a bank there.
But I was able to work my network and they said,
hey, go talk to this guy.
And that's when I took, you know, I basically 10x the portfolio and said,
I want to go to multifamily.
That's my next level.
And that was kind of like the.
After 10 duplexes, I said, what's next?
And I said, you know what?
I like being a landlord.
I like this business.
So I'm going to multifamily next.
And that's what I did.
That's cool.
That's cool.
So are you, when you go to those banks,
are you typically putting down like a 20, 25% down payment?
Are you raising money for any of that?
Just your own cash?
How do you do it?
No, it's all my own cash.
Once again, I'm pretty conservative.
I've got to learn out of work of partnership
because I'm definitely afraid of partners
from watching my father and my own
other brother in a partnership.
And that brings up a whole host of issues, investing with family, yada, y'all.
I'm not going to go there.
But the bottom line is, I think the best saying is the toughest ship to sale is a partnership.
I mean, and so I just said, no partners.
I'm just going to do this on my own.
Basically, my favorite deal is this.
I put down 10%.
The seller carries 20%, and the bank's only in for 70%.
Okay.
And that's worked out.
I mean, are banks usually okay with that?
Like, they've been fine?
you got to have a good relationship with the bank.
You have to have a proven track record.
But most banks, they love it because they're only at risk for 70%.
The seller's got a note for 20%, you know, and I just come up with the 10% through cash flow.
Have you had a hard time finding people to agree to the 20% second mortgage?
And the multifamily, no.
It's pretty commonplace that the seller's going to carry something.
Do you mind me asking, like, how big, like what's your largest property, like a number of units?
My biggest one is a 13 unit.
Okay.
Gotcha.
So I've got a total of, I think, 29 properties.
Okay.
So.
Gotcha.
I got like six plexes, eight plexes, stuff like that.
Okay.
So I was going to ask, you had talked about this aversion to partnerships.
And you've got on the show, Brandon, who is like the king of partnerships, who
pretty much won't do a deal unless it's with a partner.
So, yeah, I mean, I think it'd be kind of fun to hear why, why are you so averse?
and, you know, hey, maybe we can help you out here.
We can all come together and work together, you know.
Call me old-fashioned.
I'm afraid to lose someone's money.
Yeah.
But if the deal goes sour, I don't want to be the guy that said,
that guy lost me $100,000 bucks.
Yeah.
He's an idiot.
Yep.
You know?
Yeah.
And also because of my other job, I have to be really careful.
I can't go talk to other people.
Say, hey, give me an $100.
we're going to go to a, you know, a 30-unit apartment building.
Yeah.
So, that makes sense.
So, okay.
I mean, I'm the exact same way.
Honestly, I wouldn't use partners probably if I didn't, you know, need to use partners.
I mean, it would be much easier if I just always had my own money to do that.
So I kind of like the idea of you're talking about the 10, 20, 70 kind of loan.
And if I, as I get more into multifamily's larger properties, I might look into that more.
But I do like the idea of a partnership in that it shares some of the level of responsibility.
but I have that fear always.
What if I lose their money?
And that's why I'll only buy a deal.
That's an incredible deal.
I'm not going to buy anything that's even to be broker.
But still, there's always that risk.
There's always at risk and I don't always sleep well because of it.
On the flip side, I think if you spell out the terms, you got someone, let's go out to the IRA example.
Okay.
I'm not opposed to taking IRA money and using that as a partnership interest.
You know, someone's earning one or two percent in their IRA because it's stuck in a
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So what is your buying criteria
then? I mean, let's kind of go back.
You've got 20 something plus units
and you've been financing it
various ways other than partnerships.
But what are you buying? What makes you,
are they all in your
proximity of one another? Is there
a specific number?
Her door that you're looking for?
Are they ugly beat up units that have low vacancy, high vacancies that you're looking to turn around?
What are you aiming at?
Okay.
Number one, it has to be in what I call my strike zone.
Okay.
So, or my target zone.
Which is?
It has to be within basically, I'd say, five miles on my house.
Okay.
And I'm in a college town, so I have a lot of choices.
When I'm driving to work, I can drive down different streets.
so I can see different properties.
So it has to be in the zone.
And then number two,
there has to be some kind of distress.
It could be, you know,
the city is shutting them down
because they're rental license and expire.
They're a terrible landlord,
so they have really bad tenants in there.
Or they're just a tired landlord.
And they're fed up with dealing with,
you know, tenants, taxes, and toilets.
Yeah, which I think there are a lot of those.
I'd call them value plays, basically.
Yeah.
That's my classic one is a value.
play. So you mentioned, well, a couple questions. One, you mentioned a college town. I get that
question from time to time on bigger pockets than other places. They want to know, should I invest
in a college town? And I've never done it. I mean, I got a community college in my area,
but that's it. I guess what are your thoughts on investing in a college town? What are the difficulties?
What are the good things? And more specific, what do you do? I mean, I know my friends who went to
school in Duluth, I wouldn't rent to them.
Right?
So, like, how do you handle that?
It sounds like we've got some stories.
Brandon, do you have any friends that were in the TKE fraternity, the TECs?
I don't think so.
Did they rent your place?
I'm a, I actually own a frat house.
Oh, okay.
Oh, nice.
And there's nine kids in there.
So, but here's my general philosophy.
I love college towns.
I love college kids because they can get loans.
the government to pay the rent.
Interesting.
And it's amazing.
Don't get me going on college education, but here's my deal.
I do not like how these poor kids can go so deep in debt to basically finish off a college
education.
And I see that with some of these college kids.
They're paying their rent with college loans.
And some are really frugal and others are just, they got nice cars and they are going
nuts.
But I don't think that's the worry of the landlords or the folks.
Nowadays.
I think the worry is, is the government going to give them a loan to pay for the damages that they caused from the kegs and the parties that they have at their college rental?
Well, you can throw overlays like on any lease agreement.
And as long as you enforce it and they know that you're going to enforce it, that's the key, then you're going to be fine.
Because 80% of tenants are awesome, including college kids.
It's the 20% that give you all the trouble.
So how do you do that?
How do you show a college kid or anybody else that you're going to enforce your lease and that you're going to be, you're not going to put up with BS?
I'm basically really firm and I'm really polite.
And if there's any lease violation, let's just do some real simple.
Let's say I've got a duplex and I see a couch on the porch.
I'm going to send them a tax and say, hey, there's a couch on the porch.
According to the lease, no indoor furniture outside.
If you don't move it, I'm going to find you.
It's that simple.
And if they don't, then I find them.
So basically you have to be, I don't want to say I'm heavy-handed.
I'm just saying, look, I tell these kids, you got neighbors, have fun, but no big parties.
And if I get calls from the neighbors, we're going to have a talk.
And if we can't work it out, then I'll be calling your parents.
And then we'll have a talk.
And if that doesn't work out, then we'll be calling the police.
Because we have like a three-strike-in-your-out policy in this town against college party, you know, party-house and stuff like that.
Gotcha.
Gotcha.
So what about the fact that kids go to college from nine months out of the year and they have three months off?
Do you require one-year leases then or do you just have an empty summers?
Everyone's a one-year lease.
Everyone has a strict background check.
And I treat them like any other person.
Do you ever make the parents cosign?
What I do is I have a letter guarantee.
And if a student has terrible credit, then I'll basically a co-sign or if they can't show proof of income.
So a lot of these kids will show me like a, you know, a financial aid award.
litter. And I can basically go off of that. Gotcha. Gotcha. Interesting. Okay. Well, so I'm just
curious. So you own a frat house. Is that, presumably, that's one of the rentals that you have.
You said there's seven kids living in. So is that like, do you consider that seven units or
whatever it is? No, that's actually, it's a triplex. Okay. But I've got nine kids living there.
And so they treat it as like one residence. Gotcha. Because there's a law or there's a rule now in this
town the city council implemented said you can have no more than six people in a single family
house yeah yeah yeah okay yep yep that makes sense now do you do you look for a certain
cash flow amount when you're buying these properties like do you say i want a hundred dollars per unit
or i want a 10% return on investment what do you what do you look for and buy them
every house has to cash flow right from the beginning so typically you know in the beginning
i was shooting for like 200 a month um cash flow after all the
expenses, make sure you get all the expenses in there.
Okay.
Is that per unit or total?
You wanted a couple hundred?
On a duplex, I always wanted 200 minimum.
And then if I could get higher, that would be nice.
So let's say 100 per door.
Yeah, okay.
Okay.
These days I'm a lot pickier and I'm shooting for a lot higher amounts.
Smart.
Gotcha.
Yeah.
It's just in the beginning.
I didn't know what it's doing.
So I learned the hard way, put it that way.
So where are you finding these deals?
Are you finding them just driving through town?
Or are you finding these?
Are you doing marketing?
Or do you have an agent who calls you?
How do you find the properties that you're acquiring?
You know, I've used like 10 agents in this town
and no one will call me and say,
hey, Corey, I got a deal for you.
I don't understand.
It's like these agents.
Why don't you work with me?
So I've had to find everything on my own.
What does that mean?
No MLS.
In the beginning, I used the MLS.
Now I knock on doors.
I go to the courthouse.
I look up records.
Okay.
I see a house that I know is a rental and you can tell they're not taking care of it.
I'll call up the landlord and said, hey, you ever consider selling?
Give me a show.
Yeah.
Okay.
And then the other thing I do is I mow a lot of my own lawns for exercise.
I figure, so I go in a gym, I'm going to mow my lawns.
Interesting.
And I've probably picked up maybe eight properties just from mowing lawns.
Talk about that.
I mean, listen, I've mowed my lawn.
I stopped.
I'm glad I stopped.
That was a happy day.
But I, you know, since, since I, while mowing, I rarely picked up rental properties as a result.
So, so tell me about that.
I love mowing.
I listen to the bigger podcast, bigger pockets podcast.
And that is better than the bigger podcast.
Because I got my, those guys are real jerks.
I got my noise canceling headphones on.
But what I do is it allows me to see the property, make sure my tenants are taken care of it, and meet the neighbors.
And in one scenario, I picked up four property is on the slide.
same block. I call it pod vesting. You want to get three properties per block.
And so if you have three properties and if you have a maintenance call, you can go at all three.
If you have a showing, you can show them all three, you know, various units. And so just through
moment, I was able to basically create my real estate pods, if you will. And that's just through
the relationships of the people, the community. Meet the neighbors or, you know, one time I lost.
Josh, you remember the Palm Trio? The Palm Trio. Like,
Listen, dude, I'm not like 50 years old.
Okay.
I know what the palm was.
I used to have...
I don't think Brandon knows of the Palm Creek.
I have no idea.
It was a Palm Pilot.
Okay.
It was pretty much the iPhone before the iPhone.
Yeah.
Okay.
Here's a classic example of this.
So I'm mowing my lawn.
I lost my Palm Pilot.
It fell out of my pocket.
And so I get a call the next day because on the Palm Pilot,
what happens is it locks out and you can put a
message on the screen that says, if phone call this number.
Guy calls me up. He goes, hey, I got your palm pilot. So I go over his house.
And I give him 50 bucks, say, hey, thanks. You know, just as a bonus. And we start talking.
And he goes, hey, by the way, next door, that guy's probably going to sell. I'm like, what are
you talking about? It was a beautiful sixplex. I go, well, what's the name of the landlord?
So sure enough, all of a sudden I'm talking to landlord, he wants to sell. And I pick up a six-unit property
on a contract for deed.
So just by mowing that little yard,
I probably picked up, you know,
a couple hundred thousand in equity.
That's awesome.
Over, you know, over time.
Well, that just goes to my point
that I like to make a lot is that,
like you never know where a good deal is going to be.
So you like, networking is a lifestyle.
Networking is not something you do
when you go and hand out business cards
at some event with a suit on.
Networking is everything you do everywhere you go,
who you are.
And you've got to be open to,
it's almost like, I believe,
in the abundance mentality.
So if I'm having a bad day,
I'll say to myself, God, I got to give more. What could I do? You know? And when you're driving through
these neighborhoods, let's say you're driving to work. You always take the same route. Don't do that.
Take a different route. Keep your eyes open. Look around. You know, look at different houses and just go,
huh, that might be a house I should call on. That is a really, really good piece of advice.
Over 80 something, we're 86 or 85 shows, I don't think we've heard that. And I love that.
That's a really, really good way to find new neighborhoods, find opportunities.
I have found so many deals by just driving around, taking a different route to work.
Yeah.
You know, it's amazing.
Awesome.
And here's what I love about multifamily properties.
And I think you'll probably find this as well.
Like, when you're a multifamily investor, it's a different mindset because you're dealing with landlords more than you are with homeowners, which some people think that's a negative because you're not, you deal with more sophisticated people.
But in the small multifamily space, which I'm in and what you're in, I find that it's very easy to spot the troubled landlords, the ones that are tired and burn.
And there are so many of us.
I mean, like, there's so many landlords that just, I mean, not that I'm hopefully not one of them, but so many
that suck, right, that are really bad.
Every property I ever bought almost has been a bank repo, almost everyone, or has been in foreclosure
or about to be foreclosed on.
They're all failed landlords.
And I harp on that all the time.
Why do so many landlords fail?
Because they don't do the math, right?
They don't do the numbers.
They don't look forward to things.
They don't treat it like a business.
For whatever reason, people make mistakes.
And with small multifacomies, it's very, very evident.
And those people are usually willing to sell and to be creative.
in that selling. Exactly. I mean, I met a lady that was, at the time, I think she was like 85,
her name was Myrtle. She sold me her fourplex. And I thought, you know, I was really worried about this.
I'm like, God, she's 85 and I don't know. So we're having trouble come up with the price. And finally I said,
okay, let's just have an appraisal done. You have an appraisal done? I'll have an appraisal done.
And sure enough, you know, we came to terms on it. And she was the toughest negotiator I ever met in my life.
And I mean, she was just brutal, but I was so happy as able to buy that property.
Because, you know, she was tired.
And her and her husband had it.
They bought the property back in 1964.
Wow.
Yeah.
And I bought it, you know, maybe 10 years ago.
But they were buying whole investors and they picked up the property, let's say, I don't know, $10,000 back in the 60s.
Beautiful brick forplex.
And that took care of them in retirement.
They did really well with that property.
That's great.
That's great.
That's great.
Buying hold.
buying hold.
All right.
So you've been doing this a long time.
You know, you laughed when we talk about college towns.
Surely you have a couple of fun stories.
Let's, we'll keep them brief.
What was the craziest thing you've ever dealt with with a tenant?
Okay, there was the text I received that said,
holy crap, Corey, there's a shakedown going on.
And basically.
Is Tony Soprana there?
I pull up to the property and it was my 13 unit multifamily.
I had a lot of college kids in there along with some other people that I was trying to get rid of at the time.
And the whole property is surrounded.
There was a SWAT team, ATF, the local police department, the sheriff.
It was just, it was nuts.
And I found out later on that these tenants I rented to that were from Mongolia actually weren't from Mongolia.
and they ended up being some really bad people.
And that's before I was doing background checks.
So that was like my worst one.
And I got a funny one where with college tenants,
you get a lot of drama with roommates.
So they'll call the landlord thinking they can solve it.
Yep.
And in one scenario, I had a girl that called me and said,
look, I can't take it anymore.
My roommate is having strange men over.
and you have to get rid of her.
And so I say, well, it's not really a violation of lease to have friends over.
And she goes, she's advertising on Craig's list.
And they're coming over to lick her feet.
Wow.
That was like the shoe fetish tenant.
And then I found out her, so that lady that complained that, this poor college girl that was dealing with this, her dad was a district attorney down in St. Paul.
And so I had to go over to that tenant right away.
I mean, it was just like, you know, I got the district attorney calling me.
And I was like, oh, God, this is ugly.
Wow, that's crazy.
Wow.
So Brandon never got busted.
You didn't find out it was him.
Okay.
So this brings up a good question.
And then we probably got to move on.
But I want to know about when you rent to people who have multiple, like, college kids in a, in a apartment, right?
So let's say you rent a single unit, I mean, a two-bedroom apartment.
This happens to me because, like I said, I have a community college in my area.
Right.
We rent to probably, I don't know, 20% of our people are students.
They move in together, two students together, and then they get in a fight or they get a problem or something happens and one of them wants to move out.
How do you handle that when it's like a two-bedroom apartment that they rented together and then now one of them wants to leave?
Do you have them resign a new lease?
Do you, I mean, I don't let them move out.
I don't care if the person is not living there.
they signed a legal contract that says they're going to pay rent for the next 12 months.
Now, what I have done to accommodate them if they're pretty good tenants is I'll say,
hey, if your roommate will allow it, you can basically find a new person, but they have to
approve of that person, the roommate that's staying there.
You know, this person can't go on Craigslist and bring some creeper in there.
And so I basically say, you both sign a lease, work it out.
otherwise, you know, in a lot of cases, I'll let the other person move in if they're acceptable to it.
But I had one roommate that said, no way.
I don't care.
They're going to pay rent for the next nine months, and I'm going to leave her by myself.
And sure enough, they did.
Do you make them pay, like, one person in charge of actually writing the check, or do you let them each pay their half or their quarter?
No, they each pay separately.
I use a program.
I use an app folio in this other program called pay lease.
Okay.
Yeah.
We've always made them do it.
with the other. We've always made them have one person be like the point of contact and then they
make them. And what I found is it seems anyway that that their friend that they live with is a
much bigger motivator than I am and get into the pay rent. That's my theory. No, I do that with my frat house.
The frat house I point the housing manager and he has to collect all the rents.
But all the other college rentals, I just, you know, they can each pay separately if they want.
What do you do then if one of them doesn't pay? Do you evict one? Do you threaten eviction on one of them?
No, the whole, everybody.
There you go.
So that's the motivation.
Yeah, that is motivation.
Yeah.
Interesting.
Okay.
That's not a bad idea.
And have you had to, I'm assuming you have,
enforce that a few times?
You know, I've only been court probably three times.
No kidding.
In housing court, it's just been, it hasn't been bad.
Okay.
Maybe I got lucky.
I don't know.
Yeah.
Well, there you have it.
Cool.
Awesome.
Well, our last question I want before we hit to the fire round is,
what mistakes have you made?
and you're investing.
Like what have you done wrong or screwed up on or anything like that you can share that you'd do
differently?
In the beginning, I thought appreciation would bail me out.
Yeah, so I was buying properties that had, let's say, 100 a month, 200 month in cash flow.
And then I made all my projections at a 3% growth rate.
I wasn't projecting really high numbers.
But, you know, being a finance guy, I said, God, in 10 years, these properties are going to double,
just like they say in the real estate books.
And they didn't.
And so I've still got three properties that are underwater,
but fortunately the cash flow.
Yeah.
Gotcha.
So you got to be really,
I mean, you make all your money,
you guys heard this,
you make all your money going into the deal.
Yeah.
And real estate is not forgiving if you buy it wrong.
Yeah.
Yeah, for sure, for sure.
Well, I've got one last question myself.
And that you're a guy who manages 97 units by yourself.
you have a couple part-time guys
and clearly you probably
want to go away for vacation
you know for a day, a week
whatever.
What do you do?
What do you do when you're in Bahamas
and one of your tenants calls saying their apartment's
flooded, the roofs caved in
and you know, the garage is on fire.
I have them, you know,
we do a Skype call and I say talk to the hand,
you know?
No, I'm just kidding.
Whoa, oh, wow.
Do not rent from this stuff.
No, I've got my maintenance staff.
Yeah.
You know, and I just say, I give everybody the number and I say, look, call this guy.
There's an emergency.
Yeah.
Now, you know, I was in Mexico for a week, you know, this year.
And I was sitting by the pool and, you know, periodically, Josh, you're a business owner, so you know how it goes.
You're going to get a Google text or something that says, what should we do?
And but if you've got a good team in place, you know, you're not that important when you think about it.
You know, other people can figure out these problems.
Yep. Yeah.
Yeah.
That's true.
So that's what I do.
I would tell Josh you need to take more vacations.
I would encourage that.
Where are you going next?
Yeah, because when I go away,
Brandon gets to play.
I believe the irony is every time you're gone is always like the biggest,
like bigger pockets weekend.
If you like gone for the weekend,
the more you leave,
the better the site does.
All right, I'm out of here.
Goodbye.
It's been fun.
This is Josh Torkin's signing off.
The Bahamas.
Yeah, baby.
There you go.
All right.
Let's take this to the next part of the show, which is the...
It's time for the fire round.
All right, these questions all come straight from the Bigger Pockets forums,
or we're going to fire them at you, just like you've heard on 80-some podcast.
All right, number one, how do you find good team members, like contractors, agents, etc.?
I tell everybody I know, I don't care who I run to do.
I'm looking for this type of person.
And hopefully I can get a referral.
There you go.
Let everybody know and see what happens.
It can be I'm at the dry cleaner and I'll ask the dry cleaner.
Do you know anyone?
Yeah.
You never know.
Yeah.
That's great.
That's great.
All right.
Number two, long term, would you rather remain a landlord or flip house?
Oh, we're not going to go there.
That is not a fire round question.
Gee, what's the answer to that one?
No, we know Corey's not a fan of flip house.
flipping. Josh, there's no flippers on the Forbes 400. Okay? So let's get that straight. Oh, man.
So when all the flippers can pile in on the show note and beat Corey up, just be nice a little bit.
Isn't it warm bucket on that list? Huh? All right, let me get to my question. Stop me. Okay.
All right. Long term, would you rather remain any landlord or switch to 100% passive income via
master leasing, note investing, some other type of passive, quote-unquote real estate investing?
I mean, listen, I call true real estate investing what you're doing.
Everything else I still consider real estate investing.
But like I don't can, you know, unless you physically own property, you know, it's kind of a entity within the realm, right?
You know, and someone pointed this out on the forum, you know, one of the flippers said, look, being a buying hold is not passive.
And I totally agree.
It's a lot easier now than it was before.
Yeah.
But that's something I'm wrestling with.
The most successful investors I know have kept all their properties, but put in a, a
management team.
Yeah.
Or what do I do?
Maybe I'll 1031 exchange and go into some giant apartment buildings and just be a limited
partner with a lead passive investor.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay.
So it's something you would consider it.
I mean, at a certain point, you get to like, okay, this is a lot.
Let me pare down.
Okay.
Right on.
Cool.
Cool.
All right.
What is your greatest technological aid in terms of your investment company, like an app or
software or anything?
Like, what do you use technology in your business?
the most? I would say my property management software. So I currently use Apple O. Okay. And I used to use
rent manager, but I could not manage 97 units without a professional property management program.
Yeah. It'd be impossible. That's something I need to get still. Yeah. Yeah. Nice. Nice. Final question.
Do you think holding a single family is better or multifamily? Clearly you've been buying multis,
But why, I guess why?
I mean, why not just buy a bunch of houses?
It really depends on your goals and objectives.
Bottom line is multifamily, I can create value.
Single family, I can only create value one way.
And then there's a limit because of sales comps.
Multi-value, I can go in.
I can, you know, Ben Labovich talks about this.
You can increase the rent, lower the expenses, put in better tenants.
Walla, you make $100,000 in instant equity.
And you're talking about five plus units.
You are not talking about four or not.
No, five plus.
That's my only focus now.
I don't want any single family anymore.
Did you buy complexes still?
No.
Well, because you can't change valuation based on.
You can't.
And that's the thing.
Even up to a fourplex,
those aren't fourplexes are still based on sales comps.
Yep.
Yep.
You know?
Yep.
I agree.
Cool.
There you go.
There you go.
Awesome.
All right.
Let's move on to the last segment of the show,
everyone's favorite, which we call the
Famous Four.
All right, Famous Four. First question.
I won't give up my day job.
What is your favorite real estate book?
I'm really having trouble with that one.
And so, I'm going to say
the Gary Keller one, the millionaire real estate investor.
Okay.
Good book.
There you go.
Yeah.
Cool.
Right on.
What about your favorite business book?
Okay, favorite business book would have
to be, this is kind of a weird one, but it's Warren Buffett, Berkshire Hathaway. You go to the website,
and I've read all their shareholder letters. And you'll get an MBA in finance. If you just read
the shareholder letters going all the way back to the start of the partnership in the 1960s.
It's just a walk-through finance. It's amazing. That's awesome. And that guy is just, he's spot on.
Yeah. I've had a lot, a lot of people tell me the same thing. And then it's snowball. That's
You know, I got that book right here.
My girlfriend got it for me.
I got the best girlfriend in the world.
She got me this book.
Nice.
All right.
Hobbies besides hanging out with your super cute girlfriend.
Oh, hobbies.
I've got two just crazy kids.
They're so fun.
13 and 11.
Nice.
And then we do paddleboarding.
I'm a skateboarder, so I still longboard.
You're skateboarding in 50.
You're that guy.
I love skateboarding.
I was a skateboarding.
skate punk in high school, you know.
But I wouldn't wreck property like they do now.
Right, right.
And I'm into rock climbing, rock climbing.
It's in the 60s, huh?
50s, 40s?
Try the 80s, buddy.
I had a bonsai board.
Do you ever know what the bonsai was?
Yeah, I think I had one too.
It was made out of aluminum.
That thing had razor sharp.
Oh, I didn't have that now.
Yeah, I used to get in skateboard fights with those.
Awesome.
All right.
That's awesome.
All right, my final question for the day is, what do you believe sets apart successful real estate investors from those who give up or fail or never get started?
A good life.
And what I mean by that is what gets in the way of a great life?
A good life.
I say that one day.
And I was like, God, that makes so much sense.
You're happy.
You're content.
You've got an okay job.
Why take on risk?
All right.
But if you want a great life, don't let the good life get in the way.
Go out there and do something.
Oh, very fancy.
That's good.
Awesome, man. Awesome. Yeah, yeah.
I'm Tom Voo. You know what Tom Bo is?
No, don't go there. Don't go. I will go there.
All right. Corey, it has been a pleasure. Where can people find out more about you or find
your, you know, around online or anything like that?
You know, just use Bigger Pockets.
Okay. Right on. Right on.
And of course, you'll be around on the show notes at BiggerPockets.com slash show 86 to answer any
questions. And you know it.
We definitely appreciate you coming on board.
Thank you so much.
Good luck to you as you continue to expand your entire empire of rental property and frat houses
and whatever else it is you decide to pick up next.
Only one frat house is enough.
Never again.
All right.
Cool, man.
Well, listen, it's been a pleasure.
Thanks so much.
We'll see you around.
All right.
Thanks, guys.
All right.
All right, everybody.
That was show 86 of the Bigger Pockets podcast with Corey Binsfield.
big thanks to Corey for coming on the show.
We really, really do appreciate it.
Always something to learn on the show.
What do you think, Brandon?
I mean, this is 86 shows, and there hasn't been one where I haven't walked away saying,
wow, okay, I pick something up.
I agree.
I especially like today because, I mean, I am a multifamily investor.
I love small multis.
I love getting in the larger ones.
And yeah, I think it's great.
Corey is a bright guy.
Yeah, for sure, for sure.
Cool.
Well, guys, listen, we hope you enjoyed it.
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I'm Josh Dorkin.
Signing off.
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