BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast - 914: Deals We’re Doing: Rob’s Pink Pickle and How David Made $500K on ONE House914:
Episode Date: March 14, 2024You hear us talk a lot about buying real estate, but what real estate deals are WE doing in 2024? Today, we’re pulling back the curtain on our portfolios, walking you through actual deals we’re do...ing, how much they cost us, how much they’re making, and why, surprisingly, one of us STOPPED buying real estate to focus on something that’ll make much more money. Want to know what it is? We’re about to give you every detail you need to repeat the real estate deals we’re doing! First, Rob will talk about his Pink Pickle…yes, you read that right. It’s the newest bachelorette party-themed short-term rental in Austin, Texas! This short-term rental has everything you’d ever need: a pink pickleball court, a pink dinosaur, a mysterious red button that you SHOULD NOT PRESS, and an above-ground pool. This property took a LOT of work, but it only happened because of a real estate deal gone wrong. Next, David gives a masterclass on how to make half a MILLION dollars in equity on one rental property. He also shows you how having an investor’s eye can allow you to TRIPLE the square footage of a home and skyrocket the rents, making you much more cash flow than you thought possible. And no one even wanted this property in the first place! How do you find these hidden deals? Stick around; we’ll show you! In This Episode We Cover: Whether to buy more doors or reinvest in your real estate portfolio in 2024 (and what we’re doing) Housing market headwinds that are stopping most investors and how to get around them Turning a house flip gone wrong into a cash-flowing short-term rental How David turned a tiny house into a $1.3M triplex with a HUGE equity position The BRRRRSTR strategy explained (buy, rehab, rent, refinance, repeat, short-term rental) Why you always check for extra square footage BEFORE you make an offer on a house And So Much More! Links from the Show Find an Agent Find a Lender BiggerPockets Youtube Channel BiggerPockets Forums BiggerPockets Pro Membership BiggerPockets Bookstore BiggerPockets Bootcamps BiggerPockets Podcast BiggerPockets Merch Join BiggerPockets for FREE Learn About Real Estate, The Housing Market, and Money Management with The BiggerPockets Podcasts Get More Deals Done with The BiggerPockets Investing Tools Find a BiggerPockets Real Estate Meetup in Your Area Expand Your Investing Knowledge With the BiggerPockets Books Be a Guest on the BiggerPockets Podcast David's BiggerPockets Profile David's Instagram Rob's BiggerPockets Profile Rob's Instagram Rob's TikTok Rob's X/Twitter Rob's YouTube How to Invest in Short Term Rentals (STR) How to Invest in Real Estate With the BRRRR Method Book the Pink Pickle Why I stopped buying real estate (and why you should too) Check out more resources from this show on https://www.biggerpockets.com/blog/real-estate-914 Interested in learning more about today’s sponsors or becoming a BiggerPockets partner yourself? Email advertise@biggerpockets.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Transcript
Discussion (0)
This is the Bigger Pockets podcast show 9-1-4.
What's going on, everyone?
This is David, your host of the Bigger Pockets Real Estate podcast.
And boy, am I happy to be here today with my good buddy, Rob Abasola,
as we pull back the curtains and show y'all what we got going on with our own real estate projects.
Good to be here once again, fellow host, David.
I'm excited about today.
We have a good episode that we're calling, Catching Up with the Cast,
where we will give you all of the hot goss.
of everything going on in our real estate portfolios in 2024.
And nobody loves hot goss more than Robert.
What's your favorite Ryan Gosling movie, by the way?
Is it Behind the Pines?
Was it Barbie?
I think I'm going to go crazy stupid love,
which I know is a bit unconventional for the Baby Goose gospel himself.
I know a lot of people like the notebook like yourself.
But yeah, dude, crazy stupid love's a good one.
That's right.
On this episode, you're going to be learning about what Rob and I are doing
in our own investment journeys to help inform you on yours.
You're going to hear about how our portfolios are
performing and what deals we're actually working on a little bit into the day to day of how we're
pulling off deals in 2024, what strategies we're using and the approaches that we're taking.
So without further ado, let's get into today's show.
All right, Rob, let's start with you.
How is your portfolio performing right now?
You know what?
It is actually looking pretty dang good relative to where we were a year ago.
I've been talking about this for a bit now, reinvesting back into my properties, all that good
stuff.
And I'm finally starting to see the results.
on a lot of the different properties that I've put my money back into versus, you know, I think a
year ago I was really into this mindset of wanting to buy more and acquire more. But I've just
try to be disciplined and trying to do what we call portfolio revenue optimization. So I would
say for the most part, other than maybe two properties that one of them is down relatively
significantly on the short-term rental side, still profitable, but just not making as much as it
was in 2021. Surprise, surprise. I had another property that took maybe like a two-rength,
3% dip and everything else for the most part has either performed the same, if not significantly
better, aka our Scottsdale property. That one has really, you know, that one's turned a corner for us,
which has been really, really fun to experience. Yes, it has and hopefully more corners to turn in the
future as we just slowly and steady keep adding amenities. So on that topic, are you buying more
properties right now or are you increasing amenities like what we did in Scottsdale? That's a very good
question. The answer is yes, no, maybe everything. I actually just released a
video on my YouTube channel called Why I Stoped
Buying Real Estate and Why You Should Too.
And basically I talked about this idea that we all get caught up in door count,
which we've all been there.
Like, right?
Like we all want more doors.
We've gone to the real estate meetups and everyone's like, I've got 70 doors.
And it's like, oh, I need more doors.
But I've really been more into this idea of making meaningful doors.
So yes, I am buying more properties.
However, the properties that I'm buying right now are bigger development deals.
For example, we're currently looking at like a $6 to $8 million,
dollar hotel deal. That would be effectively a 22-door complex, much more meaningful to what I'm
looking to do in the real estate world. I'm not necessarily taking down single-family residences
the way I once was instead of doing that. I am taking the same amount of money that I would
typically have used to deploy into real estate and really just putting that back into my portfolio.
We'll get into one of the deals that I'm talking about specifically where I did sink a
pretty penny into it, but the results have been pretty astounding. What about you?
Are you buying more properties or what's your approach been?
Oh, man.
I bought a whole bunch of them at one time.
You and I have talked about that.
Then I ran into a whole bunch of headaches with the city.
Long, long, long story there.
But I bought in really nice neighborhoods.
The neighbors did not want rental properties in their neighborhoods.
And I came across problems.
I haven't come across before.
So I tried to get people in place to fix those problems.
They didn't really get any progress made.
I finally switched to new people.
I'm on my third group of people and they're doing great.
So these people have become.
employees of mine now, I pay them to be in-house property managers for my projects, and we are
finally starting to see light. At the end of the tunnel, I got maybe another couple months,
and I'll have all the permits cleared, the city good with everything. Basically, the neighbors
all get together, and they call the city and made it seem like I'm Blackstone coming in to buy
up their neighborhoods. And when we finally were able to get in touch with the city officials,
we're like, no, we're not at all. We're just regular people that are, you guys are crushing us with
these permits that, I mean, basically, Rob, they were telling me that I need this to tear down
structures on the property that have been there for 80 years. Yeah, that's crazy, man. Right. 80 years ago,
someone didn't complete the permitting process and so they want me to take down the duplex that's
on the property. But good news is, as I'm turning the corner, and once that's done, it's kind of like,
all right, now let's go clean up all the pieces, put everything back together, start rebuilding,
and then like it, start buying more properties. I think things are going to be looking good for me
in the future. So in the market you're looking at today, what headwinds are you seeing that
are slowing things down for investors?
Yeah, I mean, obviously, I think the big elephant in the room is interest rates.
We are seeing them go down a little bit.
And so as a result, I still think that we're a bit in a stalemate where people have
really low interest rate homes and they don't want to sell them because then where are
they going to go?
You know, they're going to have to pay five, six, seven percent.
So I think that has ultimately kind of caused this really weird stalemate in the market.
it. I think interest rates also make it really, really difficult to, I don't know, produce a meaningful
cash on cash return, which isn't really the golden metric it used to be, but it's still very important
to a lot of investors. And a lot of investors say, well, if I'm not going to make money on this deal
or if there's not enough room for error, then I'm just not going to do it. Other than that,
I wouldn't say like too much more has changed because I would honestly argue that competition has
kind of subsided a little bit, and we're no longer in this era where you have to make an offer
that's $50,000 over asking and waiving all your contingencies. Yeah, I would agree. I think we have
an inventory problem more than anything. There's not enough houses to buy. You mentioned what
contributes to that. Part of it is lower interest rates, keeping people from putting their properties
on the market. And that's further compounded by people don't want to sell their house because what are
they going to buy? There's not much out there to buy. So there's just not a lot of options. So
demand goes up. Supply doesn't keep up. We're still not really building many houses.
houses. So the good news is you're not having to pay massively over asking price in a lot of
markets like you were before. The bad news is it's very hard to get cash flow. So if you want to be
buying real estate now, you kind of got to take a longer term approach. So you can't just
set it and forget it. Now you have to always be thinking about how do I get a leg up on the
competition? What's going on in the algorithms? What are the people who are booking short term
rentals looking for? What are tenants and markets looking for? How do I get into a new niche like
medium term rentals? What markets does that work in? What markets are other investors missing?
is sort of becoming, in a sense, like a day trader in stocks.
Like, I got to know everything going on in the market so that I can make these, like,
minute quick adjustments, which is great, which is why podcasts like this are that much more
valuable, because if you don't know what's going on and your competition does, they're going
to beat you.
Yeah, I guess I'd like to clarify, too, a little bit.
I said that I'm not buying as much.
I mean, I'm still buying for the purposes of cost aggregations and tax benefits.
I'm just not doing, I'm just, I'm approaching real estate very differently.
And so, yes, 2024 is a little bit more competitive.
I'm kind of, I'm not going to say hedging my bets, but I'm changing my strategy.
I'm doing a lot more off market and creative finance deals, which is how I'm able to
make things pencil for my personal strategy a lot more, I don't know, meaningfully.
So we can actually talk about that is in this next deal if you, if you're down.
I was just getting ready to ask you, man.
All right, we're going to take a quick break.
But on the other side, Rob and I walk through details of real deals that we're doing in
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Welcome back, friends, friend of me, investors, and everyone in between.
David and I are catching up on what's working for us in our portfolios today,
specifically what we're learning from our deals right now that you can apply right at home.
That's right. And you're up first in the hot seat, Rob. Tell us about the deal that you are
calling the Pink Pickle. Okay, so the latest deal that I've finished, I started this back in,
hmm, back in May. So it's honestly, it's taken a little bit of time. But this is an awesome
in Texas. The strategy that I used to acquire this property was creative finance. It was actually
kind of a mixture of strategy. So I was able to acquire this creative finance. And it basically
turned into what we call a burster here at Bigger Pockets, which is a full-on renovation by rehab,
rent, refinance, repeat. That's the typical method. But I bought it, rehabbed it, short-term
rented it. And now I'm probably going to refi and do that strategy. But it's been a whole journey
for me, man. I spent $440,000 for this specific property. I invested pretty heavily into the design of it.
I would say the ARV on this property is in the neighborhood of $700,000, which actually isn't like a, I know
that sounds like a really big increase in value, which it is. But I also invested a significant amount of
money into this property. So I would say it's actually probably a little closer to a wash.
I'd turn a small profit if I were to go out and sell it. But I've had some bumps and bruises on this when
I'll pause for questions.
All right.
So let's get into this thing.
And by the way, bumps and bruises are not uncommon in this market.
I basically was in a fiery dumpster fire of a car crash.
So don't feel bad, Rob, because it happens to the best of us.
All right, I'm sure knowing you that you bought a short-term rental, tell me what your intention
was going into this property.
Yeah.
So this one was supposed to be a nice little creative finance flip.
It's called a subtail where you basically creatively finance the property while you rehab it
and then you retail it and sell it.
So I came into this thinking it was going to be a flip
and that I was going to make, you know, I don't know,
$50,000 on it, $75, something like that.
That was the initial idea.
As I got into the flip, a lot of skeletons in the closet, if you will,
and in between the studs and two by fours.
And pretty much everything was wrong with this house.
Side note, we may need to rename this podcast between the studs.
You just gave me a great idea.
Like between two ferns, between two studs.
could become the new name for the bigger pocket.
That'll be our YouTube series.
Yes.
All right.
As you were.
Yeah.
So it was meant to be a flip and I was going to come into this thing and I was going to have to invest,
you know, I think it was initially the budget was like 100.
And the upside was I was going to make like up to $100,000 on the exit for this.
Well, the Austin market really corrected itself very quickly in the time that I own this property.
And honestly, I'm kind of glad because I waited about a month,
month and a half before I started this flip. And had I started immediately, I would have been in the
middle of like a strategy that wasn't going to work because what I found out with this specific
property was basically the money, I was going to have to spend a ton of money to break even on it.
And I was like, dang, that's never a good place to be having to spend 100,000 to just make your
money back. And so I quickly thought to myself, well, listen, how can I take a losing situation
and turn it into a winning situation.
How do I make lemonade out of lemons?
And so I just decided, well, hey, I'm rehabbing this house.
I'm going to make it super nice.
Why don't I just make it like a super amazing short-term rental,
which is eventually what this property ended up becoming?
And I ended up really creating what I think is something.
I think it's very special.
We call it the Pink Pickle.
It's a Bachelorette Party house in Austin, Texas.
If anybody wants to check it out, you can go to Pink PickleATX.com.
And it's full, I mean, it's very pink.
Very, very, very, very pink.
But it really hits on one avatar.
Can confirm.
Yeah.
Super pink.
It is.
But it's amazing, man.
And it's honestly, like, been a very creative experience for me to kind of do this.
And I've never done anything like it.
So it's actually turned out to be what I think will be the coolest property in my
portfolio.
All right.
I'm going to make you give us a little more detail here, right?
Okay.
Other than just pink, like, tell me what's in these rooms.
Tell me what you got hanging on the walls.
Tell me about any extra design features you brought in.
Walk me through this.
Well, you know, I love my pickleball.
Right.
So we've got a hot pink pickleball court in the backyard.
We've created an amazing above ground pool.
So a lot of people ask, like, how can I add value?
Pools add a lot of value on the short-term rental side of things.
But I didn't want to spend $100,000 on a pool.
So what we did is we built an above-ground pool.
And we built this whole wrap-around wood deck around.
it and it looks like a really premium like really nice pool dude i can't believe we pulled this off
for like 15 000 so now we got an amazing pool we have a ton of murals uh one of the mural says like
how do y'all another one says like it's not my first rodeo yeah we've got neon lights that say
cosmic cowgirl um so and then like obviously all these murals are like a mixture of hot pink and
purple and all that stuff and one of them says lucky you but i would say the most insane feature
on this entire property. I don't know if you saw it.
But, well, first of all, there's a pink dinosaur in the backyard.
We found it at like a junker yard.
And we went and it was green and we...
You see this.
Yeah, we basically painted it like hot pink.
That was cool.
But the most insane feature at this property is there's a red button when you walk in with a
giant sign that says, do not push this button.
Don't push this.
Yeah.
And then the moment you push the button, the lights turn off.
A disco ball starts turning.
and then Abba dancing queen starts playing for one minute and you can't stop it. So the idea is it's
our hype button. So, you know, bacheloretts come in and they're like, oh, we need to get hyped up and they push
this button and then boom, like they can dance for a minute and then leave the house. So we have a lot of like
things like that. How did you pick Dancing Queen to be the song that played? Well, you know what?
I was advocating for Shania Twain. Man, I feel like a woman. Yeah, that one. Uh-huh. Because
that's, you know, that's my song right there. But I interviewed.
Several ladies, I asked them for their opinions, and they all agree that Abba is just very iconic to that
to that demographic. So, you know, hey, I had to listen to my avatar, you know.
Let me know in the comments, everybody, what song you would have put had this been your property
and you wanted something to come on? I'm surprised you make me feel like a natural woman
didn't make the short list there. All right. So you also have pink felt on your pool table.
You have cowboy hats hung on the white wall. Look like you have kind of like a bar setup.
up with like a hole in the drywall between rooms.
I did something very similar on a cabin of mine in Blue Ridge, Georgia, where I converted a garage.
And I basically had like a wall, like separating two rooms.
And it has to be there because there's a beam so you can't get rid of the wall.
But I did what you did.
I punched a big hole in the wall.
And then I put a bar so you could kind of pass through drinks between the two spaces.
Right.
Can you share what you did there?
Yeah.
So that was an idea for my contractor.
And he was basically like, hey, man, your space is kind of closed.
but I think if we knock this down, it is a load-bearing wall.
We'll have to put in a beam, but he was like it would completely open up the space.
And it wasn't really a cheap thing for him to do, but we all agreed it needed to be done in it.
Man, it really just changed.
I mean, I would live in this house now.
It's absolutely amazing.
In that same room, we've basically created an open game room concept.
But like you said, it's got a pink pool table on it.
And then there's what we call a selfie vanity station.
So we have like a wall that's all pink wallpaper with about six or seven mirrors in six or
seven bar stools where all the ladies and they can get ready for a night on the town to go to
Sixth Street in Austin. So really, I've gotten so much creative sort of fulfillment from this
because I've never really approached my Airbnbs with really just hammering down on who that
avatar is. And that's something that I'm starting to discover as well with the whole like
pickleball court in Scottsdale. Our avatar there is the pickle ball player and they pay a lot
of money for the three courts. Oh, that's the play on words. The pink pickle pickle ball. That's
one of the play on words, yes. There's there, there are a few. We'll leave it there. Now I'm kind of jealous
that you got a pink property. I need like the green cucumber, the greenhouse. I need one of my own
to make it all green. The dill pickle. The dill pickle, there you go. The disco ball makes green lights
go around and you've got like artificial astro turf everywhere. What song would play? I have the
tiger turns on when you push the button. I love it, man. Yeah, that'd be fun.
But yeah, man, the results, it's a little early to say, but we can dive into that and then get into your deal if you're cool with that.
Well, let's hear, is it performing yet? Do you have it on the market? How's it doing?
I do. So we just listed it. I just checked April. We have about $7,800 on the books.
My entire mortgage and everything on this property is about $3,000. So we initially, before all the renovations, if we just made it a cute Airbnb, like, you know, just doing my typical style.
it was slated to make between like 40 to 60, probably around that $50,000 range.
And now as a result to all of this, we think it'll do $100K plus.
So we've effectively added $20,000 to the bottom line, which will be very significant
from a cash flow perspective.
Congrats, man.
That's awesome.
Pink pickle ATX, if you guys want to check that out and get some inspiration for your own
designs.
And if you're wondering why ATX is because that's how people like Rob from Texas,
want to look cool, talk about their hometowns. He lives in H-T-X, ATX. I don't know if they call,
do they call Dallas D-TX? No, but I do travel to Portland, which is PDX. There you go.
I've actually only been there one time, but they do follow the same naming convention.
Getting both useful and useless information all on the same podcast while you are entertained
and educated. Okay, I can't wait to hear the details of your deal, specifically how you added,
I don't know, half a million dollars of equity with just $150,000 of work.
Right after the break.
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slash rookie. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring indeed is all you need. And welcome back. Rob and I are here
walking you through what's working for us in today's market. So let's jump back in. Okay. So I know you've got a deal
that you've been working on this this past year. So tell us about that. Yeah, I got a couple of them.
So the one we're going to talk about today is in the East Bay of California, a city called Castro Valley.
This is one of the nicer cities in the Bay Area. And if you don't know the San Francisco Bay Area
dynamics. It's more than just the city of San Francisco. There's a ton of small cities that surround it and
make it up. You basically have polarized options. You have pretty expensive real estate that usually has
high crime, rough tenant bases, not very desirable, or you have relatively safe and stupid expensive.
There is nothing in the middle out here. So Castro Valley would fall into that relatively safe,
but stupid expensive. The school scores are going to be high. The crime is going to be low. You're getting a
lot of professionals that are there that have some really nice hospitals it's a good area but you can't get
into that thing for less than a million bucks like every house pretty much is over a million dollars well
i found this one when rates were just starting to go up and i saw that it was a three bedroom one
bathroom about 1100 square feet it was a very small property the floor plan was a little odd so you have
to walk up the stairs to go into the house all the houses on this street were built on raised foundations
They basically had like a bit, like they were all on top of a big basement.
But the garage itself was at floor level because you can't have a raised garage.
So the idea would be you drive in, you park your car in the garage and you have to walk out of the garage and go up the stairs to get to your house.
Or you go from the garage into a basement and then up a different set of stairs to get into the interior of the house.
Well, the house was sitting on the market at 950,000 and nobody was biting because it was just this weird floor plan.
It had one bathroom and it wasn't that big.
It's a small house.
And for three bedrooms, it's very difficult to have only one bathroom.
So they had just reduced the price to $8.50 and they thought they were going to get a bidding war.
Well, I watched it after they reduced it about eight days in.
To me, that's like this perfect period of time.
If you go before seven days have passed from a price reduction, the seller's expectations are still,
I'm going to get several offers and I'm going to bid it right back up to the price I wanted.
If you wait longer than that, you're at risk of someone else coming in to buy it.
So I jumped in right at eight days and I talked listing agent and said, do you have any offers?
She said, no, we got several people looking, which is realtor speak for it.
Please write an offer.
I just don't want to admit that that's the case we're at.
There's always going to be several people looking.
So I wrote the offer for, it was listed, I think, at 850.
I wrote it at 825 with $30,000 in closing costs.
So net, it's going to be a little bit less than $800.
So like $7.95 or so somewhere in there?
That's about where the net would be.
They countered back.
And then we went back and forth and we settled on 830 with 25,000 in closing costs.
So right about 805.
Now, the plan for this property was that there was some square footage that wasn't included in the listing.
It had a sunroom in the back.
And it also had in that basement, it had a part of the basement that was finished.
It had like a bedroom that they had created to be an office.
So it had drywall.
It had a window.
It had finished floors.
And they'd put a closet in there.
It had electrical run to it.
It looked like a regular bedroom.
you just get into it by walking through a dirty basement.
It was weird.
And then the area where the stairs went down from the house,
they had also put laundry in,
so they finished that area too.
The rest of the basement was just exposed wooden beams and electrical,
and the framing was all done.
And then you have like this old garage.
Well, I took that room that was in the back of the house.
I guess I didn't mention that.
There was a room in the back of the house.
It was kind of right off the kitchen.
It was an odd place for it.
And then they had a sun room.
in the back of the home that wasn't included in the square footage.
I basically combined the sunroom with that bedroom that was in the back
and created a one bedroom unit, like a junior ADU right off the back.
And I was able to put a bathroom and a kitchenette in that as well as its own laundry.
So that's like a little studio type of a property, a one bedroom unit.
So really fast.
Tell me, because ADUs, they're very popular in California, accessory dwelling unit.
You just said a junior, which is also known as a JADU.
Yes, sir.
What is the distinguishing factor between both?
Yeah, so an ADU is usually detached.
It's not connected to the property.
It's like a standalone structure.
And then a junior ADU has to be attached to the main property.
It's kind of like a little house tumor.
Yeah, okay, that makes sense.
So I actually have, I used to have what's called like a bonus room under my house that
we would rent.
I've chosen to not rent it anymore.
But what a lot of people have mentioned is, yeah, I should just convert it to a JADU and
get it all the paperwork ready to rock.
Because that's very common in the Los Angeles area is a bonus room.
But JADU, that's basically if you want to convert like a garage or something like that too, right?
Same idea.
Yeah, the garage would be attached to the house.
That should JADU exactly.
Okay, okay.
That makes sense.
Sorry, I didn't mean to derail us, but some people at home may not know these strategies.
That's why you're here, my man.
Appreciate you.
So we had that one bedroom unit that we converted in the back of the house.
I took one of the bedrooms in the main house, the one that was right off the kitchen,
because it's weird to have a bedroom right off.
the kitchen and I took it off of the main property, put it in that back one, which left me with two
bedrooms and one bathroom in the main house and then I remodeled the kitchen. So I just made it look
nicer. Now I have the appropriate square footage for a two bedroom unit. I've got a full family
room, fireplace, dining room, remodeled kitchen and a bathroom with its own laundry. That's like
the main house, about 11,100, 1150 square feet. I've got that one bedroom in the back and then I
finished the basement and I included the attached garage.
So you don't really need garage parking that bad if the property has enough space because in California, it doesn't rain a ton.
We don't get snow. We don't have a lot of inclement weather. You can survive without a garage, especially if you're a tenant. You may be renting a car. It's not your own car.
So I took the garage area and I finished it and I combined it with the rest of the basement and the room that was already down there that already had laundry.
And I built a bathroom and a kitchenette. And I ended up with basically a three bedroom, one bathroom, additional unit in the basement.
Now, all of this work more than double the square footage of this little property that was too little for anybody else to want down there.
And I ended up with three units that can all be rented separately.
So the plan is that small one bedroom and the main house two bedroom I rent out to traveling nurses.
There's hospitals on that same street.
So whenever they have placement agencies that need to put a nurse somewhere, this is like the first place that pops up for them.
And then I rent out the basement unit as its own unit to a traditional person who just wants a place to live, like somebody,
with a family that's going to want the additional bedrooms and doesn't mind sharing a bathroom
because they're all a family. Okay. Cool. So what was the square footage going into this property
that was not captured in the, you know, in the appraiser's office? So it was listed as, I believe,
1150. And then there was probably like about 700 square feet that wasn't included in the back of the house.
That was the sunroom. And then there was another 1,300 in the basement.
area that wasn't included because it hadn't been developed yet. Wow. Okay. So you mentioned you bought this
for $795,000. It was about $1.50 square feet. So that comes out to roughly $691 a square foot.
Does it work? Can you just extrapolate that out or not necessarily? Like if you doubled your
square footage, is every square foot that you add to that property going to be worth that $691?
Is that how you're able to increase the value? It's close to it, but not the full $690. Like that,
the basement that was converted won't be worth as much as the main house. It's not as desirable. The
ceiling's a little bit lower. It's kind of a weird way to get into that basement because I had
to create separate interests for all the units. So you have to walk into the backyard. But it's still
close, right? Maybe you're adding another $500, $550 a square foot. So you took a property that was like
$11.50 square feet and you bump that thing up to like $3,000 square feet. And it's in an area
where at Railway was already really expensive. Yeah, man. That's so that's significant. So now the
ARV, the after repair value, comes out to what with all the square footage?
It's about 1.3.
Wow.
Okay.
So you've added pretty close to $500,000 of equity somewhere in there.
Yeah.
And it costs about $150,000 or so to do that work.
Dude, that is crazy.
Now, obviously, this goes into several strategies, but the idea here is you'll do a cash out refy, pull your money out, and then run them as rentals.
That's right.
There's a bear.
And I got three separate rentals, and I'll have two different strategies.
So two of them will be medium-term rentals.
and then the basement will be a traditional rental.
Do you think you'll get all of your, I mean, it sounds like it based on the ARV,
but you'll get most of your money, if not all of it, out of this deal?
If I had wanted to, what hurt me was rates went up after I bought it.
So once it was finished, I had decided, like, I don't want to pull all my money out of the deal
because I don't like how the high the rates went.
So I could have, yes, got it all out.
I just didn't do that.
Yeah, yeah, because then the interest rates would have maybe made the cash flow not as appetizing.
Yep, that's exactly right.
But this is a great example of how in today's market, you can't just try to buy something out of the box with your pink pickle.
You went in there and you put work into thinking about this.
You hired a designer.
You were intimately involved in the creation of this project and how it needed to look.
You said, hey, as it stands, it would make this much.
But if I do this, I can double how much it makes.
Same for me.
I saw potential on a property that other people missed.
I took advantage of a property that was sitting on the market longer than it normally would have because of what we call functional obsolescence in the real estate space.
And then because I listened to the Bigger Pockets podcast, I knew about medium term rentals and
traditional rentals. I had all these tools that I could pull out of my tool belt to make a deal
work just like you.
Very cool, man.
Yeah, you know, if I'm being totally honest, even on the Pink Pickle, like, I could cash out
refi and get a pretty significant amount of money back, but I don't need to.
And I'm fine with, I don't, I mean, I really like that Mike.
It's going to be a crazy cash flow machine the way it is.
So honestly, I might just wait it out.
and if I decide in a few months, if interest rates are appetizing enough for me, I'll do the cash out and
complete the burr. But for now, I just really like that I've created a property that will make
pretty dang good cash flow. So it sounds like this property that you're doing is also going to be
a cash flow machine too. It's great. Congrats. That's it. And when they're in good areas like this,
they're going to appreciate faster than what the national average does and in the future we'll be looking
better. I like your advice there that you don't have to pull your money out on a burr. You're not losing
the ability to do it, you're just not doing it yet. If another opportunity comes out, you need some
cash, that's when you would go back and complete the burr and put it into the next deal. But if there's
nothing else available, just let it sit there and have a lower mortgage and have it cash flow
stronger. Yep, that's where I'm at. I'm just, yeah, I don't mind having equity at this time.
Like, I've worked so hard with my whole portfolio to get to optimize cash flow. That's working for
me. So I'm happy to just kind of hang and be more a little bit more methodical as we kind of get
into the brunt of 2024 because I've got some things I want to do. Like I said, I'm doing some
developments over here and looking at buying some stuff and going to the dark side of hotels.
So yeah, man, we'll have to do another one of these pretty soon. Yes, sir. And please go leave
us a review wherever you listen to your podcast and follow us on the Apple and Spotify apps.
Appreciate everybody. Thanks for being here today. Keep an eye out for the next episode of the Bigger
Pockets podcast. And Rob and I should be sharing more in the future. If you'd like to know more
about Rob or I, you can get our personal information in the show notes. And don't forget that
Bigger Pockets has an incredible full website. You can check out the more information. This is David
Green for Rob the Pink Pickle Prince Obisolo. Signing on. Thank you all for listening to the Bigger
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