BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast - 964: Retiring His Parents by Buying Unwanted, Overlooked Real Estate Deals w/Logan Koch

Episode Date: June 3, 2024

One investment property could change your life, especially if you buy the right one. Logan Koch, an investor in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, was buying investment properties for one specific goal: To retire his parents. With a $45,000/year cash flow target in mind, Logan and his parents went to work, finding small multifamily rental properties to buy, fix, and increase rents on. But one day, Logan stumbled across a commercial real estate deal that nobody wanted, one with huge signs of opportunity. In today’s show, Logan lays down step-by-step exactly what he did to find this unwanted and unnoticed commercial real estate investment, how he was able to DOUBLE the cash flow on it, the massive return on investment he’s walking away with, and even how he got the city to lower his property taxes by two-thirds! The best part? None of what Logan did requires expert-level investing knowledge. Anyone, even a complete real estate investing beginner, can follow Logan’s same thought process to find and buy undervalued real estate deals. Do you want to start building some retirement (or early retirement) cash flow for yourself or your parents? These are the exact types of deals you should be on the lookout for! Stick around as we discuss Logan’s almost unbelievable return on this cheap investment property everyone else was overlooking!  In This Episode We Cover Telltale signs that a property’s expenses are WAY too high (and how to lower them significantly) Setting a cash flow retirement goal that’ll allow you to retire (or retire early) on your timeline  How Logan cut his property tax bill on this investment by over sixty percent!  Seller financing and how to get creative when buying commercial real estate  BRRRR-ing a big property and how Logan bought $15,000/year cash flow for just $20,000! And So Much More! (00:00) Intro (01:58) Investing to Retire His Parents (05:50) Small Multifamily, Big Cash Flow (11:42) Finding the Opportunity (19:01) Cutting Property Taxes by 66% (22:22) A 75% Return!? (29:19) The Rental Retirement Plan Check out more resources from this show on BiggerPockets.com and https://www.biggerpockets.com/blog/real-estate-964 Interested in learning more about today’s sponsors or becoming a BiggerPockets partner yourself? Email [e-mail]. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Henry, have you ever passed on a deal that someone else winds up by and just making a ton of money on? Dude, yes, absolutely. I had a single family home that I was looking at flipping and had it under contract for a great price and then just couldn't figure out how to make the numbers work. And now somebody's flipping it and making so much money. It's the worst feeling. I mean, I'm happy someone else is doing it. I had something similar.

There was this deal that I thought about doing for like a while and wound up just not pulling the trigger similar to you. And someone did a great job with it, made a ton of money on it. But it was literally right next to a deal that I was self-managing. So I just had to go over there and just look at it every day. And I was just like so mad about it every time I had to go look at it. Hey, everyone. Welcome to the Bigger Pockets Real Estate podcast.

I'm Dave Meyer, joined by my friend Henry Washington. And today we're talking to Logan Cook about these kinds of deals, a deal that no one else wanted, but he found a way to make money on. Absolutely. We're going to get into some of the smart things that Logan looked into to figure out that this deal could actually work and how Logan got started investing originally. Personally, this deal made me want to look more closely at my property taxes. I don't know about you, but I'm definitely going to do some math here.

Man, it takes a lot to make. me want to look more at taxes. But I do think this conversation made me do it because he has this amazing tax tactic that doubled his cash flow. And super cool. You should all pay attention to this. But Logan also just has some really incredible insights. It's just a super cool story about how he got started and why he is investing in the first place. So let's bring on Logan. Logan, welcome to the podcast. Thanks for joining us. Hey, how you doing? Happy to be here. Doing great. Excited to to talk to you about these deals that you've been up to. But before we get into that, tell us a little bit about yourself. Where do you live? And when did you start investing?

And where do you invest? So I live in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I work as a real estate agent as an investor in Pittsburgh. I've invested a little bit in Pittsburgh. But most of my portfolio is back home in central Pennsylvania, a small town called Sunbury, Pennsylvania. Got started investing back in 2018. And the main reason why was because I was looking at my parents getting ready for retirement. And we sort of made a goal to get started investing as like a way for this business to supplement their retirement income to cover all the expenses for them. So we got our first deal back in April 2018. And then from there, it's been a lot of the small multifamily investing. And then the deal that we're going to talk about today was the first commercial deal that we did.

Very cool. So just out of curiosity, were you an agent first when you started thinking about doing this with your parents or were you an investor first? So investor first. Actually, the main reason why I got started investing in real estate was because like most other people like reading rich dad, poor dad. I was actually working as a sports therapist, traveling around the country, working with professional athletes. So I was doing that while also investing on the side. We were investing since 2018, but that whole time had a full-time W-2 job. And then while I was doing this, I was like really is getting more passionate about real estate. So I was like, well, I could like make a career out of this. And that's why like just recently I jumped in on the, on the agent side as well.

You know, it's, it's cool and admirable that you got into this to help your parents and supplement their income. A lot of people have a nine to five. They want to get into investing. And they hope that they can produce enough income to either retire themselves or retire their parents. But like, sounds like you had a great job doing something. kind of cool and fun, like how did this conversation even come up with your parents and were they supportive at first? Like, no, keep your job. Or were they totally into this? Like, yeah, make money for us to retire. So when we first had that initial conversation, none of us had any background in real estate investing at all. So that they were like open to it. But at the same time,

they had more trust that I would like make it work more than anything. And as every deal went by, then we pretty much like they started getting more confidence like, oh, this might actually like go somewhere, you know what I mean? But then like over the course of those five or six years, everything just kept compounding and like we kept growing it. And then we're like looking back five to six years later and like, wow, we really built a business here that's actually got to that goal of supporting their retirement. That's really cool, man. So was there a specific goal you were trying to hit in terms of cash flow or equity in order to get to that goal of being able to supplement your parents' retirement? Yeah. Originally it was we've set out a five year goal to make

$45,000 a year in cash flow. And we didn't really have a unit number. It was mainly just like the cash flow number because that's where like the bare minimum was to like support all the basic financial bills that they would have during the retirement. I love this because it's so important to just have a specific goal. Everything gets easier if you have a very specific goal like $45,000 in five years. And that's a realistic goal too. You know, it's it's one thing to have a realistic specific goal. You could also say, I want to make $2 million in the next year. It's probably not going to happen. But I think that's a very reasonable goal. And I love that you're not focusing on door count either, because there are a lot of different ways you can go about approaching making

$45,000 a year in cash up. Some of them might be by acquiring a lot of doors. Some of them may not require buying a lot of doors. So how did you think about that goal and what the best way, like the right first steps to start working towards it. So we just went all in from the beginning. Like, I mean, mind you, like, we didn't have a lot of money starting out. So we were investing like $3,000 a month between the four of us for five years straight, just reinvesting all the cash flow and putting our own capital into it. And then just buying like small multifamily deals that we knew would produce enough cash flow

that they'd be a good deal over the long term to get to where we wanted to be. And then as like the years have gone by, the rents up, increase, the appreciation has been there. So like the deals keep getting better and better. But it's mainly just been trying to get those base hits like every single deal that we buy. So we weren't looking for the home runs. Now this deal that we'll talk about, yeah, that ended up being a home run without even like realizing it. But when we got started, it was really just trying to get get the repetitions, just getting started and then investing every dollar that we had into it just to keep like building it from there. So I believe you said your first deal was a single family,

Yeah. So I went to a school at a small college called Clarion University, and we bought a single family house that we actually rented out to college students, and we ended up burying that deal without even knowing what burr was at the time. But that was our first deal. And then we held onto that property for probably about four years, sold it, and then took the proceeds and put it into a four unit property back home where my parents live. But it was sort of cool just because it was, like, it was like where I went to school, so I knew the area. And then I rented it out to my friends. So it was like landlord on training wheels just because like I knew my tenants for the first couple years. And then that deal snowballed into just buying small multifamily properties for like the last five or six years now. Okay. So just to clarify, you bought that first one and then you set it snowballed into small multifamily. So were you buying small multifamilys between that four year span of when you sold that one? Yeah. So we've been, we probably, purchase at least one or two properties every year over the over that course that four years there.

And what made you? And when you say small multifamily is what are you what are you meaning? And then what made you? Why did you look at that instead of not doing another single? So I want to say small multifamily, I mean like the two to four units. And why I chose those is just because like the cash flow was higher. And because of like the expenses as far as like having more units. If one unit is vacant, then you have no money coming in versus when you have the two to four units, and you might have one unit down for a turnover, but you're still at least cash flowing or breaking even the pay on like if it's one unit empty or two. How were you finding these deals and evaluate?

Like how did you know these were deals that were good deals? Or did you not know? So the beginning was just like looking at properties on the MLS. And like everybody else says on the podcast, it just takes like the repetitions. Like you're going to look at 100 deals and maybe offer on 10 and then get one. So it's like really just like analyzing that many deals to understand like, all right, in this market, this is a good deal as soon as it comes on to the MLS. So like in that case, and you're able to like look at that deal within the first couple minutes. Like I'm going to

put an offer in on this property. I'm not now mind you after you still have to go through your inspections to make sure there's nothing else that's like hidden. But numbers wise, like you can know within the first couple of minutes once you get the reps in. And what was the price point on these, Logan? Um, so pretty much all the small multifamily properties that we have purchased was anywhere from like 125,000 all the way up to like 250,000. So like a, it's like a more rural like central Pennsylvania area. So it's like a lower price for it, lower barrier to entry. But the rents like the rent to price ratio is still pretty good as to where we can meet that 1% rule and get a little bit higher than that. Do you have any benchmark? What kind of cash on cash

return were these deals generating for you? When we originally bought them, everything was like a lot of value ads. So like they were under market rents. We would go in, renovate them, do a lot of the work ourselves, and then stabilize the properties to where the rents were a lot higher. So when we bought them, they were still cash flowing, but probably only like maybe eight to 10 percent. Now, then we would go in and stabilize the properties ourselves and then we would get them up to like 15, 20 percent returns. Eight to 10 percent sounds pretty good to me. So I'll take 50 to 20 percent. That sounds even better. But I think that that sounds great. I mean, it sounds like you're taking a combo approach.

The reason I was asking that question is because when I hear a goal like $45,000 in cash flow, the first thing I do is think, what is the cash on cash return and how much money do I have to have invested at that cash on cash return to make it happen? So if you were getting an 8% cash on cash return, you need $562,000 of equity invested at that amount to generate that cash flow. And I like what you're doing because it sounds like you're kind of doing. both at the same time. You're generating some cash flow, great cash on cash return, but also doing the value add to build up that total amount of money that you have to invest to make sure you hit that

goal. So I was just curious, before we move on to this commercial deal that we want to learn about, how are you funding these acquisitions you're buying about one per year? So to start off, we were using a line of credit. That was like the main funding for a couple of them that we would be able to burr. And then... Sorry, is that like from your parents' home or the line of credit? So originally the first line of credit was from my parents' primary residence. Okay, cool. And then after that original line of credit, then my mom actually cashed out a 401K to purchase the second property.

And then from there, it was just a lot of us investing capital monthly and then reinvesting cash flow. So now that we know a little bit about Logan's background and why he started investing in real estate, We're going to get into the details of how he made his latest deal work right after the break. Most investors spend more time chasing deals than reviewing their insurance. But a quick coverage check can be fast, easy, and one of these smartest ways to protect and even improve your property's cash flow. As the months get colder, frozen pipes, icy walkways, and seasonal wear and tear can increase the likelihood of claims.

And traditional insurance companies aren't always built to handle these claims quickly or smoothly. That's why more real estate investors are turning to steadily. They focus exclusively on landlords, whether it's a single-family rental, a burr-builder's risk policy, or midterm holiday guests. You get fast quotes, flexible coverage, and protection for property damage, liability, and even loss of rental income. Now is the perfect time to review your rates and coverage. Get a quote in minutes at biggerpockets.com slash landlord insurance. Steadily, landlord insurance designed for the modern investor. Most investors spend more time chasing deals than reviewing their insurance.

But a quick coverage check can be fast, easy, and one of these smartest ways to protect and even improve your property's cash flow. As the months get colder, frozen pipes, icy walkways, and seasonal wear and tear can increase the likelihood of claims. And traditional insurance companies aren't always built to handle these claims quickly or smoothly. That's why more real estate investors are turning to steadily. They focus exclusively on landlords, whether or. it's a single-family rental, a burr-builders risk policy, or midterm holiday guests.

You get fast quotes, flexible coverage, and protection for property damage, liability, and even loss of rental income. Now is the perfect time to review your rates and coverage. Get a quote in minutes at biggerpockets.com slash landlord insurance. Steadily, landlord insurance designed for the modern investor. Thinking about wholesaling or flipping your first property, but not sure where to start? The truth is, deals don't just fall into your lap anymore. You need to go out and create That's where PropStream comes in. With PropStream, you get instant access to over 160 million properties nationwide. Use 20 pre-built lead lists such as pre-foreclosures, tax delinquencies, and vacant homes to find motivated sellers fast. And now PropStream has integrated batch leads and batch dialer to provide you with a complete all-in-one solution. That means you can not only find motivated sellers, but you can also reach out right away. SkipTrace phone numbers free on select plans, then send postcards, emails, or call sellers directly. Don't worry if you're new. PropStream also gives you AI-powered insights and coms that are over 99% accurate.

So you know you're making smart offers. Plus, you'll have access to PropStream Academy to guide you step by step. Start your seven-day free trial and get 50 free leads at Propstream.com slash BP. That's P-R-O-P-S-T-R-E-A-M.com slash BP. Don't just dream about real estate. Make it happen with PropStream. Welcome back, everyone. We're here with Logan Cope talking about his latest deal. Let's get back into it. All right. Great.

So let's talk about this commercial deal. It sounds pretty exciting. Give us a little bit background. When did you find this one? So this would have been April of last year. So April of 2023. It originally came on the market, I believe, in like February, 2023. So it was on the market for like two months when I first saw it.

They had it listed for like $250,000 originally. And at that price, I was like, well, the main tenant's moving out. it doesn't really make sense because the rents from the other units are only bringing in like 900 bucks a month because they're well under market value. So I'm not going to pay $250 for this. So I let it sit on the market for about two months. And then we came back and asked if they'd take $200,000, which they did. Wow.

Well, I probably should ask this question first, but why were you looking for commercial? It sounds like your previous strategy was working well. Does this just opportunistic or did you set out to find a commercial property? No, like you said, it was more opportunistic just because of the fact that once it came on the MLS, like I was looking at the potential from like what the rents could be and saw that like the taxes were like pretty overinflated. So I knew it could get the expenses down. So I knew it would be a profitable deal if it was stabilized correctly. But I wasn't looking for like commercial at the time. It just like happened to like come on come on the market.

And I was like, let's take a look at this. See what happens. And just to clarify, we're talking commercial retail space, right? not commercial apartment building. Yeah, it was retail. Yeah, that's a big transition almost because the underwriting is different. The tenant class and tenant base is different. The leases are different.

There's longer term leases, triple net leases. What gave you the confidence to know that or at least think you know that this was a good opportunity? I knew just because of the fact that it was broken up into five units. And one unit was probably 3,000 square feet. The other four units made up 2,000 square feet roughly. So the smaller units I knew just because they were like 500 square feet apiece, they wouldn't be that hard to rent just because there's a lot of small businesses in the area that are looking for areas that they can rent out.

And the price points on those small units is only $500 per month in rent. So it was reasonable to assume that we could get tenants in place for those. So that would be $2,000 a month in income. I knew that the taxes were overinflated so we could get, if we get that down, those first four units would at least cover the expenses. If that large unit sat for like a year or two years that we couldn't rent it, we weren't losing money on the deal. So I felt comfortable in that aspect that we could find a tenant for that larger space over that one to two year period.

And then from there, the deal is going to be phenomenal. Well, I think what I'm hearing is you understood enough about your market to know or have confidence in your ability to get someone in there to at least cover yourself. And it sounds like because this wasn't some massive $2 million commercial property, you were paying $200,000, you limit your risk that way, right? So you're limiting your risk on your purchase price. You're limiting your risk on understanding who you can get in there to pay it. And that allows you to be a little more aggressive as I think. what I'm hearing. So the other question I would have here is like it sounded like people were passing on this deal or overlooking it or had been sitting for a while. So what did you see that

was people were overlooking this deal and made you realize you could potentially walk into an opportunity? So I think everybody else saw exactly what I saw like when I first looked at it. Like the main tenant was moving out. That was the majority of the income. It was only like all the other units were under under rent. So like it wasn't bringing enough more or enough rent to cover like the taxes and insurance. But after, like I kept looking at this deal for like two, two months as it sat there and I'm like, well, taxes are overvalued. The rents are under market. I know there's a lot of people looking for these small units that we can get that stabilized pretty quickly. And the bank isn't going to loan on this deal. So if I can get a good seller financing term, I can get a lower

mortgage. And then that way it keeps my expenses down to have more time to stabilize this to take it back to the bank and then go from there. Yeah, I think this is a great example of quality real estate investing, right? Because there are opportunities all around us, but we have to be able to, A, look at the opportunity and then B, see what competitive advantage or superpower or skill sets that we have that can help us take advantage of this opportunity that maybe some other people can't. And when you are marrying your skill sets with the opportunity and then using data to make decisions, you can really find great opportunities in any real estate market. A great example of this is I bought, I was under contract for a house that I was going to remodel. And it came with kind of five acres in the back.

And my plan was to remodel the house and then to build a duplex on the back half of this five acres. And as I started to analyze this deal more after we were under contract on it, I was just like, okay, I just, I don't know that I'll be able to get the return that I'm looking for on this property. And that made me realize that that's why this property was on the market for so long. People couldn't really make the numbers work. But a guy I know went in, bought the house. He went and he remodeled the house. But he did his research and realized that this property. would probably get turned into commercial in the future. And so he went to the city, figured this out. And so he remodeled it now as a commercial office space. He split off that property from the other five acres. And he built another home to sell on that five acres, which wasn't on that main thoroughfare.

And so now this property is owned commercial. And he's got it listed for over a million dollars. So I was under contract for like 190. He probably spent a hundred grand or so on the rent. But now he's got a much higher price point to sell. So that's the things that I'm talking about. It's kind of similar to what you did. You looked at this opportunity and said, how can I maximize this opportunity that other people maybe don't have the skill set or understanding to do? That is just, that's an example of great real estate investing. Every deal has like a price, you know, I mean that you can

pay for it. But it's like trying to figure out like which levers the pool to make it work out in your favor. I really like this. And what you said too, Henry's. I always think that there's two primary ways people can scale. There are tons of ways. But I feel like you either need to be excellent at your market and then you can go into a lot of different strategies or you can get really good at one strategy and go into a lot of different markets. But it's really hard to do both, right? I wouldn't recommend Logan. You're like doing small multifamilies in Pennsylvania. You don't go do a retail deal in San Diego. That's just too difficult, but because you understand the market so well, you're able to expand your portfolio

and try different tactics, which is super cool. I do want to bring something up, Logan, though. You mentioned your property taxes as being too high, I think, which I think most people would think is a detriment to the deal, but did that mean you were going to contest them? Yeah, so when we purchase this deal for $200,000, like, the taxes, at that time were assessed at a $600,000 like a valuation. What? I don't know how or why, but like the, yeah, so the taxes were assessed at $600,000 and we're like, all right, it's going to take a commercial appraisal and a lawyer to contest this.

And based on the valuations, there's a huge discrepancy where we know we can like get these taxes reduced. So based on that valuation, the taxes were $12,000. a year. And that's in comparison to what the purchase price was of $200,000, where in that case, the taxes should have been about $4,000 a year, which in these smaller deals where we're purchasing for $200,000, that $8,000 a year in taxes is a big deal, especially from the cash flow side of things. Man, that's really cool. First of all, how did you catch that, right? did like was it just how did you know it was based on a 600,000 dollar valuation it's actually going going through the process on a previous small multifamily deal that I found out because the school

the school district was trying to increase my taxes on a four unit property that have here in Pittsburgh so I had to go through the process with a lawyer to contest it and like get they were increased but not as much as like what the school district wanted to do so that was how I learned about like millage rates and like common level ratios and like what like how do you figure out like what your taxes your tax amount would be based on like the assess value. So then when I looked at this deal, I'm like, all right, this assessed value is a lot higher than most of the properties that are that I've been buying or that based on like the purchase price. So I looked into it more and like took that assessed value times the millage rate to figure

out that they had the valuation of the billion about $650,000. And are you doing this during the due diligence period or are you waiting until after you closed to do this? On this deal, we waited directly closed. Okay, so you bought it first. Yeah. The reason why I was comfortable with that, though, is just because, like I said, about how much of a difference there was in the assessed value versus the purchase price. And then I talked to my lawyer during the due diligence process, and he was pretty confident that it would be reduced by a significant amount as well. And for those listening, I believe you can at least start this process during the due diligence period as well. Now, you might be out the money for the appraisal if it doesn't turn around.

and get reduced, but at least you don't buy the property where the numbers don't work in that situation. So, I mean, obviously you felt comfortable that your risk was mitigated and you had some professional people in your corner telling you that, hey, this is pretty likely. Yeah. If I remember correctly, we purchased a deal on April and in our area, like how they reevaluate taxes, like if that the paperwork filed by some point in August and then all the hearings are held in like October, November, and then you find out in December. So like we held on of this property for eight months before we've finally got the final decision that our tax would be reduced. All right, we have to take one more quick break, but stick around. We'll hear how this deal ends

when we come back. And just as a quick note, we actually found Logan's story and asked him to come talk about it on the show because we saw a forum post he'd written about this property on the bigger pockets forums. So don't be shy about asking your question and posting your wins over there. We might just come across you. We'll be right back. If you own a short-term rental, here's something worth knowing. Not all landlord policies are built for your type of property. And with holiday bookings, chilly weather, and higher guest turnover, having the right coverage is more important than ever.

Steadily offers insurance designed specifically for short-term rentals, covering property damage, liability, lost rental income, and even unexpected issues like bedbugs. Steadily works exclusively with real estate investors. So they understand the details that make short-term rentals, unique and they build coverage to match it. A quick review of your rates and coverage every year can help you protect your property and your cash flow. Get a quote in minutes at biggerpockets.com slash landlord insurance. Steadily, rental property insurance for the modern investor. Most investors

spend more time chasing deals than reviewing their insurance. But a quick coverage check can be fast, easy, and one of these smartest ways to protect and even improve your property's cash flow. As the months get colder, frozen pipes, icy walkways, and seasonal wear and tear can increase the likelihood of claims. And traditional insurance companies aren't always built to handle these claims quickly or smoothly.

That's why more real estate investors are turning too steadily. They focus exclusively on landlords, whether it's a single-family rental, a burr-builder risk policy, or midterm holiday guests. You get fast quotes, flexible coverage,

and protection for property damage, liability, and even loss of rental income. Now is the perfect time to review your rates and coverage. Get a quote in minutes at biggerpockets.com slash landlord insurance. Steadily, Landlord insurance designed for the modern investor. Thinking about wholesaling or flipping your first property, but not sure where to start.

The truth is, deals don't just fall into your lap anymore. You need to go out and create opportunities. That's where PropStream comes in. With PropStream, you get instant access to over 160 million properties nationwide. Use 20 pre-built lead lists such as pre-foreclosures, tax delinquencies, and vacant homes to find motivated sellers fast. And now PropStream has integrated batch leads and batch dialer to provide you with a complete all-in-one solution. That means you can not only find motivated sellers, but you can also reach out right away. SkipTrace phone numbers free on select plans, then send postcards, emails, or call sellers directly.

Don't worry if you're new. PropStream also gives you AI-powered insights and comms that are over 99% accurate, so you know you're making smart offers. Plus, you'll have access to PropStream Academy to guide you step by step. Start your seven-day free trial and get 50 free leads at Propstream.com slash BP. That's P-R-O-P-S-T-R-E-A-M dot com slash BP. Don't just dream about real estate. Make it happen with PropStream.

Tax season reminder for all the real estate investors listening. If you own rental properties, short-term rentals, commercial buildings, basically anything that's not your primary residence, you need to know about cost segregation. It's an IRS-compliant strategy that lets you, you accelerate depreciation on your properties, which means you're paying less in taxes this year and keeping more cash in your pocket for your next deal. Cost Segregation Guys is the go-to firm, having done over 12,000 of these studies with $500 million in total depreciation identified.

Hit to Costsegregationguise.com slash BP to get a free proposal and see your potential tax savings. Managing properties can feel like a full-on circus. You're juggling vendors, tracking payments, chasing approvals across multiple properties, and maybe a few HOAs, all while trying to keep tenants happy and owners confident. One delay can throw everything off, and suddenly your day is all clean up, no progress. That's why hundreds of property managers rely on bill to streamline their finances. Bill for property management lets you add all your properties, assign permissions, pay bills, and receive payments quickly and efficiently, without the usual bottlenecks. It syncs with platforms like QuickBooks, Zero, NetSuite, and Sage intact, so your accounting stays aligned. You can automate bulk payments across properties and HOAs. Choose flexible

payment methods like same-day ACH, international wires, card or check, and set custom roles and approval policies. There's even a dedicated bill inbox for each property to keep everything organized. Ready to simplify your workflow, book your free demo at bill.com slash bigger pockets, and get a $100 Amazon gift card. That's bill.com slash bigger pockets. Hey, investors, welcome back. Let's pick back up with Logan's deal. Awesome.

So tell us a little about once you got it, how did you stabilize the deal? So all of the residential stuff that we have bought, I have personally been the one to like advertise it and screen tenants and place tenants on this deal, especially that large unit. I let my real estate agent back home take care of all of that. And she was able to find a tenant for that large space in about four or five months, I believe.

The four smaller units, I rented out myself. And we went in, updated those units, put new floor and new paint. They're pretty easy because it's only 500 square foot of commercial space. So then we were able to rent those out. And then the tenants that did stay in those smaller units, we increased closer towards market rent. And how long did that take? The total process from the time that we purchased that property until we completely stabilized it and went back to the bank to get a loan was about eight months. All right. That's pretty good. And you had mentioned you went back to the bank. You said you got a creative or seller finance in the beginning.

Why wouldn't the bank lend to you on the initial deal? So I originally went to my commercial loan officer that I work with to purchase like most of the residential stuff, the two to four units. And he said, because it's not bringing in enough income to cover the taxes and insurance, they're not going to fund it until I stabilize it. So that's why I went back to the seller and told him that, like, listen, this deal is not fundable right now just because of like your main tenants moving out. Your other units are well below market. So we need to work something out here seller financing wise so that we can purchase this

deal from you. Yeah. And so for people listening, what this happens a lot, especially in commercial real estate. or even large-scale multifamily real estate, right? The bank wants to fund something that they feel like is a good investment. And they're not going to feel confident that it's a good investment if it's not bringing in any income or they're not certain or confident in the ability for that deal to make money. So in this situation, what you're saying is, okay, I'll go prove to you that it's a good investment by getting it to make money. And in order to do that, that means I'm going to have to do some creative financing on the front end.

And then once that deal is stabilized and making money, there's no denying that it's a good investment. And the bank feels a lot more confident in lending money on that deal. Yeah. And funny enough, that's ended up what happening once we got the appraisal back because my commercial loan officer that I work with says, turns out it was a good deal after all. I love that as a negotiating tactic too with the seller because you're not just like lowering the price to low ball them. You're like, listen, no one will lend on this. So your price is not realistic. and you can use actual data and feedback that you're getting from the people and team you have to use to close this deal. And hopefully, I would imagine with a lot of sellers that would ring true for them or that they would understand your position a little bit better when you have that sort of data point from your lender.

So, Logan, how's the deal doing now? So once we stabilized it, we got a commercial appraisal back. It came in at $300,000. So we were able to get a loan from the bank for two. $200,000. And we originally seller financed $160 from the seller and we put a $40,000 down payment on it. So the loan from the bank paid back to seller financing note and it paid back our $40,000 original down payment. So now the only money that we have in the deal is the money that we had to spend on the tax reassessment, a little bit of renovation costs and the commercial appraisal for the loan.

So I think we're all in for under $20,000 right now and it's cash full in about $15,000. thousand dollars a year. Damn, that's awesome, man. Congrats. Thank you. That's a, that's definitely a solid deal. And it sounds like you were able to refi it, get your, your seller finance note taking care of. What were the original terms of that seller finance note? So we finance it over two-year period on a six percent interest rate and it was 80 percent loan to value, which would have been $160,000. We did that two-year period just to like give enough time to be able to stabilize it because I figured we would probably be able to get it done in one, but I wanted to make sure that we had enough time just in case it took longer than expected to find that tenant for that larger unit. Yeah, that's great. Again, that's solid real estate investing because I made that mistake the first time I ever did seller financing on a deal is I only put it on a 12 month term because I was just so confident in my ability to renovate this massive property and I failed miserably.

had to go back after 12 months and ask for an extension. Luckily, I've been making all my payments on time, so we was glad to give me an extension, but that does not always happen. I really, I love this because it's the kind of mutually beneficial real estate investing that gets me excited because you basically figured out a way to get what you wanted and what the seller wanted out of this deal, which is super cool, because I think seller financing has become super popular recently because it is, it's a good option for people. but not every seller wants to carry a note for you indefinitely.

Like, some of them might want to do this for 30 years, but my guess is that a lot of people who have paid off properties are probably a little bit older, have hold down to that property a long time, and they don't necessarily want to be attached to this property for another 15, 20 years. And so what you did was find a way to get seller financing, not indefinitely. So this person had to think about this forever, but just for the people. period of time that would allow you to buy this property at a reasonable price and get him what he wanted, him or her, out of this deal. So I think I just commend you on finding a really

cool mutually beneficial strategy here. It's a really good lesson for everyone listening. You did mention that this was a deal you found on the MLS. And so what I found sometimes that when negotiating seller financing, it can be difficult to do that with MLS deals because you've got to weed through talking with an agent instead of the seller. And so how did you navigate that? Were you pitching seller finance to the agent and then they were relaying that to the seller? Or did you get in direct contact with the seller? Like, how did all that work? So because it was on the MLS, we had our own agent, seller had their agent. And we were going back and forth for about the two-month period because we were still interested in it,

but we weren't looking to purchase out the price that they wanted. And then I went to the bank, asked them if they would finance this deal. They said no. So my, agent went back to their agent just to try and figure out if they would accept seller financing. And then once we figured out that they were open to it because they weren't getting the attention from any other buyers because of like the state of the property at that point, then we're able to start negotiating further with on that. All right. So to round out our conversation here, Logan, how has this deal and I guess the rest of your portfolio tracking against your goal for you and your parents? So like I said, we had the five year goal of $45,000. And,

And it took about five and a half years, but I can say that we met that goal back in October. So that was a really proud moment for myself to be able to say that we built that business and be able to support my parents' retirement. That's amazing. Congratulations. And we'll give it to you. We'll round down for you from five and a half years to five. Thanks.

That's got to feel great, man. What did your parents or your mom say when that was finally a reality? Originally, they didn't like really see the vision as far as like, is this going to be? be something that's doable in the time frame that we think. And then as time went on, they're like, wow, I mean, this is, this is awesome. Like, they're completely invested into it. Like, they do a lot of the work on the, on the properties. And they're, they're like all in on it. And they're like, wow, I can't believe like we got here. So, I mean, it's one of those things where I'm just like, like, like, as a family, like, it's something that's like really cool to be able to, like,

do together. And I'm glad that we were able to make the journey happen. And then, everything worked out. Yeah, super cool story, man. You should be really proud. So are your parents retired? Are they good? My dad retired back in, like, October. My mom's still working like two days a week just because she likes to work and she can't

get her to completely retire yet. That's really cool, man. Honestly, I feel like this is just a classic great real estate investing story, you and your family, having a very specific goal to do something nice for your parents and congratulations on achieving it. Thank you. And I want to highlight that, you know, this wasn't by accident. You had a plan from the start in terms of how much money you were looking to get. You had a goal that you were shooting towards. You started to leverage what you knew and the experience that you had, evaluate deals. And that's the important part here is because it sounds like when we're listening to it, hey, I just went and I started buying some stuff, right? And it started to produce a return. But no, you had a goal. And then you worked your way backwards, you said, if I have a goal of X amount of cash flow, that means I need to be making

X amount of offers. And you highlighted that you were making a lot of offers on properties in order to help you get there. And so having the goal helps you back into a plan of action. And that plan of action is what essentially got you to your goal. So this is like real estate investing 101, man. You did great and your parents are happy and you're happy. And I think this is this is a great Great story. Thank you. Yeah, thanks. I mean, like that goal, I believe is like what keeps you motivated because like a lot of people like to say that like, oh, you can get rich quick and real estate and that's definitely not the case. Like it's slow. Like I like to say it's like that hockey stick graph where like it's very, very slow over like the first four or five years. Then like you can hit

an inflection point. You finally start seeing results. But I mean, it takes like all your effort, like putting all the time, money, sweat, like whatever into it. And like, you have, if you're not, If you're not doing that, like, it's going to take a lot longer or you're just going to quit and, like, go on to something else. I still feel like I'm at the bottom of that hockey stick, Dave. So I'll let you know. Yeah, I've been to hit that acceleration point yet, but we'll get there. That's awesome, Logan. Congratulations.

And if anyone listening wants to connect with Logan, we'll make sure to put all of his contact information in the show notes below. Again, congratulations, Logan, to you and your parents. Thank you. Thank you all so much for listening. And Henry, thank you for joining me today. Hey, for Bigger Pockets, I'm Dave Meyer, and we'll see you soon for another episode of the Bigger Pockets Real Estate Podcast. Thank you all for listening to the Bigger Pockets Real Estate podcast. Make sure you get all our new episodes by subscribing on YouTube, Apple, Spotify, or any other podcast platform.

Our new episodes come out Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. I'm the host and executive producer of the show, Dave Meyer. The show is produced by Ian K, copywriting is by Calico content, and editing is by Exodus Media. If you'd like to learn more about real estate investing or to sign up for our free newsletter, please visit www.w.com. The content of this podcast is for informational purposes only. All host and participant opinions are their own. Investment in any asset, real estate included, involves risk. So use your best judgment and consult with qualified advisors before investing. You should only risk capital you can afford to lose. And remember, past performance is not indicative of future results. Bigger Pocket's LLC disclaims all liability for direct, indirect, consequential, or other damages arising from a reliance on information presented in this podcast.