Epic Real Estate Investing - How to Pick a Good Cash Flow Market | Episode 81

Episode Date: December 23, 2013

How to pick a good cash flowing market, the title says it all. That's exactly what this episode is about as Matt shares with you how he picked his first market to invest in, and then he shares with you how he does, currently. In fact, he just began analyzing a new market today and he leads you through his thought process and the action steps that follow. Enjoy! ---------------------------- Download Matt's free real estate investing course "How to Do Deals : No Money Required" at FreeRealEstateInvestingCourse.com Too busy to do the work? Allow us to do the heavy lifting. Go to CashFlowSavvy.com to download our free cash flow investor packet. Subscribe to this podcast at EpicRealEstateInvesting.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Broadcasting from Terrio Studios in Glendale, California, it's time for Epic Real Estate Investing with Matt Terrio. Yeah. Hello. Welcome back to another episode of Epic Real Estate Investing. And if this is your first time listening to the show, welcome for the first time. Really glad that you're here. This is the place where I show people how to get out of the rat race using real estate. And it all begins with a simple start.

shift in mindset, a shift in focus. Simply stop focusing on creating piles of cash and start focusing on creating streams of cash. What we like to call here in the real estate world, we call that cash flow. You see, by doing just that, making that shift in mindset, I escaped the rat race in less than four years. What literally 99% of our population is unable to do in 40 years. And I'm not sharing that with you to brag, not by any means. I don't consider myself special in any way, meaning,

Anyone can do this. Even you. Anyone can do this. I mean, all it takes is just for someone to show them how to do it. Someone was very gracious enough, and God bless them for showing me, they were gracious enough to let me in on this particular life secret, and now I'm letting you in on it. I'm paying it forward. And if you think that's good news, hey, it gets even better because, you know, it took

me just under, I don't know, four years or so to escape the rat race. and that was with making a ton of really just dumb and stupid mistakes, the type of mistakes that anybody and everybody makes when they're learning something new for the first time. But the great news here about that is that you don't have to make all of those mistakes yourself, meaning you can learn from my mistakes. I mean, if you hang out here for a while, you should be able to travel that road much quicker than I did. And to help you get started, I created a very, a very free step-by-step course to show you exactly how I did it and how to do it yourself and to show you exactly how I do it if I had to start all over again.

And you can download that free course at free real estate investing course.com, free real estate investing course.com. The domain name, pretty self-explanatory. It's exactly what it is. It is a free real estate investing course. No strings attached. It is whole and complete and that is there waiting for you and it's absolutely free. Free real estate investing course.com.

All right. And by the way, that's exactly what. where Fernando, Fernando Orneles started, and in just a year, Fernando has escaped the rat race himself in a year. And you can hear his story just a couple of episodes back, episode 78 to be specific. And now Fernando works here as director of operations for cashflow savvy.com. And he's helping me help others exit the rat race also by investing in cash flowing property. He's doing an awesome job. and I know many of you have had the chance to speak with him since his episode aired on, or last episode of number 78.

And he's enjoyed talking to you all. And if you haven't had a chance to talk to him, if you've got downloaded the investor package, return his phone call. Give him a call back. I know he called you. That's how it works. You come to Cashflow Savvy.com. You download the investor package, and then he's going to call you back just to answer

any questions that you might have. And that's how that works. Okay. So if you miss that episode, go back and check it out to see what's possible, what's possible in just a year. year. He's an amazing individual and you know what, he's got a great heart and he's here to help anybody and everybody that wants to do what he did. He's here to help you do it as well. So he's an awesome addition to the team and he loved to talk to you. He loves it. All right. So I was just

sitting here pondering as to what I was going to share with you today. You know, last episode was all about creating cash flow with little to no money. It's very information intensive. It was a rather heavy episode and I was just thinking that, you know, what could I discuss for today of which would make a, would just kind of make sense as a good follow-up? And you know what? Just right on Q, God is so good. I received a message via LinkedIn from Mr. Matt Jones. And Matt wrote to me, Matt, first of all, thank you for your epic real estate investing podcast. My buddy got me hooked on it. And now he and I are on a mission to pool our resources and retire in the next 10 years on real estate. Awesome, Matt. I'm very excited for you and your buddy. I think that's a very

wise decision. He says, I'm certain you are extremely busy. So I'll make it quick. Our strategy is to buy and hold. That being said, how do we go about assessing a rental market so that we are able to confidently predict how much a house will bring in rent per month if we buy it? I will add that I'm only partway through your podcast. So maybe you address this. Again, thanks for your help, Matt. and then he signs off if God is for us who can be against us. Amen to that, brother. All right. So interesting.

Very good. We have it covered this generally and we've covered it from multiple different directions. But today, well, let's discuss it directly and specifically. Okay. Perfect timing for your message, Matt, by the way. So thank you for that. How do you go about assessing a rental market so that you are able to confidently predict how much a house will bring in rent per month if we buy it. That's his question. That's how he phrased it.

And I really like the way that Matt phrased his question. He wants to assess a market so that he and his partner can confidently predict how much a house will bring him in rent per month. The first thing to note there is that it is a prediction. Nobody has a crystal ball. Nobody knows what a specific economy or a specific market is going to do. Nobody knows what's going to happen in the future. Nobody knows what any particular tenant is going to do either. As much as you screen them as many background checks as you perform, you really don't know what's going to happen. We don't know. And there's the risk. But the great thing about real estate is that we can manage the risk like no other investment. And a lot of that risk management lies within the assessment of a market exactly what Matt wants to know how to

do. Now, if you go in and Google, say something like best rental markets or top 10 rental markets or best places to buy rental properties or best cash flowing markets, anything like that, type in your phrase of choice into Google and you're going to get a list of properties. You're going to get a lot of options. You're going to get a list of someone's opinions, many people's opinions. And there's nothing wrong with that. That can make a very good starting point in your search or quest for good cash flowing rental markets. So go ahead and leverage the efforts of others. That's what's great about real estate is we get to do that.

But leverage the efforts of others and use the results of their research and use that as your starting point. But what I want you to do is I want you to keep in mind, and this is very, very important. Regardless of whose opinion it is, well, I guess first keep in mind that it is an opinion, nothing else. It is just some person's opinion. But the second thing is regardless of how good a rental market may be. be or someone may say it may be. And it really just all comes down to the competency and the

dependability of your property manager. That's what really makes a good rental market is your property manager. I mean, you can be in the best rental market with all of the best economic indicators and the great price to rent ratios and the best tenants and they've all got jobs and there's a bunch of people there and they all rent. You can have all of that in the very best rental market and if you have a crappy property manager, you're going to get terrible results. Ask me how I know that one. Personal experience would be a good answer for that question. And also, you can be in a terrible rental market or a market with not the best of economic indicators with a great property manager, and you can get fantastic results.

I know that one firsthand also. So first and foremost, you need a good property manager if you expect your rental properties to perform. Bottom line, no ifs, ands, or. but you need a good property manager. That's the starting point. So how do you find one of those? How do you find a good property manager? And I get this question frequently,

and I get this question with regard to all your team members. Like, how do you find a good contractor? How do you find a good realtor? How do you find a good property inspector? And how do you find a good property manager? Well, in my case, I worked with a lot of terrible ones first. You know, sometimes you have to kiss a lot of frogs before you find your prince or your princess.

You know, regardless of how you go about finding your property manager, just keep that in mind. You might not find a good one at first. And sadly, you probably won't find a good one at first. But, hey, maybe you will. I certainly don't want to remove that from the possibility. I like to be the optimist. The primary way that I start my search for a property manager is to ask another investor

for referrals or ask multiple investors for referrals. So that's how I like to start. I mean, you can certainly go to Google. You can certainly go to the yellow pages. You can certainly just start walking the city and looking around. But I like to ask for referrals from other investors, from other cash flowing investors. So where do you find other investors? As I always recommend, your real estate investor clubs, that's a great place to start.

That's where a lot of investors, they congregate once or twice a month in your area. perhaps there are multiple clubs and you might want to hit all of those clubs. But they all congregate and they all want to talk shop. That's essentially what they all come to do and do business if there's any opportunities that present themselves. So to talk to other investors at these meetings, find out what kind of investing they're doing. Because you want someone that has rental property. You want someone that has cash flowing investments.

And when you find other cash flow investors inquire about how they manage their properties. And if you hear that they are using a property, manager and you might want to ask how is that going how are your results or do you get your rents on time what are the what do the maintenance costs look like um how are your vacancies going how are you how is occupancy overall and then if things sound good ask for a referral just ask them hey would you mind if i got that person's number i'd love to give them a call so start there and and to be safe don't stop with one referral okay what i want you to do is i want you to get at least two three or four if you can find them, but at least two.

You know, like I said, it's likely that the first one probably won't pan out. It might, but it probably won't. That's just the way this game works, at least my experience. Now, depending on where those property managers are located, because maybe all those investors that you're talking to, they might not be investing in your backyard. They might have them, you know, a city over, a couple cities over. They might have them a few states over. Or it might be in their backyard.

But the reason I want you to pay attention as to where those property, managers are located because there might be a good hint, a good clue. There's a good indication of where a good rental market might be. So pay attention to that as well. Now to assess that market, once you've discovered or you've got some referrals, to assess that market, there are three things that I like to look at. I like to look at population and the population's growth. I like to look at the driving industries and employment. And then I like to look at the percentage of that population that actually rents properties. I want to know. how many people there rent.

And there's a fourth factor that I like to look at, and I'll get to that in just a minute. But take note that this isn't an exact science. You know, a lot of judgment and discretion is involved in the whole process. And I have two points to make here. One, if you find a market where population growth is super strong, industry growth

and diversity of that industry is really strong and a good portion of the population rents their dwellings, their residences, really strong and if you just find a perfect market where it looks like, hey, you just can't lose here. Everything is perfect. Everything is thumbs up. Here's what you're going to find. You're going to find that the purchase price to rent ratio is out of whack, meaning it's likely going to take more money to get into that quote-unquote perfect market. And you're probably going to have to use leverage. You know, you're going to have to deal with banks. They're likely going to be necessary to

achieve an above market average return to get something like to get a double-digit return. And the second point here is there's more than one way to do this. Okay, like the way that I'm going to share with you is not the only way to do this. There is more than one way to do this. There's plenty of people out there that have been very successful, maybe even ignoring everything I'm talking about. But as always, all I can do is share with you how I actually do it. As you know from me, I don't like theories.

I don't like hypothetical scenarios. There's just too many of them out there that you could present. So you're wasting your time if you're trying to answer all of those hypothetical scenarios. I just like to share with you and discuss what has actually worked for me and what is actually working for me right now. Not what was working for me 20 years ago. I want to share with you what's actually working for me today. So what I'll do is I'm just going to go ahead and run through my first market that I broke into on my own

that I went into without any partners. I just went in there, you know, all by myself. And I'm going to walk you through the process of what led me to my decision to set up shop there. Okay? And that'll give you a good indication of what my thought process is and what the action steps that I took

and how I set that up. So it all started with a friend that had three multifamilies under contract, three multifamily buildings, but he only had enough money to close on two of them. So what he did is he offered me the third one via a wholesale. He wholesaled the multifamily to me. And what he did is he provided the scope of work for the rehab. And he also shared with me his property manager contact that would

manage the building for me. So all the pieces were in place. I had the building. I knew exactly what the rehab entailed. And I had property management in place, someone that was already working for him. And he had up to that point, he had had a good history with them. So that was good enough for me. That was my introduction to a property manager. So I hopped on a plane. I visited Memphis and met with the property manager there and closed on the building and began rehab. So that part was very simple. It was just a normal real estate transaction.

Nothing fancy there. And the deal, I mean, it was a no-brainer. I mean, once rehab and fully tended it, that building was going to generate a 20% at least cash-on-cash return, very conservatively. I actually borrowed all the money, so the return was actually infinite. But if I were to look at the money that I borrowed and put that in the deal, it was going to be 20% cash on cash. So that was really good. But it wasn't my money, so it was infinite, even better.

All right. So as we were there and we were visiting Memphis, getting to know the neighborhood, I was looking at other real estate and noticed the price to rent ratio on single family residence there was very nice. It was very nice to the point where I could get just about the same return. on single families as I could on the multifamily building that I just bought. And I could do it with no debt. I mean, I could just buy it outright, collect rent,

pay the building's expenses only, and get a very comfortable double-th digit return. So that's where the light bulb went off from me. Now, all I really had my mindset on at that point was to do a little bit of investigating to see if this were it was too good to be true type situation or not because I'm from Southern California and you can't buy houses in Southern California for $40, $50, $60,000 and rent them out for $7, $800, $900.

Can't do that. You know, you've got to put down way too much money here in Southern California to get any sort of double-digit cash on cash return. So I had to do a little bit of investigating. I was rather excited, but I had to inject reality back into my thought process, my decision-making process. The first thing that I looked at was the population. The population, how many people are there? The population of Memphis, Tennessee is a little over 600,000 people. So I like that. There are people there, and I wanted to market with a lot of people,

and because people is what drives the economy. And if you got a few people, you've got probably a smaller economy. You've got a lot of people, you've got a bigger economy. And I just, and since then, I've just kind of always focused on the population, meaning, I want to be a few people. You've got a smaller economy. And I a couple hundred thousand people there at least or more. But I did notice since 2000 that the population in Memphis was on a rather slight decline, just over a six percent negative population growth. So that caused me a little bit of concern, but that that six percent decline was stretched out over a 12-year period. So that's actually a rather very slight decline. At least it was in my books. So I kept that into consideration and I continued to do my research. I then looked at

the driving industries and the employment in the area. See, I want to make sure that the people there have a source of making a good and predictable living. So I look for big industries and I look for stable industries. And I always like to see a diversity in industries as well. You know, for example, although some people have done very well there, a lot of people have not. A lot of people have not. I'm just not a big fan of Michigan, for example, because it revolves, that whole economy revolved around one industry, the auto industry, and when the auto industry went computes, very much so did that economy. Now, Memphis doesn't have an extremely diverse industry. The medical and biotech industry is the predominant industry there. Now, if there were any place that had just one industry,

If I were going to invest in any one place that had just one industry, it would be the medical industry, of which that's where I would make an exception to my rule of industry diversity. And here's why. And we've talked about this before, this dynamic, this sector of our population called the baby boomers, right? As they move and age through society, they have a very significant impact on different industries. For example, when they were born, when the babies were booming, you know, that's how Gerber baby food became a household name. And as they grew up and they became teenagers, you know, that was the thriving period of Levi jeans, right? Levi jeans, the Ford Mustang, things like that, if that was affecting that era or excuse me, that population was affecting those industries because that's just the age where they were interested in those types of things. cars. And then they hit their, they started to grow a family in their 20s and 30s, and that's

where Lee Ayacocca, one of the greatest business minds of our time, he recognized this and he resurrected a dying auto company, Chrysler, by just launching something called a minivan because he knew the baby boomers were going to have a need for that. And he's very successful by recognizing that. And then, you know, economists say that as you hit approach your 40s and your 50s, those are essentially a person's real money earning years. That's when they really hit their stride and they start making a really good income, per the statistics. And so that's why we've had this giant real estate boom in the last, I don't know,

10 to 15 years is because that's when the baby boomers were in their money making years. They're buying investment properties. They're buying their vacation homes. They're buying just second homes. And they're buying homes for their kids. They're buying homes for their parents because they were making money. Now those baby boomers are retiring. And they're going to have the same impact of all the industries that are related to retiring as they had with all the previous industries.

So what do you need when you retire? Well, you need recreation and you need health care, don't you? Right. So that's why I make the exception for any market that is strong and deep into whether it's health care or bio-research, anything like that. The baby boomers, they're retiring. old and they're going to need medical care, lots of medical care, because there's lots of them. That industry, it's not going anywhere. It's not going anywhere for a very, very long time, so it's a very strong industry.

But having said that, Memphis has somewhat a backup industry as well. And that backup industry is the transportation industry or the distribution shipping industry. You know, Memphis is a major transportation hub. You know, it's actually recognized as America's distribution center. So there are a lot of transportation and shipping type jobs in Memphis as well. And a third industry that I found are a third company, a major company, is Nike. Nike is doing some major expansion in Memphis. And that's probably, I don't know, I might be a little biased there because I hold Nike

near and dear to my heart. If you went and looked inside my closet, you would understand. I have quite the Nike collection. But those were two backup industries in my opinion. At least I saw a major company also is my, you have the health and the biotech, and we had the shipping and distribution center. And then I noticed a major company like Nike is moving there and growing. So you see what I mean when a little bit of judgment or discretion is in order.

I mean, there aren't a bunch of industries there in Memphis, but there are two very strong ones that aren't going anywhere, not by any means. And then you have a very large company that actually sees some opportunity to expand their operations there. Just the baby boomers. They're going to need the medical innovations coming from the biotech industry there in Memphis and the entire nation is dependent on Memphis to ship and receive goods. And I personally could probably keep Nike in business as well. So anyway, you know, Cleveland, Ohio, another one of our markets is very much the same way. Not extremely diverse. But, but, but very strong in the medical industry, the healthcare and biotechnology industries, as well as

fuel cell research, those industries, they fuel the city's economy. And there are actually 10 Fortune 500 companies that call Cleveland home as well. So not extremely diverse, but it's got the right industries there. Another example of judgment and discretion is the employment rate in Memphis, not very good. Few points above the nation's average, like a nine and a half percent. In fact, that's well above the nation's average. But the recent job growth is actually very positive. It was a little higher than that not too long ago.

So Memphis jobs have increased three and a half percent in just the last couple of years. So even though this population has been on a decline for the last 12, the job growth just in the last two years is very strong. That's really significant growth for such a small region. such a short period of time. So again, a little judgment, a little bit of, I don't know, intuition, you know, just looking at the facts. Now, the third thing I like to look at when assessing a market is the percentage of the population that rents. And that's a little different from how most investors look, but I like to see how many renters are actually there. Who are my clients or my tenants and who are they going to be? And that's why I really like Memphis.

And St. Louis as well, actually as well as Columbus. But 51% of the Memphis population, rents their residence. Over half the population rents. Whether someone says Memphis is a good market or a bad market, it's on the rise, it's on the decline. I mean, you could probably create that story depending on which economic indicators you look at. I really like it because, one, there's a lot of people there. Two, they have jobs and they're getting more jobs. I mean, jobs are on a significant rise. And half the population there rents their dwellings. The translation is there are a lot of tenants there that can afford to pay their rent. They can afford to pay me. But first and foremost, what makes it a really good market for me is I began with the referral

of one good property manager. And as I got more familiar with the area, more familiar with other investors in the area, I got more property manager referrals, some good, some bad. But after a few years there, now I have three really hot property managers there that cause my properties and my client's properties to perform. First and foremost, I got good property management. And and I got the economic indicators there to back everything up. So that was my thought process when I chose Memphis. But the straw that broke the camel's back, and this is what had me go all in.

I pushed in all my chips, and this is the fourth thing that I actually like to look at, is what the city is doing. How is the city contributing to its own growth? And to get to the nitty gritty right there, sometimes you've got a visit. I highly recommend it. You've got a visit.

got to ask questions. And we ask questions of a lot of people. We ask questions, of course, of our property manager and our realtors, but we ask property managers of the cab driver, of the waitress that served our food, of the clerk that checked us into the hotel. And we ask questions like, what's the city doing? How long have you been here? What things are you noticing? Is it growing? Is it decreasing? What's happening here? So you've got to ask questions. And you have to do your own little research. You have to look around for yourself. And after doing that, I noticed how much money Memphis was pumping into the city's development, its own development, in the interest of attracting tourists. You know, they built the FedEx Forum right there in the middle of downtown. Very popular.

The Memphis Grizzlies are staples there. It's a regular attraction. They've developed the riverfront there with all kinds of attractions and new housing, and they're continuing to do that. They're going to build the biggest bass pro shop in this giant pyramid there. They're tearing down the old prison-looking government housing projects and replacing them with new single family housings that blend nicely into the landscape to make the city look nicer. I mean, in a nutshell, it's obvious the city is pumping a serious amount of money into city improvements. I mean, you can actually see many projects right there in progress right now. You can see the stuff under construction.

You can see it with your own eyes. And that's something you just might not be able to get a good feel for over the internet. Those are all the reasons. That's why I chose Memphis as one of my markets, all of the above. You know, it started with the property manager must. There's no movement forward without a competent, reliable property manager in place. And then I look for some key things to make sure that the property manager will be able to get my properties to produce for a while. You know, one, the population, two, the industries and employment.

Three, the percentage of population that rents. And four, the city development. And I found all those things in my other markets, too, in Cleveland and St. Louis and Columbus, Kansas City, Cincinnati. Maddie, and I'm looking for more markets right now. You know, for example, just today as I was going through my emails, I got a message from a podcast listener, Nick, Nick from Oklahoma, and Nick wrote to me, he says, Matt, I am looking at your epic wholesalers website and wondering why you are not considering properties in Oklahoma City.

The market is great with very low unemployment, low vacancy, and great rental returns. I currently work this market and would like to find out if you'd be interested in expanding into this market, best Nick. So I just got that email today. And I've actually been thinking a little bit about Oklahoma City. Nick is not the first person that's brought that area to my attention. And first of all, thank you very much, Nick. What I like what you could learn right here from Nick is Nick has taken initiative.

He is exercising his resourcefulness. And he has sent me an email, giving me three good little market indicators that this could be a possibility. And he's asked me to expand there. to his market. I love it. Awesome, Nick. No doubt that you are successful in your area. If you just had, if you just sent that email to me, I believe it. So what I did, after I got that email, I quickly went to my favorite resources. I go to citydata.com. That's city-hyphen data.com. And I went to bestplaces.net. And I went to hotpads.com. Those are my three little

quick resources where I do some research. And I did a couple quick Google searches. I confirmed the There's almost 600,000 people there in Oklahoma City, very similar to Memphis. There are four Fortune 500 companies right there in the middle of the city. The unemployment rate in Oklahoma City is 4.8%. That's very low. That's like half of what the national average is. And the recent job growth is very positive. It's on the rise.

So that is very reassuring. And then Oklahoma City also has a lower percentage of renters, though. So only 30% of the population rents. That's a lot lower than my other markets. But like I mentioned, judgment and some intuition, some discretion, you got to exercise all of those. You know, a lower percentage of renters is something for me to consider, but there's a much higher employment rate. So to me, it's definitely worth a look. Those things kind of balance each other out.

And I've been thinking about this market anyway. So here's how I responded to Nick. Hi, Nick. The only reason that we're not in the area is because we haven't had the chance to build our teams there yet. I don't have a property manager yet, right? I don't have a property manager. That's why I'm not there yet. And so I continued to write, I would be very open to expanding our operation to Oklahoma at the top of the year. We have quite a bit of money to deploy the first quarter. I've got a lot of investors in my pool ready to buy property, so we're looking for some more

markets. So I let him know that. So I asked him, if you can refer me to three to four property managers that would manage the type of properties of which you're referring, the ones that he says that are good ones, I'm going to get someone on it right away. And I let him know. that. I'll get someone on ASAP. Thanks, Matt. I share that with you because that's how it starts. That's exactly what it looks like from the inception. I didn't pick Oklahoma. I'd been thinking about it, but I didn't pick it. But someone from Oklahoma shared some really good information with me, at least enough to catch my attention. And my first response is all about the team, the property manager, to be specific. And Nick replied, and he's obviously been listening to the podcast,

and he's done his homework. Nick replies, I will ask around to other investors and see who they recommend. I will go to the two Ria meetings in January and ask for referrals, and I'll get back to you when I have more information. Awesome. Perfect. Absolutely perfect how this should happen.

So there you go. And by the way, this is exactly how I did it. Before I had a podcast, in case you were thinking, yeah, but you have a podcast that reaches. thousands of people. Well, sure, I do. And that does make it a little easier. It's very much easier now.

But it got easier before I even had the podcast. I haven't, even though I have the podcast now, I haven't changed one thing about my process. And that's how it's going to be for all of you as well, just getting started or for those of you that are restarting. You're going to go through two phases of your real estate investing career. And the phases are going to look like this. First phase is you're going to be out there proactively searching for business.

you're going to be looking for business. You're generating leads. You're looking for deals. You've got to be very active on that. You've got to be proactive on that. And you're going to be very proactive in building your teams. You're going to be very proactive in expanding your markets or territories. And the more you do that and the quicker you do that, that business will gradually start looking for you.

You're going to start making this transition into the second phase. That business is going to come to you. Those deals are going to come to you. The leads are going to come to you. Business will actually come to you. new team members are going to find you. They're going to seek you out because they heard about what you're doing and they want to work with you and new markets and new opportunities are going to come to knock in.

I mean, whether you have a podcast or not or a blog or not or a TV show or not or if you're on the speaking tour or not. I say all of that because all of this happened to me before I had any of those things. And I say all of that to remove your excuses. You know, because you can make excuses or you can make money. but you can't do both. That's how the saying goes. So I want to remove all of those excuses.

And I just want you to understand that this takes effort. It takes work. And that's how it happens in the beginning. And I haven't really changed my process. There's some different dynamics that make my business a little bit easier now, but only because I've been doing this for a while now. So I just want to let you in on that and look at you look at the inside of how I pick a market. And it all starts with a property manager.

It starts with a referral of a good property manager because if I don't have the property manager, it doesn't matter how good that market is. It's not going to be a good experience for me. That property or the properties are not going to produce. So it starts with the good property manager. Then start looking at the economic indicators. And there's certainly more of those to look at than I look at. But I just kind of shared with you, the ones on the surface that I like to look at.

I like to look at the population and its growth. I like to look at the industries and the employment. then I like to look at the percentage of the population that rents, and then I like to look and see if the city is doing anything to develop itself. And that's what I look for. And that's exactly how I believe it should be done. That's exactly how it's working for me today. So there you go.

Okay? That's it for today. Until next time, to your success, I'm Matt Terrio, living the dream. You've been listening to Epic Real Estate Investing, the world's foremost authority on separating the facts from the BS in real estate investing education. If you enjoyed this show, please take a minute to visit iTunes

and share your thoughts. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next time here at Epic Real Estate Investing with Matt Terrio. This podcast is a part of the C-Suite Radio Network. For more top business podcasts, visit c-sweetradio.com.