How Our Family Of Companies Operate Under ONE Roof - Podcast | REIal Talk | EP. 63

Hi guys, it's Lauren with Freedom Real Estate Group again. Welcome back to our podcast, Real Talk for real estate Investors. I'm here again with Packer, our director of operations for acquisitions for Cash for Ohio Houses. And also Jennifer, our renovations coordinator with Bulldog Renovations, here with Tiffany, our transactions coordinator with Freedom Real Estate Group. And Erica, she is our assistant property manager with Independence Property Management. This is a bit of a longer episode than the last vlog that we did that was a quick overview of kind of what the companies all do together in terms of a turnkey property. We're going to have a bit of a deeper discussion talking about our roles, our company's roles and how it relates to the companies, our sister companies.

Yeah.

So we will get started. How's everyone doing today?

Still doing well.

Good, good.

Awesome. All trying to stay cool outside. It's getting pretty hot around here. So yeah, we will go ahead and start. Packard, do you want to dive deeper into what C4OH does and how it relates to the rest of the companies?

Sure, sure, sure. So like I was mentioning before, cash for aisle houses, we are basically the fuel that, you know, runs this plane. We start everything off so that we can create these turnkey properties for our investors. You know, it's our job to find these properties, talk with the owners, you know, find out their motivation, you know, see what they're looking to get out of the home and try to make it a win win situation for everyone. My particular role in the company, it's my job to kind of oversee everyone, make sure everybody stays on task, stays focused, work with our sales team to make sure they're doing things the right way, work with our VAs. You know, we have a great team of VAs over in the Philippines that help out as well. But yes, we, you know, I work with the owners, wholesalers, our bird doggers, anyone that can generate those leads to bring properties across our desks. Basically kind of a little bit deeper dive what we do on a day to day. Once we talk to those folks, we'll get a lead, if you will. We'll run the numbers. Basically we'll run comps, come up with ARVs, potential rents for those markets and see what we can really do to maximize profits and things of that nature. And it's all integrated with the rest of the sister companies. We all work closely together. Once we have a potential lead, we basically work with Bulldog Renovations to get them out there, get rehab estimates and things of that nature. And that's of course something that Jennifer does for us on a Daily basis. So maybe she can touch upon that as well.

Sounds good.

That's a smooth transition into Bulldog Renovations. If you want to talk about your role, your company's role, the stuff you go through day to day.

Yeah.

Okay. So like Packer said, once they have a lead on a property, then it's our job, it's Bulldog's job to go out and look at that property. And we do what's called an acquisition walk. So we go. We take pictures, we walk through every room, we assess what is going to need to be done in terms of rehabbing that property and getting it up to the standards of our property management company so that we can get a resident in there once the rehab is completed, once the property is ours. So once it has closed A to B. And Tiffany can talk more about that, which means we. We technically own it, and it's vacant. So if there was a previous tenant, they are now out, and Erica can talk more about that. Then it's time for Bulldog to go to work. So we have a group of contractors who we. Some of them are newer, but some of them we've used for years and years and years. And that's nice because they know our standards, they know our process. They know that, you know, we want this particular bathroom vanity or this particular kitchen faucet, or these are the countertops we use. This is the flooring we use. This is the color paint we use. So the contractor is in charge of the cosmetic rehab, which is basically what you see when you go in. The paint, the flooring, you know, the kitchen, the cabinets, all that good stuff. Then we have vendors who do the mechanicals or the services, because a house can look nice. But if the water doesn't run and the furnace doesn't work and the lights don't go on, then you're nowhere. You know, we can't call that finished. So I coordinate with the contractors and with the vendors, and sometimes it's, you know, who needs to get in there first so that then the next person can get in there, you know, that kind of thing. But that usually takes hopefully four to six weeks for the rehab from the time, like I said, it's vacant, and we assign a contractor until it's finished. Sometimes things slow us down. There are properties that, you know, it's great to have a vacant property because it means we don't have to evict a tenant. We don't have to wait for a resident to move out. But on the other hand, sometimes these vacant properties come with their own set of Issues, they're vacant for a reason. The electric has been off for years. The plumbing, you know, the, the gas, if it's a gas furnace, gas, water heater has been off for years. There's no water meter at the place. So those come with their own set of, you know, fun challenges because we often have to get the municipalities of the city or town or wherever the property is involved in terms of applying for a permit, getting an inspection before we can get approval to get some of these mechanicals done. In some places, they also want you to have a permit just for doing the general construction. So it varies from, like I said, city to city, town to town, and we have to navigate that kind of stuff. But once the rehab is complete, then we work with both Erica at IPM and Tiffany at Freedom Real Estate Group because kind of two things happen at once. We're trying to get a resident to move in there and we're trying to get an investor to buy the property and become the landlord. So I'll throw it off to them, I'll throw it off to Tiffany first and then Erica and they can talk about what the next steps are.

Yeah, so like Jen said, it kind of goes off to both of us at once. So we are, we are really taking the, the sales side of it, you know, and we are marketing it to all of our investors. And here is the, you know, here's the, the pro forma that we can give you that. We can show you how, you know, the financial projections and, you know, photos, scope of work, things like that. So we have this whole, you know, marketing folder, I guess, and we start sending that out. So we start sending that out to our investors. You know, they say, hey, I'm interested in this property. Great, we'll talk to you, we'll get a contract and paperwork out to you. Once that is signed, it typically then comes to, well, it comes to me. So I'm not involved in that process, but that's what Freedom Real Estate does. But then it kind of comes to me and I help it along with getting title involved lenders. I will do kind of weekly check ins with your lenders. I'm the person who schedules appraisals, inspections. I'm the person who goes through your inspection report, which I then boot back over to Jen for her to look at. But I continue to check in and help keep that process moving along. So, you know, if we have a closing date on the contract, that's the closing date we're aiming for.

Right.

Because I want to help keep it Moving along so that you can get a property, get it closed and cash flowing as soon as possible and you don't have to sit there and wait with everything tied up on your end. So that is I guess in a nutshell what I do.

Just in a little nutshell.

Yeah, yeah. And a little portion of what I do, I guess. But, but Freedom Real Estate Group, you know, obviously once we have, have passed the property off, we've closed it, it's off to you. And that is to Jen's point that is B2C. So we are person B. So when Jen says A to B, that's when we bought it. B to C is when we, we've sold it to somebody else. So we're person B. We're just that person in the middle who's going to hold it for a little bit, clean it up, make it look perfect for you so that you can have a cash flowing property. You don't have to hopefully go through any of the headache that we went through. And so once, once it's closed and everything's done, we pass it off to IPM so that they can take care of you for the rest of your life or as long as you want to hold the property.

Yeah, it is really cool. I really enjoy hearing everyone because it makes sense. It's just the whole process makes a lot of sense and so it's cool. IPM's kind of like the last part of it all. The longer, maybe even the longest, hopefully the longest part if the rehab doesn't take too long. Yeah. So with Independence Property Management we kind of touch with everybody that's here today. We for like before C4H buys the property, a lot of times they'll check about like hey, what's the market rent in this area? What can we expect to promise? You know it all goes in the calculations which Becker touched on and talked about. And then like Jen said, we work on doing the vacating. You know, if there's tenant in there, we can't have them in there while it's being renovated. So they, we asked them to leave. And then once it's, you know, during the, after the renovation process, we're in charge of making sure that it's up to the quality that a, that people would live in. So make sure all those little details are good and anything that's on the scope of work obviously they take care of. But just some of the little things that might need to be done like if a light bulb or a light fixture is not all in properly, whatever, maybe Light outlets, not working, things like that. But they have a good process. We have a good process and together we work it out to make sure that the. When the resin moves in there, it's smooth, it's ready to go and they are happy tenants. And then we work with frag a lot of times because, you know, it's their name out there. And so we are helping make sure that the brand is meeting the company's expectations, meaning the people that they're selling to, their expectations as well. So it's very. It's very fun, that whole process. And then myself, I am newly the assistant property management. Assistant. Assistant property management Property manager. And so it's been fun. It's a learning curve for me for sure. Learning a lot of different things about the whole leasing process because of course we have to get someone in to the home so that there is a steady inflow. You know, there's different things that we check to make sure that there are quality people that are moving in there that will be a good tenant and say that we definitely have a lot of good tenants in our properties. And yeah, just making sure that the owner is up to date. If there is any issues that come up for like work orders and things, making sure we keep in contact with them. We're kind of like the middleman a lot. You know, kind of like explaining, hey, this happened with the resident. This is what the vendor is saying, this is what needs to be done. Making sure that everything gets done quickly and that everyone's happy and keep the resident in there for as long as possible. So yeah, so I was the maintenance coordinator for a while for about a year. And now I'm working in property manager assistant position. So it's been very, very good.

That's awesome. Yeah. It seems like in terms of turnkey, that every company that works with a property is all connected to each other in some way. It doesn't even seem like a one street path where you hit one, hit another one, hit another one. It seems like every single one is connected in some way. Every single one touches another one in different area as the property goes along the pipeline. Would you guys agree with that?

Yeah, I would say that's definitely true, Lauren. We, we interact in formal and informal ways. The companies do. We kind of talked about at the beginning how Bulldog and C4OH are related because once they have a property that they want to acquire, we have to go and look at it and make an estimate about the rehab. But then down the line it would be. It never happens. It would be like a 1% chance where once we are finished with the rehab, we don't ever have to go back to a property or deal with a property again. But that doesn't happen. When we move a resident in or actually before we move the resident in, we have what's called a punch list. So IPM goes and looks at the property and they have certain standards that they want us to rise to in order to get the best resident, the best tenant in there. So they make a list of things. Maybe it's as simple as, oh, we forgot to put blinds up here, or oh, the water pressure isn't great. And then Bulldog goes back and fixes those things. Now down the line and with Tiffany, I work with her during the same time frame because her buyers often have an inspection. You know, they're spending a great deal of money. They want to make sure that everything is buttoned up so, you know, they want their people to look at it too. So we fix things for the buyer, we fix things for the property management company. We fix things that we ourselves have called out, you know, once the contractor is finished on the punch list. But then further down the line, once the resident is in there, we have certain limited warranties on our work at a property. So if a resident has a problem within a certain amount of time, we go back out and fix it at no charge to the owner. So Erica and I work pretty closely together on a day to day basis, especially during those transition times where we're going from heat to air conditioning or air conditioning to heat. There's a lot of those. Oh, this, this furnace is under warranty. Can you send your vendor out to take a look? And you know, then we get on his schedule and do that same with the roof. You know, whenever it rains, we know when we're going to have roof issues. And again, we have the vendor with the best pricing to send out, whether the property is under warranty or not. A lot of the times, you know, Tiffany will say, hey, this property isn't under warranty, but this is a good buyer, this is a good investor. We'd really like to help him out with him or her out with good pricing. Can you send your roof vendor out? So we'll do that. So it's kind of nice because we still kind of stay in touch with some of these properties. And then there's sometimes when the investor is finished wanting to be a part of that property and they want to sell it, and sometimes we'll go back in again, we'll kind of do that walk through again and say, okay, this is what we need to do to get everything ready for, you know, for you to sell this. Whether you want to sell it on the MLS and it'll be owner occupied or you want to sell it, you know, to another investor. So really work. Yeah, go ahead, Erica.

Yeah, yeah. Or with us if a resident moves out and, you know, it was. Maybe some things need to get repaired. It's kind of big thing that has to be done. We'll refer off to Jen and the BDR crew for them to do an external deal of, you know, getting a turn done there. And then because we are a property management company, we have people outside of the turnkey investors that maybe we are where they're a property manager and they're like, I'm looking to buy more, you know, real estate that we can refer them off to, Frank, you know, make sure that, you know, we just continue to work with one another and it's cool.

Yeah, it makes it easy because we're all under the same roof. We're not separate companies, we're sister companies. So we're all working under the same building. Some of us work from home, but we all essentially are here together. We're sometimes right down the hall from each other, just a phone call away, which makes it super easy to get in contact with the other person instead of, you know, having to go through a whole other receptionist, company phone number. We're all right here, which makes it super easy so that we can make this process easier for our investors to be able to get a hold of individual people going on here and in the process and all this stuff like that. So.

Yeah, and our leadership body kind of has the vision of like, how it's supposed to run and things like that. And we even have like a weekly meeting that we all like. We go through all the properties, the whole process. And so we're on top of like, what is, what is the product and what's the process of going through it all. So it's really, it's really cool that it's also.

Yep, exactly.

Yeah, I agree.

Yeah. Cool.

Does anyone have anything else about the companies, their roles, how the companies affect each other in our family of companies.

So, Tiffany, you've been here the longest. Tell us about the order of how the companies were created.

Yep. So we just played a trivia game at a company event and this was one of the questions. And not a lot of people got this right. So Real Estate Group obviously was the first company, but I believe I wasn't here at the very creation of Freedom Real Estate Group. But I believe that Bulldog was created very, very shortly after you have to renovate properties if you're going to flip them. Right. So Bulldog was created shortly after that. And I think we ran that way with those two companies for about two years. And then that's when we realized we need, we need an acquisitions company. So. Q. Cash for Ohio Houses that came in next and then IPM started very, very shortly after that out of necessity. If you've listened to any of the other blogs or podcasts, IPM was very, very quickly after Cash for Ohio Houses. So we were up to four.

And.

That'S really the four that we're talking about here. We also have Independence Realty Group that started at the same time as Independence Property Management, because you have to have a brokerage to have a property management company. Or maybe I don't know that. Right. But we did. So we have the same time. Yeah. And then our newest company, Freedom Capital Investments, that was created last. That's the order.

Cool.

It's nice because even though companies that we didn't mention, like Freedom Capital Investments and Independent Realty Group are still fairly involved and we are still sometimes very involved in those, even if it's not our direct title, like Jennifer Bulldogs Renovations works a lot with the retail properties that we sell to families and stuff like that. Right? Yeah.

And I think that Tiffany, correct me if I'm wrong, but was it fci? That is where we're getting the apartments in Hamilton through.

Yes.

Yeah.

So Freedom Capital Investments, that's multifamily lending. So they really, you know, if you're interested in the private lending side or you've been involved in the private lending side side, Freedom Capital Investments is kind of where that's all shifted to. So that is helping Freedom Real Estate Group fund these properties that we're getting from Cash for Ohio Houses. So we all just work very integrated all the time.

I feel like instead of a pipeline, it's like a spider web that we're all just intertwined in every area, basically.

Well, and everybody's willing to help each other out too. You know, I mean, we were just joking before about, you know, who's going to call this challenging issue that we have. And actually earlier today at one of our newly acquired properties that was just vacated by ipm, we need the city to go and turn the water on. And my assistant, or the Bulldog assistant is caught up with some stuff going on in another area. And I knew I had work in the office and then had some stuff, had the blog to do. So. Actually, Erica, you probably don't know this, but the IPM maintenance tech, Neil, who used to work for Bulldog, happened to be down in Middletown, so. So we got in touch with him and said, is there any way you can meet the water guy at this property? All you have to do is let him in so we can turn it on. And it worked. So I always really like it when stuff like that happens, too, where people just don't say, that's not my job or that's not my specific company. Nobody says that here. Everybody's always willing to go across the lines. And I think it's because we're a small company and, you know, our owners have established that this is the expectation and everybody just pitches in and helps where they're needed, you know, within the limits of their abilities.

So, yeah, even in marketing, I find myself having to pick up keys, drop off keys, place lockboxes. Sometimes I've done that. Do property tours with prospective tenants or place stove pans in. I just found myself doing anything because I feel like everyone in this company, if you have the opportunity to, if you're out and about in the field, if it's in your area either in Dayton, Cincinnati, everyone is willing to step up to the plate, get it done real quick, because we all have the same goal and vision in mind.

Well, and we even, I mean, here recently, we had a, you know, inventory dried up, cash for Ohio houses. Couldn't find anything. Right. Nobody could find anything, really. And so our entire team, regardless of what company worked in, got out and we hit the streets. We submitted probably, I don't know how many leads, probably too many.

They weren't even.

Probably all valid.

But there were. There were a bunch.

You know, we all got out and we tried. And even me, like, if I was working from home and I was like, oh, I'm kind of caught up for the day. I'd go drive around because I knew I could go try to find some properties and I'd usually maybe find one and. Okay, that made it worth it, you know. But, yeah, so we all help out. Yeah.

Even though we're all designated to our own separate companies, we all. We all tag team. We're all hand in hand. It's a spider web. Basically. We're all just together.

That's what's great about this company and what the owners have established, that whole familial aspect that we have. And like you said, everybody willing to help out and. And I mean, it's great. You know, I think I can say that for everybody. We just love working for this company. So it's. It's great.

That's awesome. Yep.

Well, we are about out of time now, so thank you guys for such a great discussion. I hope for our listeners right now this was a good overview of our company, what we do. Pretty lengthy, but we are. We all work very hard. We all have a lot to do all the time, because real estate, Right, Real estate. You do a lot. We have a lot of planning going on, a lot of projects going on, campaigns going on that we're always working with. So thank you guys for listening. Thank you guys for joining me and answering my questions today. And we always end these. I don't know who wants to do this with me, but invest smart.

Live happy.

All right, thank you, guys. Have a great day.

Bye.

Thanks.

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