Rookie Mistakes | REIal Talk Podcast | EP. 29

Hello, freedom fans. Welcome back Aaron Davis, Matthew Packard. And what do we do here? We're managing some stuff. We buy some.

Buy some stuff and try to make things happen.

That's right. So we're. We're gonna chat today, follow up on our. On our vlog. We're gonna chat today in this podcast. Podcast. Which number is it?

2929. I think maybe 2929 sounds about it.

We're going to talk about some of the common pitfalls in rookie mistakes when you're new to investing in real estate and hopefully save you a little bit of the hassle that we've been through.

Absolutely.

Others that we know have been through by sharing some of our war stories and preparing you to. To get started in real estate a little bit better.

Absolutely.

So I know you're kind of our acquisitions lead, Right. You're the man, right?

Like, yeah, you know, acquisitions director of acquisition. That's. I kind of have to do. You know, us on the front end. We, of course, acquire the properties. If you guys don't know, we take care of the lifespan of creating turnkey properties for our investors. My main focus is acquiring the properties to start that whole process. And it's. It's been fun, it's been a learning experience, but there are things that go with it.

That's the risky part.

Exactly. It's the very risky part.

We do property management, we do rehabs, we sell properties, but the real risk is taking what we buy the asset.

Exactly, Exactly. There's a lot of forecasting, if you will, a lot of trying to look into the future, you know, so that, that's always fun, but. But I enjoy it. But yeah, hopefully we can talk about some things so that you don't have to fall in some of those pitfalls and traps.

So we ran into this today. The appraisal came back. It was disappointing.

It was a little lower than what we were hoping.

Yeah.

To the tune of about 70,000, if I'm not mistaken.

Yeah.

You know, but I think there's some. Some challenges. We're going to push back on that, so.

That's right. So. So making an acquisition, we're. We're reading the future a little bit. We're guesstimating a future a little bit in kind of two big spaces, really. Right. If we're going to sell a retail property to a homeowner, then we have to guess what those consumers are going to do. What are they going to think and feel when they walk into a property. How are they going to value this property? Right. We're less concerned about the appraisal in that scenario, more concerned about the home buyer who wants to put their nest egg into living there and that's their dream home. That's hard. Then we're kind of assessing the market. Right, right, right. And then the other pitfall is trying to read the future in terms of what appraisers will do. Right. So let's talk a little bit. I know Mark and Flip, our director of sales and our. One of our founders, are going to talk more about appraisals in another podcast. Let's hit on the big things that happen in appraisals. Where are the big risks?

So the big risks are first off, not comping properly, you know, kind of going outside the area, you know, and picking the wrong comps.

Okay.

Unfortunately, I think what happened this, this last time.

Yeah, this last, sure.

But then again, you know, the comps we went off of, we were at the right arv. It was just this opinion of the appraiser, so.

That's right.

But that's one of the biggest things is because the life cycle of what we do, you know, we're trying to predict four or five months into the future. Essentially.

True.

You know, so what somebody's going to opinion. What's the market going to be like four months down the line?

So, so what are the couple of the common mistakes we can do when we're, when we're trying to look at a neighborhood, pick a comparable property to, to use as a point of reference to estimate what our properties, what our acquisition is going to be worth. What's a, what's a couple of the common mistakes that a newbie, a rookie could make in, in picking comps?

Sure. The biggest thing is just the, the, the layout of the home itself.

Okay.

You know, you know, you want to make sure you got the right square footage. Of course, number of bedrooms, bathrooms, things of that nature. You know, calculate the price per square foot. That's a good measure. A lot of people like to go by.

Square footage is our square footage is our first and foremost.

Exactly. Points and efforts.

Right.

And then, of course, you definitely want to make sure you're within the area, you know, never try to never go out more than a quarter mile if you can.

So if you're looking at comps that are five miles away.

Yeah.

They're not really comparable properties that could.

Be same type of house, but like I said, five miles away, you're a whole different.

And we've run into this a little bit here where in the Dayton area. In the Dayton region. Dayton, Southern Ohio region, you take an area like Huber Heights where the entire city is just cookie cutter brick ranch one after another. So two miles away, your comp is a legitimate comp. Right. And then you take a neighborhood like Middletown.

Middletown.

And two blocks away, it's a completely different neighborhood. Different style of house, different quality of neighborhood. So your comps are less relevant just. Just a quarter mile away. Right. So yeah, we're kind of learning here that comps are not, you know, one particular radius is not equally applicable in every.

In every area. Right, exactly. Exactly. So, yeah, that's. That's something that you definitely want to learn and definitely to hone that skill.

There'S a, there's a value in having local eyes.

Absolutely, absolutely.

People who kind of know that know.

The area and have been doing it for a while. So.

Yeah. Yeah. All right. What else do we run into? What other. So the radius is a big hiccup that people can get into. What else. What other stresses can be problematic and getting good appraisals. Good comps.

Let's see. I believe another big thing is maybe even thinking about school districts, you know, things of that nature. True.

So you could have a property that's two blocks away.

School district.

Yeah. Interesting.

But. But that helps out. You know, I'm sure praisers looking at that as well, but that's right.

Railroad tracks.

Railroad tracks.

There's a substation across the street.

You don't want to go. Don't want to go near those. Yeah, stay. Stay on the same side of the railroad tracks.

Yeah. So you could literally be, you know, you got a property here on one side of, you know, one side of the block and then just right around the corner, literally, property over there is facing it. It's facing a park.

Exactly.

And this property that you're back, your backyard's back to back, so like you can't get any closer. But that property is looking at an electric substation. Right. It's all, it's all gravel, industrial, and it changes your.

Definitely want to do a, do a drive by if you can.

So we use Google Maps and whatever else to get a street view. Yeah, that's helpful. And some of that stuff is a subjective assessment.

Absolutely.

Right, absolutely. But getting a similar comp that's looking at a similar landscape in front of them. Yeah, it can be. Can be helpful. So. Yeah. Okay, cool. Yeah. Appraisals are tricky. It is kind of a crystal ball.

Yeah.

I mean, that's why I've said a number of Times you have the, the riskiest job, you have to take on the most risk. Because we get into rehabs, we manage properties, they have their risks. But we're asking you to read the readers and tell us the future.

But, but it's fun. I can handle it. But yeah, that is, like I said, one of the biggest things is, like I said, you just got to know your area, know your product.

Yeah.

You know, take it astride, you know.

So risk tolerance and. Risk tolerance. And like how you manage, how much, how off you can be, like how far off can you be? Right. Is also. So when I was, I was flipping properties and I was a one man show, more or less. And so I always knew that like I could have, I could afford to be wrong by 15 grand.

Sure.

Right. And so I made sure that I had a, like a cash buffer and some. Like, you're not going to win in every deal.

Absolutely.

So sometimes the rookie mistake is just betting too much, counting on a success too much. Right.

Yeah, absolutely.

You try to stack everything up just right. And you have to, if you need to win, because you have to win, you could be in a room.

Yeah. It's one of those things where you have to take the bitter at the sweet.

Right.

So you're going to get those home runs, but.

Right. If you make a bad deal, one out of 20 times. Yeah, no big deal.

No big deal.

You make a bad deal on your first one with all the cash you have and then you're in the middle of a rehab. Right.

And it's not good.

How do I finish this deal now that I know I can only sell it for X or whatever.

Right, exactly.

Yeah. So cash management's a big deal. Well, let's talk about the underestimating rehabs. I've run into that problem before.

Have you now?

Yep. Yeah, so I've done that. We don't do a lot of this or whatever, so feel free to warn our viewers if you think this was a bad mistake. But I had a couple of successes buying properties at sheriff's auctions. Yeah. Right. And so in those scenarios, you often don't get to look at a property. I wasn't able to. I was looking in the windows. Right. So I'm like, oh, I can see we're going to need some flooring. Oh, we're going to need to replace those appliances. Whatever. Right, yeah. Kind of doing eyeball.

Eyeball, Yeah.

I remember this one where. Oh, this looks pretty clean. Looks pretty nice. Right. I could tell it was kind of looked pretty well cared For. Yeah. Until I drilled the locks and got in. I made the acquisition, drilled the locks, got in, and the place just smelled like death. It was. It was cappy. Everywhere. Everywhere. Everywhere. This entire house was a litter box.

Wow.

And so, like, I had to take drywall out. Even when I took drywall out to carpet out, like, it had saturated the studs.

Wow.

So I had, like.

Bad.

Yeah. So just because it smelled bad, I've got to do some mitigation, like down to the studs. And so anyway, going through that. That's just a cost that you just. You cannot do by. You just have to walk in and. And smell it. Right. To know that. Okay, this is good mitigation. Right. This is not like a little bit of cat pee on the carpet.

Yeah.

This was like they turned this whole house into it.

It was. It was a cat house. It was a cat house. Literally.

Yeah. I've had. I've had others. I had to buy a roof once that I thought at a glance looked great. Sure. And when I get inside, I realize there's a lot of. There's moisture in the ceiling.

There's.

You. You don't know that until you're in the attic space that there's water that had collected in there. Of course.

Yeah. That's one of your biggest costs. So you definitely want to rehabs. You got to go in there and put your hands on it. Yeah.

You really do. I think I learned the hard way doing this, you know, sheriff sale stuff that I just had to put in a big extra buffer. You just have to assume that you're gonna. You're gonna buy something big that you can't see.

Exactly.

And then you probably end up walking away from. You know that sheriff sales. Kind of a high risk business where every once in a while you'll land one that's lightweight. It's like. It's like those shipping wars or whatever. You buy containers without seeing inside of it. You're just bidding on. You have no idea.

You have no idea.

But. Right. So if you're bad on your first one or two, you're screwed.

You're screwed. The rest. Yeah, forget about it. I got lucky on a couple of them.

Yeah. Some surprise expenses, but none of them were $20,000 unexpected expenses. I had another one where. Just say on that same subject of sight unseen investments or whatever in properties. I had another one where, again, it looked good from the window and door didn't go in the property. As soon as you crack it open, it. The entire thing smelled like there was no P trap in the basement. So I smell all the sewage. The whole house had been sitting there for months with no, you know, no P trap to block the sewage smell.

Yep.

So the entire house just was. It was disgusting and it required a lot of extra work and a lot of extra cost. More so than you could look at. You can see. Right.

Those are, those are the worst ones.

So put a sniffer on your acquisition.

There you go.

Put a smell. Yeah. I mean you can't. You can't smell through the window.

Yeah. Like I definitely want to get in there.

Yeah. So, yeah. I had a lot of mold in the basement once I bought another property that was. The entire basement was saturated, so it was a complete. And you can't see that from a distance. Right. Yeah. I learned hard way on the sheriff sale that you just have to buffer in a lot of extra expenses.

So anyway, and all goes in. Every house is one of your biggest expenses, if not your biggest expense. You know, trying to do a property. So.

Right.

Got to make sure you do it right.

Right. So we've got a rehab leader that's pretty spot on. He's pretty like, he does his. He walks a property, looks at it pretty darn close to spending what he thought it was going to cost. Exactly. To rehab it. That is a. That's a lot of years of experience built into the ability to do that well. So most of us don't do that as well.

Right.

Like when I was, when I was doing it myself, I'm kind of handy. But I didn't know, you know, I could do most electric electrical stuff. For instance, I can put in light fixtures and switches and all that kind of stuff. But some more sophisticated things are putting in a breaker box or whatever. I would hire out somebody. Right. And I don't do that often. And I had only done a, you know, half dozen properties at this point, so I didn't know what it would cost like to hire an electrician, what they're going rates were. Because I just didn't have a lot of experience with it. Right. So when I walked through a property and I. And I see, oh, that's probably going to need an updated break. I don't, I don't know if that's. I don't know if that's $500 or. Or $3,000. It was somewhere in between. But. Yeah.

Yeah.

But hopefully. Yeah, that's right. When. So when you don't. When you haven't dealt with all the various contractors, that's another big risk, I think, you know, Just to not know. You can't. You don't know what you don't know.

Exactly.

Right. So if you haven't hired every kind of contractor to mitigate every kind of issue, how do you even. How do you estimate something? Like. Right, right. Yeah.

So that's definitely something you need to learn, you know, especially as a rookie coming into the game like that. Yeah, it's definitely. Do your research, shadow somebody if you can. You know, YouTube University. That's a good spot.

YouTube University is a great way to build knowledge. I think there's, you know, there's something to be said too, though, from having somebody that you trust to help you, you know, as opposed to like an online resource or whatever. Because stuff's dated, it's geographically influenced, whenever you're getting content from the Internet or whatever. And it can lack, you know, the depth or specific insight you need for a local purchase or local acquisition. Right. Or a modern acquisition. Like rehab costs right now in 2021 are different than rehab costs in 2019. Right.

Easily.

So whatever we're reading in 2019, forget about it.

Forget about it.

Somebody who's been doing these things one after another for the last years has that insight.

They know what they're doing.

They know we're buying Covid lumber. You know. Exactly. Like what it cost to put up a wall now is different than what it costs to put up a wall. A year and a half.

Exactly.

Yeah, yeah. There's. There's little. It's unfortunate. Preparing the rookie is hard to do because there's. There's very little to replace. Just experience. Right. And up to date. And local experience in particular. Right. The. Yeah. So that brings me to another point. Accessibility of contractors. Like, do you even have access? Can you even get contractors of the.

Sorts that you'll need to show up on time? Yeah, it's. It's few and far between. Like I said, there's a lot of work going around right now. A lot of contractors, they're, you know, they're busy, they're backed up. You know, we're seeing that a lot, like I said, with us even being, you know, having a dedicated rehab team, whole rehab company, you know, we're still.

That's still a limit still, right?

Yeah, still nor still six weeks out. That's right. So.

That's right. But.

But yeah, like I said, it's one of those things you have to learn.

Yeah. And then surprise. You need a structural engineer. Oh, how. How far out do we have to schedule that guy?

Exactly. How long is that going to Take. And then we have to get permits. And then you got.

We need a chimney torn down.

Exactly right.

How long. How long?

Wait on the city. Wait on the county. It's, it's, it's. Now, don't get me wrong. Not to deter anyone, but just things you need to look out for when you're.

Yeah, exactly. I mean, for the rookie. The rook one. The big theme of that is the rookie mistake is not having the depth of experience, the local and recent experience, to be able to. To estimate your rehab with any kind of precision. Exactly right. So thinking that you're like me, I'm a handyman who's kind of done all my own work, whatever, so I can kind of guesstimate with that.

Sure.

False. False. That's gonna suck. I could probably do that for 15 grand. False. 35,000.

$35,000. And you're waiting two months, my friend.

That's exactly right, man. The time is. I think I hurt myself. The time more than the money.

Yeah.

Because. Oh, now I think I'm going to change my mind. I'm gonna go ahead and do redo these countertops or whatever. And then you're waiting four weeks out. It's like, wait, why did I. Yeah. So preparing your, you know, whether it's your Gantt chart or whatever it is, how you execute your project, being over. To overlap the things that can overlap. Having a mature, clear and thorough rehab schedule.

Exactly.

And then identifying the resources that you're going to need at what time. Getting loose commitments up front. Yeah, right. That's. That's something I matured into.

Yeah.

By all the failed experience. Experiences or experiments with not having all those things. Right, right.

I mean, that is definitely the common theme, is that you want to be prepared in all aspects. I mean, literally write down each bullet point before you even spend $1. You know, so.

Yeah, that's a really good point. So you look at a property like, okay, that's going to need countertops. Do you have a countertop guy or a countertop resource? Exactly. So I had used the shop that, you know, they sell you the granite and they install it for you. You know, like when you're doing this stuff at scale, you've always got that. You know what I mean? You're always in conversation, so you kind of know. But when you're looking at a property, when you're going to use a given rehab resource, you better make sure that they're actually going to show up in that exact time frame. Exactly. Yeah. That's a lot of planning. It's a lot of planning. Yeah. So that makes it really scary for like the individual investor who wants to.

Yeah.

I'm just gonna buy it. So I'm gonna be a chip and Joanna Gaines.

Yeah, yeah, right. I'm gonna make my own TV show off this one.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

But like I said, not to deter anyone. You know, it's a, it's a, it's a great feeling when you got it done, you got it accomplished and you know, re great.

But, you know, but planning is key, right?

Planning is very key.

Right down to the nickel. Exactly. Yeah. I couldn't down to the day emphasize that enough. Like down to the day, down to the nickel. Estimating everything, like every step of the way would be my best advice.

Exactly.

I didn't do that well. Instead I showed up with a bunch of, I had a bunch of cash set aside, showed up and I spent all of that cash on these hard lessons. Got good at it as I was going. Lost a lot of, lost a lot of opportunity, you know, could have been a lot more profitable moves if I'd been a little bit more savvy on the spreadsheets and planning and such. Living, you learn rehab, rehabbing is expensive if you're not doing it right.

Absolutely.

Yeah. We took some notes beforehand, so getting second bid on stuff, getting bids.

Yep, yep. What a lot of people do, they, you know, they get into the project, they want to get it done, so they're going to take the first bid that they, you know, that they get, you know, as opposed to getting two or three bids. Competing bids.

Sure.

You know, one thing you always have to realize, these contractors, a lot of people won't have your best interest at art. So they're going to. Yeah.

They're buying their kids shoes. Right.

And they're going to, they're going to pick up on that. Oh, this is his first time. Well, you know, what Extra twenty five hundred dollars, you know, so.

Yeah, that, that twelve fifty dollar project that you could have gotten for ten thousand dollars.

Yep.

And you add that up times four and all of a sudden you've, you know, you made another ten grand.

Exactly.

So make sure all of those transactions are the, you know, you're getting the best quality for the best price. Yeah.

So multiple bids, don't just go with the first one.

Yeah. Then ultimately you should have partners, rehab resources that you can trust that understand kind of your pricing objectives and.

Yep.

It's more of a partnership. You might be able to mature that ultimately to where you don't have to put Everything out to bed. But even still, you got to have some measure, some mitigations to keep your keeper delivery honest.

Absolutely.

Absolutely. That's a. That's a good idea. That's a good point. Trust is a big deal. I mean, whether you trust by, you know, kind of putting stuff out to bid or you maybe share in the value of the deal, whatever. Having trust in your. Your rehab crews is a big deal.

Yeah, that's the biggest one. Like I said, what we've seen now is just showing up. You know, you trust them, even give them the deposit. Then you need to show up. You know, then you hold another thing you have to worry about. But that's a lot of trust issues.

Yeah, that's a. That's another big rookie mistake, paying your contractor too much in advance.

Yeah, like I said, a couple that I've done. I don't pay for labor up front. Yeah, you know, sure. I'll pay for materials. Might make a payment schedule.

Sure.

You know, you get this much done, you get this. But yeah, don't pay too much up front.

Yeah. You have to withhold a meaningful amount to the end to make sure that last 90. Please. Last 90% of the job is not nearly as exciting as the big impact first. Exactly. Or that last 10% of the job not nearly as exciting as the. The big impact first. 90% of the job. Right, right. But those finishing details sell a deal, Right?

Exactly.

So making sure your contractor stays and stays engaged and stays on time all the way through means can't necessarily pay proportionate for all of it. Right. You have to hold back a disproportionate nut at the end. Right. That they're. They're very invested on. They're very vested in finishing the project. Exactly, Right. Yeah, that's a good point. I've been burned on that before. I'll pay me half. Okay. Then all of a sudden, it's like, well, it's gonna be another week.

Yeah. And then they. They've already got enough that they wanted, Right? Yeah.

Right. Construction money turns into beer money.

Exactly.

You're on a delayed schedule.

Yep.

Yeah, that's another big risk. Another big rookie mistake, I think, coming out too much. Too much cash up front. What else? What else? We run into rookie mistakes.

Let's see.

Appraisals. Appraisals, planning. Well, up front, for all your costs.

Rehab estimates, you know, trusting bidding.

We talked a little bit about property management last time, so. A little bit when you're not. Another problem I run into. Right. Is I bought properties, so you talked before about planning your disposition.

Yes. What's your ex.

From the beginning. Right. Like I want to know whether I'm going to hold this property as a rental and collect income. I want to know if I'm going to sell this property to a homeowner. I want to know if I'm going to sell this property to an investor who then manages rental. Those kind of three moves. Just, just those three moves. Impact which way you do your rehab.

Absolutely.

Where you finance the deal. So having a specific exit strategy is important to determine how you find it. You know, are you going to finance it with hard money?

Absolutely.

That's short term in nature, right? Yeah. How much cash do you want to put into it? That all depends on how long you're going to hold it and all that kind of stuff. Right.

That definitely goes back to initial planning. So like I said, make sure you write down every bullet point how you want to do it and stick to it.

And property management came to mind because I've had a property that I sold before because I didn't like being a landlord an hour away.

Sure.

Well, that was a mistake. What I really needed was a good property manager who could keep that cash flow coming and also keep me from having to show up with garbage disposal calls and such. Right. So property management is another good that comes down to trust too. You know, we've got a great in house program, Independence Property Management here in the southern Ohio, you know, southwest Ohio area. But wherever you are, in whatever market you're at, having a trusted, reputable, capable, vetted property manager is a big deal because it just gives you a whole nother exit strategy or disposition opportunity. You want to, you want to keep it as a rental even though you're not local, you need somebody to help you with that. Yeah, that's right. That kind of, that might be a reason why your exit strategy is different. If you know you've got a trusted resource who can manage it, well then.

Keeping it, keeping a different opportunity, keep that income stream. Definitely.

Yeah. What else did we screw up? You said you've, what was your worst, worst move ever? You probably never messed up a real estate.

Yeah, I'm not going to say that one that comes to mind is a little bit of the trusting issue, if you will. Kind of not going to use names, let's just say. Let's not use names. Let's just say Pete, who I've known for a while having a real estate, lots of, you know, properties and whatnot, knows I was getting to the game. Hey, Let me have one, you know, sell me one. Hey, I got this great one pack, you know, already generating income. There's already a tenant in there. You know what great did kind of a drive by, kind of eyes in the window. But I was trusting Pete, you know, hey, it's generating income. It's good to go.

Turns out Pete was trying to make his margin.

Found out Pete was trying to just unload this. I'm not even say catastrophe, but a problem property for him. So like I said, it goes back to the trusting got in there. The tenants weren't the clean, the cleanest. The basement was, you know, backed up, essentially. So it was poor.

Poor disposal, poor.

There was a lot of issues with this house. So don't get me wrong, it had a tenant in there, it was producing income. But, you know, the exit strategy was not there. I did plan on. Yeah, it was problematic, so.

So.

But I mean, that. That's what comes to mind. That's the biggest one I've pretty much had.

For me, it was the rehab surprises because I bought so many of them blind. That's the whole share of sales. Strategy is tricky and I've learned a lot. It's been fun. You know, the way you guys do acquisitions is much more mature and thoughtful and careful than the high risk stuff I was doing. But I definitely got into hiccups in the rehab world being overconfident in my ability to turn a wrench or swing a hammer. Right. Like, yeah, I can do all those things, but can I do them now? Right. I do them fast. Can I do them the cheapest? I learned a lot of hard lessons on that.

That was kind of my mindset early on, going into it. Like, I don't, like I can do those things, but I don't want to do those things. I'm the type of guy, let's just. I'm going to hand you this money and let me, you know, give me a product, you know, let me, let me, Let me get my return, you know, I don't want to have to go through those steps of, you know, rehabbing things of that nature. I want turnkey, basically.

Yeah.

So. But that was kind of my thing.

Another rookie mistake. I. I've learned over the years is the time value of your money is not a small thing. Right, Right. So whether you're paying interest on a financed deal or you're tying up your cash, that could be making you money elsewhere. Exactly. When you're sitting on a property for nine months, that hurts, Right?

Definitely.

Property that you turn out in nine weeks. You know, you can live with that. That's a couple of bills, a couple of months worth of bills you're paying. That's a couple of months worth of interest you're paying or what have you. But yeah, when you're sitting on something for months instead of weeks, that costs you a lot. Those holding costs add up, whether it's. Even if it's just your cash. Yeah, that's right.

Absolutely.

All those things add up. So, you know, I definitely learned over the years how to get that, you know, get that 9% to 7 and so on or whatever else. Right. Every little, Every little nickel adds up. And that's all these deals are made out of. Right. That's it. It's a stack of nickels from every little corner. There's just a lot of little corners. That's it.

30,000 corners you want to get them nickels from.

What about the sale? You know, so I, I always. I paid an outside realtor to list my properties and sell them. That's how I did most of my flips. Sure. And I was always conscientious of how expensive that was. Yeah, right. And on my last deal, I did it for sale by owner and saved myself a couple grand.

Sure. How was that experience?

You know what it was? It was good. This is a crazy hot market where like everything sells now. Right. I don't know that I could have got it gotten away with that in any more common time in market economy. It worked well. You know, I put it up, I got quick attention. You know, I got sold it at asking within a couple of weeks and ended up saving a couple thousand bucks. It was a little bit extra. You know, if I'd have had to talk to 20 different buyers through that process or entertain multiple different offers and all that stuff, I think I would have. I would have wanted to spend the money on an agent to help me. Right. I got lucky on that one, and it ended up being worthwhile. I still had to pay the. The buying agent. Sure. So I didn't save the whole commission, but I. I did save a few bucks, which is cool. I don't know that, you know, in a more remote area, it might have been harder to do that. Right. But this particular property worked out well. Had a lot of eyeballs on it, that kind of thing. So anyway, even in the sale, there's, there's some mistakes to be made or.

Some opportunity to learn to be made. Like I said, it's all part of that planning. So figure out what you want to do. But, yeah, the sales side is something else you got to learn.

Yeah.

Something else you got to learn.

You know, in retrospect, this is what we do at scale in our operation. You know, we're. We're kind of building up our sale in advance. Right. Like, we're. We're engaged with buyers throughout the whole process because we're. We're always. We always have a turnkey property, you know, on. On hand or whatever else. So we've got buyers kind of waiting and looking for the right deal that makes sense for them. There's no reason why you can't do that as a rookie, too. Sure. You know, be thinking about talking about and marketing your property before it's done. I mean, I did this in the software world. It's, you know, show what you're building. Right. There's no reason why you can't be, hey, here's the update on my property. I'm working through and sharing that on social media, provoking interest from consumers before it's time to consume. Right.

Get to that finish line. You pretty much got it lined up.

That's right. That's right. I think that's a big opportunity. Rookies don't think about a lot. It's like, oh, it's got to be perfect before anyone will take interest. Not really that. Before and after stuff is fun to watch. Right. So if you've got an audience or attention from friends and family, even, you know, whether it's Facebook or whatever, LinkedIn or wherever, whatever, wherever your. Your network is paying attention to what you're doing, you could, you could be marketing that property. Whether it's a rental you're trying to sell, a rental you're trying to rent, or, you know, a retail property you're trying to sell to a homeowner. No reason why you can't be telling.

The have to be perfect before you put it out there.

Right now, like, everybody's on Zillow. Every. Every homeowner who's trying to buy, they're like, is there anything available now? What about now? What about now? So it's a. This is a particularly good market to be pre selling. Yes.

Right? Yes.

Cool. Anything else you want to add? That's everything you need to know.

That's everything you need to know right there in a nutshell. There's nothing else, so I hope we.

Didn'T scare anybody out of it.

No, I think. I think they know. I think they figured it out. Like I said, big common theme. Just be prepared, you know, coordinate plan properly and create a buffer for yourself.

Yeah, the buffer is a big deal. Right? Be prepared for the hiccups. There will be one or two. Exactly. Or three. All right.

But other than that, I guess, as we always do, invest smart and live happy.

Thanks, guys.

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