156: Lifestyle Engineering Through Commercial, Residential, and Vacation Rentals with Mark Spidell

This is the BiggerPockets podcast show 156.

Now, that was how it happened and, you know, learned a lot from that. So now we have a much more smaller scale property management group involved and much higher level of service. Monthly report and yeah, we're feeling good.

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What's going on, everybody? This is Josh Dworkin, host to the BiggerPockets podcast, here with my co host, Mr. Brandon Turner. Happy New Year, Brandon.

Happy New Year, Josh Dworkin.

How you doing? Yeah, yeah, I'm good, man. I'm good. As you can probably hear, I'm a little, little sick here. A little, little recovery from. From.

You're always sick. What are you talking about?

You're a sick person.

What can I say?

Really?

Why are you so mean? Like, everybody talks about what a nice guy you are.

It's not true.

They don't realize you're such. You're. You're kind of me.

Well, here's what I realized this week. Somebody said something in the forums and they said, I just watched the YouTube video of the BiggerPockets podcast because we put this on YouTube as well. And they said, I totally had Brandon and Josh's faces mixed up with their voices. And somebody else said, I did, too. And then somebody else was like, I did too. And I realized people have no idea that I, I'm you and you're. So they like, people think that I'm you and you're mean, and I think that's weird. So maybe really they're actually thinking I pick on you more and they just. They're saying the wrong thing to your face. I don't know. So I don't know who picks on who. Most you guys should let us know in the comments of this show.

Oh, yeah, let us know. Biggerpack on whom show 156. Let us know what you think. Let us know. All right, guys, we've got a really cool show today. Before we go into the show, let's bust out today's Quick Tip Tip.

All right.

Today's Quick Tip. You got it, Brandon, you got it? I got it.

I'll take it.

I think it's a new year. Let's, you know, I'LL be generous. More generous.

Today's quick tip is a brand new feature on BiggerPockets called the Rental Property Portfolio Tracker. And basically what this does is it allows you to enter in your properties that you currently have and you can track the, you know, the process. I mean basically the idea of your property address, the purchase date, purchase price, current value, loan balance, equity, and your monthly cash flow. So you have like this one nice page where all your properties are at. You can see what your cash flow looks like, how much your net worth is currently, and you can download a PDF or share just like a PDF document with anybody you want. So if you're trying to get a bank loan, you can print out this nice document. So check it out@biggerpockets.com portfolio and start using it.

Nice. Nice.

It's free.

Yeah, it's free for everyone and it's in beta mode. So you know, we're still working on it, trying to make it better, but we could use your advice on how to make it better. So get in there, use it, try it out and see what you think.

Yeah. Awesome. Great tool. Cool.

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All right, guys, let's cut to this thing. Today's guest is Mark Speidel. Mark's a real estate investor with a really interesting background. He's built a pretty cool portfolio with both long term and short term rentals. He's got a great story and a really cool philosophy on life which includes something that he calls lifestyle engineering. I'm doing finger quotes here and I know you guys listening are going to love it. We also talk a bit about commercial real estate investing as well as a bunch of other topics. There's tons of actionable stuff in here. Lots of advice for everybody regardless of where they are in the real estate world. I know I get excited about these shows that help everybody out. And so here we are again with me Excited.

I am excited.

So excited.

I'm excited. Yes.

All right, let's get to the exciting show, shall we?

Mark Spidell, let's do it. Mark, welcome to the show, man. It's good to have you here.

Thanks, guys. It's an honor.

Yeah, this should be fun. We're talking about investing in a couple things today. You do a, you do vacation rentals, you do commercial, you do residential. You kind of COVID the whole gambit, right?

Correct. Yeah.

Awesome. So great. Why don't we start with how you got into that game?

You know, I was pretty timid to start off with. I would say I eased into it. I had an ADU or like a mother in law apartment at my house and some neighbors had been doing vacation rental, had some success with that. Also I had a background in banking and other just mortgage related finance, even kind of at a higher Wall street level. And from that I always understood real estate. But to be a more active investor, it took me a while to kind of take, take the plunge.

Hey Mark, what's the ADU stand for?

Additional dwelling Unit.

Got it.

Yeah, Right, there you go. Every day.

So you were house hacking at the beginning. That was kind of how you got into it?

Yeah, it was a modified house hack for sure.

That's awesome. That's awesome. So you decided to convert it, you said, into a vacation rental.

So yeah, before we had a guy working for Comcast living in there that did nothing but kind of be creepy all day in my opinion. And so I, that was Brandon.

So I thought, gosh, how can we best utilize this space? Because the nice thing about it was we could have friends and family stay there as well as get the income. So it was sort of a nice compromise at that time in life.

Yeah, nice. So what inspired you to do it though? I mean, at the end of the day, why start renting it out? Did you have plans? What was your goal up front? You know, did you want to just build some side income? Did you want to be, you know, a full time investor?

At that time, I wasn't sure. You know, I've always been a bit of a hustler, but I think one of the challenges in my area is that it's the credit quality of the tenants is not all that hot. And I'm not trying to pick on anybody because it's a tough place to live, it's an expensive market. So what I thought was a better route at that time, and I still believe it, that's why my business has evolved this way, was if you go the vacation rental route, you obviously just get a different clientele, would you say?

I mean, I would assume those clientele are a lot higher because they're renting vacation rentals, right?

Yeah.

And the vacation rental minds mindset is a lot different. I would say 80, 90% of the people, they tidy up when they leave, you know, they do exactly what you say in the instructions and they're just pleasant to deal with on the, on the rental side of things. You know, you go through the background check, you look at their income and everybody's a stretch around here just because, just there's such a huge discrepancy between what people can make income income wise here and really what rents are.

And you're, you're, you're in Glenwood Springs, right? So that's Colorado, what's around you.

So we are 45 minutes north of Aspen. So the Aspen market has a huge impact on our local market. And there were about an hour due west of Vail. So again a major, major resort market there.

So. Okay. Yeah and Glenwood Springs is beautiful. Um, it's, you guys have hot springs and it's, it's an amazing place for anyone listening, you want a cool spot to go check out. But it's, it's, it's boundaried by these ultra, ultra, ultra high end resorts. So that, that's kind of fascinating. You know we, we talk about these different market niches and market types, big cities and things like that. It's kind of neat to have somebody who's kind of caught in between the two ultra high end neighborhoods. So you, you get into this, you've got this property and you've got this Wall street background and where does your mind take you? You know like all right, I've got this guy now renting out this mother in law adu apartment. How do you transition from that to kind of the next phases in your investing?

Well really it was lifestyle focused. My wife's a professional and she works a fair amount. At the same time she's been fortunate to find a situation where she can work three quarter time. We now have a four year old, a four month baby. So thank you. Yeah, so big deal. And we're, we're very focused on, on wanting to do the parent thing correctly, you know and it's, it's so hard, you know, in, in an expensive market and just how life is for, for modern people. So we're trying to figure out a way to have balance, have a little bit of control and have some, some freedom. So yeah, that's why we went more real estate.

Okay, so let's talk about your first then non owner occupied deal. What did that look like?

Well, I had been in the mortgage backed securities industry studying what was going to happen. Really I went from doing work related to subprime mortgages and the different companies that were involved in those mortgages and I saw that there was going to be an opportunity in extreme levels of default. So I told my brother and my dad, hey, I think there's an opportunity here. Do you guys want to try to pull some money together and invest? And so we bought two single family homes in the Dallas area and then a house near DIA in Denver. And so that was sort of our first foray of saying, hey, there may be an opportunity here. Let's give it a shot. And as a partnership, it was just okay. But it was our first way of kind of getting into real estate. So, yeah, it was interesting.

Okay, and you said those are single family, you said in Denver, right?

Denver and two in Dallas.

Okay. Okay. And do you still own those today?

Yeah. So I bought my brother and dad out of the partnership the beginning of last year, and that was just sort of a piece to my overall puzzle that I have now.

Okay. Can I ask you about the relationship thing? And, you know, obviously, maybe your family's gonna listen to this, so don't talk bad about them. But do you have tips for people working with family? Because that is oftentimes people's first inclination is to go out and partner with their mom and dad, brother, sister, kids. What are your thoughts on that? What are some of the dangers and ways you can avoid that? The bad things?

Well, we're a very transparent family in that, you know, we have formal loan documents if there's loans involved. You know, in fact, I would say it's almost a detriment because sometimes we're talking about it at Thanksgiving, and my mom hates that, my wife hates that. But at the same time, we, you know, we. Everybody knows their role and is transparent about it. You know, it's not a awkward sort of thing. At the same time, though, we had different roles and responsibilities and skills. But after a while, my. My brother, he needed some money to invest in some of his other business ventures, and my dad was kind of getting just tired of even wanting to think about it, so he wanted out. And it made sense for me to get bigger into real estate.

Okay, right on. So what year was this?

We bought those houses in 2009.

Okay, so right after.

Yeah, it was right. At the right time, for sure.

Perfect. All right, so, I mean, would you be willing to tell us. Okay, you talked about you got into bed with your brother and dad as your partners. What did these deals look like? What attracted you to them?

Basically, you could get over 10% return on your money. That was pretty much. We were just back into the math and look at it that way. Purely quantitative. We were not looking at enough qualitative because we actually had some hiccups. And that's why we didn't grow more at that time, because not everybody was on the same page. More on the qualitative aspects, what they was involved.

Can you. Can you go into more detail into what that means, I get, you know, qualitative. Okay. So it's the math. What's the quantitative part of the picture?

Well, the quantitative we felt good about qualitative wise. For example, at the house near Dia, we had the very first tenant, and it was my responsibility to find the property management company. I just googled what's the. What's the property management company in Denver, Found the really big one, and I got really big company service, and it wasn't good. So, long story short, we had a. A woman applied to rent. She didn't ever really live there. A gang had paid her off. A group of gang members had paid her off to get access to the house. So, yeah, two or three months in, they stopped paying. And then it takes a while for the eviction. And they were definitely sketch tough guys. I got a relationship going with a neighbor, and so he would shoot me pictures every now and again. One day I get a text of an Escalade on blocks in front of the place. You know, bad things were going on for sure. And so that was sort of part of the qualitative part where, you know, not everybody was feeling good about this. And, hey, my bad. You know, that was a learning opportunity for sure.

Yeah. Yeah. I want to know more about this Escalade on blocks. I mean, were they putting, like, drugs in the tires or.

Somebody was not happy with whatever they did and took their tires.

That's pretty funny.

Took their wheels. Yeah.

So, yeah.

But, you know, that very house, though, I mean, that was a $90,000 house, and it is currently up for renewal Now, I vote there. Let's see. Since we bought it, I would say we're on the third or fourth tenant, and, you know, I might be able to sell it for 240if I want, or, you know, it's going to rent now for 1700.

Yeah. So back to the gang member. I mean, it's interesting because I. I had some drug doings in property that I had, and that was. It was. It was scary, and it was, you know, it was a pain in the backside to get rid of these folks.

Yeah.

How did that go down for you? How did evicting. And I'm assuming your manager just dealt with it and you had nothing to do with it, but maybe not.

Yeah, well, and they dealt with it really poorly, to be honest with you. I mean, they wanted to take the path of least resistance, and I had to just follow up, you know, bang on the phone a lot. And, you know, that was how it happened. And, you know, Learned a lot from that. So now we have a much more smaller scale property management group involved and much higher level of service, monthly report. And yeah, we're feeling good.

So if you could go back, you know, and tell your, your younger self or maybe somebody else comes up to you and they're your exact shoes that you were in back then, you know, what can you tell them? Like, what lessons did you learn from that first, Those first couple deals, maybe with your family that you would warn listeners of the podcast right now about?

I think at that time I was almost viewing it as a, like, I would view an investment, a stock or a bond and just say like, oh, pure math. This is how we do it. Sure. You know, instead of calling an investment person, now I'm going to have to call a property manager. And, you know, I'm going to make the very minimum decisions involved in this. And you know what? In hindsight, no, you need to be educated and you need to make more than one phone call to be. It's just not that easy.

Yeah, interviewing property managers is a monster, monster task. It's of the utmost importance. And we've got tons of resources on the site that go into that. We've got a lot of articles that include questions to ask and things like that when interviewing. So for anybody listening, if you're dealing with that, I definitely encourage you to just jump on bigger pockets. Type in the search, like interview property managers, and you'll come up with some cool stuff. I think everybody will find it really helpful. Okay, so Brandon made a note here about the crash coming. I want to jump back before we jump forward here. You saw the crash coming. You were in the MBS space.

Where are we today? Do you think we're in a position?

Yellen just made some changes.

At the Fed. And where are we going?

Well, looking backward, I was in that industry from 2001 till about 2005. And part of the reason why I got out in 2005 was because all we were talking about was rising delinquencies at that point in time. And it was in a lot of the tougher rust belt markets. And so I was just, I've always been a bit of a belt and suspenders type of guy. So I thought, you know what, maybe I need to diversify my skills a little bit. You know, I mean, I'm young, I'm going to try some different things out. And so I actually went to commercial appraising for a year. Didn't like that, but learned a lot. Went back to the MBS Space for another few years. But from there it was crazy because it was hot at that time. I mean, they were just pumping out the loans all the way through to about 2008. Really towards the end, all I was doing was work for the FDIC closing down small banks that still own mortgages on their portfolios. I mean, it was. It was an interesting roller coaster for sure, but where we are now, I definitely agree with Brian, who was on the podcast a few episodes back. He talked about the fact that this time around, it's not just crazy lending that has escalated prices. There are fundamentals. I think that jobs have come back a bit. I think that incomes are supporting just the mortgages that people are getting now. At the same time, though, I think there has been financial innovation where people have been able to get access to credit in different ways. Subprime financing is coming back, both auto and home. So that. That is something I think that people have to consider. Where we are now, though, you know, I'm not sure that we're. We're going to have a big real estate crash so much as we may just not have as sexy. Of appreciation for the next few years is my. Is my feel for it.

Fair enough. Cool. Thanks for sharing.

Sure.

Cool.

All right, so what happened next? You know, you got these first deals under your belt. You started working on them. Maybe. Actually, before you answer that, how did you finance those deals? Was it all cash or did you guys.

Yeah, we just used family money at that point. And, you know, they were cheap enough where it wasn't too. We should have backed up the truck at that point in time and bought more. But, you know, we were just kind of trying things out, and so, yeah, it was pretty easy.

Okay, so what happened next then? How did you buy more?

You know, I really took a break for a long time.

But when we bought those, I was actually transitioning. We were living in Glenwood that time. I used to live in Denver. Now we're in Glenwood trying to start a family. And I was working as a commercial banker at that time doing commercial real estate loans. I was doing a lot of research on just the local markets, both residential and commercial. And so I actually came across a commercial building loan that I liked it. It was a new loan that we took. We had taken from another bank on a commercial building that I felt had good tenants. And I had left that banking job and went into something else, But I had always remembered that building. And sure enough, one day I drive by and I see this commercial building for sale. And so the guy who was actually listing it was the same guy that helped me buy a couple condos that I also have in my portfolio also. So.

Got it.

Yeah. Went into this commercial building.

Interesting.

Can you explain what you mean by.

You like the loan? So what's the distinction between that and liking the fundamentals of the property?

Well, you know, so I guess it's kind of the same thing. I mean, I understood the loan, and there's just very few commercial loans in a market like this that actually look good, especially as a pure investment. You might have a situation where a business owner, maybe a restaurant owner, wants to. To buy their real estate. Yeah, that makes sense. But as a pure investment in terms of commercial, you're buying this tenant income. There's not a whole lot in these markets that I think float. So this is one that did, and I had always remembered that.

So.

Yeah, got it.

Tell us about the property.

Yeah, yeah. So it has three major tenants, I would say high quality tenants, you know, and what I mean by high quality tenant in a small market, you know, there's one of the top three real estate companies in one of the bigger spots. I have a title company, I have a State Farm agent. Then I have a dentist specialty type guy in one spot. And then I have a couple of nonprofits. So I'm full except for one basement space that I actually use for my office right now. Yeah, Cash flows. It was a brother sister team that inherited the property, and they were really just not into real estate investing so much. I mean, they basically wanted to collect checks and not really think. Think too hard on it. So there was a lot of deferred maintenance problems. The utilities weren't handled well. The tenant relationships weren't all that great.

Just a lot of easy pickings to work on to really add value.

So how would somebody know that? How am I, as some novice real estate investor who's interested in commercial, see this property and be able to identify that there was all this deferred stuff sitting around that I can potentially snap it up cheaply, make some fixes and drastically improve the value.

Yeah. And Brandon talks about your unfair advantage. And really I have the unfair advantage of seeing the loan. So that was in seeing the types of leases involved. So that was something that was a little bit unique in this situation. But it takes a long time on a commercial deal. And by just in terms of size, this was a $1.14 million deal. So not. Not a huge deal. But at the same time, it was. It's big for me. And. But yet too small for. For bigger boys. Right. You know, you're not going to get a large real estate investment group looking at that size of building. And the value add is really in the management. So it took a. It took, gosh, two, three months to really scrutinize the deal. I interviewed all the different tenants. I got a good handle on all the different, different deferred maintenance aspects. And yeah, it was definitely intensive work. And it was still scary, I mean, at the end of it, because they weren't going to give me a lot of information, you know, they were only going to give me the least to get the deal done. And so it was hard. It was painful.

Hey, Mark, so you touched upon something. There's this kind of hole in the market. You know, this is a $1.14 million commercial deal. Too small for the big boys, but kind of of scary. Perfect for you.

At what point is something not too small for the big boys? As somebody who's been in the commercial space, when do the institutions start to take notice of properties? Is it 5 million? Is it 10 million? Is it 20?

I'm not sure I'm the best to answer that, but you would be surprised, though. One of the things I learned from being a commercial real estate appraiser, interesting story, where a guy who had hotel experience bought a Hampton inn in roughly 2005, and he knew that he could go in and manage that hotel better. It was underperforming. The people that he bought it from were the original developers of the hotel and they were going to get their value add from just building the hotel. Right. And selling it for the profit. So he went in, he worked hard, you know, he lived in this hotel. He got the income up and just got a better culture in there. And then he sold it a year later for roughly a million dollar profit. So that was, you know, I would call that at that time it was a $6 million hotel. So that was one guy doing that and I think he maybe had one or two investors. So that was, I would say, not yet at that scale of the bigger time guys. So really I think the bigger investors are going to look for something that's at least 10 million bucks.

Yeah.

Cool.

So how did you finance that property? How are you able to. Do you do cash or do you financing?

No, well, I actually went to bank I used to work for and I, and I said, hey guys, wouldn't it be nice for you to keep this loan? And I helped him do some of the underwriting work. I showed him what I was going to do. You know, I gave him countless spreadsheets of, you know, this is how I'm going to add value and I'm going to make this work. And it worked. And that was with a very conservative bank. So I felt good that we were able to get it done.

Interesting.

That's cool. Pretty much every webinar I do here on Biggerpockets, I do a weekly webinar usually on, I don't know, Wednesdays or Thursdays. But people can sign up@biggerpockets.com webinar. But anyway, almost every webinar stress this idea of help your banker out when you're trying to apply for a loan, when you're trying to get a deal, the more work you can do for your banker. You know, if they've got 10 loans they got to try to process and one of them is handed to them on a silver platter and one of them, they have to dig and spend hours and hours of time digging, who are they going to help? Sure, you're the front of the line when you help them. So I love that you said that you helped them with spreadsheets and with documents and you showed them, you know, this is why it is a good deal.

I love that.

Oh, absolutely. Well, and you know, and that's, that's a great tip because being a commercial banker, I can tell you that it is hard. You know, most of your day is just vetting through folks, having them get, trying to have to give them bad news that, sorry, you know, you're just not in a good position and they're not even close to being ready to help themselves. You know, that's, that's the hard part about it is they don't even have the information. They're not even in the ballpark of knowing that they could even apply for a commercial loan. At the same time, though, I mean, I still have friends that work for this bank. You know, it's a large regional bank and you know, there's cost cutting. You know, there's a lot of pressure in that market. So the easier you can make it on your banker. The, you know, but they really want your loan. There are very few good commercial real estate loans out there. So the easier you can make it, they want to give you the loan for sure, but they just have time and resource problems for sure.

I did it when I was trying to get a loan on my 24 unit apartment complex. I had a 5 unit and a 24 unit unit trying to get loans on them. And I went to a couple different banks. I had a lot of trouble getting it. And it wasn't until I flipped that switch in my mind and said, you know what, I'm going to help this banker do their job for them. And like I went and printed out this really nice report and I gave them every bit of information they could have possibly wanted and then gave them more information to verify it. I put it inside of a plastic binder. I even use like the bigger pockets like rental property calculator report on the front of it that showed them all the numbers. I gave it to them. Within a day, I was approaching approved for both those loans.

Nice.

Yeah.

And it was like, oh, that was way easier. And I realized because before that I was handing them a box of paperwork and they hate that. And so of course they turn me down because they're busy doing other stuff.

Hey Mark, Mark, Tell me about that two to three month vetting period.

I think a lot of the folks here want to know what exactly are you doing? What is it that is it not just evaluating what they give you? You have to go out and actually source some information yourself.

Right.

You have to do some detective work. Can you talk about what exactly you're doing?

Yeah. So I would say the big parts of that were having specialists come out. So I had a roofing guy, I had an H Vac guy come out versus with a residential deal, you might just hire a home, home inspector.

Right.

You know, and, and there's, there's some value to that arguably. But with this, especially with the roof, with the H Vac, I knew those were, were big deals. I also talked with the, the city utility company and worked with them a little bit, try to get an idea of how I could add value there as well as there's a energy savings nonprofit around. And so through them I got some ideas on how I could add value through energy savings. So like LED Lights was a big project that we did. For example, this building, one of the buildings is the assessor shows it as 1950 era. So it had the old school T12 halogen lights. Awful, awful in terms of energy efficiency. So through replacing those lights with led, not only did the energy nonprofit help me by covering over half the cost of that improvement, but then I got the tenant to pay go halfsies with me on the other half. So then I'm only out a quarter of the, of the cost. And so now it's a win win for everybody. Right?

That's awesome. Yeah, that's great. Cool. Do you need to be locked in A contract in order to have these specialists come out? Or can you actually do that just with the, hey, we're in diligence period and we're going to have people come and look?

Yeah, that wasn't hard. The owners were helpful there. And again, my broker was the one who was listing the property. So although he had to walk that fine line of serving both parties, he was also, though, helpful in doing what he could to facilitate that.

So the answer is yes, you can actually do it without being in contract. Yes.

Correct. Yeah.

Okay, perfect. Cool.

Well, let me talk about financing a little bit more. You being a commercial financing guy, how does that differ for those people who don't know, how does commercial financing differ from residential financing?

Well, we talk a lot about portfolio loans and so I have both. I have residential portfolio loans that I use a small commercial bank in Texas and then I have the Colorado Commercial building that is also a commercial loan. So. Well, some of the bigger differences are with the 30 year loan, you're talking about 30 year fixed rate, 30 year amortizing loans with a commercial. Both of them are 20 year amortizing. Both my residential portfolio loan and my commercial building loan, those are both 20 year amps. But five year terms, what's that mean?

I mean, what's a five year term mean?

So five year term we're talking about at the end of five years, you either have to refi or you have to pay off. Actually, with my Texas residential portfolio loan, that one's a little bit different. It just adjusts. The interest rate adjusts after that, so not as much exposure.

Now, a lot of people might be wondering, I mean, if you've got a, you got five years, that's not very much time, right? So you got this multimillion dollar, potentially loan with a commercial property and the bank says, we'll give you five years to do something with this. Doesn't that, I mean, like, that seems right. That's a lot of pressure, right? How do you get around that or what are your thoughts on. That's true.

But you are your loans amortizing 20 years, right? So you are going to have that loan pay down. So it should be easier to refinance at that point in time. At the same time though, you know, I thought Ben had had some good points and I know some of the other folks on, on the.

You're talking about Ben Labovich.

Yes, you might.

No, I, I think you've got it all wrong.

I mean, he drives a Tesla.

He does drive a Tesla.

That's all I Took away from that, that's all I took away from that podcast was the fact that Ben now has a Tesla.

I was like talking about show one. What was it, 151 or 52? I forget.

I don't remember. Yeah, I could just totally imagine Ben pimping around Lima, Ohio in his Tesla, you know, just, just sporting it. Yep.

I'm sure he's very.

Sure that I said, by the way. 152 BiggerPockets.com show 152 probably one of the best shows we've done. It was a great show, fantastic show and you can learn all about Ben's Tesla. So check it out.

All right.

So definitely the adjustable thing makes me a little nervous. I mean I have it too. Right. I think mine, I can't remember now for sure. I should know this but I think mine's a 10 year, it's got a 10 year balloon payment on it. 20 or 25am I think it's 20 year. Anyway, my thinking is the same thing. After 10 years or after 5 years, whatever, I'll have it paid down. Significant, hopefully prices will go up. If not, the bank could call it and say, you know what, we said you had to pay this back. But at the same time they're not going to. My hope is if the market did tank, they're not going to want to necessarily go and foreclose on me anyway. So they're going to want to work with me hopefully if worst case scenario happens.

But that's on the variable rate, right? That's on the one where you go variable. What about the five year term?

No, that's what I'm talking about. That's what I'm talking about.

After the end of that you do have a risk. And you know, I worked for a very conservative bank that actually had inherited, did a ton of loans from another bank that they, they bought and they kicked a ton of loans out because you know, they weren't well underwritten and you know, they just didn't fit the guideline anymore. So a lot of folks had to go hustle after that five year mark and go to the other bank in town. And sometimes it works, sometimes it didn't. There's a lot of hard stories, you know, in 2008-2010 in the commercial market for sure.

This is why also I don't, I don't like if I'm going to have a short term loan. Like I said, the ones that I have 10 years or, or whatever. Like I want to make sure I have enough equity in there even now and then I'll have even significantly more. Like, I don't want to over leverage my, my risky loans, so to speak. Right. I want to, I want to have that option to later on be able to get out. And that's why commercial loans typically don't lend 90% loan to value. You know, they're what, 60, 70% usually.

Right, right.

Well, and from the bank's perspective, they do not want to be long. You know, they, they don't. I mean even talking about a seven year loan, they just, a lot of them just pucker up because they have interest rate risk. They don't want to deal with that. At the same time though, as an investor, it gives you discipline to have that five year mark because if you have a house that you've had for five years and sort of the buy and mold theory that some people talk about that, you know, you really shouldn't just keep some of these things forever. Maybe it is time to parse something out of your portfolio after five years and then, you know, you start again.

Yeah.

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Investor Hey Mark, so one what is the standard down payment on a commercial loan?

Usually I see it as 30%.

30%, okay. And then what tips do you have for somebody who's looking to go and purchase commercial property to minimize their risk? How do they go about doing that?

You know, I would say homework is your key. But the best thing about without being in that market, you just have a lot fewer competition. For example, I'm by far the youngest commercial real estate investor in my town. Everybody else, if I go around talking to just different people that are tenants in buildings, I'll ask them, hey, who's your landlord? And they'll say like, you know, some LLC out of California. I've never met them. And how long have you rented here? Oh, 15 years. You've never met your landlord in 15 years? You know, it's just a faceless thing. Or you have an old school investor who's had the building for 25 years and they're getting older and they don't want to put any money into it. So it's pretty easy actually to, if you hustle, you know, to be the best landlord in a small market and have a lot of success.

Mark, really quick, how old are you?

I turn 40 in June.

Oh, I got you beat February.

Nice.

You are an old guy, by the way.

Well, look at my hair. I mean, I'm very, you know, you have great hair compared to me. I got the silverback gorilla going on for sure, man.

Looking good. It's all so good.

Okay, you say that it's not that hard for those who want to Hustle. And maybe isn't as hard as people might envision getting into commercial real estate, but I want to go more basic than that. Why get into commercial real estate? What's the point? I mean, what are the benefits of going into that niche?

Well, it comes down to commercial real estate is valued based on the income of the property. And there is more value add because, yeah, you can cut expenses and, and there's plenty of deals out there where you can better manage the expense. At the same time, though, you should be able to hustle and be more creative. For example, you might have. And you've had a lot of good guests talk about this. Let's say you buy a commercial building, you need an office yourself. There could be a lot of benefits just right there. You may have some friends that need office space, but then downstairs you have a basement that's completely unutilized. Well, all of a sudden, just due to social media, just different apps, whatever it might be. Why not make the. Your basement of this building a mini storage, for example? I mean, you can totally do that now where I think 10 years ago that was not even, not even in the ball game.

Yep, yep.

I like commercial for that very reason. The ability to add value by being creative and by using your head. You can just add cash to your pocket at the end of the day as well as equity later down the road. I think that's awesome. Do you manage your properties yourself, the commercial ones?

I manage everything in Colorado myself, with exception of the Denver property. The stuff I have in Texas, I have a manager down there, but yeah, everything in Glenwood, I do manage myself.

So what is. We've talked to the nth degree about managing houses and stuff like that, but we haven't really talked about managing the commercial. So what is that like, what's different about it?

That's a good question. I would say that you obviously have some different things going on. You have. Snow removal is a bigger issue. You have just landscaping, have outdoor trash. You know, things that you just don't have to deal with as much with residential, you know, the leases are much more complicated, so you can't go cheap there. You really should use attorneys when possible. You know, I think also culture, it's a big deal at a building if you can have a good culture where everybody gets along. You have good synergies between tenant businesses. That really goes a long way too. Adding value.

That's. We. We just signed our first year. We've. We've been working out of a cowork space for, for A little while and just signed our first commercial lease. We've got a 2,700 square foot office space now. And what a. Oh man, I mean this was not signing your five, six page residential. I think our current lease is 69 pages.

Wow.

Something like that.

I mean you have triple net cab and all that.

You know, I mean it's exceptionally complicated. You know, there's all sorts of, of, you know, gotchas and things like that. And you know, I've looked at other leases in the past that had, you know, I mean, very old school tenants and you know, I would need to literally get permission to put WI fi in the office space. But, but a typewriter was. Okay. You know, written in the list.

Like really?

So. Yeah, I think your advice about using a real estate attorney is spot on. I mean I. Listen, I think it's spot on for anybody, but particularly for commercial because to go through that kind of paperwork and assume that you're going to know what the hell you're doing as a tenant and as a landlord is remarkable. But yeah, it's interesting. And the culture part, I think it's something that I bet a lot of the big corporate landlords don't think about as again, as somebody who was shopping, right. And we looked at a lot of buildings and it's like, you know, you've got this surgeon office and you've got next to it, you know, just these random combinations and you're like they're never going to interact. There never is going to be this positivity, this vibe within the building itself. And, and I think by trying at least to establish some kind of culture, I think you can like anything else, get longer term leases, get people who just stick around and want to be there because you know, that's just that little extra that is going to keep them from moving somewhere else else.

Yeah. And a couple of my tenants have been in the building since the mid-90s, so you know, there's a lot of value to that. And if you're a good landlord, if you hustle and everybody gets along, you know, sure. Why, why are they going to leave? It's a hassle to leave.

Yeah. So how do you make it, you know, how do you, how do you make your buildings? How do you landlord differently than the big corporate, faceless, nameless entities that are out there doing it? What, you know, what's, what gives a commercial a tenant? What do you do to attract those tenants that much more than those big guys?

Well, first off, if somebody calls, I reply within at Least no more than two hours. Second, I usually meet with the primary decision maker once a year and I go through just different maintenance things I'm doing, different improvements, I'm doing, doing, let them know who the neighbors are. I'll go out of my way to say to a new tenant, hey, do you, have you met everybody? And we'll go around and we'll shake hands and you know, just get everybody comfortable. In just fact, this year I gave everybody a Jimmy John's lunch for just being good tenants, you know, and for the holidays. So yeah, little stuff like that.

Yeah, very cool. Awesome.

All right.

So before we get out of here, I want to touch base on a little bit more. More besides just the commercial? We got vacation rentals and commercial. What else do you do besides that? You have more than that, right?

Yeah. So I have my portfolio in Texas that I don't really do a whole lot with, but it's just a lot of single family homes. Then the commercial building we've talked about. And then I have four short term vacation rentals that I do, VRBO and Airbnb, that kind of strategy. But then I have four other furnished condos that I do month or long longer. And that can. It's a nice synergy with the vacation rentals because I might have somebody that's longer term that I can move into a vacation rental in the shoulder slow season or I'm getting a lot of traveling nurses, temporary workers. So sometimes those folks need to stay for three months, sometimes six months. Or I may have a retired couple that wants to ski for the season. They want to spend a couple thousand bucks a month on a vacation rental furnished condo and yeah, it works out for great.

Well, it's cool. And you manage all those yourself, you said, right?

Yeah, you know, I have a lot of help. I have a couple of cleaning people, a couple of maintenance people, but I do all the sort of facetime with the guests, slash, you know, tenants.

That's cool. That's cool. And do you anticipate in the future are you going to do more vacation rentals, more commercial? Where you, where are you headed?

You know, I would like to, I may go into the direction of just via a pure technology play of doing more marketing for other vacation rentals and help them provide some structure to their business? I personally don't want to use my time to really kind of grow that aspect of it. Next step though. I find a lot of value add in understanding and executing on bigger deals, but sort of these medium to larger deals. For me, a million to 5 million bucks. I'm going to look for other investors and we're going to execute on some of those opportunities.

Okay, cool. Hey mark, you've got SFRs, you've got the commercial, the vacation short term, you've got the vacation long term. That's a pretty unique mix and it seems like one that you probably crafted intentionally. Is that the case? Did you do that intentionally?

Part of it was it was the best opportunity at the time. A lot of the vacation rentals in a resort market at the time I bought a few of these, they were the best thing in terms of value to buy. In terms of just price point. What you could do if worst case scenario is to do a 12 month lease, I mean you could go that way route. It's not going to give you the best yield but you know, it's, it's a good worst case scenario. So that's why I did that. At the same time though, it is a little bit labor intensive, especially on the vacation rental side to really execute that well. It's not a passive business, but it can be lucrative.

Yeah. Hey, and really quickly, because you brought it up, you talk about the furnished versus vacation versus your standard longer term lease. What goes into that? You know how different it seems like kind of a quasi in between the two. What's different about running a furnished property short term and a super short term apartment vacation rental and again a longer term typical lease.

Right. Well, you know, obviously cleaning is a big part of that and just having a standard, you know. So we've kind of come up with a little bit of a program between my two cleaning folks and my maintenance people that when it's time to have a turnover, you know, we execute. We know what we're going to do that day and I'm planning that a couple weeks in advance, always at the same time, just keeping them booked. Because I've actually had a lot of success, I would say with my sort of intermediate term rentals. I've only had a couple of months in the past four years where I haven't had those things filled. So what that means though is I might have a traveling nurse who's working in the area for six months. Well, she called and I told her because of just a tight market, I can accommodate you here, here for the first two months and then I'm going to move you over there for the next. And you know what, they don't really have a lot of choice and I have the best product. So that's how the synergies sort of work with all these different units.

Well, it's cool. I love, I love the diversification within that asset class, you know, like, and I also love how, you know, I wrote a blog post on this a couple weeks ago, but this topic of when finding out what strategy you should do, you got to look at, you know, what are you good at, what are your abilities, what you are, are. What's your location like? You know, like, it's kind of like this intersection of a lot of different things. And for you, I love that you just figured that out, that this works for you in your area. And that's why I advise people all the time, listen to as many podcasts as you can, because you start to hear these things. And today there's probably dozens of people going, man, Mark's strategy is exactly what I want to do. Like, that is my. That works for me. I'm in a great area for that. And other people are like, yeah, you know, maybe someday down the road, I'll keep it in the file cabinet and come back to it. So I just love that. That's very, very cool.

And the reminder that there is no one set path for anybody particularly, I think it's important to reiterate this for the newbies, despite what the quote, unquote educators out there might tell you, There isn't a single path, there isn't a single strategy.

Well, there is, but I'm not going to tell you what it is unless you pay me 997.

Hold on, let me bust out my wallet right now. Let me call my credit card company and expand my limit. Yeah, so, I mean, every niche he's working within his market, what works there, he's looking at the niches and the strategies and kind of polishing and creating, formulating a plan that works for himself. And that's the key, is create that plan, create that strategy up front so that you can start to take steps forward and actually start making things happen.

Well, it was purposeful in that. It was a little bit lifestyle engineering. I said, well, how much time and effort and energy do I want to spend on certain things, and how much cash do I really want to have? If you use the mindset of every month, put yourself in a position to take more and more risk, then all of a sudden you can get to a place to do really cool things. So I've kind of hit phase one where between what my wife's doing, what I'm doing, we have enough to really do some cool things in terms of we have more control and Flexibility with our time. But at the same time now I'm to the place where I can say, you know what, maybe I get a couple people together and we go look at that 2 months million dollar deal. You know, I know I can get the bank loan set up. I know that we can add value to this deal. You know, all of a sudden it can start to get more fun.

Yeah, that's cool. That's cool.

I love that. I like that term lifestyle engineering. You said that's kind of like. Because that's what it is. You're saying this is what I want out of my life. I'm going to build it out of my real estate investing. I'm going to engineer this to make it happen. And it's one of the things that we all love about real estate is the ability to do that.

So very cool.

Last question I have before we get out of here or before we move to the fire round anyway is what are some of the potential like pitfalls or you know, things that can happen when you invest in those resort areas, the mountain towns, the things like you're doing right now.

Yeah, well, I think a lot of folks do not give enough credit to just the fact of liquidity. And these markets are more like rubber band type reactions. So when things are going great, all of a sudden there's, there's just a lot of activity going on and you'll have a hard time finding a place to rent or buy. At the same time though, boy, when it got soft, it got soft hard. You know, a funny way of saying that, but that's really what happened. Right. So, you know, I mean, there. And the thing about it is in a resort market, there's not cookie cutter houses so much. A lot of the stuff that really got into trouble was like the $800,000 custom home that was just an oddball and you know, it sat there vacant and there was, there was a problem with it. Or you know, the same thing with the commercial side of things too. You know, there's just not, not a lot of liquidity in these markets whenever things, you know, don't go well. So from the investor's perspective, you know, you have to have money in reserves to get you through these tough times.

Yeah, that's a good point.

That is a great bit of advice and I think we can apply that to, to absolutely anybody in real estate, whether they be a flipper or, you know, rental property, you know, single family, rental property owner. I mean, reserves are absolutely key.

Yeah. And I think it's coming Again, to the point where if we do have another soft spill, there's just a lot of people stretching right now. Whether it's, you know, you might get caught on a couple bad flips or you might get caught doing a couple spec houses, you know, that's when the heartache starts for some.

Sure. Yeah, yeah, very true.

All right, well, hey, let's shift gears and move over to the world famous fire round.

It's time for the fire round.

All right, thank you very much to our sponsor of the fire round. Let's move on and ask you those fire round questions. So these questions come direct from the BiggerPockets forums and we're going to fire them at you. Number one, how can I know what a commercial property is going to rent.

From for you know that that is difficult because in a small market, you may not have good comparables. So, but you can't go on the mls. You can't see what things are running for. The important thing, especially in a small market, is to look at what the, the gross rent rates are and the net rates are and do your adjusting to really get a good handle on what the market rates are for your, for your product type.

Okay, so it's kind of like, it's kind of like how you would value a, you know, the purchase price of a house. You just got to find what similar ones are going for and adjust up and down based on, you know, what your property has and doesn't have.

Well, that, but also, if it's a gross lease, let's say it's a gross at $20 a square foot. Okay, well, then, you know, you might be going on triple net. Well, the triple net's $15, but it's really hard building to building to know what those expenses are going to be. So apples to apples is more difficult. It does take a little homework and a little bit of math.

Okay, cool. Awesome. All right, my question, Do I need a commercial real estate broker to find a good commercial deal?

No, absolutely not. You know, and I like the fact that Ben was talking about sitting in his Tesla and the guy sat down and wanted to talk about selling his commercial portfolio. I mean, that is how a lot of business happens. In fact, you know, there's some folks in my town that, you know, I know are getting to a point in their life where maybe they don't want to be property owners, maybe they want to be property lenders. And so, yeah, I'm talking to those folks for sure.

So you think just the relationships is the best way to get out there and source deals. I mean, obviously, brokers are a great resource.

Well, in small markets especially, there's not a lot of people that quote unquote, specialize in commercial real estate brokerage because to lease a commercial space in a small town is not all that fun. I mean, there's not a whole lot of sexy action in terms of commission on that kind of stuff as well as just selling those buildings. It's not as fun and easy as to sell a luxury home, for example. So why does somebody want to get in that business? So there is a lot of opportunities in the small markets to just go out and hustle, talk to make calls and get to know people for sure.

Outstanding.

Cool. Next question. What's your best advice for people looking to invest in another city outside of their own? Maybe they found a city that's growing really fast that you think there's potential. What's your best advice for somebody doing that?

I would say to find somebody to partner with in that community and you have to go in with the mindset of a win win for everybody involved. In fact, I have two deals closing before the end of the year and one of them is in Tulsa. And I got to know a guy in Tulsa on a recent trip and I know what his goals are in life and kind of what his capacities are. And so he and I, I are going to work together. I'm going to be the money guy and hopefully we have a good result on that. So he's going to beat my boots on the ground.

Fantastic.

Very cool. That's great. Last question. Do you think out of country investing is a smart move for new investors?

Boy, the only thing I've ever looked at was things in Puerto Rico and in Mexico and.

You just have a lot of things that are outside your control there and it's a long flight oftentimes to go and take care of those things.

I'm not to that point, so I don't have a good response for you.

Okay, fair enough.

All right, let's move on to the last segment of the show.

All right, number one, what is your favorite real estate book?

You know, it's, it's sort of a real estate slash business book. I do like the rich dad, poor dad four quadrant. Oh, yeah, yeah. Cash flow quadrant. Yeah. So just was checking that out the other day and you know, good mindset book for sure.

Sure.

What about business book?

So I actually have it here with me. This is a non traditional choice. This is not your light bedtime reading. I recommend folks pick up a Used old copy of The Kaplan Schwerzer CFA Level 1 Financial Reporting and analysis. Yes, very boring, very boring. But within a phone book sized book, you could really get a good brush up on accounting. Or if you're completely new to some of that stuff, it will really help you. You really get to the point where you can prepare that stuff for the banks, et cetera, you know.

You know what's interesting about that is as you escalate in the levels of real estate investing from novice to become more advanced, I mean, you really do need to become more sophisticated in your, in your knowledge base. And you know, while I give grief to, you know, this book that is likely exceptionally boring, you know, you have to, you got to start to understand some of this stuff.

The pages are so, so thin. They, they're comparable like Bible book pages. So. Yeah, I can get, I get that.

Yeah. Right on. All right, Mark, you got two kids, you're living in a pretty cool part of the world. What do you do for fun, you.

Know, besides the normal hiking and skiing? I do a lot of backcountry skiing. You know, that's where you put skins on the skis, go uphill. So that's great exercise, a lot of fun.

What are you talking about? I've never heard that term.

Never heard of that?

No. What is that? You put skins.

Yeah, skins on your skis. It's all the alpine touring at skiing and so you put skins on the skis, you go up the hill, you can go check out stuff that, you know, the resorts can't offer. And yeah, it's, you have to be careful with the avalanche danger. So I got to give that disclaimer. But it's, it's awesome. Great workout, great views. And then you get powder turns.

Yeah, cool. That country's really cool.

Yeah. And then a lot of road biking too. This is a good area for road biking. And I do want to encourage any bigger pockets listeners to come visit me in Glenwood Springs. I, I will give a 10% off BP discount to anybody that wants to stay at one of my vacation rentals. But we may end up drinking beer and talking about real estate. So that may be part of the deal. I'm coming.

I'll see you tonight.

Nice. That's awesome. That's awesome.

All right, last question for me and the last question of the famous four. What do you believe sets apart successful real estate investors from those who give up, fail, or never get started?

You know, I liked what Brian said in that same episode we mentioned before about just the why? And I think that if your why is that you just don't like your boss and you think that real estate is going to solve your problems, you're going to have a tough time. I think that the why has to be multifaceted. If you really want the freedom, if you want the lifestyle engineering that we talked about, real estate can help you. But make sure you're doing it for the right reasons.

I love it. Great.

Love it.

Mark, thank you so much for coming on board. You already plugged your vacation rentals and your 10% discount. Where can people find out more about you?

You know, I think BP is the best way for the community, and I look forward to hearing from folks for sure. Awesome.

We will, of course, link to that in the show notes so people can.

Check you out there@pickerpockets.com show 1, 5, 6. There you go. All right, Mark, it's been a pleasure, man. Thanks for coming on board. Thanks for being a part of the BP family and enjoy the snow.

Thanks, guys. Yeah, over a foot this week.

Nice. Yeah, we've had almost a foot this week in Denver, so. So I feel you. I'm in.

Thank you. Appreciate it. Thanks.

All right, guys. I don't know. There was a lot of wisdom in there. I hope you guys are able to get it all. If you weren't, get back in there. Listen up again, it's. I don't know. This show is difficult. It's funny because, like, you want to pick, like, hey, we've done 156 shows, which was my favorite, which were my top 10, my top 15. And I don't know about you, but, like, I'm finding it harder and harder to do that just because the quality of the shows is so good. And just, I don't think I leave an interview without walking away with something.

Yeah, yeah, same here. I mean, every guest we have now, I learn from continually. And the shows we've recorded that are coming up soon, like, they're incredible as well. Like, it's just been. It's been a really good run on this podcast with amazing guests. So thank you guys to our amazing guests over people listening who have been on the show. And if you are listening to the show and you think you could be an amazing guest, we would love to talk to you more about that. So go to biggerpockets.com guest and fill up the simple form there and let us know what you do and what you can bring to the Biggerpockets table.

Awesome. Awesome. Hey, before we roll out, I Want to. I want to read a review. This is from Desert Skier. He left it on January 2nd. We've got a real estate investment group here in Dubai and many of the members recommended Bigger Pockets, so I thought I'd give it a try. This is indeed a brilliant project for all those who value their freedom, time and financial. I love listening to the other real estate investors and pick up on as many little details I have not thought. I've not thought about. I can't talk. I can't read. I'm convinced that the information provided allowed me to bring more astute decisions to my own business, which probably avoided many mistakes called Experience. Great podcast. Thank you for bringing it to us. Well, that is pretty awesome. I love it. The listeners are everywhere. Dubai, you name it.

We've got listeners everywhere. So big thanks to you. And if you want to leave us a review, please do so. Just jump on itunes and you could leave us a rating and review and we would very much appreciate it. Otherwise, jump on the show notes biggerpockets.com show156 it's biggerpockets.com show156 and I don't know. That's all I got. What do you got?

That's all I got. That's a.

It's a great show.

Go listen to last week's if you haven't listened to it, or next week, except we're done. That's it.

Take us out of here.

Take us out. Okay. Hey, guys, thanks again for being part of the Bigger Pockets community. Happy New Year. You know, use this time to crush your goals. We'll see you on the other side for Bigger Pockets. This is Brandon and and Josh signing off.

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