7 Properties in 10 Years by Turning 1 Home’s Equity Into an Entire Portfolio

To be successful in real estate, you don't need a massive portfolio. You also don't need to buy several properties a year or have hundreds of thousands of dollars in capital to get started. Today's guest shows the power of slowly building a portfolio of seven properties over 10 years focused on appreciation and not cash flow. This is the Real Estate Rookie Podcast. I'm Ashley Kerr and I'm here with Tony J. Robinson.

And welcome to the show where every week, three times a week, we bring you the insp motivation and stories you need to hear to kickstart your investing journey. Now today we're going to discuss why house hacking is such an incredible option and how to do it even when you have a family. How to leverage a cash out refinance and a HELOC to scale your portfolio. And lastly, why appreciation is the focus of our guest today's portfolio. So welcome to the show. James Lykis. Super excited to have you, brother.

Thank you for having me, guys. I listen to you all the time. It's a pleasure to be here, James.

To kind of start off the show, give us a snapshot of your life, where you're based, what career you're in, and then we can kind of go into your real estate journey.

Sounds good. So again, my name is James. I live in Boston, Massachusetts, born and raised locally. I'm a former teacher, now assistant principal of a big K to 8 school in Boston public schools. And so, yeah, I've got started real real estate investing a long time ago and sort of slowly grown it from there. So excited to talk with y' all about it.

James, one super important question before we move on with this podcast. So I'm a Southern California n. Obviously, I'm a huge Lakers fan. I think the million dollar question here is, are you a Boston Celtics fan?

Tony, I'm really sorry for you and your life choices in some regards. Yes, I am a Celtics fan. You got that right. I'm feeling really good. Basking in my championship glow.

Oh, yeah, you guys had a good year, man. I'll give it to you.

We're ready for another one. Boy, we're after it, you know.

No, I love my C's so they, they spur me on. They inspire me with their excellence, you know, in my real estate investing too.

So. So, okay, so were you a teacher when you started actually investing or were you an assistant principal at that time?

Yeah, no, I was a teacher at that point. Actually, the way I got started was growing up, my parents had owned a condo and that's where. Where I was born, that's where we lived. And when my brother was born, that's where we lived. And then they sold that condo to buy a two family and that's where they I grew up and where they still live. And so very early on I was aware that there was somebody who lived next door that they were helping pay for the house. And I thought, oh, this is a great idea. And sort of growing up, one of the things that always stood out to me from my dad is that he was really disappointed that they had sold their condo. And so I was like, okay, going forward, like, I know I want to own property, I know I want to have something for myself. But also this makes sense, numbers wise as something that could work. I'm a former math teacher. Like the numbers all make sense to me in terms of house hacking at that point, didn't know the term, but I was like, that's what I want to get into. So that was in my second year of teaching, coming out of a master's program, did a couple years of teaching and bought my first, first property, a condo in Boston.

We kind of talked about your first strategy is house hacking. And you kind of led into why you chose house hacking. Because you learned growing up that, you know, someone else could help pay the bills for you. So when you first started this, you went after this first property. Was there a reason why at that point in time you decided now is the time for me to start investing in real estate?

It was just, it was kind of, it was good timing. Like it was 2013. So we're coming out of the crash and Boston did better than a lot of other places in that regard. But it was actually I was looking and saw that if I was going to rent, I was then my, my now wife, then girlfriend, Ivy Rose. I was looking to move closer to her and I was looking at prices and I was like, I'm going to be paying a little bit more to rent than I would to own and if I own and have a couple of roommates, I'm going to pay a lot less money. So that's what got me started there. It wasn't until later that I started really taking on real estate investing as versus just like home ownership. At that point it was more like I wanted to own a home. I knew that if I had some roommates it would make it more affordable. So sort of like later on is where I got more into the real estate investing bug per se.

And was that first house act, James, was it a single family home where you Just rented out the rooms or was it multifamily, duplex, triplex or whatever?

Yeah, so in a lot of multi families in the city, in Boston are triple deckers. So it's three condos stacked right on top of each other. So it was a three bed, one bath condo that I moved into, had two roommates, two friends who moved in with me. And right off the bat I went from paying what my mortgage at that point would have been about 1700, $1800 to paying about 300 out of pocket myself. They were getting a good deal on rent, I was getting a really good deal. So it was a win win situation. And I did that for about five or so years where I had roommates and then eventually my now wife moved in as well. But so we house hacked that for a while and that really gave us a lot of flexibility, helped us pay for, help us, helped us do a lot of other things financially. While we were getting our foundations up.

What was the next step after that? So you're, you know, you're now wife moves in. How long did you stay there and then when did you move on to the next property?

Yeah, so we were in that condo for about six and a half years and a couple, a couple of years before that. So we bought it in 2013 or I bought it in 2013 and then come 2019, we'd been looking for a two family for a while because again, that was sort of like anchoring back to my parents. That was the goal, was like, let's get a two family, let's keep this single or let's keep this condo. We'll be in a really good spot. At that point we'd been really patient. We'd been looking on the mls, seeing different two families that had come on for about two years.

Made a couple offers but weren't being super aggressive. And then we stumbled upon the place that we're in now which has a ton of space compared to a typical place in Boston. And at that point we were thinking we were going to use a home equity line of credit and somebody introduced me to a cash out refinance, had never heard of that before. So we went ahead and lined that up, did that while we were still in the condo and pretty much within a month and a half turned around and bought the two family that we live in now. And so that's where we got a little bit more into it. And then shortly after that is when I was introduced to bigger pockets. And then we sort of took off from there with more real Estate investing bugs.

So I need you to break down the comparison there of the HELOC and the cash out refinance and why was the cash out refinance actually better for you in this situation?

Yep. So a home equity line of credit is where you're using your house as collateral and you effectively a line of credit is similar to a credit card where you can use it or not use it, but it's secured by your property. And so they're looking at your total loan to value your mortgage plus the home equity line of credit amount versus the value of the property. And that's something you can use and then repay however you want. A cash out refinance is when you're getting a brand new mortgage and they're giving you a difference in cash at that point and then you're carrying that new mortgage going forward. So I'd only known about a home equity line of credit. I was not biggerpockets educated at that point. I'd only learned about that from my parents as well. And I thought that was sort of the only way to tap into the cash. And at that point I Knew back in 2013 I bought our condo for 357,000 and I knew it was worth like upper 500, 600 at that point.

And so I knew that there was a lot of cash sitting in there that I could do something with. I just didn't know the way to get to it. And so that's where at that point, as it's still being our primary residence, doing a cash out refinance allowed us to still get a really competitive rate on a 30 year fixed rate mortgage. And so we decided at that point, let's take the cash out versus going with a home equity line of credit where we would have to sort of pay that off over time as well, just roll it up in a new mortgage instead.

One follow up question on, on the difference we get this question a lot like on the, on the rookie replies, should I helock. Should I cash out refi. And for a lot of people at least right now, you know, if you locked in a 3% interest rate, maybe refinancing into a 6 doesn't make as much sense. Right. But I, I guess when you looked at the numbers for yourself, what did you see in, in the, in the refinance that made it more attractive than the heloc?

Absolutely. What I saw was the interest rate was going to be about the same. We were in a like historically low interest rate environment. Well, I guess it got even lower in the pandemic. But we were in at that point a historically low interest rate environment. So we weren't going to take a big hit on the interest rate. And I knew that when we moved out, because that was the plan is we were going to do the cash out refinance while it was still our primary residence, which it wasn't going to be for long because we knew we were going to move into this new two family that we're in process on that at that particular point, the cash we could use would be more advantageous going into that new property. Even though the condo at that point, when we went to go rent, it was effectively cash flow neutral. We didn't have, there was no big spread there. It was effectively just paying for itself. But you know, that was five years ago. So it's looking better now. But at that point it was like, as long as it can handle itself and allow us to continue to own and control that property, then we're going to feel like that's a win. And so that's sort of how we thought about it in terms of that trade off.

So kind of looking forward here, house hacking has been your strategy. Have you ever gotten shiny object syndrome to go after anything else?

Yeah, like all the time.

And how do you control that?

Right now I'm not. I mean, we got, we got a couple different projects going on at this point. The big thing for me has been we went from being really patient and really sort of diligent and so we had the, like I said, the condo was about six and a half years. We've been in this two family for five. We're not going anywhere. I've got two boys, we're all growing up here. This is the house that they're going to be in. But with shiny object syndrome, the idea of long distance real estate investing always really stood out to me. The numbers made sense to me. And as I hit a point of sort of thinking about Moro, of, you know, what do I actually want to do with real estate? How can this be something that really supports us as a family now and later? That's where we started thinking more about going long distance. And that's ultimately what we decided to do, long distance with long term rentals.

So tell us a little bit more about that transition going from the second house hack where, you know, you've kind of laid your roots, you know that you don't want to upend and do another house hack. How did you make that transition into going long distance? I think a lot of People love the idea of investing in their own backyard, but when it turns into going somewhere that they maybe don't know as intimately, there tends to be a little bit more fear, a little bit more hesitation around that. So maybe walk us through, what steps did you take to build up the confidence to do that remotely at that.

Point, a friend had introduced me right after we closed on the two family, two bigger pockets. And so that was fall of 2019. And I've listened to thousands of podcasts, read books, been in the forums, just trying to educate myself as much as possible. The comfort with long distance real estate investing. Give David Green a shout out for his book on that in particular. Going through that and just understanding the steps made a lot of sense to me. Hearing case studies from other folks who are doing it, I'm like, okay, this is a thing people do. It's not like I'm the first person to do this. And just looking at the numbers and thinking about it, those were the big things. And at that point too, having a family, having, by the time we started investing long distance, we had at that point a three year old and a one year old. Another big thing for us is Boston is a high cost of living area, right? The, the numbers on the condo are really exciting, but it also comes with a bigger mortgage payment every month. And I knew going long distance we would be at a lower price point, but still in a quality neighborhood, the numbers would work out in terms of what the rent was versus the value. And so I was just looking at it and sort of thinking about the trade offs there and deciding like, you know what, that is something that we want to try and do. I talk to folks a lot about it. When they hear that I invest long distance, they're like, but you haven't seen the house. And I'm like, I've been in a lot of houses. As I was looking for my condo, my two family, I know I don't know as much as an inspector, I don't need to be there to confirm that. That's just a fact that I already have. They're going to be there, they're professionals. And really just setting up those win win situations where we have multiple professionals involved. We know that if we execute this successfully, everybody's going to benefit. Those are the sort of like, those team dynamics are things that I rely on a lot going into the long distance and also frankly like being a dad, being busy as an educator as well. Another thing is like instead of me going and driving somewhere locally to walk a property and see where we're at with a project. I can just ask somebody to take a video and send it to me. I watch the 5 minute video, I feel pretty good about what's going on. So there's efficiencies there that come in too. When you do long distance. While there's trade offs in terms of how hands on you are, there are also benefits in terms of how hands on you actually need to be and still getting the information that you need. So those were things that made me comfortable to think about going long distance to begin with.

James, you, you laid out a lot of great points there, but the one that I want to quickly highlight is the whole inspector thing. You know, Nashley and I talk about this a lot on the podcast as well. It's like, especially as a new investor, how much value are you going to provide above and beyond what an experienced investor, friendly real estate agent will provide? What an experienced, you know, maybe a general contractor if there's rehab work that needs to be done that they're giving to you in their bid and that an experienced property inspector will give. Right. And an appraisal report. Right. All these different things, people going through the property. So I love to hear that. I do want to know because you're in Boston, where, when you went long distance, what market did you actually land on?

We went Kansas City to start. That's where we've got, my wife and I, we used a home equity line of credit that time to fund two long term rentals in Kansas City. And then from there we've continued to scale up and grow there as well. In addition to looking at my wife's from Grand Rapids, Michigan. So that's another market that we're looking at now and getting active in as well.

How did you guys land on Kansas City? What was it about that market that made you say, hey, out of all 19,000 cities, this is the one that makes sense for us.

Again, just like looking at the numbers we did go through, we got started with a turnkey provider just because we thought the sort of extra set of eyes as we talk about building a team and having that like mutual accountability would be helpful. And just looking, looking at the price to rent ratio more or less and saying, okay, we think this will make sense. We're seeing there's good inventory that's both on the MLS and off that we can pay attention to here. And so that's, that's sort of what took us there. Honestly, Tony, at that point it was weighing multiple markets and then also sort of swimming in all this knowledge of things I could put to use. But until we actually picked the market, there was only so much we were going to do. And so I'm a big believer on you just make a choice, you go forward with it, you learn through it. And that it's not about like necessarily maximizing a return or trying to get the best deal possible. It's like if I start and continue the work there, I know I'm committed to doing this. And so I know ultimately I can have things shake out the way I need them to shake out for me and my family.

Stay tuned after a break for the details on how James pulled equity out of his primary residence to grow his portfolio out of state. If you're hoping to invest out of state, you will need a team to help manage your properties. Go to biggerpockets.com propertymanager to learn more.

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Okay, guys, welcome back to the show. We're joined by James Lykis.

James, if you can just really quickly define like, what exactly is an FHA 203k loan? Because I think some people maybe know FHA, some people don't. Like, what is that? And I guess why were some of the contractors not so eager to work with you?

The FHA parts comes from a federally, it's a Federal Program. The 203K loan is, it has to be your primary residence and you're getting money as part of your new mortgage to do the renovations and whatever kind of scope of work you would like to do in the property to bring it up to the quality that you want it to be at. And so the reason contractors don't particularly love that is because they, instead of getting paid any amount of money up front, they are getting paid on these draws after the work they've done is complete. That's not how every contractor wants to work. So that's, that's sort of one of the hang ups for folks is that they, there's going to be another set of eyes. I think most contractors are fine with that, but the actual pay structure and when they're getting paid and how they're getting paid, those are things that I think were a hang up for A lot of the contractors we spoke with.

So let's go back to the financing piece of things here. So you got your first house hack and then the second one, you did the cash out refinance on your first house hack, deployed those funds. And did you just use those funds or did you get a type of loan product to purchasing that second property?

Yeah, the second property was a little bit of a. More of a project necessarily than we knew we were getting ourselves into. We did an FHA 203k loan, so we did roll pretty much all the cash we pulled out of the condo as the down payment. And so an FHA 203k loan is where it rolls the renovation costs into the mortgage ultimately. And so that's another process where you've got sort of a third party involved with the bank in terms of paying attention to the work that's being done. And so that was a major renovation that we did on the house that we moved into to really make it the home that we knew we wanted to be in. And so that's, that's how we got. That's how we sort of got the home that we wanted, even though we didn't find it that way when we first got there.

So.

So before we move on to how you funded your other properties, what are some things that we need to know today about going through that loan process with that loan? What are some things you wish you would have known ahead of time?

First thing, when you start calling contractors, when you're using that kind of loan, tell them you're using an FHA 203k loan. Because I didn't even at that point. Another example of like, I didn't even know the exact name. I thought we were doing a renovation loan. And then as we got deeper, they're like, no, it's called a 203k loan. A lot of contractors not interested in a 203k loan, turns out. So we were scrambling to get a contractor in and get a bid and get everything approved.

The big things are you have the support of somebody who comes in and gives you a full scope of work based off of what you would like to do. And then you're vetting contractors who are giving bids off of that. There's a draw process where that same person comes out and sort of inspects the work and makes sure it's sort of not necessarily up to code because there's still inspectors who are doing that, but making sure the work, if they said they put in flooring, making sure there actually is Flooring put in before they're releasing draws. And so it was definitely, we learned by doing it, I would do it again. It was stressful. I don't know exactly how we got all the way through it, but. But it ended up with, we. We ended up turning our home into a. From a four bed, two bath to a four bed, three bath with a whole renovated upstairs with a master suite that didn't exist before. Added another bathroom up there, which is really wonderful as well for having family visiting. And had a rental unit on the first floor that was already in good shape, but did some minor more cosmetic things down there as well.

Okay, so after this house hack and you decide you want to go investing out of state, where did you get the funds to go and deploy into these markets?

So at that point, we then started using a home equity line of credit on our primary residence. So our new 2 family, that's where we got the capital from. And our thinking, our thinking on that was, I know this is not like a. I wouldn't say people should do exactly what we did, but we used the home equity line of credit to fund down payments rather than a quicker turnaround on that capital. And our thinking was at that point, we had the rental income from the condo, we had the rental income from downstairs. We felt like we're in a pretty sound financial place on our personal finances side of things. And the trade off was basically, we've been doing all this learning about real estate investing. We're really finding this as something that my wife and I are interested in. We see it like as a hobby that makes us money and it's something that we know we want to do long term. And so the trade off is, do we wait a couple years where we'd have a down payment to buy another property long distance, or do we use that home equity line of credit and just sort of use the cash flow from our portfolio overall to help pay that off? And so that was the trade off we decided to make, is we went with the home equity line of credit to fund it so that we could start getting into it and start learning our lessons sooner. Because I knew that whether we waited another couple of years and bought our first property long distance or did it sooner, we were going to have the same growing pains either way and just wanted to move that timeline up in terms of getting, getting right into those, those growing pains and learning as much as we could, as quick as we could.

I just want to point that out as, you know, having that option available but making the comparison so in reality, you could be taking a chunk of money every month from your paychecks and setting it aside in a savings account. But instead of doing that, you drew off your line of credit and now you're taking that chunk of money and you're paying back your line of credit every month. So this definitely is a tool that can be used. But as you said, you were in a good financial position, you had your other income streams coming in plus your W2 job. So I just want to give that with a word of caution, but also a great tool of how to leverage debt to build wealth. So from that moment when you decided to buy those long term properties, how long has it been and how much have those properties appreciated over those. That time frame?

Yep. So that was spring of 2022. So we're like two and a half years in Kansas City. Continues to be like a pretty steady market. The appreciations 5 or 6% a year. I think the last couple. So properties that were, I think when we bought them, they're around 160ish each. The two that we got now, they're around 180. So it's nothing crazy like they're cash flowing a couple hundred dollars a month. They, they take care of themselves. We've had a couple sort of bigger rehab pieces that are bigger repair pieces that we've had to do with one of the properties in particular, that's hurt it a little bit. But again I'm looking at it as I'm holding these properties for a long time. I'm doing it to build wealth. I don't need. The thing I need the cash flow to do is to help me hold the properties so I don't have to sell them at the time. I don't want to sell them, but I don't need the cash flow for anything else right now. That's just sort of a long term play that we're, we're just sitting on and letting them, them do their things. Let rent continue to increase, which it has been doing out there in Kansas City in addition to here in Boston. So just sort of playing that slow and steady game.

James, do you have a specific cash flow number that you're shooting for right.

Now, like in terms of, for myself as like a overall number I would like to get to. Getting to somewhere like $5,000 a month would allow me some flexibility in my work life. But on each individual property, were you asking individual property both?

Yeah, I mean overall and I guess individual. If you got targets there as well.

I think on the Individual properties front. That's where I want to make sure if we're at least like 100 to $200 as a starting point, once I've accounted for vacancy maintenance, capex, etc. I feel good about moving forward with that deal, provided that the property is in an area that I feel good about investing in. And then overall looking to just continue to build a portfolio where we can get to a place where we can create some work flexibility for myself and my wife. My wife's not interested in leaving teaching anytime soon. I could do for maybe not working full time, but we'll see when we can get there. The goal is to do that in the next few years and just to sort of be again, slow and steady with getting a little bit more. More aggressive with some of the work that we're doing now in terms of setting up a partnership as well.

James I also bought my first property in 2013. It wasn't a house hack, it was a duplex as an investment property. But I had never even bought a primary residence yet for myself at that point. But just over that time frame, from 2013 to 2022, so almost, almost 10 years, I did sell a couple of the properties that I had first initially bought. And just over that time frame, some of them doubled in value. And I was able to, to sell them and then to take that money, that capital, and put it into something better. So I started off with these small, little cheap properties and, you know, kind of maintain them. They had very little cash flow. It was not a lot at all, you know, some more than others. But it was after that waiting game, I was able to sell them for way more money than I expected. And that really, at that time frame, really opened my eyes to, like, there is a second side of investing that I want to tap into more is the appreciation. Because I never bought for appreciation to start. I never looked at that. It was all cash flow, like, I want to quit my job. I want to quit my job.

No, I. I hear you completely, Ashley. It was actually August was a cool month. So we, we track our properties on Redfin and I got an email at the beginning of the month with the condo that I've been referencing. So it's 11 years later and I get a little notification and it's telling me the new value that they think of the property, and it's officially doubled in value. So it took 11 years. That's about 6% a year. But that's a, that's a property that helped me and my wife pay for Our wedding helped paid off her student loans. We did our cash out refinance helped us was the down payment to buy our two family that we live in now, which has generated a whole lot more equity that we've then used that equity to invest long distance with. And now we just opened up another home equity line of credit on that property as an investment property that as we, we're starting to transition now into thinking both about the long term rentals, but also doing some fixing flips as well. And so now we've got another big old chunk of money that we can access out of that same property. So my wife says it's the gift that keeps on giving. She's like, we're never selling that property. I was like, we might sell it one day. But right now it's treatment. That's pretty good.

So. All right, we have to take the final break, but more from James on how he's building his long term wealth through real estate.

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All right, let's jump back in guys.

Well, James, look at all the things that you were able to do just with that first property. That's and I think that's a great part of this episode is that, you know, you don't have to have a large portfolio to really make a difference in your life. So I want to go back to the house hacking piece and some people listening may think that it is not possible to house hack with a family. What would your response be to that?

I think it definitely should consult with your spouse as a starting point. But after you consult with your spouse, the I think that it, it depends. This is all like trade offs on comfortability versus profitability to some degree. In our case, we've got a two family house where we live on the second and third floors and somebody rents the first floor. And so other than having to go up an extra flight of stairs, it doesn't cause much friction. I'm not at a point in my life with having two boys under six. I don't know anybody would want to share rooms in our home anyways. But we definitely wouldn't want to take that approach. But that's why our two family had already appealed to us is is having that second unit that is a standalone unit that's separate from our own home. And so I think it is. I know that. I know how beneficial it's been over the long run for us both when we started doing in the condo and now doing in the two family. The rental income from downstairs pays for over half of our total monthly cost with the mortgage. And it allows us to live far more cheaply for the amount of space we have in the city than we would be able to do otherwise. And so those are things where it's not for everybody. But I do encourage anybody who's interested in talking with me about buying a home for the first time. I'm like, you might think it's crazy, but having it, having a roommate, having a second unit like these are things that if you do that I think you will ultimately look up a few years from now and be very happy that you did. So I've encouraged some folks to go that route, but don't put too much pressure on people, especially if that's not the thing that they necessarily feel like they want to do.

James, I want to get some of the details about the actual purchase. So we know that when you bought it it was a 4:2. You did the renovations to turn it into a, you know, really nice 4:3. But what was the initial purchase price and then how much did you have to invest into the rehab?

Yeah, so with the. We got it down, it came on in the summer. It was just sort of like a slow market. And, and the property popped back up as, as a price adjustment. And my wife was like, we should really go check it out. And at that point we'd been, we had a one, our son was about to turn one. It's the middle of the sort of the dog days of summer and we're like, sure, we'll go check it out. We came to the property, nobody else is here. We're looking around, we're like, this is a ton of space. These kitchens are updated. This is like a good start. And so the price had, we were able to negotiate it down. We ended up paying 887, which is a crazy number in many markets, but for a two family in Boston, it's not too crazy. And then with the FHA, the 203k loan portion, our rehab was about 150,000 for the work that we did as well. And so for the down payment, we came in at sort of like a random number around, I think technically like 12% with the money from that cash out refinance that we brought over.

So the total then loan balance was The, I think 887 plus the 150.

Minus whatever we came with the down payment at that point. So I think it was around, I think it was around like came to about like 880, I think is where we started with the total balance. And that's where just off the bat, even at that we were going to be paying about $3,000 per month. I think at that point out of pocket, plus the rent that we were getting from downstairs and knew that we had some different levers that we could pull as we move forward to reduce that monthly cost.

And what does that same two family worth today?

We're around 1.3 million now. So bought it for just under nine, did some renovations. So it's been, like I said, it's been A good equity play. And, you know, we're in a neighborhood in Boston that continues to appreciate. It's just going to keep on marching. So we feel. We feel good about where we're at with it.

James, before we kind of wrap up here, I'm curious about the management of doing the rehab. So give us some tips and tricks that you've learned managing contractors to do a $150,000 rehab.

Yeah, that one. Learning by doing. Again, try to be over here about once a week. At the same time we were doing, we had contracted out a lot of the more major stuff, but we were doing, painting, doing things that are a little bit more cosmetic. And so just being involved, being in communication, I think that's one of the strengths. Just sort of like thinking about as a real estate investor, sort of like, what are the. What are the superpowers? What are the things that you're particularly good at? Building really strong relationships, having clear communication, and being somebody who follows up. Those are some of the things that, for me, stand out as things that I know I bring to the table. And so we were fortunate that we had a contractor who mirrored a lot of that back. We went through a process of just, like, talking to the different folks we had gotten a bid from. We did get lucky to some degree in terms of picking the right person there. But just being somebody who's present, continues to talk, ask questions, but doesn't micromanage. That's a big thing for me with contractors is it's like, ask questions, but be clear. You're asking it because you're curious, not you're actually asking to tell them. Sometimes you do have to tell contractors what to do, certainly. But I do think having more of a curiosity and an orientation to just making sure that we're on the same page or things that are really beneficial, whether you're doing it locally or long distance, I think those are things that really serve you well.

Well, thank you so much, Tony. Any last questions before we wrap up?

No, I feel like we had a lot of the important things, James, and, you know, I just want to echo what you said earlier about how you build confidence going long distance, because for a lot of people, they live in markets that are like California, that are like Boston, that are expensive to try and buy rental properties. And so building that confidence to go out of state, I think is a lever that maybe more people need to get comfortable trying to pull.

I completely agree. And I think it's also, I think, a thing that sort of getting to like my why a little bit in terms of the real estate investing side of things is that.

As you think about getting started and if you want to go forward and you find real estate interesting, it's something you want to do. I think those are key elements to it and you can figure it out and you can build the relationships to get the things done that you want. For me personally, I didn't. I never thought I was going to like buy properties in Kansas City, Missouri that I've been to one time in my life. Like that wasn't the thing that I ever thought I was going to do. But the more I learned and the more I just thought about how that could really serve my family and just having different things that have come up over the last couple years. I lost my job unexpectedly at one point. My mom's had some health difficulties. We had a brother in law who passed away who had young kids also. It's just sort of like I was sitting there continuing to think about real estate and I'm like, you know, might as well get started. It's something that I want to do. It's things that I want to invest in. I want to set my family up. And if the worst thing is that I'm going to have to build relationships with some contractors and maybe fire them, or I'm going to have to work through a couple real estate agents to find the right one, or I'm going to have to argue with an inspector over something that they found. It's like those all seem pretty worth it given that with just a few purchases, like again, I've gotten more active in the last couple years. But just buying one property, buying a second, those are things that fundamentally alter the financial trajectory of your family. And if you do have kids, set your kids up for something different than what they had been on before. And so for me, digging into those relationships, working through those problems with folks, dealing with whatever headaches come up, those are just things that just can tick off my list because I know that at the end of the day I've got some properties under our control that are going to pay for themselves. Going to set my family up, going to set my boys up, and are things that are just really worth it for me to invest that time in. And those challenges are just well worth it for me.

James, what an insightful way to kind of end this episode today. And I 100% agree with you. I, as you were talking I was thinking about getting uncomfortable and like how some things you just don't want to do or you get that uncomfortable feeling. But if you really look at the scope of things, that it really is worth it to do these different things as a real estate investor, to have that reward, to have that feeling of financial freedom to build wealth for your family or whatever. Your why is what you're trying to reach is doing these things aren't that bad once you look at the big picture, 100%.

And I love our tenants locally and I manage those properties myself. And every single time I get a text message, one of them, like, oh, my God, what happened now? But like, but it's like that's a momentary thing and then. And we'll get it solved, whatever we need to do. But. And, and it is. It's just they're little. They're little problems if you take the big picture. They're just little steps along the way.

Well, James, thank you so much for coming on to the episode today. We really appreciate it. Great insight and knowledge of your investing journey. We really appreciate you taking the time to share with us today.

Absolutely. Thank you both for having me.

If you'd like to be a part of the rookie community, make sure you join the real estate rookie Facebook group. You can also find us on YouTube and make sure you are following us on your favorite podcast platform. I'm Ashley and he's Tony. And we'll see you guys on the next episode of Real estate Rookie.

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