2073 FBF: Greg Saylor - Six Properties In Six Months, Client Case Study

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Welcome to the Creating wealth show with Jason Hartman. You're about to learn a new slant on investing, some exciting techniques and fresh new approaches to the world's most historically proven asset class that will enable you to create more wealth and freedom than you ever thought possible. Jason is a genuine, self made multimillionaire who's actually been there and done it. He's a successful investor, lender, developer and entrepreneur who's owned properties in 11 states, had hundreds of tenants, and been involved in thousands of real estate transactions. This program will help you follow in Jason's footsteps on the road to your Financial Independence Day. You really can do it. And now, here's your host, Jason Hartman with the complete solution for real estate investors.

Welcome to the show. This is your host, Jason hartman. Episode number 665. 665. And today we've got a great show for you. We're going to have a client case study. Yes, it's our client, Greg Sailor, who purchased six properties in six months. Six in six. And I think you'll really like his story. Six properties in rapid succession. And he's doing great with them. And you're going to hear firsthand his story of how he looked at alternatives and came to real estate because it is the most historically proven wealth creator in the entire world, period. There's nothing this good. I mean, everybody has access to it. It's just such a great thing. So a couple things before that. I want to make sure listeners that you have made our relationship official. Yeah. Are we going study? I hope so. What you need to do is make sure you press that subscribe button in itunes or whatever podcast platform you're using to make sure you do not miss any episodes. We're coming at you three times a week, every Monday and Friday. And occasionally we might slip a little announcement in there on a, on an alternate day. So you don't want to miss any of that stuff. We got some great stuff coming up for you. Been doing a lot of good interviews. I did one today that I think you'll like and just a lot of, a lot of good things coming up. I got to get the schedule all outlined for our upcoming episodes as we move toward episode number 700.

Whoo.

That's a big deal. 700. Wow. We're getting up there. And remember, overall, I've got about 3,000 podcast episodes out there with all of my other shows. You know, I rarely mention these other shows, so. Of course, the Longevity and Biohacking show, the Jetsetter travel show. On that show, we talk about expat living. We talk about all kinds of interesting stuff. Offshore investing, which ain't so great, to tell you the truth. I've certainly looked at that up, down, sideways, and we've just never found anything internationally that makes as much sense here as it does in the good old US of A. Gosh. Holistic survival show. If you're feeling depressed, do not listen to that show because it might push you over the edge. It's definitely not the optimistic stuff, but, you know, there's two sides of the brain. We're all. We all have a positive and negative side. Right? I was going to say we're all bipolar. Fortunately, we're not all that, but we all. We all have ups and downs. We all think of the positive and the negative. And it's interesting. I've been reading this book and it talks about what I've talked about on the show before, many times, which is that concept of what will you do more for? Will you do more? And this is such an important part of how we think as humans and how we invest as real estate investors, because we. What will you do more for? Will you do more to go and earn 20, 25, 35, 40, 45 even percent on your money by investing it in income, property, the most historically proven asset class? Or will you do more to save some money? Will you do more to avoid loss or to gain something? What is the stronger motivator in our psychology? Well, since we have been conditioned by eons of scarcity, our mentality is always to preserve, to conserve. That is the way we operate. In fact, I was reading another book and I can't remember. They used a funny phrase. Oh, yeah, here it is. Cognitive misers. Yes, we are cognitive misers. So even with our own brain power, we conserve because, interestingly, the brain, compared to the rest of our body, doesn't weigh very much. But, you know, it takes like 20 or 30% of the energy that your body uses. That's pretty amazing if you think about it. Our brain is very greedy when it comes to energy. And if you think about it, we're kind of lazy as people. I mean, that's just the general propensity of. Of all of us, I think. I mean, I get, I certainly get this way. I hope you share that with me. And you do too. I hope. It's not just me, I guess I'll say, but we don't want to make a big effort to think. Earl Nightingale used to say that we'll go around when we have a problem, we'll ask our neighbors what to do, our families, what to do, our parents, our children, our uncles, our cous. You know, we'll look at our horoscope. We'll do everything. But the last thing we'll do is sit down and he said with a pen and paper and actually think the problem through. Right. Actually think the problem through. And that's because of this propensity to conserve, to conserve our energy, to conserve even our thought energy. We are cognitive misers. That's what the, that's what the experts say. And I was going to say that's what the psychologists say, but I don't know if it's a psychologist or a biologist or a physiologist. I don't know. I don't know exactly what expert said that, but some experts said it, trust me. Oh. Anyway, so. So we will do more to avoid loss than to gain. And certainly I notice this in my own behavior all the time. For example, when I shop for clothing, one of my favorite places is Nordstrom Rack. I think Nordstrom Rack is a pretty great deal. And it's funny, it's just funny how this is, I mean, time is money and we will search around online and look for the best deal on something. But when it comes to desire for gain, because the gain is speculative and the conservation is not it, that is also speculative, by the way, but it's not as speculative as the, as the possibility of gain. So we will take the old saying, a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.

Welcome to this week's edition of Flashback Friday. Your opportunity to get some good review by listening to episodes from the past that Jason has hand picked to help you today in the present and propel you into the future. Enjoy.

Right. A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. And so because we've had scarcity throughout our history as humans, we still think that is the world in which we live. And it's not. We live in this world of massive abundance, even in bad times, even living under obammunism. Yes, obomunism, it's like communism, but it's got a different flavor. What will they call it if Bernie Sanders becomes president? Well, he's probably not going to. We're either going to have a very weird, loud, boisterous guy. You know who I'm talking about, Mr. T there. Or we're going to have the criminal known as Hillary Clinton. Yes, that will probably be our two choices. It's always that. We don't really ever get a choice, do we? We always have to just vote for. Or the. Yep, you guessed it, the lesser of two evils, Right? So given that one, you know what my decision is going to be, listeners? But again, certainly not my favorite. My favorite was disqualified a long time ago. And that was Mr. Rand Paul, of course, Ben Carson. He wasn't kind of an interesting guy. We had him on the show before. We've had quite a few presidential candidates. Austin Peterson, the libertarian candidate. John McAfee, of course, another Libertarian Party candidate for president. I don't know who's leading. I mean, Rand Paul endorsed John McAfee on the Libertarian Party side. I don't know. We'll see who's living. One of our clients said a great thing to me today. She was so funny. I just cracked up when I heard her say this. We were voxing back and forth. Yes, that's you, Michelle. And she says it gets lonely being a Libertarian in the San Francisco Bay Area. I thought that was the funniest statement. Oh, gosh, you really made me laugh on that one. But yes, it does get lonely being a libertarian sometimes. But I tell you, it is rising, that ideology. I'd say it probably has a stronger foothold than it has at any time in my lifetime, at least. And I would say that Ron Paul, not Rand Paul, Ron Paul, the father, of course. He was surprisingly popular with Generation Y, with the millennial generation now. Hey, you know, folks, we've talked a lot about Gen Y, by the way, and the fact that they're going to make great renters. They're going to be renting for a long time. This is the reason we're seeing such strong rental demand virtually everywhere in the country and virtually every market. We did a call today with our local market special. Not all of them, but most of them. We had about 25 people on the line, and we were talking with our different teams in Indianapolis and Memphis, just all over the place, you know, all our different markets. Right. I don't need to explain. Little Rock, Arkansas, et cetera, et cetera. So anyway, we had them all on for a conference call today. And the first thing I did is I went around the virtual room and I asked them all what was going on. And without, well, I actually cannot say, in all fairness, without exception, because there was one exception. Virtually all of them, 24 out of 25 said inventory shortage. Really tough to get good inventory. Battling to get inventory. Way more buyers than sellers, et cetera, et cetera. One of them said they weren't having too much of a challenge with inventory. So kind of interesting there as we went around. Jason, what was your point? You've gone all over the board, presidential candidates, there's no choice. Lonely libertarians in Northern California. That's kind of like being sleepless in Seattle. Inventory shortages. I don't know what was my point. Maybe someone can write me and remind me and I'll talk about it on the next episode after Flashback Friday, of course. So a couple things. Make sure you subscribe to the podcast. We so much appreciate your reviews of the podcast on itunes or Stitcher Radio, whatever your podcast platform is. Go and review the show. Make sure you're subscribed so you don't miss any important episodes. And we very much appreciate your ratings, your reviews, and telling your friends about the show to spread the word so they can join us as we get toward episode number 700. We got a big sale going on. Before we get to our guest here, I want to tell you about this because we just launched it and you probably haven't. Now here's the thing. @hartmaneducation.com Our new little website, hartmaneducation.com Just my last name. Education.com hartmaneducation.com we used to just have one product there. Now we have three. Yes, we have the Meet the Masters from 2015, the Meet the Masters from 2016, and the first ever JHU Live or Jason Hartman University course from San Diego. Now, I know a lot of you listening have attended all of these events, right? So if you'd like to get a copy of the video or the audio download. Look, people, I know that you don't always need to see this stuff. Sometimes you want to download the audio, have it with you so it's portable. And then if there's something in there that strikes your interest or the speaker mentions a visual aid and you want to see that, then you can just go back to a very well organized portal with these three courses and you can log in and you can watch the video at your convenience. So a super handy course. I'm really happy. This is the first time we've had these all online and we are kicking it off with a big, huge sale. Yes, a big sale. So normally each of the Meet the masters courses are 497 a piece and the JHU Live is 297. But bundled together, we normally sell this for 1197, which is basically 100 bucks off. It would normally be what, 12.91 altogether. But for a limited time, what will be the limitation here? See, when you're in the marketing world, you got to create this false sense of scarcity. And folks, let me tell you, this is complete bullshit. Oh, you're not supposed to swear on this show. It's complete bs. You know, I'm a little punchy here, aren't I? It's, it's the end of the day. I had a big day here. So yes, you're not supposed to swear on the show. We are a clean, family friendly show here, so. Well, most of the time anyway. And Normally these are 12.91 if you buy them separate, 11.97 if you buy them together. But for a limited time because we got to have some urgency. We got to create urgency, right? Otherwise you're never going to get off the dime and make a decision. So what is the limited time going to be? For a limited time, what should be the time limit for this sale? Oh, will you shut that thing up? That just goes on way too long, doesn't it? How about if we say for the next week. Yes, one week sale on this. Well, maybe we better make it a little longer because what if you're not, what if you're not caught up on your episodes and you haven't listened to them all? Let's make it, let's make it two weeks. Let's make it a two week sale. Okay? For two weeks. You can get all three of these for only 7.97. And that, my friends, is a great deal. 797. All three courses, audio and video, beautifully well organized. We got a great little online university sort of website for that. So check it out. Take advantage of that. Hartmaneducation.com also we've got our Ohio Property tour and Creating wealth seminar coming up. That's going to be fantastic. Cincinnati area. Jason hartman.com, click on Events. Check out the details for that and join us. A bunch of you have already. So we're looking forward to seeing you there. And that is coming up in early June. So check that out. Without further ado, let's get to our guest, a client case study. Six properties in six short months with Greg Saylor. It's my pleasure to welcome another case study, a case study from one of our wonderful clients. We love hearing from you. And we would appreciate having any of you on the show. Let us know if you're interested in being on and sharing your story. This is where the rubber meets the road. These real stories from clients really inspire our listeners. It's my pleasure to welcome Greg Saylor. Now, let me tell you a little bit about Greg. He is a software engineer. He's in the cybersecurity field for big corporate enterprise applications. And he started investing with us just about five months ago. So he's pretty new at this. And we love to hear from investors at all levels, even investors who haven't started their journey yet once in a while. That's really interesting. Or maybe they just started or they're just a few months in like Greg, or they're several years in and they're veteran investors and they can tell us the good, the bad and the ugly about investing. So let's just dive into it and welcome Greg Saylor. Greg, how are you?

I'm doing really well, Jason. Thank you so much for inviting me on the podcast.

It's good to have you. And you are closing on your sixth property. That's. You'll have a six pack next week, right?

That's right. Yeah. I'm really happy about that. I couldn't, couldn't be happier with how things are going.

Good, good stuff. Well, it's new, so there will be bumps in the road and problems. I'm just going to warn you, it's not all roses, but I'm glad to hear it's all going to. Well, it's, it's mostly roses most of the time. So first of all, what got you interested in real estate investing? I mean, I'm sure over the course of your life you've, you've done and tried a bunch of things. Maybe stocks, maybe. Maybe you work for a publicly traded company and you have stock in that company. I don't know. But what, what's the interest with real estate?

Well, actually, I do work for a publicly traded company right now, but I've never really done much investing. I mean, I did the 401k thing. I did try to trade stocks a few times and quickly discovered that when it comes to trying to time things, I'm just not good at it and I can't. Some people might have that skill. It's not one that I possess. And the other thing, I guess I've always had an interest in real estate. It seems like. I think everybody says that, but, you know, it's always, I've always just been fascinated by it as kind of a necessary human need, you know. And we moved around a lot when I was a kid, so I never really had, I guess, a kind of a stable place to live. My mom, you know, tried to buy a house at one point and succeeded at that, but then we lost it. And so it's just kind of always been sitting back there that this made sense, but I didn't know how to make it work, you know, that's kind of where I came from. And I just had no success in anything else, you know.

Well, well, let me first tell you, Greg, you mentioned that when you were referring to the stock market, that you weren't good at timing. And just to make you feel better, nobody's good at timing, no matter what they tell you. And here's how you know all of these fund managers, all of these different mutual funds, and I don't just mean fund managers of mutual funds, all of these different advisors, there have been numerous surveys on them that by and large, none of them beat the index funds. So they charge big management fees. And you can pretty much get the same result. This has been documented over and over for decades. Okay. And you've probably heard this stuff. You can get the same result by just buying the index. Just buy the s and P500 if you're into stocks in the first place. And I think stocks suck. You know, that it's the modern version of organized crime. But don't feel bad if you say you can't time the market because nobody can. The people that do it full time that have made a career out of it can't time the market either.

Yeah. And then you have, you know, all these shenanigans that are going on behind the scenes in the stock market too. We probably have a whole many hour discussion around some experiences I've had with that. But you're exactly right. I finally just put my 401k into the total market index fund. I think it's good to have that. But when I started investing in real estate last November in the stock market, I managed to lose about $20,000 between November and December, so. Wow.

Yeah, you could. With $20,000, as you now know, having purchased six properties, you could buy another property.

Exactly right. And you know, I. Yeah, yeah, that's it. I mean, I like cash flow. I think cash flow is really, really compelling. And like I said, I just like everybody else, I can't time the market, so why even try? Kind of my perspective at this point.

Yeah, absolutely. But. But even if you could time the market it doesn't mean that you'll win the game. It doesn't mean that you'll outperform good, solid income property investments anyway. So, yeah, very, very good points. Okay, so, Greg, tell us what you did when you started getting interested in real estate investing because you knew you could. You could do better there than you could in the stock market. What do you do first?

I kind of knew. I started looking around locally in California, and it was sort of, I guess, the same sort of general direction that I took when I bought my property, which is I started looking for properties that seemed like they would make sense.

Now, does that mean the house you live in?

Yeah, that's right.

Okay, so you.

You don't.

You do own your own home. And just so the audience knows you, you live in the Bay Area, San Francisco Bay Area, right?

That is correct.

Okay. And whereabouts do you want to be more specific? I mean, it's a. Do you live in San Jose or. Where.

I live in a. Up in. Actually, the unincorporated part of Alameda county, in a. In Hayward, which is right about halfway between San Francisco and San Jose, or kind of near Oakland on the East Bay. But that's. So when I was looking at buying a property, of course I was living in San Francisco at the time, and I just started expanding my search until I found property that had the amount of land that I wanted, that was something I could afford, that I liked, and that put me into Hayward. So it was the same kind of a thing with investment property. I started looking in areas I knew, and it just kept expanding, getting bigger and bigger, bigger. Finally, I realized I was up in Chico, of all places, looking at.

You.

Know, rental housing for college students. And I'm thinking, I really want to get into that. Not really. And they didn't even make that much sense there. So I kind of said, there has to be another way. There has to be another way to invest in real estate. And that's when I started listening to your podcast and a couple of other podcasts, and, you know, I knew it wasn't going to be California. I knew it had to be somewhere else. So I just was trying to find a solution to that.

Right, right. And by the way, you know, there are no other podcasts on real estate investing to ever listen to, so we are the only one.

You're certainly my favorite.

I would like to think of that. It's not true, unfortunately, but, yeah, good stuff. So you started listening to the podcast, and when was that? I mean, your first purchases were in November of last year, about Five months ago. How long did it take? How long were you educating yourself, listening to podcasts, and then before you did your first deal?

I would say about 45 days. But I listen to a lot of podcasts. I have quite a commute between my house and work, so I have, let's say, about two hours a day, so about 10 hours a week of listening to your podcasts. So it. I got through quite a few of them pretty quickly, and then I called and left a voicemail, and Oliver called me back. We had a very nice conversation, and I just knew it was the way for me. It made sense to me. The investment vehicle makes sense. It's not complicated. I mean, the transaction might be a little complicated, but the investment itself makes a lot of sense and seems relatively simple.

Yeah. Yeah. And you know what? I'm so glad you mentioned that, because I find that a lot of these different investment promoters out there who are promoting whatever type of investment, they hide things through complexity. And the world is not a really complex place as it might appear on the outside. You know, sometimes the simple things just are the best. I mean, the concept of just. Just owning a property and renting it to someone, I mean, there are things you have to know. No question about it. We fill a lot of time on this podcast talking about many different aspects of real estate investing. But overall, I mean, you don't have to understand the Fibonacci curve or all of these crazy things these Wall street guys would have you understand. You know, some of these other investment schemes out there. It's just. It's just not really that complicated, is it? It's just a simple, workable thing, Right?

Yeah. I mean, there's, like, the acquisition. I mean, there's, you know, a number of players involved, of course, so it does get a little bit, you know, I'll say cumbersome. You know, there's moving pieces during the acquisition piece, but after that, you're right. I mean, it's. For me, it's pretty straightforward. You know, there's the mortgage, the tenant, the insurance, property management. That's maintenance. What else is there? Really?

Yeah, you. You got about six components. I'd say, you know, five, six, seven components, depending on how you look at it, depending on whether or not you have a homeowner's association. So there are a few moving parts, but it's a really small number of moving parts in comparison. So what was your first property? Which. Which one did you buy first?

Yeah, let me just add one more thing. And the other thing is that those Moving parts are ones that I feel like I can have influence over. If I don't like my insurance carrier, I can go get a different one. If I don't like my property manager, I can get a different one. So I think that's like, if I want to raise the rent, I can raise the rent. If I need to lower the rent, I can lower it. You know, it's just that having that flexibility and all the dimensions, I think is a good thing.

Doesn't it feel nice to be in control of your investments?

Yeah, it really does.

Yeah. It just makes such a difference. It really does. Yeah. Good. Good stuff. Okay, so your first deal. Tell us about that.

It was in Indianapolis. It was a duplex. And actually I had in mind that my first three properties were going to be duplexes because of the way that the lending works is the first four properties, if their duplexes are 25% down, and then after that they go to 30%. So I kind of wanted all of my. And then after four, of course, the single family homes go to 25%, and I just wanted to keep it, putting 25% down on my properties. So I loaded up on the duplexes for the first three because I have my primary home, which was number one, and then switched to single family homes.

So Indianapolis was one duplex or you bought a couple of them there?

I bought two in Indianapolis.

And were those new construction or resales?

I'm sorry, do you mean like, rehabbed or.

Oh, no. Were they. Were they brand new or from a builder? Or were they, you know, re. I mean, all of our properties pretty much are rehabbed, so that kind of goes without saying, but. Or were they resales? Were they already owned prior to your buying them?

Oh, I. I bought them. From your network from. Yeah, so they were rehabbed.

Okay, good. Good stuff. And so you've closed on those properties probably by now, I'm sure. And you're closing on your sixth property next week. So tell us about the process of buying and. And how that all went and getting them closed and so forth.

Well, it was pretty smooth. I mean, I've. I had some issues early on with. I was working with a lender that you guys did not recommend or hadn't recommended, and I didn't like how that was going. So I asked Oliver and he suggested some other folks that you guys recommended, and that just went. Just greatly simplified everything.

What was the problem with the. The first lender that you didn't like so much?

It was just kind of a lack of of communication. You know, as a new. Somebody new to investing, you know, I just didn't. There was a lot of questions I need to have answered and I was not getting clear answers. You know, it could be me. You know, sometimes, you know, people can communicate differently. We were just not communicating well with them. Whether it was my fault, their fault, I don't know. It just wasn't a good fit.

Sure. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And one of the things I say frequently is that investment property financing is a specialty. So going to the person that did the purchase of your home or the refinance on your home, it won't necessarily work out very well. You really got to have someone who specializes in financing investment properties. It is a different thing. Even though, even though those investment properties are residential properties, in other words, they're four units and under, it's still a different deal. It's, it's really, it really is a specialty. We've, we've, we've seen that all too many times over the years. Yeah.

And actually on that point, now that I'm reflecting back on this, because it's so new, if you'd asked me this two or three years from now, I probably would have completely forgotten about it. But at the same time, I was closing on two properties simultaneously, those two duplexes actually closing on three properties simultaneously. I was throwing three investment properties simultaneously and decided to throw into the mix to refinance my primary residence. That was a mistake because as soon as they were getting like close to ending the refinance my primary residence, all of a sudden on the soft credit poll, they saw the credit poll from another lender. So it was like, now they want documentation on all the investment properties I was buying. So it's like, it was an interesting. December was an interesting month.

Yeah, yeah. There's stuff to do there, definitely. Okay, so you got those properties so financed and you got them closed. Tell us about whatever part you want about the property management, about getting tenants, just whatever you'd like people to know.

Okay. So I, I guess, I mean, I'm a software engineer, so I'm kind of a, a numbers guy. And you know, I, I'm going to be looking at some of the, I think you call it property manager. I'm going to be looking at that software soon. But, you know, I started building these spreadsheets and the spreadsheet here has gotten bigger and bigger and bigger and it's becoming increasingly difficult to track this.

But yeah, use property tracker. Makes it so much easier. You're not doing that yet. Huh?

Not yet.

Okay. That's what I'm going to bug you about.

Fair enough. For sure.

I want you to use that because you are going to find it's so much easier to keep track of your properties when you use that software.

Yeah. So I guess, I mean, I'm kind of in, I don't want to say negative thinker, but I, as in my profession, I kind of look for problems. Right. So some of the, I did hit a couple of like, minor snags along the way and. No, don't. I'm not trying to be negative here, but the. Like on the.

No, we listen, we want it to be realistic. Like one of the things we really try to do, Greg, is, is provide real transparency. Other people out there will hide the flaws. Look at this is there are problems. I'll be the first to tell anybody. It's not perfect, but like Winston Churchill said of either democracy or capitalism, it's just better than everything else. That's all. That's the only thing I say, it's better than everything else.

One of the things that I found, like when I'm looking at properties, using, you know, your website that I found a little tricky was the providers. Some of them put 20% down, other ones with 25% down, they put different interest rates in there and it doesn't really translate to what interest rates I'm able to get. So I, that's why I had to build a spreadsheet right there, because I needed to be able to take that numbers, put them into my spreadsheet so I could see what the actual, you know, numbers were. Considering the financing.

Right, exactly. So that is a terrific point. And that's one of the reasons I want. Well, for the first part of that is all of our investors need to, number one, embrace the fragmentation, like I say, because that's what keeps the institutional investors out of our business. So you do have that fragmentation, which is annoying. I completely get it. Right, because you have one, one group in one area that does it one way and another group in another area does it another way. Right. So there's fragmentation. But standardize your data as much as you can by using our system, the, the property tracker, Property shopper system on the jasonartman.com website. But the second part of it is, is that if you actually subscribe to that software, you can change the assumptions and you can make it all dynamic. It's static when you're looking at our website and we are working on an upgrade to that. But I'm not going to Say that's coming anytime soon. You know how software projects go in your business. But then you can change those numbers and you can make them all 25% down. Like you said you, that you, you wanted to have them all be consistent like that or all the same interest rate or whatever you want. So. Yeah, good point.

Yeah. So it's so basically got to, you know, where I had this spreadsheet where I could enter four or five numbers and I would use your website because your website gives you a great kind of. Should I look at this further kind of a thing? I can figure that out really quick from your website. But then I just take four or five numbers, bunch them into the spreadsheet. I got three properties that look attractive. Then I'll punch them into my spreadsheet and figure out which one from the numbers looks better. So it's kind of like the filtering that I can do on your website is really good, but there's just another. It's like the due diligence, I guess.

Yeah, absolutely. Okay, good, good. So tell us what else happened. What. Tell us more about the experience.

Okay. So in addition to that, I kind of have this view of risk, I think around these, around my properties that as long as I have, let's say good, solid, let's say really conservative single family homes, that with those I can afford to take some other risks like with duplexes or with maybe properties in a little bit lower rent, lower grade neighborhood, you know, as long as I have that good foundation of good performing, conservative, you know, really good properties and I can, you know, take a little bit more risk in some other areas. So I'm, you know, I'm, as you would say, I think, independently owned and operated. So I, you know, can take a little bit more risk in my life, perhaps. So the third duplex I bought in Chicago and it was in a, not, not a very good neighborhood of Chicago. It's Section 8 tenants. But it's been a really, really good performing property. But the trick there, I think was property manager that knows how to deal with those tenants in that area. That is like, was critical for me. So I did a lot of vetting on that particular property manager. I wouldn't have felt as comfortable doing that, for example, in Indianapolis just based on, you know, that there's anything wrong with any of the property managers there. They're all wonderful, but it's just experience with that type of tenant.

Right. It's a, it's a specialty. Yeah, no question about it. Good.

And then I switched to the Single family homes. I bought one in Memphis. I was number four. And then hopefully next week I'll be closing on another one in Memphis and another one in Columbus, Ohio.

Fantastic. Yeah. Congratulations. Why did you pick the certain markets you picked, and what was behind that? I mean, you could have picked different markets. Why those?

It, I think it's coming back to a little bit of my view of risk, which I can't even really articulate that well. It's just sort of this innocuous thing that I wanted to be in, you know, a few different markets with different types of properties in those markets. And I liked all of these markets. I like all of these areas. Columbus is probably the biggest, iffiest one, I guess. But that's because I was surprised by the property taxes there. Like in, in Chicago, the property taxes are high, as we all know, but the rents kind of support that. In Columbus, not so much. But I feel like Columbus is, it's coming around.

Yeah, I, I agree with you. Ohio isn't as blighted as it used to be. I, I, I'm not as hopeful about Detroit, but, but the Ohio markets that were actually really pretty blighted in years past, they've, they've come around quite a bit. I mean, when I've been in Columbus, Cleveland, I mean, I, I just, I've been pleasantly impressed. I really didn't expect to think as highly of those markets as I did until I, you know, until my last visit, before my last visit to them, you know, and I reported on that on prior podcasts.

But, and I should say as well, you know, I lived in Indianapolis for many years and made many road trips to Chicago and Columbus, so I was a little bit more familiar with those areas as well. So I can't say it was consciously looking at those markets because I was familiar with the area, but that might have been an unconscious factor, I don't know. But, but, you know, it's like I looked at all the markets. I looked at, you know, Atlanta, you know, all the markets, and those ones just resonated with me, you know, Columbus, I like, like you just said, I think I just, I like the way that city feels for some reason, you know.

Yeah, I agree with you. Yeah, I agree. I agree. Good stuff. Okay. What else do you want people to know about the experience? Just anything else. A question I haven't asked you, I would say.

Another surprise that I had along the way. I feel like I'm being so negative. I don't mean that, but was, you know, property taxes. I've Been a bit surprised a couple of times with property taxes. So I think it's worth, for me, I just added as part of my workflow, whatever you want to call it, to just double check the property taxes.

I think that's very good advice. And one of the constant, constant battles we have, and property taxes, I would say, are one of the hardest ones to hold local market specialists accountable on is they, generally speaking, they are not conservative enough on the numbers. You know, they're salespeople, okay. And they want to sell properties. And we are constantly, as they upload properties to our website and we make them do the updates, uploading, so that they have to make the representation about the property and its performance and, you know, its projections and so forth. But one of the things that we're constantly battling with them is, you know, estimating rents higher than they should be. We want them to rein it in and be more conservative. And that's one of the nice things about having a someone like us that offers an area agnostic approach. And we'll tell you if we think they're, they're being too optimistic on those numbers. But one of the hardest ones for us to check and know is property taxes, because that's a complex thing and it varies by the municipality. So just always take whatever they tell you and just assume it's not going to be quite as good as they tell you. Okay. That's the first thing. But the second thing is, and I talked about this on a recent show about the Chicagoland area. Of course, when we talk about these markets, we're not being specific as to city, we're talking about metropolitan areas. Okay. So everybody understands that even if property taxes go up quite a bit, given their financial perils in the Chicago or the Illinois area, I should say the whole state, I think the numbers still work out pretty well. I mean, I took our performas and changed them based on a 10, 20, even a 30% increase in property taxes. And those deals still look pretty good to me.

Yeah, I'm baffled in, in kind of a good way how the properties there perform and just the general quality of the rehab work that is done there. I've just been really, really blown away by it. You know, I would think my brain tells me that a property in those areas at that price point with those property taxes wouldn't perform. But when you run the numbers, they perform really well.

Good, good stuff. No, it is surprising and I think that has the chance to really be more of a hybrid market where you could see some decent appreciation as opposed to the more linear markets that just sort of chug along and appreciate more moderately. So that's another benefit of it.

Yeah, and let me give this nod out as well because I've said, I said a couple of things about, you know, the, your website and some of these things we just talked about. But you know, being a software engineer, one of the things we deal with is normalized data a lot. And you guys have done a remarkable job of that. There's other providers out there that are in multiple markets and they do not do nearly as good of a job as you guys do. So even though I have a few what I would call almost due diligence items, they're not even, they're just minor. But there, you guys do a really good job of getting us, you know, a good idea of what a property is going to look like if we were to buy it.

Yeah, yeah, good. Thank you. We really, you know, that's the first thing I said when I got into this business many years ago. As I said, look, you got to standardize the data because I was trying to do this myself and I didn't have anyone to help me. I mean, that's why I started this business is back in 2003, 2004. I wanted to become a nationwide investor. And I mean, the data I would get, Greg, it was like I had to be a detective work for every deal. It was just crazy, the amount of detective work I had to do and I had to assemble things into my own format and it drove me absolutely nuts. You gotta standardize the data. So that's absolutely imperative.

Yeah, I couldn't agree more. And the other thing I would would add is where is I going to go with this? Oh, in terms of the property, of course, I track all of my income and expenses in, you know, month by month. And I've been pretty surprised that the properties haven't just met the performer, they've actually exceeded the performa. So, you know, you in general, like after, after everything's all said and done, I think the numbers you guys put up there are actually pretty conservative.

Yeah, that's what we try to be. We just want you to have a better experience than what we say. But even if you don't, even if those numbers come in short, it's still going to be pretty good, you know, compared to whatever else you might do. I would say I would hold our, our deals up against anything else you could find, you know, so.

Yeah, and then here's a real example, like the Chicago property, which I Mentioned wasn't in such a good neighborhood, but I kind of knew that. I knew I was taking a little bit more risk with this property. It. We need to put a fence up. Right. There's just, no, say, not good activities going on in the backyard at night. So we need to put a fence up, which is something that we probably wouldn't have to do or I wouldn't have to do if I say we. I mean, the property manager and I working in combo on that, which probably wouldn't have had to have done in any of the other properties that I bought.

Yeah, yeah.

You know, so little things like that that can. But, yeah, it's just a risk that I kind of knew going into that.

Right, right. And so plan for some additional expenses. Be conservative on your numbers, have a reserve fund. That's all good advice. Very, very good points. And tell us, what are your plans for your investment portfolio? I mean, you know, you got into this because you wanted to earn a higher return on your money, of course. And maybe the overall goal of financial freedom and leaving the corporate world someday. I don't know. What are your plans?

That's an interesting one, because I really enjoy the work that I do. But, you know, it's. For me, growing up really poor has had sort of this odd psyche. I can't really explain it, but it's sort of almost a fear of losing everything that I've had my whole life. So, to me, this is kind of more about redundancy, about redundancy of income streams. So if something does happen that it's already had very positive impact on that, you know, I already feel more, you know, relaxed, just generally speaking, and, you know, things are getting better. Yeah. I don't know if I should say this, but, you know, the income that I'm getting from these properties just kind of blows my mind. I mean, I'm generating close to $4,000 a month from these six properties.

Wow, that is fantastic.

Yeah.

And that's with those. Are Those all based on 25 down?

Yeah.

Yeah. Wow. Yeah. You're doing great. Good for you.

Be happier with this. I'm, like, really blown away by it. I mean, that's. That's not county maintenance and things makenzie loss. That's. That's how I kind of rate my goal progress, I guess, is looking at the income, but then not counting vacancy, loss, or maintenance. That's how I kind of track my goals, I guess. Yeah, yeah, I know. I track the performance of how I track my goals.

In terms of goals. Do you Have a certain number of properties you want to buy?

I think it depends on what's going to happen after property number 10. I'm not sure. I know there's some solutions out there, but I'm still not real happy with the ones I've seen in terms of.

Financing more than 10 properties.

Right, that's right.

Yeah. Yeah.

And the other thing that I've noticed is, you know, the debt to income ratio, our personal debt to income ratio, is actually a really important factor in financing. And what I always thought is that as I buy more properties, that I'm going to have income coming in from the property and expenses going up. With that, my debt to income ratio is actually going to go down. But that doesn't happen. It actually goes up. I suppose it depends on where you start in the debt income curve. But the way numbers average out, it actually kind of keeps creeping up with every property purchase. And I think that number needs to be less than 43%. I don't want to speak for anybody, but so it's, you know, I've been, you know, I account for that on my spreadsheets now, too, just to make sure that if I'm looking at a property that it's not going to. That my debt to income ratio is going to be okay with it.

Right, right. Okay, good, Good stuff. And, and so you're going to get to your 10th property. And one solution, because you don't like the financing out there for more than 10 properties, is to just get married and have your spouse buy 10 more. There you go.

Okay, now you're just teasing me, Jason.

There you go. Yeah, good. There's a creative solution, Greg, Actually, here's.

Another creative solution I thought of. I don't know how all this would play, but, you know, if one has the flexibility to relocate, my understanding is you can buy one primary residence a year.

Well, yeah, but that'll, that'll be a slow process, but yes, you can do that. Absolutely. Yeah.

So, yeah, I'll definitely be hitting, you know, 10 properties this year. So it's, you know, in less than a year, basically, I would have, you know, filled out my conventional financing. So.

Yeah, Good, good stuff. Well, Greg, it's been fantastic hearing your story. Thank you so much for sharing it with the listeners. Just, you know, Anything else you want to say to wrap it up?

I just want to give another shout out to Oliver because part of the due diligence that I do is, of course, looking at the neighborhood. And he gave me a lot of really good ideas and I Found some on my own too, about, you know, kind of how to, like make it back to Risk. You know, I want properties, some in good neighborhoods. I ran some. I actually want some properties in some less than great neighborhoods. And you know, some things I used to look at that are what's around the property. Like, is it just a bunch of liquor stores or are there movie theaters or are there other things? Like, you know, as you kind of move up the scale, there's like more entertainment type things around the property. And then you get into the really good neighbor. You got like golf courses and things like that. So I kind of use Google in a very large way just to figure out what's around the property and get a sense of, you know, is there a Home Depot nearby, is there a Lowe's nearby? You know, that kind of stuff. And I think that's been really helpful, helpful for, for me. And of course, just walking around the street, the technology that's out there now to be able to look at a neighborhood is just phenomenal.

Yeah. And soon, soon we're going to be able to dispatch our personalized drones out to do that for us too. So it's, it's Greg. It's an amazing time to be alive, as I always say.

It certainly is.

Yeah, yeah.

Good stuff. And personally thank you to, to you and all that you guys do. I know you guys work really hard on everything and I've been an incredibly fortunate benefactor from that.

Well, thank you so much. We appreciate your business and appreciate having you as a client and hope that we can help you build an awesome financial freedom portfolio. So thank you.

Yeah, thank you so much.

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Really? Now how is that possible at all?

Simple. Wall street believes that real estate investors are dangerous to their schemes because the dirty truth about income property is that it actually works in real life.

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Want to be able to sit back and collect checks every month just like a banker. Jason's Creating Wealth Encyclopedia series is for you. This show is produced by the Hartman Media Company. All rights reserved. For distribution or publication rights and media interviews, please visit www.hartmanmedia.com or email mediaartmanmedia.com Nothing on this show should be considered specific personal or professional advice. Please consult an appropriate tax, legal, real estate or business professional for individualized advice. Opinions of guests are their own and the host is acting on behalf of Platinum Properties Investor Network, Inc. Exclusively.