2447: Client Case Study with Derek and Anna & Mastering Context and Income Property Assets

This show is produced by the Hartman Media Company. For more information and links to all our great podcasts, visit HartmanMedia.com. Hey buddy, just wanted to say thanks again for the awesome job you did Friday morning. That was great. Just started out our day perfectly and put a cap on our event. I just thought it was awesome, man. You did a great job. But even more than that, just appreciate your spirit in the room, man. Seem like you're just more alive and just more enthusiastic than ever about things you're working on and things the family's doing. So I I just want you to know I appreciate you, man.

Travel safe.

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.

Good day, empowered investors, and welcome to episode 24 47. If you are watching on video, you can see that I am in a beautiful place. This is Colorado, and I'm at a 9,000-foot elevation. Maybe I'll take these sunglasses off. I don't know, I kind of need them, but I won't wear them the whole interview. How's that sound? Anyway, I'm up here for a mastermind, and it's just been great talking with entrepreneurs and talking about how you can add value in the world. And today I dropped the quote, the quote that I love so much that I discovered way back at age 17 from Zig Ziglar. I dropped it in our company chat this morning for our team, and of course it is, you can have everything in life you want if you just help enough other people get what they want. And that is what we want to do for you. We want to help you get what you want, which hopefully is financial independence and maybe to become really, really wealthy. We do both of those things for people with the most historically proven asset class in the entire world— income property. And also, you are doing that for other people. Think of how the government incentivizes you to do that, and that just shows you how important what all of you are doing is, right? The government provides massive incentives to investors to provide rental housing because there is a, an extreme shortage of for-sale housing, as we've discussed ad nauseam on this show. But there's also an extreme shortage of rental housing. Now granted, at this very moment in history, that shortage isn't as bad as it normally is. Why? Because of all the apartments that have been dropped on the market in the past 2 years, record number of apartment deliveries, keeping rents artificially soft. But that's clearing up, and the single-family market has a very, very bright future, as I said way back in 2010. And I love that so many of you have been listening to my show for so long. We literally have listeners who have been listening for 21 years, and I know some of you pop in and out and you don't catch every episode. I get it. But it's just so valuable to those people and to the rest of you listening to our Flashback Friday episodes because you really just hear the context. In fact, at the mastermind group here, we've been talking about that concept of how someone brought up the subject of fish, right? Told a little funny kind of riddle story, I guess, of how two fish were talking and then a third fish came along, and the two fish talking to each other didn't realize when the third fish came along. You know, I don't remember the story, so I can't tell it. I'm sorry. But the concept was they didn't realize they were living in water. And so many of us don't realize that. And that is such an important thing. It's so important to constantly think about and recognize in all of our lives the difference between the context of our life, in other words, our environment. Everything is generated out of the context of our lives, right? Whether it be investment strategies, opportunities, whatever, right? But then there's the content, and that's what's in the context, right? The context is the bigger picture of the environment, the worldview, right? We all have a different worldview. That's the context. And the content is what is possible within that context. And just think about it, we all have comfort zones, right? And you've, you've all heard this, you've probably seen a funny little diagram, uh, because it's, it's common, it's been going around for forever, which is a box, right? And the box represents our comfort zone, which would be the same as our context. And then how everything that's possible in our life is generated from within that box, because that's the context, that's the comfort zone we have. But you could put a dot outside of that box And everything great and worthwhile and really noble and powerful and life-changing is outside of the comfort zone, right? So we've got to constantly force ourselves to, number one, understand what that zone is, what that box is, what that context is, but also help ourselves get out of it. We live in water, you know, as was the fish, they live in water in that example, but They don't really think about it, right? But yet everything in their life is generated out of the water in which they live. And so let's make sure that we constantly understand that we are living in some kind of box, comfort zone, context. To me, all of those things are pretty much the same, and there's a lot more opportunity outside of it. So let's think about that for investors for a moment, right? You know, the Wall Street world, the vast Wall Street conspiracy CNBC, The Wall Street Journal, right? They want you to think that investing is only about buying stocks and ETFs and mutual funds and bonds, but there's so much more opportunity outside of that. It's funny that they take the most historically proven asset class in the entire world and the most tax-favored asset class in America, and they call it an alternative investment. How the fuck did that happen? You know, it just shows you that the vast Wall Street conspiracy is in play because they've got so many billions and billions of dollars dedicated at advertising and promoting their ideas of what investing is, that real estate or income property is considered an alternative investment. That shouldn't be the alternative, that should be the base. Like if you're looking at Maslow's hierarchy, right? It's the base of the pyramid. That's the base. Everything else is an option up from there, right? Anyway, we've got to constantly understand that and overcome that in every area of our life. Our opportunities are limited to what is within our environment, our context, our comfort zone, and everything great is outside of that. So always think of that and always remember You can have everything in life you want if you just help enough other people get what they want. And what you're doing as an investor is so important, and that's why the government incentivizes it. That's why it is the most tax-favored asset class in America, because the government needs you. It needs all of us to provide more rental housing. What you do is, is really important. Like, really understand that and think about that often. It really is very, very important. And today we're going to share with you a clip from our most recent Empowered Investor Live. This is about 2 months ago, and this is one of our wonderful clients, Derek and Anna, who started listening to the show back in— I think, well, they're going to say it from the stage, but I think they said 2010, 2011, something like that, and started investing. And now built a portfolio. I think they're going to say like 50 doors, 5-0. And it just shows you how you can leave the comfort zone of the corporate job. And, you know, I think Derek, if I recall correctly, tells the story of how, you know, there were layoffs going on in his company and he didn't want to be a casualty. So I thought, you know, I got to take this financial independence thing into my own hands. And start investing in the most historically proven asset class in the entire world— income property. It's a great story, and you're going to hear it here from them. And our investment counselor Sarah is on stage too. If you're watching on video, of course you're going to see the interview. If you're listening on audio only, you're going to hear it. And I think it's going to be inspirational for you, and it's just going to show you how, how practical and how wonderful this investment is. Remember, it's a multi-dimensional asset class. You earn your return on investment in 8 major ways. There's really 9, because when you're in the business, quote unquote, of real estate investing, you have a business. And I know most people don't think of it that way. They think of, well, I've got my W-2 corporate job, but I'm also investing in real estate on the side. Well, that's not the way the IRS looks at it. The IRS thinks you have a business, a side hustle, another business, right? You've got your corporate job and you pay taxes there at the worst, highest rate. The worst tax treatment of all is the corporate job. And then you have your real estate investing on the side, but that's really a business. And remember, with a business, you can start deducting all sorts of expenses that you're going to have anyway. So a lot of these things now become deductible. Of course, my disclaimer: always check with your tax advisor on everything under the sun. Taxes are a complicated field, but it is really wonderful. And just remember, taxes are the single largest expense most of us have in our entire lives. So we've got to learn to reduce, optimize, and protect ourselves from our own government by saving on taxes and doing what the government is incentivizing us to do. Get all those rewards, all those deductions, because they want you to provide housing to other people. They must have heard the Zig Ziglar quote, 'You can have everything in life you want if you just help enough other people get what they want.' Help other people get rental housing because they need it. And by doing that, by pulling more housing through the supply chain, you're also helping builders and developers build more housing. Because they've got more demand. And they see that, they're looking at their numbers, and then they realize, hey, we better build more houses because these investors are buying the houses as well as owner occupants. So it's a big circle of life, right? Like the movie The Lion King, right? And it's just a great thing. Remember, join us for our free Wednesday masterclasses every single month. You can go to empoweredinvestor.com/wednesday That funny domain name is because they're always on the second Wednesday of the month. And if you want to upgrade your investing experience, join our pro community, Empowered Investor Pro. We'd love to have you as a member. Our investment counselors are here for you and they're happy to do a free portfolio makeover. If you're already one of our clients, every 6 to 12 months you should be getting a free portfolio review with your investment counselor. And then lastly, make sure you get a free Property Tracker account to help you analyze and track your properties, properties that you're considering, and properties that you are already owning and operating, because it can track them and make the management much easier as well as make the analysis much easier. So check that all out, propertytracker.com. And let's get to the interview with our clients who started investing with us a very long time ago. And are now up to, I believe, 50 doors, 5-0. And we've got a lot of other clients like this that have even done more than that. I think our biggest one has about 160 properties now, and there's just tons of opportunity. So whether you want to buy one property a year or you want to buy 50 a year, we can help you. I know we're helping a lot of people with 1031 tax-deferred exchanges now that are coming out of something where they maybe have $1 million or $2 or $3 million in gain and they want to reinvest that. And so we can line up a whole bunch of properties for you to make your 1031 tax-deferred exchange work. We've done that many, many times. The biggest one is one you heard about on the show many years ago. That was these wonderful clients that we helped. They inherited a property, turned it into a short-term rental. It was about $2.6 million property, free and clear inheritance. It was performing very badly as a short-term rental compared to what we did for them on an exchange where they got 39 properties and their cash flow went through the roof and their portfolio size went through the roof. Their inflation-induced debt destruction just became enormous. Their tax benefits became enormous. So many of you are just missing opportunity costs. And every time someone books a one-on-one consultation with me or our investment counselors, I'm constantly amazed by this. Is how much money you're leaving on the table. Don't leave money on the table. You got to make your money work really, really hard. Your money is like your employee. It's got to work hard for you. So just make sure you make your money work, and we can help you do that. So set up a free investment counseling appointment and let our investment counselors help you with that. All right, enough said. Let's get to the interview with our clients here, and I think you'll really enjoy this. Here we go. So, Sarah, you want to start with a question?

Sure, yeah. So, this is Derek and Anna, and they've been with us for a while, and now they're kind of doing their own thing, but they started with us. And just tell us a little bit about when and how you got started, and maybe tell us about your very first deal.

How much time do I have?

Well, let's make this about maybe a 10-minute conversation.

Yeah.

2009, great financial crisis. I got laid off for the second time. I was a civil engineer. I am still a civil engineer, but I got laid off for the second time around, and I realized that I was not the master of my own destiny, and I didn't like that. I didn't like the fact that somebody in a completely different location I'm not even at the table can decide your income is over, you know. So, that was after I read Rich Dad Poor Dad. So, I was like, this thing about assets, you know, I need to think more about assets. And I started listening to iTunes. That was back in the iPod days. And Jason Hartman. Jason was on, what was the name of your show at that time?

Creating Wealth Show.

Creating Wealth Show. So, I started listening to that and it just got into me and I got fired up about replacing my day job with rental income. And Anna could probably tell you many stories about how I had it all mapped out. I was an engineer, you know, we got to have the—

Right. Very analytical.

Oh yeah. I was on the board and I said, "This property will provide this much income and by the time we're done, you know, with this many properties." So, today, we're sitting here, we're financially free. I would say it started pretty much back in 2009, getting my butt kicked for the second time around and realizing that I wasn't the master of my own destiny unless I own assets.

Mm-hmm.

Change that.

That's great. Just a little comment, not related to real estate, but a lot of people think getting laid off, getting fired, some bad thing happening of any sort in your life is terrible. But a lot of times that's the kick we need, right, to go on to greater things.

Right.

So that's a great story. Yeah, because without getting laid— if you had not been laid off, you might not have never have done this, right? You might have just kept working.

And I wanted to— I wanted to be president. Yeah, that was—

you were just on the corporate track, right?

Corporate track, climb the ladder, do— put your time in. You know, that was my— that was my focus. And after that event, that was the epiphany. Everything changed in my life. And I said, you know, let's let's go with, you know, acquiring assets.

Great.

And I would tell everybody in this room the exact same thing: acquire assets now. I mean, Jason has said it multiple times probably this weekend already. We see our friends that don't have any assets versus those that do, and it doesn't really matter what market you buy into today. It doesn't matter where you go. Um, well, I mean, it does to a certain extent, right? But you're buying assets and that's the important thing. Of course, you want all the demographics and you want that market to go gangbusters with population and all those are good things. But the fact is you're buying assets.

You got to be in the game. You've got to own assets because then the world beats a path to your door and the assets don't get debased when the currency does. Can you believe how much inflation has happened? Since you started? Oh yeah. So 2009, the first property, how much was it? Do you remember?

What was the very first property?

Do you remember?

Wildwood, $169,000.

Where? $169,000?

For duplex.

For duplex, wow.

Brand new duplex.

Where?

In, in, uh, it's south of Indy.

Okay.

Maybe like 30, 40 minutes.

Wow.

Wildwood Farms.

A new— Do you hear that?

So $169,000 for a duplex.

Brand new. Brand new.

Brand new.

4-bedroom, 3-bath. Yeah, what's it worth now?

Do you know? $450,000.

$450,000. $450,000. Yeah. Wow. Isn't that amazing?

And I remember those duplexes were like the hot commodity because we mostly did single family and everybody wanted those duplexes when they came out.

I remember those.

So that's more than a double in 10 years, 11, 12 years, maybe something like that.

So, and your rents, I mean, The rents, they've gone up. Yeah.

And we self-manage those. I mean, I know everybody's talking about property management, so we, we went vertical and we self-manage now 50, 50 doors.

Wow.

Good for you.

On Buildium.

Yeah.

And so if anybody wants to talk property management and AI and all that stuff, I'm geeking out on it in a big way right now. So that's awesome. Always open to those conversations.

I'd love to have you on the show to talk about that, you know, sometime, because that'll be a more detailed discussion we don't have time for here. But, but so you use Buildium software, you self-manage 50, 50 doors, right?

50 in about 15 years.

Wow. Can you believe it?

Yeah.

Yeah.

We saw the topic 20 minutes. There was, and the other thing is, so we bought in, We bought in Indianapolis, Atlanta, St. Louis, Phoenix. We bought too many markets.

So, a lot of people do that. I made the mistake myself. I was in 17 markets personally.

That is just, it's insane.

Don't do that. Yeah.

So, keep it to 2 markets, I would. I say 3 to 5, but yeah, it's just to any one person, property manager, you need to be a major loss if they're treating you poorly. If they're treating you poorly and you pick up and leave, they need to feel it. If you got one house—

They don't care.

They're not gonna feel that. So that's why I would double down, you know, like Buffett. You know, he doesn't buy every stock. He buys, you know, 20 stocks his entire life is what he said he would. You would go for, I'd look at your properties the same way. Buy one market. Yeah.

So, other than over-diversifying, is there any other one lesson you've learned or maybe one pitfall you've overcome that you would share with the group?

I would say—

Maybe something you would do differently.

I would say what we did right was we did our taxes separate. So, Anna and I both had, you know, 6-figure jobs. Yeah, can I have that? And we paid a lot in taxes, so we decided to do our taxes, file separately. So, at that time, I'm not sure exactly what the lending environment is like right now, but we decided to run both of our portfolios up to 10 so we could double the amount of—

Right.

The amount of— properties we could purchase.

So what he's talking about there is—

No DSCR loan back then.

Right, right. There is a limit on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac loans to 10 loans per person. So if you're single, you can only get 10. If you're married, you could get 10 each. Okay, that's what he's referring to.

I think when Derek started, it was limited to 4 right after the recession, and then it increased to 10. And now there's this beautiful thing called debt service coverage ratio.

The DSCR loans where you can get unlimited amounts, but they didn't have that back then. You know, another part of Derek's and Anna's story that I think is really, really important is that you had the courage to do it when all the news was negative. I mean, 2009, are you kidding me? No one wanted to buy a property in 2009. It was the end of the world, the Great Recession, the worst economy in 7 decades.

Yeah.

How do you muster that courage? Or did you not know it was courage at the time?

I think, you know, Anna and I always had, like, we love real estate. So we saw an opportunity to buy and that was enough. You know, I don't know that there was this huge, like, once we decided to replace our income, I think I was just on the mission. You know, I didn't want to be held by somebody else making a decision about my future. And the other thing I would say is that we did right was, so we split so both of us could go up to 10, and then we had a, we had a strategy for stepping out of our W-2 jobs. So, so Anna would go first and then she would become a real estate professional and And then we'd get the benefits of that. We'd start depreciating and, you know, we start having these passive losses. And then that was used against my income once we qualified for the real estate professional designation. And that's a game changer because you're not going from a 20% tax rate, you're going down to, you know, 5, sub-10, and legally pay very little. I mean, there's nothing shady about this at all. It's just following the IRS tax code.

It's great. The IRS wants to incentivize housing. They want you to create rental housing stock because people need it. And he's just doing exactly what the IRS wants him to do. Right. So, yeah.

And pools are for fools. Yeah, that still comes back to me.

Thank you.

The mistakes that I screwed up on, I— the pools are for fools.

I—

that was one of my rules that Jason gave me. And I messed up because I know 3, 4 years ago I can talk about it.

Yeah. What kind of pool did you get?

It was an ATM.

It was one of the ATM deal funds.

And I've always wanted ATMs because they got me very excited when I was at the racetrack or whatever. And there's somebody, you know, they didn't care what, what they paid for a fee as long as they get cash. I'm like, that's a great business. But I could never figure out how to get into it. So anyway, I became part of this ATM fund.

Dave Zuck was promoting that.

Dave Zuck. And we were all part of it and that turned out to be a Ponzi scheme. So pools are for fools.

So what— maybe you don't know what he means by pools are for fools. Look, we believe in be a direct investor, own, buy your own stuff, stop investing in other people's stuff. Nobody ever got rich investing in a syndication except the person setting up the deal, the syndicator. You are the limited partner. Nobody ever got rich as a limited partner. Nobody ever got rich investing in the fund except the fund manager. And so that's pooled money. That's why I always say pools are for fools. Be a direct investor. Don't invest in other people's deals. And if I can find it, I'll show you a very funny ad that I did that if I had a boss, I would have been fired for this ad. But it's funny. And it's about that. So I'll try and find the slide. Yeah.

Yeah. Tell us, a big concern in the room—

And sorry you lost money on the Ponzi scheme, Derek. Yeah, by the way.

A big concern in the room this weekend has been about over-leverage and how to prudently use debt and the deferred down payment. And you know, you kind of started with us when we were talking about deferred down payment a lot, and because you could get in for like 5 to 15% down. How do you manage your debt your cash flow ratio and follow the refi 'til you die plan prudently without overleveraging?

So we worked our jobs, we purchased these properties with fixed rate debt, no bridge loans, no, you know, fixed or floating rate anything. So fixed rate debt, you know exactly what your debt service is going to be, nothing's going to change there except for insurance and taxes. So you got to be able You gotta be able to lock down that, you know, the expense side, kind of. And then you just let the rents come up and start making things look better and better for yourself. We're actually at that point now where we're starting to refinance the one that Anna brought up, Wildwood. That was from back in 2011, or '12, we bought that, 2013. We haven't touched it. So it's had, you know, some 12 years of appreciation.

So you haven't been following the refi 'til you die plan at all?

You know, uh.

You're paying your stuff off, right? I'm gonna get on your case for that.

So Derek did a refinance one, 2024. You pull $150,000 out, the one, just one of the property we bought, 5 units.

And I rolled it, I rolled the money into another duplex, a new build. So, that, I love compounding. So, when you take money that wasn't yours originally, I mean, you take equity and you roll it into another property, there's nothing better than that.

Yes, infinite return property.

So, I say we were slow to, continually refinance these because we were really focused on the cash flow. We wanted to replace our monthly income so that we didn't have to work anymore. And now, now I work, but, you know, it's not a job job, but I still work a lot. And what would you say about that? Anything? Any idea?

So principal paydown is one of the things nobody look at it. I looked at my— when we refinance, yes, the mortgage went up so much, but you look, if you're paying down your principal $1,000 a month, that's money you don't pay tax. When you refinance cash out, you don't pay penny in income tax. Those are all who people have W-2 job never has. I told Derek the best thing happened to him. I met him in 2009. He got laid off in 2010. That's when he had time to sit home and think about what should I do. And then he come to Jason's seminar. Then he brought me next year. Sarah invited us. Then that's when whatever Jason said, I said it makes makes sense. We should do this. Didn't take us very long. We started 2012, '13. I created my job 2018. Derek created his job 2022.

Yeah. So, what Anna's saying is there's no tax on borrowed money, right? We talked about that during the refi. That's the best way to manage your portfolio.

Right. But she also brought up a great point, and I don't know if we've touched on it much this weekend. We talk about it all the time, the principal debt reduction she mentioned. Yeah, everybody's focused on the appreciation of the property, but you're getting the benefit in the opposite direction because your tenant's paying down your, your loan for you. So this is one of the reasons I'm for getting into more expensive properties if you can. I love the cash flow on the cheaper properties, but you're not getting the best advantage on the debt because you're financing such a little bit of money that your tenants only paying down a little bit of debt for you. When you take on bigger loans, when you get into duplexes or bigger single-family homes or quads, your tenants paying down a bigger chunk of your principal payment and you're still getting the appreciation on the other end. So I'm glad you brought that up because people really don't pay attention to that, and that's part of the equity build and the refi till you die strategy.

And most important lesson, of course, I would say, you know, looking at the different markets I, being an engineering type, I had to have everything in spreadsheets and, you know, in tabs and figuring out what was the best market. And I think Jason kind of gives you, I mean, he doesn't let you go into really bad markets. They're all pretty good markets that, you know, come recommended and then you've got it narrowed down and you can select something that maybe works for you. It's an easy flight. Flight, I would invest in places that you can get to easily, you know. And we had another separate deal apartment in Lexington, Kentucky, and it's impossible to get to Lexington. It takes forever. You have to fly up to, you know—

No direct flights.

Atlanta, there's no direct flights. So, that would be something I would, you know, just keep in mind, you know, if you can get there in a couple hours if you need to, you know. Hopefully you won't need to, but it's good to go and, you know, kick the bricks and take a vacation while you're there.

Sure, exactly. Good stuff. Do we have any questions for Derek and Anna? Anybody? So can I grab one microphone? I'll use yours. Okay, I'm gonna do— we don't have another mic, right? No, we don't.

Yeah.

Okay, first name and city.

Just thanks for sharing. One, maybe give an idea of how you're using AI to help self-manage, like the biggest impact or where you're using AI for that.

Great question.

That's no small question. I mean, I just get kind of giddy because, you know, I've just started messing around with Claude and I use Buildium with these 50 doors and I'm watching Claude like go into Buildium and go through my tasks and respond to tasks. Of course, I've got—

Is it Claude Cowork or Claude Code? Which one?

I just use the chat.

Oh, okay. Wow.

And I've got separate chats for, you know, some for tasks, some for leasing, some for this. So it builds a knowledge base. And then I open up Buildium and I got Claude Claude doing my, you know, task triage. I call it triage basically, you know, as tasks are coming in. Some of them are maintenance, some are concerns. It basically evaluates, has a recommended response to that, and then I go, "That's better than I could write," you know.

Okay, go.

And then I can go between, I can actually have But, you know, building them open at the same time as I'm leasing in like Zillow Rental Manager, I have to use that in my market. So I'll have those two open at the same time and Claude is actually doing both, you know, responding to both on both ends. Guys, this is going to be a no-brainer to self-manage in a very short period of time.

Yeah.

And technology's just making— easier and easier, and outsourcing as well. And Sarah noticed something really good. We had one of our monthly Empowered Investor Pro meetings, and I had a— I put a post on Upwork, and I had a whole bunch of Central American and Filipino applicants usually that were property managers, like virtual property managers. And, you know, they had experience working for property management companies and and so forth. And I wanted our clients to see that they could hire these people to help them for like $6 an hour. And now you could just have tech do it even better than that. But if you need an actual human— and then Sarah noticed like a week later after that pro meeting we had, Sarah said, hey, one of my property managers is doing the same thing you're telling our clients to do. And you're not going to get the— cost savings of any of that. The tech, the outsourcing that the property manager's using is just to increase their profit margin. You're not going to get the benefit of that, I guarantee it. They're still going to charge you just as much. So, you can— this is great. These are great tools. Yeah.

Especially the new build stuff, the newer stuff in Indy and all of that. There's just not going to be a lot of maintenance to deal with on that. So, using AI for for your property management or using Buildium or whatever tool you decide to use is pretty simple, really. I mean, automate rent collection, can't beat it, you know? Don't use Zelle.

Yeah. Oh, I use Zelle. I like Zelle actually quite well.

Rent collection.

Yeah. Yeah. I just like them to Zelle me. I like seeing that text message. Someone sent you this, they can't take it back. Get it like immediately, but you know, if you have, you know, the more properties you have, the harder it's gonna be to use Zelle.

Yeah, but you gotta be careful about clawbacks on Zelle.

I've never, I don't think you can clawback Zelle. I've never had a clawback, really? That scares me. You had a clawback on Zelle?

No, I didn't.

Oh.

I would never use that for rent collection.

Okay, okay, Scott's got a question.

I have a question, Scott from Cerritos. Totally agree, the cloud is definitely the way to go. It reduced tons of my stress, so totally agree there. Can you talk about your plans forward since the returns are not going to be as good, right? The rate, the mortgage rate is higher, you know, all that wind against our face. What's your plan forward in the future? —of acquiring more? Are you sitting for a while? What's your plan? How do you wrap your head around, around your future plans? In San Diego, we went vertical with property management, so we developed our own property management company, and then we also add ADUs to multifamily properties because it's just low-hanging fruit for me because I'm a civil engineer, so it's easy for me to develop develop and work through, you know, city planning and all of that. So that's what I'm going to do. I think there's going to be an opportunity coming up, and I don't know that it's going to be specifically in single-family homes, but we're raising capital right now. So we're actually refinancing some things to get some dry powder ready.

Good. Smart move.

And we're going to go just as big as we went, you know, 12, 13 years ago. I'm anticipating. I don't know.

So the next time we have you back, you'll do what Anna tells me to do. But the next time you come back, though, you'll have 100 units, right? Yeah. Good.

Good for you. So we are refinancing Indianapolis. We bought it 13 years ago through Jason Hartman. And we have all of those properties. We're just refinancing now. We talked to a lender last week. They told us we'd be able to pull out $1.3 million. Wow. So, we will use that to purchase more properties. That's our goal.

That's our plan. Refi till you die, Anna. That's great. Yeah.

I was just going to say, you know, there's no timeline for which you have to refi till you die. So, they had a long holding period on theirs. We're waiting for the right time to do it, and I guess the time is now.

And we also want to just, you know, give Jason Hartman and Sarah the props. I mean, they deserve— because Sarah helped us tremendously 12, 13 years ago. And like I said, I still have Jason coming back into my head when I like run into something stupid that I did.

Yeah. Thank you so much for coming, you guys. This is great. Isn't it great to to hear from real investors who really did it and how it worked out. Isn't that great? Just give them a hand now. Okay. Thank you so much for listening. Please be sure to subscribe so that you don't miss any episodes. Be sure to check out the show's specific website and our general website, hartmanmedia.com, for appropriate disclaimers and terms of service. Remember that guests' opinions are their own, and if you require specific legal or tax advice, or advice in any other specialized area, please consult an appropriate professional. And we also very much appreciate you reviewing the show. Please go to iTunes or Stitcher Radio or whatever platform you're using and write a review for the show. We would very much appreciate that. And be sure to make it official and subscribe subscribe so you do not miss any episodes. We look forward to seeing you on the next episode.