CW 1114: Client Case Study: 13 Properties & Counting with Curtis & Balanced Budget Amendment & Benefits of High Loan Balances

So I kept reading and listening and then went forward in the podcast. Then I went to your website and I looked at the sites you have for the different properties and the numbers. So I started learning about the numbers and what they meant. And being the skeptic I am and being a techie, I actually wrote a program to go and scrape your website and other people's websites and redo the calculations just so I could prove it out myself. And eventually I came to the conclusion that real estate is a great deal.

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 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 Creating wealth Show, episode number 1114 11114. 1114. 1114. This is your host, Jason Hartman, coming to you today from p beautiful Dallas, Texas, the big D, where it is very chilly. In fact, it almost feels colder here than it did when we went to the ice hotel last year with the venture alliance.

That's because the beds there had fur on them.

Oh, maybe that was it. Maybe that was it. Well, hey, as you might have heard, listeners, that's Adam. And Adam is here back on the show to do the intro with me. And after that, we've got a client case study. I think you'll really enjoy this story. They've got 13 rental properties now. Their real estate investing career. Adam, do you know how it began? It's an amazing story. Ready?

I'm ready.

Bagels? Yes.

That's not where I was expecting you to go.

Bagels inspired this couple to get into real estate investing because there was a.

Hole in their retirement plan, right?

Oh, ha ha. That's pretty good. Adam is a part time comedian.

When he's not on the show, it.

Doesn'T pay the bills.

Yeah, right, exactly, exactly. But you know what? We, Adam, here in Dallas, we just walked over from the hotel here to the JFK assassination site. Now, I gotta tell you right around, well, shortly after you were born I'm guessing Adam? Yes. I'm the senior person here, and I saw the movie jfk, the famous Oliver Stone movie. We had Oliver Stone's son on the show before he talked about many of his father's projects. And that movie intrigued me so much about the JFK assassination that I actually flew to Dallas in the early 90s to visit the former book depository where Oswald supposedly took the shot from. Now, Adam, you live in Austin, and you were just in Dallas this weekend, although we didn't see each other here. Have you been to that site?

I have not been. I was at the Perot Museum with my son. And that's actually a really cool museum. It could spend a whole day in there. I didn't have a whole day, but that's more like dinosaurs and earth and science stuff. But I have not been to jail.

So it has nothing to do with Ross Perot and his career?

No, I didn't. I was a little surprised. I didn't research it at all before we went. And so I was a little surprised whenever I walked in and it was dinosaurs and space and all of that.

Got it. Got it. Well, you know, I kind of think it's too bad Perot didn't become president. What do you think of that? Or maybe you weren't really painted. You were a little young back then.

I was a little young, but based on what I know, from what I've heard about his policies, that probably wouldn't have been my cup of tea.

Really? Wow. I'm kind of surprised. I mean, I know you probably supported Clinton, but, you know, Perot was sort of a. You know, he appealed to both sides.

It's all about the economic stuff for me. I don't think he would have gone the way that I want to these days.

You know the famous line from H. Ross Perot when he ran for president? I think his most famous line was probably that giant sucking sound. And he was. He was referring, I believe, to Nash. I'm pretty sure he was referring to NAFTA back then when he said that. And he was talking about how all those jobs would be sucked out of the U.S. economy. And he was exactly right. That's exactly what happened. So, I don't know. I think Perot would have shook stuff up, too. And even no matter what side you're on, everybody will agree that Washington is a mess and it's just an insider's game. And politicians, no matter what side you're on, the aisle, don't represent the people anymore. And they're so Detached from us. And it's just sort of. That's a universal complaint either side of the aisle, I find. And do you agree? What do you think?

Oh, I would definitely agree, but he supported the balanced budget amendment, and that would be a death blow to the United States.

Yeah. You know, that's an interesting one because I'm glad you brought that up, because on the face of it, that sounds like a responsible idea. You know, on the face of it, I mean, I'm sure you'd agree that at face value. Right, right.

It's a great way to run a home.

Right.

Terrible way to run a country.

Now, why do you. I'm curious why you say that.

Because the only way you could balance a budget is if the government takes out as much as it puts into the economy. It has to be even. And the only way you can do that is to stagnate your growth. Your growth has to be zero. If that happens, your economy can't get bigger and it can't get smaller. So it's just. It would crush our GDP growth.

That I do agree with. I think as much as not having a balanced budget amendment allows politicians to be very irresponsible, the flip side of that, if we did have one, would just curtail growth. You know, it's sort of like, you know, I'd almost compare this to the Dave Ramsey philosophy. We had Dave Ramsey's number two man on the show, and he said all kinds of silly stuff that didn't make sense. But. But don't get me wrong, folks. I'm not hating on Dave Ramsey because I think for the audience he serves, he's carrying a really good message for people who are irresponsible and get themselves into debt and spend money on stupid things. I think Dave Ramsey's great, but I don't think he knows anything about investing. You know, he'd be like, oh, buy everything with cash. You know.

He gets your life to.

A point where you can actually think about investing.

Right, exactly. So if you are underwater and you've got a bunch of credit card debt and, you know, debt from being irresponsible, Dave Ramsey's the guy you need. And, you know, that's really a good message for anybody who has looked up to. And everybody has. People have looked up to certain, you know, mentors or idols. Right. You know, they're for certain stages of your life, and sometimes you need to kind of divorce from them and find a new mentor, a new guru, if you will. And I agree with that. That's a great way to put it. So you're right, a balanced budget amendment would make the country a much smaller country. And so the Dave Ramsey philosophy would be like the balanced budget amendment. The other side of the philosophy would be you've got to take risk, you've got to take on some debt. And really counterintuitively, the debt is actually less risky. That's the less risky position. And we've got an interesting story about that, the article we were just talking about off air, Adam, about Denver. Tell the audience what's going on in Denver. I posted this in our private Facebook group. Now the Venture alliance has access to this group and it was pretty interesting because what do I always say the best insurance is a high loan balance. Tell us about that story.

Yeah. So obviously the government shut down because compromise is dead. So Denver is saying, hey, if you've been furloughed, actually they've expanded it past furloughed. If you have, if you've experienced an income reduction due to involuntary employment, change is the official term. They're offering a grant for up to two months of mortgage payments, which they're saying A maximum is $5,000 total and you can apply for it. And if you get it, it's free money. It's not a loan. It's not an interest free loan. It's just $5,000 they're giving you so you can pay your mortgage and not be foreclosed on or go into bad credit situations.

The partial government shutdown, which I think is kind of awesome in a way, but you know, not really, but sort of kind of awesome. And I'm sure you'll disagree with me on that, Adam, but we don't need to go there be too long a discussion. We'll go, we'll get that one later. But this is not a federal government thing. This is just a Denver thing, right?

It's being paid for by Denver, the.

City or the county, one or the other. Right. And so, so it's a local government thing versus a federal government thing. But the point is, and why I posted this article is because it shows yet another of so many examples, Adam, where the people who do the seemingly right thing, they work hard, they make extra mortgage payments and they pay off their house. They pay it off early, right? Or they pay all cash for their house, they get burned the most because they're not going to get any of this free money. Okay? Similarly, when big natural disasters happen, like the old Hurricane Katrina, I remember reading all the articles about that, the mortgage companies and the state's attorney Generals, they put a moratorium on lenders saying, don't force anybody to pay their mortgage for six months. Now, that's fine. If you have a mortgage, you get this relief. Great. But what if you don't have a mortgage? Does someone send you the equivalent of your mortgage payment every month? No, of what it would be. You don't get anything.

Get six months of zero.

Yeah, exactly. So the best insurance is a high loan balance. And there are some marginal exceptions to this one that I've taken advantage of a little bit in my Florida property, and I explained that on a prior show. But by and large, really, you're just better off not using the property as a bank. You're better off using the property as a property. And it's the most debt favored asset class in America. It's the most tax favored asset class in America and of course, the most historically proven investment in the world. So. Yeah, interesting. Yeah.

And not only that the city's doing it, but then banks, I've been hearing stories about banks around the country are starting to get ready to make deals with people already, the federal employees, so that they don't have to go after them. It's happening now, too. Not just Katrina there. I've been hearing about mortgage companies talking to furloughed workers and saying, you know, let's work out a deal beforehand so this doesn't become a thing.

Yeah, yeah. You get no help if you've done the seemingly right thing and paid your mortgage off. So having that loan balance, you're going to get some relief. You're going to get some help. So that's really interesting. Thanks for bringing that up and the balanced budget amendment. Adam, So I told you that this client case study we're about to hear was inspired by a package of bagels. And what I meant by that, and you'll hear our clients say that here in a couple of minutes, is that inflation is so real and so significant and most people don't realize it because it's not just the price of things going up, it's the size of things getting smaller. So I am looking at Consumer Reports, November 2015 issue. I just grabbed this, you know, before I got on the plane. And it's three years old, four years old. Well, three and a half. A little more than three years old.

Which means you moved a three and a half year old magazine.

Yes, I do. I tend to keep a lot of stuff. You know, I'm kind of a bit of a pack rat. So I grabbed this and I was reading it on the plane. This article is entitled that Empty Feeling. Have you ever felt duped when opening a bag of chips or a bottle of pills only to see a lot less product than you expected? Learn how to shop smarter. See the inflation. They can either raise the price of something or give you less of it, which effectively is the same as raising the price. So on the Hershey Giant milk chocolate bar, it was 7 ounces. Now it's 6.8 ounces. On the Ivory soap bar, it went from 4.5 ounces to just 4 ounces in 2012. And they show pictures of all this stuff, which is fascinating. Less fattening ice cream. Well, how about a larger package with two less bars in it? This one really surprised the writer. It said, really wrote. Jocelyn wood of Salem, New Hampshire, and she sent Consumer Reports a photo of the 12 box and now the 10 pack box of hood ice cream sandwiches. Right. I love ice cream sandwiches, by the way. Hey, audience listeners, if you ever want to get on my good side, just bring me an ice cream sandwich. Those are good. Okay. Chips, NyQuil and DayQuil pills. Okay. You know, you're getting less and less. The package sizing is the same. A jar of peanut butter, it's got a big dimple in the bottom now in the plastic to take up space so they don't have to give you as much peanut butter. The. Well, I guess the lid that you screw on to the laundry detergent, you know, when you got a big bottle of laundry detergent, they make that lid now so big, you know, because it's a cup that you put the detergent in. Right. And they've been able to make it, the package look the same. And it used to be 64 ounces, now it's only 50, 59 ounces. Oreo cookies are smaller now. They just give all these examples and that's just inflation, inflation, inflation. So you're really paying more. And my philosophy of investing is based largely on inflation. Inflation due step, destruction. You've heard me talk about that many times over the years. So there we go.

So you're saying when I land in San Diego for Meet the Masters, I need to go get a box of ice cream sandwiches for you to bring to the hotel?

You could do that. But please don't bring it from San Diego because you're going to want to be landing in Orange County, California.

I was thinking of last year. I apologize.

Yeah, that was last year and I.

Was just in San Diego, so it's on top of my head.

Yeah, yeah. Well, this time, folks, you're coming to Newport Beach, California on March 23rd and 24th, and we've got a beautiful hotel venue there. Jasonhartman.com masters for more details on that. Tickets have been selling very quickly, so we look forward to seeing all of you there. We're going to be announcing a couple great speakers real soon, and it's going to be a great event. This is our 21st anniversary meet the Masters event. So we look forward to seeing you all there. And Adam, time waits for nobody. We got to get to our guest interview, our client case study. You ready?

Let's do it.

Here we go.

What is the sort of the one trick, the hack, the secret that really empowers people to success? Income property, the most historically proven asset class in the entire world.

Let's break this down and look at some of the strengths of income property as an asset class. That this event is really helpful because.

I'm totally a newbie to real estate investment. And so I picked up so much information.

One of the great things about it is that it's so fragmented. Right. Embrace the fragmentation.

I've actually been learning a lot about tax benefits to real estate and a lot of I've been investing actually well over 10 years now and I learned a lot in new things today. The other advantage of this weekend is networking, meeting new property managers, meeting new area specialists and seeing the product they.

Have to offer that changes year by year.

We always love it when clients volunteer to come on the show and share their story and share kind of a client case study. So I saw this appointment booking come up. Someone booked an appointment on my link recently and I called him up and we've got Curtis Wrischuk on the phone and his wife Karen was not able to make it for the call today. But Curtis, welcome. How are you?

Hey, Jason, I'm doing great. Friday before a long weekend.

There you go. It's good to have you on the show. And you are in Raleigh, North Carolina, is that correct?

That's correct.

Fantastic. Well, just before we started kind of formally doing the interview here, you were telling me about your story and what got you interested in real estate. I guess it was bagels, right?

That's right. It started way back in 2008, right after the crash. I went to the store to buy groceries. I looked at the six pack of bagels and I saw that the price had increased 50 cents. And I thought, how can there be no inflation? I just saw a bunch of inflation in front of me. And so starting me down a journey about questioning what people were Telling me what I was hearing from the media. And it rolled back a lot of, I'll call it, brainwashing of propaganda that had been pushed on me. Eventually I came to the conclusion that, you know, maybe this will extreme, But I think 401ks are losing proposition. It's gambling. And after losing the money in 2008, I didn't want to gamble anymore. So I started learning and researching and moving forward. And eventually I came across you, believe it or not, on Carrie Less's podcast.

Sure.

And you said some things that really resonated with me. So I looked up your podcast, and I'm a bit of a skeptic. That's my nature.

Yep.

And so I actually started listening your podcast. I went back, and I actually think your best podcasts are your early ones.

I do too.

11 to 1 to 100. Right.

Thank you for.

The newbie started talking about things like how inflation is actually leveraged in your favor with real estate.

Right.

And being a numbers guy, I started looking into this and I actually went. I couldn't find your original podcast, but I bought, I think, the transcript off of Amazon.

Yes, yes.

So I kept reading and listening and then went forward in the podcast. Then I went to your website and I looked at the sightsee have for the different properties and the numbers. So I started learning about the numbers and what they meant. And being a skeptic, I am. And being a techie, I actually wrote a program to go and scrape your website and other people's websites and redo the calculations just so I could prove it out myself. And. And eventually I came to the conclusion that real estate is a great deal.

Yeah.

But I had a problem.

Yeah? What's the problem? You have a skeptical wife too.

I was even more skeptical. Right. And so the way I convinced her was that you had a conference in Orlando. And I asked her if she wanted to go to Orlando, but we had to go to the conference. And it was the Orlando thing first, I think, that swayed her to come. So we went to Orlando. We listened to the speakers. She's skeptical. Right. So she listened to speakers talk to people that were right beside us, and they had already bought houses, and they were happy with the results. And then she got up and went, talked to Aaron, who is in the back of the room. Right. And she grilled him, I think, for.

About two hours on financing issues.

Financing issues, mortgages, whatever she could think of. He handled it. And she walked me and said, let's do this. So we didn't buy a house that Day. But we. We started the ball rolling when 2016, we bought three houses. 2017, we bought two houses. And then in 2018, we bought six houses. Properties in Memphis, in Little Rock and in Jackson, Mississippi.

Fantastic.

Are you up to like 13 or 14 houses then?

Altogether, we're up to 13 houses.

You've got 13 properties there. Okay, great. And Curtis, you know what, I didn't ask you just so the listeners can get kind of get a little context here. What do you do for a living?

I am what's called a technical director for a high tech firm. So I oversee a bunch of software we develop and the engineers that are under it. So I'm. I don't do any more coding. I'm the guy who actually shepherds everything I would say to make sure it gets done. And I'm a problem solver.

That's fantastic. Yeah. So you have that analytical mind, and you even created AI. You programmed a little program to scrape our website and get the property information and then redo it with your own calculations. That's amazing. Wow.

Yeah. That's a skeptic in me. One of the things is that they had different interest rates. I don't love that. So I want to normalize everything. And you know how it starts.

Right.

You start off with a little thing. It gets bigger and bigger and bigger. Eventually I went to multiple sites and it helped. It helped to convince me. Right. Being sort of a skeptical guy.

Right, right. That's fantastic. Okay, great. So you've got that, you know, software engineer background. You know, that skepticism. And what does your wife do? What's her background?

My wife is in the quality department of a hospital here. It's a big hospital. Right. And she's in compliance. So she looks after making sure all the regulations are followed. And if there's a problem with respect to that, she has to intervene. So she has a very busy job as well as I do.

Yeah. And she. So she's doing regulatory compliance. Now you're up to 13 investment properties. So congratulations on your success there. And what really got you interested was it sounds like, you know, that you realize there's more inflation than you're being told. Right. And of course, income property performs extremely well against inflation, doesn't it? Right, right.

You gain equity. Right. Because the price goes up and that equity is leveraged by the ratio.

Right.

It increases by the ratio of your leverage. Right. Which really, you know, knock my socks off.

Yeah. You get a multiple.

You get a multiple. Right. And then your tenant pays your loan, you get some cash flow. And you get that. Was it inflation induced debt destruction?

Right, that's. That's the one people don't usually realize. Yeah.

Oh, and you get the tax break. Don't forget the tax break.

That's really important. Tax benefits. Yeah. Most tax favored asset class in America and the most historically proven asset class in the entire world. I think that's what I say. At least along your journey of buying properties. Tell us about that. I mean, what I always say, and I know people struggle with this. It's a very fragmented industry. You know, there's just a lot of different players that property managers, you have to deal with. Some are just bad and some are good and some are just mediocre and. And some are outright crooks. Get all types, you know, they're all different. And that. That's kind of frustrating a little bit. Right. Because you can't standardize things super well in our business. But also the benefit is that keeps the big institutional players out of it to some extent. I mean, they're here a little bit. We all know that. You know, Blackstone and Invitation Homes, we've all heard of those big institutional investors, but by and large, they're a really small player in the overall market size in the aggregate. Tell us about some of those experiences and how you overcame challenges or tempered disappointments or anything like that.

I hate to disappoint you, but it's been a great experience so far. And that the. One of the things that really drew me to your organization was that you had vetted the turnkey provider as well as the management company, and you said that you're a champion for your customers. And so I figured, well, that means he has leverage over these people so that if something goes wrong, you know, Jason Harmon and team can ride to my rescue. And so far I haven't had any issues in the sense of with the turnkey vendor or the management company. The management companies have been exceptional. You know, responsive, quick, professional. It's great. You know, for somebody who's really busy, this is a great way to invest. Now have to say that, being a skeptic, we went outside of your network. We did go to another turnkey vendor. We went to, you know, their place where they did their work. They had this beautiful binder with pamphlets and we looked at it. And then they went to show us the houses. And it was not what I expected. You know, the thing that scared me is we went to an older house. I was thinking this, this is a great investment property. They went into the basement and there is literally A electrical junction box with four wires coming out of one of each side hanging in midair.

Wow.

Hanging in midair.

Yeah.

So at that point, it was, well, we're not doing anything with this team of people. And we went back. We went back to your organizations because I hate to sound like a commercial, but they're just quality people.

Yeah. Well, thank you for that. I appreciate that. And we. We work hard on that. And I tell you, we miss out on a lot of business by really being, you know, people in our industry think we're too rigid, you know, and it's a tough balancing act because, of course, we want to have more business, but. And more inventory of properties, but, you know, you just can't cut corners. You got to maintain quality. So I'm glad to hear that. Not every experience is that positive, though. You know, people do have challenges with this stuff, and it's definitely far from perfect. It's just better than everything else. That's all I can say.

Well, yeah, so my threshold may be a little higher than normal, because I have. I deal with a lot of stuff at work, and so I just look at some stuff as. It's the way you get business done. Right. One of the things that happened to us is a year ago and a bit in Memphis, one of our houses, the water heater took, pipe broke, and the tenant was away for two weeks, and they came back to find, I guess, a stream of water flowing through their driveway.

Mm.

Total the house, right?

Yeah.

But the property management company just handled it all. So one tip I have is if your property management company has struck a deal with a local insurance company for landlord, take that local insurance. That's. We had changed that over just a couple weeks before, and because we had done that, it saved us so much grief. Because it was a local insurance company, they had a plan made just for us. They paid our mortgage for several months while everything was being reconstructed. You know, in some ways, it was challenging emotionally, but from a time standpoint, there was very little drain. Management company handled everything. So we were just very impressed.

That's fantastic. So have good insurance. That is definitely important. Do you know how much that claim was? I'm kind of curious. Did you get involved and see the. The price that the, you know, what the insurance company paid?

I think it was around 55k.

Whoa, that is a big one.

50 or 55k?

Yeah, yeah, that is a big one. But you know what? You got a rehabbed house. I mean, they probably built you a partial movement. Yeah, right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Fantastic. And did you. I'm curious, did you lose your tenant during all that time? I mean, where did the tenant stay? Or did they just move to another property? And then you had to get a.

New tenant, so the tenant had tenant insurance, and so they were able immediately to move, I guess to a hotel, a motel or something. And they were great tenants, but we couldn't expect them to wait around for three or four months. So they actually went somewhere else. And then we got another tenant.

Right.

I think the rehab took about five months, believe it or not.

Wow, that is. I think that's the biggest one I've ever heard of. I've never heard of a claim that big or rehab that long. That's pretty extensive.

Well, the water heater was in the attic.

Oh, so it went all through the house.

Yeah, that's all through the house.

That's an unusual design, too. Yeah, definitely. Well, what are your plans for your real estate portfolio? Are you still buying more properties?

We do plan on buying more properties. We'll get up to our 18, because my wife and I are both on our primary. And then we'll just. We're not sure. You know, we may move into notes, we may move into, you know, maybe multifamily syndications. I think investing in hard, real physical assets that generate cash.

Right.

Is the thing to do coming up. I mean, that is where my focus is.

Yeah.

None of this paper stuff that can evaporate.

Yeah, yeah, no, I agree with you. I mean, no matter what. And I've tried almost everything out there in terms of investments. I just like the hard asset the best. It's the best. And I don't like syndications because, you know, that's commandment number three. Thou shalt maintain control. You're violating it because the syndicator can rip you off. And I just got a call from a New York Times reporter about a guy that was out peddling a fund. And it's like a 1.2 billion with a B dollar fund. So it's a big fund. The SEC is all over them now because they are alleging that they were running a Ponzi scheme. Those tax lien investments I did, you know, I filed a lawsuit claiming that that company was running a Ponzi scheme. And now I've been burned on my first first position loan, the first position mortgage. I got burned on some seconds before, but never a first until just recently. And I'm going through that now. We're going to have to take a real haircut on that deal. It looks like, you know, when you, when you hold the paper, there are all these lending rules that you have to abide by and all this stuff. It's pretty complicated stuff, you know, to navigate that world. And just the idea of buying a house and renting into someone, that's just simple, you know, it really is a simple asset class and that's what I love about it.

Yep, I agree.

Yeah. Yeah, good stuff. So do you have retirement plans or why real estate investing? Just to make more money or do you want to get out of the rat race and retire? What's the plan?

So that is at least a huge portion of our retirement thoughts, right? You know, you have this rent. The rent should track inflation to some degree. I can trust that, you know, 75% of that rent or cash flow will come in and 25% will be for some sort of disbursements. That's sort of the ratio I'm finding. And so that is what we'll use for our retirement. A huge part of our retirement funds month to month. You also get all the other benefits. So, yeah, we're planning on that. In fact, if all goes well, my wife will take an early retirement and, you know, she'll be the one managing the portfolio.

Fantastic. Now, any management tips for people? I mean, I'm glad to hear you're having such a good experience with the property management managers, but you also have to manage your own affairs, you know, bookkeeping a little bit and things like that. Any thoughts on, you know, how much time that takes every month to manage the 13 properties? You know, any, any tools that you're using to do that, property tracker or otherwise?

Yeah, at the moment, we aren't using any external software other than a spreadsheet. I've just made it a habit, you know, every Saturday, roughly every Saturday, to spend about an hour going through things. When things come up from the property management company, they come in by email. Deal with them right away, don't let them accumulate or wait. I usually find that that makes things a lot easier. One of the realizations I've come to is that when you talk about the real estate investment mechanism, it's the people that matter. And so what mattered the most to me was from a property management, having people I could trust, that I liked, that had experience. And so that mattered a lot to me. Just from a sleepy, well perspective, from a, you know, a bookkeeping perspective. Well, we're using Excel at the moment, right. And I have an income tax accountant that manages all the other stuff. And I just plop the papers on his desk. He's really good too.

Yeah, that's. Yeah, good. Good for you. Good for you. The team is. You know, I've said this often. I'd rather have an A team, you know, in terms of the local market specialist and the property management company in a B market, than the other way around. Because the team is so critical. It's just so critical to have a good team of people, including our team and that team on the ground, the boots on the ground, so to speak. So. Yeah, that's great. I couldn't agree more. That's very important part of it. Yeah.

When you invest in real estate, I think we can really invest in is the people that are on your team.

Right, right.

You'd lay the cash out once, but it's the people that really make that investment thing.

Right, right. Including the tenants, by the way. You know, a lot of people don't kind of consider that. And I said this on the show before, I'm sure you probably heard it, but I'll just say it again here. You know, when you think about it, someone is spending 33% to 40% of their monthly income on your property. And it's literally like you have all of these tenants working for you. You have 40% of a person's income. That is hugely significant. I mean, what other business can say that they get 40% of someone's income, right. Apple Computer can't say that. You know, no other, no restaurant can say that. Nobody can say that. Except a landlord. The landlord gets a third to 40% of their monthly income. It's amazing.

I guess it depends if you consider the government a business, right?

Well, fair enough. Yes. The government gets a big percentage too, especially if you live in New York or California. Yeah, no question about that. You know, good, good stuff. So you and Karen have been married for 33 years, right?

That's right.

Fantastic. And you never thought about real estate investing sooner in your marriage?

I wish I had. I really wish I had. It took a large amount of deprogramming to stop looking at my 401k or the stock market. And in my job, I have to deal with data. So I had the choice of listening to the propaganda or listening the data. Eventually the data won out and it led me down another path. And then, you know, again, learning about the four or five ways that real estate works in your favor is like, okay, this is a no brainer, but is it real? It. It sounded too good to be true. So it was hyper skeptical. Eventually I convinced myself.

Right.

I wish I'd known earlier. The good news, I think it's good news is that we're speaking to our children. So my son, who's 24 and graduated, just bought his own house and has a renter. So he's house hacking, I guess. My oldest daughter is just buying right now their first property rental property. Even though they don't have their own house. Right. They're buying a rental.

That's fantastic.

That's how I do pass it down. Yeah. So that's what we're doing.

I lived at home at my mom's house. I bought a rental Property at age 20 and I didn't move out till I was 22.

So being a landlord first is very important. That's a good idea. Yeah. Really good, good stuff. Good stuff. Curtis, thank you so much for sharing this great story. I really appreciate it and I'm sure all the listeners will appreciate it. They always love hearing client case studies and listeners out there. If you're one of our clients, and I know many of you are, thousands of you, please reach out to us. We'd love to have you on the show. We always get so much nice feedback on these interviews and people just really appreciate. So thanks for giving back. Curtis. Thank you so much. And thank Karen as well. I know she couldn't be here today, but next time we'll have her on and appreciate your story and just want to wish you happy investing.

Thank you, Jason. You too.

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