Capital Raising, AI and New Opportunties In 2026 with Aaron Lambert

What's up everybody? Welcome back to the New and Experienced Investor Podcast. Today we have an awesome guest. He's actually calling in. We're going to be doing more virtual interviews and, uh, my friend Aaron is the first one. Super excited to have him on. I'm Alex Barnett. I'm one of your hosts. I'm the new guy.

I'm Joe Holmes and I'm the Experience Guy.

That's right. Yeah. Aaron Lambert is the founder of RKL Investments, a real estate investment company focused on creative finance acquisitions, dispositions, and cash-flowing rental aspects, or sorry, assets with a track record of 200+ wholesale transactions, 50+ properties bought and sold in over $30 million. In real estate transaction— in real estate transacted. Aaron brings real deal experience to every opportunity. Today he manages $4 million plus portfolio across Airbnb, midterm and long-term rentals, with continuing to build strategic partnerships, raise capital, and expand into rental markets across the states. Um, my buddy Aaron, let's bring him What's up, buddy?

What's going on, my man? How are you?

Great. Um, I wanted to just talk really quick about how we met. We actually met in on the, that, uh, I call it business church. I forget what it was. It was like, uh, the Pace Morby and business, um, deal, uh, deal maker weekend.

Deal maker. Yeah.

But we were actually in a deal That was supposed to happen. It was a Hemet deal, and there was like 7 daisy chainers on there.

Oh my God.

And we almost got it through the, through the, um, finish line. And guess who screwed it up? Let's all say it together: the agent.

Okay, you remember that?

Yeah, I do remember that. And the agent screwed it up because he wasn't talking to the dang Probate attorney. He wasn't telling the probate attorney like, hey, this is the numbers. And then the probate attorney was like, oh, I got to get paid. And this dude was trying to get paid like some crazy amount of money. We're like, no. Yeah.

No.

And then they tried to hold our EMD for like, I don't know how long. And we had to get that back to whoever. I think it was your guy, right?

Yeah.

There was so many people in that deal.

It was crazy because we found like It was like out in the middle of nowhere and it had this garage. So we found like the perfect buyer that was looking for all this land and he owned like a shop and he wanted to have a shop there. One buyer, he was ready to go, walked it and everything, and then it all blew up at the end.

So people get greedy.

It was a pretty nice entry fee. No, it was probably like $150,000 or something. It was up there. I mean, I think the house was like $700,000 or something, but yeah, no, it was a win-win for everybody.

And then, you know, people get involved. And, but it was funny because, yeah, then I met Aaron there and I was like, I'm pretty sure we're trying to— we were trying to do that deal together. And then from there, you know, it was just love at first sight, as they say, into the business. Well, uh, why don't you jump— oh, sorry, go ahead.

Oh yeah, I was gonna just comment a little more on that deal. We actually reached out to Pace And asked him about a probate attorney and how to do probate sub-2s. And he's like, oh yeah. So he sent me to his probate attorney and his probate attorney talked to him back and forth a little bit. And then finally he just was like, he, he talked, I don't know if he talked to the other probate attorney. He's like, yeah, I'm not gonna be able to help y'all. The whole deal was just like, no, we can't do it because it was California rules over like, uh, I guess he was in Vegas, or not Vegas, Arizona or something, but that was a nightmare headache. Yeah, we're getting paid. Nope. No.

Yeah, exactly. Classic, classic wholesale deal. It's so— it's funny how many people will do all sorts of transactions outside of California. And then once you bring up, hey, this is actually in California, they're like, nope, we're done. I don't know why that is, but—

I don't know. Yeah.

There's plenty of deals to be had.

It's people in California love California. It's the people outside of California that are being told there's too much red tape. Don't get a rental because people will squat. And it's very true. But, you know, it's, it's not reality for the majority in California. You know what I mean?

Correct.

It can happen. Right. But it's harder to deal with. I actually mean, when I was wholesaling, we were, we went and we was wholesaling a deal in, uh, Desert Springs or Hot Desert.

Desert Hot Springs.

There you go. And the deal was we ended up having to pay as the wholesaler. We went and paid cash for keys for these squatters. There was just like 5 or 6 in there and we brought the, ended up getting the cops over there. That's what we had to do to get the— for the seller to buy the property. And it was like we were selling it to New Western. New Western had the buyer. So we drove out there from Vegas, gave the dude $5K cash for keys. Well, we locked up the house. The police put the signs on it. We made them sign paperwork and everything that they wouldn't come back.

They couldn't.

The very next day, there was a woman that was staying there that wasn't there when we went there. She went there the very next day and then everybody was living there again. Nobody knew about it until we sold it. And then the seller— the buyer was like, hey, they still got people in there. I'm like, bro, we got them out like the day before you closed. I can't help you. You didn't go over there and secure the property. But yeah, so that's like a— that was like a nightmare situation. But I did get my $5K back and I made like $20K on the deal. So there we go.

That's a happy ending.

Yes. It was worth the drive.

Heck yeah. Um, yeah, why don't you go ahead and, and kind of introduce yourself to the audience and let us know how you got into real estate and, you know, bring us up to current day?

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I started in real estate. Well, my name is Aaron Lambert, by the way. You already know that. From Louisiana, moved to Vegas in 2020. COVID happened, started, uh, uh, on a whim. I'm not a business owner at this point, not an entrepreneur. Started a business selling COVID supplies.

You know, when COVID happened, everybody needed a mask and gloves.

Well, long story short, I was able to get a COVID test kit, uh, distribution with a company out in New Jersey. Next 18 months, I did like $30 million in revenue. And whenever COVID died, dude, it was like me and another guy. The other guy wasn't doing much work. I was like literally handwriting invoices, drop shipping millions of dollars worth of test kits across the country. Government agencies, Walmart, McDonald's was buying them from us. They didn't even know who they were buying them from, but it was wild. So anyways, that calmed down and I took some of my, uh, my winnings, as I would call it, and started buying real estate. I bought 5 properties in Louisiana, which is where I'm from, turned, uh, 3 of them in air— 3 of them in Airbnbs, 1 in the midterm, and I kept 1 as a long-term Bought some property out here in Vegas, and then something unfortunate happened. Me and my partner on the test kit side of things, we got swindled out of like the million dollars that was left in the company. So that kind of put us in a bad spot. So I started wholesaling. Wholesaling for like, I did it 3 years, and then between wholesaling, I bought a couple creative deals in Dallas, uh, like some co— turn them into co-livings right when that started being a thing, like PadSplit. 2023, bought another Airbnb in '24 creatively. I bought that one, uh, for $2,000, just took over the mortgage over in Houston. That was a cool deal.

Crazy.

I think, uh, the closing cost was more than the money I gave to the seller. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So then I started fixing flipping, did some out here in, uh, Bullhead, which is Arizona. Some in Vegas. 24. And then 25, I bought another co-living property, uh, went on Fractional, raised a bunch of money there. Then I started raising capital for some deals out here and then started finding these deals. And we started wholesaling in Florida. And then I started looking at the deals in Florida and I was like, oh, these are nice. There's some nice spreads on these deals. So started fixing and flipping in Florida and that went well. And then we started looking at new construction because the houses we were flipping were flooded houses. There's a lot of red tape with flooded houses. There's not that much red tape, not as much red tape with if you're scraping it and building it because you're building above floodplain. So we started doing that and I got projects down there. Simultaneously, he was raising a bunch of capital out here in Vegas because out here in Vegas we have— I think we purchased maybe 25 or 30 since October, single-family homes that we convert into 55+ co-living. It's like the PadSplit model but for older people. And what's great about them, if you know what PadSplit is, you know those tenants like to jump around and move around. What's great about the people that are 55+ is they don't like to move much, so occupancy stays high. And we can put 2 in a room as opposed to PadSplit, you can only put 1. So I mean, that's up to date. So now that's where I am today.

Perfect.

Assisted living, first assisted living, uh, for memory care, and doing this new construction in Florida. And that's been my short stint in, uh, real estate. And now I'm here sitting in here with you.

Do you, in your pad splits, 55+, 2 in a room, um, do you have bunk beds? And who gets the top?

No, they're 55+. We do buy single stories. No, that would be nice. I actually toured a property the other day. It's like 3,500 square feet, single story, 26 beds, 4 rooms, 26 beds.

Oh my gosh.

She rents them out to the airlines. And she, she had 90% of her clientele or tenant base was Spirit. So Spirit went bankrupt. Everybody left.

So now she wants to sell.

So sad. And, uh, so she's, she's trying to master lease that out. So we're— I'm trying to figure out what I'm going to do with that. I don't want to do the airline thing, but yeah. So no, no bunk beds for the 55+.

Okay.

Uh, single story, 2 to a room, but 2 singles, like 2 little twin beds.

Yeah, they like the company, you know, they, they, they probably don't mind it.

Is it— is the whole space One gender or, you know, different genders in different rooms?

Typically, we teach— it stays the same gender, but there are some that are mixed. It really depends because some of them are— there's like some real elderly ladies that are just like, you know, they just chill on the couch and hang out. And, you know, so it's all just kind of that genre, maybe some a little better shape than others, just so to help around the house, whatnot. And, you know, for the men, they got some houses that are— they're all veterans, even though they're not on like a voucher or anything. And then there are some that are just kind of mixed, mixed with some people are still like, they still work. So, and have cars. So they— the way that my partners do it, they'll— they, when they do the application, or when the lead comes in, they'll talk to them, and then they kind of place them, you know, one, where they need to be in the area, and two, in a certain house that fits their— Whatever it is, their situation, their gender, whatnot.

Wow.

Love that. So it seems like in a short period of time, you've jumped around to different asset classes, different exit strategies. If somebody was just starting out, would you suggest that they start wholesaling or go straight to a different exit strategy, whatever's working?

Personally, I would tell them to run as fast as they can from wholesaling, but that's just me because I don't Sure. Sure. You know, for me, I, you know, it was like, it was a love-hate relationship because we were wholesaling mostly creative deals, and that is painful. Very painful. If I had to do it all over again, if I had to give any advice to anybody that's thinking about wholesaling, because it is a very low barrier of entry, I would maybe think about doing the bird dog method before that. Right. It depends. You might be set up, like you might have some capital that you want to allocate. Maybe you meet a partner or something. But my suggestion or advice, if you was going into wholesaling, would be to focus on cash deals, not creative deals. I mean, most people probably think that anyways when they think wholesale, but yeah, the wholesale creative is like, I would rather wholesale cash, take that money, buy the creative deals if I had to do it all over again.

Yeah, I agree. There's just so many moving parts and then you trying to squeeze out $5K from all that stuff is just, it's kind of unbearable at some points. Well, and we've seen kind of when it comes to the sub-2s, there was like a sort of a backlash because there were buyers that were defaulting and then the seller has your contact because you were the point of contact and now that's tarnished your reputation. That luckily never happened to me, even though I've subbed, I've wholesaled sub-2s. As far as I know, everyone's paying. But, you know, it's definitely when you're just going willy-nilly with it, I'm sure there's a lot of buyers that just stop paying and, you know, said screw it.

It happened to me.

Okay. Please elaborate.

Good story. Good story.

Were you vetting any of these buyers that you were selling these properties to?

At the— well, at first it was our first deal, right? After that, you know, it was a semi-vet, right? I don't think we vetted them fully. And it came to a, you know, it was like, how many deals have you bought like this? Like, do other people know you? Like most of the people in the community, really. And, you know, if they had the cash to close, uh, you know, like, okay, let's go, right? Whatever. You know, the wholesaler's not thinking about vetting the buyer most of the time. I say that really good wholesalers should. Yes, on our first deal, we had a lady. She was actually an agent. It was a listed property. It was an Airbnb, and it was generating money. I don't I don't think it was cash flowing, but they wanted to sell it, and they wanted they was buying another house, and so we. Ended up getting under contract, and we found a member in one of our communities that we're in, and he, he bought it. And then he was gonna hold— he was gonna do the Airbnb thing, but he immediately wrapped it to another buyer, and which is fine, whatever, uh, but he let the mortgage lapse like 60 days instead of paying it. Like the whole purpose of, in my opinion, like one of the real cool things about a wrap is you as the seller, right, have a, have a layer of protection to protect the original seller. Like, okay, so you're, you're the buyer, right? You're the buyer. You're gonna now wrap it to somebody, which a wrap is just taking the deal and selling it to somebody with adding some points on it. But, you know, for me, that's a great deal because If you as the now the newest buyer default, I have time to then go make it right with the bank and, you know, make that and then get you out, right? Because that would be the stipulation. Like, if you don't make payments, you got to go, right? There's— what is the— what are they called? Like, um, I guess it would be like a contract for deed or like a lease option kind. I can't remember the contract that he did.

Yeah.

But that's what happened. So they started calling us. And they're like, my, my credit went down like 80, 90 points. I think it was like 120. I was like, oh my God, are you kidding me? And then we called the guy that we sold it to and he's like, he's being just a jerk about it. He doesn't want to do anything. He's like, no, you're not right. He's like, I'm like, bro, here's the credit report, my man. I'm like, her, you didn't pay a mortgage for 60 days. Like, what's going on? Anyways, it, it drug on for us. Like probably a year because she kept calling. She was crying. She's like, "I don't know what to do. We gotta buy another house." Like it was nightmare, and I didn't even know what to do. I sent her to some like credit, you know, fixer people that say they can do move mountains, right? But I don't think I don't know if it ever happened. But yeah, it it was something that I was like, man, I do not want to do that again. I don't want to mess people's. Lives up. You know, I don't want to mess with people's money. Don't want to mess people's lives up. So it was it was a very very lesson, a hard lesson learned that lingered for a while. I mean, she hadn't contacted us in a while, so I'm assuming she got it all taken care of. But still rough.

Yeah. Yeah.

And it's it's kind of hard to learn those lessons without actually going through that sort of thing. I think some of the backlash from you know maybe. the people looking at mentorships that teach creative finance on the outside is like they explain it in a way where it can get you started to where you can understand the basic functions of each of these exit strategies, but they don't really lay out the cons, I guess. I mean, there's 100 different things that could go wrong, so how could you? But maybe you teach it with a little bit more caution. I'm not sure. I don't know what the answer is.

It depends who's teaching.

Yeah, no, that's true. I mean, because, you know, it's like, it can get explained really easily. And so you're like, oh yeah, that's simple enough. But you just don't know what you don't know. It's classic, classic phrase. But that's how you learn.

I think, I think for me, it's more like whenever I'm talking about it, like I'm telling people, it's like, if you're gonna buy it for you, Or if you're in the deal, you control some aspect of it, and you're standing on a piece of crap. Yeah, buy it, right? Buy it because totally it could have a good interest rate. It could have good terms and all this stuff.

Yeah.

The wholesale aspect of it is where it kind of gets tricky because now you're handing it off to somebody that you don't know if they're going to perform. So now you're putting the seller at risk, right? So that's kind of like, but you know whether tell somebody to do it or not, it all depends on their situation. You know how to. How to— but I think the wholesale aspect of it is the kind of this part you want to stay away from. And there's another point that you might be able to expound on, is I struggled with, is like always raising capital, right? They tell you go raise capital before you get a deal, right? Well, okay, I got some— somebody that wants to lend some capital for a year. I got a seller finance deal or sub-to deal, like, okay, cool, right? They come in the deal, the deal makes, you know, they want 12%, the deal makes 20% cash on cash. Well, at the end of the year, you gotta owe that principal back to the lender. It's like the property didn't make that much. How do you expect the lender? So you have a lot of that going on too. People doing these short-term loans on like creative finance deals, and they're not getting paid back. And they're getting, you know, getting stuck with either not getting their money back or a house that's not performing.

A year seems like it's a long time until that year comes up and that payment is due. You're like, wait a second, I just got this thing.

It goes fast.

It goes real fast.

It goes fast.

You just— yeah, you don't just block their number, do you? I've never done that.

No, for who? I'm just kidding. Yeah, no, no, absolutely not.

No, no, I'm just joking. No, no. And that, that's, that's one thing that I do like about you, Aaron, and, and you are raising capital and like Joe and I cover, um, a lot of times on here is like guys that start raising for funds, you know, into like the hundreds of millions and then they're just basically living off of that and then never paying it back. But I know, um, even with you, it's like some deals go sideways. You're always picking up the phone. You're always, you know, like facing people head on and just being talking them through whatever may be going on. Because that's just part of the game.

Yeah. Yeah. The way I raise capital, I don't really get paid until they get paid back. When my lenders get paid back is usually when I'm getting some money, right? Either on a sale or refinance, or we're just paying them back from whatever else we got capital coming in, right? That's when I get paid, uh, on all— most of all my deals.

It's a good plan.

There have been times where I take a little bit up front, but yeah, do it. Doing a fund and living off of that, it sounds great, but not really. I don't want that stress.

Yeah, it usually ends up, um, like 10 years in, you know, federal prison, and then, and then who knows.

I've always said that the only person that makes money in a syndication Is the syndicator themselves, you know, because it's like they get paid upfront, they get paid during the transaction, and then they get paid at the sale.

Yeah, I mean, they're putting a lot into it. They got to get a little something something. That's just, you know.

And they never participate in the loss.

Right.

Well, yeah, yeah, it's just, you know, other people's money, but It's just part of the deal. I mean, I bet you there are a bunch and we don't cover them when it's just, hey, the deal went perfect. Everybody got their preferred returns and then they exited, they got their payouts, and then they're onto the next deal. We're not seeing the headlines from that, but—

Maybe because there isn't any.

Yeah, exactly.

But yeah, Okay.

No, no, no, no. Jump, jump in.

Yeah, I was gonna say, you know, people focus on the negative more than— they'll, they'll talk about the negative way longer than they'll talk about the positive. I don't know why that is in life. Uh, yeah, it just seems to happen. I— and talking about syndications, one of my, uh, lenders, she calls herself a newbie, but she's lent, um, on several deals over the past 5 years, I think. And one she was referring to the other day, she had— they had lost $100,000 on a syndication deal that they did, I think, like right before COVID or something. And she said they might get— they're still fighting, kind of get their money back, but obviously no interest. And they're hoping to get all their principal back. But yeah, it's been a struggle for the past 5 years because they're like, You know, that was kind of like one of our little nest eggs. We were just gonna let it grow, but COVID happened and kind of screwed things up. And then the syndicators, you know, just like you said, they, you know, it's all written in contract. They, you know, the money goes, it goes, right? That's part of the risk, at least on their front. So yeah, it's a bad deal. But yeah, I want to hear about the good ones. Where are the— you do hear about the good ones. You know, when you hear about the good ones, Looks like he's trying to raise capital.

Yeah. True.

That's right. They're like, I've got a deal for you and my last 5 went gangbusters.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, I know. I know.

Yeah. That's true.

Yeah, that is true. So what was sort of the mindset shift from going from wholesaler flipper to long-term portfolio owner? And what made you Do that?

You know, I don't know if there was a—I mean, there probably was a mind shift, shift, mindset shift, or just I'm a fed up shift. You know, like I was fed up with wholesaling was like supposed to just be temporary, not temporary for three years. It was supposed to okay, do a couple deals, cool, get some traction, and then maybe roll into. Fix and flip. I've always been enamored about fix and flip for years before I ever did one. And I'd say before, I'd say like 5 years before I even did my first real estate deal, I, I was in my brain like I knew everything about— not everything, but like I was reading so many books, doing so much research, and you know where I was at the time, I was unable to Move forward with real estate. Once I got to a place where I could, then then I did, right? But I did at that time. I did have a mindset of like, how am I going to do? Where am I going to get the money from? But going from wholesale into fix and flip, I had already that shift had already vanished. Okay, I know where I can get the money from, but it just it it didn't happen near as fast as I wanted to, and it was just a whenever I got out of. Wholesales, like, I was just fed up, fed up with the daily grind, fed up with the, you know, oh cool, we got, we, we gotta win. Oh, here's your 2 grand, dude. Like, that's cool if there's like 4 or 5 of those a week, but yeah, you know.

Yeah.

And, and it was just, it was a, it was a battle too because I wanted to do cash. And you know, with cash You need a little more capital to do it right, you know, because there's a little more marketing, or you need more staff, more people. It's, it's a lot more different than on market because we were doing just strictly on market. And of course, you could do cash on market, uh, the margins are thinner, but so that's just where we were. So, and, you know, once I started doing these flips in Florida and then these, these properties out here in Vegas, my time was just— Not there. And I didn't want to do it anyway, so it worked out.

Absolutely. Yeah. It's like when you first start in wholesaling and you get that 10 grand, it seems like so much. And then you're like, yeah, after the few years, you're like, how can I do the least amount of deals with the biggest spreads? And those are out there. And those are out there. And maybe they take a little bit longer or maybe locating them takes a little bit longer, but Yeah. Joe's got a sort of a mindset right now that we're just going for straight home runs right now. We're not screwing around with anything skinny. We're just going for home runs because we don't know how long the market's going to stay like it is. I mean, we were promised lower interest rates, but who knows when that's going to happen? And so you just kind of got to ride it out as long as you can and just go for the home runs. Yep.

Joe, so y'all are partners on the mobile homes and stuff too? Correct. Yes. Oh, nice. Okay. Right on. Yeah. Yeah, I see you on the mobile home seem to be a big hit. I was just on the mastermind call earlier and they were talking about this is all they do is mobile homes, not in California, somewhere else. But yeah, you know, I mean, you've talked about it before and the low barrier of entry, the decent size. Uh, wins and then just the ease of the project.

Right. Yeah. And, um, yeah, just less competition cuz, you know, people still think it's just like an RV basically that you're buying and selling. So, um, yeah, no, we love it and, and we're gonna, we're gonna keep on that. Um, one other thing that I tried or that I was a part of the, over this last year was like the co-living. And I jumped onto yours, that one in Florida. What do you, after being an operator in this, what? No, you're fine. You're fine. This is a gotcha moment. No, I'm just kidding. No, after being an operator on the co-living, what are your thoughts from the hype of it to now living the reality of it?

Well, I had already owned co-living before the Florida one. I have 2 in Dallas, and, you know, I've managed the Airbnbs and stuff. It's a little different, right? But, um, so it wasn't a huge shock. But the Florida deal, as you know— well, Pat, let me just say, pad split, um, model is great, but it is a lot of like If I'm not the manager talking to the people, I would lose my mind and kick everybody out and tell them to go down the street. Me too. Me too, dude. The first week that we had our first property in Dallas, it was Mesquite property. I had the, the notifications on, right? Because I had been doing it for Airbnb, right? And I was, I was pretty good at Airbnb's customer service. I was Pretty chill, you know, talking. Hey, let me figure it out. Well, I got you. No worries. I started seeing all these messages come in through PadSplit and the stuff that they're talking about. I'm like, are you serious right now? And then I'm like, I'm like getting anxiety reading these dang messages and talking to these people. And then I had this one girl. She Supposedly in the Army, didn't pay for like 4 or 5 weeks and just complained the whole time. I'm like, are you— I was like, you know what's funny? The people that pay the least complain the most, and you are the worst. You're not even paying and you're complaining. You need to change the light bulb? I got it. Go to Walmart. Like, and then finally I had— I was like, I was like, I turned my notifications off. I said, uh, I told my property manager, I was like, bro, I can't handle this. So, but operating co-living, so I would say, yeah, it's on paper, it looks good. The setup process can be— Yeah.

Okay.

The setup process can be tedious. Pad split takes chunks, and if people don't stay in the property, you just get chunked down every month. You know, our property in Florida is kind of like a one-off. Meaning the amount of just literal crap we had to deal with on that one with the plumbing. But, you know, whenever you're putting more people in a— this is another thing I don't really— people don't really tell you— when you're putting more people in a house, you know, there's— if you don't really kind of like plan for the extra usage of everything, then Yeah, it could become a problem. Like, we've had electrical issues because of it, a lot of plumbing issues. And then we didn't have rats when we had 3 or 4 people in the house. Now we got 10 people in the house. Now we got these dudes coming down the street with a backpack, like, come on, bro, I got food over here.

Oh my God.

So yeah, these are things they don't tell you. Nobody tells you that, right? And, uh, so it's completely different operating one of these things. And I'm so thankful for my property manager in Florida. He's, uh, he doesn't really bother me with little stuff, only when, you know, obviously big stuff. But, um, and then our properties manager in, uh, Dallas, which— Jose de la Macora. I'm gonna put his name out there because I want to, you know, thank him if he's watching ever. But he's, he's a stand-up guy. He's probably got Over 100 doors on PadSplit. He helped us get started out there in Dallas. Sub2 student, you know, really good guy, knows his stuff, like really sharp. Um, but yeah, he, he's, he's the one that was managing our, uh, properties in Dallas, and he, he actually did the construction and everything on them. So jam-up job there. But pro— if you're getting into co-living, right, and you're gonna do PadSplit, you need to, you need to find you really good property managers unless you like to hear all the bickering. And you just get— and prepare and do your underwriting a little, you know, even more conservative than you think you were doing it.

Yes.

Yeah, it looks good on paper, but at the end of the day, sometimes—

Alex and I went to, uh, to a PadSplit, uh, presentation, and then we also had him come to our meetup and do a presentation.

Yes.

And I told Alex, you know, like literally right after that, there was one guy there that had a PadSplit and he was going on, on, you know, these are almost my family and I go every week and I bring them a pizza. And I look at Alex, you know, after the meetup and I go, are you serious? Do you expect me to go and meet with these people that are renting my place and give them a pizza every month? That's way too much Management for me. No, no way. I'm not doing this. That's crazy. That's nuts.

Yeah, I know. That is. I know. Yeah. Well, and, and I think, um, with the PadSplit fees, I think the answer was always put more people in there, put more people in there. And then it, you know, eventually you got, you've seen it where it's like 20 people in a single-family house and that just becomes insane to manage.

Yeah, I mean, just complaints from the neighbors alone.

Yeah, you know, well, you know, our property in Florida, you know, it's like a duplex. It's 4,000 square feet. It could, it could literally be— we could have set it up as 10 beds and a triplex. That upstairs, I think we walked through it before and told you about it, but if I had to do it again, I think I would have done That I would have put a little kitchenette upstairs. Of course, I could never have foreseen the plumbing issue or would have known that. But, you know, now looking forward, I know, let's, let's check that before we buy the place, especially if we're putting people in there. You know, now out here in Vegas, right, speaking of co-living, we don't do PadSplit, same model, kind of, you know, it's shared housing. But it's 55+ as stated, and single-family, one-story, no stairs, and no HOA. And, you know, our minimum is like 1,500 square feet, but we could put in like a 3-bed, 2-bath, we could put 5 people in there, no problem, and get around almost $6,000, right? So no pad split fees, and they don't leave every other month. So the model's real good, but, um, that lead is a little trickier to get. You know, you need more relationships with case managers. You know, there are people that, um, that will generate those leads for you, but they're more like relationship-based to acquire those leads, at least what I know, right?

Yeah.

But once you've got that, it's, it's, it's good, right? When you move them in, You can put 2 to a room. Obviously you don't want to have 2 in every room, but you know what we do is like we'll have, um, we'll convert, like maybe we'll add a room or maybe we'll convert the garage. We like 2-car garage because you can make those real quick. You know, 2-car garage, you could get 2 bedrooms, add 2 rooms and a bathroom, and I think it's roughly like $25,000. $25,000. But you can get either $2,400 or $3,200 depending on if, you know, some of the garages are a little bit bigger. But if you could put 2 beds in each one, that's $3,200, $1,600, that's $800 a bed, that's $1,600 each room a month. And then you got the other 3 single rooms that we would do like $1,200 as a minimum. So the pencil's out, right? As long as you—

Yeah.

Your PITI is not too high. Of course, you have a little more expenses on the side of like, like kind of like the care, like you have, we have like a 24-hour nurse on call, right?

Oh.

Of course, you know, we're not paying for them unless they get called, right? And same with a maintenance guy, but they are a little more expensive. I'd say they allocate like maybe like $400 a month for that. And that's, that's for a couple of properties, not just one. So, but the expenses are a lot less whenever you're factoring in the PadSplit fees. 100%.

Yeah, I know. Absolutely. And I think they're just getting— I mean, they're already like changing the fee structure and stuff, it seems like pretty regularly. The 55+ seems like a good idea. Do you need— it's not like assisted living, so you don't need any special licenses or anything, right? Or is there any sort of, you know, thing like that?

No, they call it independent living.

Ah, okay.

Yeah, independent living. It's like your lowest form of assisted living without the assistance.

Right.

So they do have— they do make sure there's like, if it's— if there's a step They have a ramp. They try to have all walk-in showers mostly. If they, if they don't convert it to like a walk-in shower, then they would have— they would just place specific tenants, right? Because not all the— not all of them are like, you know, I can't walk upstairs or nothing, because they do have— we do have some 2 stories here in town. But that's where it kind of like the screening process goes in. But Yeah.

Okay. Yeah. Joe and I are looking at a house right now. It's like one of those where the guy is just straight up, I'm done with my payments, but the payment's like $5,000.

Um, how big's the house?

It's probably like 3,500. Mm-hmm. 5 bedrooms already. Mm-hmm. Oh, that's 3 bathrooms. That's money.

Okay, thank you. Uh, and Alex is gonna manage it.

Well, if it's— dude, old people love me, so what do I gotta do?

Where, where, where is it?

Beaumont. Uh, you know where that is? It's like off the 10, you know, kind of. Yeah, yeah, it's in like a new— it's like a— it's— I think the house was built in 2021.

Oh, okay, that's even better. Single story?

No, no, that's why he's got— he's got to leave because he's had 3 strokes. And so he can't— yeah, go up the stairs anymore. So I need to get people that are—

3,500 square feet. That thing's huge. What you want to do is, you know, obviously, you want to understand the laws on how many people— like here in Vegas, you can have like 10 non-related people in like a kind of scenario. But I don't know. That's You know, really on you. Whatever you want to do. Put pack them in there like sardines, or or or listen. Here's a model that that not a lot of people are doing, and I have some partners that have done it on the East Coast. They bought a property. DSCR is a four bedroom. They bought it for three fifty, and they sold. I don't know. I don't know how the structure is, but they sold each room at $100,000.

Wow.

One tenant, one person bought 2 rooms and rents one out. And then the other tenant— and then there's 2 other people bought the other 2 rooms. They own the room. They can do whatever they want with it. And then they pay a certain amount on top, like a percentage. I forget what the interest rate is, but I'm like, and they pay their own utilities. They pay. I'm like, that's interesting. I don't know the whole like how the deeds of trust and work and stuff like that. Like we didn't get into that, but he's like, this is our first one. It's a pilot and it worked and we want to do more. I'm like, huh, okay. So they're looking at, I mean, they're buying more because they originally were doing the standard Well, not— yeah, I guess it was standard. They would buy a distressed home, they would fix it up, and then they would refinance it. They would fix it up with, you know, the co-living. But just like we know with any fix and flip, you budget $100,000 and it's $120,000, right? It's— and there, you know, you think it's going to take 4 weeks and it takes 4 months. Uh, you know, so they kept on running into that, so they're like, screw that. So they started buying Turnkey properties, and well, they well, I say they started. They bought one, and it worked out. They're like, okay, let's do it again. So that is interesting. Is an interesting model. I would have to get parameters around like like I said the deeds of trust. I don't know how they do that. But yeah, on the other five bed side house. Well, say that again.

What state?

I think they did it in South Carolina.

Okay.

But they were asking me, they wanted to do it here in Vegas because they were, I think they were targeting, I don't want to say targeting, but they were grabbing leads that were 55+ too. These people that, but these people obviously had a little, um, they were established, right? But I don't know what the situation is. But it seemed interesting. We started looking at it out here and then, um, now they're just going to be buying some of our co-livings that we already have operating, which is nice. And they're just going to keep them like that. But I would say for the 5-bedroom, that size home, 3,500 square feet, that's monstrous. I don't know what the rents go out there, but some of our properties out here for a 1-bedroom, that's like a nice size in the nice part of town. that has its own bathroom can go up to $2,000 for the room.

Oh, geez. Wow.

Right. So, you know, you have to— those tenants you have to find. But, you know, in a house that you're talking about in California, I don't know what the rents are in Beaumont, but, you know, that's for a private room, nice room, like in a— but you seem— seems like, um, you said his house is pretty new, so I would imagine. Somewhat decent part of town. Yeah, I don't know what the rents are in Beaumont, but yeah, I mean, they're not worth looking at. I'll look at it with you too.

Like, there we go.

It's like $3,200. Yeah, I think it was for the whole house. So I'm talking about the whole house, so not, not pad split, but $3,200. Um, but you know, like Alex said, the payment— because this guy just got bought this home like 6 months ago. Yeah, so his interest rate's like 7%.

Yes.

And so, you know, with, with PITIA, it's like $5,000, you know. So it doesn't make sense to buy it because you're negative cash flow, you know, $1,800 a month. It just doesn't make sense.

It's kind of like getting a DSCR loan without, without the new loan, because that's right, kind of what we're doing right now is 7% on our DSCRs.

Yeah. Yeah.

But I mean, okay, California is— the rates are a lot different than over here. Like, we need to be around, depending on the size, you know, for instance, we have a 3,500 square foot thing pulls in like $1,300 or $13,000, uh, a month because it's bigger and they have like 10 people and a lot of them have their own room. So—

I will manage that, Joe. I will manage that and we'll do $75 plus.

If 75 is age, I mean, yeah, yeah, they're not moving.

You've got, uh, exactly, you've got, you've got 5 bedrooms and you could probably create another 4, I would say, maybe more, right? So if let's say you get 10 grand a month, yeah, that covers it. That might work.

Yeah. And you get Ethel and, uh, you know, whoever else in there.

And I don't know, you have to get some healthy people to go upstairs though, because you keep putting unhealthy people down. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Need the, uh, that's right, the younger, the 70-year-olds. Yeah, the 70-year-olds that still do triathlons.

Yeah, put them upstairs. It's like, you know, $1,000 a month per room, which, you know, maybe even low.

Yeah, from what he said, that's what we do out here in Vegas. Yeah, okay. I mean, I don't know, Beaumont, Vegas.

Yeah, they're both hot.

Yeah, but Yeah, they are hot. But yeah, there's not as much to do in Beaumont.

So yeah, so maybe, maybe the rents are a little higher over here. But speaking of a 3,500 square foot or 3,200, I have a 3,900 square foot. It has 8 bedrooms and 1 living quarters for the staff. And they have a little section like an office and really huge area for like Activities, dining room, great room, almost like 2 living rooms as well. And it's 10 patients. It's a senior care for Alzheimer's. That thing's bringing in $40 grand a month, bro.

Oh, there is an idea. Alzheimer's patients, they'll forget every morning they wake up where they're at.

They keep paying rent every day. Yeah, we're gonna end up on the news with that one.

Yeah, that would be like that movie. What's that movie? That girl, uh, what, 20—

was it 21st Dates or something like that? Yeah, 41st Dates. Yeah, that was a good movie. Yeah, that was a good movie. Yeah, that was cute.

That was a heartwarming story. Now what you're talking about. But yeah, um, yeah, I mean, with, with the, with the care, I know there's, there's more, um, Like, I guess legality that goes into it as far as you need to—

Yes. Yes. The licensing and all that stuff.

Licensing and people looking over your shoulder.

Yeah. Yeah. There's a, there's a lot of, lot of, and there's, so we were talking to them because we're buying it right now. We don't own it yet. And we were there and they were like, yeah, they come because they got an A rating, right? So they got like ABCD ratings, I think, whenever they come. Well, the inspectors, they come, they'll give you a range. It's not like an hourly range or, you know, maybe 5-day range. No, it's like 2, 3 months. Like, we're going to come between this time. You better be ready. And the first thing they go in there, they check their binder, all the people that work there, making sure all their certificates are up to date, everything's up to date, all their licensing, everything. And then they check the place out, make sure none of the tenants are complaining, like talking to them, like It's serious. Yeah. So there's high reward, but it's a lot more work on one end to get those because you got to get zoned for it. And then you got to get the license. So it's like a big thing. You have sprinkler systems, you got a whole 9.

Oh my.

But about bringing that up is the size of it, you know, you know, for yours, I think it has 8, that one has 8 rooms with the 9. So like doing the 3200 with like 8 rooms is kind of nice. You Whenever you're doing the 55+, you want to leave room, lounging room, right? You want to leave the living room, the dining, kitchen kind of alone as much as you can because you want, you know, we just, you know, they're already not really doing much. You don't want to keep them in a room like in a prison cell.

That's what I was going to say. You just can't lock them in the room, you know, have this automatic On your phone. Oh yeah, we're gonna lock him in. Yeah, that's it. I'm done with that. You know, we're locking him in. You can't get out.

Yeah.

You know?

Yeah, I'm sure.

Alex, you're managing. You go over there. You take care of it.

Oh boy. Yeah. Well, that's interesting. And that's one thing that's nice. And I encourage people to follow Aaron here is because, you know, you're always kind of moving and shifting with the market. You're not necessarily just gung-ho on one thing. You could still be wholesaling right now, wholesaling creative deals, but you're trying things out, seeing what works, and then pivoting. Because I mean, even in my short time, it's been 5 years now, I've seen the market change to where one exit strategy may not work anymore or as well as it did.

Yeah.

Yeah. For, for me, I kind of, you know, I would say don't take my route. Don't do what I did. Because what, like, you found, you found a good lane in the mobile homes. I think that's great. Because shifting goes along with, you know, it's like, not like you got shiny object syndrome, but you gotta learn kind of a whole new process. And some of it was like kind of building, right? Wholesaled. Okay. I see kind of like the transactions, how they— I could talk to sellers, I could talk to buyers, agents, and title. Okay. I know how all that works. Cool. Okay. Now we're going to do our fix and flip, right? Okay. The first one, see how that goes. And now it kind of progressed. Um, and then went from the Airbnbs into kind of like the co-living. So, you know, some— they're all kind of the similar genres, kind of building on each other. Now I'm doing new construction. I really like new construction. And I had a mentor way back when, before I was— I had a— I had it in my brain to do real estate, and he was a real estate developer like 20 years or something. And me and him would talk a lot. He would just tell me everything's like so easy because I was telling— I was like, I always want to fix and flip. And you know, because you see all the shows, right? You see, you know, all the shows on TV, HGTV, all these Flicks and flippers, and they're like, oh, make it look all cool, right? Um, until you actually do one, you're like, this is freaking— No, but seriously, like, so he would tell me, he's like, it's so easy to get in, um, new construction. He's like, dude, you just need like $10,000 or $15,000. He's like, I'll help you find a lot, and then we'll do a— but he would call it, it's a subordinate, right? Um, you know, you'd go You go kind of creative. It's like a creative deal. Before, like, I knew anything about creative finance, you would go, you know, make a deal with the seller that has this lot that he's not doing nothing with. Like, hey, you know, let me give you a little bit up front and then I'll break you off on the back end, right? And then we'll use the land that you already own and put it as collateral on the loan. I'm like, back then that didn't make sense to me. I had no clue what he was talking about. Like, didn't know a thing. Now it's like Oh, that makes complete sense. Like, duh.

Mm-hmm.

Like, right? And it wasn't until I did my first, uh, new construction deal in Florida that I realized, like, what the guy told me 10 years ago. Like, oh, that's why you do it that way. Because, you know, I've learned the hard way, falling forward is, um, you know, buying lots that have houses on them that you don't have plans on yet. That's a long time. That's a long hold time. So, but I like new construction because it's new. I don't have to dig with anybody else's crap. And, you know, here's the plans, guy, go build it, right? I don't have to figure anything out. Like, this is the design, this is what we're going with. This guy just sold the same house for, you know, $600,000. This is what we're building, right? Maybe a little better, maybe a little less, whatever. We're gonna try to get the same, but So, and it's, it, you know, it's a longer hold time, and you do need, depending on the lots that you're buying, you might need larger sums of capital to raise. Um, but like, like the ones I have in Florida right now, you know, I've got 3 of them that I'm raising capital on. One's, uh, for $400,000, one's $300,000, one's $300,000. But the returns on them I'm offering are great. You know, I'm offering like a preferred and a huge chunk of the profits. So, um, amazing. But yeah, the new construction is kind of like where I built to, and I think I'm gonna stay there for a while. I still have my co-livings and 55+ in Vegas, but the new construction and that, I think that's kind of like my, my lanes now. Like, I'm not really operating the new con— the, the new construction, and I'm more operating on the 55+, but I have a really good team in Florida. So, you know, I think I'm gonna build there because Later on, I can now build like for co-living. You know people are doing that now, right? It's kind of a big thing. Right. You don't think so? Yeah. Build for 55 plus or yeah.

Yeah. No, absolutely. And and you kind of come down to knowing okay, I'm gonna have ten people in here, so I'm gonna make the the plumbing you know the right way and you know kind of plan for that. I mean, you want to talk about red tape. This is where California. California, it's like they do not like new construction. Or, or I mean, it depends on where you're going, you know, but there's definitely like LA and all that kind of stuff, just for whatever reason, talk, they talk and talk and talk about needing more housing and then they just make it so hard for, for developers. And that's one of the reasons why we don't go from raw land with these mobile homes. Because it would just, it's just so capital intensive. And then, you know, having to get the utility company out there and all that stuff, it just doesn't pencil out. So I wonder what it's like in Florida. I mean, you see in Texas, you can get a house built in like 60 days. I mean, permits and everything. So it's kind of crazy to see how some states are, you know, pro-building and some are not as much.

You're saying they're build— they're actually building the house, or are you talking about the mobile home?

Uh, no, either one. I mean, it's, it's like, it's kind of the same thing. Like, like, if we could go raw land, we would have so many more opportunities with this mobile home thing. But, you know, for, for what it would cost to bring the utilities in, and then plus the hold time and all that stuff, it doesn't make sense. So we find an old one with the utilities already there, rip that off, put a new one on. And we— it's, it's basically the same, um, timeline as a regular flip. But, um, if you were to go raw land, it's like, yeah, it's like, it's just like with the permitting and all that stuff, it would just take so long. And then it— by the time we finished, it wouldn't even, you know, it wouldn't make— there would be no profit left because of how much it costs.

Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, that's a— that's like, uh, I like that. I'm gonna buy this trailer. Yeah, I don't feel like fixing it up. Just remove it. We'll go bring a new one in. Oh yeah, perfect.

No, it's been, it's been great. Um, the, the hardest thing that we found is like there aren't really any like hard money lenders or anything that are down for it because, you know, there's, there's the asset has to come from the factory and, you know, travel and then land there. And then, you know, kind of get tied to the land. So it just freaks them out. So, um, it's pretty much—

Let me ask you this, because I was, uh, in— I was in, uh, Orlando, and they had a guy that does kind of what y'all do is the mobile homes, but he became— he was doing so many of them, he just— he became a dealer. Have you looked into that?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And you, you basically, you get Right now we're buying 'em wholesale and then our project manager contractor is taking a fee to run the whole operation. But if we became dealers, we would obviously get a better price on the house, on the home, but then we'd have to install it ourselves. So I'm not sure if it necessarily makes sense, but if we were doing mass volume, it would definitely— makes sense because we're, you know, probably paying an extra 10 or something, 10, 15 that the dealer makes.

Oh, that's cool. Yeah, yeah. Oh yeah, speaking about Texas, you're right, like Houston. Houston is so crazy, you don't have any zoning.

Oh yeah, I think that's—

Knock down a— yeah, they're just building. They'll just knock down a house and just build whatever next to it. Doesn't look anything like Anything in the neighborhood.

Exactly. Yeah, I know. I— it's like, I wonder, there's probably, you know, there's probably a good, a decent reason as, you know, having some of these regulations, but then they just take it too far here. They take it way too far here to where it just stifles everything. Yeah. So awesome, man. Well, um, I mean, how can people reach out if they want to be a part of, you know, a lot, a lot of your upcoming opportunities.

Yeah, absolutely. Um, you could reach out to me on Facebook, Aaron Lambert. Um, and then unfortunately Meta just deleted my Instagram account. Just no, like nothing. Just looks like we're not going to review it. We reviewed it and you still got it deleted. I'm like, okay. So I have a new Instagram account. It's @AaronLambert83. And yeah, you could hit me up there. I would imagine y'all might have a link below or somewhere.

Got all your links in the description. Yeah. And then, yeah, how does that process go? They like book a call with you or how are you onboarding people onto these opportunities?

Yeah. So if they're like interested in lending in some of our opportunities, then we have like an intake lender form and they'll be able to fill it out and then go into like a booking. Or if they just want to chat and see what's going on, I have a booking link just straight to a calendar as well. So I do like people to fill out the form even if they're not lenders. I have, um, you know, uh, bullet or questions on there that if you're not a lender, then okay, cool, whatever. Um, maybe just another investor you want to partner up. So, uh, because I got a lot of partners, a lot, a lot of gators too, because In the Gator community, I post a lot, uh, or a little bit, trying to help. There's so many newbies, so many newbies that are like, I want to do something. So I've been offering my help. I don't, I don't, wouldn't call it a mentor, but, you know, offering them, trying to help them get their first deal. And, you know, of course, if they got money, I want to use it, but also just steering them in the right direction, you know, helping with them underwriting, trying to figure out like what it is because You know, just as well as I do, you get into a community like our Gator for the first time and you're like, oh my God, I'm going to be a millionaire. This is so easy. I got $5,000 and I'm about to double it.

Yeah, absolutely. And then you wake up like 7 years later, you're like, what happened?

Still got the same 5 grand.

Ah, good times.

Yeah, yeah. But hit me up on any of those channels. I'm open, free. I love to chat, love to meet new people, love to connect.

Yeah. No, it's been cool following you, man. And I see you out there and you're hosting Zooms where people can jump in and you're talking about deals and all that stuff. So it seems like you got a lot going on, a lot of good stuff. So yeah, next time you're out here, we're going to have you in studio. And, uh, I appreciate you coming on today, man. It's good catching up.

Yeah, man, I appreciate y'all having me. It was a pleasure. Joe, nice meeting you.

Nice meeting you.

I want to hear some— next time I want to hear some of your experience.

Okay. Yeah, look at the— look at the, the podcast that we do every week. You'll see a lot of it on there.

Okay, I'll go check it out now that I've been on. I'm gonna go check it out and see what y'all talking about. Gain some knowledge, I'm sure. Okay, sounds great. Appreciate it, gentlemen. Thank you. Take care. See ya.

If you want some more advice on real estate investing, reach out to us one-on-one.