Demystifying Real Estate: Expert Strategies with Mike Nuss

I think it is important to real estate, understand that owning real estate is not as simple as just owning assets. It's owning the right assets and having the right strategy, the business model in place to ensure that you get value out of that asset. You can't just buy something and assume it's gonna provide value to your life. You have to buy the right asset. You have to give that asset the right value, right? So you magnetize it the right way.

Welcome to the She's Got Assets Real Estate Investing Podcast. I'm the host, Shona Leppis. Follow along as we unpack and demystify real estate investment strategies through expert interviews and personal experience. From how to find off-market deals to creative financing to long-term and midterm rentals, we aim to educate and inspire others to gain financial freedom and generational wealth through real estate. And as always, please subscribe so you never miss an episode. We really appreciate reviews. It helps others find us. Welcome to the She's Got Assets podcast. I'm super excited. I have a rockstar guest on, Mike Ness. He's very well known in Portland. Crazy awesome entrepreneur, just real estate kind of wizard. So without further ado, Mike, thank you so much for coming on. I'm super excited to have a fun conversation today about real estate.

My pleasure. My absolute pleasure.

So yeah, we were just talking before we started rolling. Like, you probably know Mike, he's very well known. Google him. But Mike, just quick nutshell, like really short about your background, then I'd like to dive into the meat of real estate in this current market we're in and all that fun stuff.

Yeah. So my background and probably really specific to like what we'll talk about today is I was an appraiser for a long time, so that's how I got into real estate. Outta high school, bought my first house 5 years after that. House hack like most people do, learned a little bit about buying some assets and not flexity during the recession. And then when Doc Frank passed is when I started focusing on really becoming Oh, instead of a self-employed person, more of like, how do I understand macro policy? How do I become an actual investor in real estate? How do I become a developer? And so with the appraisal industry kind of crumbling with Dodd-Frank, that was just the perfect segue for me to actually take my skills, which is I love math, I love architecture, I love communication, I love economics, and then take all that and turn it into this package of how do I become really successful at real estate development. And because the background really comes from real estate appraisal, I have a really fundamental understanding about demographics and economics and long-term value versus short-term in value, intrinsic value, extrinsic value, and market value. And so that just leads to being able to create different types of income streams or different little business models or strategies inside of a really localized market. So I specifically just work in close in Portland for the most part. I've got about any, any, anywhere between $25 or $35 million of real estate at a time, depending on short-term projects and portfolio holds. And that's all within about a 5-mile square radius in Portland. So my whole thing is understand your market really well, and then what strategies work inside of it.

Okay. I love that because I feel like there's this debate between in your backyard and out of state, and I'm very much your own backyard. So I would love to hear. We're in, we're an expensive market. It's very unfriendly towards landlords. So I'd love to hear why that's your take and what everyone has to find a way and every way works, but I'm in the same camp, so I'd love to hear your thoughts on that.

Yeah. You know, my, so I have a podcast as well. My co-host, his like two rules are, are make friends and have fun. So A, I can have fun in Portland because I've been here for so long. And so real estate is really about capital. It's finding capital and matching that to deals. Deals. And when I look at finding capital, I need to be a fiduciary to that capital. And the best way that I could be a fiduciary to that capital is by investing where I know the market really well. And so if I were to go into a different asset or a different market location, for me, it is a different, it's a whole new learning process. It brings unawareness to the table. I don't know what I don't know in some scenarios. It's so why restart when I've got traction and momentum here. So I'm not against investing in other markets. I'm just all for— I love the Warren Buffett statement. Don't put all your, put all your eggs in one basket and watch it really well. I look at that as know it really well. For some people, they don't have that level of background going into another market because that meets your goals better, may make sense for them. For me, it's— and the other part about me is I am a real estate geek. I'm a developer. I love to buy deals. We buy 15 to 20-ish properties per year. So I've got a development company that, that keeps me busy creating income, and then I can use that activity to then purchase income-producing property. For me, I can do both wealth creation through forced appreciation and really good acquisition and deal structure. And then I can do cash flow through holding those assets over a longer period of time. So we're not a cash flow market, we're more of an equity market. So I use my skills to force equity, create equity, and then stack equity. And then when you stack equity 2, 3, 4 times, then you get cash flow as a byproduct of that. I'm a long-term mindset. That's how I look at things. I don't need to win every single deal. I just want to stay in business. And so Portland allows me to do that. So that's the kind of the philosophy behind it. And then you look into, well, what's my skillset? I love historic architecture. I like math. I like, I'm a weird quirky person. So I fit well into Portland. And so I invest in the neighborhoods I like to hang out in, which is really cool because I can go, I need to go check out a project, check out projects this day. I'll go to this coffee shop, work here, and then I'll drive these projects. or I can structure my field activities around having fun and enjoying the city. So that's important to me as well.

So many things. Yeah, I think, okay, where'd I go from there? I love what you said. I think I, I totally agree. And I think investing where you like to hang out in, I, when I'm buying a rental, I'm like, would I want to live in this? And I think that part of me when I go out of state, I don't know, I don't have a neighborhood and all that nichey stuff. I think, so I think all of those, and I think it goes back to community, right? Like you have that, you're, and you can be a fiduciary of the market, but I think just to be the devil's advocate, the cliché thing is it's too expensive. It's very unfriendly. All those things, right? We're not an easy market. You have to be creative. So what do you say to that? If someone—

Yeah, look at this way. We, we all have a job. And then typically we all create income in that job and some of us choose to have a job outside of real estate and then trade that income for real estate. I look at my job is finding hard deals to find. Right? That's my job is to find deals that other people cannot find. And so rather than go be a doctor or a dentist, I'm an acquisitionist. So my, my structure, like if you look at our entire company, it's built around acquisitions, right? So it starts with acquisitions and everything comes off of that. We have project management, we have property management, we have brokerage, we have entitlement and development. But first and foremost, our job is to be in touch with property owners so that way we can have direct conversations with them. So if you think about it this way, if you're not having a direct conversation with the property owner, someone's getting paid. That's all it is. There's someone in between you and the owner and they're getting paid. So that's their job to get paid having or facilitating that conversation. So I look at it as take those people out and then make a better investment. So part of it is just that. The other part is it's all deal structure and equity, right? Sure, that initial purchase may not be great. But what if you can just get interest-only financing for a little bit while you force a couple hundred grand in equity, and then you turn 1031 that into the next forced appreciation that you create a couple hundred in equity. And what people, I think, get misled a lot, like Airbnb arbitrage or lease options and master leases and sandwiches, that's artificial cash flow, right? If you're creating cash flow through like leases and BS, that's artificial. It's not building wealth. It's not long-term. It will end. But if you are stacking equity and cash flow is a byproduct of equity, that's real wealth. And so I look at it this way, is cash flow is literally just a byproduct of equity. And so my job right now is to build as much equity, as big and as fast as, and as wide as I can, and then maximize the return on that equity.

And that's, to me, the difference between being in an expensive market versus a market where you can buy a house for $200K, right? There's no—

yeah, here's the example. Our friend Jonah, he's, he wants to cash— he's all on this mission to buy cash flow and all. He goes and flips a house in Pendleton. He makes $90,000 and then he's trying to pick my brain. Like he wants to buy a 6-unit in Pendleton and this and that. And he's working so hard to create $500 of cash flow on paper. And then you do the math and it's Jonah, what's your goal? And it's really lifestyle-oriented. It's okay. So you can work really hard to get this 4, maybe $500 a month of cash flow. Let's do the math. You just got 5,000 or like 1,600 months of that cash flow inside of that one flip that you did remotely, took no more than 10 hours of your time. And so I look at it this way. What are your goals? What are you trying to accomplish? And then do what you're trying to accomplish. So for Jonah, if his goal is to create cash flow so he can have his lifestyle, you can do that one sixplex that doesn't change your life, or you can do that flip to create all that equity that then does. And then how do you use that equity that you create? I look at it as the reason I like real estate, the reason I don't buy Bitcoin is because I can control it. I can manipulate.

Yes.

And that's the whole thing is I'm not subject to the market, right? There's the intrinsic value piece. And unless you're printing and mining Bitcoin, you cannot do the intrinsic value. You're a slave to a market. And I just don't want to be a slave to a market. I want to create that value and then choose what I do with that value.

I love that. And that's always been my, I don't understand that. I just, I want to have a physical thing I can impact. I can influence, I can hustle.

I can, you can have parties in it, right?

Like, like a real thing.

It's physical.

I can go and I can fix the paint and I can like instantly add sweat equity. Yeah. Okay. And the other thing, I just, I have to bring this up because I have a point of view as I hate the word landlord. It's just kind of, I don't know what other word there is. We're in a very challenging I, I see it as an opportunity. What was that?

Housing provider.

Yeah. Housing. That sounds like a nonprofit.

Well, it sounds like the verbiage, right? Like landlord is a set, like, and I've been, I got pretty deep in the political world and landlord-tenant law in Portland. And, and it is landlord, it brings this vision of how housing providers used to be. As tenants have gotten more protections, where does that come from? It's come from this old school landlord mentality where This is my asset. You need to treat my asset the way I'm going to treat it. I think a new way of looking at real estate is I own it. You're going to live in it. I want to provide good housing and fair housing. I don't expect you to treat it the way that I treat it. I don't want to be your lord. In fact, that's the opposite of passive income. Like you buy real estate for passive income. So why the hell do I want to be your lord? No, I want to provide you with housing and make it a fair deal. And if you don't treat it well, there's penalties for that. We have security deposits. So I just look at it from a different mentality because it is a partnership in, in, like, in these stupid tenant advocate landlord meetings at the city level I've been in. And you say that statement, everyone, no, it really is. Because if you don't pay your rent, guess what? I fucking am not happy. If I charge too much or I don't make repairs and you get sick because I don't give you good housing, guess what? That sucks for you. So I want you to pay your rent on time and I want to provide you good housing and I want to have a really good partnership about that. So I want to be a provider and I want you to be a resident. And so that's the mindset that I have around property management. I think the hardest thing about when you get into income-producing properties and forcing value and creating value is typically what you're going to get in is you're going to get in these scenarios where the tenants have a really bad codependency with the owner or the property manager, where rents are low, maintenance is shitty. That's where the slumlord, like a slumlord or area, like works good for a short period of time, but the longer the tenants are there and the longer the period the property deteriorates, then you get to a point in time where you just can't fix it. The only way to fix that is to vacate and do massive renovations. And I don't know where that tangent came from, but it just, there's the financial piece, there's the physical piece, there's the management piece. And those are all 3 different strings that you can tug on to create these situations or scenarios where you can extract value.

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I'll get into the asset class that you manage in. We sold off almost all of our client portfolio as a property management company. So we do in-house management for our own portfolio and then client management as well. And we got in a scenario where I came across a slumlord owner in the off-market world and I bought a bunch of apartments from him. And they're apartments I didn't really want to own, but they were, they were, I could get them at a good price and then I could fix them, fix the management. They weren't a real physical heavy lift. The force appreciate, it was all management oriented. They're managed by a really crappy manager in town, and then they had a really bad landlord. The guy's just an asshole. So what I did is I bought a lot of those properties, fixed the management, and then sold them to my investor friends and then managed them for them. But here's the problem that I put in my property management company. We want passive income as investors, right? The asset class matters. And so what I found out in that is I didn't, why did I not want to own them myself? Because the asset that they were, the tenant class, the location, it just didn't fit my portfolio. What I found out is, well, it also, I don't want my management team managing it, right? Because your tenant class and your asset class is really going to determine the level of property management that is required. So when I say Portland, am I really concerned about my tenant, Class A tenant that makes $250 grand a year, not like getting them outta my property. I'm not concerned about getting that person outta my property. In fact, I really want them to stay and I will do everything I can with them to help them stay. And now on the Class C side of it, yeah, it's a nightmare, right? Because that's where you're gonna get the people that have the income properties, the income problems. Those are the people that they feed their mind instead of with growth and being amazing and making like a quarter million dollars a year, they fill their mind with This is my right as a tenant. This is that. And so then, and they call you, right? So I look at it, this is, I may not get a lot of cash flow, but it keeps me in my highest best use of time and it keeps my staff in their highest and best use of time. And so you may get more cash flow on a tax return or in a K-1, but do you really get more value out of that property? And so I, you can hear I'm a pretty philosophical guy. I evaluate things significantly higher than just What's the cash-on-cash return or what's the net positive cash flow? And so when you look at it through those metrics, I don't understand why people really go for cash flow. Because really, like, the higher the cap rate, the shittier you're gonna have, you're gonna have, right? Like, the more cash flow just offsets more risk and more problems and more management. So I'm totally cool sacrificing cash flow for better lifestyle. And the other part about when you sacrifice cash flow is every dollar of NOI you create in a 5-cap market, is twice the dollar of, and is twice the value of the NOI you create in a 10 cap market. So I can work a lot less harder and get way more value in an area I want to be in, in dealing with the real estate that really makes me happy. So it just, there's so much more value in that for me.

Yeah, it's that age-old location, a romantic. Yeah, that's my take. I always like, don't quite know how to answer that cuz I'm like, but if you have good properties and I think it really attracts good people and it's— so I just had to ask that because it's this hot debate, I feel like, with being a landlord.

One of my favorite analogies is the magnet, right? And that's all we're trying to do. Magnet for money, magnet for deals, magnet for tenants, whatever it is. And so then what are we magnetizing? Do you want to be a magnet for Class C tenants that keep you up at night that complain because they clog the toilet? Or do you want to be a magnet for Class A properties and really wealthy investors that are happy with a 5% return? What do you really want to be a magnet for? And then for me, it's pretty clear. I want the magnet that's gonna make my life funnier and happier.

Exactly. And I don't know if I— mindset is so important and philosophy. It's if you're obsessed with that bad tenant, you're probably going to have that happen. You're gonna buy a property that's— I know you're big on this too. I'd love to hear your take on that, cuz I think that's, there's a lot of risk and if you can't, yeah, it's real.

Yeah. Manifestation's real. Like it's consciously and subconsciously. And the science behind it is amazing. Like, I have faith, I believe, but I also just do not ignore the science of physics, the way our brain works, the way our heart energies work, the brainwaves, the heart. Yeah, you can focus on this is that, this is that, and it can be good or it can be bad. The reality is the half— the glass is half full and it is half empty. And it's our job to then deal with our emotions on a day-to-day basis. 'Cause we can deal with the same stuff on Tuesday that makes us happy, and then on Wednesday it doesn't, right? It's just our version of the glass. Cool. And so in, in the beauty of it is framing, I think, is the most powerful thing. And, and that's what mindset is, is just framing the events of the day. When you think of framing, you can frame everything. You can frame a negotiation, you can frame the way you got outta bed this morning. You can frame where you are physically, you can frame where you are financially. And are we framing that to empower us or are we framing it to bring us down? And typically as humans, we paint things that hurt ourselves. And I'm a victim of that. We all do it. Even the most powerful mindset people, they, they get bad days and they have bad days. And like right now I've been texting someone where we're trying to start to be an accounting. They're amazing human being. They haven't responded in 2 days. Why? Because I'm texting on a level of accountability and arena that they don't want to be responsible in. It's not that they're a bad person. They just are like, poster to that scenario. Again, I don't know where this rant came from. I go on these rants.

No, I, I think it's so true. And I think, I don't know if you ever win, I don't wanna say battle that paradigm, whatever you wanna call it. I think it's a constant effort and being aware of it, but I, I really believe you just have to believe in the positive and you'll, and you're not gonna, yeah, you're gonna have issues, but this is a long game. And yeah, if you own an asset, my, my first asset has, it's appreciated and I've had issues and I could tell you horror stories, but guess what? I held in there and I knew it was just a bump.

So I, I think it's really important with the mindset though, is a lot of people fake themselves outta reality. It's important to be an optimist, but you also have to be a realist because the, like, one area when people are just so much about the mindset is they ignore reality and they don't feel their feelings because they're not like, it's okay to be in reality. It's okay to say, hey, this sucks. I'm gonna take an hour to feel my feelings, to just tell all the bullshit stories that may or may not be real of how we got here and why we're going through this. And then say, okay, good. You got that outta your system. We're cleansed. Now what are we gonna do to frame this in a way that allows us to move forward? And so I am a huge optimist, but I'm very real at the same time. And I think that's probably one of my downfalls is like, if you get around my staff, I'll feel my emotions quickly and more loudly than I probably should sometimes. But for me, that's an important process of how I deal with things is I let my initial kind of reaction, and I try to control that in a way, but it's okay, get the feelings out so now I can be logical. And that's my whole thing is the more logical, the more logically we think, the more productive we're gonna be. The more emotionally we think, the less productive we're gonna be. And like, why does productivity always slow down during an election? You know, just the mindsets that we get into, right? Yeah. There's my rant.

Yeah. No, I, I, there is that mix. It's a lot. You have to believe it and take action and deal with your, you can't just sit there and vision building a portfolio without dealing with those ones.

Yeah, but you also have to do that. I'm working on a care facility. I was just trying to finish the underwriting. I gotta negotiate the lease and this is way outside of my asset class. So from an appraiser standpoint, Lozani and grandfathered use category, this is so much in my wheelhouse. But the asset of itself, this type of lease. Finalizing the actual tiny little pieces have been, it's been really hard for me to do 2 hours of work because it's new for me, that imposter syndrome stepping in. And so I don't even know why I'm going down this route, this road, but yeah, I don't know. But we get into these scenarios, right? Okay, so self-evaluation. Why are we being productive? Why are we not being productive? Why are we showing ourselves to the world? Why are we hiding ourselves from the world? And it's typically sometimes something that we're just internally, when we're hiding, it's something internal that we're holding that we just don't don't want to let out. And it's something stupid and it's usually ego-driven and it's usually imposter syndrome. And if we can dig into that and shed light on it, then we can get back out into the world and be our, our, our authentic selves.

I love that. And I guess just on a personal note, I'm a, we're small-time landlords and I was so terrified to talk about it publicly. I was just like, I'll get shamed and I'm just a jerk. And then I flipped that frame and I'm like, I just came out in a way and I, it was liberating and I don't know where I'm going with this, but anyway, I think, yeah, it was just, it's interesting.

Well, I love you say that because a lot of people are afraid to put themselves out there and I've done that a lot of times now and it, and it gets painful. I'll give you two analogies. I remember in one of those Rental Service Commission meetings, we were talking about, like, I was thinking 3 steps ahead and honestly, I think I fell asleep in the meeting. I may not have been paying attention, but I was thinking 3 steps ahead and, and I was pointing into an issue that we had in the code as it was written. And I said something that sounded stupid because I hadn't fully thought of the process, but I was 3 steps ahead of everyone. And the big tenant advocate that like literally takes poops in landlord's lawn was sitting next to me and she was on the board. And so she said something in like second grade kid made fun of me and then everyone laughs. And that was really fucking hurtful in the middle of a public meeting with an audience and it's recorded and it's, that really could have affected me and it did for a little period of time, but then Well, what really actually happened? Not because of what I said, because I, it wasn't in the timeline with the rest of the board, but I was just looking ahead to an ultimate change that was made in the code because it was a problem and people weren't able to articulate it. And because I started to mention it and it sounds stupid and someone made fun of it, it created a conversation that actually pointed to what I was thinking. I was like, there's an error here and we need to get ahead of it. And here's example number 2. So I'm in GoBundance, which is a pretty big national Rich Guys Networking Group, and we do these kind of state-of-the-market calls and you get, I'm a really small fish in there. And we're doing a market update and I chimed in. I like to talk economics and this was in like June or July. And my opinion at that time was the bond market's already turned. The Fed's already pivoted. They just haven't made the statement. Bond yields are coming down. Mortgage rates are coming down. And the leader of that call, the CEO of GoBundance was like, I don't believe you, Mike. Like we just had the old the man who just ran the Philadelphia Fed in a Champions meeting, and he gave all these reasons why you are wrong. And it was like, I'm on the— and I felt minimized. And I, and even more backstory, I haven't been on one of these calls for a couple of years because I've been checked out of GoFundMe. So it's put myself out there. The CEO says I'm wrong. I feel dumb. And it did affect me for the rest of that call and the next day. And then actually the next, the week later, I had a present, public presentation down in Salem, and I brought that up. I had made a comment at the presentation before that August is going to be the best month ever on an in-person presentation. Then there's that GoBundance call later, and I'm essentially saying this is why I believe in August. And in that next presentation, it was all about you got to stick to your guns. And this is where making predictions and putting yourself there, as hard as it is in the short run, makes you so much better in the long run. And the reason I'm telling this really long story is because I started making economic predictions in like 2014, 2013, 2014. I've always been known as the guy that understands the market that comes from my appraiser background in math. And I've always been vocal. And ultimately that turned into when we created our meetup, we did, I just was doing a market update all the time. And then ultimately it turned into Creating predictions. Well, guess what? When you create predictions, that's on record, right? And so now you're on record as being right or being wrong. And then the beauty of that is you get the opportunity of unpacking why were you wrong, why were you right? When you're wrong, you actually get more value out of it than when you're right. But then you get a, now you have to think hard. You have to think further back in history. You have to think further ahead in the future. You think on longer timeframes, you make better decisions. And even here's this pivot you mentioned before we started, our speaker for our meeting tonight wasn't able to fly in from California. And so we had to pivot and it was last minute. It's okay, we're going to put together a panel. What's it going to be about? Who's going to be on it? Yada yada. This was in the mix, Matt. I'm in a 14, you know, short due diligence on a 14-unit. I'm coming to the end of this care facility. I've got 2 more flips that are like all this stuff into the middle of the week. And I have to make a decision on these panels and I let some stupid thing keep me tell someone they couldn't be on the panel. And it was a stupid fucking decision. Why? It was a very short, not thought out, rushed decision. And that's like the antithesis of what I want in my business and what I want in my real estate, what I want from a leadership standpoint. And so when we can think on longer timeframes, when we can take so many more distractions out of our mindset, we can get so much more clear on our decision-making process, and that just makes us more Yeah, I know.

Yes to all of that. There's so many things I do. This is a little bit of a tangency, right? GoBundance. It's been on my like vision board. I've heard it on BiggerPockets.

It goes back to the women chapter.

Yes. That's all being in the right rooms, right? Pay, you know, I guess how am I going, but I want to pick your brain about whatever the word is. Education, mindset. I think we have to invest in ourselves to get there and to keep us on track and to have that vision to know, because this stuff is not easy, right? I think there's a lot of people saying It's just no money down, all the things, right? All the buzzwords. Where's the balance between hiring a coach, education, being in the right rooms, paying for that, and just bootstrapping it, right? I guess I'm curious.

Yeah. I look at this college almost. College is such a— in the cost of it is such a touchy subject. Why is it a touchy subject? Because people go on massive levels of debt and spend significant amount of time, resources in an arena that they don't know they want to be in. In real estate education, that raises the exact same thing. It's, so do you want to spend 10 grand on an Airbnb course when you have no clue what that actually means? Do you want to go to a wholesale? What? Go to a meetup and talk to a bunch of different people and find out what they do. What do they love about it? What do they hate about it? And start getting some feeling of what the options are out there and how you may resonate with those options. And then start to dig further into those options. Part of the reason you want to do that is like when I got started, their meetups weren't a thing. There was the, the REIA, the Real Estate Investment Association, which is like the biggest, worst investment association out there because their model is putting gurus on stage to sell you really expensive courses. And, and here's the thing is those courses typically work in a small niche or in a small market or for a small people. Like we share a mentor that is really good on the seller financing side, really good at that mentoring. That is such a small piece. Like 90% of the people that I know would never do what we do to use those tools. And so 90% of the people out there shouldn't buy that. And so now it's just what feeds you and then go spend your resources in that arena. And now you may need to toil around. I've done that. Like I've spent so many, I've gone to so many of these and That's the double-edged sword of real estate is there are so many options that you can do. You can spin wheels in a whole bunch of different directions, and I've done that. I've experienced that. But I think the beautiful thing about, or, or what you'll see from people that have gotten traction, have had success, is ultimately they get into a part of the arena that resonates with them. And then that's what allows them to get traction. And then that's what allows them to get through that early adoption phase. Like doing your first deal is so much more difficult than your second, which is so much more difficult than your 20th. And so you have to, mindset matters, being in the right position, getting in the right environment, having the right influences, all those kind of go together to create this harmony about how do you stream your tune, make your song inside of the arena. And everyone sings their own song inside of this industry. Do you know anyone that does the exact same thing?

And we all resonate with certain, I feel like I did, I did a, I was very small time I did a course and I thought I knew everything and I kept going down the, the rabbit path or whatever hole of different strategies.

Well, let me ask you this.

Yeah.

Have you learned more making your course or more owning your real estate?

Owning real estate. Yeah. And I, and I never ever did I think I would wanna be a coach, but what I, I learned so much and it was so different than the mainstream buy and flip and wholesale. And that to me is not investing. So I have a major soapbox. I want people to hold assets. And not just, it's, it's a cheesy thing to say you're a coach, but I think we're both doing it cuz we're passionate about, we want to help people, right? It's not just, it was a calling if you can say that.

Yeah. It's the, my favorite Zig Ziglar quote. I help enough people get what they dream, you'll have everything you want in life. You'll have everything you want in life if you help enough people get what they want. Something like that. For me, it's also kind of byproduct in my DNA as just education was part of my, um, but that's, we, when we help people out, we get, there's that The chemicals that flow through our body. So there's value there, right? And that's the other part is you can create so much more impact in your community when you do help people out.

100%. So I think, I think it's, I do think investment's important and I'm, whoever, but you have to resonate with that person. They have to be doing the thing. But, and I think they can, there's a lot of times you just hear, you don't need all that, but I think you really do if you really wanna make progress and get the, this toolbox of real estate. It's very big. And oftentimes you have a hammer and you just flip and you wholesale, and that's just so limited to Yeah, flipping isn't even investing, it's business.

It is running a business, running a really hard business at that. Mm-hmm. Running a really capital-intensive business at that. And the, like, my biggest beef with real estate is in the guru and the education side is misleading. But it almost feels like gurus have to mislead people, even the really good ones that teach really good tools. It almost feels like they have to mislead you to buy what it is. Wholesaling, it's a job, it's a business, it's a marketing and sales business. If you're not good at marketing and you're not good at sales, you're not going to make anything in wholesaling. But it gets sold as you don't need any money, no credit, you can make $100 grand tomorrow. And in the context of the vacuum of one deal, that is true. You don't need any money to do that deal. You can make a lot of money, but how do you get to that deal? You have a lot of marketing to get to that deal. Then you have to have sales and negotiations chops when you do get to that deal to then get that deal. Then you have to have sales and marketing to then go get that deal sold. So the whole profitability is based on sales and marketing and negotiation has nothing to do with actual real estate. Real estate is just the vehicle that the contracts are surrounded around to print the money. Same way, it's just the next extension of that. But investing, like, that's all those two things are. Wholesaling is a business, flipping is speculative. To me, investing should not be speculative. I don't want— market appreciation's awesome. I love it. It's there. I know why it's there. I believe in it. That's the gasoline on the fire that you create through good fundamentals of understanding investment, through value creation, through cash flow, through tenant management, through zoning, through expansion. So again, that kind of goes back to real estate versus Bitcoin, right? Like you can create the intrinsic value and, and then wrap stuff around.

Definitely. Okay. Where to take this? I want to circle back to acquisition and mindset. Cause I think part of being in a quote unquote expensive market is that there are no deals. That's why we go out of state. So there's a lot of ways to get good deals. I'd love to hear your take on the acquisition, how to do it, because that's a big topic, right? It's really important.

Yeah. So I look at it as a bicycle wheel and then each spoke is a different strategy. So there's all different types of strategies to find real estate. Estate, right? There's, there's probate, there's estates, there's foreclosure, there's pre-foreclosure, there's short sale, there's direct mail, there's cold calling, there's door knocking, there's pocket listings, there's referrals, repeat sellers, right? There's so many different ways to do it, but what you really want to do is, okay, what are the different strategies? And then how— and you should always have all of those strategies going. What you need to do and where people then become ninjas is understand how, why the market conditions allow some strategies to work and some strategies not, right? Like direct mail was really bad in '21, '20, or '20, '21, and '22. Why? And seller financing was more difficult. Why? Because you could go to the open market. You can turn your property into more cash than you ever dreamed of. Okay. Then why do you need a wholesaler? Why do you need a direct— so that didn't work as well. Do you know what also you didn't get? In 2021 and early '22, we didn't get any pocket listings. Why? Because the market was flooded with money and there's so much funding for investors and okay. So it makes now getting direct to those sellers more difficult. And so then you have to do them in different arenas. But then when the market conditions switched, guess the most of our, the majority of our deals over the past 18 months have come from relationships. And so pocket listings, realtors we already know. Repeat sellers, sellers that we've been slow dancing with for a long period of time. And now timing comes up, direct mail starts working more because now brokers are less useful. And so if a broker's less useful, I'd rather go directly to the buyer. And so then, well, then what do we do in those arenas? Then we take some money out of one part of the marketing and we put it into the other part. And so you, that's why you want to have everything going so you know what's working. So then you can change the volume. Of each little strategy.

That makes total sense. And I also think that you have to resonate with it. If someone says, I, when I first learned it was like, go door knocking and do SMS and ringless voicemail. And I just felt like a spammer from hell and I couldn't, I tried one campaign. I was just like, I felt really inauthentic. So I think you have to be consistent and do the things that figure out what you like.

Yeah.

Because you won't do it otherwise.

And yeah. Yeah. Be authentic. Like the whole fake it till you make it. I get that you don't want imposter syndrome to keep you from taking action. The way I look at it and what I try and tell newer investors is there's a seller for you. And that's what I experienced. My first seller finance deal was a FSBO on a house. They owned the lot next door. Didn't know that. Talked to them, knocked on their door, ended up buying the lot seller financing. Why? Because he just saw me, right? And so he just resonated with me. But what I was just honest with him, I don't have any money. Here's my— I need you to seller finance because I don't have any money. Oh, I also need you to subordinate to a construction loan so that way I could actually go get a loan to go build a house. And so he was cool with it. And why was he cool with it? Because he liked me, he trusted me, and we knew that we were going to use the documents to keep him safe. So I was knowledgeable, but I just didn't have some resources. And so just to understand that, and I love this, my best, my favorite story of this was a little, a broker that used to work with us. Our brokerage is just coaching. And at the time they were, it was all about the FHA loan, husband, wife, couple, like. They'd buy one FHA loan, they'd fix it up, they'd refinance into conventional. And while they're doing that, another, the other person would buy an FHA in their name and they'd fix it up and they'd refinance and they'd get an FHA loan on it. And it's just, this is such a stupid model. Send out some stupid letters. And they wouldn't send out letters, wouldn't send out letters. They send out 40 letters, they get like 4 calls. 3 of them are the FUs and the one of them was like, oh yeah, I bought this seller financing and seller was really cool. He just, just let me have it. Just financed it for me. Right. And now here's the beauty of this deal. It was a fourplex. It was two duplexes on one lot that could easily be converted to two duplexes. And he was such an easy seller and they were so set on FHA that guess what? The negotiation was like, you know your price. This is what FHA would require from me. 3.5% down, 4% interest. Let's just give FHA terms to your price. They go and negotiate the deal. I show them how to split it into two duplexes. Instead of it being worth $800 grand, it's worth $950,000. That one letter, because they bought it for $400,000, by the way, that one letter made them half a million dollars. And instead of retiring at 30, they retired at 29. 40 letters. But at that time though, it also made sense with where the market was at. So I don't, again, I don't know what the rant is, but the reality, you have to have everything. Don't just think that this is how you get deals. And if you're not having success, you should probably change it.

Yeah.

I met with a guy yesterday. It was really sad. He actually sold me an insurance policy a while back at a big company, like really— and now he's not doing great financially. And he's like taking wholesaling classes and he's talking to me about all these things. He's like, I'm doing lending and I got private money and they'll give you seconds behind subject tos. And he's like, yeah, you got any deals, man? I'm going to flip a house. My neighbor's a GC and I'm going to get the loan. He's going to do it. We're going to split I'm like, even if I had a deal, there's no way I'm calling you. Right? Because again, so who are you? Be clear. You have to be clear with what you're doing. You have to be able to have an elevator pitch. You have to have people feel comfortable in who you are. And again, this was someone like, I bought an insurance policy from them. I respected them. I thought they were a really high quality human being. Who I met with was a shell of their human being. And I'm just using this example that they gave me no confidence to communicate with them either as a seller, as a buyer, as a wholesaler, as a flipper. Like I just have no confidence to communicate with you. If that's what you're giving property owners, if that's what you're giving brokers, the inability to help them feel, oh yeah, this person knows what they're doing, then that's what you're, then you're just not going to get any. So you have to be clear. You got to know what you want.

It's so true. And I think starting out we're nervous, but I've realized the more kind of, I hate the word authentic, right? It's so cliché, but the more I'm just like myself, I bring cookies and I make jokes and I connect it. It just feels more natural. And I feel like there's a lot more confidence and I'm not trying to be like, I'm this big bad investor. And I, I'm, cause I'm not, and I don't want to put myself out there. I think there's another seller financing, right? It's an amazing tool in the tool belt and it's thrown out and I think it's out there, but I think people don't understand how to use it and when the right the right conditions are and how to even— there's just a lot of misinformation. So I, I know you're an expert on that. I'd love to hear you talk about that a little bit.

Yeah. Well, the reason I think the reason people are misled on seller financing is people have expectations. And the first thing about seller financing is you should have no expectations around it because you can literally do anything that you want to do. And that's the beauty of seller financing. Well, I need 20% down. And so why do you need that? Oh, because you're a the, you worked in the '80s and the '80s told you that this is what you need. Okay, great. That's awesome. That's not going to work. Here's what will work. And so the whole thing about seller financing is if you're a good communicator and you can listen and you can actively listen and you can find out what they're actually saying with, without their words, now you're building the rapport. The rapport is the first part to understanding this is a partnership. And when you have rapport and you understand that seller financing is a partnership, then okay, you like each other, you want to do a deal with each other, but it needs to be a partnership. Then you're exploring how do we find the terms that work for all of us? And that's the beauty of it. The problem with the typically you see in the marketplace with seller financing is, well, you usually have some misinformed person in the middle that's telling you, you need to do it this way. The best brokers out there are the ones that just step aside. If you don't have any If you don't have experience in seller financing, or you have this vacuum you believe it needs to be in, and you have a seller that wants seller financing and you bring them a buyer, just get out of the way. Let them communicate and take your opinions and biases out of it. And again, with real estate, I think that's the thing. This is why I always love the fact that I was an appraiser. What I was taught as an appraiser is my bias doesn't matter. I was conditioned for two decades to believe that what I believe does not matter. That is the best opinion you want in a, as a buyer, because guess what? My opinion doesn't matter as a buyer, because unless my opinion is in line with yours, we're not going to do a deal. And with seller financing, it's all about what is their opinion and what is their need and what do they want. And then you, the beautiful thing is you have 4 different terms that you can then pull on to find out what it is that you want. And that's where you use multiple offers. You can use low down payments. With low, with high prices. You can use big down payments with low prices. So you can figure out, are you need to be in first position? Are you okay with second position? Is interest rate really sensitive to you? Is it monthly payment? Is it down payment? Is it price? And ultimately when you make one or two offers, they're gonna automatically hone in on what they want and what they don't want. And then you just need to listen. And it's, I like this, I don't like that. Okay, great. You like that part of offer A. You like that part of Offer B and you didn't like the other terms. Okay, let's focus on that part of B, that part of A. Let's bring those into the 4 terms and then manipulate the other 2 so that we're happy as a buyer and they're happy as a seller. And so the way I look at seller financing, it's the ultimate tool to get everyone exactly what they want, as long as you get yourself out of the way and let those things be found out. Now, there is reality to it, which is it is dangerous. You are now extending credit. right? So as the lender, you're now giving them your equity. And so then there's documents around it. There's collateral around it. There's analysis of real cash flow, right? So now there's the default and the solvency conversation, which then goes back to the partnership conversation is we need to set this up to be really successful. And how do we set it up to be successful? We make sure that the property can pay for itself. We make sure that I don't need to write a check. Or if I do have to write a check, that there's some good environment or terms around me writing that check that we can all feel good about.

I love how you framed it as a partnership because it really is. It's so, I think, and we don't, we often think it's a tool to use if you don't have any money or something, and that's the worst case, right? Um, but yeah, I think we, and we also go into a lot of these meetings with why would you sell? Why wouldn't you just want cash? There's so many reasons, so that, I love what you said about being an appraiser and not bringing your bias in? Because I think we have so much bias and we don't leave it at the door and it's really hard to do that. So do you have any tips on that? Like how do you do that? It's so important though, right?

Yeah, that's a really good question. I don't even know how to answer it cuz it's just kind of part of my DNA now. And I've never really taken myself seriously as a human being to begin with, so that kind of plays into it. I don't know. That's where listening, right? So just if you're a good quality listener and you can— this is what changed for me when I was first in living rooms and negotiating. I didn't have money. I didn't have credit. I learned wholesaling. I learned flipping. I didn't have any other tools. And so my brain, I couldn't hear anything other than, mm-hmm, here's your level of distress.

How low can I get?

Right? Like, I got one tool. It's really one fucking object.

Yeah.

Like, how do I shed? And so in, in the living room, I was a completely different person versus now it's, there's so many different tools. And so I guess that's part of it. When, when you expand your tools, it allows you to listen more. In fact, you have to listen more because your job really is to be there to figure out what tool works best. And a lot of times the best tool is, hey, I know this person, you need to call 'em. But like, literally that is The tool you use 95% of the time is call this person, call that person. And you do that enough times and the world will turn that back around to you. It'll come around.

I think that's so interesting because yeah, like you, you don't even know what to listen for if you don't have that tool. You don't even know what the possibilities are. And I think ultimately we're there to serve the seller, right? What's in the best interest of them. But that also brings me back to education. Like I, I had a toolbox. I was nice and shiny and pink, and then I came across some other strategies that kind of blew my mind. And now I have my toolbox just got bigger and got a little more dinged up. So like, I think there's, and I'm not advocating for go hire someone, but I think to build that toolbox, you need to invest in that education to even be able to listen for the signs of what might serve the seller. And maybe that's seller financing, maybe it's listing it, but yeah.

And honestly, you can get so much education just by providing value to someone who's doing what you want to do. You don't need to pay. And think of it this way, if a young kid comes to me, he's, hey man, I spending $2,000 a month in marketing. I'm coming across deals. I don't know how to evaluate them. I don't know how to just, can you help me? You can have a couple of my deals. Am I going to say no to that? No, because, okay, so you're giving me opportunities. I'm not spending money to do it. I get, I get value from helping someone just innately. My podcast co-host, so my co-host, I've got another 48-year-old guy. He has a huge balance sheet, bought a crap ton of real estate. And then the other two guys are in their 20s. One of them, he owns 82 units now. He bought those before he ever credit card.

Why?

Because he knew he doesn't have much behind his name, but he knew how he wasn't afraid to call people. He's been calling sellers of commercial real estate forever. So that's his value. And then he met the guy that can just put his value to work, right? So now you've got my, the 48-year-old Gabe. He's just wants to have fun and make friends, not want to do a whole lot of work, has a really big balance sheet. Then now Dane just makes phone calls all day, finds deals, then uses Gabe's balance sheet to structure the deal, and then he gets a piece of the deal. Gabe's happy. He's not doing any work. He's just putting his assets to use and he's got now this team below. So Dane's dialing the phone, making all the offers, and then Trevor, we call him Trevor GPT, he's doing the underwriting, he's talking to the banks. And so now the 3 of them are all in their special wheelhouse. None of them feel like they're working hard because they do what they love. And they're all getting value from each other. So you can go pay for a mentor and sometimes that's valuable. I'm talking to a guy right now about potentially on the wholesaling side, talking to some sales team. Like I bought the seller finance course. I have probably spent, gave that guy like 6 figures in education. I joined GoBundance. So I'm not against paying for it by any means, but depending on where you are in your career, sometimes paying for it is gasoline and it's just like a 10x return. Sometimes you're just not ready for that gasoline and you don't have a fire to pour it on. And so I would start the fire before you pour something on it.

And I think that is the, there's nothing like, you can learn these crazy strategies until you do them. It's nothing's gonna sink in. It's, I, I, I love that kind of analogy. Yeah. Because you can have more education and no action is just, I don't wanna say wasted, right? Yeah.

Some of the best lessons, I've said this about my coaches, I've had my coaching She's gonna say, should I listen to Mike? Yeah. Okay. So you're paying me so you listen to me so you don't make those mistakes, but you're still gonna make the mistakes because you didn't listen. But guess what? That mistake is even more valuable because not only did you just go through and learn it, someone told you not to do it. And so now it's really on your radar. Mike told me not to do it. I went and did it. Now I found out all the reasons why Mike was right. It gives you a different lens to evaluate that loss from. Or that mistake through. So part of a coach is to help you not mistakes, help you to avoid mistakes. Part of a coach is to tell you're gonna make a mistake before you make a mistake, so that way you learn that mistake better.

Yeah, no, I, there's a, I think there's also, and there's accountability, there's just a lot. But yeah, I think there's multiple ways to do it. And I think the ultimately is if you're gonna bring value to someone they're willing to work with. If you go to someone and say, I just want to, go to coffee and pick your brain. Like, I don't know if you get that a lot. It's, it's, it's tricky, right? 'Cause I wanna be, give back, but that doesn't bring me any value. Like, you're very, you're way busier than I am.

No, I, it's funny. I, yeah, I've gone to so many lunches and coffees and just had my brain picked and there's no return in its value. And so you, it makes you a little jaded the longer you are into it. It makes you try and qualify people. Yeah, and I don't ever want to get in that mindset, but I'm cognizant of it. And so if I do get in that area, like I gave someone some time, I'm not going to continue just giving it to them. They're not going to use it and reciprocate it. That's when I provide value to someone, I want them to push that forward. That's the whole goal with all of this.

Mm-hmm.

Creating this ripple effect and impact through your community.

No, 100%. I guess to put a bow on this really fun conversation, I know initially your kind of topic was real estate's a business. Understand, and we've touched on this, understand the business and who do your audiences. And I think that's a really important point cuz I think we sometimes dive in for passive income or these kind of generic kind of goals, right? So I'd love to hear your thoughts on that.

Yeah, everyone gets into real estate for money, money or lifestyle. Usually you think it's money or it's lifestyle. You find out the other one has more play than you realize into the other. I'm sorry, what was the question?

So when you submitted the form, you put the, which I thought was a great, the real estate's a business, understand who your audience is and what they need. I think we don't think about that enough.

Yeah, it's funny. I was actually thinking more about midterm rentals and short-term rentals. I want to put that in there because I just don't want people to realize that's a business inside of real estate is the arena I was going there. But I think it is important to real estate, understand that owning real estate is not simple as just owning assets. It's owning the right assets and having the right strategy, the business model in place to ensure that you get value out of that asset. You can't just buy something and assume it's going to provide value to your life. You have to buy the right asset. You have to give that asset the right value, right? So you magnetize it the right way. So then it can provide that. And what I've witnessed over so many years are there people that do really well in real estate, creating the right value, keeping their properties magnetized. And then there's people that just buy assets and they eventually deteriorate. Those are the people like we learn from the Joe Westons of the world. And this is just real life scenario. The Joe Westons of the world that built everything, every asset class, low-income housing, A-class housing, storage, office, right? He's done everything. There's this whole group of old men here in Portland that they all did the meetups. They go to, uh, Katie O'Brien's on Sandy every week. There's guys that were friends with Joe. Joe's mentality was, let's use debt, let's use leverage, let's keep our properties nice, let's build new construction, expand, expand, expand. A lot of his friends were no repairs, no rent increases, no vacancy. I learn from the guys that have Joe's mindset. I buy the properties from the guys that no longer became Joe's friends, right? So the, in, I'm I'm thinking of 3 or 4 different guys where their claim to fame is, but we were friends with Joe. But guess what? You were friends with Joe. Joe left you because you had the fear mindset because you thought you could just buy some assets and hold onto them. No, you buy assets, you be a good business steward, you're a good steward of those assets and they will expand. And it's just the money conversation, right? If you look at the money, if you look at your equity, you look at your net worth, you look at your financial statements, you look at your cash flow, that is going to expand. If you don't look at all those things, it's going to dissipate.

Yeah, it is. It, it's a, a business and it has to be nurtured. And I, yeah, that's really important because we all see the properties where they were not maintained and they're not safe and they're just, yeah. So one more thing, you're so well known for your market reports and I have to say, I feel like like, if I get like a glimpse out of it, they're so like a— but they're brilliant. And I— we're in an interesting time, right? There's a lot of stuff going on. I feel like it's a time of opportunity. There's a— I guess it's crystal ball, whatever you want to say. What would you— what do you think? What's the opportunity we have in this current market?

Um, yeah, and it's not even— so we always have opportunity, it's just what are the shifting opportunities. And on our podcast, we talk about this on an episode recently where Trevor's been doing amazing, the deal structures they've been doing on getting subject tos and seller financings. Well, in all commercial real estate apartments, it's the perfect storm for that, right? Now that financing's come back and liquidity that's come back, and that's really a skill that they're young, what he survived off of. My whole conversation with him is you're, that, that tool is going to be less effective going forward. You're really good at it. You got it. You are going to still be able to do it. But the past 2 years, you could just call every broker that had a listing on the market and you get a couple deals. That's going to change. That's going to go away because they're going to be able to turn your property into cash again. And I actually just sent him a video because I was listening to that podcast episode yesterday. I sent him a video and I was like, I'm really actually excited for you because you already naturally went on this next road. What's the next level of opportunity? Where is funding not going to. So as an investor, you really want to get into the areas where there's no capital, because if there's no capital, there's no effective demand. If there's no effective demand, there's no demand. So then values go down. And so if you're getting ahead of the capital, you're getting the discounts before capital flows in, and then capital flows in and increases the value, A, of what you're buying, and B, the liquidity of what you're buying. So now you can convert it to cash. Or you can then get the new type of financing you need to make that acquisition better. And so what he's naturally done and what they've done as a team is they did a deal with the builder. So now they've added a builder to a partnership. They've expanded their partnership and they started now going and buying entitled land and entitled. So now they're getting into an arena where they're bringing their balance sheet that gives them the liquidity and the capital they need to go get in deals where money isn't flowing into them. So they can go get, like, they're working on this entitled project at the coast. It's 66 units fully entitled. $20 grand a unit, that's your dirt price. Now they have, they can roll into construction immediately at the same price dirt was 5 years ago. And so that's just an opportunity in the marketplace. So while seller financing was there and subject to and seconds and all this creative stuff was needed to keep transaction volume, that transaction volume's gonna slow down. Now go get into the land and now you can use those exact same tools to get into land before the money flows back into there. And that's what we're seeing is Apartments in Portland, would you want to build apartment right now? Land's expensive, construction's expensive, rents have capped, right? We're not going to build apartments. So then builders are putting land and money into cottage clusters, right? So now it's just understanding the reason I like macroeconomics is macroeconomics says this is the plumbing, the avenues, the money's going to trickle down. And so it's our job to understand where the Fed and the US government say, this is the amount of money we're going to have in our economy. Based on the amount of money we have in our economy, the amount we're spending, the amount we're taxing, this is going to be what the interest rates are going to be based on. That's where the money is going to flow to. And at the cost of that money, that's going to make these assets need to flow in these different arenas. And so if you understand the plumbing of macro money, your job is just to get in front of it at the local level.

Yeah, that, that, so go to the events.

Sorry, I don't know if that was helpful, but that's to me is now understanding, okay, interest rates are going to go down, cost of money is going to get easier, which means on income-producing properties, loans can be higher, right? So now sellers can get higher prices, investors can have less liquidity. So you just expect transaction volume to increase a little bit. If transaction volume's increasing, then construction's going to increase. Construction's going to increase. Fewer subs are available, cost of construction's gonna go up. And so it's understanding the trickle effect. Our economy is just a machine, it's just an engine, and we have all these little pieces and some pieces need, like you need to have the air intake for your exhaust system to work, right? So what if you mess up your air intake? What's that gonna do to your exhaust? And so that's just under, for me, I understanding economics is, well, we make that tweak, it's gonna show up here. And so if I think they're gonna make this tweak and I think it's gonna show up here, how do I get myself exposed to this in a low-risk way to take advantage of a change I think is gonna happen?

Yeah. And I think, I guess my, if I could sum that up, I think it's understanding what trends are and pivoting and not just being like, this is my, I'm all in on Airbnb. Clearly that's, or whatever it is, right? Or the sexy asset classes. You have to understand market and it's It's a living thing, right?

And that's the funny, like we have to have everything now and instant gratification and data. And so we get all caught up in interest rates and this and that. It's, it just, it doesn't move that fast. Trends are over a long period of times. I never get worked up over one report. In fact, like at the local level, I looked at the Market Action Report. I only look at it because people bring it up. It's not like I rely on it because I understand the trend. Like one report's not gonna change the trend. Multiple reports showing the same thing, that's your trend line. So I wanna be aware enough that I recognize when the trend is going to change because that's where the value is. When you see the trend changing before it changes and you get in front of it, that's the value.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. All right. Is there anything that we didn't cover? Like you have so much wisdom, I don't know anything, just in general on investing or things that, like, what's your soapbox on investing?

Oh, do you want to get into the realtors and NAR? I'd love to actually. Well, again, it just comes to biases. I did this presentation on knowledge, like 101 knowledge. The level 101 knowledge is the emotional communication, and I in context to like economics and the Fed. And I put a sign, a picture of a guy I make fun of who complains about economics all the time. And then the realtor logo. And I, and I love talking into investment groups with realtors in it because the clarification is, look, you're here, you're an invest— you're an agent. You're not a realtor. You are a real estate agent that may be a member of this association. But the reason I don't like NAR, and I learned this as an appraiser, I was a member of NAR. Back in 2004 when I started my company because I had to be so I could get data. And so when you understand actually what's behind NAR, it's data. They use data to control you. They use data to create a huge lobbying, and then the lobbying has some value to us. But the mindset that comes outta NAR is so backwards. It is based on retail real estate of the vacuum to control sellers and buyers. NAR was created so people can collude to control buyers and sellers. And so the information typically you get from a retail agent who is their— the realtor that you want to look out for is the realtor that identifies as a realtor. If they can't separate themselves from the industry they're in and truly say, yeah, this industry sucks for these various reasons. And because of this, so like CYA mode, here's a really good example. You got a foundation issue, right? CYA mode. A realtor can't tell you anything about it because they have their ethics and NAR says that you could get sued if you give them advice on this foundation. So guess what? We're, we need to go get a foundation contractor. We're not going to hire an engineer that can actually tell you what the problem is and give you a solution. We're going to go hire a salesman who has a really expensive construction company and then get him to tell you what needs to be done to this foundation. There's no other real estate industry more, no industry more than real estate where consumers kill themselves more than anything. So they sue realtors. So then realtors have to give them less value in order to cover their ass. And we're just in this loop of freaking sales. And then the consumer gets screwed because they pay too much for houses. They pay too much for construction. They don't know actual due diligence. They don't know how to make simple solutions. Like most foundation issues are like $4,000 or $5,000 to fix, but most people pay $50,000, $60,000, $70,000. Misled. Like, I just hate the idea that real estate has to be done this way. It doesn't. You can write a deal on a napkin. You can sign that napkin. You can take that napkin to your escrow officer. They will open escrow and you are in contract. And they may want some tweaks and they say, may say, get this and they may say, get that. But you can do whatever it is. You know, you can write it. I'm giving you my van, you're giving me the property, give it to escrow, delivery receipt slip, the, like, you can just find out. And so this thought process of it has to be done this way, that was created by people trying to control the situation.

Yeah, that I, that's so funny. I'd love to, that would be a fun, like, little task to just actually end up getting an escrow. Visual of that.

I do want to, I know people that have done it.

I just think in, 'cause I think in, I talk to people and they're so intimidated by just if they're first-time home buyers, I'm like, and we forget that it's just, I think it's been positioned as this really complicated thing, but it's not necessarily that complicated.

Yeah. I would say this, I would say this to the unedgy or the people that are inexperienced. It is our industry's job to make you feel inadequate. That is how we stay successful as an industry is to make you feel dumb and stupid. Because then you now have to pay us to go do something that you can do on your own.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's an interesting thing cuz you, yeah. But at that, Mike, this has been so fun. How can people reach you, work with you? I know you have a lot of stuff going on, so yeah. Yeah.

So, so the Deal Junkies podcast, that's the podcast. Come check it out. I think it's amazing. And then, so I'm on Facebook, Mike Nuss on Facebook, and then Instagram is @rarebird_mike. So, awesome.

Yeah. Thank you so much. I, this has been really fun. It's so fun to talk real estate. Always.

Yeah. Especially on a day like today where it's gonna be real estate past midnight.

Thanks again. Everyone should follow you and reach out to you and tune into the podcast and all the things. So yeah, thanks again.

This was really fun. I appreciate it. Yeah, thank you, Sean.

I appreciate being here. Thanks.