Purpose Driven Real Estate: Episode 01

Welcome to the Purpose Driven Real Estate podcast. This is where passion meets purpose in an ever changing real estate market. I'm your host, Steve Valentine, former real estate agent turned real estate entrepreneur, speaker and guide to all things real estate. And this is my co host, Paige Tons, former D1 college athlete turned real estate adultrepreneur. Whether you work in the industry or you are a consumer of real estate, with each episode we intend to raise the bar in our industry and show you the purpose behind every piece of real estate in your life. This is Steve Valentine. This is episode one. Yay. Of Purpose Driven Real Estate. We are here to provide the utmost value that we can in the real estate business. Whether you're consuming it, whether you're a real estate professional, whether you're a lender, title company, whatever it may be, it's really about delivering value. And here's when we started this page. I remember when we first started going down the road, started about interviewing people and going through them into a podcast. And then the more I thought about it, the more fun I thought it would be to actually deliver something that's more lively, based on my experiences of 20 years and your experience of being in the business just about two or three years now, and just kind of getting the perspective from someone that's a millennial and someone that's experienced in the business and some of the experiences that I have had. So I just want to kick it off with. This is kind of our int. And this is Paige. As I said, she's.

I'm also here to keep Steve on track so he doesn't talk your ear off.

Wow. Okay. Whatever. My ultimate goal in this podcast is to take the story that I've had from the losses that I've experienced, the being a third generation real estate agent, and then also the many levels of investment and knowledge I have inside the business and deliver that on an episode basis and then bring in your experiences page coming up from your adultrepreneurship and what you're trying to accomplish on your side as we teach millennials how to not only own homes, but we also teach them how to invest in real estate as well. And that's one of the my and yours big goals in the wealth building program inside Valentine Group is to really impact people with their real estate. Showing them how to invest, showing them how to buy, and showing them how to walk down that path and guide them through the process rather than sell them through the process. Right.

So for everybody that doesn't know what you do, what do you actually Do?

Oh, good question. So it'll kind of lead in, we'll tell lots more stories. We get moving into it. I'm a third generation real estate professional and I started in 1999, parents both in real estate and went through the 2006 real estate crash, went through the REO market which is real estate owned when the banks owned like 90% of Phoenix at one time and, and then moving into three or four years ago, learning how to invest successfully in real estate while giving the consumer a totally different experience than what they would normally see which has allowed us to build a totally different business that we thoroughly enjoy now. And so now we have a group of real estate agents that actually are employed by us. It's not part of our team. We really don't work on splits and so we have a full or commissions or commissions. So we work as a group in the Valentine Group and that's one piece of the business. We do traditional real estate, whether you're buying, selling and then we have the handcrafted solutions which is where we may buy homes from you in any condition with tenants in place or we have our wealth building program where we're teaching consumers how to invest and, and how to build their wealth over time with real estate. And then we have the coaching and mentoring and training of real estate professionals that want to see how we do business and how we changed our business and our aspect. And then we also have one of our sister companies is a property management company where we're able to help our investors go into a property management company as well.

Got it. So you sell, you help people sell, you help people buy and we help people invest and that's some and, and, and, and do a lot of things.

Do a lot of things but they all intertwine, all intertwined with real estate. Got it. Hence the purpose driven real estate. Here's the big piece. No matter. I believe that real estate serves a purpose in all of our lives. Depending on the stage of life that we're at and there's, there's difference. So I always look back to when Wendy and I lost everything in 2006, 2007. We were in rental properties at the time. Those rental properties were serving a purpose for the investor. They were income producing people living in properties or for us it was our home. So the last property we rented we were there for five years and it was really our home at the end of the day. And so I believe that depending on the stage of life you're at, whether you're renting or you're owning or you're considering buying. There's a purpose behind every piece of real estate and what it does. And one of our beliefs that we work through our investors with, you know, when you own rental properties, the purpose behind it is providing a home for a family, you know, for as long as they're going to need it and obviously as long as they're paying the bills and taking care of the property. But that's the way we look at housing. The homes that we buy, we own them. But I think about the families that are living in them and what we're providing for those families.

Providing purpose.

Yep.

Why did you want to start this podcast in the first place?

Originally? I probably want to start it because everybody's doing it. And then I started follower. Right. And then I started seeing what everybody was doing. And you're bringing guests on and they're talking about how they do real estate and what their accomplishments and those types of things. I don't believe that anybody's going through maybe the day to day in real estate in a market that's all of a sudden start evolving pretty rapidly. I've heard a lot of people use the word disruptor, that there's a lot of disruptors in the market. The Zillows and the offer pads and the open doors.

They're like mad at them. It's like an angry term.

Yeah, they're frustrated. They feel part of that is because the real estate business has been done the same way for 50 years. We have the same commission structures, we have the same old, same old pieces when it comes down to it. And I sometimes make the joke that I'm not your mom's realtor. You know, your mom's realtor had glamour shots or your grandma's, either one. What are you saying? Yeah, your grandma. Just because you're that age, tons.

It just makes it better.

Your grandma's realtor, your grandma's realtor, she drove a Lincoln. So we really wanted to go through the process of delivering more real things that can be applied not only to maybe the new real estate agent that's coming in that might hear a story or motivate them, or maybe somebody that's been in the business a long time and wants a different way of doing it, or the consumer that might want to hear, you know, part of, you know, bringing Wendy, my wife, on every now and again. You know, my wife renovated 170 homes last year. So we're gonna try to go through some of those daily tips and tricks on what we're Looking for and what we're doing and why we're doing it, and the purpose and the passion creates an impact in our communities and in people.

Awesome. So you kind of touched on this a little bit, but who is this podcast for?

The podcast is really for anybody that wants to consume real estate knowledge. I really. I guess I would put it as. It's kind of like the HGTV of podcasting. So we're going to go on an episode basis where we. We're gonna maybe have some motivational stuff in it. We might have some daily stories in it. And trust me, I got stories. I got lots of stories. I lived through the REO days. We've lived through homeless people. We've lived through all kinds of craziness.

But all those experiences created value for you today.

Correct. And so now delivering those personal experiences, I'm hoping that it has an impact on the real estate agent or the consumer that's looking to do something or need something in the industry.

Yeah. Something I always think about is, you know, you're. You're. Well, if I talk about, like, my age of people, someone in their 20s who has never bought or sold a home, just understanding a little bit more about what you're buying or what you're selling for the. The typical person, I mean, that's a huge step in life is buying. Buying a home and owning something. So I think that's. That is something that I think about all the time. Like, I'm buying a house and I. It's probably the most expensive thing I'll buy in my whole life, but I don't know anything about it. So it's just having that.

Well, I think some of the.

And providing that value, I think, really. Knowledge.

Right. And we talk about raising the bar in the industry. Part of that, in hopes of this podcast is getting the consumer to understand and the real estate agent to see that the consumers have enough knowledge on where to find a house. But what they really are missing is someone to guide them through the process, not sell them through the process. Totally.

Yeah.

I think that's really important because I think early on, even when I first got into the business, it was about. It was about selling and it wasn't about building relationships. And I think you need to first build relationships before you can sell the consumer something. And they need to know you and trust you before they can do that. And hoping that we can guide people to that process of how to guide the consumer and some of the knowledge that we have that it may give them a better experience Both from the real estate standpoint and from the consumer standpoint.

Right. I call it hand holding.

Hand holding is good.

Just need a little handhold. Like, come on, you can do it. Okay, so what value do you want to give your listeners on the consumer side and the real estate industry side?

Okay, so on the consumer side, it's about keeping up with the market, what it's doing, where we're heading. You know, we may have some guests on, you know, from lenders.

Evolving instead of disrupting.

Yes, yes, I believe the market is definitely evolving at a rap rapid pace. You think about those old school posters, like the evolution from the fish to the frog to the caveman to the man. This is like they skipped over the frog and the caveman. It went from fish to man over like the last three years. Seriously. I mean, it's just again, I'm third generation. So you go back and you look at, you know, 6% was the commission fee. In 19, you have to, like, pull.

Out your atlas to find houses.

I didn't use an atlas. Wendy would pull out an atlas. It's kind of like today, you know, what. Driving directions in the mls. Somebody said the other day to just put. Use your. Your nav or your, your, your imap. Your imap.

Sorry. Anyway, back to your point. Yeah, I'm supposed to not derail you.

That was good, though. Where were we at?

I was asking you, what do you want to give listeners?

Okay, so what value are gonna. Both. The consumer is just seeing maybe the ways that things can be done a little bit different, that not everything has to do with, you know, putting a sign in the yard, you know, that there's different solutions, that maybe the house that they live in, rather than selling it, they should turn into investment property in order to continue their wealth building. And so they can have, like, educating.

Them so that they can make the best decision in their. In their best. For their best interest.

Right. For their family's best interest. But here's the interesting piece. I think that 95% of the industry, if I remember the stat, right, Real estate agents, professionals, people with license, have never invested in real estate themselves, but they will sell a consumer a rental property not understanding it.

Right.

And I believe that real estate agents have forgotten and not been taught that they should be investing in themselves and their future by investing in something they claim to be an expert at.

Right.

I'm a product of this. So, you know, my dad and my grandmother, grandmother, 50 years into the business, my dad, 40 years into the business. Both of them have passed Both of them passed not owning one piece of real estate. That shook me up. What was even more scary was the big aha moment when my wife said, you realize that, you know, your parents didn't own their first home being in the real estate business until we came in in the late 90s. So 30 years into the business, my dad still hadn't bought a home.

Mm.

And I was trying to go back and figure out why because he was super genius in the business. But he didn't. And I think that that's because too many of us are chasing the dollar and not chasing the long term benefit behind what it has to offer.

Right.

Which is some of the reason that, you know, we created the wealth building program and we coach and mentor real estate agents on top of it. But it was mentoring you through buying your first place, but buying it with the intent of, I'm not selling it. It's not a credit card.

Right.

It's forever.

And that gave me a lot more confidence in talking to more people about real estate buying, selling and stuff like that, because I had finally gone through the process myself.

Right.

So as we wrap this episode.

Yeah.

What is your. What topic are you most excited about that you have, may or may not have brainstormed that you're going to share with our audience in the near future in the next episodes?

Well, some of the upcoming episodes would be, you know, how Wendy and I went from losing everything to paying everything off within four years.

It's like from rags to riches, kinda.

And also rebuilding the real estate business. Different. And showing both the consumer and the real estate professional that there's a different way to do it. And there's a ton of different ways to do it. And that's probably one of the most exciting things because it really. We had a lot of challenges. There was a lot of motivation and a lot of drive.

Well, that experience almost kind of led you to all of this.

It did, it did. And then. So that's probably one of the most exciting things. And we'll certainly have Wendy on. Wendy's kind of a hybrid of contractors and designer, being that she has a lot of construction knowledge along with her ability to design and put out these great houses. And then, you know, I think another episode is really the purpose behind the repurpose program. You know, we really talk about why we're doing what we're doing to where I think the terms fix and flip have gotten a very negative connotation in the market because I think some people, not everybody, but I think some people are tending to cut corners because profit margins are tighter, building materials are going up, and, you know, the only person that gets stuck with that is the consumer at the end of the day.

Right.

And that's way beyond what we do and what our purpose is. I think we're gonna talk a lot just about some motivational stuff, some things that have really helped me through different times, things that I hope we talk about, things that maybe have inspired you from the time you started working here and what's driving to teach other millennials about the real estate process, the investment process. So there's some of the things that I'm excited to do and to drive on. So that was episode one. All wrapped up. Hope you enjoy it. I promise we will get better. Not that you sucked, Paige.

Thanks.

It's all good. High five. We're out of here.