Amy Tiemann -The Untold Stories Of Real Estate Investing Podcast - Scaling Real Estate In Texas

Welcome to the Untold Stories of Real Estate Investing, hosted by Wayne Courageous iii, a place where active and passive investors come to hear the good, bad and ugly of real estate investing. Our guests consist of experienced operators and investors who want others to succeed by sharing their stories. If you're looking to syndicate deals or grow your wealth passively in real estate, you've come to the right show. It's now time to sit back, take mental notes and enjoy next episode of the Untold Stories of Real Estate Investing.

Welcome to the Untold Stories of Real Estate Investing. I'm your host, Wayne Courageous. For our next episode, we're excited to have Amy Tieman. Amy is the founder and chief executive officer at TM1 Properties, a commercial real estate private equity firm. Amy's first multifamily investment was in 2010. At this point, Amy was becoming active in multifamily investing, real estate investing, while also managing their construction business. By 2015, she made the decision to focus primarily on real estate investing. And in 2017, she went on her own. In addition to investing, Amy has taken on property management. Welcome to our show, Amy.

Hey, thanks for having me.

Yeah. So before we dig in, was there anything I missed or anything you want to add to introduce yourself?

No, that sounds good. That's pretty good. Synopsis of me. Yeah, Been doing real estate investing for a very long time. Started as a general contractor. I guess we can talk about that. That's how I got into real estate investing is I was a general contractor before that. So. Yeah, perfect.

And it was your family business, what I read. Right.

Yeah, my husband at the time and I started it back in. I started my. My grandfather had started a glass company and then. So I remember with my dad riding around in the truck, you know, going to job sites and stuff, and kind of grew up in construction. And then I, you know, when I was, I was working in HR and a large tech company in Austin and during the downturns of 2001 and made it through like till about 2003 and after, like, I don't know, it was like the eighth layoff or something. And I was in hr. And so then I just, I had already kind of was helping my husband at the time with the construction company because he started it and I was still doing both, but so we decided I'll just work with that full time. So we started, we were building retail stores and we started the retail side so commercial. And they were about 16 states at one point during commercial construction. So that's how we got started. So. Yeah.

So how did. How has your career progress from that? Tell us about that first property in 2010 and sort of how has it grown over the years? Have you stuck with multifamily or there are other asset classes that you've focused on?

Yeah, there's other asset classes as of this year. Prior to that, it was strictly multifamily. So I was multifamily single family rental for a while. 2015 went full time multifamily just because I couldn't find a single family house that made sense, you know, that I could buy at a reasonable price. Almost all my single family rentals were in Austin. And so then 2015 got out of single families and then got into multifamily. Straight multifamily stuff. 2015. And then I got divorced in 2017. So then. So I just stayed in multifamily. So. And now that I've kind of. I've kind of rebuilt myself back up since 2017 because I had to sell off a lot of assets and stuff that we owned and made businesses together and stuff. And so I kind of had to recover from that. And so now I'm. I'm in multifamily. I'm looking at office and I'm also looking at retail projects, too. All kinds.

Yeah, you're looking at office and retail. Now that we're post Covid, you see opportunities there or like what. What's branched you out to those asset classes?

Contrarian, they're cheap. I think it's going to come back, especially if you're in good markets like Austin or anywhere in Texas, that for that matter, I think, you know, retail will come back. We're already starting to see that it's coming back in certain areas. Right. I mean, it's not. It was. It was just hit, you know, had had to be put on pause out of no fault of his own. Right. I mean, just like any other multifamily operator, if you were a bad operator and Covid happened, well, you're just a bad operator. It just did you in. Right. But if you were a good operator and Covid happened, you made it through because you were a good operator. Right? Same thing on the retail side. A lot of the retail stores that went out, like Macy's or wherever, they were already in trouble. It just Covid did them in like sooner. Probably did them a favor. They kept losing. They were always just losing money all the time anyway. But yeah, it's something like that. But I do like. I like reap. Since I have a construction background, I'm Not So some of the stuff I'm looking at is like doing adaptive reuse or it's really ugly. My thing is I take ugly and I make it pretty. So whatever I'm buying, it's going to have that component. It's going to have a value add. Like I'm going to take the site and then do some redevelopment on the site, reuse the site that maybe it's not being used very well at all. It could be currently multifamily, but they're using the footprint really bad. Stuff like that is kind of stuff I'm looking at doing. So.

Yeah, so you mentioned you find ugly properties and make them pretty. But are there a certain age of the properties or, you know, chillers, other attributes, physical conditions that the property has that you like to stay away from?

No, I'm not scared of anything. So, I mean, it just. The number's gonna make sense. Right. So there's a lot. There's a deal in Fort Worth that we're getting under contract now. Half their property's on a chiller system, the other half is on split systems, and it's. The whole thing's on boilers. And it's not that big of a deal. None of that. None of that crap scares me. As long as you're in an area where you've got good subs that can take care of it, you're fine. Right? That's what you. That's what you get into. It's like I did manage a property, it was like 200 units and it was in a submarket of Houston. Like, it was like an hour and a half away from Houston. And that was the biggest problem we had. We had boilers, but I couldn't get a plumber to come out there to like, you know, service the boilers. So that's what you worry about, right? You can maintain your systems. You just gotta learn how to do it. But none of crap scares me. Foundations don't scare me. Roofs don't scare me. Nothing scares me. Right. I can fix pretty much anything. So it's great because I demand a lower price because I'm the. I'm the person that can come in and fix the thing. So generally that's kind of where we're. Where we're looking at. So. Yeah.

No, and the reason why I ask is, you know, for. Personally, we've been looking at a lot of properties that were built in 1970s, 80s, but there's a lot of product that's coming to me in the 60s from brokers. But I'm Having a hard time getting, you know, partners and other people really interested in those. And so the thought is, is that If I buy a 60s property, you know, that's going to be even harder in five to seven years to sell it because we're just adding more time. So. But, you know, chillers, you know, scares our team and, you know.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay. Yeah, it scares some people. But if you're repositioning it, right, you're repositioning it. And if it's making money, whether it's 1962 product or 19, I mean, obviously the cap rate's going to be a little bit higher. But everything's so compressed right now. We don't know if there's inflation. Our cap rates are going to stay low. Like they just are, right? So. And we all know inflation's coming, right? So I don't, right now, I don't think vintage matters. I think location matters. And if it's an older product in a really great location, you'll do fine. You'll do fine in five years you'll be able to sell it. Right. As long as you figured out how to maintain the systems. And they can see that they're well maintained. They're just going to borrow your game plan. They'll take a look at your game plan, go, okay, we'll use that and we'll just maintain systems that way. Because at the end of the day, people, I mean, we have a housing crisis in the nation and people need places to live. So if you're making a really nice product out of something old, it's okay. And if the investors are scared of it, go find another investor. There's always a value add investor right around the corner that can recognize that that's a good deal and you're going to provide them from a value add standpoint. You're going to provide them while there's more risk. The risk is mitigated if you have somebody like, who's experienced like I am, who's done a lot of them and mitigates a lot of your risk on these value add repositions. But yeah, I mean, I, I'm not worried about multifamily in the next five, seven years at all. Like, it's going to be just fine. It'll be, you know, actually, if you're in any asset class in commercial real estate, you're going to do great. Like, just go buy now, go find now. Because you're going to be like doing cartwheel five years like she will, because it's just going to be a really great time. So I'm trying to buy everything I can get my hands on right now. I'm like, anything I get my hands on, I'm buying. Like, because I bought. I started buying in 2008. I remember what that was like, that was fabulous. I mean, Funko loathes the money. When we started buying in 2008, everybody looked at us like we were crazy. I'm like, oh, no, no, no, we need to go buy, buy, buy, buy, buy, buy, buy everything. I bought an apartment complex in Austin, Texas. The Little 42 unit, we got it for $37,000 a door. Like, no joke. In 2010, like 2010, everybody had to pay all cash because we couldn't get a loan on it. So we had to find, like, go raise the money to pay all cash because we couldn't get a loan. But then we financed it out in about a year. But yeah, I made a buttload of money on that one. Like, it was fabulous. It was great. So, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So I know you invest a lot in Austin and we were talking before the show that, you know, you were looking at Houston and Fort Worth, Brian College Station. But what are you looking at from an acquisition standpoint in new markets? Are you wanting to be driving distance? Is it all about where your business is, is located with property management because you're vertically integrated? You know, what, what are you looking for?

Yeah, so now that I'm scaling a lot larger, I'm doing less and less property management and doing more and more asset management. So I'm partnering with good property management team and. But before I go into any sort of market, I generally have, like, I've kind of done a, like, I want, you know, based off of supplies hitting the market, the existing inventory of, of multifamily in that area. I, I will have a target for units I want to acquire in that market that I want to saturate or have X number of units or whatever it might be. So like in Houston, I want 3,000 units right. In Dallas, Fort Worth, I would love to have another 3,000 UN. Right. And I could probably get it in Houston faster because the numbers make more sense in Houston. But I'm starting to see Dallas, Fort Worth stuff come down to where it's reasonable again. So that's the one we've got in Fort Worth. That was my first one there. I would love to find stuff in Brian Cole Station, fabulous market. And then, you know, Austin and all that other stuff. So it just. So anything in Texas, I'll be Fine. Right. I can get to anywhere. I keep telling people I'm gonna buy a plane. I'm like, I just so close. I'm so tired of being in the car. I've had to like, I chew through brakes and tires because I'm in the car so much, but. And I waste a day driving. I. There's a property I'm co partnering on, it's in Amarillo. So, I mean, I don't care where it is in Texas, as long as the numbers make sense, I'm good. Right? Because Texas is a great state. And then the whole freaking state is doing well. You go to the Valley, you're doing well. You go to Victoria, you're doing well. Corpus, you're doing fine. I don't find that there's many markets in Texas that are not doing well. Right. You know, so just San Antonio, 11% rent growth last year. I mean, like, just. It just, you know, everything's doing fine. So. Which is good.

So one thing I noticed on your LinkedIn is your background experience in smart building technology, and that's something I haven't really talked much about on our podcast, is what are your residents wanting in smart building technology and is it change in asset classes of the property types or are your residents wanting, you know, similar, same building technology regardless of, you know, rent, price points, etc. In a market?

I think what's going to happen is in the class C, it's just going to get pushed there because it's not something from a tenant demand perspective. It's going to be. The owners are going to want it. Right. Because when you push smart building technology down to no matter what asset class it is, right? Yes. It costs you a little bit. You cost you a little bit per unit, Right. But you say like the princess leak detect, leak detection technology, everybody out there's got a leak detection sensor. Everybody in their brother's got one. Right. So you can. But you want to coordinate with your other systems. Right. So it's good to get an IoT device that's going to tell you there's a leak, but it's got to coordinate with some other hub and stuff. And so that's so my. I actually have a property technology company. I started because I was just so frustrated as a property manager, I was like pulling my hair out. Right. My maintenance guys are the most inefficient thing I've ever seen in my freaking entire life. So I started one. We're tinkering it now. We're putting it on my properties now. Kind of tinkering with it to see if it's going to work. But the leak detection sensors will give you like for different insurance carriers you can get like a 10 to 15% insurance discount. Like, and that's a big freaking deal. Like you're, you're going to knock off thousands of dollars off of your insurance because you got leak detecting technology deployed throughout your property. And those suckers probably only cost like, I don't know, like it's nothing. So that's kind of the way that the future, it's pretty havoc in class A, everybody's got, you know, like keyless technology to get in their door in class A, right. It'll push down, it'll push down to the classes. And if you were early adopter, like I am, right, you're gonna, you're gonna be able to differentiate yourself between everybody else on the market because nobody's doing it yet. That'd be great because you can come in and then your property is gonna be cool because they get the ooh ahh. Because I walk up and I can use my phone to log in the door. I can do this or have an Amazon locker or whatever it might be, right. But I can use a keyless technology. I can give a code to a guy who's coming. The maintenance guys can come in and do whatever they need to do and I don't need to be there. And you know all this other stuff. So it just facilitates a lot of stuff. And so there's a lot of stuff on the smart building technology around maintenance. That's kind of stuff my company is working on. There's a whole lot of stuff in the private property technology. It's a budding field. Like there's, there's like a lot of people chasing it. A lot of money's chasing it. It's real estate for the longest time didn't have to evolve because you didn't have to be very tech savvy because they made a crap ton of money anyway. You could have. I bought multifamily properties from people who did their accounting on paper. Like no joke. Like tenant lenders like freaking on paper, right. And then like shooting I'm like sell like something that I can underwrite with but, but I think basically redo all of their finances. Everything was paper. So and, and they made money. They didn't lose money. They're making money, right? So they didn't nobody in the commercial real estate is like 80s maybe at best on some people, right. But now they're starting to adopt more Technology. And as they do right now, the race is on, right? If you can get a good Property, technology like RealPage will probably end up buying you out at some point. But like, but if you've got a good solution, you can, you can really drive down cost. Because right now that's the biggest, that's the biggest scare, right? If there's a lot of stuff on the chasing the revenue side, like on leasing and how you do leasing efficiently and gain efficiencies and leasing and, and do your cost per lease, keep it down, right? Because you can use a lot of technology around that, right? So that one's easy because you can, you can easily match up your revenue to whatever it is you're buying, right? So everybody, that's generally technology. You'll get to somebody like me where our technology is on the cost side. We're going to save you money. We're saving you crap ton of money. Sometimes I can, I can quantify it, sometimes I can't. The fact that your maintenance guy doesn't have to walk back and forth five times to the maintenance shop to find a freaking part to figure out your problem and he spends half a day on it, you know, or like I can't, you know, you want to play that, but how many times in a year does it happen?

I don't know.

Nobody. Watch your maintenance guy, right? So, you know, so if there is efficiencies you can build, that's what we're doing, right? Figuring out our case studies around it so that we can go, oh, okay, great. Now you used to have to have two maintenance guys for 100 unit property. Maybe I can get you two maintenance guys for a 300 unit property because it got diagnosing, so it's different. So that's kind of where I'm at with it. So it's really, really early. Really early. But a lot of property technology is going that way. It's around enabling, it's about enabling good decisions through data, right? So there's a lot of stuff on the ESG side as well, around utilities, smart meters, you know, sub metering the properties of their smart meters. So you can tell, you know, you can give the tenants they can get visibility of what their bill is going to be. So, yeah, it's pretty cool.

Yeah, I love how you, I mean, I didn't even think of it more on the ownership side with who's going to be pushing it, but you're absolutely right. And that lead detection, that's something that, you know, we're looking at, at Our properties as well because it's pretty low cost to your point and does have that insurance savings. So I think that's a huge key takeaway that it's not just the residents that are wanting more of the smart technology, but really the owners. So really well said. Thank you for. And I can tell your passion is in that as well. So with your.

Yeah.

Which is great. So with your business on this, is this something that others can contact you on and learn more about or you know, what is. What services do you provide on that?

Yeah, it's real early. So I talk about it because I don't have product I can sell yet. Like I'm still like, I'm. I can like install it and I can get through it, but it's not something where I'm ready to like put it in a box and put it on a shelf. Right. It's not ready yet. And then. And there's a lot of. Because there's a lot of hardware that goes into it too. And so we're tinkering with who's our preferred vendor. So we were doing. We're still in tinker mode. But I should again how things are trucking along now. In about nine months or so we'll be ready. Like I'll have a, I'll have a product that I can, I can sell to other folks. Right. Or actually what I'm going to do is like, you know, because for me I do it one way. So I'm going to call my friends who own apartments and go, hey, you want a really cool system for cheap so I can like, can you like guinea pig my stuff, man? That is basically what I want to do. So yeah. And so, and then, so maybe in about another year and a half. Yeah. So maybe about 18 months I might have got there.

So obviously you're very data driven. You've got passion behind the smart technology and such. So what are software systems and tools that you've used to help manage your processes? It sounds like you're going more third party for property management services. So what are you looking for them to have when it comes to software as well?

So with all my property management companies, kind of it written in our agreements is I'm like I have to have a direct API into your property management software. I mean like I still want an account and that's very cool and that's fine. I can get in there and look at it. But I want an API where I can pull all the data down because we built out our own dashboard. So I Had, you know, a couple of Baylor kids. I live in Waco, so I have a couple Baylor interns, and they helped me build out this really cool asset management dashboard, which makes my life because I'm a property manager. I mean, I used, I don't know, four or five different property management softwares. I have never found one that gave me the reporting that I needed to manage effectively. Right. It gave you some of it. Right. They gave me, like the big. The known thing. But when I was trying to get really good insight into renewals and kind of where people were and where I was, you know, and then like income management and all other stuff, I had to pull pieces of data together and it wasn't real. Real smooth. Right. So. So we just created one. And so as long as you API the data down, right, Then it's easy. They can. Long as they have the data, they can do it for me. Software called Tableau. And that helps with, like, just creating the dashboard itself. And if it's API, then it's. Then it's live and linked, and it's nice. And it's. Every once in a while we have to pull down data. So we have static reporting because it's not static. Right. It changes by every. Depending on what's going on and the data that you're pulling. So depending on how you do your downloads. But yeah, so it's nice. I like it a lot. That's made my life a lot simpler. And I can look across properties, I can look across portfolios, I can look at certain one property, I can drill down into one. So it's really nice. And I spent, you know, I paid a lot of money for those kids to kind of create that for me. But it was nice. So I can. And we still tweak it. I have a. I have a business analyst on my team, and that's their job. They, they, they like. I'm like, go do this. I want. I want to see this. And so they go off and they do their little coding thing and it comes back and I'm like, now the sound like. And then we'll go. So I've got my little minions that do data for me, which is fabulous.

How are you finding your minions at Baylor and these other, you know, in your case, Baylor. But it's something, you know, now that we're in Bryant College Station, I thought of the same thing with A and M. Like, how. How do you attract and find those.

People you intern, go to the Office of Career Planning and tell them you have an internship and that's how you find them. You get the fabulous students. Fabulous. And you're competing, especially A and M. I would love to get an A and M intern. Like, it'd be great. We actually had some, some of them they do over the summer. And so as long as you got an office where they can come hang and you get them all set up or do whatever, they'll do some really cool stuff. And you can get engineering interns, you can get computer science folks. I mean, I got Baylor, I just get interns and I just get them and they. It's nice because I get them throughout the school year. Baylor. But you can get, you can get A and M interns and it's, you know, you're gonna pay them. I mean, you're gonna pay them. Like, it's not, they're not cheap, but for what you're paying them. And they're just freaking bad. They're kids and they don't believe in it. Like, you go, like, I'll give you more coffee. Like, just go, that's fine. I don't care if you sleep. Give my crap that, you know, a.

Lot of, you know, I've used it as well upwork and fiverr and those have worked really well. But you know, I just thinking back in my early days, like, you're hungry for those extra jobs and opportunities to build out your resume and also so good on you. And one thing I love about podcasts is, you know, we, we go different directions as the conversation goes. So hopefully that benefits some listeners and not just me for sure. So, hey, you had mentioned a lofty goal early on in this podcast about, you know, you want to another 3,000 in Fort Worth or 3,000 in Houston. The reality is, is that you want. It's hard to find these properties that are good deals, but to raising capital to buy the properties can be a hurdle for most people. So how are you structuring or going about raising capital? And for somebody that's newer into this industry, how. What are some lessons learned or advice that you have just for that razor, a capital raiser.

Okay, so the deals that I'll just tell you about the deals I'm doing now and then I'll give you advice is ever like, it's like somebody turned on a water hose and just pull it off full blast. Like, I get so many freaking deals now, I can't underwrite them all. So. And it's really, it's really interesting. Everybody's understanding the deal flow fatigue. Like, everybody's in deal fatigue at the moment, right? You can't underwrite everything that's come across your desk. Some of it's gonna be bad, some of it's gonna be good. Like, you do the. That's a bad deal. Like, move on, right? Because you just don't have time. There's so many deals. I'm finding more deals in Houston. I did find one at Fort Worth. It's all about relationships and relationships with people all networking. When you've been doing this as long as I have, your name gets out there. And people like, the other day, some yahoo head from New York calls me and I'm like, hey, I want to partner with you on a deal. I got this deal in Houston, and, yeah, we need a boots and ground person. I never met him for my life. And it was like a 520 unit deal in Houston. And I'm sitting there and I'm looking at it, and I'm looking at the deal, and I'm like, first of all, I don't know. You said, tell me who you are. But then I'm looking at the deal and I'm going, this is not a good deal. Y', all, like, look at the cap rate. You're buying it at, like, just that alone. I was like, y' all are overpaying for it. And it might. And it might turn, but you just need. Not right now. With the impending chaos headed our way. Don't overpay right now. That's just silly, right? You don't want to overpay for anything right now. So I'm always. I'm looking for stuff where I'm going to walk in, and I'm already getting it at a 100 or 200 basis points above what the market cap rate is. Right? That's what I'm buying. I'm not going to buy anything at cap rate right now. Not paying full price for anything right now. Right? Because we don't know. We know that there's crap's going to hit the fan. We do know that's happening in the next six months, right? Next couple of quarters. Nothing's changing. We all can see it. The banks are hiring specialists. I mean, like, when they start hiring foreclosure specialists, they know what's coming. They know what's on their balance sheets, and they know they're going to have to foreclose on stuff, right? They're. They're the. So kind of reminiscent of 2008, 2009, which I went through and started real estate investing in. So, yeah, I wouldn't. So I'm deals are not a problem for me right now. I'm finding a bunch of them. How I raise capital right now is now I'm starting a fund. I used to do syndication after syndication after syndication and that game gets old, especially when you're doing two or three deals at the same time. It's tough, it's not easy. And so it sucks. Honestly, Truly, it sucks. It's hard. So I am starting a fund and our first one will be 50 million and then we'll start raising for that here next month and we're off to the races and start, you know, we have plenty of deals to stick into it. That's a problem. Is now changing your capital raising from deal specific syndication to you need to invest with me because I'm groovy, cool and I'm a very track record. Right. So it's a different model of raising money now. I will, you know, pitch them all day long. The deals that we have that we already have that might be fairly easier on the first one. It's not truly just, hey, you know, invest with me because you like me. It's going to be, oh, invest me because you like me. Is it a fun. But I have these three deals like, you know, so it's going to be, it's going to be nicer. So yeah, that's kind of what we're doing now. So for the first person is like, this is your very first raise. Let me go back to when we did 2010. Now your very first raise, when you're going to ask people for money, what you need to understand. The couple things that you need to understand are you got to understand how if you're bankable or not. That's the one thing you need to know. Do you have liquidity and net worth and knock down the loan. You need to go find somebody does, right? Because you will not get a loan if you don't get a loan. Raising money, silly, right? You don't want to do it all cash deal like we had to back in 2010 because that your returns are just horrible. And it's an all cash deal. So, you know, figure out if you're bankable, right? Talk to a commercial broker and they'll tell you if you're bankable or not. It's really kind of straightforward. It's like, do you have the net worth of the loan you're trying to get? Yes or no? No, I don't. Okay, great. Go find somebody who does and then do you have liquidity? I mean, if you might not have. You might not have the net worth, but you might have liquidity. Right. That you need whatever the liquidity department is. Sometimes it's six months, sometimes it's a year, sometimes it's three months. Just depends on what they want you to have sitting in the bank. So that's. That's number one. Number two is they're actually going to go raise capital and talk to people. Marketing takes a lot longer than you think it does. It takes a long time. It takes you like at least 90 days before you start building momentum. And then you have to maintain that and push that. And it might take you six months to a year before people really know who you are. Right. So marketing. So you. It has to be a constant train. If you are. If you suck at it, please hire somebody who's good at it. Like, don't try to do that yourself because you'll just shoot yourself in the foot. It's like, like, don't do accounting if you suck at accounting too. Like, that's the other rule too. Like, just don't even bother. Like, be able to get yourself in the world of her there too. So if you have the cash where you can save up some money to invest in your business, with your business, real estate investment firm, marketing is one of those functions you need to have done. Accounting is the other. Right. So those kind of things. And then, and then not being afraid to ask money. That's the biggest thing. People don't ask people for money. And I don't get it. I'm like, you're a capital raiser. Go ask them for a hundred grand. Go. Like, go. And then when they tell you no 100 times, you'll don't. Then you go, okay, great, I understand, but why? And then when you find out why they turned you down, it could be a variety of reasons, but that's the information you need to know so you can craft your message so you can do it the next time you talk to an investor. The next time, right. People are going, well, I don't know you. I'm not going to give you 100k. I don't know who you are. I don't know what your record is. Oh, great. Okay, great. Let me start marketing what my record is. Let me start marketing what I've done. Right? And then you talk to the next person. I don't like your hair color. Okay, great, thanks. All right, move on. And then it could be anything, truly. Like, they could not like you. There was a great quote. I think somebody the other day was like you're going out and you're Talking to people, 25 of the people are just not going to resonate with you and they're not going to like you. So move on. Stop trying to sell to those people. Just move off. Right? Like just, you know, just chalk it up. Okay, I gotta go text the next person. Because it's a sales business, right? Raising capital, sales business. And if you've never sold anything a day in your life, if you've been an engineer or project manager or whatever, you never had to sell anything and you're gonna go ask people for money, well, might be good to get in a sales training class because that's all that all this is. If you never run a business, you've never done that and had to learn how to be a salesperson, because that's what it is. You're selling people on yourself that I'm going to. You're going to trust me with your money and I'm going to take your money and not party with it. I'm actually going to buy a property with it and I'm actually going to improve that property and give you a return. Right. You know, that's what you're trying to, you know, have people, do they have to trust you with your money or their money. Right. So anyway, yeah, it's kind of an interesting gig. But marketing takes a while. That's one thing. Hire somebody and hire somebody. If you're, if you suck at it, hire somebody. If you suck at accounting, hire somebody and know if you're bankable or not. Like, for an intro person, that's what you need to do. And then that'll get you farther along. And then eventually, when you've been doing it as long as I have, right, you'll start funds and you'll start doing stuff and having a grand old time raising money. I wouldn't do anything else. This is what I was born to do, apparently, is to buy real estate and create investments and do stuff like that. So it's just kind of nice that I found my calling. It's kind of cool. Yeah. Long answer.

It was a perfect answer. And there was a lot of information there that I would love to just keep digging in on. But a few of the things that stuck out to me was one, and I love what you said in this because I see very eye to eye and it's a reason that I'm, you know, really haven't bought anything this year personally. Because to find a deal that is at or below cap rate, I mean, it's it's amazing how aggressive people are getting on deals, in my opinion. It's just my opinion on deals just to make it work. When I'm with you, the signs are there that over, you know, over the next six months to a year, there's going to be some sort of correction. I don't know how big the correction is, nobody does. But the key to any market, at least this is what I took away, you know, previously and then from you just now is never overpay real estate. You know, real estate will definitely provide that wealth and those returns. But if you overpay, you know, you're just having the potential. It may get you where you need to be, but you may need to wait longer because of what you did initially. Right. It's that beginning. So thought that was pretty key. And then the other thing too, that I'd love to dig in more on and hopefully spend a few more minutes on it is this fund. I'm seeing more of this from syndicators where they're becoming doing more of a fund situation. And I love that too because it helps diversify the passive investors capital investment or their investment. So what are some lessons learned and what have you been seeing through the process so far of doing this fund? And what a lofty goal you said, what, $50 million. That could buy you a lot of real estate. So congrats on that. But. And it will. And it will. So what's your lessons learned on those funds so far?

So far that I've learned, it seems to be a fairly straightforward process to set up a fund. It's a blindfold fund. And so it's like a reg D5. SAM is like authentication. You can do a 560 or 560. Obviously we're raising $50 million and I don't know that many wealthy people. So we'll do a five of 60, which means I can advertise it. Right. And what I'm finding is that as far as getting it set up, it's not, not much different than the regular syndication, right? It's the back end stuff is a lot more stringent. The back end stuff is a lot crazier. So my, you know, like your investor portal has to change, right? Because some investor portal that people are set up for syndication, so they're not set up for funds and fund accounting. And how do you determine. That's where it gets weird, right? It's like, how do you determine somebody came in on this date? We already have these properties, like what percentage share? I mean they get all weird and math. Right. So you have to have a really good fund accounting team that does this day in, day out. And you have to have those folks. The front end is easy. It's the back end that'll kill you. Right. So. And I've already talked to some of those folks about how we do, how we do all of that. And there's different funds too. Sometimes they're like a menu where you can pick, I want this property and this property, but I don't like that one. Right. You can set your funds up different, different ways. So it really kind of just depends. And most of the fun I'm starting is it's going to be like a. It's like for most people, brains, it's like a mutual fund. So you jump in and the date that you jump in, you're getting participate in any sort of gains of whatever the shares that are being held by that fund. Right. So, and that kind of my first go at what we're going to do. We do already have like, so the amount we're going to raise, we already have deals kind of in our pipeline that we're working, we're negotiating with sellers for. So it'd be fairly easy. We're going to like, okay, you're going to get your money. And by the way, these are the three deals we're going to do, or these are the four deals you're going to do. Right. Then trying to over a year, try to find properties that fit our criteria, go find them and do stuff like that. So, yeah, that's what I'm finding so far. It's really your back end. You got to have a good partner that knows what they're doing. And I think I found somebody. I started this fun conversation over a year ago where I was really kind of investigating it. I wasn't moving very fast. I was trying to figure out, okay, what is it going to look like? How are we going to set it up? Who are going to meet my partner, she's going to manage the accounting side because I ain't doing that crap. And like, who, who were the good ones? And like, so really been investigating it for about a year, like, no joke. And so I think I finally found the folks that I like, the portals that I like. So we'll kind of see. I have to get some more demos from some other. I'm sorry, I'm an investor portal. But yeah, so we'll, we'll move on that really quickly now. But it's been a long process. I mean, I said, oh yeah, I'm going to send my fund next month. But I've really been looking at it for over a year. Like it's not like something I just. Yeah, I, Yeah, everybody's like, oh yeah, I'm starting a fund next month. And they've probably done the same process, like truly trying to investigate how it happens, what you do, you know, at least six months or so. I've been busy, so I have to add here. But yeah, it's like you, you, you don't just go do that stuff. Right. And it depends on like, you don't have to do. Some people do depending on the reg A or like whatever. So if you did a reg A plus sign, right. That's a whole other ball of wax versus just doing a reg D 506C fund. Right. So, you know, it depends on how you want to, how you want to structure the reg A is going to take you longer. Just so your listeners know it does. It takes a lot. Four to six months maybe, depending on how bad Covid is. And if people are in the office, maybe longer. Right. Because reg A has got a little more requirements, a lot more requirements than reg D does. So anyhow. So.

Yeah, well, definitely something, you know, in that 18 months or 12 months whenever we get you back on the show. Love that. To learn more about, you know, but that's really good to know about the back end too, and that the accounting piece and you know, how the splits and all work out. And if the market starts declining and you have that cash in hand, you know, it's even better opportunity. So the timing seems to be really good for that.

Yeah, yeah.

So a couple of questions here. With your massive experience and, you know, just. So where you have started from in your career and where you're at now, what are, what are some of the most overlooked aspects that you're seeing in real estate investing in general, whether that's syndications or these funds? I mean, what are you. What, what cringes you at night with seeing like we're making these mistakes? Because we all have that, right? We're all like, oh, you know, so what is that? What is that? So the listeners can look out for.

And hopefully better themselves from an investor standpoint. It's. I, I really think that the investors are getting. There's a lot of groups, right. There's a lot of things and a lot of education, a lot of stuff out on social media. And I think investors are getting into deal that would not necessarily qualify. They would not be qualified for like, they're not even sophisticated. Like, they don't understand the end. Right. And yet sponsors are taking them in their deal. And it. And it's scaring the living out of me because there's just so much money chasing deals right now that I, I'm just like, y', all, like, I mean, I'm getting. And so I, If I get it, like a, A weird sense that somebody doesn't understand what they're investing in. I just don't stick them in my deal. But I have to have a conversation with them. But there's just like. And I have to train my staff, like my investor relations manager, my acquisitions manager. People like to understand they know what we're doing, but if they get a sense from an investor that they don't know what they're doing, we can't take them. I mean, like, according to the sec, we can't take them because they're not sophisticated and they at least be sophisticated. There's that. So that makes me a little bit cringe. There's. So that my processes are making sure we're not getting somebody into any of my deals that don't really. I don't want that. I mean, they're going to get a lot of education because I do a lot of communication, investor communication and stuff. And I'm going to, I'm going to make sure our deals perform. But still, I would like, before they got into it, to understand what it is that the hell they were investing in and not, oh, I really like Amy, so I'm going to give her my money. No, I really want you to understand what the hell this is and what the risks are. And like, you just gotta understand that because it's not if it's not. I mean, it's not when. Yeah, it's not if it's when. I mean, you're gonna get like, it does. And so you gotta, you know, I get, I get people like that. I mean, my value act that they take a long time. Like, this is not. This is not. I'm gonna give you cash flow distributions every month starting, you know, 90 days from when I bought it. No, it's value add. So you gotta understand it's different. And a lot of people don't understand that either. So I'm trying to do a lot of more investor qualifications right now because there's just a lot of that and then there's. And then what's feeding that is what I'll get out of my high horse about is all these guru people. One is Name, his first name is Brad. Will get up there and tell people that anybody can do what I do. Anybody can be a sponsor, whatever it might be, right? And, oh, and they're the ones that are making all the money, right? I was at a conference and that joker got up there and was telling people that. And I'm like, no, my job is really, really hard and it takes skill and it takes experience and it takes a lot of different things. And nobody, not everybody can do this job because it sucks. And oh, by the way, we work 90 hours a week for that damn money. And like, nobody wants to do that either. That's why they're called limited partners. They don't want to work 90 hours a week, right? I mean, like so crazy. But yeah. So that's my other. And they, this one right after the other, selling their education, telling, oh, that's easy. It's easy to do multi family real estate. It's easy to do this. You can go make a million dollars and, and like real estate is a get rich quick thing, but everybody get rich quick easy. And it's not, you know, real estate is hard and it takes, takes a lot of time and it takes you to build up systems. And when you don't have the systems, that system is you, you gotta do all the manual work and do all this other stuff till you get it set up where you have systems, you can afford them, right? And you have employees and you have all this in the beginning, it's just you, you're doing everything. You're doing the county, you're like, you know, plunging the toilets, you're like doing everything. And you know, but I, I just, it's kind of an interesting thing. So those are my two big things, I think. I. Investors need more education and they need to stop throwing their money at stuff that they don't understand. And then the Yahoo head stop telling people the guru dude. And they're all dudes, by the way. No woman would ever say that. But all the dudes are saying, oh, yeah, anybody can do this. No, not anybody can do this. There you go. You let me, you gotta let me get on my soapbox and bit. It was fabulous. I'm so excited.

But this is awesome. This is awesome because people do need to get educated about this real estate investing, whether it's multifamily or off anything in syndications. You've got to be, you know, knowledgeable, sophisticated. I'm gonna do a plug here. But you know, we do the fourth Monday of each month, we do a meetup virtual meetup. And we do that for this exact reason, Amy. Like just to teach and educate and we have people on and it's not a. We don't get money from it. We're not. At the end of the day, we just want people to make good decisions about, you know, maybe real estate investing isn't what you want to do. If you are putting in your last 50,000 and need that money a year from now, then this shouldn't be the investment for you. You know, this is a five, you know, potentially a five to seven year. Like your money is being used for something, especially if it's value add, it's already part of the plan repositioning of that asset. So I think it's key. The other thing, there are these great programs out there. Some are better than others, but at the end of the day, it's a lot of work. And so I feel your passion and just to even find an opportunity, the amount of hours, a lot of amount of money that goes into just the systems and the processes that you're talking about. So well said. And I love your passion about it because I think it's very true in so many ways. So with that said, I would like. I always end with this question and then I'd love for you to share on the show how listeners can reach out to you. What are your proudest moments in real estate investing and real estate in general? And again, how can people reach out to you?

Proudest, proudest moments in real estate investing. I guess when I was a sponsor and we had done really fabulous thing, I had, you know, I was the life of the party because I just cut everybody's checks, I got their capital back, right? Because we did refi. So it was a major refi. We profited from it and everybody got their money back. And I was the belle of the ball. Like, that was just so. But they. But it was, but it was fabulous, right? Because those people had invested with me and I was able to turn around in like, you know, 19 months and give them their money back. And it was great, right? So that was nice. That was really nice. You know, those moments are. And it's. But they were still in the deal. Everybody doesn't think, but they're still in the deal, right? So they got their money back and they could go invest in something else as they'll be in my deal, right? And still we're still cash flowing and stuff like that. So it was great. It was kind of cool. So that was nice. And then how can people reach out to me. So my website is T as in Tom, Emma's and Mary, the number one tm1properties.com and that's my website. So if they want to like they can register to invest in my investor portal there at the yellow button. If everybody just press the yellow button and it can kind of see the offerings I have, they can learn more about me on my website. I'm obviously on LinkedIn. I'm not on Facebook as my I'm at there but I'm not on. I don't use it for business. So I'm on LinkedIn more. And then obviously my website's the best way to get hold of me. I do have a white paper on my website too. 15 Ways to Create Value. It's kind of, I wrote it, wrote it a while back. But anyway, so there's that too on my website.

Well, Amy, thank you so much for your your time. I know you're even as of today you're out looking for properties and look for opportunities for your investors which is awesome. So love getting to know you today and I can do anything for you. Let me know. But you have a great rest of the day. Thank you so much Amy.

You too.

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