BiggerPockets Podcast 045: Finding Your Unfair Advantage, Rural Investing, and Getting Started with Tom Sylvester

On today’s episode of the BiggerPockets Podcast, we cover a huge variety of really interesting topics with real estate investor Tom Sylvester (yes, that rhymes!)

Tom has been investing in the Rochester, NY area for several years and has a great perspective on getting started, building systems to manage your business, investing in rural areas (or as Brandon says, “rrrrrurrral”,) and a whole lot more.

Don’t miss a second of this excellent interview!

Read the transcript for episode 45 with Tom Sylvester here.

Listen to the Podcast Here

In This Show, We Cover

Tom’s early lessons
The advantages and disadvantages to rural investing
Finding mentors and networking
Talking with your spouse about getting started with real estate
Getting started with real estate at a young age
When is the right time to quit your day job?
Red flags for problem tenants
The $10 Toilet part that could have saved Tom hundreds of dollars
And much more.

Links from the Show

Books Mentioned in the Show

The Automatic Millionaire: A Powerful One-Step Plan to Live and Finish Rich by David Bach
Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki
The 4 Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss
The E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber
The Book on Flipping Houses by J Scott
The Book on Estimating Rehab Costs by J Scott
What Every Real Estate Investor Needs to Know About Cash Flow… And 36 Other Key Financial Measures by Frank Gallinelli
The Ultimate Beginner’s Guide to Real Estate Investing by BiggerPockets

Tweetable Topics

Find your unfair advantage in business and exploit it. (Tweet This!)

What do you want your life to be? How are you going to get there? (Tweet This!)

If you aren’t finding success – be persistent but change your tactic. (Tweet This!)

Know the difference between a cheap property and deal. (Tweet This!)

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Connect with Tom

Tom’s BiggerPockets Profile
Tom’s Website: Tom-Sylvester.com

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alex anderson

Replied about 6 years ago

great tip on the toilet fill valve!

Tom Sylvester

Thanks Alex. I wish we would have known about it before our $800 water bill. Hopefully it will save you some money.

Brandon Turner

Great Podcast Tom! Thanks for being an awesome guest. I know I learned a lot in this episode, as I’m sure everyone did. It’s nice to see you and I pursuing fairly similar things! (Rurrrral properties, that is!) Thanks again!

Thanks Brandon, it was a blast.

After listening to this podcast, I went to Home Depot and purchased the Fluidmaster Leak Sentry (i needed them for my new property), and can I just say how AWESOME these are?!?! you can drain the entire tank of water and the fill valve will not utter a drop of water until the handle “activates” the fill valve. this is such a no brainer that I will now replace every fill valve in my toilets with these. thank you! http://www.homedepot.com/p/Fluidmaster-Leak-Sentry-Water-Saving-Fill-Valve-400LSRP14/100393067#.Uoqm8MS2bWo

Alex – Great stuff. Thanks for coming back and sharing the real life experience of using them.

Greg Jackson

Another enjoyable podcast, and great to see Tom making it happen in the Rochester area, where I misspent my youth. And Joshua, don’t knock scaring abandoned buildings … it builds character. 😀

Thanks Greg. I think I’m going to have to get Josh a ticket out to Rochester. He can have a garbage plate and all will be well.

Ha ha Tom … now you’re talkin’!

Chris Vail

Thank you for another great podcast, just ordered the book by Frank Gallinelli, sounds like a good one, when I am done with that I think I will move on to the BP books on flipping and Rehab costs. Again thanks again for another great Podcast.

Thanks Chris. Those books are fantastic. The reason I love both of them is they take these big obscure topics and break them down to the basic. With Frank’s book, he takes all these calculations and actually walks you through a simple example for each formula. I took this a step further and put many of the formulas in a spreadsheet that I use ot evaluate deals (read more here – https://www.biggerpockets.com/blogs/4317/blog_posts/29893-how-to-quickly-evaluate-a-real-estate-deal). J’s books do a similar thing. He goes into a ton of detail with each step of the process and makes it very easy to understand both the sequence and what is involved in each step. Lots of reading between the 2 books, but probably two of the best value books out there for real estate.

Sachin Acharya from Dubai , Dubai

Replied about 4 years ago

Hey Brandon, The Automatic Millionaire is written by David Bach. You said Steven Bach….lol Sorry man, couldn’t resist that… :-p

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