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7 “Ninja Tips” From One of Hawaii’s Largest Real Estate Investors

The BiggerPockets Podcast
69 min read
7 “Ninja Tips” From One of Hawaii’s Largest Real Estate Investors

We all know that Hawaii is expensive. With its black sand beaches, fantastic surfing waves, and delicious poke bowls, why wouldn’t you want to live and invest there? Well, even with all those positives, many investors steer clear of Hawaii due to its high prices and lack of land, but one investor, Indar Lange, has proven those critics wrong.

Indar is Hawaii’s largest flipper, running about 15 flips at any given moment, and tackling deals priced at upwards of $3,000,000! Indar is no rookie to the game, he’s been doing this for the last decade and a half, but he had humble beginnings.

Growing up poor on a farm in rural Hawaii, Indar thought that his life would be set once he got his engineering degree. After realizing that engineers topped out at about $150,000 per year, Indar had to think of something else to do. He coincidently bought a small home at the time, fixed it up, and sold it after living in it for a few years. He paid zero taxes on the gain and this became his first live in flip, which caused the real estate wheels to start turning in his head.

Now, he’s hooked up with some of the best lenders, agents, wholesalers, contractors, and investors in the Hawaii area, taking down massive deals for a big payday. You’ll hear Indar’s full story and catch his “Ninja Tips” for the aspiring real estate investor.

Click here to listen on Apple Podcasts.

Listen to the Podcast Here

Read the Transcript Here

Brandon:
This is the BiggerPockets podcast show 490.

Indar:
That’s so funny. I was just in Home Depot yesterday and somebody that follows me on Instagram came up to me and he wants to know like how to start flipping and buy this million dollar house. I was like, “Dude, just go to the bank, get that little bit the bank will give you and buy something. That’s your easiest thing to do right off the bat. And living it, you’re paying somebody else’s mortgage, you might as well pay your own mortgage fees, house hack, whatever you want to be.”

Speaker 3:
You’re listening to BiggerPockets Radio, simplifying real estate for investors large and small. If you’re here looking to learn about real estate investing without all the hype, you’re in the right place. Stay tuned and be sure to join the millions of others who have benefited from biggerpockets.com, your home for real estate investing online.

Brandon:
What’s going on everyone? It’s Brandon Turner, host of the BiggerPockets podcast here with my cohost, Mr. David Greene. David, man. What’s up, dude? How you doing?

David:
I’m doing pretty good. Just plugging along, trying to stay consistent with our goals. My tax return is finally getting done. So I’ll be looking to buy some of our properties pretty soon, and still growing the real estate team and the mortgage company, making great concert with you.

Brandon:
Awesome, man. I love it. Well, I am pumped about today’s interview, which we’re going to get in just a minute. I’ve actually got our guest coming into the sea shed sit with me and chat. But before we get there, I do what today’s quick tip.

David:
Quick tip.

Brandon:
Nice. Quick tip. The book that I wrote with Brian Murray, the two of them, volume 1 and volume 2 of The Multifamily Millionaire is out. So go to biggerpockets.com/store and get the book now. You can only get it on BiggerPockets right now. So we’ll ship it to you and you get a bunch of cool bonus stuff when you buy from BiggerPockets. In fact, the bonus stuff is just as cool as the book itself. So buy from BiggerPockets to get all the stuff into it right now.
Do me a favor. Let me know over on Instagram, shoot me a DM that says you got the book. Or even better post a picture of it, of your receipt or whatever, post it to your social so you can let the world know. It just helps me out and appreciate all of you, and I love the support. Thank you all. That is today’s quick tip.
All right. That’s it, man. I think it’s time to get in today’s interview chat with our guest, Indar. So Indar is a real estate investor from the island or on the island of Oahu out here in Hawaii, but he flew the long crazy trip over to Maui to sit with me in the shed. I think it was 22-minute flight?

Indar:
Yeah.

Brandon:
22-minute flight over here. Indar, welcome to the sea shed, man? How you doing?

Indar:
Great. Aloha everybody out there. So honored and excited to be here with you guys and just share our story about Hawaii and how we done it here in Hawaii.

Brandon:
I love it, man. I’m excited to dig in. I know you got a cool thing going right now. Whenever I watch on your Instagram, you’re investing in crazy Oahu, which is nuts expensive, super competitive, and then you’re also doing stuff on the mainland like a long distance invest and you can’t get much more long-distance than Hawaii to Ohio, Pennsylvania or something?

Indar:
Ohio. Yeah, we’re all over. Yes.

Brandon:
So that’s crazy. So I want to hear that whole story. But first why real estate? How did you even get into the idea of own and invest in real estate?

Indar:
Yes. I mean, that’s a great question. It’s small closing question get turned into huge. But it stemmed off into that passionate love of wanting to learn about doing your real estate, and you want to get to the next level in life. I got an engineering degree and it’s great money. I can make, I don’t know, 150,000 a year, which is great money and I’m very grateful to be able to do that degree if I wanted to, but for me I just wanted more in life. I wanted to be to the next level in my life. I wanted $1 million and etc., etc. of all that more in life.
Real estate was the next avenue to do it. I surrounded myself with very successful people, People who had influence in life, who had money and I only listen to them. And those people either did real estate or had real estate as part as of their portfolio. Now, these are multimillionaires, and I’ve started noticing that, that was part of their life. So that just led me to start wanting to figure out more. And this was 15 years ago plus, that the ideas started rolling in my head.

Brandon:
Well, I hear that from like CPAs all time who say like, they got in real estate because they kept seeing their clients. All of their wealthy clients, either own real estate or full-time real estate investors.

Indar:
Yeah.

Brandon:
So there’s a pattern you see with wealthy people and you’re like, “Hey, I want to do that.” So what was your very, very first investment ever?

Indar:
First I ever did was my own personal property. I was young, I went to the bank and I said, “Give me all the money you got,” and the time.

Brandon:
And they arrested you and threw you in jail for it.

Indar:
At the time, the bank would only give 240,000. If you know anything about Oahu in where we live, 240,000 gets you probably about the size of this shed.

Brandon:
This shed, yeah.

Indar:
So, I literally bought a box. Me and my wife, girlfriend at the time, bought this tiny little box and we lived in it. We fix it up and I did a do-it-yourself everything, and lived in it two years. And did that two-year hack of selling and after two years, pay no taxes.

Brandon:
Yeah. That’s cool. Can you explain that real quick. So those people never heard that amazing benefit to owning real estate. What that’s the two-year thing.

Indar:
So as long as you live in a place for two years, you don’t have to pay any taxes up to that. It’s up to 250,000. If you’re married, it’s 500,000. You don’t pay any taxes on that. So you just got a live or show that you lived in that place for two years, and it’s a great tax incentive. Now, at the level we’re at, I’m always looking at tax incentives and all the tax legal tricks to do around it from appreciation, depreciation and all the other fun stuff that we love to talk about.

Brandon:
Yeah. Also, you get a bunch of nerdy real investors together and our conversation are all taxes.

Indar:
Exactly.

Brandon:
David and I talk too much about taxes and we just sit around and talk about taxes because that’s what nerds do.

Indar:
It’s exciting.

Brandon:
Yeah, it is exciting.

Indar:
It is exciting. It’s like you’re almost figuring out how to beat the system legally, of course and do it the right way because there are so many loopholes in our system.

David:
It’s like sports coaches getting together and talking about the rule book.

Indar:
Exactly.

David:
You get really excited. That’s funny.

Brandon:
Can you see there’s a new rule coming out that allows us to put our hands on the right receivers within 3 yards of the line of scrimmage. In the first five seconds, what player we’re you going to construct?

Indar:
I literally did that December 28. I bought my wife a brand-new BMW for like, I don’t know, 80,000 tax write off, depreciation. Took the whole thing right away just for the write-off.

Brandon:
Yeah. There’s some fun tricks you can get when you get fun of the taxes. We do whole show just on that. All right. So you bought the house, you sold it, which a lot of people… I mean, Mindy Jensen hosted the BiggerPockets Money Podcast. She does that every two years and she has it for like a couple decades. Every two years, they fix up the house, sell it, make a profit. Do it again, and again, and again.

Indar:
So I’m all for using all the different sources of money I can get. So bank money is easiest money to get. It’s the cheapest and easiest. So we do that same strategy year after year as well. We do the two to five years and were into our $1.6 million house now. But that was because we bought and sold, bought and sold and kept on moving up in life.
A lot of times people are so scared to buy that first house because it’s their dream house, but really, it’s just your starter home for that next dream house down the line. It’s scary to pull the trigger. And Brandon, you’re amazing at action. I think you’re the best action taker I know.

Brandon:
Keep going, keep going, keep coming.

Indar:
That’s what all our weaknesses are, is that action. We know, we see, we read, and we know what we should do, but I think that separates people in life is that the amount of action you take, 10 more action than I even do and I love to do even more action but…

Brandon:
We could do a whole show just on people taking an action. But, man, thank you.

Indar:
We’ll just do it and figure it out later.

Brandon:
Yeah. Jump out of the plane, build your parachute on the way down. That’s very much the real estate investor motto. All right. So you bought that first property. What came next? Like investment wise, where did you end up going and how did you start your portfolio and your business?

Indar:
Yeah. So we bought the first property and that was when the ball started rolling for me. That’s when I started wanting to get into real estate really seeing what the flipping world was all about. I started going to seminars. I signed up for a program that really boosted me to the next level. I’m very big on education. Education is huge. I got an electrical engineering degree. I got a business degree. Contractors, license, but that’s nothing. Education is really what stepped me up to the next level because we can do one or two houses a year maybe, but how do you do this in a large scale?

Brandon:
So this is something I wanted to talk to you about because I know you have been a part of several groups and you pay for education on your part of lot of groups. We have mutual friends. You pay for one of the guru courses early on. We talk a lot of bad stuff about them, but you’re one of the guys who came out and said, “No, I did this and I got successful.” So who is that right for? Who should spend 10, 15, 20, 30, $50,000 on education and who shouldn’t?

Indar:
I mean, I think it’s right for anyone as long as you can afford it and you’re going to find that return. As long as you really are going to put into the work. You’re going to do the work you’re going to take that action that they tell you. I mean, all these gurus have great starter tips, great step-by-step how to do it, and we just started our own program too as well. And it’s great for the new guy who wants to have his own step-by-step program on how to do this because real estate in general is very simple to understand, very straightforward. It is truly, but it’s the action part, again, is the hardest part of it. It’s very easy to grasp and understand. We fix the house. We paint it and make it nice, and we sell it. It’s like the concept is we can watch it on TV all night long. Obviously, there’s a lot more to it, but it’s the action part of doing, right?

Brandon:
Yeah. We just did his interview with Adam from the company called MyBodyTutor and it was all about fitness. But every analogy related to business. A big piece of it was like the knowledge alone isn’t enough. We all know how to build a real estate business, right?

Indar:
Yeah.

Brandon:
Very simple. You buy a property. It goes up in value. You sell it eventually. It’s fairly simple. But it’s also simple get a six pack. It’s also simple to serve. It’s also simple to do a lot of the stuff, but we just don’t do it. It’s not about knowledge, right? Knowledge in our head. It’s not about that. It’s about, do you take the daily consistent action needed to accomplish that goal, which obviously you’ve done. So you started, you had the course, the program, you started learning, educating yourself. What came next?

Indar:
So we did a course. At the time there was no one flipping big in Hawaii and I had so much naysayers, family friends, even close people to me saying, “You can’t do this in Hawaii. You can’t scale Hawaii. It was too expensive.” I mean, at that time, I mean price points were like 700,000 for house. I think we’re about to hit a million for single-family price points.

David:
We just crossed it here in Maui.

Indar:
Yeah.

David:
Crazy.

Indar:
It’s crazy. I mean, how do you afford $1 million house with $80,000 salary a year, is What are Hawaii average is. So it’s crazy. And you hear a lot of naysayers from people. But then I started looking at those people and what they had in life, they are just normal people and they didn’t have what I wanted. So I started listening to people who had millions, multimillionaire people, and they started changing my mindset to how I was taught to learn and grow because we were trained so much as kids. I went to college and everything, but I think, honestly, college is kind of wasted time. I don’t want to say it like that. But you know what I mean.

David:
Yeah, I’m with you.

Indar:
I think the real estate or the life lessons you learn is a lot more important.

David:
I agree.

Brandon:
Hey, David. I’m curious to hear your thoughts. I don’t think you and I ever talked about this. What you think about college educations today>

David:
I think the problem is when you assume everybody should go to college. That’s where the problems come from. For some people, it’s great. For some people it’s terrible. It’s like most things in life, you got to look at your motive. If you want to be in a profession that you’re going to learn how to do that profession in college, it can be a good idea. Doctors, lawyers, engineers, accountants. You’re not to go to get an internship to learn how to be an engineer. You’re probably going to need to go to college.
If you don’t know what you want to do, you don’t have any idea or you know I want to be an entrepreneur, college might be a terrible idea. And if you’re in the person who’s saying, “I don’t care what I do. I don’t know what I want to do, I just want to have an experience. I just want to go pay $80,000 to spend four years partying and goofing around,” it’s a terrible idea.
College will only continue to get more expensive as the government continues to give grants to people to go there. Every single time, the government says we want more people to go to college. Colleges say, “Great. Let’s up the tuition.” And people would just get under this crippling debt for reasons that they don’t even understand why they did it. If you’re going to go be a doctor, then you’re going to pay that debt off. If you’re going to go be a mechanic and make $60,000 a year, you’d have been way better off getting an internship at mechanic place than going to college.

Indar:
For four years, yeah, you can be better off in four years. Even in trade.

David:
Take a person who learns how to invest in real estate because that’s what we’re talking about. Four years of interning underneath Brandon Turner at Open Door Capital or you, Indar, they’re going to be a ninja.

Brandon:
Yeah, that make sense.

Indar:
You’d easily be $100,000 breadwinner in four years.

Brandon:
Agreed. Easily. Okay. So you educated. You start flipping a rental. What came next?

Indar:
So we got into the flipping business. I had a great wife, girlfriend at the time was really supportive. She pushed me into the education program, help me pay for it. We maxed out credit cards. 35,000 in debt on credit cards off the bat. But I took the steps. I was very into vision boards. Still am at the time, goal setting, still very in it to this day as you are too, and I think that’s intricate part of where we’re at today. But we did our first deal. Super scared.
We did a small little wholesale deal. It was great, but our first deal, we bought it 700,000. We sold it for just over a million. I was so scared. So scared. I feel like that first deal, it just gets you over that hump. It’s such a scary moment, and as it should be. We’re all scared. I’m still scared today on deals. But if it was easy, everyone would be doing and I recognize that. I partnered on my first deal, which I recommend, if you’re scared to partner especially on a bigger deal. Just for the security of being with somebody who’s been there, done that, finding the hard money. This is back when hard money was like 12%. And they wouldn’t lend to you unless you had deals on your belt. Back then, they wouldn’t lend. It was very hard to-

Brandon:
But Indar, I don’t want to show my profit. I want all of it. I want the 100 grand profit or whatever is you’re making. What do we say to those people?

Indar:
You can’t do the deal and then you make nothing.

Brandon:
Exactly.

Indar:
So make half or nothing. And that’s my motto today. When I look at a deal, I’m like, “Well, somebody’s going to do the deal and somebody is going to figured out that deal. Is it going to be you or is it somebody else?

Brandon:
That’s good.

Indar:
So that’s always my model. Even on the hardest deals. I did some flips that everyone is like, “Oh, it’s a tear-down. My dad is a construction guy. My dad is like, “Oh, you got to tear that thing down and build new.” It’s like, “I’m going to do it. I’m going to figure it out, and just watch me”.” When I did those hard deals, I’m talking like structural underneath the house, jacking it up, putting 4 by 12’s and all that fun stuff and jacked it up and did it. After I did that deal. Everything else was easy. You know what I mean? You do those hard things in life. Everything else is easy after that. Next flip, I was like, “I got this.”

Brandon:
That’s cool, man.

David:
There’s some gold there. That’s a really, really good point. People in my life will say, “How do you work so much?” That does come up sometimes. And I think it’s because when I compare to working 20-hour days as a police officer, nothing really seems that hard anymore. It doesn’t feel hard to me is what I’m saying. If somebody else was maybe stepping to our shoes, they might feel very stressed and strained. Just like if I try to go work out with The Rock, I’m sure I feel like overwhelmed, right? But he isn’t feeling overwhelmed because he’s been doing it.
So doing harder things will make the stuff that seems hard now so easy. I think that’s a great point. And the other one I like you said is that first deal is so important. And the minute you said, “I bought a little box for us to live in,” I knew that’s why you were able to scale the where you are right now. I really think for so many people, buying a primary residence just a house to live in instead of a house to rent is 70% of what the momentum that they need to get into real estate investing. They’re sitting there, renting a room from someone else or renting an apartment and there listening to Indar talk about buying $1.8 million houses and they’re saying, “How could I ever do it?” The answer is you do what he did when he was in your position and you just by your own house.

Indar:
That’s so funny. I was just in Home Depot yesterday and somebody that follows me on Instagram came up to me and he wanted to know how to start flipping and buy this million dollar house. I was like, “Dude, just go to the bank, get that little bit the bank will give you buy something. That’s your easiest thing to do right off the bat.” And living it, you’re paying somebody else’s mortgage, you might as well pay your own mortgage fees, house hack, whatever you want to be.

Brandon:
That’s such a good point. Because I mean maybe at the end of your career, that first house isn’t going to make you millions of dollars. It’s not going to be a big piece of it. It doesn’t matter. It’s about you are changing your identity. We just keep talking to identity, David, but you changing your identity from somebody who is a passive like walk through life, not taking control their life to somebody who says, “No, I’m a financial person. I’m an adult. I’m a grown up. I put on my big boy pants.”

Indar:
It does make you an adult.

Brandon:
Right?

Indar:
It does.

Brandon:
You mentioned adult. It goes into that next thing. It’s so important. Do you have to own a house in order to invest in real estate? Of course not. But it definitely gives you a different identity.

Indar:
It does make you feel like it. It’s funny because I sit with you on the porch sometimes with you guys on Sundays and I don’t feel like and adult. I feel like a little kid when I’m hanging out with you guys. I think we’re almost all 40 here.

David:
Exactly. That’s funny.

Indar:
Just little kids chatting it up.

Brandon:
Yeah. We get pretty into it. I love this like lanai conversations. A lanai, for those who don’t know is like a front porch in Hawaii. Those moments, I mean, David and I do them a lot. You and I have done it a number times where we just sit down and just talk late into the night about the stuff.

Indar:
Yeah.

Brandon:
And it’s really cool to be able to.

David:
I want to ask our listeners, if you are listening to this on YouTube, please comment and if not, please go to BiggerPockets. Is there demand for videos of lanai session? With Brandon, David, Indar, whoever it is that’s in Maui. If people want to hear that, maybe we’ll record those and release them.

Brandon:
That’s funny. I thought about it.

Indar:
It’s a real personal moment. I mean, I sit there with you guys [inaudible 00:17:58] Instagram because it’s a personal friendship.

Brandon:
Yeah. They are good moments. [crosstalk 00:18:02]

David:
We wouldn’t release everything. I think there’s quite a bit that probably have to be edited out.

Indar:
Some of your comments.

Brandon:
[crosstalk 00:18:09] a little bit. All right. So the first flip, how did you even come up with the money to buy a $700,000 property. You [inaudible 00:18:19] the money or how did that work?

Indar:
Oh, man. I was so scared. I was so stressed about it. I sent the deal to everybody I knew, the program, my mentors, and everyone. Everyone’s telling me to deal. I was so scared. I partnered with somebody, brought somebody in and he was a broker for a hard money actually, and ended up two weeks before we’re closing on our extension. He moved away. He pulled out his hard money, fell out. I have 12 grand in earnest money deposit at risk. 12 grand is a lot for me at that time and I’m young. I was so scared. I was like, “Oh my god. That’s 12 grand. I’m so scared.”
I ended up figuring it out. I problem solved, called other hard money lenders. I made it happen in two weeks. Now, we’re on our extension. They’re ready to shut us down and cancel the whole deal. I’m like, “I’m not losing 12 grand.” So he moved away. I still paid him half and he still made his money and everything. I still honored that even though he moved away and left that part of the deal.

Brandon:
Left you.

Indar:
But I still am a man of integrity. It’s kind of a Hawaii way, no matter what. So he moved away and I had to figure it on my own. I found the money, man. I found it. The gap funding was from my little house I lived in it. We sold that. We made 90 grand off of that and we sold that and that was our gap fund. We did that deal. Everything you can think of happened. Contractors left. We went over budget, flipped it longer than we wanted, but just plowed through it and just figured it out. I have an electrical engineering background and that’s what an engineer does, figures it out. You just figure it out. You roll with it. You can get stop where you’re at and people will tell, “No, you can’t do it this way or you can do it at all.” I always will go around and ask somebody else or I will go around and find the right person to figure it out.

Brandon:
That’s such a huge part of just success in general, isn’t it? I always think of the TV show like 24, let’s say. 24, which was an action show or any action movie, but I like TV shows because Jack Bauer is a hero. There’s a bomb going to go off. The whole show is about him going to stop the bomb, right? The clock is ticking down and he finally stops the bomb. Then he’s like, “Oh, I saved the bomb.” Then a person goes, “Yeah, but your daughter just got kidnapped.” He’s like, “Oh.” Then he goes and saves the daughter and it’s like, “Well, it’s great. But your wife just got taken.”

Indar:
That all happens in like nine minutes.

Brandon:
Exactly, yeah.

Indar:
It’s very quick.

Brandon:
But that’s how real estate is so much like, isn’t it? It’s like this constant like, “Okay. I’m going to diffuse this problem. Then oh now, I got another problem. Now, I got to go diffuse that one.”

Indar:
It is.

Brandon:
And if you can get through it, that’s how you get [crosstalk 00:20:49].

Indar:
I feel like you just tackle those little problems like you just learned so much go to the bigger one like how you guys are just into these huge massive deals now and just from learning it. There’s no better way than to just do action, to do a deal.

Brandon:
Yeah. It’s just getting the bigger stuff. So what came next? I mean, what the next few years of your career look like? Just lots of flipping?

Indar:
Yeah. So the first few years, did one or two deals. I don’t know, three or four the next year. Five, six, seven, the following year, and I think we got up to like, I don’t know, 20 to 30 last year.

Brandon:
Wow.

Indar:
29 last year.

Brandon:
Wow.

Indar:
And these are million-dollar deals. 15 million last year. I’ve done about 75 million buys and sells of fix and flips.

Brandon:
Wow.

Indar:
In Hawaii, I heard many people they’re doing 100 deals a month. I’m like oh my god. How do you do that? If I were to do 100 deals a month, it’s crazy amount of money because our average price is a million dollars.

Brandon:
Yeah, it’s up there.

Indar:
I’ve done $3 million flips, crazy high-end flips. So our profit margins is a lot bigger.

Brandon:
What is a typical profit that you aim for an on a flip now?

Indar:
I don’t know if I should share this edit. So yesterday I just closed and we made 515,000.

Brandon:
Oh my gosh. We’re not editing that out. We got to… Dude, that’s amazing.

Indar:
Well, they’ll come asking for money.

Brandon:
Exactly. But I’m guessing that’s not normal.

Indar:
Not the biggest one, right?

Brandon:
That’s the biggest one.

Indar:
No, our average KPIs right now are 80, 90,000 a deal. So we do a lot of lower end stuff too obviously.

Brandon:
What do you like better? The $3 million flip or the $700,000 flip?

Indar:
Oh, all day long, the cheap, easy ones.

Brandon:
Okay.

Indar:
On the high-end flips, you got to be very intricate in your designs. You got to do accent lighting and you’ve got to make it cater to higher end. So it’s more involved. Profit margins can be bigger. You can enjoy that. We had a flip. We were going to make, I don’t know 600 or something on that. This was a couple years ago. And then making about 100.

Brandon:
Wow.

Indar:
It was 700 000 rehab, purchased at almost 2 million. So it was a big deal. I was just happy to just make something.

David:
I think you’ve told us about that one on the lanai. I remember this one.

Indar:
Yeah.

Brandon:
What freaks me out about the big deal… I love the idea of them, right? I love the idea of buying the $2 million property, putting a million bucks into it, selling it for four. Oh, that just sounds so good, right? But then the market shifts and that four turns to three. And all of a sudden you’re underwater.

Indar:
Yes. That’s the hard part about them. The ARVs like we’re looking at Kahala. You’re looking at a 4 million to a 9 million. It’s like how do you figure out this ARV?

Brandon:
It’s so hard when there’s not a lot of sales in an area.

David:
That’s exactly what it is. There’s not a lot of comps to go by because there’s a lot of people in Hawaii that want to buy a $700,000 house. I know that sounds crazy if you live in Kansas, but whatever your market is, there is a lower end price range that first-time home buyers want to get into. There’s incredible demand, so there’s a ton of comps. It’s very easy to come up with an ARV because you have all these past sales and you have a huge buyer pool.
The more that you go up into expensive properties, the thinner the buyer pool gets because there’s less people that can buy them and the easier it is to miss on what you thought. Just as someone who sells real estate, you put your house market at 4 million, it sells for 3.2. It happens way more than you would think. It does not happen where you put that house on for 700 and it sells for 520.

Indar:
Yeah.

David:
And that’s the danger when you get into those higher priced homes.

Indar:
Yes.

David:
Yeah, it really is.

Indar:
I find after about 1.5 million, it’s changes. People are generally cash buyers. You’re not really financing as much, so your buyer pool gets a lot smaller.

Brandon:
Which is why you have the opportunity to make a $500,000 profit on a flip because you could have also lost 100 grand on that one, 500 grand.

Indar:
It really is. Actually, where I made my killing more of my money was I was actually doing out on the west side Waianae back 2015. This is when realtors in general like, “What? You want to buy a house out here?” It was kind of like the outskirts, not…

Brandon:
Yeah, it’s a little wild west out there.

Indar:
Yeah, it’s a wild west. But I made a killing out there because that was affordability. We were selling houses at four or 500,000 at that time and that’s what the average guy, the wife who works, I don’t know, as a nurse and a husband who does construction. That’s what they can afford on our island. That was cheap. 400, 500,000 was the cheapest you can find on our island, and probably this island too. We were over asking back then, all the time and still to this day.

Brandon:
It’s one thing that they don’t talk about on a flipping TV show. All the flipping TV shows are like, “We’re going to do like the huge fancy things and every project is brand new and super high-end.” I don’t think most people realize that flippers are actually like most of their money is made from just the very basic, usually the same carpet or flooring or paint. It’s just rinse and repeat.

Indar:
You can tell all my flips is the exact same paint, the same colors. I got the same accent wall. Something like your sea shed. That’s actually similar. I do an accent wall. You find how it works and everyone loves it. I find here in Hawaii compared to LA, in LA you need to be more high-end. You need to have the marble and the hardwoods. You want to drive to LA. You can drive to LA from all these different cities compared to here in Hawaii, if you want to live in Kihei, you’re going to forego anything just to live in Kihei.

Brandon:
Live in Kihei, yeah.

Indar:
I know another flipper who does Frigidaire and dollar 12 by 12 tiles, million dollar homes and he sells them all day long because nice, clean, new is generally what people want here in Hawaii. So that’s another price point. My buddy flips in LA. He’s big flipper and he kind of gives me crap about million dollar houses are not as nice as his. But I don’t need to.

Brandon:
You don’t need to, yep.

Indar:
My cost is probably more.

Brandon:
Yeah, for sure. Well, on that note then, I want to talk a little bit about contractors because I know you’ve dealt with a lot of them, but before… Are there people flipping bigger than you are on Oahu right now?

Indar:
No, I think I’m the largest here on the Oahu for the last couple years. There was somebody else who left, but we’re the largest. Normally, we carry about, I think, 12 flips right now. We got carrying. So that’s our sweet spot. I don’t know. 10 to 15 is where I like to carry. It’s generally about 15 million. It’s a lot.

Brandon:
It’s a lot of money.

Indar:
It’s a lot of money to be carrying.

Brandon:
How are you financing all this flip? Are you still using hard money or do you raise money privately or what do you do for the financing?

Indar:
Yeah. So we do of course hard money. I’m always looking for better and the best hard monies out there. I have a great relationship. I am generally the biggest client for a lot of these hard money lenders, so they love working with us because my… It’s the same amount of work when I buy a million dollar house or they’re buying a $200,000.

Brandon:
You’re right, yeah.

Indar:
I kind of throw my weight around with hard money and I like that relationship. Then I bring private money. I bring people in. We make little huis. I love to throw that in here. We don’t call syndicates so we call them little huis on every property and I pay out interest to all my investors. They love it. I love bringing people in and helping them make money. I brought this one guy in. He didn’t know he had money in his house so we got him… He locked on his house. He took 300,000 out. We did a flip that lasted 10 months, paid him out about 35,000. The next day he bought a brand new Lexus.

Brandon:
That’s cool.

Indar:
“Dude, do you even know you could have bought a brand new car this year? And you got a brand new Lexus.”

Brandon:
Yeah, that’s cool.

Indar:
It’s such a rewarding feeling to when you make it a win for everybody else, and you’re helping out the community. With what we do in real estate, I posted this other day that we’re helping out so many people from… How many people are involved in our transactions? Realtors, appraisals and all the contractors. I mean, the list is crazy amount of people how much money generate into our society.

Brandon:
That’s true. Yeah, we bring a lot of jobs. So speaking of contractors, let’s talk about them. Hawaii is not known for being a super good contractor friendly place. In fact, we just hired a contractor to do some work on our condo, our month in Maui condo and the guy specifically said, he’s like, “Yeah, I show up every day.” He’s like, “I’m not like other contractors. I show up every day.” He goes, “Well…” He literally said, “I do have a surfing clause in my contract.” And he did. He has a surfing clause in his contract that said if it’s good waves, he will not be there that day. And I’m like that is so Hawaii. So how do you deal with finding good contractors, keeping good contractors? What’s been your secret?

Indar:
I mean, I have a contractor’s license, so I have that background. I know what things cost. We used to break things down generally. But anyone, out there who’s hiring people, just know right off the bat. A good labor guy should be 250 bucks a day. A lower end, maybe 150. Use that scale really fast to figure out how much labor rates will cost. Say, you got three guys on a job. I don’t know $250 dollars a day per guy. Ask them how long it’s going to be. Say it’s eight weeks. They’re going to tell you eight weeks. Take $250 a day times five days a week, times eight weeks. That’s your labor cost right off the bat.
Then you can figure out materially on your own side. A lot of times on our jobs, if we do material, we save money because now I’m controlling that material cost. I don’t like too on bigger jobs, sometimes, it depends on per job, but I get 20% off Home Depot, and I get a lot of discounts because of my volume. But finding a good contractor, this is a trick. I was at your house last time and on my way to airport. I stopped at home depot, put a little cardboard sign up because we got that flip in Lahaina coming up. I said, “Contractors needed. Give me a call.” I put a little cardboard sign on the stop sign. Probably got taken down a couple days, but my phone blew up.

Brandon:
Oh, no way? That’s hilarious.

Indar:
It’s such an easy trick. Look, I mean obviously, you want to ask for referrals and find other people in Yelp and all those fun sites, but a lot of times it’s just finding that right little guy.

Brandon:
On that note about the contractors and finding them, and the cardboard sign, last night, I’m talking to Tarl Yarber, who’s a good buddy of mine. We were driving up to do some Jiu Jitsu class. I have to find a way to put in Jiu Jitsu by the way in every episode of the podcast just to make me feel good. So we’re driving to this class and on the way home I’m talking to him about just the difficulties in finding contractors right now, and I told him the surf guy contract. Then I mentioned that this other guy I’m hiring right now is like super expensive. I mean, he’s basically 600 a day for labor, the labor only.
I’m like that’s just so much. I said to him, “I just can’t find anybody else.” He looked at me and he goes, “Brandon, be honest with yourself for a minute. Have you really done the work needed to find a contract?” I’m like, I called one guy, I asked for a recommendation. He gave me two names. I called both of them. One was busy and one gave me the bid.

Indar:
I know what you mean.

Brandon:
He’s like, “Your problem is not that you can’t find a contractor, it’s that you’re being too lazy.” And Tarl’s very direct like this. He’s like you’re being too lazy to do the work you need to be doing to do a good job with this.”

Indar:
I’ll give you credit because Maui is very hard to find contractors.

Brandon:
It is.

Indar:
Guys, it’s known.

Brandon:
It’s tough. But he’s right. He’s like, “Did you have your assistant call up every single tile and flooring, and paint contractor on the entire island and ask for recommendations and referrals who like to work with?” “No.” “Did you go to this site? Did you do this? Did you call everyone in the yellow pages?” “No.” He’s like, “Well, then don’t tell me you can’t find a good contractor because you haven’t done the work yet.” So, “Yeah. You’re right, Tarl.”

Indar:
A little trick too is to give the contractors an added incentive. Say, “I got five more projects lined up for you. Do you guys want to start here with you?” And even if you guys are brand new out there and you don’t, you will. You’ve got five more you’re looking for. So just giving them that additive incentive that it’s not just one and done. Even with agents, and when I’m interviewing agents to work with, you’re not going to buy and sell one house for me. I want to buy and sell a house every week with you. Make yourself feel seem bigger than even you are if you’re starting out.

Brandon:
That makes sense. That makes sense. All right. So I want to go to being the biggest flipper on Oahu, probably maybe in all Hawaii in general. I don’t know in Oahu who’s the biggest either?

Indar:
Well, I’ve flipped on every island.

Brandon:
Okay, yeah. So you’re probably the biggest flipper in Hawaii. So to go from that, and now you’re also doing long distance rental property investing, how did that start? Where did that come from?

Indar:
I mean, relationships. Relationships are a huge part of this business. You hear a lot of gurus talk about how this avenue of real estate is great. Wholesaling is the only way to do it. Rehabbing is horrible. I don’t believe in that. I believe in every avenue of real estate makes you money. As the agents, they make a killing. There’s billion dollar plus agents. There’s every avenue I think is great. And I just have that mindset that I can do more than I can. Just listen to you for years, of course. I mean I’ve been on bigger pockets before. One was free actually. I know that’s a long time ago.

Brandon:
You can still get a free membership. We got a lot of pros now.

Indar:
Yeah. You guys are awesome. I mean, so we’re flipping for years now and it starts where you want to put your money, what do you want to do in life? What kind of legacy do you want? The family avenue is huge in my mindset. So having the legacy for kids. Flipping is a job. I got to show up. I got to find deals. I got to do the work. I got to sell it. It’s not legacy. Legacy to me, your real worth in life, wealth in life is what you leave for your kids and your kids’ kids and your legacy that you leave on. So with that mindset and the BRRRR model, of course the BRRRR model is awesome. We started developing rentals and I used to have the mindset that Hawaii was too expensive. We couldn’t do the BRRRR model. We couldn’t do the 1% rule.
I follow those rules. Those have to be from the back. I used to think, “Oh, you can’t do it in Hawaii.” And that mindset really was holding me back. The second I changed my thinking, there are deals out there. It just starts naturally flowing? Do you what I mean? That rhythm of it all starts. And now we have about 15 BRRRRs here in Hawaii and then we’re now in the mainland. We got 16 in Ohio, 11 in Pennsylvania. We’re buying a 98 home deal in Missouri. 98 package home deal.

Brandon:
Wow.

Indar:
It’s pretty exciting on that one. 24 in Texas coming. Then we’re doing some wholetailing in a few other states, just our single family stuff. But the multi-family is exciting and the single family stuff too is really exciting because I have one deal that pays itself off in 18 years. That’s going to go to my son. So here you go, son 18 years from now.

Brandon:
That’s awesome you did that.

Indar:
You can either buy it, you can sell it, you can manage it, whatever. It’s such a life-learning lesson for my son, I feel like.

Brandon:
Yeah. I did the same thing for Rosie. Now, I’m doing it for Wyler. I just got a property under contract in Bangor, Maine actually. And I chose Bangor because, again, it goes back to team and relationships. I have a good contractor too, but I have a good property manager there.

Indar:
Ryan is up there.

Brandon:
Yeah, Ryan was up there. So Jesse McHugh is up there. And Jesse’s my property manager. He’s got all the contractor relationships. I have a core four in Maine.

Indar:
I mean, you got rock stars around you, man. Ryan Murdoch, if you’re listening, man, he’s a beast. I love that guy.

Brandon:
Yeah, me too. I know. Ryan is awesome. So, guys, so what else have you found? What’s worked well in terms of long distance investing? When you live in an expensive market, which a lot of our listeners do. They’re in LA, New York, San Francisco, whatever, and they want to invest in the Midwest, what’s worked really well for you and what are some of the things that have been difficult in learning lessons?

Indar:
I mean, the biggest thing on all the real estate is trusting the numbers. I mean, it’s a number business. But I think we’re all really comfortable with numbers and trusting it. It’s almost like a data game. If the numbers work, if the market is right, you got to trust that intuition. And then of course finding the right people on the ground, finding the right agent over there, finding the right partnership in that area. Whatever it may be, it’s just the act of figuring it out.
I’m scared too myself. I’m scared jumping in different markets. I’m always scared, but when I have a right person on my team or together with me, somebody I trust, whatever it may be, that knows that market well or knows that area well, I vet him of course. I make sure he’s a good guy. Then I’ll act and I’ll jump in with them. Or I just learn that market and I really fall in love with that market or I follow you guys, man. You guys set tones for markets. I mean, I think everyone and their mothers in Ohio or has something in Ohio.

Brandon:
There’s a lot in Ohio.

Indar:
I mean, we’re jumping all over those markets where people generally are. And of course we do our own research and check it out. But it’s really a legacy for the kids. Yeah, cash flow is great and I love cash flow. I love that check in the mail. It’s a great feeling because flips, especially when you start doing a lot of flips, it’s a lot to manage because a lot of money goes out. I mean, yes, you can do big in Hawaii but man, I was paying 70,000 a month in mortgages. I would be spending 150,000 a week just like that. It was no big deal. Still is not.
But managing that in Hawaii is huge. It’s a lot of money flowing. It could be stressful. So enjoying the cash flow or rental, it’s cake. It’s like I love that little extra, but talking about rentals a little tidbit for all you people out there, it’s not about the cash flow of the rental. It’s everything else that you get from it. The appreciation. Silent bank account. That thing is going up in value generally in most states. That’s huge.

Brandon:
My loan is getting paid off over time.

Indar:
And your loans getting paid off, the house hacking. Every other avenue I think is amazing. And for me now, it’s the write-off. It’s the write-offs. I mean, it allows me to flip more and do more and write everything off, doing a cost seg. Cost segs.

Brandon:
Cost segregation studies. They’re amazing.

Indar:
That’s a high level thing. It’s a common thing for us, but a lot of people don’t understand what a cost seg is. And it’s worth every dollar. Actually, I think you guys all should do one before… I don’t know, Biden I hear my get rid of it.

Brandon:
Yeah. There’s some changes coming. So I’m…

Indar:
If you do it now and you have it, [crosstalk 00:37:27].

Brandon:
You can should be grandfathered in. We do those every year. It’s been really good.

Indar:
It’s worth the money. It costs money.

David:
Indar, can we ask you first off what’s a cost seg? How have you used them before? And then let’s get into some of the other write-offs that you mentioned for just people that are thinking… Really to me, this is like the carrot that makes you want to get into it, right? The real estate ends up funding your entire life in many ways, not just from cash flow, but literally your business can pay for all the things that you want to do and it becomes a write-off. So I’d like to give as many examples as we can for the listeners of ways we can do that legally.

Indar:
The government really makes an incentive to be a real estate agent, I mean a real estate person in general, because we are bringing a lot of money back into our economy as we were talking about it. A depreciation, you can write off. The house value excluding the land, you can divide that by 27.5 and you can write that off every year. You can write that off of any dollar you make. Say you make 100,000, you write off 100,000. And the cool thing I love about it is it shows I made 100,000, but I don’t pay any taxes. So when you go to the bank, you’re still showing 100,000, because you a lot of times we have to work with banks.
Then, whatever, cost segs? Cost segs, awesome. So a cost segregation, you’ll pay a company to come out into your property, multi-family. They do single families too. Generally single family is I think 600 to 1,000 depending on the home of course. They’ll come out and they’ll give a valuation of the windows, the doors, all the smaller things that go down in value slowly over time, generally, maybe five years or something. And they’ll give you a write-off for those items which now you can take and use as a depreciating asset against the money you make. You can write off that cost, that costs you to pay it for those guys to come out and do it. You can take that and use that for the next five to a year, whatever, how many years you’d get it for. Those two assets are great. Then we did also, was it tax code 179, I think it is, the bonus depreciation?

Brandon:
Oh, yep. We do the same thing.

Indar:
For my cars. So if your car is over 6,000 pounds you can write it off as long as it’s being used for work. So my wife’s a real estate full-time agent and her vehicle is used for work. You can write off G wagons. They’re over 6,000 pounds. I think everyone talks about that. Anything over 6,000 pounds. And you can take the full write-off 80%, whatever. It may be that you use for work and write it off for that whole year. So we took that $80,000 vehicle and now I didn’t have to pay 80 grand in taxes. So if I’m in a 30% tax credit, whatever I have to pay, that’s 20,000 I just saved me in paying taxes. So really that 80 grand vehicle was like 60 grand, if you think about it.

Brandon:
Yeah, that’s cool.

Indar:
And if you have a good accountant, they’re teaching you things… And I’m not accountant so please check with them all the exact codes. I’ll throw that disclaimer out there. But figuring out all those little things at the end of the year, we did it December 28th at the end of the year. Okay. We got to do a write-off so we did it real quick and-

Brandon:
That’s cool.

Indar:
… bought the new car.

David:
I think we should highlight, when I first heard about this before I got into… I was just a police officer that bought rental property. I didn’t really have a set of like a business and I heard people talk about loopholes and just that phrase sounds immoral, it sounds wrong like you’re avoiding taxes, right?

Indar:
It’s not.

David:
No. Taxes and tax breaks are just incentives that the government creates to incentivize a certain behavior. It’s no different than when you tell your kid, if you clean your room then you can have an ice cream cone. You’re trying to get them to clean their room, right? It’s not a loophole that that little kid gets ice cream just because they clean their room, it’s something that’s set up. So when we as real estate investors invest in this asset class, we are taking on risk. We could lose money. You can’t lose money going to work and earning a W-2. That’s why you get taxed the hardest. It’s the safest, but there’s actually risk associated with what we’re doing.
So to offset that risk, which the government wants you doing because you’re creating jobs for lots of people. Look at the people we’ve talked about just now within our story. We’ve created jobs for contractors, for CPAs, for real estate agents, for banks, for people that the banks hire, for underwriters that the banks hire, for people that make the materials that you go buy at Home Depot. I could go on forever, but every time you flip a house you are putting money in a ton of people’s pockets. So of course the government wants you to do that. Did you want to comment on that, Indar?

Indar:
Yeah. I mean, 100%. The government wants you to spend money and bring money back into the economy. If they get taxed on it, so that same dollar… I followed this somewhere that your dollar bill gets taxed so many different times as they exchange hands. So the incentive is you’re spending money back into the economy. We will reward you for that. You are creating jobs.

David:
So the concept of depreciation, for example, it’s very confusing, because it’s an accounting term. It is not the opposite of appreciation. And we throw that around. We say the house appreciates. Well, depreciate sounds like it loses value. It’s not the case. It’s losing structural integrity. Eventually that house that you bought will fall apart and break apart. Now, the value-

Indar:
That’s 27.5 years.

David:
Yes, exactly. Exactly what they’re saying. In 27 and a half years, this property should be-

Brandon:
Who came up with that one? That’s what I always wondered? I would have completely understood if somebody was like 28 years or 30 years, round up.

David:
200 years ago, houses didn’t last as long. Thank god they haven’t upgraded that to like 100 years. That would be terrible if they do that.

Indar:
Some of these houses here in Hawaii are like that.

David:
Yeah. So your house was built 27 years ago.

Brandon:
We got half a year left, honey. Half a year left.

David:
So depreciation is the benefit you get because the government recognizes your property is slowly falling apart and so we’re going to give you 1/27.5th or whatever you say that of this thing’s value back. You’re not going to pay taxes on the money that made. Now, the way it works out because of inflation is you get the best of both worlds. Your house falls apart so you get depreciation, but it also increases in value and increases the value so fast that you can take the equity and put it back in the house and keep it from falling apart. You can keep reinvesting.
But I guess what I’m trying to say is it’s not like a free money. There is risk associated. There is work associated. There’s a reason they’re incentivizing investors this way. But if you are smart, you can take the things that you normally paid for in your everyday life, run them through your business instead and write them off. So the reason a realtor can write off a G wagon over 6,000 pounds or whatever and they get to take 100% of the cost, and they can write it off is because they got to drive around all the time for work. So if they have this big heavy expensive car that uses up a lot of gas and needs a lot of maintenance, they can write off the total value of it because it’s going to cost them more money.

Indar:
Well, if you think about that, the incentive is if you spend money, we will let you write it off. So they want you to spend money. It generates our economy so much money. So they want it.

David:
Yeah. As financially wise people, we don’t want to just be throwing money everywhere. So the idea is you take money that you already were going to spend and you run through your real estate business so that you limit the taxes that you pay. We’re not saying go buy a land rover just because you have to spend money on something, but if you’re going to buy a BMW, it would be better to run it through your business and write it off than it would be to buy it personally and get nothing back.

Indar:
And I shop at Home Depot for every toilet paper and soap that I need for my house.

Brandon:
There you go. All right. We got to slowly begin wrapping this thing up now. But couple things I want to get to.

Indar:
I got some ninja tips though.

Brandon:
Please, yeah. I read that somebody said you got ninja tips. So why don’t we go over those? I don’t know how to get into that, but you just nailed it. So let’s go to ninja tips. Go ahead.

Indar:
We missed the whole backstory of my life. So I grew up in a very poor, water catchment, in the Puna. I was born in a jungle on a pot farm. We grew bananas. Very poor.

Brandon:
Pot farms, wow.

Indar:
Yeah, my parents. This is ’70s.

Brandon:
Yeah, okay.

Indar:
That was legal back then. Like [inaudible 00:44:53] Hilo in the jungle. So my parents grew up there.

Brandon:
And that’s on the big island, right? [crosstalk 00:44:57]

Indar:
It’s on the big island. It’s way out in the boonies.

Brandon:
I mean, yeah. It’s in the sticks right there.

Indar:
It’s in the sticks. I mean, I was born on the farm. I was born that way. Water catchment and a generator is how we lived. So I grew up that way. So I am constantly into cost saving and living below my means. I like to try to because I think I was raised that way with less. Now, we have more so I’m constantly looking for little ninja tips. Little tricks of the trade that I learn from each other and I always like take note. So let me dive into a couple like good ones that people love.
A huge, huge one. So when we sell a house, before we sold, we’ll hire a home inspector. Normally, that’s done after you sell a house and you hire a home inspection then and they come back at you with, “Hey, fix this. Give us a credit for that.” This is generally huge when you’re doing three and a half million dollar house because that buyer in general is a savvy person. He’s buying a $3.5 million house. He’s a savvy dude. He knows his stuff in life. So he’s going to come at you for credits. They’re going to ask for stuff. If you stop him in your tracks, so I get a home inspection to run through the house.
I’m not going to put on the suit and crawl through the attic. I’m not going to look every nook and cranny. I try to so I pay for a home inspection, 700 bucks for a higher end home. It’s worth it. Then I give that to my contractor. “Here you go. Here’s your punches.”

David:
Here’s your punches. I love it.

Indar:
You know what I mean?

David:
So good.

Indar:
What is that 80 pages there, David?

David:
Yeah.

Indar:
You guys get those things all the time.

David:
Yes, and that’s the same thing that I do exactly like you said. It’s funny you mentioned that. What I actually started doing, when I was burying at high volume is I would have the home inspector and the handyman contractor go at the same time. I would have the home inspector meet with them and he would point out stuff the contractor would then give me a bid for specifically what it was and just give me a list of, “Hey, I can do this for this much money.” And I could just go through and pick like what I want on the menu. “Oh, those chicken nachos sound good. I’ll take that. Ah, that looks a little too expensive. I don’t need that.”

Indar:
I don’t even pay my guys until they finish the work and I make it like that, because I mean it comes down to they’re going to ask you for credit. If you caught everything, they’ll still maybe find some little things. But if you caught all the big stuff, you’re saving thousands of dollars generally.

David:
And they’re going to come after you.

Indar:
A good realtor is going to ask for credit. I always ask for credit I want to buy. No matter what, I ask for credit. The little tip out there, no matter what, ask for credit.

Brandon:
Ask for credit

Indar:
When they say you can’t, ask for credit.

Brandon:
Let me explain why this is. So when you’re in negotiation with somebody, you have undercut… Let’s say, Indar, you’re selling a house to me and I’m buying it.

Indar:
Yeah.

Brandon:
So I go in there and I want to buy this property for a million dollars. I’m going to find things wrong with the property, right? So I’m going to then go to you and say, “Man, this isn’t good. The foundation had a little bit of crack over here. I want $30,000.” Best case scenario, you say yes. Worst case scenario, you say no. Either way, I am in no different position.

Indar:
Yeah.

Brandon:
Right?

Indar:
You still can do the deal.

Brandon:
I still can do the deal legally. I have the right to buy the deal.

Indar:
I always ask. I had a deal one time that… Pictures look great. We put an offer and the numbers look great. When I actually went and looked at the property, mold, mildew. Worst case. They covered it all up with great pictures. I was going to walk away from the deal. I told the realtor, “Give me $50,000, I’ll do the deal.” I didn’t think we’re going to get it. He gave me a $50,000 credit. I was like, “Oh, crap.”

Brandon:
You never know. There’s zero risk and downside to asking for that. We’re not saying go and lock up properties and be a jerk and then negotiate them down three weeks into the process. That would give you a bad reputation in the industry. But they’re going to be legit problems every time.

Indar:
Bring a contractor, bring in a termite guy. Get a mold guy. Mold is a huge one because it’s a big deal, mold. Get their cost and present it to them. Now, that agent has to disclose that when they sell it later on too.

Brandon:
When people say they don’t get inspectors like home inspectors when they buy a property like, “I’ve been doing this a long time. I don’t need a home inspector.” I’m like, “They’re going to find something that’s going to pay for themselves guaranteed.” They’re going to find something and it’s going to be like, “Oh, yeah. That’s $1,000 thing. Okay. Ask for $1,000 credit.” Now, you just got that thing fixed and it paid for your home inspection and then some.

Indar:
And generally, I ask for double whatever it’s going to cost because they always make meet halfway so I always ask for double.

Brandon:
There you go. Knowing that everyone negotiates that way, that helps a lot. All right.

David:
Let me bring some clarity into why this works. When you ask for a credit, what you’re really doing is you’re saying, “I have an inspection contingency that will allow me to back out of this deal.” I have found something. Now, you don’t always say these words. You don’t go threatening, “I’m backing out if you don’t give it.” But it is implied in the offer. “If you say no to this credit for this mildew, I may back out of the deal completely.” That’s the formality of what you’re doing when you make a request for a credit. And they know that.
The seller is hearing, “Oh, man. If I say no, they might back out of the deal. That means I got to put my house back on the market. That means I got to wait another 45 days for another buyer. Then I got to go to another 30 day escrow. And that’s going to cost me all this money. The house that I just went put under contract, I might lose that too.”
To me, having a really, really good agent like Indar’s wife understands, they feel out that situation. Realtors are stupid. They talk way too much. People do that all the time. All the time we start building rapport, they’re like, “Oh my god. Our clients are so happy. They just put their next house under contract in Texas and they can’t wait to move.” I’m like, “I don’t know why you told me that but I’m about to tell my client that we’re asking…”

Indar:
Extend that J-1 another two weeks. Now, you just have them locked up for a month. They’re so invested in that sale already after a month. Asking-

David:
Yeah. They’re going to have work to do.

Brandon:
The only caveat I will add is in very specific markets, which we happen to be in right now in many places, it can be so hot that they could say no to you, put their house back on the market, sell it to somebody else for more.

Indar:
It’s got to be a buyer’s market. Yeah, a buyer’s market.

David:
A buyer’s market or even a neutral market, you could get a little bit. When we say it doesn’t hurt to ask, it could hurt to ask if you don’t have a contingency to back out of the deal. They kick you out of contract and then they go sell to someone else. So in that circumstance be careful about asking for too much, but in any other circumstance, absolutely go see what you can get.

Indar:
As long as during the inspection phase, the J-1 here in Hawaii.

Brandon:
Yeah. As long as you’re in that phase, you can ask for it. And if they say no, it doesn’t void the contract. That’s the key. The inspection period is a one-way road here.

Indar:
When you have it, more ninja tips. I got a bunch.

David:
You said J-1. I just want to confirm. In the Hawaii contract, that J-1 is the part of the contract that says you have this long to do your inspections.

Indar:
Inspection is normally 14 days. I use 14 days.

David:
There you go. That’s what the standard term typically is. I have a team in Hawaii that helps people out there and so we definitely go over this training of how like Indar said that was perfect. Extend it another two weeks, get them on the hook even longer. Now, they’re more likely to say yes to what you’re asking for because they’re sort of being held hostage. Brandon, you’re dead on. They only benefit the buyer.

Indar:
And actually having a good agent like you’re talking about is key to it all because they’re negotiating on your behalf. These are MLS transactions we’re talking about it and it’s worth it to have. It’s worth it.

Brandon:
Before you go to the other ninja tips, how are you finding deals today? I should have asked you that earlier.

Indar:
So my KPI is actually 63% agents. We do a lot of online auctions. We got the one over here in Lahaina, an online auction. I have a great relationship with them. They actually called me. I think it was auction.com. Called me to let me know the deal is coming up.

David:
That’s cool.

Indar:
So they let me know inside. We have our hard money lenders. We got an inside track to some of their foreclosures. They’re giving us first choice.

David:
Interesting.

Indar:
And we’re wholetailing those deals across the United States. Those are awesome. Of course, we got some cold callers, PPC. In Hawaii, I think you got to do it all. I hear so much in the states it’s like, “Oh, we’re experts at short sale or we’re expert at one thing.” In Hawaii, you got to be a master of everything because I’ll be looking on MLS and I’ll get a deal from… We do courtroom steps auctions. So I’ll get a deal over there. Oftentimes where I’m not looking, I get deals. You got to look everywhere for a deal. You can’t just, to me, be a master in one little spot because deals will come, relationships, bandit signs. We do bandit signs with my wife, man.

David:
I just didn’t like that.

Indar:
I don’t like that.

David:
Yeah.

Indar:
[crosstalk 00:52:36] I’ll find somebody to do that kind of stuff.

Brandon:
It can get the phone ringing. It makes sense because especially in Hawaii, there’s probably more houses in Oakland than in all of Hawaii.

David:
Or at least Oahu. There’s probably more houses in one city. LA, I’m sure has way more.

Brandon:
You can get really niched.

David:
Yeah, if you’re in a smaller market like Hawaii is a smaller market, Oahu is a small market.

Indar:
I mean, Hawaii is a relationship business market. I mean, everybody knows everybody. You walk down the street. “Hey, you’re friends with… Your uncles with that?” And I am born and raised here. I’m going to leave my kids to live here in life down the line so I want to keep those relationships really, really important. So that’s how we actually grew so much is the relationship.

David:
Yeah, relationships.

Indar:
And so much so even on deals, I’ve lost on two and a half deals in my life. I’ve had an $80,000 loss. It kicked me in the butt on that one for a year. I still pay back every investor. I still made everybody money, because I valued… This was my third deal ever. I valued the relationships. I would keep with those investors who are still investing with me today. Every other person got paid on that deal no matter what because relationships are far more important than monetary value of doing business. In Hawaii so much so. You don’t want your name, your reputation to ever go bad. And it’s extremely important to me in Hawaii because it’s my kids’ names. It’s our family.

David:
Yeah. That makes sense, man.

Brandon:
What else you got for ninja tips? First one, hire a home inspector when done. What else you got?

Indar:
Knowing your daily holding costs. So on all our deals, we know our numbers. We know our numbers down the T. So an average is about $300 a day of holding cost per house. So when we go to sell the house, I will give a $100 a day credit if they can close sooner.

Brandon:
Smart, yeah.

Indar:
So now that seller who’s often not in control of the deal, a lot of times it’s the mortgage lender we’re pushing. He will push that mortgage lender to close sooner because he’s going to make a hundred bucks. It’s not really losing me money. You think it is. But when you do the math-

Brandon:
Yeah, it’s not.

Indar:
… it’s saving you money. Saving a couple hundred bucks a day, I’m all for it. I’m such a chain person, and I’m always fighting for every dollar. Pushing them to close sooner, get the deal close sooner. Just a quick easy ninja tip. “Hey, I’ll give you 100 bucks a day if you can close a day sooner or couple days sooner.” And they’ll push the lender in return. A lot of times, they want to move in faster anyway, so that’s a cool little trick to try out. A huge ninja trick is we’re all scared at this deal. We’re all scared in this business.
The numbers are huge. It’s very life-changing what we do. Could change it for better or worse, but to educate yourself and to understand a deal. Be the expert in that market. When I look at a deal, I know everything that’s going to happen in that neighborhood. I know it’s active, what’s selling, what’s coming up. When an agent talks to me, I know what that neighborhood is.
Knowing my market. Getting that map behind you and plotting your price points in that market. Being that expert in that market, it’s your money at stake. It’s nobody else’s money. Even if you got hard money, whatever, it’s your money at stake and I treat it like. And I make sure I am that expert in that market.

David:
Absolutely, yeah.

Indar:
You want to know everything about it. Then with that said, get out there and write an offer. I know so much people are out there, they’re in the analysis, paralysis phase, analyzing deals, analyze deals, looking at deals, but they don’t take the time to write that offer. I tell so many people, “If you spent an hour analyzing a deal, throw that offer out there and write an offer. Zero offers equals no deals. For us our KPIs are 22 offers equals a deal.
So I’m just writing an offer to get to 22. I’m just throwing an offer. I need to get to 22. So I write offers, and forget it and move on. Even if you don’t think you’re going to get it. We’ve had deals six months later, “Hey, is your offer still good?” A lot of times people don’t realize that. They can’t get bank financing because their house is in such bad shape or whatever circumstances. So for us, forget it and move on. Worst case, your numbers are off. You have J-1 to get out. You have an inspection period to knock that price down if you’re off. Submit it and forget it.

Brandon:
I love it.

Indar:
And move on.

Brandon:
So I’ve been teaching people on bigger pockets webinars for five years now. I’m like it’s a very simple funnel. You get leads that come in and you just talk about you got to do a variety of things if you’re in a small market, especially. So get your direct mail, your cold call and your agents. Get that in. You get leads then you analyze them, run the numbers, make an offer. I say pursue them because it fits with the LAPS funnel, L-A-P-S. So leads, analysis, pursue, and then you will get success.
It might be one out of 10, one out of 20, one out of 30. It doesn’t matter. I mean, it matters you can try to improve those numbers over time, but the fact is it is a funnel. And I love the fact that you know your KPIs. That just tells me like this is not a mystery, it’s not a surprise that you’re a successful flipper, because you’re doing the things that successful flippers do.

Indar:
And the numbers.

Brandon:
Yeah, the numbers. This is a numbers game.

Indar:
I’m an Excel spreadsheet galore guy.

Brandon:
Yeah, I love it. I love it.

Indar:
No. You don’t get your first deal overnight. Yeah, I mean I worked so hard to get my first deal. It took me nine months to get my first deal. I remember I was like six months and I was so heartbroken. I got a deal locked up. It was great. I fell in love with it. Two days before closing, it fell out. Whatever happened, it happened. Oh, man. I was so heartbroken. And most people would stop kind of from there.
But I took that experience of learning what escrow was, learning the lingo. We’re sitting here talking. But real estate got its own lingo, it’s own language. We’re talking about, escrows and J-1s and KPIs and all this stuff. It its own lingo. It its own world that comes naturally to us, but you guys remember, back in the day, no idea what that was.

Brandon:
Yeah. You don’t know.

Indar:
So just going through escrow and learning about the process of it all was worth it in every sentence.

Brandon:
It’s like trying to learn how to lift weights at the gym without going to the gym. You’re like you can read a book that says what a leg press is or whatever you or what a squat rack is, but that’s not the same as going there, looking at it, touching it, feeling it, throwing pens around your office.

Indar:
Stop throwing a pen at me. Sorry, I’m throwing a pen at you.

Brandon:
I get excited about this. Yeah, that’s the downfall being in the sea shed with me is you get pens thrown at you. So everyone be warned. [crosstalk 00:58:49] The difference is showing up, going to the gym, not knowing what you’re doing, doing some stuff, pushing and pulling, some levers and getting yelled at. And that’s fine. You got to do it, man.

Indar:
There’s something about it.

Brandon:
Yeah.

David:
I’ll comment on the reason that we like funnels, it gives you structure and direction for what you’re trying to accomplish and to learn. We do the same thing on my real estate team. We have five steps to taking a person and turning them into a closing. And every step where we classify where you are, there’s a tool that we use to move them from that step to the next one, because we realize it’s the same freaking process over and over.
Brandon has the LAPS funnel, leads, analyze, pursue, and then success. If you force yourself to be disciplined enough to do that, which is what Indar has done, what you find is that your brain understands what it’s trying to accomplish a lot easier. Well, we need leads. That’s the first thing. Then Indar was talking earlier, you got to get leads from everywhere. You got to go here, you got to go there. Oahu is not big enough. You have to be able to do direct mail.
He has figured out what works in Hawaii to fill up a funnel of leads. People that are interested in selling their property. So when people say what’s my first step? What do I do? You’re never going to know where to start if you don’t understand that you got to go to the top of that funnel. And you’re going to take some time going through a different ways that you can get a lead.
Then once you get one, what do you have to do? You analyze it. That’s where we talk about having spreadsheets, hitting numbers, stuff like the 1% rule pops up, things like cash flow. All of that is a part of the analyzation section of the funnel. And then there’s pursue, write offers. Ask people like direct conversations with sellers where we’re going over negotiation tactics and ways you can bring stuff up. That’s all part of the pursuit process. That’s why Indar said, just write the offer, because the feedback you get will improve your knowledge in the pursuit section of the funnel.
Then there’s the success, right? So I really like that because real estate can seem overwhelming with all these different options, but if you force yourself to view it from this funnel thing, you start to recognize, “Hey, I just got to get these three steps down. Finding leads, analyzing and pursuing them. And when my skills in those areas reach the right point, boom, stuff will start making it from its way from the top of the funnel down.

Brandon:
Yeah. I had.. Go ahead.

David:
Let me jump through some ninja tips before run out of time.

Brandon:
Yeah, please.

Indar:
I’m just going to go through them really fast.

Brandon:
All right. Take them.

Indar:
Quickly I’ll just touch on them. People can do some research and be a professional money finder. That’s the name of the game. That’s how you’re huge, Donald Trump is huge, everyone. They’re experts at finding money.

David:
Huge.

Brandon:
Huge.

David:
Working with banks, getting HELOC’s on your own personal… Getting personal lines of credit. Everyone here can go to the bank right now and get a line of credit with a small bank. Go to a small bank and get a 25, 50,000 line of credit. And the cool thing about that one it’s unsecured line of credit, which is you don’t need any collateral. You can use that as your down fund, your gap funding later on.
The trick for that one is if the bank gives you 50,000 ask for 25,000. Ask for less and you’ll up it later. But you get in a lot easier when you get asked for less. They’re super easy to get lines of credit with the bank. And it’s a great way to get your gap going on. Then learn the credit card game. When we were flipping at the beginning, we use the credit card game.
I have a maybe 150,000 line with my credit cards and we use that for our rehab. I did the whole points fund part of it all. There’s a website called Plastiq, P-L-A-S-T-I-Q, I think it is. You can take money out of your credit card. They charge you, but it’s a way to get cash because that’s the name of the game is developing, how do you find money? How do you find money? Of course, working with hard money, investors. We love working more with private money investors. That’s where we’re at today. We’re trying to find more investors to do bigger things. But knowing other sources of money.
Stay away from it. If you guys ever hear somebody talking about factor rates, it’s hard to figure out who’s a scam and who’s not out there. Ask around. Go on BiggerPockets. I did that. Mid-March COVID started. Every lender was shut down. Every lender was shut down. I went on to COVID, I BCC’ed every hard money you had on there. I had four deals lined up and everyone was shut down. It was the largest client, I don’t want to say their name, but it was the largest client they shut down because no one knew what was going to happen.
I went on to BiggerPockets, I BCC’ed I think… I gave up after like 30 plus lenders. Same email to all them. Hey, I got these deals lined up. Can you work it? Can you make this happen? I knew I’d be well off and those deals turned out to be mega awesome deal. But I was a professional money finder. I figured out how to find money.

Brandon:
I love it. By the way, everybody, if you’re looking for the hard money lenders, we have a free… What he’s talking about is there’s a directory on BiggerPockets called the hard money lander directory. Totally free. Just go to biggerpockets.com/hardmoneylenders. It’s all on there.

Indar:
Another quick little tip before we run out of time is front load your deals. So when I’m talking about front loading, so if you guys are up into fix and flips, when you start getting to higher end fixing flips, this is super, super important and I learned it the hard way. I learned this really hurt when I was kind of scaling from, I don’t know seven to eight deals into 14, 15 deals, it’s a big jump.
So we get our rehab funds… most of our general rehabs are, I don’t know $100,000. If you’re a hard money lender, we’ll fund 100% of your rehab, but you have to do the work first before they will give you money. A lot of times at the beginning of a rehab, a lot of costs go in the beginning. You don’t show it like. A lot of money is spent generally maybe $30,000 is spent up front before you can kind of see any work done.
So when you times that 30 grand by 15 deals, that’s a lot of money I didn’t account for. I accounted that, “Okay, my hard money is giving me 100% of rehab. I never had to come up with that money, but then I didn’t realize I am paying 30 grand for all those deals. So what we started doing, and my hard money taught me this, is front loading. Make those items, because I’m giving the rehab budgets. Make those items that you do up front cost more. So demo now cost 20,000.
I was super honest back then. I was like, “Oh, demo is only five grand. Windows are only three grand. So I front load those items up front to cost more and that way I can get money sooner to carry all of this. So when you’re carrying 15 homes, 30 grand a piece and I didn’t account for that money. You’re very stretched yeah and that’s a hard part of the business. So front loading, for any fixing flippers out there, who want it, scale in a high market. It’s extremely, extremely important so you’re not just caught with your pants down per se, with trying to figure out the money part of it all.

Brandon:
It’s extremely difficult. It makes sense.

Indar:
There’s a lot of little other little things working, networking, and networking and go to more networking business. It’s the name of the business. If you’re not doing it, you need to be doing it. I like to learn everything on every little trade. Remember, I had a plumber once come on to do a job and he was like, “A lot of times if you get a high cost, it’s because that guy is busy. Nothing personal, he’s just got too much work going on.

Brandon:
Sure. Supply and demand.

Indar:
And he’s like, “Oh, it’s nine grand to do this.” I was like, “I did plumbing before.” I was like, “No, you just got to sweat this and do that.” And he’s like, he kind of backtracked. He’s like, “What? How did you know that?” I was like, “Because I did it.” I knew enough about every little trade. I said, “See you later. I’m going to pick somebody else.” But knowing enough a little about every trade is useful. It’s useful especially in life I think in general.
My last favorite point I love to know, I love to share is know your net worth. Know your net worth in life and what’s your time worth, because a lot of times when I was first starting off, I love construction. I got my tools. I love being involved. I love jumping on a project and doing. I got my saw and cutting, and drill. It’s fun. I don’t know. It’s something about being a man. I don’t know something about that. I grew up like that.

David:
Oh, I got stuff too.

Indar:
It’s cool to jump in. But is my time really valued at that. When I’m paying a guy 30 bucks an hour, is my time 30 bucks an hour? No, it’s 500 bucks an hour. That’s what we need to be at. That’s my goal.

Brandon:
That concept changed my life just thinking like what task am I doing? What can I pay somebody else to do that for? 20 bucks an hour, 50 bucks an hour. I should not be doing it.

Indar:
Yeah. I love doing the yard stuff actually. I like getting out laying grass. That’s my cheapest labor, guys.

Brandon:
Yeah. It is the cheapest, yeah.

Indar:
That’s fine. I like yards.

Brandon:
Yeah. There is something to doing stuff that’s that you like doing obviously as well because that’s your time.

Indar:
I jump in now here and down for an hour to because something about… It clears my mind. Actually, talking about clearing my mind, I paddled between islands and that can be a whole nother subject.

Brandon:
Oh, wow.

Indar:
I did a race from Molokai 2 Oahu actually.

Brandon:
No way.

Indar:
Talking about clearing your mind there.

Brandon:
Yeah, that’s crazy.

Indar:
Yeah. It’s a huge thing in Hawaii for anyone who doesn’t know about paddling and the community that it’s involved. But it’s a big life-changing event when I got into paddling.

David:
That’s cool man.

Indar:
Pushing your body to the next limit. I mean, literally when we paddle, we don’t even see the next island. You just see the horizon often and you’re like where is Oahu? How far am I going? It’s 30 to 42 miles is the different races. And it’s pretty crazy too.

David:
It’s cool man.

Indar:
You push yourself to the next limit. And that’s what I think we do in this business. We could be content where we’re at in life. We’re fine. We can stop tomorrow and live a beautiful life. But it’s not about that. It’s about the art of the deal. It’s about pushing yourself to the next limit. I don’t know, David. Could you tell me what it is? There’s something more in us to want more. You know what I mean? If we were to stop today, we would be fine.

David:
It’s because in the beginning… Here’s what I think it is for me. It’s really, really difficult… We’ll just use the Jiu Jitsu analogy because we just [crosstalk 01:08:16].

Brandon:
Of course, we can.

David:
We’re terrible at it and it sucks sucking at it. It would be stupid to say, “Okay, I finally got good at this so I don’t hate it all the time.” Now, I’m done. I’m going to hang it up the ghee and say, “I’m not going to do Jiu Jitsu anymore because I accomplished it.” Once you figure out how to make all these pieces work, it becomes fun, and easy, and light. And you can spend one hour and make 500 bucks instead of one hour and make 15 bucks which is what you were doing. And when you were working for 15 bucks an hour, you would have given anything to be able to make 500 bucks an hour or 5,000 bucks an hour, whatever it turns into.
Sot actually, the better you get it, even though you told yourself, “I just want to get to this point and quit,” that isn’t how most things in life work. Once, you get to that point, that’s when it becomes fun. That’s when you get to do the parts of the job that you like and only the parts of the job that you like. That’s when you get to say, “Well, I have enough money. I don’t need to keep working.” But my kid might not be okay. But other people need help, so I’m going to keep working making this money so I can help others.” That’s the only explanation I can think of for why I tell myself, “Man, I’m going to get the team to this point and I’m going to ride off into the sunset.” No. Once I got to that point, I wanted to go do it again in Hawaii because that’ll be easier this time.

Indar:
Yeah.

Brandon:
Yeah, that’s funny.

Indar:
It’s like the goals just keep changing and growing.

Brandon:
They do. There’s a lot of happiness in growth. Happiness is from growth for a lot of us.

Indar:
I like to celebrate every time I have a big win in life. I do little things. I treat myself. I did a huge deal. I made 200,000. I went and bought a Louis Vuitton bag.

Brandon:
That’s cool.

Indar:
I know it’s cliché, but I treated that moment to enjoy that moment in life because what is life for? It’s to treat yourself.

David:
What do you say to Heather, Brandon? Treat yourself. Isn’t that your thing?

Brandon:
That’s from Parks and Rec, the show, “Treat yourself.” Yeah. One of my favorite shows of all time. All right. Treat yourself day. Let’s move this thing towards the end and go to the last segment. It’s called our famous four. This is the part of the show we asked the same four questions every week to every guest so we’re going to throw them at you right now. Number one, Indar favorite or current favorite, like either all-time favorite or current favorite real estate related book?

Indar:
Oh, I mean I got to say your book.

Brandon:
Thank you.

Indar:
I could be cliche and I could say Rich Dad, Poor Dad because that’s everybody’s cliché. And actually, I met him at Outrigger Canoe Club.

Brandon:
Oh, no way.

Indar:
I met him-

Brandon:
Kiyosaki, that’s awesome.

Indar:
He’s a member over there. We were at dinner and my wife is like, “Oh, that’s Robert Kiyosaki.” We just bought him a drink. We’re in the next table over. This is a higher end, I want to bring you to dinner.

Brandon:
Man, I want to go.

Indar:
It’s a private club.

Brandon:
Yeah, I want to go.

Indar:
No cellphones. Private invite only. You can’t just go there.

Brandon:
Wow. Yeah, I want to go with you.

Indar:
The richest guy there is Ebe. I seen him once.

Brandon:
Oh, that’s cool.

Indar:
He’s the richest guy in Hawaii, right? And he’s a member over there. But I see Robert over there, bought him a drink. He said nothing, just give a wave. Nothing, right? Next morning, I go to the… It’s a private gym they have too. Next morning, I’m in the gym. It’s like 9:00. Everyone’s gone. It’s just me and him in the gym. I’m like, “Oh my god. It’s Robert Kiyosaki. I’m so nervous like I got to say something to him. I just go and we just start chatting. He’s a chatterbox. He’s so cool. He told me on his first deal he paid a realtor 10 grand to find his first deal on the side to work exclusive for him. 10 grand back in, I don’t know, whatever state [crosstalk 01:11:27] is a lot of money. This guy, he’s just a wealth of information. I mean, all his stuff he shares, he lives it. Better or worse, I think at the time he was actually getting foreclosed on.

Brandon:
Funny.

Indar:
A big group of properties he has. Of course, his books are great. I see all your books behind, I’m like, “I read that, I read that, I read that.”

Brandon:
That’s funny, yeah.

David:
I got of books in here.

Indar:
I think more important, the best book is spending the time to read books. Instead of driving now, I don’t listen to radio, I have my books on tape going playing in a fast forward because I want to listen to them faster. I listen to like 1.5, 1.25 depending on the person, just constantly filling my head full of knowledge and knowledge is what… And even if you can just one little takeaway, that’s all worth it. I want to do the 52 books a year. I think you said it once [crosstalk 01:12:15] will give you 50 books a year.

David:
It’s doable. All right. What is the business book that has made the biggest impact on you?

Indar:
Attraction is obviously huge because that’s helping us scale right now. It was Miracle Morning.

David:
Of course.

Indar:
Miracle Morning didn’t seem like a book I was… Because I’m not a morning guy, but had so much more other information than real estate that you’re like, “How come they’re talking about this?” It is a real estate book, I think more so than people realize.

David:
I think so too.

Indar:
So anyone who’s not read that book, of course read that because they have a lot of broad spectrum about business in general and life.

Brandon:
Hal Elrod is actually going to be the keynote speaker, one of the keynotes at BPCon this year. So BiggerPockets Conference happening in New Orleans, October 4th and 5th I think it is or 5th and 6th. Early October. Anyway, I think tickets are probably sold out by now. But if not, you can get them at biggerpockets.com/conference.

Indar:
And you guys’ books. I read your guys’ books.

Brandon:
Thank you.

Indar:
You guys share… I’ve read your guys’ books. Some of them I read twice. You share a lot of tidbits that really… It’s so straightforward. It’s so easy to understand a lot of times. You just got to take the action.

Brandon:
[crosstalk 01:13:19] break it down and make it really simple to understand. And really it’s simple to understand. It’s not complicated.

David:
It’s that cliche term easy to learn, difficult to master.

Brandon:
Exactly. There you go. All right, David. Next question.

David:
All right. Next question. What are some of your hobbies?

Indar:
Paddling.

David:
There you go.

Indar:
I grew up surfing, grew up surfing, diving, fishing, anything in the water. I grew up in the water. Before school, we’d go surf. After school, we would go surf. I grew up on the big island. That was life. We later grew up paddling. It just developed. It’s a community. It’s a network of people. Some of my guys I hire are paddlers. There’s something about the camaraderie of it. It’s almost like the military guys that they grow when they do basic training, when they do that together. The Navy Seals guys.

Brandon:
Those training, yeah.

Indar:
They do that. They get that camaraderie. It’s the same thing. When I paddle in a six-man boat, it’s nine guys, you’re killing yourself for each other. There’s something about giving your all, 42 miles and you’re done. I do the single man thing. After 30 minutes, I’m like, “What am I doing out here?” It takes four, four and a half hours for me to do this race. In 30 minutes, I’m done. It’s such a mental-

Brandon:
[crosstalk 01:14:25] Yeah, you’re right.

Indar:
It’s a mental game. And when you push yourself mentally beyond your limits, it just gives you capability to do so much more. I got to be honest, I haven’t paddled in like two years really. COVID kind of started and we’re doing our own house. Life takes over of course, but finding that routine, and it really gets you being out in the middle of the ocean on a little stick with a little canoe, nothing else matters in life. Not how many properties you have, not how many deals you got going on, it’s about you making it back to shore alive. And not dying. The ocean is so powerful.
I love reading the ocean. In that Molokai race I talk about, you can’t even see Oahu, but I know from the ocean, the groundswell is going this way. The top soil is going this way. The wind is blowing this way. I know where Oahu is. So having that visual in life where we’re going to go.

Brandon:
I love it, man.

Indar:
But paddling is… Oh, man. I love that sport. If I can do it full time.

Brandon:
Yeah. Just be pulling and paddling. I love it.

Indar:
But there’s no money. I want to get you guys going out there.

Brandon:
I know. We’ll do it.

Indar:
It’s a good network of people really. It’s a Hawaii sport.

Brandon:
Let me ask you the last question of the day, of me anyway. David’s got one more. But what separates successful real estate investors from those who give up, fail, or never get started?

Indar:
Oh, that’s a loaded question. There’s so much. I was thinking about… I mean we touched on action. We touched on problem solving, being creative on deal structures. Having that mindset to do more and having the cajones. [inaudible 01:15:54] I mean, that’s a huge, huge part of it. And I think the underlying thing of it is what do you want in life? Where do you want to be in life? I mean, a lot of people are okay and it’s very comfortable taking that W-2 paycheck every Friday.
It’s very comfortable and it’s nice to have that feeling, but as soon as you’re ready to take that next step in life, you want more and really, really want it, you gotta want it like nobody else wants it. Not for anybody else, but you gotta really, really want this. And that will take you to the next part in life

Brandon:
Awesome, man. Very cool. Well, David, you got your final question and we’ll be out of here.

David:
Last question of the day from me, Indar, where can people find out more about you?

Indar:
Of course, on Instagram. If you guys just message me on Instagram. I’m Indar Hawaii. All day long, I’ll message you guys back. I love to help people and talk to people about it all, any questions you got. Of course, Indar at Our Home Investments and text me, 808-989-2323. I love partnering with people. I love bringing investors in. Just talking about your deal. There’s enough wealth to go on. There’s enough deals to go on. I’m not going to take your deal. I’ll talk about your Hawaii deal if you want. Little key point about Hawaii is malama ka ‘aina. I like to share that.

Brandon:
Yeah. I was going to ask you about that. What does that mean?

Indar:
Malama ka ‘aina. So we grew up here in Hawaii and malama ka ‘aina is always kind of you’ll hear it in the back tones of things and stuff. And it means to respect and take care of the land. I think that’s what we’re doing as flippers. A lot of times you’ll find these homes that are just torn down, just ready to fall down. You’re bringing that life back for years to come. You’re taking care of that land for a family to enjoy for 30 plus years to come. I feel like that’s what we’re doing is we’re taking care of this place that we grew up and we’re providing it for other people to enjoy.
It’s a huge part of how I live my life from integrity to respect the place I grew up and to give back from jobs we’re hiring to giving to people, to bettering our communities, and for our families for years to come. I would love to give back and do more but there’s like a fine line. Sell a house for so much and it’s job.

Brandon:
I hear you.

Indar:
But malama ka ‘aina is a huge part to live by.

Brandon:
Very cool, man. Appreciate it. Thank you for coming to the sea shed today. You and I are going to go-

Indar:
Aloha.

Brandon:
… with some lunch after this and we’ll laugh at David who’s over back in California.

Indar:
We’re going to get a pokeball.

Brandon:
David, take us out of here.

David:
Yes, sir. Indar, great conversation, man. Thank you for sharing so much of what goes on in your personal business and your personal life. I thought this was a great show and I think people really liked it.

Indar:
Mahalo.

Brandon:
Mahalo.

David:
Right on. This is Dravid Greene.

Brandon:
What’s your name again?

David:
We’re not editing that either. That is in here. Dravid Greene.

Brandon:
Dravid Deene.

David:
This is Gavid Dreene.

Indar:
David Dreene.

David:
This is David Greene for Brandon treat yourself Turner, signing off.

Speaker 3:
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In This Episode We Cover:

  • Why real estate the go-to investment for the wealthiest people in the world 
  • Completing a live in flip and the tax benefits associated with it
  • When it makes sense to attend a real estate course (even expensive ones)
  • How Indar stopped his first flip from falling through due to lack of funding
  • Financing your deals with hard money and private money loans
  • Long-distance real estate investing from Hawaii
  • Cost segregation studies and other tax write-offs from real estate
  • Indar’s “Ninja Tips” for real estate investors
  • And SO much more!

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Books Mentioned in this Show:

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Note By BiggerPockets: These are opinions written by the author and do not necessarily represent the opinions of BiggerPockets.