On today’s episode of the BiggerPockets Podcast, we cover a huge variety of really interesting topics with real estate investor Tom Sylvester (yes, that rhymes!)
Tom has been investing in the Rochester, NY area for several years and has a great perspective on getting started, building systems to manage your business, investing in rural areas (or as Brandon says, “rrrrrurrral”,) and a whole lot more.
Don’t miss a second of this excellent interview!
Read the transcript for episode 45 with Tom Sylvester here.
Listen to the Podcast Here
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In This Show, We Cover
- Tom’s early lessons
- The advantages and disadvantages to rural investing
- Finding mentors and networking
- Talking with your spouse about getting started with real estate
- Getting started with real estate at a young age
- When is the right time to quit your day job?
- Red flags for problem tenants
- The $10 Toilet part that could have saved Tom hundreds of dollars
- And much more.
Links from the Show
- Investing in Rural Markets: The Secret to Real Estate Investing Success?
- The Top 100 Ways To Make Money In Real Estate
- How to Get Started With $100 blog post by Tom
- Keyword Alerts
- How To Survive When Your Spouse Doesn’t Believe In Your Dream
- How to Start Investing In Real Estate at a Young Age (or a “Young at Heart Age”)
- BP Podcast 044: Creating Systems to Flip Houses While Still Employed with Michael Woodward
- Tenant Screening: The Ultimate Guide
- Cashflow 101: Using the Game to Define Your Investing Strategy
- Home Depot Toilet Fill Valve
- Dropbox App
Books Mentioned in the Show
- The Automatic Millionaire: A Powerful One-Step Plan to Live and Finish Rich by David Bach
- Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki
- The 4 Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss
- The E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber
- The Book on Flipping Houses by J Scott
- The Book on Estimating Rehab Costs by J Scott
- What Every Real Estate Investor Needs to Know About Cash Flow… And 36 Other Key Financial Measures by Frank Gallinelli
- The Ultimate Beginner’s Guide to Real Estate Investing by BiggerPockets
Tweetable Topics
Find your unfair advantage in business and exploit it. (Tweet This!)
What do you want your life to be? How are you going to get there? (Tweet This!)
If you aren’t finding success – be persistent but change your tactic. (Tweet This!)
Know the difference between a cheap property and deal. (Tweet This!)
Connect with Tom
Tom’s BiggerPockets Profile
Tom’s Website: Tom-Sylvester.com
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12 Comments
great tip on the toilet fill valve!
Thanks Alex. I wish we would have known about it before our $800 water bill. Hopefully it will save you some money.
Great Podcast Tom! Thanks for being an awesome guest. I know I learned a lot in this episode, as I’m sure everyone did. It’s nice to see you and I pursuing fairly similar things! (Rurrrral properties, that is!)
Thanks again!
Thanks Brandon, it was a blast.
After listening to this podcast, I went to Home Depot and purchased the Fluidmaster Leak Sentry (i needed them for my new property), and can I just say how AWESOME these are?!?! you can drain the entire tank of water and the fill valve will not utter a drop of water until the handle “activates” the fill valve. this is such a no brainer that I will now replace every fill valve in my toilets with these. thank you!
http://www.homedepot.com/p/Fluidmaster-Leak-Sentry-Water-Saving-Fill-Valve-400LSRP14/100393067#.Uoqm8MS2bWo
Alex – Great stuff. Thanks for coming back and sharing the real life experience of using them.
Another enjoyable podcast, and great to see Tom making it happen in the Rochester area, where I misspent my youth. And Joshua, don’t knock scaring abandoned buildings … it builds character.
😀
Thanks Greg. I think I’m going to have to get Josh a ticket out to Rochester. He can have a garbage plate and all will be well.
Ha ha Tom … now you’re talkin’!
Thank you for another great podcast, just ordered the book by Frank Gallinelli, sounds like a good one, when I am done with that I think I will move on to the BP books on flipping and Rehab costs.
Again thanks again for another great Podcast.
Thanks Chris. Those books are fantastic. The reason I love both of them is they take these big obscure topics and break them down to the basic. With Frank’s book, he takes all these calculations and actually walks you through a simple example for each formula. I took this a step further and put many of the formulas in a spreadsheet that I use ot evaluate deals (read more here – https://www.biggerpockets.com/blogs/4317/blog_posts/29893-how-to-quickly-evaluate-a-real-estate-deal).
J’s books do a similar thing. He goes into a ton of detail with each step of the process and makes it very easy to understand both the sequence and what is involved in each step. Lots of reading between the 2 books, but probably two of the best value books out there for real estate.
Hey Brandon, The Automatic Millionaire is written by David Bach. You said Steven Bach….lol
Sorry man, couldn’t resist that… :-p