A Marine (and his Mentor) Buy a BRRRR: Step-by-Step with Joe Roberts and Steve Rozenberg

Ashley:
This is Real Estate Rookie show number 33.

Steve:
So what I look for number one is someone coachable? Are they willing to listen to what I have to say and my recommendations? They don’t have to do it, but are they open to listening to another way of thinking?

Ashley:
I am Ashley Kehr, and I am here with my cohost, Felipe Mejia. Felipe, I have nothing to harp on you today because I feel like I harped on Steve Rozenberg so much during this episode that I’m all set.

Felipe:
That’s hilarious. You were really digging into Steve, your mentor, which I think is great because we have a great show today. We have a mentor and a mentee, right? This gentleman won 20 grand at the last BiggerPockets Conference through a partnership with Mynd, and Steve, his mentor picked him out of 50 people to mentor him on an out-of-state investing property. Steve talks about why he picked him as a mentee, and then Joe talks about earning and winning that mentorship with Steve. I think it’s going to answer a lot of questions about mentee and mentor relationships.

Ashley:
Yeah. Steve is actually my mentor, and I loved getting to see him in action with another mentee and how they’re doing an out-of-state deal. They break down the deal, how the numbers work, but just the mindset stuff they get into is really great. So make sure you guys listen to the whole thing. At the end, they’re going to tell you how to reach out to both of them and what they’re doing with this out-of-state deal.

Felipe:
Yeah. Absolutely. Steve, Joe, welcome to the show, man. How are you guys?

Joe:
Right. Thanks for having me.

Steve:
Doing well. Thanks for having us.

Felipe:
Super pleasure to have both of you guys on.

Ashley:
You guys are really excited to talk about how you guys know each other. So can you guys talk about this contest that Joe won?

Steve:
Yeah. Sure. So Mynd, the property management company who I work with did a contest. They actually announced it last year at BiggerPockets conference number one, and it was the $20,000 giveaway, that we were going to give away $20,000 for an investor to use as down payment money when they purchased property. So Mynd did a huge amount of investing in marketing and figuring out if this makes sense with this actually helping an investor and the everything pointed to yes. So we went down the path of now figuring out who will win this contest. So I believe we had, I’m going to say about 2,500 entrance, people that entered from the BiggerPockets Conference and people from other channels that came in. We basically just kept whittling it down and whittling it down through different criteria.
The final stretch was actually we down to the last 50, and I wasn’t really into it up until this point. When it got down to 50, they said, “Hey, we’re going to give you this spreadsheet of all 50, and now we need to figure out, who do we want you? We need your help.” So I looked in, and I thought, “Okay. Who would be someone that we could help as an investor that would benefit the most from this? I took that list. I got it down to about 20. Good old Joe is still hanging in there. He’s still hanging on the list here.
The final 20, we said, “Okay, we’re going to be doing a lot of videos with this person. We’re thinking of doing a mini documentary. We’re thinking of doing all this stuff. So let’s make sure the person understands how to use a camera. Let’s have them do like a quick five-minute video or a couple minute video intro of themselves, why they want to win and those kinds of things.
So we go down this list of the top 20, and I actually personally reached out to each 20 of the people. I called them or sent them a text message so that they realized like, “Hey, you really did make the top 20. Now this is the next step.” Everybody turned in their videos except one person.

Felipe:
Joe.

Steve:
That person was out of the country on vacation with his family in Cambodia. We almost closed it, and I was like, “Man, I can’t believe this guy did not turn in his video.” I thought like, “This is the guy.” I’m thinking, “This could be the guy.” I get a phone call from him saying, “Hey man, I just landed. I got in from out of the country. If you give me the ability because it was just about to close.” Sure enough, he got it in under the wire, and we watched the video and we thought, “This is the guy. This guy deserves to win this. This is the go-to guy.” So he that’s how we won.

Ashley:
Well, Steve, first of all, I entered into that contest and I didn’t know that-

Felipe:
Did you really?

Ashley:
… you hand-picked the person, and I’m just wondering, “Can you please explain why?”

Steve:
Yeah. I think you were too famous already. You were already too famous, Ashley.

Ashley:
That’s awesome. So Joe, tell us about what that feeling was like getting that phone call, knowing you’re a finalist and finding out that you won?

Joe:
Well, I got say the initial feeling was super excited. So I landed in San Francisco, plugged my American SIM card into my phone cause I’d had a Cambodian SIM card in it. I get all these voicemails. So I’m going through them and I listened to it, and it’s Steve, and he’s like, “Hey, I’m following up on the email I sent you.” You’re like, “You’re in the top 20.” At first, I was like, “Oh my gosh.” Then he gave the date for the submission of the video, and it was like that day. And like my heart just sank, and I was like, “What email?” I go back, and sure enough, it’s in my spam folder.
So I call Steve up, and I’m like, “Hey, I’ll make a video right now in San Fran Airport, or if you give me til tonight, I’ll get home to Denver over to just my family, and I’ll make a video tonight and get it to you in your inbox tonight.” He was like, “Yeah, man.” But I mean, I answered never expecting that I was going to win. So it was just sort of, I heard it on the BiggerPockets podcast. I think Brandon and David were talking about it on the way to work, and I had like 10 minutes before work. So I filled out the questionnaire, and then I honestly sort of forgot about it because I never win things like that.
So yeah. It was pretty incredible to get to the top 20. But I had a couple more steps actually to get through all the way to the end. But I will say knowing that you entered in that we’re both sort of… Steve is our mentor to both of us. I am going to hold that over you for the rest of your life because [crosstalk 00:06:38]-

Steve:
As you should. As you should.

Joe:
… over you, Ashley.

Ashley:
Right. You’re right. Yeah. The first time Steve and I ever talked, I had to message him on Instagram. He didn’t even approach me. So man, yeah, I definitely am low on the totem pole.

Felipe:
Joe, real quick. Let me put in there. So what were you doing in real estate before you won this? What was your plan to do with earnings from this contest?

Joe:
So real estate prior to that, my wife and I have had a rental that was our primary residence. The Marine Corps moved us. So we kept it as a rental. So we’ve had that for a few years. Then in 2018, I went on deployment to Afghanistan. While I was there, I started doing more and more reading about real estate investing. I actually tried to buy a few properties while I was in Afghanistan. It didn’t work out, and that’s honestly probably for the better. But I got back. So this is fall of 2019 when this contest. So I was in the middle of the rehab stage on my very first BRRR, a tiny little two-bedroom, one bath here locally in Eastern North Carolina. So that would technically be my second investment property.
Then yeah. Then my plan for the earnings was to wait to refinance that one and then do another BRRR with that money, which is what we ended up doing. So I’m sure we’ll get to it later.

Ashley:
Yeah. Steve, do you want to talk about how the process first started with Joe once he was announced the winner? How did you become his mentor? What were the first steps there?

Steve:
Yeah. So I really thought of this as a great opportunity with BiggerPockets and Mynd Property Management to kind of come together. It’s all about education, trying to help investors figure out this puzzle. One of the things we wanted Joe to do was to be able to understand how to live in one place and invest long distance in another. So that was kind of the strategy that we talked to him, and would you be open to this concept. If I coach you and mentored you through the process, would you be open? He was all in.
So what we decided to do was we were going to fly to North Carolina and meet Joe in person. He had two properties. He had one property that he was in the middle of rehabbing. He had another one that he was about to close on. So I thought, “Okay. Why don’t we go there? Let’s meet Joe. Let’s do a bunch of filming. We brought our camera guy with us, did a whole bunch of filming. Let’s walk the properties, and maybe I can give Joe some tips and some advice on the property that he’s rehabbing now on just things that I would do, and then let’s go look at the property that he’s going to buy, and I’ll give him my perspective.”
So we showed up in North Carolina, myself, Alex, and Dan, our camera guy. We met Joe and met at the property. Actually, they met Joe the night before I flew in from another destination, and I came in and met them the next morning, and we went to the house that Joe was in the middle of rehabbing, walked in. I gave him just my perspective of what I would do differently with this property or just some tips and tricks of things that I thought. Joe was already doing a great job with it. He was already knee-deep in this property.
A lot of tips and pointers, all on film. Then we went to the other per house that he was in the middle of purchasing, which subsequently he did buy. This was more of a work was going to be more intensive. Then we ended up having a whole conversation on that. Then what did we do from there, Joe? What did we do after that?

Felipe:
Before we go on, Joe, let me but in here. I do have a question that I know that our listeners are going to want to know, because we always give advice on how to be a good mentee or how to follow through or how to add value. But let me ask Steve, Steve, you had 50 people that you had to pick from. If it wasn’t going to be Joe, what in your mind was your criteria to picking a mentee? Because I know that our listeners are all going to probably be close to Joe’s spot, and they want a good mentor. But what in your mindset, Joe, stands out?

Steve:
Well, first was not Ashley. No just kidding.

Felipe:
Great answer. Done.

Steve:
First and foremost. No. What I was looking at is, from my perspective, I’ve helped a lot of people, and I’ve mentored a lot of people, and I thought, “Okay. Can I add value to what this person wants to do?” So if they want to flip a multifamily complex in Minnesota, that’s not my specialty. If somebody wants to buy something that I’m an expert in and that I know that I can help them, and are they open to doing what we needed them to do, meaning did they have the financial means to buy a property? Joe had the financial means. This was helpful, but this was not the only money that he had to invest in real estate. So I can’t help someone if they don’t have the assets and the tools. So what I look for number one is someone coachable?
Are they willing to listen to what I have to say and my recommendations? They don’t have to do it, but are they open to listening to another way of thinking, and do they have the assets to get the job done? They don’t even need to have done a deal yet. My thing is I can teach anyone to buy real estate. As we hear this story, I mean, we bought a piece of property, Joe and I did, Sight Unseen. We can do all the mechanics. But do you mentally have the ability to do what I ask you to do, and are you going to stick to it? That’s what I look for in someone. You can see by the words people say, right, the vocabulary and the words that they talk about and their goals and their strategies, is that something that I can help them with or am I not the person for them?
That’s why, if I was looking for someone else, another Joe, I would say, “Can I actually add value in this person’s life? Are they someone that we can help become a better person because of it? Or is this just going to be a waste, and they may lose the house down the road?” So that’s what I look for.

Felipe:
Good. That’s perfect. I think a lot of our listeners want to know that. A lot of them are probably starting out, and they’re like, “How can I add value to a mentor?” But not just that. You have to be coachable. Right? I feel like-

Steve:
Absolutely.

Felipe:
… maybe Joe was that, right? He was probably coachable to you. You accepted the task because that’s what it was. I’m sure you had to put in work as well. But you saw that Joe was going to reciprocate positively and take your words to heart, because if not, you’re just beating a dead horse.

Steve:
Well, yeah. Look, at the end of the day, Joe is out there fighting for our country. I think that he deserves to me the respect to give him my time. If he’s willing to do what I ask, I’m willing to do what he needs, and I’m willing to step up and do all the things. Joe and I have had many, many conversations about many things. But to me, it’s important. It’s not always one sided, and it’s not always… Some people ask for a mentor, and they think just because they pay me money or they want to pay or whatever the case may be, that that gives them the right just to do it. I don’t need someone. I want someone that’s willing to do the work and that has their heart into it. That’s more important to me than any financial means, in my opinion.

Felipe:
I love that.

Ashley:
What is the structure of the mentorship now? So how often do you guys talk? I mean, is it just a weekly meeting? Do you guys text? What’s kind of involved with your mentorship agreement?

Steve:
All the above. But I would say the way it started, so I’ll just finish, when we went and we saw Joe at Camp Lejeune, I had the opportunity to talk to the military squadron, his squadron. A lot of people wanted to know about being an airline pilot as well as real estate and how it ties in. So Joe set up that I could meet and talk with a lot of the guys, which was really, really cool, just giving back. Then Joe and I talked a lot as far as what is the strategy going to be, and how do we get this going? So we kind of laid out the footprint, and the answer is, I’m not really sure how we’re going to do this, but I’m here at your disposal. Let’s just start the process. First, we have to figure out big picture. What cities do we want to invest in?
Obviously, we wanted him to invest in a mind to market preferably because that’s something that we can help manage the asset, and we can have boots on the ground, which came into play downstream. So we started off with, what cities does Mynd managing, and are they to his goals, and do they align?

Ashley:
Did you guys figure that out together, analyze each market together, or is that something Joe went and did and then kind of brought it to you, and you gave your opinion on?

Joe:
It’s more the latter. Steve would give me homework essentially that we would talk about, and then I would go put in the legwork and the effort and then bring back. Steve knows now I’m a spreadsheet guy. So I’d usually bring them back a spreadsheet with all my research, and then we would have coaching sessions that we would do probably about biweekly, about every other week, a couple times a month, and then we had talked through sort of what his taskers for me had been and what was the next steps, actionable items.

Steve:
Yeah. What I wanted him to do was I wanted him to basically prove to me why he wanted to invest in certain market, explain to me why that made sense to him. It wasn’t an emotional decision that the numbers were dictating the deal. Then we had to go through, okay, now that we know what market and that aligns with his goals, now we got to figure out the strategy and then the tactic of the actual property. So we we did it backwards. Every time that we would talk, I would give him homework, and some of it was kind of a little bit off center where he had to actually figure out, where does this time go on the day? Because he’s not able to analyze the deals. So then we had to figure out, “Okay. Where’s your time going? Why do you not have time?”
So a couple of these, even though it’s like a karate kid, right? He’s waxing the car. He doesn’t understand why he’s waxing the car, but it helps them downstream. So when he was able to understand where his time went, he was able to all of a sudden segment that off to be able to find deals and be focused when he’s looking, and it’s not a sidetrack. So using leverage and a lot of other things are part of what I wanted him to learn.

Ashley:
Steve, what’s your advice for someone who wants to do the same thing, they want to figure out where their time is going? What’s something they could do for that?

Steve:
Yeah. I just have a hard time understanding this process because it kind of just like sand, right? It just drips away. The best thing I would advise someone to do when they’re trying to figure out, a lot of people are very reactive in their day, meaning the day has gone, and they don’t know what they did and why they did it, but they know they’re tired, and they know they put out a lot of fires is to start tracking. If you want to figure out where your money’s going, you go on a budget, and you start writing down all of your money. If you want to go on a diet and lose weight, you start tracking down what you eat. If you want to see where your time’s going, start writing down from the time you wake up to the time you’re done with the day, write down everything you do.
Then at the end of the day, total lies what each project was. So two hours email, one hour social media, whatever it is and write an executive summary at the end of the day, as to where your time is going, and that executive summary makes you basically right and realize where your time is going. If you do that for two weeks, I guarantee everyone who’s watching this, if you did this for two weeks, you would be shocked that you would realize, “Wow, I’m spending a lot of time doing this, a lot of time doing that. Is that even closer taking me closer to my goal, or is it taking me further away from my goal?”
So just writing it down and seeing it on paper and writing that executive summary, I’m a big believer in accountability. So having someone to actually give it to whether it’s a spouse, whether it’s an accountability partner, having somebody make sure that you give it to them is essential to making this work.

Felipe:
That’s really smart. I got a friend, Diego Corzo actually has a net-worth tracker, and he is annoyingly with it. I mean, weekly, he’ll look at it, and he’ll plug and play. If he has a month where his net worth didn’t go up, he goes back and figures out why. I think that’s probably the same thing with our time. If we can go back and check, like you just said, what did we do this last month, and what was productive and what wasn’t productive, then it’s keeping yourself or someone else, helping you keep yourself accountable to, what are you really doing with your time? That goes the same thing with your money. What are you really doing with your money?
Before we move on a little bit to the rookie deal that we’re going to talk about, Joe, can you give us a little bit of your background? You know, what is it that you’ve done? We’ve talked a little military. What else? So give us a little background on yourself there.

Joe:
Yeah. So broad strokes, I was born in Colorado. I lived there till I was in my early teens, and then my family moved to Cambodia. Parents were missionaries. My dad worked for an organization that combats human trafficking there. So I spent my middle school and high school years in Cambodia. Came back to the States for college. I went to the Naval Academy and then commissioned as a Marine Corps officer in 2012, that was. After basic training, went down to flight school in Pensacola, Florida. That’s where we bought that first house that is now an investment property. I got married right after I graduated and then hopped around to a few different duty stations with the Marine Corps until we ended up here in North Carolina, and I am a Cobra Attack Helicopter pilot is my primary job in the Marine Corps. Then-

Ashley:
Very cool.

Felipe:
That sounds really like BA, dude. I would say at every bar.

Ashley:
Better than an airline pilot.

Joe:
It is cool. We did get to check it out and give us a tour. I got to say it was pretty cool. I almost couldn’t get out of it, but it was pretty cool to get into.

Felipe:
You enterprise Steve out of it like, “Get out.”

Joe:
It was a tight fit getting in there, but very, very cool. Yeah.

Felipe:
Guys [inaudible 00:20:07] not supposed to be Attack Helicopter pilots.

Joe:
Yes. No. That’s hilarious.

Felipe:
But keep going, Joe.

Joe:
Yeah. So no. So yeah. I’m active duty Marine Corps, actually getting ready to deploy here shortly in the next couple months. Then I sort of keep doors open at all times. So whether or not I stay in the Marine Corps till 20 years or I get out and do real estate investing full time, I sort of just keep all doors open and keep going towards my goals. But the eventual plan is to get out and do real estate full time. But for now, I’m very much enjoying my job in the Marine Corps, although the longer you stay in, the less fun stuff you do and the more paperwork and desk stuff you do.
So I think at the point where it’s no longer fun and I’m no longer enjoying it, that’ll probably be the point that I get out.

Ashley:
What you’re doing is building that option for yourself so that when you are ready to retire, you can with real estate.

Joe:
Exactly. Exactly.

Steve:
I think one thing to point out here is while we are in North Carolina, we had a really good conversation, and we’ve got it on film too, of talking with Joe and his wife about, this is something that I think is important for all rookies out there getting into real estate is making sure that you have alignment with your spouse or significant other and so that everyone’s on the same page, going down the same direction to the same destination. She had some concerns about Joe getting out of the military and going into real estate full time, and we kind of talked it through, and I don’t know, Joe. Maybe we’ll see how… I don’t know how it was after I left.
But at the time when we talked it through, I think that it really was I thought a great conversation of understanding the other person’s side who’s not… She’s not really into real estate like Joe is. She doesn’t watch the podcast shows as much or go to the seminars. But she’s affected by Joe’s decision. So she had some concerns about his time availability, and I thought it was a great conversation of just kind of unpacking that. We didn’t even realize it was going to be so good. But I thought it was very helpful, hopefully for her as well to understand what you were embarking on and where you were going on your journey. I think it’s important that more people need to do that, I think.

Joe:
Oh, that was fantastic. I’m going to say that was the most valuable thing to come out of this experience, even more valuable than the 20,000, because now she’s completely on board. Now actually, let’s make moves by finding five more properties. So yeah.

Steve:
Smart man has given his wife a shout-out, smart man. He knows she’s going to listen.

Felipe:
Joe, let me ask you. What city did you decide on, and why with Steve, and then I’ll let Steve answer as well, why he agreed to that city.

Joe:
So I decided on the Atlanta, the Greater Atlanta Metro Area. It was process of elimination in terms of… So I started out by just looking at sort of big demographics. I want to invest in areas where a good population and job growth and in big demographic terms, you see the US moving South and West. Then I also wanted to invest in a market where $20,000 would make a little bit more of a dent. Some of the market’s minds in is like West Coast, California, $20,000 is like that’s your closing costs or not even your closing costs.
So with the idea of being, I want to do small single family bird deal ideally, I wanted somewhere where that $20,000 was going to kind of have the most legs. So I narrowed it down to, I think it was six markets, Steve in the South and Southeastern United States. This is when I went a little crazy with the spreadsheet. I mean, I just started looking at everything possible that I could think of that would factor into future growth. This is not something I’m going to flip in a year or two years. I want to establish myself in a market that I’m going to be in for a long time, and I’m going to hold real estate there for a long time. So job growth, presence of Fortune 500 and Fortune 1000 companies, median income, percentage of renters or age of the homes in the area. I just sort of had a spreadsheet, and then I would kind of go through and assign values to how they ranked out. Then I think it was Houston, Atlanta, and Tampa sort of rose to the top.
It was sort of a toss up between the three. Atlanta was sort of a happy medium between the two for me, and I liked being in the Southeast. I’ve got a property in Florida, got properties here in North Carolina, Atlanta. It’s enough geographic diversification for me, but I’m still sort of all in the Southeast. So if I wanted to go over there, it’s not that big a deal. So really, of those top three, it could have been any of them. But I was able to find a really good agent in Atlanta, and that sort of helped me solidify the deal there.

Felipe:
Steve?

Steve:
Yeah. My thing is whenever anyone’s looking for a property, it’s got to make sure that the numbers make sense towards the goal. So every time he asked me or thought of a new city, my question always was, does this align with the goal? So that was the first question I’d always throw back at him, and then he’d have to justify why it did or did not. So just because he likes Atlanta doesn’t mean he needs to invest in Atlanta. So unless the numbers dictate that it makes sense aligning with his goals as the price and everything else that we looked at. So I agreed Atlanta made sense based on the data, based on the numbers, manages properties there. So we have assets on the ground. So we’re able to help him with that.
At some point, you got to pull the trigger, and you got to pick one. So we said, “Okay. Atlanta’s worked out. Let’s make it happen.” So that was step one was identifying the market and making sure that that market aligned with the goal.

Felipe:
So Steve, what’s the next step. Let’s engineer this project for those that are listening. Found the guy, found the city. What happens next?

Steve:
Yeah. So next was once we found the city, okay, let’s see, do the numbers actually work on actual deals that are going on there? So what are the non-negotiables that you have? Is it equity capture? He wanted to BRRR the property. So we had to look at that ratio of what he was going to get it for, the hard money, how he was going to acquire it, what he was going to do next. So we went through that mental mathematics on these deals. So I think he had what, Joe, about 12 deals on the spreadsheet that matched what criteria was good for you. What’s important to understand here is just because this works for Joe, this may not work for someone else because the numbers may not make sense towards their goals. If Joe had a three-year window that he wanted to get in and out, this Atlanta may not make sense. It may be a negative geared high appreciation area, as opposed to what Atlanta did for him.
So just because Joe’s in Atlanta, I don’t think everyone needs a rush to Atlanta if it’s not aligned with their goals. That was the one thing that was vital that I made sure that he understood. Then of the cashflow, equity capture, other variables, which one is the most important? Because you’re not going to get all three. So then he had to split up and say, “Okay. I’m capturing this much equity, but I’ve got a lot of rehab costs. What are the days on market?” So I told them, “We need to look at these variables. You may buy this property thinking days on market or five days, but maybe it’s really 60 days.”
So we need to think of all these variables in the new city that we’re in and in that market it’s because Atlanta is a big city. Now, we started digging into, where in Atlanta, because just like all cities, they have higher areas and low areas, and what, we had two deals fall out because of other stuff. So we had to kind of keep massaging this to make the deal work.

Joe:
Yeah. We went under contract twice and then pulled out of both of them. It was good learning experiences though.

Steve:
Yeah. And-

Ashley:
You did you pull out of them.

Joe:
Well, it’s the inspections for both of them. This is why I highly, highly recommend getting an inspection done. I’ll never buy a house. One of my first deals here in North Carolina, I didn’t get an inspection done, and it cost me money, and I’ll never not do that again. It saved me on two deals in Atlanta. One of them, it had rained all weekend prior, and it hadn’t rained in like three weeks there, and when the inspector went right after the rain, we found out that the basement was flooding, and we would essentially have to regrade all of the round it, and it just blew that budget out of the water.
Then the other one just found a lot of stuff in terms of… It would need to be rewired and replumb, stuff that my agent hadn’t seen on walkthrough. So once again, it just blew the budget up. We went back to the sellers, were like, “Hey, this is what we found, requesting to drop it to here.” They didn’t want to. So we’re like, “Okay. But if I hadn’t done the inspection, then it would not have been a good deal at all.” So-

Steve:
I think part of this too was assembling the team. So now, Joe and I have neither been to Atlanta still. So assembling the team of getting the realtor, and Joe ended up finding on BiggerPockets, found a realtor in the forums. We started grouping the team, having conversations of who does he need to have on his team that understands where he’s going as the goal and making sure that everyone is in line with what we wanted. So if you’re going to invest in another city, you really got to think about, where’s your team, who do you need to have on that team, and are they aligned with your goal? Now, this guy didn’t know Joe. He didn’t know anything about Joe. But he was aligned enough to do what we asked him to do based on what Joe’s goal and strategy were.

Joe:
Yeah. The learning experience too. I mean, I by no means did this without many missteps. But the experience was assembling that team. I think people, they don’t want to feel like they’re a burden on people. So they want to wait until they have work to do for somebody to bring that person in. Right? But what I learned through this experience is it’s okay to reach out to people who will be like, “This is my plan. I’d like to bring you.” Ask them some questions. Make sure they’re a good fit, but then bring them on board, because the very first deal, although we pulled out because of the inspection, I never would have bought that deal. If I had been talking to who’s going to end up managing the property for me. I’ve been talking to the property manager at the time, because I would have found out from her that the rents that myself and my agent were projecting for that were completely unrealistic.
So I should have had that property manager on board, even though I had not worked for that property manager yet. I should’ve had them on the team earlier. That’s why when we bought in the area we did, it was with a lot of injects from the property manager.

Felipe:
That’s a really good insight. That’s a really good nugget that people should go back and kind of write down. That property manager is super crucial, and they’ll give you information that you didn’t even know you needed. But earlier Steve said that you found that your agent on BiggerPockets. Anyone can actually go to biggerpockets.com/agents to find a top agent in the market where you want to invest. So that’s kind of how you find your agent. Is that right, Joe, for Atlanta?
Yeah. I did a little bit of a more roundabout way, because I wanted to sort of know about the market and the sub markets, like Steve was talking about. So I spent like half a day just reading through the Atlanta sub forum, and I don’t know if people know that, the BiggerPockets, like most Metro Areas have sub forums for local investors. So I read through five or six pages worth of forms on the Atlanta market, and you see the same names start to pop up. Right? So I sort of identified a few people that were agents that obviously had very intimate knowledge of the market and were offering really good advice. They’ve mentioned working with out-of-state investors and stuff. So I reached out to a few of them, had some phone calls with them and then pick the one that I felt like most aligned with my goals after talking to Steve.

Joe:
It’s not hard to go on the BiggerPockets forums and find great realtors. They’re the ones that are sitting there talking about the area. They’re the ones interacting with out-of-state investors, answering questions. They’re just really active on BiggerPockets. If you go to the forums, and you just type in your city or the city you want to invest in, it’ll pull up all the forums, and you’ll see who’s talking, who’s answering questions. It’s going to give you a good idea of who you should work with. So I agree that biggerpockets.com/event-agents is a really good place to find a really good realtors in the area you want to invest in.

Ashley:
Joe, this is a common theme on our podcast is when people talk about finding agents or property managers and just like you did. You didn’t just say, “Oh, here’s one person. I’m just going to use them because I see their name.” They interview them and talk to them and take that time to find out who is best suited for you. I think that’s great advice is just don’t jump at whoever’s first available. Take the time to get to know and connect and figure out these different realtors and which one is going to kind of be the best for you.
So let’s kind of dig into the numbers because that’s the part that I love. What was the sale price? What were they asking? What did you purchase it for, rehab costs? Just dig into all of it for us, please?

Joe:
Yeah. So it’s funny because this deal, so Steve said I couldn’t get all three of forced appreciation or minimum appreciation force equity and cashflow. Steve said I couldn’t have all three. So I was having a really hard time choosing, and I eventually decided there was a minimum appreciation I wanted of at least 4% to 5% historical in the area, and then I wanted a cashflow of at least 200 a month. What I was realizing is that there wasn’t a lot of BRRR deals that made sense at that price.
So I had started shifting to thinking about just putting a standard 20% down payment. I don’t remember if my agent or I found this one. But from the pictures, it looked pretty turnkey. So I was like, “Hey, man. Yeah, go check that one out.” It was listed at 1.35.

Steve:
Didn’t we widen the search, Joe. Didn’t we finally-

Joe:
We did.

Steve:
I finally said like, “Look, we got to pick a different area.”

Joe:
Yeah. You made me nail down an exact number on what I was looking at for ROI, and that helped a lot too, because we widened the search into a different area, but then we were able to sort of narrow down with being very specific about, “Okay. It has to meet a minimum ROI, or we’re not going to look at it.” So this one, buying it turnkey, it seemed like it would make my minimum ROI of 11%. So he looked at it, and he was like, “That needs some work.” It needs a new roof, needs all new siding.” But he found out from the listing agent, the listing agent told them like, “Yeah. We’re taking it off the market. seller can’t find anybody. It’s fallen out of contract a few times.”
So the listing agent stopped responding to him, and it was like… So then my agent reached out to the owner and was like, “Hey, I know you’re taking this off the market, but I’ve got somebody who’s willing.” Because he’s like, “Hey, let’s turn this back into a BRRR deal and do the cash with this, and we’ll drop the price pretty significantly.” So he reached out to the owner was like, “Hey, I’ve got a cash buyer.” We’re going to need to drop the price for all these repairs, the reasons it’s fallen out of contract so many times. So we negotiated down from 1.35 down to 1.14, and that’s what we ended up closing on.

Ashley:
That’s great.

Joe:
Yeah. What’s not great is that… So at 114, and we issued ARV at about 1.75. So we’re looking at a nice spread there. What’s not great was back to that lesson of bringing those team members on early, I hadn’t sort of done the legwork to identify a GC yet. So now, my agent is an investor himself, and maybe there was a little hubris on my side of being able to thinking that like, “Oh, I can ballpark these rehab numbers and with his help, we’ll get close enough and then with the inspection report.” But we were estimating low to mid 20s for rehab, so around 24, 25K. What we realized is just a lot of little things started to add up.
There was a lot of things that I probably could have just left off, and I probably could have arrived at that 25K number. But I’m the sort of guy that like, once it’s brought to me, I sort of want my properties to be in a very good shape when I start renting them out, A, for the appraisal value, and then B, just so I don’t have to worry about stuff later on. It’s not this constant drain away. Fix it all up now and just get it over with. So what’s not great is that the budget is… It went up to about 335 for the rehab. So that definitely aid into some of the BRRR for the appraisal.
If I brought a GC on that it could’ve had walked that during the due diligence, maybe I could have negotiated that price down even a little bit more with the seller. So that was a learning point for me.

Felipe:
But Joe, let me but in there and tell you that a $10,000 mistake is potatoes in the long run. Okay? That is-

Joe:
Oh, I love that.

Felipe:
… a lesson learned that I have heard a horror. I’ve heard a hundred thousand dollar, and that’s where I start cringing, a $10,000 stake, I think you’re right, Joe.

Joe:
I think this way but makes you feel better.

Ashley:
So when you finalize your BRRR, what will you be able to refinance out of it? Will you be able to get everything out?

Joe:
I won’t get, get everything out, honestly. I mean, I know that’s like the ideal BRRR. But I’m perfectly happy leaving 5,000, 10,000. Honestly, if it meets my ROI, right, and then I’m happy leaving money in it. So this one, depending on the LTV, I BRRR out of it, and that’s going to really depend on lending conditions because I’ve started to search around. I can’t really find anybody that’s going to cash out, refi 80% LTV at a very good interest rates. So I might take 75% LTV, and at that point I’ll leave about 12,000 in the deal. But my ROI will still be 20%, which is almost double what my minimum required ROI was for the deal, so-

Ashley:
But let’s be clear on something as well, Joe, for our listeners. It’s not that you’re losing any money, and it’s not-

Joe:
No. No.

Felipe:
I don’t want people to think, “Oh, he’s going to lose 5% because he’s only getting 75% of his money back, and it didn’t work, and it’s a terrible deal.” That’s not how that works, guys. He still has that money. It’s just sitting in his property, and that positively affects his cashflow because his mortgage payment is now not higher than it would be at the 80%. So it’s not like he lost anything. It’s just sitting in the deal, and I’m okay with that as well. Right?

Joe:
Understand.

Felipe:
That means you’re not as leveraged as you would be at 80%. So I mean, you took action, and you listened to your mentor. Kudos to you, man. I think that’s great. Even if it is that 75%, I would still take it.

Ashley:
Yeah. I think that’s a great point.

Steve:
Yeah. I think what’s also important for people that are trying to get into this is what Joe did is he’s setting, and this is what we talked about. We’re setting up the form to duplicate this process over and over again. I told Joe, I said, I want you to be able to buy a property in every state that you want to using this methodology we’re doing. So a base hits, still gets you around the field, and you’ll still win the game. So a lot of people, they think, if I’m not going to hit a home run, I’m not even going to buy the deal. There’s a lot to learn. If Joe never went forward with these deals, because he said, “Oh, I’m not going to take all the money out,” or whatever their analogy is, is all the lessons that he would have learned from long distance investing would never have happened.
So I think what’s important for people to realize is there’s… It’s like there was Windows 98. Well, the first Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows 2000, every time is an improvement. What Joe’s doing is he’s refining his system, which is what I want people to understand is all you’re doing at this is you’re just making your processes better and better. So that eventually, I told Joe, I said, “I want you to be able to buy five properties in five different states at the same time by using this system.” To me, that’s when you know you have a true business, and because you’re at a disadvantage that you can’t go to these cities, you have to rely on your processes and your procedures to make this work. That to me really was one of the biggest lessons I wanted Joe to learn out of this whole process.

Ashley:
Joe, are you using any software? Are you using spreadsheets? What are you using to track of these processes and put these systems in place from start to finish?

Joe:
No paid software, a lot of Excel sheets and Google Sheets. That’s pretty much where it’s all been on. I think for getting a property from buying it through to management, that’s fine. Where I think the software is really helpful is when you start self-managing. But after many conversations with Steve, I’m past the point of being a self property manager now. It’s just I’m realizing how much that 10% is such a good deal to just pay a property manager. So I think that’s where maybe some of the software would really help people, but Mynd Property Management is going to manage it. They’re going to do the books on the property, and they’re going to hand me a nice file at the end of the year with all the bookkeeping and everything for it. So I don’t really see a need for… I don’t see if we’re anything more than Excel and Google Sheets.

Ashley:
I can already see the weight lifting off your shoulders. [crosstalk 00:40:40] feel good.

Joe:
How it’s amazing.

Ashley:
I just transferred over to property management maybe February off. It feels so good, and it was perfect timing because right before COVID, and they handled everything with the tenants through that.

Joe:
[crosstalk 00:40:51]. Yeah. People get hung up on that 10% until you realize how much… Talking through the time thing, I did. I told Steve like, “Yeah. The two properties I manage, they take up…” I forget what I told him, like an hour a month, and then it’s like, “Well, no. There was 30 minutes there, and there was 20 minutes there, and there was…” It starts to add up. But when you realize you can completely just get a report in your email that you check once a week or once a month, that 10% starts to look like a real good deal. So-

Ashley:
Yeah. I did enjoy it at one point. I enjoyed the property management, and then it bogged me down, and I did not enjoy it anymore, and you’re right. It’s such an easy thing to outsource and get rid of, and that’s where the time value comes in. Look at things that you are doing and which of those things can you get rid of. Felipe, what’s an example for you. You cut the grass, and you enjoy that now. But someday you might not want to do that. But that is an easy thing for you to get rid of.

Felipe:
Yeah. Absolutely. I have quotes on stuff like that, and I have quotes on a bunch of stuff. When I’m ready to rock and roll for that, definitely do it. But like you said, personally, it doesn’t bother me, and it’s something that I like. Just like we talked about in the last podcast we did, Ashley, the gentleman that uses Cozy, right? It’s a free platform for him, and he just enjoys being able to be in control of that situation. But like Steve said earlier, it’s about goal and mindset. Joe’s goal is not to be managing properties. Mynd offers him that service at 10% of his earnings. So it’s great. Right? So it just depends on your goal. What is your goal? Let me preface that with, there’s not a right or wrong answer here, guys. If you love property management, go do it. Ashley says all the time, if it makes you sleep well at night, everyone’s goal is a little different, and Joe doesn’t want to have to worry about property management. He loves the email, and I think that’s fantastic.
So Kudos, Joe. I mean, that’s awesome. Like you said, that 10% saves you so much time, and like you said, the time does end up adding up, kind of like the rehab, right? Before you know, you’re spending 10,000 more dollars than you should. That’s probably what happens with property management. We think we’re just doing three hours, but in reality, it might be like eight or nine because we’re not calculating all the costs.

Steve:
Well, and I think that from owning a management company before and working with mine, I think one of the things a lot of people when they’re getting into real estate, and they buy that property, a lot of people feel that’s the part that they should do. They feel that, “Well, I own the property. I should at least take care of it because it’s just collecting the rent.” My flip side to that is you really need to be careful because you are running a business when you own a piece of real estate. That business has laws, litigation. There’s a lot of glass in the sandbox of owning a rental property because there’s a human being living in that property, and there’s a lot of protection rights. The last thing somebody wants to do is lose everything they own or get into a lawsuit or something happened because they just didn’t know the law.
Joe and I talked about this, and Ashley, you and I have talked about this, and it’s like, “What is the best use of your time?” Like you said, Felipe, it may be that that is the best use of your time. But if you do it, make sure that you take it seriously. Know the laws, know the regulations, and don’t put you, your family, all your finances in a bad position because you didn’t take the time to know that there was a new… I mean, especially, we’ve got COVID-19 going on, right? There’s a lot of laws around COVID-19 of what you can and cannot do, and that’s changed just in the last three months.
So I think it’s important that if you get into real estate, you take it from tip to tip as a professional, don’t go three-quarters of the way through and go, “Okay. This part, I’ll do at the end.” I just think sometimes it’s a mindset. Sometimes it’s financial. Sometimes it’s not planning properly. But I just think it’s important for people to think it through all the way.

Felipe:
Agreed, a hundred percent. It’s all, like you said, building the standard operating procedures and how to be successful that directly positively affects your goal. In certain situations, that’s one way, so in the other. Joe, I think you’re absolutely right with what you’re doing with handing it over to a property management company and worrying about Joe’s next homework, or I’m sorry, Steve’s next homework for you to go get five deals in five different places. The last thing you want to be worried about is a tenant that’s locked outside of their house at 3:00 in the morning.

Joe:
Yeah. Especially when I’m overseas, deployed in another country, the Marine Corps.

Felipe:
Thanks for your service. Thanks for what you’re doing, man. It keeps us all safe. So seriously, thank you.

Joe:
I appreciate the support.

Felipe:
Let’s move on to what happened. What’s the numbers? Wrap up that property for us.

Joe:
So renovation should complete next week, and it’ll come in the change… I think we only had one change order. So that bumped it from 32.5 up to that 33.5 I mentioned for the rehab. Then I haven’t really found any good deals on seasoning yet or refinancing it inside the six months seasoning period. So I think I’m just going to wait and allow it to seasonal a bit. Appreciation seems to be taking hold in the neighborhood. So I think there’s a couple of properties on the market right now that if they sell between now and when I’m going to refinance, it’ll bump my ARV a little bit. So just going to let it sit for a while, turn it over to property management in August, and then yeah, probably later this fall or the winter, then I’ll refinance out of it.

Steve:
I would say to people watching, I think that we have a certain window in time right now with everything going on, and there’s going to be a lot of deals in place coming very soon with pricing. I think this is the time that watching this show, watching the other shows, being involved in BiggerPockets, this is when you sharpen that mental ax before you start swinging. I think pretty soon, having everything, knowing what your goals are, knowing the strategies and the tactics you’re going to use by really thinking this through, writing it out, having a mentor, getting on BiggerPockets, doing all these things so that when the right deal does approach, whether it’s locally, whether it’s out of state or even out of country, you know exactly what you’re doing, and everyone’s going to be… Pretty soon, you’ll see everyone’s going to be running away from real estate because prices will start falling.
That is the time in my opinion, that more wealth will be created, probably in the next 18 months, and it has been created in the last 10 years. That’s going to be caused by people that did not run their businesses correctly and didn’t think things through to have the right strategies in place. So I think that, like I told Joe, I’m like, “I want you to be ready to be able to purchase five properties when you’re overseas.” I mean, this deal, maybe Joe, you can tell him where you actually signed the documents on this deal because this shows a true business model. So tell him where you were when you signed.

Joe:
I was out in the field in the tree line, as we like to say in the Marine Corps, doing a field op… So this little guy right here is… Other than Steve, my MVP, because-

Ashley:
[crosstalk 00:47:31]-

Joe:
… I pretty much did this entire deal on this to include… Yeah, I closed on while I was out training, so-

Ashley:
Well, you just led us into our next segment there, Joe. Our next-

Joe:
Oh, my. Look at that. What a good segue.

Ashley:
But now you can’t use those answers. So-

Felipe:
So aside from Steve.

Joe:
Oh, man.

Ashley:
Plus, we don’t want it to get to Steve’s head that he’s a VP. Okay. So who is someone on your team who has really helped make this possible for you? We call this segment the-

Joe:
MVP. MVP

Felipe:
MVP. MVP. That’s right, Joe.

Ashley:
There you go. Okay. So who is that person that has made that impact in your real estate business?

Joe:
So not Steve. Can’t pick Steve.

Ashley:
Yeah. Try and think of someone else. Yeah. We already talked enough about Steve. Yeah.

Joe:
Yeah. I’ve got to get… Nick Fitzpatrick, my agent that I found on BiggerPockets. He’s been awesome. He was flexible. He took the time to really ask me about my goals and make sure that he completely understood what I was looking for and the objectives I was trying to hit, completely responsive in terms of dropping things, driving out to a property, giving me the pictures and the videos. He’s worked with out-of-state investors before, and it shows he’s emotionally in tuned with people investing and people buying a house too. Because he had a heart to heart with me after we fell out of the second one because I was feeling a little bit down, and he took the time to be like, “Hey man, you’re still good? Let’s reevaluate. Let me know where you’re at. Let me know what you’re thinking.”
So he’s just great guy to work his butt off, and he’s got a good team there too, in terms of, because he is an investor, he’s got different contractors and subs and stuff like that. So yeah.

Ashley:
What are some things that you could… For someone who’s looking to find an out-of-state realtor, what are some questions that you asked him kind of during that initial interview process?

Joe:
Yeah. So I mean the first question was, have you worked with out-of-state investors? Yes. Okay. What kind of deals have you done? I try not to put leading questions there. Right? So just to kind of see like what he comes. He’s like, “Well, I’ve done BRRR deals [inaudible 00:49:46] investors.” I was like, “Okay. Perfect.” I asked him in terms of where he was located, how would he be able to get to these areas quickly around Atlanta, the neighborhoods we’re thinking of? If he’s living on a suburb on the far North side of the city and I want to invest on the far South side of the city, he’s probably not going to want to drive down there all the time. So location, especially in a massive Metro like that is probably important as well.
Then I sort of gave him what my goals were, and then I asked him to tell me, what areas of Atlanta do you think meet these goals and explain to me why? That sort of allowed him to sort of free talk in terms of me getting a feel for his knowledge of the area really in depth. I mean, he could have been blowing smoke. He wasn’t. But it allowed him to just sort of free spiel and me get a feel for like, does he know his stuff?

Ashley:
That’s great. I think just that you found them on the BiggerPockets forums and that he knew what a BRRR deal was. I mean, a lot of real estate agents don’t even know that. But thank you for sharing today’s MVP, and Steve we know is also your MVP. So we recognize a little bit.

Joe:
Of course, Steve.

Ashley:
But you can find out more information about the MVP at biggerpockets.com/rookie33. Let’s move on to our next segment. Felipe, do you want to take us into that?

Felipe:
So the next segment of the show, Joe and Steve, it’s called the rookie request line. You can reach us anytime at 1-888-5-ROOKIE to leave us a voicemail, and we might use it on the next show. Joe, Steve, are you guys ready?

Joe:
Ready?

Felipe:
All right. Here’s today’s question.

Ali Suleiman:
Hi, guys. My name is Ali Suleiman. I’m from San Diego, California, and I feel like I’m in a rut. I’ve been watching podcasts for maybe the past year and attending webinars and reaching out to people on BiggerPockets. I even put together a platform on Excel to analyze deals. But I feel like this next step, I should be taking, and I’m not really sure what it is. Do you have any stress-ins. Thanks.

Joe:
Steve, you want to start or-

Felipe:
Yeah, Steve? That’s [crosstalk 00:51:51]-

Steve:
Yeah. It’s one word. It’s called action. Right? So a lot of times, we hide behind going online, going on BiggerPockets. I didn’t hear anything about what action he could be taking. Action could be actually making phone calls to sellers, knocking on doors, doing actual things, to make an improvement on where he’s at. So my advice would be come up with a plan, right? Really sit there and say, “What do I want my life to look like as a result of owning real estate? What is my end goal?” Once you know what that is, it could be a certain amount of assets. It could be a certain amount of cashflow. But really take the time and figure that out once you know what that is. Now, it’s a matter of opening the front door, walking down the steps and making it happen.
A lot of times, we get so caught up in spreadsheets and conversations that we never actually just get it done. Joe is a great example. Joe had the spreadsheets. But Joe was out there doing all of his homework, taking action. That’s the biggest hurdle most people have to overcome. It’s like getting a locomotive to move down the tracks. You just kind of get that momentum going. Once it goes, it’ll happen. Getting that action going is the hardest thing.

Joe:
Yeah. I’ll add to that by saying, I may have done this deal completely virtually. I’ve never set foot in Atlanta and whatnot. But for that first deal, if you’re having trouble getting started, there is something to be said for physically meeting with somebody who’s going to push you into that action and being held accountable. I think what that looks like in many cases is finding that investor-friendly real estate agent and then actually taking the action of going and looking at houses with them. What that did for me when I did my very first real, because that was sort of what got me into that first step. Because I also sat around for a while, did a lot of reading and research before I ever did my first BRRR deal.
But it wasn’t until I realized, I went and met an agent, started walking through houses and then realized like, “Well this person is doing this stuff for me, and I don’t want them to work for free.” Right? Putting a face, it’s easy to like, “Oh yeah, I meet with somebody on the BiggerPockets forums, or we message on Instagram, and it’s like, “Oh, we connected.” But sometimes, for that very first deal, maybe what you need is go meet that person who’s going to let you achieve or help you achieve those objectives and realize they’ve got a living to make, and if you feel a little bit of responsibility for not wasting their time, maybe that’s what pushes you into that next step.

Ashley:
And just putting in those low-ball offers. I mean, you might stick a deal-

Joe:
Yeah. Putting those offers.

Ashley:
… just practicing, putting in offers then. You’ll get something if you’re not finding deals. He’s obviously analyzing them. He’s got his spreadsheets. If you’re not confident that it’s working based off the purchase price, then lower your offer so that the deal does work for you.

Steve:
Well, and I think the challenges is people do what they should, not what they must. So if he had someone holding him accountable and said, “Hey, by next week you better have 50 phone calls made,” he would probably make those phone calls. If I said, “If you don’t do it, we’re done talking, that’s it,” he’d probably get them done. Right? If it was like, “Well, maybe you should. But you’ve probably got stuff to do. You’re in San Diego. So you can go hang out. Maybe you should. Maybe you shouldn’t.” It’s not a priority. So when your should becomes a must, that’s when action starts coming into play. So it has to move up on the priority list to make action actually happen in my opinion.

Ashley:
That’s great advice, Steve. Steve actually did that to me on the time blocking thing. He told me if I didn’t write down my time every day, he was not going to talk to me again.

Steve:
All right. You got it done, right? But you got it done.

Ashley:
Yeah. No. I was like, “Geez. What a big regret?”

Steve:
Okay. Roll back time.

Ashley:
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So we have a few questions that we like to ask at the end of the show. So Steve, what we had you on before. So we’re going to ask these questions to Joe to get to know you. Felipe, do you want to go ahead and take the first one?

Felipe:
Yeah. I’ll take the first one. Hey Joe, what is the biggest piece of advice that you would give a rookie that you took from Steve?

Joe:
I think the biggest lesson learned, and we’ve sort of touched it multiple times, but just to make it concise is you got to build the team. That goes not just out-of-state real estate investing, but that’s for local real estate investing. Most people have a W2. Even if you don’t have a W2, you don’t know all the aspects of what there is to know about investing in real estate. So if people are looking for next steps, you should be looking at, who do I need on my team, and how am I going to get them? That goes for deals in your local area or deals out of state.

Ashley:
Thank you for sharing that. I think after listening to this episode, a lot of people are going to be looking for a mentor and someone to help them get that first deal done. I think even just throughout the show, you gave a lot of advice as to how to add value to your mentor and how to be a good mentee. But now let’s move on to the super fun rookie hazing. I know Steve will probably help you out here, but what song-

Joe:
Oh, I don’t know.

Ashley:
… is your guilty pleasure, and can you sing a few lyrics for us?

Joe:
Okay. So a big fan of the show. I’ve loved all your guests. But if I have a bone to pick, I would say that some of them are not putting the guilty into the guilty pleasure part because some of them have picked genuinely great songs, some of the songs that are great music.

Ashley:
You’re absolutely right. Yeah.

Joe:
The song that I’m about to butcher, no self-respecting Marine should ever sing in their truck on the way home from work too, and I’m ashamed to admit I have from time to time. So Steve can join me if he wants. We don’t have to, because he’s sort of like the VIP here. But Call Me May-

Felipe:
Oh, no. Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Wait a minute, wait a minute. We are not letting Steve [crosstalk 00:57:38]

Ashley:
I don’t know, Steve [crosstalk 00:57:38]-

Joe:
He’s not a rookie. It’s rookie [inaudible 00:57:38].

Felipe:
No, no, no. No, that’s okay.

Joe:
It’s rookie [inaudible 00:57:43]. I got to look out for my mentor.

Felipe:
No, that’s okay. That’s okay.

Steve:
I may be too old to even know what this song is.

Joe:
Call Me Maybe.

Felipe:
Go for it, Joe.

Joe:
Call Me Maybe by Carly Rae Jepsen. You know it?

Ashley:
Yeah.

Steve:
No, I never even heard it.

Joe:
Yeah, sure. Okay. All right. All right. Here we go. (singing)

Felipe:
Yes, Joe is awesome.

Ashley:
Yay, good job.

Steve:
You know this is being recorded, right, Joe?

Joe:
Yeah, unfortunately.

Ashley:
Now, Steve does know that song.

Felipe:
Steve’s going to hold that over your head.

Ashley:
Yeah. All right. Steve, can you tell us a little bit about where everyone can find out some more information about you?

Steve:
Sure. Well, if they want to know more about Mynd Property Management, they can go to mynd.co, mynd.co, and we are in 16 different markets across the US, managing about 7,500 properties. So we do have a platform to help you find properties. We’ve got all the teams in place to help you just like we helped Joe. If somebody wants to find me personally, they can find me on Instagram @rozenbergsteve, R-O-Z-E-N-B-E-R-G Steve, as well as all the other social media, Facebook, other LinkedIn, other channels. Yeah. Happy to help, happy to have conversations. I do it a lot. We’re a very small community when you think of the grand scheme of things. So if we don’t help each other, then why are we doing this, in my opinion. So I always try to give back as much as I can to the investor community.

Ashley:
Yeah. As much as I’ve been hard on Steve during this recording, he really does take the time to help as many people as he can, and he loves to talk real estate, and especially mindset and just has great advice on that. So go follow him, and he just gives out tons of free content. Joe, what about you?

Joe:
So you find me on BiggerPockets. I’m relatively active on there. Don’t post a whole lot. But I do message a lot of people on BiggerPockets. I’m on Facebook, mostly just to be in actually the Steve’s investment group. It’s not masterminded. You just changed the name. What’s the name now.

Steve:
Think Tank. Think Tank Real Estate.

Joe:
There we go. So Steve’s think tank and then also the rookie podcast, Facebook page. But I’m not super active on Facebook. Instagram is probably the best way to reach out to me, @devildoginvestor is my handle on Instagram. So message me on there or just follow me. I post stuff about ongoing projects. I started it just sort of document my journey and mistakes I make and wins and stuff, and I like to follow other investors on there, so-

Ashley:
Well, thank you guys so much for coming on the show, and their whole journey with this $20,000 and buying this out of state property is all documented, and it’s going to be on BiggerPockets YouTube, correct?

Steve:
Yeah. Joe and I did a whole video documentary on the whole process so that everybody can follow along, they can see the wins and the struggles that Joe goes through, and I think it’s a great learning experience for anyone that wants to get involved in investing. Whether it’s local or out of state, I think it’s all the same. But it definitely shows what needs to be done and what kind of pitfalls will be out there if you’re not careful in your selection process. So yeah. It’ll all be processed. It’s a collaboration between Mynd Property Management and BiggerPockets. We’re so happy to join forces with BiggerPockets and do this together, and I think it’ll help a lot of people out there. I really do

Ashley:
Well, thank you guys so much for coming on the show today. I’m Ashley Kehr at Wealth from Rentals, and he’s Felipe Mejia, @felipemejiarei.