My first Fire Captain, Ruben Hernandez, at Engine 24 told me “if you wait to promote until you think you are ready, you’ll never promote”. He said “You promote and learn as you go. You’ll never think you are ready. You are.” I chose to work with him because he was respected and worked at … Continued
Why you haven’t heard from us in a while: The short answer is: we got ourselves so busy reaching for our 2019 goals that we got a little too busy. We have always believed that we should take down deals as they present themselves. We also have believed that this would be a “lifestyle” business … Continued
R.O.T. Return on Time Finance books are full of acronyms. C.O.C. is Cash on Cash. I.R.R. is Internal Rate of Return. One I’ve never read, but I’m sure someone else beat me to, is R.O.T. or Return on Time—as in return on our time invested. While I write about the BRRRR technique a lot, … Continued
Is Owner Finance a Godsend or the Devil? We love rentals. If you’ve read a single word I’ve written, you know that. We like flips pretty well but we hate the taxes. Owner finance, however, has always been a problem for me. I heard stories of these “sharks” who sold houses to buyers that couldn’t … Continued
Inflation-Induced Debt Destruction So learning about real estate also means learning about economics. Micro and macro. I am sorry to tell you this if these were your least favorite subjects in school. They will probably become more interesting now that they can help you to build wealth for your family. The term “Inflation-Induced Debt … Continued
Our Zombie Deal or Sales 101 from the world’s worst salesman This is a Halloween-themed post about a Zombie deal that came back from the dead. Insert creepy sounding “oooOOOOoooo” here. But it really is. At risk of jinxing a great deal, here is a real story about a real deal we recently put under … Continued
Hard Money vs. Private Money and How They Work A friend asked me to explain the difference between Hard Money and Private Money and how to use them both. It’s a really good question as a lot of people talk about these casually but don’t break down the differences between them or the … Continued
We were looking through those big folders you get after you buy a house today, in preparation for a class we’re teaching on property management. We found a few surprises. Things time has blurred. It turns out that it was three years from the time we turned my bachelor pad into a rental to the … Continued
One of the biggest questions I get asked is how we find our deals. I thought I’d write about this topic at the request of one of the blog readers. Thanks for the question, Josiah! When we first started doing this thing, deals could be found on the MLS pretty easily. It wasn’t a … Continued
My friends just lost money on a deal and now I want to invest with them. Here’s why. We’ve discussed syndication briefly here. In case you don’t recall, it is essentially when sponsors find a large apartment deal and put together an offer and all of the financials to support the project and … Continued
“No money down” real estate really does happen. And it isn’t all captured on infomercials at midnight. If you find a great deal you can get someone else to fund it as either a debt partner or an equity partner (more on the difference between these two types of partners in a bit). I still suggest … Continued
The Poor, Underrated “P” of PITI Would you buy a rent house with zero cash flow? Negative cash flow? I might. Okay, I did. The best answer to this question is: “I need more information to decide”. So it’s kind of a trick question. But take a second before reading on and think about what … Continued
Talk. That’s right; talk about what your are doing in your business. Talk with enthusiasm and intelligence. It matters. It is magnetic! If you are familiar with Bigger Pockets and their podcast, you are familiar with Brandon Turner. He is knowledgeable and passionate about real estate and it is infectious to listen to. Do you … Continued
All our eggs in one basket. My son would be so disappointed by the “dad-ness” of this. Focus is our Focus Are you old enough to recall when multi-tasking was a buzz word? I think it was a 1990’s phenomenon. When it was thought to be a compliment to be a multitasker. We may not … Continued
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