March 14, 2024 • 39 mins
In this engaging episode of the "DocWorking - The Whole Physician Podcast", host Dr. Jen Barna welcomes Brett Riggins, a seasoned expert in real estate who specializes in helping physicians build a real estate portfolio.
Brett shares his journey in the real estate sector, offering valuable advice and strategies for physicians looking to diversify their income streams through real estate property investments.
Whether you're a novice curious about the basics of real estate or a seasoned investor seeking to expand your portfolio, you'll find Brett's experiences and tips useful to guide you on your path to financial growth and stability. Join us to explore how you can learn to leverage real estate opportunities to build a lucrative side income alongside your busy medical career.
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Brett Riggins is a twenty year veteran of the real estate business whose passion is helping people connect with the life they want.
The founder of Connect Home Buyers and Physician Wealth Systems, he's shepherded more than 20 million dollars in transactions in the last decade.
With a degree in Construction Engineering from Western Michigan University and a formative journey through the blood, sweat, and grind of building his investments, his expertise has helped hundreds of people find the deals they needed.
You can reach out to Brett at -
Website: https://physicianwealthsystems.com/
Facebook: https://facebook.com/PhysicianWealthSystemsProgram
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/physician_wealth_systems
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brettriggins/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@RealEstateResidency
How To Get Rich As A Doctor: https://physicianwealthsystems.com/books/
Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/podcast/real-estate-mogul-m-d/
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We invite you to explore side-hustle and finance resources at https://DocWorking.com/.
You can find our Trusted Resources here: https://docworking.com/trusted-resources/.
Find a coach to help you accelerate progress toward what matters most to you: https://docworking.com/physician-coach-directory/.
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Thank you for listening and for being part of the DocWorking Community!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Brett Riggins (00:02):
Start asking yourself where you want to go and make sure that you ask yourself
why.
Why you want to go there.
I don't want to just buy a house on sometropical island because I want to visit there.
And it sounds like a cool idea.
I could rent it out.
No. What's your why?
Dr Jen Barna (00:22):
Welcome to Doc working the whole physician pod cast.
I'm your host, Dr. Jen Barna, and I'm soexcited to bring to you today our guest, Brett
Riggins, who's going to talk with us about hisreal estate journey and how he's helping
physicians on their journey to building a sidehustle that can help them to build strength
(00:46):
and security in addition to their medicalpractice.
Bret Riggins is a 20 year veteran of the realestate business whose passion is helping
people connect with the life they want.
And I know that we're especially interested in
that here at doc working.
And, Bret, I'm hoping that you can tell me
(01:08):
about your history, how you've ended up inreal estate, and tell me a little bit more
about how you came to be helping so manyphysicians.
Brett Riggins (01:17):
Hey, great question.
First of all, thank you for having me here,
Jen.
I really appreciate it.
And thank you for everybody that's taken thetime to listen to the show today.
And I know that's the first step, is justbeing curious first, and then we're going to
talk about taking action.
In talking about taking action, how did I
start real estate, and how did I start thispath working with physicians?
(01:40):
Because I'm not a physician.
It's a great question.
I think I started way back when my parentsstarted building a house.
I was seven years old when my parents startedbuilding a house.
And that journey inflicted many pains and manytraumas in my life.
But ultimately, it started the path ofconstruction for me and design, and that's
(02:04):
really where my world took off.
I was focused in architectural, engineering
and construction management, coming wellthrough high school and into college.
I played music for a little while, which kindof turned my college education into the
education career, maybe just a little bitdifferent than the path of medicine there, but
(02:26):
lengthwise, it was the same.
Ultimately, it came around, came about.
I ended up with basically a relationship witha small design build firm, a closely held
family firm.
And just what a blessing that was to get into
the administrative side, learning the businesspieces.
And I was introduced to a book called Tractionat that point and went from production quickly
(02:52):
into a profit partner in the first three yearswith that business.
And like I say, it was a wonderful journey.
From there, I grew and I started my own design
build firm quickly found my path into realestate at that time, and this is just a
whirlwind of time and stuff happening, andultimately investing in myself at that point,
(03:16):
Jen, and surrounding myself with the rightpeople and created these scenarios that
allowed us to scale, my wife and myself toscale from flipping houses to flipping to hold
and what I call flipping paper.
We stopped flipping two x fours and started
flipping paper.
And now we're focused solely on integrating
(03:37):
automating efficiencies and being able toshare that knowledge and experience with
physicians.
Dr Jen Barna (03:45):
Brad, I love talking with you because you have the expertise in this area.
And I think for us as physicians, we haveexpertise in different areas, and.
Brett Riggins (03:59):
I'm thankful for that.
Dr Jen Barna (04:01):
It's really helpful when we can partner with someone who has expertise in a
different area and can help us to efficientlytake on a side project or a side job that we
don't have to really necessarily build anentire career around.
(04:23):
But I do wonder, what do you recommend for aphysician who might be interested in investing
in real estate?What do you recommend that they do to educate
themselves to get a sufficient education thatthey can make educated decisions about what is
a safe investment, how to move forward.
(04:43):
And of course, I think understanding what
those steps are can help us to get past theanalysis paralysis that so many of us face
when it comes to investing in real estate.
Brett Riggins (04:58):
Hey, great question.
First of all, I've always, always, and not
only did I say this, but I hear it echoed alot as well, too.
And nothing that I'm going to say today, Jen,did I create or come up with by myself?
These are things that I've just learned fromother people through empirical evidence,
(05:19):
through experience and years and years, andpick them up, and now I get to repeat them.
So the first thing looking at is mindset.
So before we even talk about real estate, talk
about investments, what kind, how much time doI have?
All that stuff.
We have to first focus on mindset and
understanding.
Hey, what does it look like?
(05:39):
Or who do I need to become to be a real estateinvestor?
And then once I start, that's the first thingI want everybody to focus on.
I know a lot of us may have that capacity,ability and experience already, or think we
do.
We can take that then and start taking action
and say, okay, how now do I start learningreal estate?
(06:01):
Well, what is it?First, we'll talk about what kind of real
estate are you interested in?And this is going to come down to aligning
your values and the time that you have now,the time that you have next year and the year
after and five years down the road, ten yearsdown the road, thinking of these extra
strategies that align with these two things.
So when I say values, I'm thinking some people
(06:23):
are okay with a certain class property, acertain class neighborhood.
And when I say class, I'm talking aboutcondition, age, the demographics of the
tenants, those kinds of things, and makingsure that that aligns with the product that
you want to push out.
Remember, this is not somewhere where you're
(06:44):
going to live.
I hear a lot of physicians talking about
Airbnbs, and my wife and I do the same thing.
We have several Airbnbs as well, and we stay
in them.
So it's a little bit different.
If I'm going to stay in there, it's a littledifferent.
Ultimately, finding this path that aligns,Jen, with the angle that you want to go, the
way that you want to exit, and making surethat that's relative to the time that you have
(07:11):
to put into this.
So when you have a path decided whether it is
Airbnb, what we call short term rentals, orit's long term single family rentals, or it's
multifamily, where we're talking aboutsyndications, limited partnerships, general
partnerships, sponsorship, those kinds ofthings.
Once you have that direction, now, how do wetake action?
(07:32):
First, you just start talking about it.
Let's start talking about it, because we all
have colleagues, what they call it, the watercooler talk, and I'm sure we all have heard
that.
I would like to get into real estate, or my
buddy's doing this, or I'm doing this, startengaging those conversations, and then the
first step is then expanding yourassociations.
Once you're talking about it, they'll startsurrounding yourself with other people.
(07:55):
And I encourage everybody to get outside theirsphere of influence.
A lot of physicians will associate withphysicians.
Well, I'm sure you're probably aware thatmaybe physicians aren't the best real estate
investors to learn from in that perspective.
So expanding your associations.
(08:16):
Now, I get me wrong, there's a lot ofphysicians that are just totally crushing it
in real estate.
But what I say is, don't limit yourself to
only physicians.
When you are expanding your know, start
talking about it.
Start going to Reis meetups, looking at
Facebook groups, listening to podcasts likedoc working.
(08:37):
I mean, this is where you're going to getthese great opportunities to hear people who
are not just talking about this stuff, but areactually doing it.
That's a big thing.
Those are the first steps you find.
Figure out where you're at.
Then start asking yourself where you want to
go and make sure that you ask yourself why.
Why you want to go there.
(08:58):
I don't want to just buy a house on sometropical island because I want to visit there.
And it sounds like a cool idea.
I could rent it out.
No. What's your why?You got to figure out your why through that,
too.
And now I'm going to start talking about it,
expand my associations, start learning aboutit, researching, and then we need to take
action.
We need to start actually implementing these
things to change this knowledge into wisdom.
Dr Jen Barna (09:21):
Bret, just as an example, can you tell me about the conversation you have
with yourself and your wife?You said that you guys are doing this
together.
That is around your why.
What is your why?
Brett Riggins (09:36):
Great.
There's two different conversations there,
obviously, with myself and my wife.
My wife is absolutely amazing, so humble and
so perfect.
I'm so blessed to have her in my life.
It's simple.
She wants a happy, healthy family.
(09:56):
Even the home we live in can be simple,humble, as long as it's dependable.
And we are enjoying where we're at.
It's so simple.
So for her, that's an easy why for me.
I have this drive of this passion, this drive
to continuing to get better and better andbetter and more efficient in everything we do.
(10:17):
So there's something that drives me in my whythat's further.
Ultimately beyond that passion is back to thefamily and spending time with my family,
spending time with just freedom, the freedom,being able to travel.
And right now we're talking about it.
(10:40):
Everything starts with imagination and then it
comes fruition by talking about it.
But this is the path just I was talking about
with real estate.
We're talking about now our trip to meet our
team.
We've got some team members who are in the
Philippines, so we're actually figuring outthe path to get there.
But the cool part about this is it fulfills mywhy, because my family gets to go with me, and
(11:04):
it's shaped around freedom, too.
My children are employees of our investment
company, so everything is above the line.
We're paying ourselves above the line, meaning
that the flights, the food, because it's realestate related.
It's a business trip.
Now, I'm not a CBA, so don't take me on that
stuff.
This works for us, though.
(11:24):
So it's filling my why of spending time withmy family in that freedom of life.
Dr Jen Barna (11:31):
Well, I think it's a terrific education for your kids as well.
And I don't want to get too far down thispath, because it's not where we're wanting to
head with the whole conversation.
But I am curious, since you mentioned it, for
someone who's interested and listening, whatare your kids able to do as part of the
business?What kind of things do you have them doing to
(11:56):
be important?
Brett Riggins (11:57):
It's such a fun conversation because some people, I've had heated
conversations over this, and it's kind oflike, we got to step back and take it easy.
Everything's going to be okay.
It's not a sweatshop.
Everything is fine.
These guys will love it.
So we live, breathe, eat, sleep, real estate,our life.
I mean, these kids have grown up onrenovation, on job sites, flipping, picking
(12:21):
out, staging.
They've done so much.
The things that stand out to me, that bringjoy to our life.
When we were doing direct mail, anytime that apiece of.
Look at here.
I've got two right here.
So recently, my daughter and I flew to Memphisis one of our markets that we're in to meet
(12:44):
our team in Memphis.
And I had thank you notes, and you can see
them hold them up to the camera.
This is my daughter drawing on the envelopes
and just those cute little things to beinvolved on that.
Prior to that, when we're doing directmailing, we would have the kids drawing
pictures.
And at one point, I actually had them draw the
(13:05):
pictures of we buy houses, any condition, thatkind of stuff.
And I created templates.
I scanned those, put them into our direct
mailing fulfillment system, and we were directmailing the kids hand drawn letters for the.
We buy houses, everything.
(13:25):
Social media is a blast.
People just love them.
In our social media posts, we're posting
progress pictures of renovations.
There's just so much that because it is our
life, they're 100% included in it and help usgrow the business.
Dr Jen Barna (13:44):
Well, I do think that there's a huge opportunity to integrate your family life
with your work life, especially when it's thistype of work.
And I do think, having grown up in helping mymom and her business, I loved it as a kid,
getting to even do things like make boxes,like fold the boxes.
(14:05):
I just thought it was the greatest thing, allthe different ways that I could be involved.
And so for her little shop.
So I can imagine that your kids would really
gain a lot.
And while they're drawing pictures and doing
these things to help you out, they're watchingand learning and understanding what it is to
(14:27):
own a business, how much work is involved inthat, and they're watching you make those
decisions.
I think it's expanding their horizons.
Brett Riggins (14:39):
What kid wouldn't want to go to a renovation project and be the first one to
put a hammer through a wall?It's just the joy and the excitement that my
son in particular gets from doing any kind ofdemo.
Like when we can kick stuff down, knock itover.
Now, the real challenge as a parent then comeswhen it's okay, we made this mess, now we got
(15:01):
to clean it up.
You don't just get to be the social media guy
making pictures and then not be responsibleand pick up the mess that you make when you
demo.
Dr Jen Barna (15:10):
Absolutely.
Well, so now listening to you talk about where
you are now, can you tell us about yourinvestment trajectory, like where you started
and how you moved into these different typesof investments and what your decision making
(15:31):
was along the way?
Brett Riggins (15:33):
Yeah, where I started is easy.
I started with nothing.
That house that my parents built, actually,they lost it.
It was never actually completed.
It was so many years that they worked on this
house.
It was adjustable rate mortgage and ended up
basically having to sell it at a short sale,pretty much foreclosure.
(15:57):
And then from there, moving forward, werented.
We were at a place for one year, and then wemoved and moved.
So that's my starting place, and I wasactually just starting.
I had a conversation with physician the otherday, a physician investor, and we talked about
these things that we don't talk about.
It's just like that.
That's my starting point and how we progressedinto where we're at now.
(16:24):
As a contractor myself, this was my full timejob.
So I call them capital bubbles, which forphysicians, you have high potential earners.
You're high earners, so you have those capitalbubbles created through your job, whether it's
w two or your own business.
Well, mine was flipping houses, so we would
(16:46):
flip a house in profit, 1020, 30, $50,000.
I would just keep rolling that back into the
business, buying houses.
But I got to a point where I was what I called
flipping paper, where we were doingassignments.
And that to me was like, wow, I want to dothis because I don't even have to take on the
risk of opening up walls.
(17:08):
I don't have to talk to all these contractors.
So these wholesales or these assignmentsbecame a way of creating these capital bubbles
that allowed me now to either invest in thebusiness again, or I want to convert those
capital bubbles into cash flowing assets thatlong term passive, if there's no such thing as
(17:29):
passive income, but passive income, as we callit, in long term rentals.
And we have short term rentals too.
Dr Jen Barna (17:36):
Okay. And before we go any further, can you explain to us what you mean
by cold sale for someone who's listening, whomight not have heard that term, what do you
mean by that?
Brett Riggins (17:47):
What's fascinating, I'm licensed agent now in a couple of states.
My wife is licensed in a state as well, too.
And there's so many real estate professionals,
so many real estate agents don't even knowwhat that is.
It's surprising.
So if you think about it, Jen's gonna, you're
gonna sell me your house for $100,000.
(18:08):
I say, okay, Jen, I want to make this as easy
as possible.
Here's my purchase and sale agreement.
You would like $100,000 for this property?Okay.
We both sign this agreement, the purchase saleagreement.
In my agreement, my agreement is actuallywhere my name is written.
It's assignees or heirs, I believe is theactual language, but allows me to assign my
(18:29):
rights to another buyer.
So what's unique about, and it's, most
contracts are this way unless it specificallystates this is not assignable.
What happens now is I've got a buyer in mynetwork of investors that says, I like Jen's
property, and I would actually give you$120,000 for Jen's property.
(18:50):
So now I can execute another agreement.
That's called the assignment of contract
agreement.
And that agreement is where the fee comes in.
So investor says, okay, I want to buy this for$120,000.
Now I've gained $20,000 assignment fee toassign that original purchase and sale
agreement to now the end buyer.
(19:12):
Now I'm out, and I've connected the two dots
together.
I've collected a fee and not a commission.
And that's a whole nother conversation withthe way that laws and regulations have changed
in the last five years regarding that.
Dr Jen Barna (19:26):
Okay, thank you.
And if anyone is interested in learning more
about that, we'll give you some informationabout how to contact Bret at the end of the
call.
And there are a lot of resources online as
well, where you can read about wholesaling asan option.
It sounds like you've really been through,you've been through flipping, you've done
wholesaling, you've done single family, you'vedone multifamily and syndication as well.
Brett Riggins (19:54):
I've not done syndication yet.
I am excited because I also have a podcast.
You were a wonderful guest on the podcast,real estate mogul MD. And I get to speak with
so many fundraisers, so many syndicationcompanies, and I've learned so much in the
last six months.
I'm excited to make that my next journey.
(20:16):
The multifamily commercial buildings that wehave currently are mixed use commercial.
They are smaller than the full multi.
In my mind, it only takes five units to be a
multifamily per se in the commercialperspective in most places, I believe, if not
at all.
But for me, I'm thinking like, ten to 70 is
(20:40):
kind of like that.
Be that first jump for us.
And I'm excited to make that jump into themultifamily.
The one thing before we leave wholesaling isI've spoken with quite a few people,
physicians particularly, who have not had agood experience with wholesaling.
So I just wanted to put that on the table.
(21:02):
It is labor intensive, it is capital
intensive.
I mean, we have a nationwide real estate
acquisition company.
We were spending six figures a month in
marketing doing what we were doing.
So wholesaling is not something that you can
just pay a guru $5,000 or ten or 15 or 20 orwhatever, and then all of a sudden you're
going to start turning these papers into 2030,$50,000.
(21:24):
So just beware on that.
It's possible.
Not likely.
Dr Jen Barna (21:29):
Very good tip there.
So if I'm a physician listening, and I'm
interested in working with you, how do youhelp physicians specifically?
Brett Riggins (21:39):
Yeah. And it's going to come down to that first thing where we started
about what it is that you're looking for.
Physician wealth systems.
We have basically a product where we create aturnkey real estate investment company.
And this is not just a turnkey real estateinvestment property.
(22:00):
This is a company.
So we're building the company for you and it's
twelve properties in twelve months.
And this is, we get after it.
Right.
And we've created these systems to make it as
passive as possible.
Obviously, this is still going to require the
physician's time.
The physician maintains 100% of the equity and
is building their real estate investmentcompany.
Typically it's companies because of the LLCbreakouts that our clients use.
(22:26):
But in that.
Dr Jen Barna (22:27):
Wait a second.
Okay, I just want to be sure I understand
this.
So as a physician comes to you and you're
going to help them build their own company toacquire twelve properties within twelve
months?
Brett Riggins (22:42):
Yes.
Dr Jen Barna (22:43):
And you have systems in place that are automated that you've developed over
time that help them to be able to successfullydo this in a small, relatively saving time.
I have not experienced this, so I'm justasking, I'm just trying to understand what you
do, but it sounds very interesting.
(23:06):
Okay.
If a physician is interested in doing that.
What would be the time commitment from the
start?What would they need to be setting aside in
their schedule on a weekly basis?On a monthly basis, yes.
The first start it and to continue it.
Brett Riggins (23:25):
Yes. Again, there's nothing that's passive.
And I'm creating this for the physician to bea business owner.
And if you've read the book cash flow Quadrantby Robert Kiyosaki, understanding the business
owner, we're not buying ourselves another job.
We're not self employed.
Now, obviously there are things that stillrequire time.
(23:46):
So we're looking at in the first month, we'relooking at 8 hours approximately.
And a lot of that's going to be theapplications because we implement the Burr
strategy, Jen, which is buy, renovate, rentand refinance.
And then we're going to repeat that.
So in that first month, it's the most labor
intensive.
We're projecting between 8 hours, 10 hours
(24:07):
somewhere in there.
And that's working with one time a week.
We're on a Zoom meeting, at least an hourgetting through and we're taking action every
time that we're meeting.
And then the second month it cuts the time
about in half and we'd look at about 4 hoursin that second month.
Third month backing down, getting closer tothat 2 hours.
Ultimately we're ending up at about 1 hour amonth getting this stuff done.
(24:32):
And what I say from the get go is that I hopethat we continue to build our relationship,
but if you leave me, you will never need me.
I want to make sure that I'm setting these
systems and processes and procedures up forthe physicians to create this business and not
just a single property investment.
Dr Jen Barna (24:56):
And are these single family or multifamily?
What kind of properties are you helpingphysicians find and how do you go about doing
that?
Brett Riggins (25:06):
Great question.
Single family residential is, I feel one of
the best entry points.
And this is something where to scale it is
very difficult.
And I'm sure that if the listeners haven't
heard of hedge funds, we work with differenthedge funds, but to scale it's a whole
(25:27):
different machine.
So I feel that an entry point is awesome in
the single family respect because then if youwanted to depreciate exchange, depreciate
exchange, the 1031 exchange process, it'seasier to offload these things because there's
more buyers.
I mean, we're talking about an asset that
(25:47):
anybody can buy, whether it's the old chuck inthe truck to do a flip, whether it's a
landlord to do a long term hold or the firsttime homeowner or a family looking for a nice,
neat, clean, mechanically sound home.
That's what we're doing with these properties.
So a single family and we practice economy byscale, meaning that we are locked into a
(26:08):
specific market where the numbers make sense.
I can go into so much on the outside in
approach on why this market, why thisproperty, why this area.
But we implement our power team in thatregard, and that's another way of how we're
going to find these in the past.
I've been working on a project for about a
year now and I'm so excited or so close.
(26:31):
We're plugged into the MLS and we're
integrating, or, I'm sorry, we're aggregatingdata from the MLS and we're pulling it into
our system.
In our system we have a specific buy window
and a specific investment objective and we cantie those two things together and plug in
basically which properties we want to look atfor today.
(26:54):
And I always say I want to put in five offerstoday.
So my acquisition team, that's exactly whatwe're doing.
And these offers align with the products thatwe're supplying for physician well systems.
Dr Jen Barna (27:07):
For someone who is interested in getting started investing, do you recommend,
first of all, knowing what the volume thatyou're aiming for is from the beginning?
So, for example, you're saying that you helpsomeone to invest in twelve properties in
twelve months.
(27:28):
And you mentioned the Burr strategy as well,
which for someone who might not have heardabout that, the buy, renovate, let's see.
Buy, renovate, rent, refinance, repeat.
Right?
Brett Riggins (27:44):
Yeah. Nice job.
Dr Jen Barna (27:45):
You're going to take your initial investment money, you're going to buy
a property.
And then once you buy that property, part of
your investment money is going to be torenovate that property to get it to a point
that it can rent.
When you renovate it, you're going to improve
the value of it.
So then you're going to have it rented out so
it's producing income and then you go to abank and refinance it.
(28:09):
When you refinance it, you take your moneyback out essentially, right?
Brett Riggins (28:13):
Yes.
Dr Jen Barna (28:15):
And then you can use that money to buy another property.
Brett Riggins (28:17):
Yeah. So asking me, where should somebody start?
Well, it's going to come down to capital, timeand team.
We're able to build this twelve propertyportfolio in twelve months because we have the
capital, the time and the team to do it.
So if somebody's out there just getting
(28:38):
started and wants to pop their first property,it's going to be a little bit different for
that person.
I'm going to say start in your neighborhood
that you are familiar with.
And we're not talking about a scalable
solution off the front.
So I'm not as much concerned about economics.
I'm not as much concerned about job creation,rent increase, all of these things that we
(28:59):
look for on a scalable solution.
But you're going to know this property, you're
going to know this neighborhood, you're goingto know the street.
Neighborhoods vary by block, and you're goingto have probably an easier time building your
team from that point, too.
So we talk a lot about that team that you need
to build and that process, but that's kind ofa great starting point for someone who's just
(29:21):
getting started.
And single family residential is the great
way.
But remember, when you approach this, Jen, you
are not buying yourself another job.
You have to look at it that way.
You have to understand the math so that youcan include property management costs, vacancy
maintenance, taxes, insurance, all of thisstuff, because this needs to be as passive as
(29:42):
possible.
For me, when I first started, I didn't have
capital, but I had time and I had the team.
So I was sweat equity learning this stuff.
I was fixing the properties up myself.
I was managing the properties myself.
And I love that path for me because I have thetime.
The same path that I took througharchitectural engineering, construction
(30:03):
management is I didn't want to just drawpictures.
I wanted to know what I was doing and I hadthe time to do that.
So the physicians out there do not have thetime per se to do something like this.
So making sure that we're including all ofthese things in our equations.
Dr Jen Barna (30:21):
And to your point there, if I understand correctly, you make your money on
the front end.
So you have to get a good enough deal when
you're purchasing to know that you can factorall of this in and you're not factoring it in
based on appreciation in the future, becausewho knows?
Brett Riggins (30:41):
Appreciation, what I've heard, it's called icing on the cake for us.
It's something we set aside.
Rent increase.
We know in the next 15 years, the next 20years, that typically in our markets, our
properties are going to increase by about sixfigures and our rents are going to almost
double in the next 1520 years.
(31:03):
But we don't take any of that into account.
You have to know the other pieces.
Yes, the profit is made on the acquisition,
but it's not realized until the exit.
Right.
And if you don't know what your property isgoing to make when you sign the deal, then
it's a bad deal.
Dr Jen Barna (31:22):
And speaking of the exit, you mentioned the 1031 exchange.
Can you explain a little bit, just a veryquick definition of that?
Brett Riggins (31:30):
Yes. Another reason why I love real estate as an asset class is the
generational wealth potential, generationalwealth building potential.
And let's just take a single family home foran example.
I love single families.
I love real estate because we get to force
equity into places.
(31:50):
And what I call air equity, this idea that
we're creating this value out of the air, I'mgoing to buy, say I bought your property for
$100,000.
I put $20,000 of renovation into that.
I get it appraised for $150,000.
So here's that air equity.
I've forced $30,000 worth of equity into thisproperty.
(32:11):
That's on paper, obviously.
If I was to liquidate, I've got to take some
expenses out.
But $30,000 of air equity, that's great.
So I can hold on to this thing, I can rent itout, and maybe the next five years, ten years,
maybe this appreciation thing that's happeninghas happened, right?
Maybe 2%, 3% a year.
So I've actually gained a little more of that
air equity or that forced equity right on topof the forced equity.
(32:35):
So I want to cash this out.
So instead of paying capital gains, what I can
do is maybe I sold this thing for 160, and nowI've been depreciating it as well, straight
line depreciation for the six years that I'veowned it.
So I would have to pay capital gains andrecapture that depreciation if I were to sell
(32:57):
it and not do anything with it.
The 1031 exchange allows me to then roll that
into the next property like investment,meaning that it's a rental property, right.
I can roll that into the next property and nothave to pay capital gains and not have to
recapture that depreciation.
So that's the depreciate exchange.
(33:20):
And then we just keep doing this because I cankeep kicking the can down the road.
And for the listeners, I love doing my airquotes.
When I'm doing podcasts, I'm doing the airquote.
I keep kicking the can down the road, and Idon't have to recapture the depreciation, I
don't have to pay capital gains.
So now we've taken this, I've got 120 into
(33:40):
this property.
I've sold it for 160.
So now I just keep stepping up, really, intothis depreciate exchange, depreciate exchange.
And then this very unique thing happens.
And when I talk about generational wealth,
when we have these properties, then that weallow our children to inherit or somebody to
(34:05):
inherit, the cost basis of these propertiesthen steps up at that point on that transfer
and the taxes are never recaptured, right.
You pay the capital gains.
So this is the depreciate exchange.
Depreciate exchange, depreciate exchange, die.
So that's where there's the no recapture ofthis too.
(34:27):
And the 1031.
There are stipulations on time and what kind
of property, and you have to have a custodian,typically an attorney, who handles this
paperwork.
You can do it before you buy a new property.
You can do it after you buy a new property.
You just want to work with the right tax
attorney to get that done.
And I am not a tax attorney and I'm not a CPA,
(34:47):
so don't take my advice.
You take this as a little seed, plant it in
your soil of your mind and plant that baby anduse it.
Dr Jen Barna (34:56):
And I am not a professional real estate investor, but I do enjoy learning about
this.
And I think from everything I've been told, my
dock working community really enjoys it aswell.
So Bret Riggins, thank you so much for comingand talking with me today.
I love catching up with you.
I love hearing about your experiences and I
(35:18):
appreciate you sharing your expertise.
How can people reach out to you if they want
to learn more and maybe take advantage of someresources that you have available?
Brett Riggins (35:29):
Yeah. Hey, great question.
Physicianwealthsystems.com is the home base.
I love being able to, I guess, being welcomedinto the physician world through the podcast
real estate mogul Md.
I get the opportunity to speak with
syndicators, with physicians who've createdtheir own businesses, physicians who now focus
(35:50):
on coaching.
So all of those resources are also compiled on
physicianwealthsystems.com website.
Also on there you'll see access to the book.
I love this book.
We're actually going to revise this how to get
rich as a doctor.
That resource is on there too.
And why we all start with mindset in thesediscussions is exactly why the beginning of
(36:14):
that book talks about mindset.
And then we roll into real estate as well too.
And on top of that,physicianwealthsystems.com, you can also find
this wonderful resource called real estateresidency.
And for all my physicians out there, listeningto this residency is something that we all
know, right, that it was a process in ourlife.
(36:37):
The same way with real estate.
We should take this one degree pivot in your
learning career and not stop learning.
When you're done with school, take this small
pivot and start learning about something elsethat you're interested in.
Whether it's short term, long term,multifamily, whatever it may be, real estate
residency is an absolute free resource tostart learning.
(36:59):
If it is single family residential, this isthe what, where, why and how all combined and
compressed, condensed in the same way that Ipresent it to my clients at physician well
systems.
Because in order for us to get twelve
properties in twelve months, we got to be onthe same page, we got to have clear
expectations and we got to know what we'redoing.
Dr Jen Barna (37:21):
Thank you so much, Bret, for providing these tremendous resources for us.
I will share the links in the show notes, soif you're listening, please check out the show
notes and you can click and learn more aboutBrett Riggins and what he's doing.
And also, the real estate mogul MD podcast isanother one that you may really and I'm so, so
(37:45):
pleased to have this conversation.
Look forward to more conversations with you in
the future.
Bret, thanks again for coming on the podcast.
Brett Riggins (37:52):
Awesome.
Thank you so much Jim, for your time and for
all the listeners out there.
If you don't or haven't got the chance, please
stop by the podcast whether you're listeningon Apple or Spotify, and make sure you leave a
review, a five star review, because that'swhat helps Jen, Doc working and all of us
share the great news, share the greatexperience, and just keep building community
(38:16):
with everybody and sharing the opportunities.
Dr Jen Barna (38:19):
Yes, thank you so much for that.
And thank you for listening to Doc working the
whole physician podcast.
Thank you from the bottom of my heart for joining us today.
Your support means the world to us.
And please don't forget to explore our virtual
home@docworking.com where you'll findresources carefully curated to propel you
(38:43):
toward the destination you've always aspiredto reach, both in your personal journey and in
your meaningful career.
It's time to take the leap and gain the tools
and support to fully access the power of you.
Thanks again and we'll see you next time on
Doc working the whole physician podcast.
Start asking yourself where you want to go and make sure that you ask yourself
why.
Why you want to go there.
I don't want to just buy a house on sometropical island because I want to visit there.
And it sounds like a cool idea.
I could rent it out.
No. What's your why?
Dr Jen Barna (00:22):
Welcome to Doc working the whole physician pod cast.
I'm your host, Dr. Jen Barna, and I'm soexcited to bring to you today our guest, Brett
Riggins, who's going to talk with us about hisreal estate journey and how he's helping
physicians on their journey to building a sidehustle that can help them to build strength
(00:46):
and security in addition to their medicalpractice.
Bret Riggins is a 20 year veteran of the realestate business whose passion is helping
people connect with the life they want.
And I know that we're especially interested in
that here at doc working.
And, Bret, I'm hoping that you can tell me
(01:08):
about your history, how you've ended up inreal estate, and tell me a little bit more
about how you came to be helping so manyphysicians.
Brett Riggins (01:17):
Hey, great question.
First of all, thank you for having me here,
Jen.
I really appreciate it.
And thank you for everybody that's taken thetime to listen to the show today.
And I know that's the first step, is justbeing curious first, and then we're going to
talk about taking action.
In talking about taking action, how did I
start real estate, and how did I start thispath working with physicians?
(01:40):
Because I'm not a physician.
It's a great question.
I think I started way back when my parentsstarted building a house.
I was seven years old when my parents startedbuilding a house.
And that journey inflicted many pains and manytraumas in my life.
But ultimately, it started the path ofconstruction for me and design, and that's
(02:04):
really where my world took off.
I was focused in architectural, engineering
and construction management, coming wellthrough high school and into college.
I played music for a little while, which kindof turned my college education into the
education career, maybe just a little bitdifferent than the path of medicine there, but
(02:26):
lengthwise, it was the same.
Ultimately, it came around, came about.
I ended up with basically a relationship witha small design build firm, a closely held
family firm.
And just what a blessing that was to get into
the administrative side, learning the businesspieces.
And I was introduced to a book called Tractionat that point and went from production quickly
(02:52):
into a profit partner in the first three yearswith that business.
And like I say, it was a wonderful journey.
From there, I grew and I started my own design
build firm quickly found my path into realestate at that time, and this is just a
whirlwind of time and stuff happening, andultimately investing in myself at that point,
(03:16):
Jen, and surrounding myself with the rightpeople and created these scenarios that
allowed us to scale, my wife and myself toscale from flipping houses to flipping to hold
and what I call flipping paper.
We stopped flipping two x fours and started
flipping paper.
And now we're focused solely on integrating
(03:37):
automating efficiencies and being able toshare that knowledge and experience with
physicians.
Dr Jen Barna (03:45):
Brad, I love talking with you because you have the expertise in this area.
And I think for us as physicians, we haveexpertise in different areas, and.
Brett Riggins (03:59):
I'm thankful for that.
Dr Jen Barna (04:01):
It's really helpful when we can partner with someone who has expertise in a
different area and can help us to efficientlytake on a side project or a side job that we
don't have to really necessarily build anentire career around.
(04:23):
But I do wonder, what do you recommend for aphysician who might be interested in investing
in real estate?What do you recommend that they do to educate
themselves to get a sufficient education thatthey can make educated decisions about what is
a safe investment, how to move forward.
(04:43):
And of course, I think understanding what
those steps are can help us to get past theanalysis paralysis that so many of us face
when it comes to investing in real estate.
Brett Riggins (04:58):
Hey, great question.
First of all, I've always, always, and not
only did I say this, but I hear it echoed alot as well, too.
And nothing that I'm going to say today, Jen,did I create or come up with by myself?
These are things that I've just learned fromother people through empirical evidence,
(05:19):
through experience and years and years, andpick them up, and now I get to repeat them.
So the first thing looking at is mindset.
So before we even talk about real estate, talk
about investments, what kind, how much time doI have?
All that stuff.
We have to first focus on mindset and
understanding.
Hey, what does it look like?
(05:39):
Or who do I need to become to be a real estateinvestor?
And then once I start, that's the first thingI want everybody to focus on.
I know a lot of us may have that capacity,ability and experience already, or think we
do.
We can take that then and start taking action
and say, okay, how now do I start learningreal estate?
(06:01):
Well, what is it?First, we'll talk about what kind of real
estate are you interested in?And this is going to come down to aligning
your values and the time that you have now,the time that you have next year and the year
after and five years down the road, ten yearsdown the road, thinking of these extra
strategies that align with these two things.
So when I say values, I'm thinking some people
(06:23):
are okay with a certain class property, acertain class neighborhood.
And when I say class, I'm talking aboutcondition, age, the demographics of the
tenants, those kinds of things, and makingsure that that aligns with the product that
you want to push out.
Remember, this is not somewhere where you're
(06:44):
going to live.
I hear a lot of physicians talking about
Airbnbs, and my wife and I do the same thing.
We have several Airbnbs as well, and we stay
in them.
So it's a little bit different.
If I'm going to stay in there, it's a littledifferent.
Ultimately, finding this path that aligns,Jen, with the angle that you want to go, the
way that you want to exit, and making surethat that's relative to the time that you have
(07:11):
to put into this.
So when you have a path decided whether it is
Airbnb, what we call short term rentals, orit's long term single family rentals, or it's
multifamily, where we're talking aboutsyndications, limited partnerships, general
partnerships, sponsorship, those kinds ofthings.
Once you have that direction, now, how do wetake action?
(07:32):
First, you just start talking about it.
Let's start talking about it, because we all
have colleagues, what they call it, the watercooler talk, and I'm sure we all have heard
that.
I would like to get into real estate, or my
buddy's doing this, or I'm doing this, startengaging those conversations, and then the
first step is then expanding yourassociations.
Once you're talking about it, they'll startsurrounding yourself with other people.
(07:55):
And I encourage everybody to get outside theirsphere of influence.
A lot of physicians will associate withphysicians.
Well, I'm sure you're probably aware thatmaybe physicians aren't the best real estate
investors to learn from in that perspective.
So expanding your associations.
(08:16):
Now, I get me wrong, there's a lot ofphysicians that are just totally crushing it
in real estate.
But what I say is, don't limit yourself to
only physicians.
When you are expanding your know, start
talking about it.
Start going to Reis meetups, looking at
Facebook groups, listening to podcasts likedoc working.
(08:37):
I mean, this is where you're going to getthese great opportunities to hear people who
are not just talking about this stuff, but areactually doing it.
That's a big thing.
Those are the first steps you find.
Figure out where you're at.
Then start asking yourself where you want to
go and make sure that you ask yourself why.
Why you want to go there.
(08:58):
I don't want to just buy a house on sometropical island because I want to visit there.
And it sounds like a cool idea.
I could rent it out.
No. What's your why?You got to figure out your why through that,
too.
And now I'm going to start talking about it,
expand my associations, start learning aboutit, researching, and then we need to take
action.
We need to start actually implementing these
things to change this knowledge into wisdom.
Dr Jen Barna (09:21):
Bret, just as an example, can you tell me about the conversation you have
with yourself and your wife?You said that you guys are doing this
together.
That is around your why.
What is your why?
Brett Riggins (09:36):
Great.
There's two different conversations there,
obviously, with myself and my wife.
My wife is absolutely amazing, so humble and
so perfect.
I'm so blessed to have her in my life.
It's simple.
She wants a happy, healthy family.
(09:56):
Even the home we live in can be simple,humble, as long as it's dependable.
And we are enjoying where we're at.
It's so simple.
So for her, that's an easy why for me.
I have this drive of this passion, this drive
to continuing to get better and better andbetter and more efficient in everything we do.
(10:17):
So there's something that drives me in my whythat's further.
Ultimately beyond that passion is back to thefamily and spending time with my family,
spending time with just freedom, the freedom,being able to travel.
And right now we're talking about it.
(10:40):
Everything starts with imagination and then it
comes fruition by talking about it.
But this is the path just I was talking about
with real estate.
We're talking about now our trip to meet our
team.
We've got some team members who are in the
Philippines, so we're actually figuring outthe path to get there.
But the cool part about this is it fulfills mywhy, because my family gets to go with me, and
(11:04):
it's shaped around freedom, too.
My children are employees of our investment
company, so everything is above the line.
We're paying ourselves above the line, meaning
that the flights, the food, because it's realestate related.
It's a business trip.
Now, I'm not a CBA, so don't take me on that
stuff.
This works for us, though.
(11:24):
So it's filling my why of spending time withmy family in that freedom of life.
Dr Jen Barna (11:31):
Well, I think it's a terrific education for your kids as well.
And I don't want to get too far down thispath, because it's not where we're wanting to
head with the whole conversation.
But I am curious, since you mentioned it, for
someone who's interested and listening, whatare your kids able to do as part of the
business?What kind of things do you have them doing to
(11:56):
be important?
Brett Riggins (11:57):
It's such a fun conversation because some people, I've had heated
conversations over this, and it's kind oflike, we got to step back and take it easy.
Everything's going to be okay.
It's not a sweatshop.
Everything is fine.
These guys will love it.
So we live, breathe, eat, sleep, real estate,our life.
I mean, these kids have grown up onrenovation, on job sites, flipping, picking
(12:21):
out, staging.
They've done so much.
The things that stand out to me, that bringjoy to our life.
When we were doing direct mail, anytime that apiece of.
Look at here.
I've got two right here.
So recently, my daughter and I flew to Memphisis one of our markets that we're in to meet
(12:44):
our team in Memphis.
And I had thank you notes, and you can see
them hold them up to the camera.
This is my daughter drawing on the envelopes
and just those cute little things to beinvolved on that.
Prior to that, when we're doing directmailing, we would have the kids drawing
pictures.
And at one point, I actually had them draw the
(13:05):
pictures of we buy houses, any condition, thatkind of stuff.
And I created templates.
I scanned those, put them into our direct
mailing fulfillment system, and we were directmailing the kids hand drawn letters for the.
We buy houses, everything.
(13:25):
Social media is a blast.
People just love them.
In our social media posts, we're posting
progress pictures of renovations.
There's just so much that because it is our
life, they're 100% included in it and help usgrow the business.
Dr Jen Barna (13:44):
Well, I do think that there's a huge opportunity to integrate your family life
with your work life, especially when it's thistype of work.
And I do think, having grown up in helping mymom and her business, I loved it as a kid,
getting to even do things like make boxes,like fold the boxes.
(14:05):
I just thought it was the greatest thing, allthe different ways that I could be involved.
And so for her little shop.
So I can imagine that your kids would really
gain a lot.
And while they're drawing pictures and doing
these things to help you out, they're watchingand learning and understanding what it is to
(14:27):
own a business, how much work is involved inthat, and they're watching you make those
decisions.
I think it's expanding their horizons.
Brett Riggins (14:39):
What kid wouldn't want to go to a renovation project and be the first one to
put a hammer through a wall?It's just the joy and the excitement that my
son in particular gets from doing any kind ofdemo.
Like when we can kick stuff down, knock itover.
Now, the real challenge as a parent then comeswhen it's okay, we made this mess, now we got
(15:01):
to clean it up.
You don't just get to be the social media guy
making pictures and then not be responsibleand pick up the mess that you make when you
demo.
Dr Jen Barna (15:10):
Absolutely.
Well, so now listening to you talk about where
you are now, can you tell us about yourinvestment trajectory, like where you started
and how you moved into these different typesof investments and what your decision making
(15:31):
was along the way?
Brett Riggins (15:33):
Yeah, where I started is easy.
I started with nothing.
That house that my parents built, actually,they lost it.
It was never actually completed.
It was so many years that they worked on this
house.
It was adjustable rate mortgage and ended up
basically having to sell it at a short sale,pretty much foreclosure.
(15:57):
And then from there, moving forward, werented.
We were at a place for one year, and then wemoved and moved.
So that's my starting place, and I wasactually just starting.
I had a conversation with physician the otherday, a physician investor, and we talked about
these things that we don't talk about.
It's just like that.
That's my starting point and how we progressedinto where we're at now.
(16:24):
As a contractor myself, this was my full timejob.
So I call them capital bubbles, which forphysicians, you have high potential earners.
You're high earners, so you have those capitalbubbles created through your job, whether it's
w two or your own business.
Well, mine was flipping houses, so we would
(16:46):
flip a house in profit, 1020, 30, $50,000.
I would just keep rolling that back into the
business, buying houses.
But I got to a point where I was what I called
flipping paper, where we were doingassignments.
And that to me was like, wow, I want to dothis because I don't even have to take on the
risk of opening up walls.
(17:08):
I don't have to talk to all these contractors.
So these wholesales or these assignmentsbecame a way of creating these capital bubbles
that allowed me now to either invest in thebusiness again, or I want to convert those
capital bubbles into cash flowing assets thatlong term passive, if there's no such thing as
(17:29):
passive income, but passive income, as we callit, in long term rentals.
And we have short term rentals too.
Dr Jen Barna (17:36):
Okay. And before we go any further, can you explain to us what you mean
by cold sale for someone who's listening, whomight not have heard that term, what do you
mean by that?
Brett Riggins (17:47):
What's fascinating, I'm licensed agent now in a couple of states.
My wife is licensed in a state as well, too.
And there's so many real estate professionals,
so many real estate agents don't even knowwhat that is.
It's surprising.
So if you think about it, Jen's gonna, you're
gonna sell me your house for $100,000.
(18:08):
I say, okay, Jen, I want to make this as easy
as possible.
Here's my purchase and sale agreement.
You would like $100,000 for this property?Okay.
We both sign this agreement, the purchase saleagreement.
In my agreement, my agreement is actuallywhere my name is written.
It's assignees or heirs, I believe is theactual language, but allows me to assign my
(18:29):
rights to another buyer.
So what's unique about, and it's, most
contracts are this way unless it specificallystates this is not assignable.
What happens now is I've got a buyer in mynetwork of investors that says, I like Jen's
property, and I would actually give you$120,000 for Jen's property.
(18:50):
So now I can execute another agreement.
That's called the assignment of contract
agreement.
And that agreement is where the fee comes in.
So investor says, okay, I want to buy this for$120,000.
Now I've gained $20,000 assignment fee toassign that original purchase and sale
agreement to now the end buyer.
(19:12):
Now I'm out, and I've connected the two dots
together.
I've collected a fee and not a commission.
And that's a whole nother conversation withthe way that laws and regulations have changed
in the last five years regarding that.
Dr Jen Barna (19:26):
Okay, thank you.
And if anyone is interested in learning more
about that, we'll give you some informationabout how to contact Bret at the end of the
call.
And there are a lot of resources online as
well, where you can read about wholesaling asan option.
It sounds like you've really been through,you've been through flipping, you've done
wholesaling, you've done single family, you'vedone multifamily and syndication as well.
Brett Riggins (19:54):
I've not done syndication yet.
I am excited because I also have a podcast.
You were a wonderful guest on the podcast,real estate mogul MD. And I get to speak with
so many fundraisers, so many syndicationcompanies, and I've learned so much in the
last six months.
I'm excited to make that my next journey.
(20:16):
The multifamily commercial buildings that wehave currently are mixed use commercial.
They are smaller than the full multi.
In my mind, it only takes five units to be a
multifamily per se in the commercialperspective in most places, I believe, if not
at all.
But for me, I'm thinking like, ten to 70 is
(20:40):
kind of like that.
Be that first jump for us.
And I'm excited to make that jump into themultifamily.
The one thing before we leave wholesaling isI've spoken with quite a few people,
physicians particularly, who have not had agood experience with wholesaling.
So I just wanted to put that on the table.
(21:02):
It is labor intensive, it is capital
intensive.
I mean, we have a nationwide real estate
acquisition company.
We were spending six figures a month in
marketing doing what we were doing.
So wholesaling is not something that you can
just pay a guru $5,000 or ten or 15 or 20 orwhatever, and then all of a sudden you're
going to start turning these papers into 2030,$50,000.
(21:24):
So just beware on that.
It's possible.
Not likely.
Dr Jen Barna (21:29):
Very good tip there.
So if I'm a physician listening, and I'm
interested in working with you, how do youhelp physicians specifically?
Brett Riggins (21:39):
Yeah. And it's going to come down to that first thing where we started
about what it is that you're looking for.
Physician wealth systems.
We have basically a product where we create aturnkey real estate investment company.
And this is not just a turnkey real estateinvestment property.
(22:00):
This is a company.
So we're building the company for you and it's
twelve properties in twelve months.
And this is, we get after it.
Right.
And we've created these systems to make it as
passive as possible.
Obviously, this is still going to require the
physician's time.
The physician maintains 100% of the equity and
is building their real estate investmentcompany.
Typically it's companies because of the LLCbreakouts that our clients use.
(22:26):
But in that.
Dr Jen Barna (22:27):
Wait a second.
Okay, I just want to be sure I understand
this.
So as a physician comes to you and you're
going to help them build their own company toacquire twelve properties within twelve
months?
Brett Riggins (22:42):
Yes.
Dr Jen Barna (22:43):
And you have systems in place that are automated that you've developed over
time that help them to be able to successfullydo this in a small, relatively saving time.
I have not experienced this, so I'm justasking, I'm just trying to understand what you
do, but it sounds very interesting.
(23:06):
Okay.
If a physician is interested in doing that.
What would be the time commitment from the
start?What would they need to be setting aside in
their schedule on a weekly basis?On a monthly basis, yes.
The first start it and to continue it.
Brett Riggins (23:25):
Yes. Again, there's nothing that's passive.
And I'm creating this for the physician to bea business owner.
And if you've read the book cash flow Quadrantby Robert Kiyosaki, understanding the business
owner, we're not buying ourselves another job.
We're not self employed.
Now, obviously there are things that stillrequire time.
(23:46):
So we're looking at in the first month, we'relooking at 8 hours approximately.
And a lot of that's going to be theapplications because we implement the Burr
strategy, Jen, which is buy, renovate, rentand refinance.
And then we're going to repeat that.
So in that first month, it's the most labor
intensive.
We're projecting between 8 hours, 10 hours
(24:07):
somewhere in there.
And that's working with one time a week.
We're on a Zoom meeting, at least an hourgetting through and we're taking action every
time that we're meeting.
And then the second month it cuts the time
about in half and we'd look at about 4 hoursin that second month.
Third month backing down, getting closer tothat 2 hours.
Ultimately we're ending up at about 1 hour amonth getting this stuff done.
(24:32):
And what I say from the get go is that I hopethat we continue to build our relationship,
but if you leave me, you will never need me.
I want to make sure that I'm setting these
systems and processes and procedures up forthe physicians to create this business and not
just a single property investment.
Dr Jen Barna (24:56):
And are these single family or multifamily?
What kind of properties are you helpingphysicians find and how do you go about doing
that?
Brett Riggins (25:06):
Great question.
Single family residential is, I feel one of
the best entry points.
And this is something where to scale it is
very difficult.
And I'm sure that if the listeners haven't
heard of hedge funds, we work with differenthedge funds, but to scale it's a whole
(25:27):
different machine.
So I feel that an entry point is awesome in
the single family respect because then if youwanted to depreciate exchange, depreciate
exchange, the 1031 exchange process, it'seasier to offload these things because there's
more buyers.
I mean, we're talking about an asset that
(25:47):
anybody can buy, whether it's the old chuck inthe truck to do a flip, whether it's a
landlord to do a long term hold or the firsttime homeowner or a family looking for a nice,
neat, clean, mechanically sound home.
That's what we're doing with these properties.
So a single family and we practice economy byscale, meaning that we are locked into a
(26:08):
specific market where the numbers make sense.
I can go into so much on the outside in
approach on why this market, why thisproperty, why this area.
But we implement our power team in thatregard, and that's another way of how we're
going to find these in the past.
I've been working on a project for about a
year now and I'm so excited or so close.
(26:31):
We're plugged into the MLS and we're
integrating, or, I'm sorry, we're aggregatingdata from the MLS and we're pulling it into
our system.
In our system we have a specific buy window
and a specific investment objective and we cantie those two things together and plug in
basically which properties we want to look atfor today.
(26:54):
And I always say I want to put in five offerstoday.
So my acquisition team, that's exactly whatwe're doing.
And these offers align with the products thatwe're supplying for physician well systems.
Dr Jen Barna (27:07):
For someone who is interested in getting started investing, do you recommend,
first of all, knowing what the volume thatyou're aiming for is from the beginning?
So, for example, you're saying that you helpsomeone to invest in twelve properties in
twelve months.
(27:28):
And you mentioned the Burr strategy as well,
which for someone who might not have heardabout that, the buy, renovate, let's see.
Buy, renovate, rent, refinance, repeat.
Right?
Brett Riggins (27:44):
Yeah. Nice job.
Dr Jen Barna (27:45):
You're going to take your initial investment money, you're going to buy
a property.
And then once you buy that property, part of
your investment money is going to be torenovate that property to get it to a point
that it can rent.
When you renovate it, you're going to improve
the value of it.
So then you're going to have it rented out so
it's producing income and then you go to abank and refinance it.
(28:09):
When you refinance it, you take your moneyback out essentially, right?
Brett Riggins (28:13):
Yes.
Dr Jen Barna (28:15):
And then you can use that money to buy another property.
Brett Riggins (28:17):
Yeah. So asking me, where should somebody start?
Well, it's going to come down to capital, timeand team.
We're able to build this twelve propertyportfolio in twelve months because we have the
capital, the time and the team to do it.
So if somebody's out there just getting
(28:38):
started and wants to pop their first property,it's going to be a little bit different for
that person.
I'm going to say start in your neighborhood
that you are familiar with.
And we're not talking about a scalable
solution off the front.
So I'm not as much concerned about economics.
I'm not as much concerned about job creation,rent increase, all of these things that we
(28:59):
look for on a scalable solution.
But you're going to know this property, you're
going to know this neighborhood, you're goingto know the street.
Neighborhoods vary by block, and you're goingto have probably an easier time building your
team from that point, too.
So we talk a lot about that team that you need
to build and that process, but that's kind ofa great starting point for someone who's just
(29:21):
getting started.
And single family residential is the great
way.
But remember, when you approach this, Jen, you
are not buying yourself another job.
You have to look at it that way.
You have to understand the math so that youcan include property management costs, vacancy
maintenance, taxes, insurance, all of thisstuff, because this needs to be as passive as
(29:42):
possible.
For me, when I first started, I didn't have
capital, but I had time and I had the team.
So I was sweat equity learning this stuff.
I was fixing the properties up myself.
I was managing the properties myself.
And I love that path for me because I have thetime.
The same path that I took througharchitectural engineering, construction
(30:03):
management is I didn't want to just drawpictures.
I wanted to know what I was doing and I hadthe time to do that.
So the physicians out there do not have thetime per se to do something like this.
So making sure that we're including all ofthese things in our equations.
Dr Jen Barna (30:21):
And to your point there, if I understand correctly, you make your money on
the front end.
So you have to get a good enough deal when
you're purchasing to know that you can factorall of this in and you're not factoring it in
based on appreciation in the future, becausewho knows?
Brett Riggins (30:41):
Appreciation, what I've heard, it's called icing on the cake for us.
It's something we set aside.
Rent increase.
We know in the next 15 years, the next 20years, that typically in our markets, our
properties are going to increase by about sixfigures and our rents are going to almost
double in the next 1520 years.
(31:03):
But we don't take any of that into account.
You have to know the other pieces.
Yes, the profit is made on the acquisition,
but it's not realized until the exit.
Right.
And if you don't know what your property isgoing to make when you sign the deal, then
it's a bad deal.
Dr Jen Barna (31:22):
And speaking of the exit, you mentioned the 1031 exchange.
Can you explain a little bit, just a veryquick definition of that?
Brett Riggins (31:30):
Yes. Another reason why I love real estate as an asset class is the
generational wealth potential, generationalwealth building potential.
And let's just take a single family home foran example.
I love single families.
I love real estate because we get to force
equity into places.
(31:50):
And what I call air equity, this idea that
we're creating this value out of the air, I'mgoing to buy, say I bought your property for
$100,000.
I put $20,000 of renovation into that.
I get it appraised for $150,000.
So here's that air equity.
I've forced $30,000 worth of equity into thisproperty.
(32:11):
That's on paper, obviously.
If I was to liquidate, I've got to take some
expenses out.
But $30,000 of air equity, that's great.
So I can hold on to this thing, I can rent itout, and maybe the next five years, ten years,
maybe this appreciation thing that's happeninghas happened, right?
Maybe 2%, 3% a year.
So I've actually gained a little more of that
air equity or that forced equity right on topof the forced equity.
(32:35):
So I want to cash this out.
So instead of paying capital gains, what I can
do is maybe I sold this thing for 160, and nowI've been depreciating it as well, straight
line depreciation for the six years that I'veowned it.
So I would have to pay capital gains andrecapture that depreciation if I were to sell
(32:57):
it and not do anything with it.
The 1031 exchange allows me to then roll that
into the next property like investment,meaning that it's a rental property, right.
I can roll that into the next property and nothave to pay capital gains and not have to
recapture that depreciation.
So that's the depreciate exchange.
(33:20):
And then we just keep doing this because I cankeep kicking the can down the road.
And for the listeners, I love doing my airquotes.
When I'm doing podcasts, I'm doing the airquote.
I keep kicking the can down the road, and Idon't have to recapture the depreciation, I
don't have to pay capital gains.
So now we've taken this, I've got 120 into
(33:40):
this property.
I've sold it for 160.
So now I just keep stepping up, really, intothis depreciate exchange, depreciate exchange.
And then this very unique thing happens.
And when I talk about generational wealth,
when we have these properties, then that weallow our children to inherit or somebody to
(34:05):
inherit, the cost basis of these propertiesthen steps up at that point on that transfer
and the taxes are never recaptured, right.
You pay the capital gains.
So this is the depreciate exchange.
Depreciate exchange, depreciate exchange, die.
So that's where there's the no recapture ofthis too.
(34:27):
And the 1031.
There are stipulations on time and what kind
of property, and you have to have a custodian,typically an attorney, who handles this
paperwork.
You can do it before you buy a new property.
You can do it after you buy a new property.
You just want to work with the right tax
attorney to get that done.
And I am not a tax attorney and I'm not a CPA,
(34:47):
so don't take my advice.
You take this as a little seed, plant it in
your soil of your mind and plant that baby anduse it.
Dr Jen Barna (34:56):
And I am not a professional real estate investor, but I do enjoy learning about
this.
And I think from everything I've been told, my
dock working community really enjoys it aswell.
So Bret Riggins, thank you so much for comingand talking with me today.
I love catching up with you.
I love hearing about your experiences and I
(35:18):
appreciate you sharing your expertise.
How can people reach out to you if they want
to learn more and maybe take advantage of someresources that you have available?
Brett Riggins (35:29):
Yeah. Hey, great question.
Physicianwealthsystems.com is the home base.
I love being able to, I guess, being welcomedinto the physician world through the podcast
real estate mogul Md.
I get the opportunity to speak with
syndicators, with physicians who've createdtheir own businesses, physicians who now focus
(35:50):
on coaching.
So all of those resources are also compiled on
physicianwealthsystems.com website.
Also on there you'll see access to the book.
I love this book.
We're actually going to revise this how to get
rich as a doctor.
That resource is on there too.
And why we all start with mindset in thesediscussions is exactly why the beginning of
(36:14):
that book talks about mindset.
And then we roll into real estate as well too.
And on top of that,physicianwealthsystems.com, you can also find
this wonderful resource called real estateresidency.
And for all my physicians out there, listeningto this residency is something that we all
know, right, that it was a process in ourlife.
(36:37):
The same way with real estate.
We should take this one degree pivot in your
learning career and not stop learning.
When you're done with school, take this small
pivot and start learning about something elsethat you're interested in.
Whether it's short term, long term,multifamily, whatever it may be, real estate
residency is an absolute free resource tostart learning.
(36:59):
If it is single family residential, this isthe what, where, why and how all combined and
compressed, condensed in the same way that Ipresent it to my clients at physician well
systems.
Because in order for us to get twelve
properties in twelve months, we got to be onthe same page, we got to have clear
expectations and we got to know what we'redoing.
Dr Jen Barna (37:21):
Thank you so much, Bret, for providing these tremendous resources for us.
I will share the links in the show notes, soif you're listening, please check out the show
notes and you can click and learn more aboutBrett Riggins and what he's doing.
And also, the real estate mogul MD podcast isanother one that you may really and I'm so, so
(37:45):
pleased to have this conversation.
Look forward to more conversations with you in
the future.
Bret, thanks again for coming on the podcast.
Brett Riggins (37:52):
Awesome.
Thank you so much Jim, for your time and for
all the listeners out there.
If you don't or haven't got the chance, please
stop by the podcast whether you're listeningon Apple or Spotify, and make sure you leave a
review, a five star review, because that'swhat helps Jen, Doc working and all of us
share the great news, share the greatexperience, and just keep building community
(38:16):
with everybody and sharing the opportunities.
Dr Jen Barna (38:19):
Yes, thank you so much for that.
And thank you for listening to Doc working the
whole physician podcast.
Thank you from the bottom of my heart for joining us today.
Your support means the world to us.
And please don't forget to explore our virtual
home@docworking.com where you'll findresources carefully curated to propel you
(38:43):
toward the destination you've always aspiredto reach, both in your personal journey and in
your meaningful career.
It's time to take the leap and gain the tools
and support to fully access the power of you.
Thanks again and we'll see you next time on
Doc working the whole physician podcast.
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