May 15, 2025 • 60 mins
Summary
In this conversation, Kevin Lee and Ian Dietler discuss their experiences in the real estate market, particularly focusing on overcoming limiting beliefs about investing in California. They share insights on how they proved the effectiveness of their investment model and the realization that there are always buyers in the market, regardless of initial perceptions about property prices.
Takeaways
You have to prove to yourself that the model works.
Limiting beliefs can hinder investment opportunities.
California's housing market is perceived as expensive.
Investing out of state can seem more appealing.
There are always buyers in the real estate market.
Understanding local market dynamics is crucial.
Cash flow properties can be found in various locations.
Real estate investment requires a mindset shift.
Belief in the model is essential for success.
Investing in your local market can yield unexpected results.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction to Real Prop Pro Podcast
01:18 Kevin Lee's Background and Early Life
04:04 Education and Parental Influence
06:58 Transitioning from Stability to Entrepreneurship
10:05 First Steps in Real Estate: Virtual Wholesaling
12:07 The Decision to Quit the Day Job
15:17 First Deal in Wholesaling
18:15 Finding Buyers and Building Partnerships
21:13 Expanding Strategies in Real Estate Investing
21:44 Understanding Buyer Preferences in Real Estate
24:12 Monetizing Every Deal: Creative Financing Strategies
27:05 Creating Passive Income Through Real Estate
30:55 Transitioning from Wholesaling to Fix and Flipping
32:46 Risks and Rewards of Fix and Flipping
39:38 Expanding into Senior Care Facilities and Short-Term Rentals
44:33 Understanding the BRRRR Strategy
45:18 The Evolution of Short-Term Rentals
47:31 Navigating Market Changes and Competition
48:49 Mindset for Real Estate Success
49:11 Essential Reads for Real Estate Investors
53:45 Networking and Learning Opportunities
59:06 Building a Sustainable Real Estate Business
59:46 New Chapter
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
And that's another thing that I prove right.
It's, it's almost, I just, you're proving yourself to make
yourself a believer in this business.
I proved that, hey, this model actually works here.
And the reason that I started virtual wholesaling was I never
believed that hey, I can buy anything here in California.
(00:23):
I have this like limiting beliefthat, hey, number one, houses
here are very expensive and investors are never going to buy
houses here as I always investedlike out of state, like that's
where the cash flow is. However, you know, you know,
like houses, they are like dirt cheap still to this day, like
(00:43):
very dirt cheap. I used to buy houses for like a
couple $1000, right? And here The thing is, like once
you started doing it here, you realize that there's always
buyers out there. Welcome to the Real Prop Pro
podcast, where strategy, innovation and wealth converge
to redefine real estate investing.
(01:12):
Hello and welcome to the Real Prop Pro podcast.
I'm your host Ian Dealer Fix andFlip investor based out of
Sacramento, CA. This show brings you real local
investors with real stories and strategies that you can use.
Realprop Pro is where new investors go to learn more about
(01:33):
fix and flips, taxing, tax laying, investing, creative
financing, and so much more. If you're ready to take action,
grab them free resources at realproppro.com.
Today's guest is Kevin Lee, founder of Insightful REI.
Kevin is a Sacramento based investor turned short term
(01:55):
rental operator who's built his business around creative
solutions and long term vision. We're going to get into his
background, talk about real estate investor mindset and how
he got started in real estate investing.
He also works on short term rentals in Las Vegas, NV.
(02:15):
I move that has really changed his outlook on real estate
investing and really changed theway he does business.
Kevin, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me here,
yen. It's a pleasure and I'll like to
be here. Great.
Thank you so much for taking thetime to come out here.
Check us out, share some wisdom to our listeners.
(02:37):
So important that we have, you know, experts such as yourself,
people with a lot of experience in the industry to just explain,
you know, how you got started and stuff like that.
So to get started, where were you born and raised?
Yeah. So I was born and raised in
Taipei, Taiwan. I spent 14 years, 1st 14 years
(03:01):
of my life over there, and an opportunity arose for me to come
to the States. So I moved to this country just
just before I started high school.
It was a very, very big challenge for me because at that
time I spoke very little English.
(03:22):
So I had to learn English ratherquickly and I did not want to be
in ESL class with other people. I just want to be in a regular
class getting the, the real likeEnglish lessons from like, like
(03:43):
the rest of the people, the 9th graders.
So I quickly got out of it. It took maybe half a year to
really just petition to the teacher.
And the teacher told me, hey, you're not going to survive.
You can't swing with the sharks.You're going to get killed.
I proved him wrong. I proved a lot of people wrong
(04:06):
time after time. That was like the first time
where I had it taste of just proving people wrong, not
necessarily in a prideful way per SE, but it's more like, hey,
I can do it and I believe in myself and I have to appreciate
my mom for believing in me as well.
(04:28):
And I think I think having that person, especially that female
like to support you is so important.
We can't talk more about that later, but you know, having that
support is is is truly beneficial.
And then so I'm kind of growing up a little bit, you know,
(04:49):
you're kind of adjusting to a whole new culture, a whole new
language. I can only imagine how difficult
that was. You eventually got into college
and started to do a lot of you went through a lot of college,
is that correct? Yeah, a lot of education.
I wasn't really doing it for myself per SE.
(05:10):
I was there to fulfill a dream of my dad's.
He was never able to finish higher education Graduate
School. He finished his PhD in economics
and he wanted, he still wanted to do a PhD.
So he basically just placed thatdream on me to fulfill it.
(05:32):
So I ended up getting a PhD in computer science just to fulfill
his desire so that I can actually spread out my wings and
fly out of the cage, if you willeven like getting AW two job
afterwards was really just like,hey, I just want you to have a
(05:53):
stable job, right? And then work the W2 for like
the next 3035 years and then youcan retire, have the family just
live a very normal typical life like that.
Yeah. Yeah.
I mean, I feel like a lot of parents kind of teach their kids
that to go to school, go to school, get a good job, retire
(06:15):
and, you know, play things safe.Yeah.
You've kind of kind of broken that wall, you know, how did
you, how did you get out of thatstate that safe and easy, you
know, working 9:00 to 5:00 mentality into more of an
(06:36):
entrepreneurial, more of a business owner, real estate
investor type of mindset. That's a very good question.
I feel that at the end of the day, you got to ask yourself
this question is what makes you happy and how long does it take
for you to be in a situation where you cannot find
(06:59):
fulfillment, you cannot find satisfaction?
And the question that I asked myself, right, And I know that
it's either Steve Jobs or Jeff Bezos.
I think it's Jeff Bezos. He said that would you be
regretful of what you have not accomplished before you pass?
(07:23):
Like, you know, at your death bed, bed.
And that really resonated with me.
Like when I heard it, I think itwas like one of a graduation
speech that, that he gave. So that, that really just like
shook me. And I, I don't ever want to
leave any regret in my life. Like before I die pass.
So I say, hey, I got to, I got to do something because I can't
(07:45):
either be very comfortable with where, where, where I am just
having that very stable job. And I was, I was so guilty there
too, because all, all I did was really just like 2 hours of my
day really. And then they pay me like
(08:06):
probably 16 hours a day worth ofsalary.
And so that's why I feel so guilty because I, I can't just
finish my work in two hours and I'm done for the day.
Yeah. So I, I thought I was overpaid
and I could stay there for as long as I I wanted.
I was very productive, a good selfie engineer.
(08:29):
So I was just coasting. I was coasting and but but I was
like, hey, I would just want money is not going to like
handcuff me if you're well, justgoing to buy me all the
benefits. I just have that bug, that urge
to just take that entrepreneurial journey.
And I started doing wholesaling,virtual wholesaling, just never
(08:53):
looked back. Yeah, actually as a matter of
fact, I started doing that whileI was have in my W2.
Yeah. And I have some success.
And that's that actually just gave me the the gumption to just
say, hey, sail Nara boss, this, this is a proof of concept
(09:13):
actually worked out really well.I'm OK to just like, check out,
you know, turn my pink slip and say goodbye.
What point in your life what is that like?
You'd finished college? It sounds like you were in a
software engineering W2 job. Where Where along that path did
you figure out that virtual wholesaler could work?
So it started off when wholesaling was Catching Fire,
(09:39):
wildfire, you know, across the the whole country.
Sean Terry, I'm sure that, you know, he I would say he's
probably one of the earlier founding fathers of this term
wholesaling or I flip to freedom.
So I devour his stuff. And there's also Joe, Joe
(10:01):
McCall, he does a virtual wholesaling too.
He's got system process, very system process oriented person.
So I would really just glue to his podcast and that's how I
started, you know, just distilling what he said and then
started creating my own process,the same process for my
wholesaling company, started hiring people like V As for your
(10:26):
assistance and started like prospecting, like call, calling,
sending out mails. And that's how we started
getting leads, right? And then you dispose those
leads, right? And then you have some money
assignment checks that come in. And that's how like I proved to
myself and that that this, this there's actually a business
(10:48):
there. Can you?
Take us back to the moment you said you told your boss, like,
I'm done here. You know, I'm really quick.
Can you take us back to that moment and kind of describe what
that limpet felt like and what you're feeling at that moment?
Yeah, sure. Going into it, I felt very
(11:09):
scared and it it's something that I've never, ever done
before and I have been programmed that this is my
security and this is a risky move to make.
There's a statistics, statisticsout there, right?
Like out of the 100% hundred startups, there's like only 5%
(11:35):
actually succeeded, correct? Or even less than that.
I mean, something like 10% will make it past the three years.
And then of that 10% only, yeah,another 10% will make it.
So yeah, just kind of depends ontime.
But yeah, you're right, the halfdollars are very much stacked
against you, Yes, or something. Yeah.
So, so essentially it's 1% out of the 99% that's going to make
(11:58):
it right. So, yeah, the statistics is
against me. However, this is a calculated
risk that I took and I felt it was pretty confident.
And it's it's interesting because I was such a good
performer in my company is that it's annoying.
(12:21):
Is that the my boss actually said this to me.
Kevin, if you ever change your mind, OK, the door is wide open
to you. You can't, you can't always come
back. That was quite surprising to me
because when I made the decisionto quit and start my own
(12:41):
business, you know how like people say, hey, if you're
serious about this, right, whatever that you do, you got to
burn your bridges so you don't look back.
There's no, there's no fall backor backup plan.
So I, I never thought that I would ever go back.
I would, I would try to make it work, right.
(13:03):
Even though it's going to be really tough.
I'll try whatever it takes just to make it work.
So it was surprising to me and that was kind of encouraging to
me too. But I didn't lean on that.
I just kept going. And, you know, it's to this day
I've been self-employed for likemany, many years.
Yeah. What?
(13:24):
What? This is what, 7?
No. Eight years.
Eight years strong, Yeah. Wow, that's amazing.
You've done a lot in that amountof time.
And yeah, we'll go into some of the stuff that I worked on in
the past, but that's really cool.
Can you talk about the first deal?
You said you'd got it wholesaling.
Can you talk about how that first deal and kind of how you
(13:44):
felt when that first deal went through?
Yeah, Yeah. So before you know how, like
when you start business, you gotto do everything you got to, you
got to grind, you got to hustle.The first deal I got was
actually coming from call calling.
I was doing let's call call, youknow how you can just get a list
from CoreLogic list source. And there's like gurus out there
(14:08):
that teach you how to pull a list, high equity list, absentee
list. And and then you just feed it to
a skip tracing software to get the numbers.
And then you start call calling these people and ask them if
they want to sell. Yeah.
So there's no hesitation there. It's just like a lot of work
(14:29):
Memphis, TN That's that's, that's the market that I chose
to do my business in there two hours ahead of us.
Like you know, I mean West Coasttime the two hours ahead.
So six 6:00 is, is the time thatI started call calling and
that's their 8:00 and I want to capture that time before they go
(14:51):
to work. So between A and A and 9 or
maybe 8 and 9/9 and 1/2 between 8:00 at night at 9:30.
That's that's why I call and I get a lot of people to pick up
because they're not at work yet.They're either on their way to
work or they're still at home before they're going to work.
(15:12):
I would call during my lunch break as well.
That's like almost like toward the end of flair day shift just
to get a hold of these owners aswell.
So that's how I got my first deal.
I had a boots on the ground and we share 5050, We share the
(15:34):
profit. Half, half.
Yeah. So she's the one who I would
just set her up to lock up the contract, set up for the
appointment, lock out the contract should just negotiate.
But the turns are already like predetermined over the phone by
me. I say, hey, this is how much I
can pay you, right? Obviously there's a lot that's
(15:55):
going behind it to come up with an offer, right?
Like, you know, after repair value, this is how much we can
sell it for. And you got to minus the repair
cost, right, And also minus yourassignment fee, how much you
want to make. And that's the offer that you
want to present to the seller and see if that sticks.
Otherwise, you know, you guys goback and forth to come up with
(16:18):
something that's agreeable to both parties.
Yeah. Yeah.
OK. So, so you get the property
under contract with the seller, the home of the owner of the
property, How you then have to find the buyer.
How did that? How did you find that?
I was really lucky. So my boots on the ground.
She is a wholesaler over there. However, her marketing is not is
(16:43):
not like cold calling like I do like my mind is more outbound
marketing whereas her is just inbound.
She just sent direct mails. So that was a very good
partnership, right? We just combine our expertise
and the fact that she is over there, it makes it makes makes
(17:03):
it a lot easier for me. So she is the one who lock up
and she's the one who find buyerfor me.
If I were to do this again, I would probably just go ahead and
find my own cash buyers. That way, you know, you can
actually pull a list from this source, right, to figure out who
their cash buyers are and then blast it out to these buyers.
(17:26):
There's a lot of software out there that allow you to do that,
like prop string, right? There's a specific list you can
pull. It's called cash buyers list,
right? You can get these cash buyers
that way. I'm sure you can do on list
source property radar and there's there's a lot like
investor left, right, There's investor base, you know, yeah,
(17:48):
there's tons of software out now.
I think that when I was doing it, you know, Ken, Ken, what's
his last name? He does the reverse wholesaling.
Ken Norton. No, it's not Ken Norton.
I forgot his name, but he came out with a with, with a, with a
Yeah, it's called reverse wholesaling.
(18:12):
Yeah. So what that means is you would
go ahead and ask your buyers, you know, what's your criteria,
what, what, what's the type of houses that you buy, what zip
codes, right? And what's your price range,
what's your budget and what's your exit strategy?
Like? Are you mainly A flipper or are
(18:34):
you a long term buy and hold investor?
And once you figure that out, you would just go and hunt for
those deals for these cash buyers because I'm ready to, to,
to, to pull the trigger. So you're, you're not really
just out there, you know, looking for any kind of deals
and then blast it out to your cash buyers.
(18:54):
You already have these criteria from your cash buyer, you know,
the set of cash buyers in each categories.
So once you found this property that matches with that criteria,
you can just call Hey, Ian, I got this deal.
Yeah. I think that, you know, it's
good for you because this this is all like match your criteria
buy box. Would you like to take a look at
(19:15):
it? So it makes it easier for a
wholesaler to dispose a deal faster?
Yeah, yeah. So kind of a long your journey,
your real estate investing journey kind of get started off
by doing some wholesaling stuff like out of state what it was
(19:38):
kind of the next strategy because I know that you've tried
a lot of different things. So what was the next real estate
investment strategy that you went to after this virtual?
I say to myself, hey, if you could do this virtually in a
different in a market, why not just do it in your backyard?
So I was in, I was in Sacramento, I'm in Sacramento.
(20:00):
I'm like, so why can't you just replicate that here?
And there's various reasons #1 is that number 2 is the
assignment fee here is bigger. I didn't have to like split 5050
with my boots on the ground hereI'm I'm I'm the boots on the
(20:21):
ground in my backyard. So I can go.
I can, you know, talk to whoeverright and then go on
appointment, lock up the contract and dispose, dispose,
dispose it myself. So I do the whole like, you
know, a through Z transaction, you know, take it to the finish
line myself. I did that.
(20:42):
And again, that's another thing that I proved right.
It's, it's almost, I just, you're proving yourself to make
yourself a believer in this business.
I proved that, hey, this model actually works here.
And the reason that I started virtual wholesaling was I never
believed that, hey, I can buy anything here in California.
(21:07):
I have this like limiting beliefthat, hey, number one, houses
here are very expensive and people are never going to buy.
Investors are never going to buyhouses here as I always invested
like out of state, like that's where the cash flow is.
However, you know, you know, like houses, they are like dirt
cheap still to this day, like very dirt cheap.
(21:30):
I used to buy houses for like a couple $1000, right?
And here The thing is like, onceyou started doing it here, you
realize that there's always buyers out there and there's
always different types of buyersbuying different houses in
different markets. So you have like, Californians
that only buy out of state, but you also have Californians that
(21:52):
only fix and flip and buy in California because they know
that California has a appreciation that those Midwest
states do not have, right. So they'd rather buy here and
they write it, rather buy in their own backyard.
And they can go and see there's people that are like, just very
(22:16):
like macromanaging, you know, their properties, like assets,
which I get to, you know, you want to drive by and see your
houses every now and then. I get it.
So, yeah. So you can't really say, hey,
just because you like this or that doesn't mean that people
will like this or that. There's always different kinds
of people out there. So you kind of have to like feed
(22:37):
that crowd. This is kind of like reverse
wholesaling. You got to find your buyers
avatar, right, their buy box andthen feed them whatever that
they they they like. Yeah.
Sounds to me like you treat yourreal estate investing very
scientific. Like you're really systems
oriented. Like you said, you like to try
(22:59):
things out, create proof of concept, replicate and just keep
going. Yeah, I used to be very, very
systematic about the process. However, I think that like as
I'm doing this for a long time is that you can't really pigeon
(23:20):
hole yourself into just like 1/1strategy if you will like every
single deal, especially in this market very competitive market
is you want to try to figure outa way to monetize every deal
that comes across your desk, right.
(23:42):
I know a wholesaler here, right He he will wholesale deals via
creative financing terms. Yeah, so because he's able to
host out that property because if you, like, push the seller
(24:02):
down too much, you don't get a deal at all.
So why don't I, you know, speak to you about, hey, I'm just
going to take over some terms. Instead of having you come out
of pocket to pay for the difference, right, between the
loan amount and how much I can offer you.
It's like, you know, I can stillbuy it.
I can wholesale it to somebody who is doesn't have to get a
(24:25):
loan and just take over. You know, there's a set up of
the terms and then you pay the seller, right?
And then you still make a sale out of this, like you still make
a assignment fee out of this. So instead of deals that you
throw away to the trash can, youcan try to monetize you know as
much out of these deals as possible.
(24:47):
Yeah, I mean, you'd rub me to Investor Field live about a year
ago and at that event based Morgan was there.
So we got to seek him to be, which is really cool.
And he was kind of talking aboutthe same subject.
You know, like if you if you only have one tool about the low
cash offer, that's not going to work anymore.
No, like it is just being peopleup on prices and and trying to
(25:10):
take whatever equity they have left in that phone and not
offered any other solutions, just not going to you know
succeed. You're not going to row and
you're not going to be able to offer these people any different
options, right? So like you said, sometimes
people are not in the position to just accept the low cash
offer. Sometimes they have to, like you
(25:32):
said, maybe sell the house on terms more creatively, you know,
more of a, a sub two or you can lease, lease option type of sale
until they can, you know, eitherbuild up equity or get the house
fixed up and not just sell it. So I think it's really important
they brought up the fact that asas real estate investors, we
(25:54):
have to have more than one tool to have more than just that low,
low ball fashion. And, and, and the transaction is
not about just me as the buyer, right?
Like beating you down. It's about wing wing like both
parties, right? So if one doesn't want it, but
the other one wants it, that's not going to make it happen.
(26:17):
So how do we make it happen so that you're happy, right?
You're happy with the price, butI'm happy also because you know,
the, the I, I'm, I'm paying a little down, right?
If you, if you all you care about is the price and I care
about the terms, we can marry the two together and make it
work for both of us. Or if you just like, Hey, I'm
(26:38):
just going to give you a low ball offer, right?
You can only make one party happy, in this case, the buyer.
But the seller is like, why, Whyam I giving away so much equity
right to this guy? Like I don't, I'm not, I'm not a
lot of a lot of people that I talked to in the past is like,
I'm not giving my house away. And I have to preface the
conversation by saying, no, no, I'm not asking you to give your
(27:01):
house away, right? That's how you differentiate
yourself from the other house buyers out there.
So done some wholesaling. Now we're going to go back to
this journey because I really want to highlight all the
different kind of phases I kind of went through.
So done the the the wholesaling,done the wholesaling in here in
(27:24):
your local market. What was the next step on that
journey? I think that at the end of the
day is how do you actually create passive income for
yourself? And I think that's that's
extremely crucial. I think when you built a
business to a point is you can fire yourself out of the many
(27:48):
positions that you took out earlier on.
And you can start like putting people in these departments or
in these positions so that you can elevate yourself.
You can be out of all the seats in organization so that you can
focus your attention really juston growing the company versus
(28:10):
being in the business doing all sorts of monotonous things to
keep the business running and going.
Yeah. So I've always thought that,
hey, how do I create a business where it can be self-sufficient,
it can sustain yourself without me being there the whole time?
(28:32):
Because what's the difference between that and the W2 job?
You're not buying your freedom by quitting a job, one job and
then taking another job, right? Yeah.
The only difference is that you don't have a boss to answer to.
You're the own boss. But that, that creates a lot of
(28:52):
risk there as well. Because if you don't have
anybody that will tell you when things are going off track,
you're, I mean, yeah, you're, you're you're you're taking a
business. You took yourself down with your
business. Yeah.
So that's that's a very risky move.
So you you're always constantly on the watch, right, For
(29:13):
anything that can happen, especially for a startup.
It's like a baby, right, trying to survive in this like really
cruel world. So I would say that the journey
has always been or the division has always been, how do I create
a self-sustaining business, a business that can give me cash
(29:34):
flow at the end of the day? And that's why I, like a lot of
people, including myself, are soharping on this matter of like
passive income, passive income so much.
I'm sure that you do too. Like your dream is to have
multifamily. But what's behind that is, hey,
I just want to have passive income.
You can fix and flip a lot of homes and get that called the
(29:57):
crack cocaine, right, 60 thousand $80,000 profit, right
per flip or wholesale right, 3040 thousand or a host
assignment fee. But you should always consider,
you know, taking that part of that profit and then save it so
that you can buy, use that as a down payment for buying a cash
(30:20):
flowing property for you, right,because that eventually is your
your retirement. And that's the equivalent to, I
guess the stock options that youget from working for company,
right? You get stock options.
So when you retire, the stock hopefully will appreciate in
value, right? And now they'll pay for your
retirement. So just like that, you have
(30:40):
these houses, rental homes that can pay for your retirement.
So you don't have to be there anymore if the business ever
fails again. All right.
You have these cash flow that's coming in from your passive
income, your properties, rental properties.
So you're wholesaling, What was the next step?
Because you you done some fix and flipping.
I feel like when I met you, you were doing some fix and flips.
(31:03):
Was that the next progression after your wholesaling?
It's it's AI guess you can call a milestone or a goal post in my
journey. Maybe it's just I guess the next
level. Yeah, I know that as a whole
seller, right, you want to graduate to the next level,
(31:24):
which is become a fix and flipper.
So I thought to myself, hey, instead of like getting
assignment fee of ten, $15,000, right, If I were to flip this
home myself, right, I get more. There's a big spread and then
even after you take out the Commission holding costs rehab,
(31:48):
you know, there's still a a big chunk, you know, a pretty good
chunk that's left profit, right?Which is like way more than you
make as a wholesaler. You wouldn't be you.
It's not a reasonable way to charge that to a flipper because
somebody is going to scratch their head and say, hey, if
you're making as much as me, whyshould I buy this deal from you,
(32:12):
right? So at the end of the day is how
much value can you give to a flipper so that they, they
always come back to you and and buy it from you.
But if you just are too greedy, you can't, you can't dispose a
deal. You can't.
You can't flip a assignment contract.
Yeah, I feel like, you know, us fix the flippers, you know,
(32:36):
we're really strict about our numbers, right, Because we don't
want to buy a project that has the potential to not make that
much money or even potentially lose money because there's so
much risk involved in flipping, right?
The wholesaling, you're just kind of in and out on what you
know, little. I'm not going to say no risk,
but it has very little risk. Yeah.
(32:57):
Fixing flipping. You're actually taking down
these properties. You're holding them, there's
some risk of exposing maybe something that wasn't found out
before and you also have some market risk.
So can you talk about the different risks that fixer
flippers deal with that come across and, and, and how do you
(33:18):
manage those risks? Yeah.
So, so I'll talk about the risksand also talk about the
benefits, right, as a, as a contributor in the society is
that so the risk that's involvedis, Hey, you never know what is
(33:39):
behind that wall until you RIP out that wall and then you
realize that it's, it's so dry rotted, right?
You got to you got to replace all the wood, the post, the
framing, right? That's underneath the wall and a
wholesaler is going to sell yourproperty, right?
That's speed up and you know it's speed up, but you don't
(33:59):
know how beat up it is, right? You can't really diagnose the
condition of the engine right until you start like just
demoing it. And then you demo, you realize
that there's a hole right behindthe ceiling and the roof is shot
right. The, the, the roof is toward the
(34:20):
end of its its life. You got to replace the roof,
which you didn't budget before. Yeah.
Or the poor equipment fail or the central here in air is, is
is toward the end of the age. You can't, you can't, you can
you can repair it. You have to replace.
And we know how much those, those those cost us were a
(34:42):
couple $1000, how expensive theyare.
So there's a lot that go into it.
And you want to also make sure that your craftsmanship is the
quality is there so that when you put this property out on the
market, you get an offer right away.
(35:03):
So you want to maintain that level of quality and at the same
time somebody right, some buyer who is buying a flip and I would
do it, I would encourage everyone do it is to call it
home inspection, right? To make sure that all the things
in the house, if there's any problems you find out right away
(35:24):
and that flipper will have to address it before you close,
right. So that's kind of like my
standard to is home inspection, right.
And then this is like when I sell the house to A to a buyer
and buyer, you know, when I remodel it and then sell it is,
is hey, we want to address especially big ticket items for
(35:47):
the buyer. Yeah.
So that's that's not a negotiable.
So that's one risk, right. So you never know what is behind
that wall, the condition of the home, right?
You can, you can see with your own eyes one way.
But when you open that wall, it's, it's, it's, it's a
completely different matter. And you're, you're probably a
$5000 over budget. You can be over budget rather
(36:10):
quickly. And then there's also things
risks that's outside of your control.
Like, hey, right now we're in the South market.
Nothing is really, really selling right now.
So that's kind of like a, a risk, that unknown risk, right?
That's not like in your control.You can shorten the time of like
fixing up this home, right? Somebody will take three months.
(36:33):
You can't fix it in 1 1/2 months, right?
You can shorten the time, therefore like shorten, possibly
shorten the holding time, but then you can change the interest
rate. The interest rate is stubbornly
high right now, OK, unless you're like buddy, buddy with
your own pal and then you say, hey, can you, can you drop the
rate? Right.
(36:53):
Even Trump is not able to fire that guy.
All right. So that's another risk that you
have, I guess. Holding a property is is
inherent, inherently risky. I don't know if you have ever
had experience of people breaking into your homes,
especially even in good areas, right?
(37:15):
People know that, hey, this homeis vacant.
There's a for sale sign right, right in front on the backyard.
Hey, this home is not occupied right now.
We're just going to like squat, break into one of the windows
and squat inside. Yeah.
So security system is very is very crucial, you know, for
these homes. So those are the risks.
(37:35):
And then there's also I would say the satisfactions that you
have from from fixing, fixing upa house that I don't think the
wholesaler would ever kind of enjoy is you feed a lot of
people from this fix and flip, right?
You feed your contractor, you feed Home Depot or these
(37:58):
hardware supply stores, Lowe's Home Depot, you feed.
Who do you use for selling your home?
Realtors yeah you feel Realtors right If your Realtors the buyer
yeah so the buyers realtor and also your realtor.
If you're not listening home yourself, your broker and the
(38:18):
buyers broker rightly benefit indirectly from the transaction
inspection companies SQL title rightly get paid to lender,
possibly your harmony lender. They can pay and the buyers
harmony buyers lender, right? They they get paid for the
points and underwriting the loan.
(38:39):
So, and possibly your, your workers too, right?
Because because they got to, they got to put food on their
table and then you pay them through this, through this fix
and flip. So there's a lot of people that
get paid. That's why like it's when you
start your transition from wholesale into like fix and
(39:02):
flipping the home, It's, it's, it's really just beyond you now.
It's, it's more, it's not just about hey, Kevin, getting that
assignment check, right. But it's, it's also that, hey,
you're feeding a lot of people as a result of this transaction
fix and flip. So there's a lot more
gratification that come out of it.
(39:24):
Yeah. And and another reward is just
making communities better, right?
You take the worst house on the block and you make it 1 of the
nicest sound like you're not only making it look and feel
safer, better, nicer for that street, the community, but
you're also increasing sales prices, right?
And something that a lot of people don't think about is
(39:46):
those sale pricing goes up. Yes, more sales tax for the
county. And you know, we all are not
very expensive paying taxes, butthose those property taxes are
go to fund schools and you know,roads and all the other local
stuff. So you know, by increasing
values. Yes, it has its downsides, but
(40:07):
it also does have its benefits. Yeah, it's so funny you say this
because I, I have friends who know that I, I fix homes for
living. Yes, they would just, they would
just tell me, hey, I have this house that's, that's two houses
down from where, where I live. Can you, can you do something
(40:29):
about that house? You know, they would just give
me, they would just become my free bird dogs.
I, I, I guess if you will, and then just say, hey, because
since an eyesore, right to all the neighbors on that same
street, they say, hey, Kevin, why don't you buy that house,
fix it up, make it look nice so that, you know, we don't have
(40:50):
this eyesore on the street. Let's keep going on this journey
though, because now you're up tothe point where you fix the
fucking houses. I also know that you also do
care facility, senior care facilities.
Can you talk about how you got into that and kind of where
that's at today? I got into it because of cash
(41:13):
flow. I want, I want a bigger cash
flow and I did have cash flow from my out of state rentals.
But I realized that in order forme to have that number, right,
monthly net number, I have to buy a lot of other state
rentals. I mean, imagine right, each
(41:35):
house is paying you $400.00 net other state houses.
And if you want to have 20,000 cash flow a month, right, that's
going to be what, 50 houses? And that's like 5050 sets of
headaches, right? And then if 1H valve blows out,
that's 8 grand and that takes you 16 months to break even.
(42:00):
So that 500 four $100 you pay actually 20 months to break even
on that house. So every like every other 49
houses that you have will come in to like pay for the blowout
of that HVAC. But you can't just say, hey,
this particular month, there's only one blowout of that H Val.
(42:23):
It could be like 1234, you have no idea.
So you could be a negative cash flow situation.
That's why I think that if you want to get more cash flow, it's
either you go into multifamily because multiple units are under
the same roof. Yeah.
So it's not like you're going toreplace one roof for every
(42:44):
single unit. It's one roof for all the units
right under that roof. The same goes with central here
and air as well for these multi unit apartment buildings.
Yeah. So your expenses are way lower
than individual single family homes.
And management wise is also easier because you can't just
(43:05):
have to send my manager out and collect all the checks from all
the units in one location, whereas only so many homes out
there it can be a management intensive task.
So, so that got you kind of thinking how do I get more
dollars per? House, yeah.
And that's that's when the shortterm rental kind of took off
(43:27):
like Airbnb verbal back then. So I wanted to have more cash
flow and I wanted these homes tokind of like be like within, you
know, a short distance of where I live.
So I just started like looking for these homes, right, that we
fix and flip a better location per SE, like in Sacramento.
(43:51):
And we just started with one andwe're trying all this short term
rental model. And then we found out that wow,
that it work out really well. We're able to get like maybe
$1000. So twice, twice the cash flow
that we used to get from out of state rental and say, hey, if we
can get more cash flow in, in California, a coastal state and
(44:17):
we can also have appreciation, we get the best part of the both
worlds. Why don't we just do it here?
So that's how I kind of transition from like doing fix
and flip to doing short term rentals.
But that fix and flip business still there because, you know,
the profit that we make over there, it just give, give give
(44:39):
us more, you know, the the ammunition to buy more rentals
here. Yeah.
That first short term rental, was that a buy, fix and hold or
what was the strategy used to get that first short term
rental? It's it's like a bird strategy.
And so the, the bird strategy that you used on that was buy
(45:01):
it, renovate it, refinance, rentit out.
And then that rent out step is ashort term rental rent out.
It's not a long. Yeah.
So I I I would joke with people that that's like bird 2 point O
Yeah, because because it's not atraditional long term rental,
It's a it's actually short term rental Yeah.
(45:24):
I. Think I've heard the term
burster. Burster OK, yeah, yeah, so.
That was getting more cash flow.That was kind of the idea of
that as to have the same property but producing more.
And can you, can you talk about that journey out of your short
term rental because that's also evolved to where you are today
(45:45):
with a lot of the short term rental society now.
Can you talk about that and, andwhere you're at together?
Yeah. So we bought 1 and then we
bought another one and that justkind of compounded overtime.
It's snowballs to, I don't know,like I would say to the height
(46:05):
of it, we would probably own like 30 short term rentals
until, yeah, until the time where like, hey, people are
catching on and they realize howlucrative it is.
And then we started getting a lot of competition.
I still remember back then Air DNA actually use our homes as
(46:25):
data, right, to market data for people, operators who want to
enter into this market. Yeah.
So, so all of a sudden there's alot more short term rentals and
I think a lot of these landlords, they turn their homes
into short term rentals because they just realize how lucrative
(46:47):
it is. Yeah, so we did that.
But then there's also contraction.
I would say it's like, hey, oncethe competition is coming, you
know, came in, it dries down thethe nightly rate.
So it makes it so that it's not the cash flow is not as good as
before and with a stubborn high interest rate, it's you don't,
(47:08):
you don't really cash flow anymore.
So you kind of have to look at different markets and see what
markets that are going to give you that cash flow that you know
this market will no longer be able to give you.
That's that's why I kind of transition out from California
because in the back of my mind is, hey, it's always expensive
(47:31):
in California and property tax, especially property tax, right,
Insurance now, now and also withthe high interest rate is just
getting harder and harder. The cash flow even with the
store model, Burster model, you know, yeah.
So it's like, hey, what we'll just, we'll just do fix and
flips right now, you know, and then we'll just buy elsewhere.
(47:54):
Yeah. That's that's why we we
transition kind of like from outof state back to California and
then back to, you know, back outto, you know, out of state
again. But right now we're we're close.
We're we're just like do the tri-state, if you will, like
Arizona or Nevada, right. That's where we do business
(48:16):
because they're kind of biz morebusiness friendly and they also
have the appreciation that, you know, closer states like
California has. Yeah.
Awesome. Well, thank you for sharing all
of that. You know, that's really good
stuff. That's really good advice from
someone that's really lived it. It's amazing all the stuff that
you've done. Again, you know, it's only you
(48:37):
said before you've been doing itabout 8 years.
That's incredible. Before we wrap up here today,
can you talk about the mindset that real estate investors need
to have all? Right before I share what it
takes to become successful entrepreneur, real estate
entrepreneur, I want to, you know, usually share with us like
(49:01):
what what what's the mindset to be successful in this business?
Yeah, I'm so glad you asked. We have some amazing books here.
I think it's really important toa learn from people that are
doing exactly what you want to do and be educate yourself.
I think it's so important to read books, watch good videos,
(49:28):
learn from other people. So we have some books here that
I would highly recommend and I can kind of talk about some of
the concepts. So we have the rich Dad, Poor
Dad. I always recommend that as a
first read. Rich Dad, Poor Dad kind of
changes the way you think. It kind of gets you to think
more of how do I build assets, use liabilities, How do I create
businesses that pay me? And then from there, there's
(49:51):
another book here that I really like.
It's called the e-mail for Visited.
And that one actually touches onthe part that you'd mentioned
earlier, which is really important, is that that book can
teach you how to work on your business instead of in your
business, right? So if you create a business and
you're doing all of the work andyou're just created a job that
(50:12):
doesn't get your business to where it needs to be.
So even if we're visiting right here, this book is really good
at training people to figure outhow to set up systems to create
businesses that people don't have to work in, they just work
on and keep developing. So that's one.
(50:33):
Let's see, this is one of my favorite real estate focus
books. It's called the Millionaire Real
Estate Investor by Keller. I call it the real estate
investor Bible. It has everything on there, has
really full case studies too. So as you're reading it, there's
several different stories of people that are using some of
(50:54):
the strategies and it's really cool to read about how real
people have done real things to freak of wealth in real estate.
This is a newer book that I justpicked up.
It's called the the new Automation Mindset.
And I'm really into this book right now because what that one
(51:15):
does, it is not only set up systems, but how to automate
your systems, how to take advantage of what we have with
the AI, and how to create systems that just automatically
do stuff right. Because we're kind of getting
into an era where the same repetitive work is kind of going
(51:37):
away because we can program AI and software to do a lot of that
stuff for us. So I'm really into this book
right now. I really liked that.
Really highly recommend that to anyone that's looking to bring
systems in their businesses, improve systems, improve
automations and AI. So those are some of the main
(51:59):
things that I like to focus on. So I turned it back to you.
What is what is some of the mindset stuff that you think is
important for those the investors?
I'll do one thing is for me is these summits, these
masterminds, these classes, these conferences, workshops,
(52:19):
whatever you want to call them, I find them like really useful.
You know, you go to classes in school, right?
I take those as like classes in school.
You have to kind of stay at the cutting edge of your game And
like the the last one that we went to deal champs.
(52:40):
I got so much out of it and I I find so much friendship or
partnership with people that network with there's a lot of
vendors out there and there's so, so what's what's that guy
guy's name? He's the, we call him the Elon
Musk of real estate. Yeah.
(53:02):
Robert Winston. Yeah.
So he, he gave out a lot of Nuggets.
And I thought that was like, pretty, pretty enlightening.
And you wouldn't really be able to get those without attending
those summits. So highly encourage you guys to
go to like your local meetups sothat you can now work with these
(53:24):
people and then really, really learn from them.
And you will be, I think you're truly lucky if you're in the
same neighborhood or same city as Pace Morby, right?
You got somebody that is truly ago giver, right?
And he's there like in your backyard.
So go to his event where I learn, pick, pick, pick this
(53:46):
guy's brain and you'll learn so,so much.
He's got so many stories, case studies that he can give and all
the forms, right? You can just call this guy and
then use. So definitely, this is not
reinventing the will. This is not like rocket science.
There's so many people that havedone anything under the sun in
real estate and they'll be able to help you.
(54:07):
And the way to get those resources is just by attending
these workshops, summits. And there's actually 1 coming
tomorrow, right? That you're going to.
Yeah. Our local RIA is putting on a 2
day creative financing training workshop, training workshop.
So I'll be sending that. It's actually Miss Craig who was
just on the show episode 8. He he's the leader of the More
(54:32):
Calvary and he's putting on the event.
So I'm really excited for that. Sounds like a wonderful guest.
Super excited to see what type of stuff he's teaching and
showing people. And just to kind of think of
that thought of what you said about conferences.
The other thing that I think is really cool is like sometimes
you can even hang out with the people afterwards.
(54:54):
Like for instance, that deal champ, I mean they had a VIP
after party where you're just sitting there hanging out.
You can have the drains chattingwith all of the main fighters
there. And then the second day they had
another VIP party afterwards at Jason Christopher's house, which
is really cool. Got to talk to a lot of people
there. So yeah, I mean, go there to
(55:15):
learn, go there to network. Go there to network with the
speakers together that work withthe attendees.
Like, who knows? I mean, I'm pretty sure that's
how you and I met. Was that your beta that you put
on? Yeah.
And so, yeah, I highly recommendgoing to local and national
conferences. So good, good point there.
(55:35):
So one thing that I do want to say is I want to tell everybody
that Ian, he's a super knowledgeable guy.
And the reason that he's super knowledgeable and knows so much
in real estate is he is always there like any kind of meet up
(55:57):
or networking event that I go to, I always see him there.
He tries to make his presence known.
Yeah. So you try He's, he's like a, a
sponge, like ready to absorb. So he can't ask him anything
under the sun rest day. He knows it's not just like
tasks, tax liens and he knows a lot, a lot of things.
(56:20):
So definitely. And how does he know he go?
He spent his time, you know, he takes his time to, you know, go
to these events, taking off likewhat 2 days to go to this
workshop. Not many people can do that.
So there there's a lot of, I would say persistence, right?
(56:42):
You need to be very hard workingin that regard, you know, to be
so knowledgeable like Ian. Well, thank you.
I appreciate those kind words. And you know, the other reason
why I like to all show up is just because I feel it's so
important to network, to meet people in this business, right?
Yeah, like. There's Ian's a people person,
yeah. I like, I like.
(57:03):
There's so many things that, youknow, I need, you know, I've
always need, you know, capital, I always need deals, I always
need this. And so if I meet people that
have that, then they kind of fill in that family space, so.
He's got a great mom too, who helps out, who helps him out in
his business. Hey, tell us how you celebrate
(57:24):
it your Mother's Day for your mom.
Oh, OK, so yeah, Mother's Day just passed.
We actually spent time with my mother-in-law too.
So, you know, we took her to theriver and just hung out.
She doesn't get it out as much, you know, kind of health
conditions and such. So it was really important for
(57:47):
her to get out in nature 'cause she was a sloshed kind of
nature. Got her cane suit stuff and just
had a good time with her. And after that, we spent time,
we actually went to Bing Palace,which is a good Chinese
restaurant. And I got her kid, my sister got
her plan that she's really been wanting.
(58:07):
And so, you know, just, again, just showing up, right?
It's just with your business, with your family, with your
friends, you got to be there forpeople.
You have to be accessible big time for people.
And so, yeah, so both my sister and me and my wife, we all spent
time with my mom had a great hada great Mother's Day and she
(58:30):
sent me a message out there weretaking me for it.
So yeah, well, every week we do a free book giveaway.
Some of the books we have here give away is Rich Dad, Poor Dad,
cash Flow, Quadrant 10, extra E meth, go Giver, any of these to
(58:52):
enter, all you need to do is comment and like this episode
and comment which book you'd like.
And seven days after the air date, we'll pick a winner.
And then if you're a winner, we'll set it straight to your
house. And so Kevin, the story shows
what happens when you combine consistency with strategy.
(59:12):
You don't have to build something right away.
Just need to build something that works and you develop it
out. Real estate doesn't have to be
about chasing big exits or big deals.
Sometimes it's about designing alife that works, whether you're
in Sacramento or other markets or travelling in the world.
(59:34):
So whatever stage you're in, just start and keep going.
Never forget why you started in the 1st place.
Thank you all for joining us andwe'll see you on the next
episode. Thanks for having me.
Thank you.
And that's another thing that I prove right.
It's, it's almost, I just, you're proving yourself to make
yourself a believer in this business.
I proved that, hey, this model actually works here.
And the reason that I started virtual wholesaling was I never
believed that hey, I can buy anything here in California.
(00:23):
I have this like limiting beliefthat, hey, number one, houses
here are very expensive and investors are never going to buy
houses here as I always investedlike out of state, like that's
where the cash flow is. However, you know, you know,
like houses, they are like dirt cheap still to this day, like
(00:43):
very dirt cheap. I used to buy houses for like a
couple $1000, right? And here The thing is, like once
you started doing it here, you realize that there's always
buyers out there. Welcome to the Real Prop Pro
podcast, where strategy, innovation and wealth converge
to redefine real estate investing.
(01:12):
Hello and welcome to the Real Prop Pro podcast.
I'm your host Ian Dealer Fix andFlip investor based out of
Sacramento, CA. This show brings you real local
investors with real stories and strategies that you can use.
Realprop Pro is where new investors go to learn more about
(01:33):
fix and flips, taxing, tax laying, investing, creative
financing, and so much more. If you're ready to take action,
grab them free resources at realproppro.com.
Today's guest is Kevin Lee, founder of Insightful REI.
Kevin is a Sacramento based investor turned short term
(01:55):
rental operator who's built his business around creative
solutions and long term vision. We're going to get into his
background, talk about real estate investor mindset and how
he got started in real estate investing.
He also works on short term rentals in Las Vegas, NV.
(02:15):
I move that has really changed his outlook on real estate
investing and really changed theway he does business.
Kevin, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me here,
yen. It's a pleasure and I'll like to
be here. Great.
Thank you so much for taking thetime to come out here.
Check us out, share some wisdom to our listeners.
(02:37):
So important that we have, you know, experts such as yourself,
people with a lot of experience in the industry to just explain,
you know, how you got started and stuff like that.
So to get started, where were you born and raised?
Yeah. So I was born and raised in
Taipei, Taiwan. I spent 14 years, 1st 14 years
(03:01):
of my life over there, and an opportunity arose for me to come
to the States. So I moved to this country just
just before I started high school.
It was a very, very big challenge for me because at that
time I spoke very little English.
(03:22):
So I had to learn English ratherquickly and I did not want to be
in ESL class with other people. I just want to be in a regular
class getting the, the real likeEnglish lessons from like, like
(03:43):
the rest of the people, the 9th graders.
So I quickly got out of it. It took maybe half a year to
really just petition to the teacher.
And the teacher told me, hey, you're not going to survive.
You can't swing with the sharks.You're going to get killed.
I proved him wrong. I proved a lot of people wrong
(04:06):
time after time. That was like the first time
where I had it taste of just proving people wrong, not
necessarily in a prideful way per SE, but it's more like, hey,
I can do it and I believe in myself and I have to appreciate
my mom for believing in me as well.
(04:28):
And I think I think having that person, especially that female
like to support you is so important.
We can't talk more about that later, but you know, having that
support is is is truly beneficial.
And then so I'm kind of growing up a little bit, you know,
(04:49):
you're kind of adjusting to a whole new culture, a whole new
language. I can only imagine how difficult
that was. You eventually got into college
and started to do a lot of you went through a lot of college,
is that correct? Yeah, a lot of education.
I wasn't really doing it for myself per SE.
(05:10):
I was there to fulfill a dream of my dad's.
He was never able to finish higher education Graduate
School. He finished his PhD in economics
and he wanted, he still wanted to do a PhD.
So he basically just placed thatdream on me to fulfill it.
(05:32):
So I ended up getting a PhD in computer science just to fulfill
his desire so that I can actually spread out my wings and
fly out of the cage, if you willeven like getting AW two job
afterwards was really just like,hey, I just want you to have a
(05:53):
stable job, right? And then work the W2 for like
the next 3035 years and then youcan retire, have the family just
live a very normal typical life like that.
Yeah. Yeah.
I mean, I feel like a lot of parents kind of teach their kids
that to go to school, go to school, get a good job, retire
(06:15):
and, you know, play things safe.Yeah.
You've kind of kind of broken that wall, you know, how did
you, how did you get out of thatstate that safe and easy, you
know, working 9:00 to 5:00 mentality into more of an
(06:36):
entrepreneurial, more of a business owner, real estate
investor type of mindset. That's a very good question.
I feel that at the end of the day, you got to ask yourself
this question is what makes you happy and how long does it take
for you to be in a situation where you cannot find
(06:59):
fulfillment, you cannot find satisfaction?
And the question that I asked myself, right, And I know that
it's either Steve Jobs or Jeff Bezos.
I think it's Jeff Bezos. He said that would you be
regretful of what you have not accomplished before you pass?
(07:23):
Like, you know, at your death bed, bed.
And that really resonated with me.
Like when I heard it, I think itwas like one of a graduation
speech that, that he gave. So that, that really just like
shook me. And I, I don't ever want to
leave any regret in my life. Like before I die pass.
So I say, hey, I got to, I got to do something because I can't
(07:45):
either be very comfortable with where, where, where I am just
having that very stable job. And I was, I was so guilty there
too, because all, all I did was really just like 2 hours of my
day really. And then they pay me like
(08:06):
probably 16 hours a day worth ofsalary.
And so that's why I feel so guilty because I, I can't just
finish my work in two hours and I'm done for the day.
Yeah. So I, I thought I was overpaid
and I could stay there for as long as I I wanted.
I was very productive, a good selfie engineer.
(08:29):
So I was just coasting. I was coasting and but but I was
like, hey, I would just want money is not going to like
handcuff me if you're well, justgoing to buy me all the
benefits. I just have that bug, that urge
to just take that entrepreneurial journey.
And I started doing wholesaling,virtual wholesaling, just never
(08:53):
looked back. Yeah, actually as a matter of
fact, I started doing that whileI was have in my W2.
Yeah. And I have some success.
And that's that actually just gave me the the gumption to just
say, hey, sail Nara boss, this, this is a proof of concept
(09:13):
actually worked out really well.I'm OK to just like, check out,
you know, turn my pink slip and say goodbye.
What point in your life what is that like?
You'd finished college? It sounds like you were in a
software engineering W2 job. Where Where along that path did
you figure out that virtual wholesaler could work?
So it started off when wholesaling was Catching Fire,
(09:39):
wildfire, you know, across the the whole country.
Sean Terry, I'm sure that, you know, he I would say he's
probably one of the earlier founding fathers of this term
wholesaling or I flip to freedom.
So I devour his stuff. And there's also Joe, Joe
(10:01):
McCall, he does a virtual wholesaling too.
He's got system process, very system process oriented person.
So I would really just glue to his podcast and that's how I
started, you know, just distilling what he said and then
started creating my own process,the same process for my
wholesaling company, started hiring people like V As for your
(10:26):
assistance and started like prospecting, like call, calling,
sending out mails. And that's how we started
getting leads, right? And then you dispose those
leads, right? And then you have some money
assignment checks that come in. And that's how like I proved to
myself and that that this, this there's actually a business
(10:48):
there. Can you?
Take us back to the moment you said you told your boss, like,
I'm done here. You know, I'm really quick.
Can you take us back to that moment and kind of describe what
that limpet felt like and what you're feeling at that moment?
Yeah, sure. Going into it, I felt very
(11:09):
scared and it it's something that I've never, ever done
before and I have been programmed that this is my
security and this is a risky move to make.
There's a statistics, statisticsout there, right?
Like out of the 100% hundred startups, there's like only 5%
(11:35):
actually succeeded, correct? Or even less than that.
I mean, something like 10% will make it past the three years.
And then of that 10% only, yeah,another 10% will make it.
So yeah, just kind of depends ontime.
But yeah, you're right, the halfdollars are very much stacked
against you, Yes, or something. Yeah.
So, so essentially it's 1% out of the 99% that's going to make
(11:58):
it right. So, yeah, the statistics is
against me. However, this is a calculated
risk that I took and I felt it was pretty confident.
And it's it's interesting because I was such a good
performer in my company is that it's annoying.
(12:21):
Is that the my boss actually said this to me.
Kevin, if you ever change your mind, OK, the door is wide open
to you. You can't, you can't always come
back. That was quite surprising to me
because when I made the decisionto quit and start my own
(12:41):
business, you know how like people say, hey, if you're
serious about this, right, whatever that you do, you got to
burn your bridges so you don't look back.
There's no, there's no fall backor backup plan.
So I, I never thought that I would ever go back.
I would, I would try to make it work, right.
(13:03):
Even though it's going to be really tough.
I'll try whatever it takes just to make it work.
So it was surprising to me and that was kind of encouraging to
me too. But I didn't lean on that.
I just kept going. And, you know, it's to this day
I've been self-employed for likemany, many years.
Yeah. What?
(13:24):
What? This is what, 7?
No. Eight years.
Eight years strong, Yeah. Wow, that's amazing.
You've done a lot in that amountof time.
And yeah, we'll go into some of the stuff that I worked on in
the past, but that's really cool.
Can you talk about the first deal?
You said you'd got it wholesaling.
Can you talk about how that first deal and kind of how you
(13:44):
felt when that first deal went through?
Yeah, Yeah. So before you know how, like
when you start business, you gotto do everything you got to, you
got to grind, you got to hustle.The first deal I got was
actually coming from call calling.
I was doing let's call call, youknow how you can just get a list
from CoreLogic list source. And there's like gurus out there
(14:08):
that teach you how to pull a list, high equity list, absentee
list. And and then you just feed it to
a skip tracing software to get the numbers.
And then you start call calling these people and ask them if
they want to sell. Yeah.
So there's no hesitation there. It's just like a lot of work
(14:29):
Memphis, TN That's that's, that's the market that I chose
to do my business in there two hours ahead of us.
Like you know, I mean West Coasttime the two hours ahead.
So six 6:00 is, is the time thatI started call calling and
that's their 8:00 and I want to capture that time before they go
(14:51):
to work. So between A and A and 9 or
maybe 8 and 9/9 and 1/2 between 8:00 at night at 9:30.
That's that's why I call and I get a lot of people to pick up
because they're not at work yet.They're either on their way to
work or they're still at home before they're going to work.
(15:12):
I would call during my lunch break as well.
That's like almost like toward the end of flair day shift just
to get a hold of these owners aswell.
So that's how I got my first deal.
I had a boots on the ground and we share 5050, We share the
(15:34):
profit. Half, half.
Yeah. So she's the one who I would
just set her up to lock up the contract, set up for the
appointment, lock out the contract should just negotiate.
But the turns are already like predetermined over the phone by
me. I say, hey, this is how much I
can pay you, right? Obviously there's a lot that's
(15:55):
going behind it to come up with an offer, right?
Like, you know, after repair value, this is how much we can
sell it for. And you got to minus the repair
cost, right, And also minus yourassignment fee, how much you
want to make. And that's the offer that you
want to present to the seller and see if that sticks.
Otherwise, you know, you guys goback and forth to come up with
(16:18):
something that's agreeable to both parties.
Yeah. Yeah.
OK. So, so you get the property
under contract with the seller, the home of the owner of the
property, How you then have to find the buyer.
How did that? How did you find that?
I was really lucky. So my boots on the ground.
She is a wholesaler over there. However, her marketing is not is
(16:43):
not like cold calling like I do like my mind is more outbound
marketing whereas her is just inbound.
She just sent direct mails. So that was a very good
partnership, right? We just combine our expertise
and the fact that she is over there, it makes it makes makes
(17:03):
it a lot easier for me. So she is the one who lock up
and she's the one who find buyerfor me.
If I were to do this again, I would probably just go ahead and
find my own cash buyers. That way, you know, you can
actually pull a list from this source, right, to figure out who
their cash buyers are and then blast it out to these buyers.
(17:26):
There's a lot of software out there that allow you to do that,
like prop string, right? There's a specific list you can
pull. It's called cash buyers list,
right? You can get these cash buyers
that way. I'm sure you can do on list
source property radar and there's there's a lot like
investor left, right, There's investor base, you know, yeah,
(17:48):
there's tons of software out now.
I think that when I was doing it, you know, Ken, Ken, what's
his last name? He does the reverse wholesaling.
Ken Norton. No, it's not Ken Norton.
I forgot his name, but he came out with a with, with a, with a
Yeah, it's called reverse wholesaling.
(18:12):
Yeah. So what that means is you would
go ahead and ask your buyers, you know, what's your criteria,
what, what, what's the type of houses that you buy, what zip
codes, right? And what's your price range,
what's your budget and what's your exit strategy?
Like? Are you mainly A flipper or are
(18:34):
you a long term buy and hold investor?
And once you figure that out, you would just go and hunt for
those deals for these cash buyers because I'm ready to, to,
to, to pull the trigger. So you're, you're not really
just out there, you know, looking for any kind of deals
and then blast it out to your cash buyers.
(18:54):
You already have these criteria from your cash buyer, you know,
the set of cash buyers in each categories.
So once you found this property that matches with that criteria,
you can just call Hey, Ian, I got this deal.
Yeah. I think that, you know, it's
good for you because this this is all like match your criteria
buy box. Would you like to take a look at
(19:15):
it? So it makes it easier for a
wholesaler to dispose a deal faster?
Yeah, yeah. So kind of a long your journey,
your real estate investing journey kind of get started off
by doing some wholesaling stuff like out of state what it was
(19:38):
kind of the next strategy because I know that you've tried
a lot of different things. So what was the next real estate
investment strategy that you went to after this virtual?
I say to myself, hey, if you could do this virtually in a
different in a market, why not just do it in your backyard?
So I was in, I was in Sacramento, I'm in Sacramento.
(20:00):
I'm like, so why can't you just replicate that here?
And there's various reasons #1 is that number 2 is the
assignment fee here is bigger. I didn't have to like split 5050
with my boots on the ground hereI'm I'm I'm the boots on the
(20:21):
ground in my backyard. So I can go.
I can, you know, talk to whoeverright and then go on
appointment, lock up the contract and dispose, dispose,
dispose it myself. So I do the whole like, you
know, a through Z transaction, you know, take it to the finish
line myself. I did that.
(20:42):
And again, that's another thing that I proved right.
It's, it's almost, I just, you're proving yourself to make
yourself a believer in this business.
I proved that, hey, this model actually works here.
And the reason that I started virtual wholesaling was I never
believed that, hey, I can buy anything here in California.
(21:07):
I have this like limiting beliefthat, hey, number one, houses
here are very expensive and people are never going to buy.
Investors are never going to buyhouses here as I always invested
like out of state, like that's where the cash flow is.
However, you know, you know, like houses, they are like dirt
cheap still to this day, like very dirt cheap.
(21:30):
I used to buy houses for like a couple $1000, right?
And here The thing is like, onceyou started doing it here, you
realize that there's always buyers out there and there's
always different types of buyersbuying different houses in
different markets. So you have like, Californians
that only buy out of state, but you also have Californians that
(21:52):
only fix and flip and buy in California because they know
that California has a appreciation that those Midwest
states do not have, right. So they'd rather buy here and
they write it, rather buy in their own backyard.
And they can go and see there's people that are like, just very
(22:16):
like macromanaging, you know, their properties, like assets,
which I get to, you know, you want to drive by and see your
houses every now and then. I get it.
So, yeah. So you can't really say, hey,
just because you like this or that doesn't mean that people
will like this or that. There's always different kinds
of people out there. So you kind of have to like feed
(22:37):
that crowd. This is kind of like reverse
wholesaling. You got to find your buyers
avatar, right, their buy box andthen feed them whatever that
they they they like. Yeah.
Sounds to me like you treat yourreal estate investing very
scientific. Like you're really systems
oriented. Like you said, you like to try
(22:59):
things out, create proof of concept, replicate and just keep
going. Yeah, I used to be very, very
systematic about the process. However, I think that like as
I'm doing this for a long time is that you can't really pigeon
(23:20):
hole yourself into just like 1/1strategy if you will like every
single deal, especially in this market very competitive market
is you want to try to figure outa way to monetize every deal
that comes across your desk, right.
(23:42):
I know a wholesaler here, right He he will wholesale deals via
creative financing terms. Yeah, so because he's able to
host out that property because if you, like, push the seller
(24:02):
down too much, you don't get a deal at all.
So why don't I, you know, speak to you about, hey, I'm just
going to take over some terms. Instead of having you come out
of pocket to pay for the difference, right, between the
loan amount and how much I can offer you.
It's like, you know, I can stillbuy it.
I can wholesale it to somebody who is doesn't have to get a
(24:25):
loan and just take over. You know, there's a set up of
the terms and then you pay the seller, right?
And then you still make a sale out of this, like you still make
a assignment fee out of this. So instead of deals that you
throw away to the trash can, youcan try to monetize you know as
much out of these deals as possible.
(24:47):
Yeah, I mean, you'd rub me to Investor Field live about a year
ago and at that event based Morgan was there.
So we got to seek him to be, which is really cool.
And he was kind of talking aboutthe same subject.
You know, like if you if you only have one tool about the low
cash offer, that's not going to work anymore.
No, like it is just being peopleup on prices and and trying to
(25:10):
take whatever equity they have left in that phone and not
offered any other solutions, just not going to you know
succeed. You're not going to row and
you're not going to be able to offer these people any different
options, right? So like you said, sometimes
people are not in the position to just accept the low cash
offer. Sometimes they have to, like you
(25:32):
said, maybe sell the house on terms more creatively, you know,
more of a, a sub two or you can lease, lease option type of sale
until they can, you know, eitherbuild up equity or get the house
fixed up and not just sell it. So I think it's really important
they brought up the fact that asas real estate investors, we
(25:54):
have to have more than one tool to have more than just that low,
low ball fashion. And, and, and the transaction is
not about just me as the buyer, right?
Like beating you down. It's about wing wing like both
parties, right? So if one doesn't want it, but
the other one wants it, that's not going to make it happen.
(26:17):
So how do we make it happen so that you're happy, right?
You're happy with the price, butI'm happy also because you know,
the, the I, I'm, I'm paying a little down, right?
If you, if you all you care about is the price and I care
about the terms, we can marry the two together and make it
work for both of us. Or if you just like, Hey, I'm
(26:38):
just going to give you a low ball offer, right?
You can only make one party happy, in this case, the buyer.
But the seller is like, why, Whyam I giving away so much equity
right to this guy? Like I don't, I'm not, I'm not a
lot of a lot of people that I talked to in the past is like,
I'm not giving my house away. And I have to preface the
conversation by saying, no, no, I'm not asking you to give your
(27:01):
house away, right? That's how you differentiate
yourself from the other house buyers out there.
So done some wholesaling. Now we're going to go back to
this journey because I really want to highlight all the
different kind of phases I kind of went through.
So done the the the wholesaling,done the wholesaling in here in
(27:24):
your local market. What was the next step on that
journey? I think that at the end of the
day is how do you actually create passive income for
yourself? And I think that's that's
extremely crucial. I think when you built a
business to a point is you can fire yourself out of the many
(27:48):
positions that you took out earlier on.
And you can start like putting people in these departments or
in these positions so that you can elevate yourself.
You can be out of all the seats in organization so that you can
focus your attention really juston growing the company versus
(28:10):
being in the business doing all sorts of monotonous things to
keep the business running and going.
Yeah. So I've always thought that,
hey, how do I create a business where it can be self-sufficient,
it can sustain yourself without me being there the whole time?
(28:32):
Because what's the difference between that and the W2 job?
You're not buying your freedom by quitting a job, one job and
then taking another job, right? Yeah.
The only difference is that you don't have a boss to answer to.
You're the own boss. But that, that creates a lot of
(28:52):
risk there as well. Because if you don't have
anybody that will tell you when things are going off track,
you're, I mean, yeah, you're, you're you're you're taking a
business. You took yourself down with your
business. Yeah.
So that's that's a very risky move.
So you you're always constantly on the watch, right, For
(29:13):
anything that can happen, especially for a startup.
It's like a baby, right, trying to survive in this like really
cruel world. So I would say that the journey
has always been or the division has always been, how do I create
a self-sustaining business, a business that can give me cash
(29:34):
flow at the end of the day? And that's why I, like a lot of
people, including myself, are soharping on this matter of like
passive income, passive income so much.
I'm sure that you do too. Like your dream is to have
multifamily. But what's behind that is, hey,
I just want to have passive income.
You can fix and flip a lot of homes and get that called the
(29:57):
crack cocaine, right, 60 thousand $80,000 profit, right
per flip or wholesale right, 3040 thousand or a host
assignment fee. But you should always consider,
you know, taking that part of that profit and then save it so
that you can buy, use that as a down payment for buying a cash
(30:20):
flowing property for you, right,because that eventually is your
your retirement. And that's the equivalent to, I
guess the stock options that youget from working for company,
right? You get stock options.
So when you retire, the stock hopefully will appreciate in
value, right? And now they'll pay for your
retirement. So just like that, you have
(30:40):
these houses, rental homes that can pay for your retirement.
So you don't have to be there anymore if the business ever
fails again. All right.
You have these cash flow that's coming in from your passive
income, your properties, rental properties.
So you're wholesaling, What was the next step?
Because you you done some fix and flipping.
I feel like when I met you, you were doing some fix and flips.
(31:03):
Was that the next progression after your wholesaling?
It's it's AI guess you can call a milestone or a goal post in my
journey. Maybe it's just I guess the next
level. Yeah, I know that as a whole
seller, right, you want to graduate to the next level,
(31:24):
which is become a fix and flipper.
So I thought to myself, hey, instead of like getting
assignment fee of ten, $15,000, right, If I were to flip this
home myself, right, I get more. There's a big spread and then
even after you take out the Commission holding costs rehab,
(31:48):
you know, there's still a a big chunk, you know, a pretty good
chunk that's left profit, right?Which is like way more than you
make as a wholesaler. You wouldn't be you.
It's not a reasonable way to charge that to a flipper because
somebody is going to scratch their head and say, hey, if
you're making as much as me, whyshould I buy this deal from you,
(32:12):
right? So at the end of the day is how
much value can you give to a flipper so that they, they
always come back to you and and buy it from you.
But if you just are too greedy, you can't, you can't dispose a
deal. You can't.
You can't flip a assignment contract.
Yeah, I feel like, you know, us fix the flippers, you know,
(32:36):
we're really strict about our numbers, right, Because we don't
want to buy a project that has the potential to not make that
much money or even potentially lose money because there's so
much risk involved in flipping, right?
The wholesaling, you're just kind of in and out on what you
know, little. I'm not going to say no risk,
but it has very little risk. Yeah.
(32:57):
Fixing flipping. You're actually taking down
these properties. You're holding them, there's
some risk of exposing maybe something that wasn't found out
before and you also have some market risk.
So can you talk about the different risks that fixer
flippers deal with that come across and, and, and how do you
(33:18):
manage those risks? Yeah.
So, so I'll talk about the risksand also talk about the
benefits, right, as a, as a contributor in the society is
that so the risk that's involvedis, Hey, you never know what is
(33:39):
behind that wall until you RIP out that wall and then you
realize that it's, it's so dry rotted, right?
You got to you got to replace all the wood, the post, the
framing, right? That's underneath the wall and a
wholesaler is going to sell yourproperty, right?
That's speed up and you know it's speed up, but you don't
(33:59):
know how beat up it is, right? You can't really diagnose the
condition of the engine right until you start like just
demoing it. And then you demo, you realize
that there's a hole right behindthe ceiling and the roof is shot
right. The, the, the roof is toward the
(34:20):
end of its its life. You got to replace the roof,
which you didn't budget before. Yeah.
Or the poor equipment fail or the central here in air is, is
is toward the end of the age. You can't, you can't, you can
you can repair it. You have to replace.
And we know how much those, those those cost us were a
(34:42):
couple $1000, how expensive theyare.
So there's a lot that go into it.
And you want to also make sure that your craftsmanship is the
quality is there so that when you put this property out on the
market, you get an offer right away.
(35:03):
So you want to maintain that level of quality and at the same
time somebody right, some buyer who is buying a flip and I would
do it, I would encourage everyone do it is to call it
home inspection, right? To make sure that all the things
in the house, if there's any problems you find out right away
(35:24):
and that flipper will have to address it before you close,
right. So that's kind of like my
standard to is home inspection, right.
And then this is like when I sell the house to A to a buyer
and buyer, you know, when I remodel it and then sell it is,
is hey, we want to address especially big ticket items for
(35:47):
the buyer. Yeah.
So that's that's not a negotiable.
So that's one risk, right. So you never know what is behind
that wall, the condition of the home, right?
You can, you can see with your own eyes one way.
But when you open that wall, it's, it's, it's, it's a
completely different matter. And you're, you're probably a
$5000 over budget. You can be over budget rather
(36:10):
quickly. And then there's also things
risks that's outside of your control.
Like, hey, right now we're in the South market.
Nothing is really, really selling right now.
So that's kind of like a, a risk, that unknown risk, right?
That's not like in your control.You can shorten the time of like
fixing up this home, right? Somebody will take three months.
(36:33):
You can't fix it in 1 1/2 months, right?
You can shorten the time, therefore like shorten, possibly
shorten the holding time, but then you can change the interest
rate. The interest rate is stubbornly
high right now, OK, unless you're like buddy, buddy with
your own pal and then you say, hey, can you, can you drop the
rate? Right.
(36:53):
Even Trump is not able to fire that guy.
All right. So that's another risk that you
have, I guess. Holding a property is is
inherent, inherently risky. I don't know if you have ever
had experience of people breaking into your homes,
especially even in good areas, right?
(37:15):
People know that, hey, this homeis vacant.
There's a for sale sign right, right in front on the backyard.
Hey, this home is not occupied right now.
We're just going to like squat, break into one of the windows
and squat inside. Yeah.
So security system is very is very crucial, you know, for
these homes. So those are the risks.
(37:35):
And then there's also I would say the satisfactions that you
have from from fixing, fixing upa house that I don't think the
wholesaler would ever kind of enjoy is you feed a lot of
people from this fix and flip, right?
You feed your contractor, you feed Home Depot or these
(37:58):
hardware supply stores, Lowe's Home Depot, you feed.
Who do you use for selling your home?
Realtors yeah you feel Realtors right If your Realtors the buyer
yeah so the buyers realtor and also your realtor.
If you're not listening home yourself, your broker and the
(38:18):
buyers broker rightly benefit indirectly from the transaction
inspection companies SQL title rightly get paid to lender,
possibly your harmony lender. They can pay and the buyers
harmony buyers lender, right? They they get paid for the
points and underwriting the loan.
(38:39):
So, and possibly your, your workers too, right?
Because because they got to, they got to put food on their
table and then you pay them through this, through this fix
and flip. So there's a lot of people that
get paid. That's why like it's when you
start your transition from wholesale into like fix and
(39:02):
flipping the home, It's, it's, it's really just beyond you now.
It's, it's more, it's not just about hey, Kevin, getting that
assignment check, right. But it's, it's also that, hey,
you're feeding a lot of people as a result of this transaction
fix and flip. So there's a lot more
gratification that come out of it.
(39:24):
Yeah. And and another reward is just
making communities better, right?
You take the worst house on the block and you make it 1 of the
nicest sound like you're not only making it look and feel
safer, better, nicer for that street, the community, but
you're also increasing sales prices, right?
And something that a lot of people don't think about is
(39:46):
those sale pricing goes up. Yes, more sales tax for the
county. And you know, we all are not
very expensive paying taxes, butthose those property taxes are
go to fund schools and you know,roads and all the other local
stuff. So you know, by increasing
values. Yes, it has its downsides, but
(40:07):
it also does have its benefits. Yeah, it's so funny you say this
because I, I have friends who know that I, I fix homes for
living. Yes, they would just, they would
just tell me, hey, I have this house that's, that's two houses
down from where, where I live. Can you, can you do something
(40:29):
about that house? You know, they would just give
me, they would just become my free bird dogs.
I, I, I guess if you will, and then just say, hey, because
since an eyesore, right to all the neighbors on that same
street, they say, hey, Kevin, why don't you buy that house,
fix it up, make it look nice so that, you know, we don't have
(40:50):
this eyesore on the street. Let's keep going on this journey
though, because now you're up tothe point where you fix the
fucking houses. I also know that you also do
care facility, senior care facilities.
Can you talk about how you got into that and kind of where
that's at today? I got into it because of cash
(41:13):
flow. I want, I want a bigger cash
flow and I did have cash flow from my out of state rentals.
But I realized that in order forme to have that number, right,
monthly net number, I have to buy a lot of other state
rentals. I mean, imagine right, each
(41:35):
house is paying you $400.00 net other state houses.
And if you want to have 20,000 cash flow a month, right, that's
going to be what, 50 houses? And that's like 5050 sets of
headaches, right? And then if 1H valve blows out,
that's 8 grand and that takes you 16 months to break even.
(42:00):
So that 500 four $100 you pay actually 20 months to break even
on that house. So every like every other 49
houses that you have will come in to like pay for the blowout
of that HVAC. But you can't just say, hey,
this particular month, there's only one blowout of that H Val.
(42:23):
It could be like 1234, you have no idea.
So you could be a negative cash flow situation.
That's why I think that if you want to get more cash flow, it's
either you go into multifamily because multiple units are under
the same roof. Yeah.
So it's not like you're going toreplace one roof for every
(42:44):
single unit. It's one roof for all the units
right under that roof. The same goes with central here
and air as well for these multi unit apartment buildings.
Yeah. So your expenses are way lower
than individual single family homes.
And management wise is also easier because you can't just
(43:05):
have to send my manager out and collect all the checks from all
the units in one location, whereas only so many homes out
there it can be a management intensive task.
So, so that got you kind of thinking how do I get more
dollars per? House, yeah.
And that's that's when the shortterm rental kind of took off
(43:27):
like Airbnb verbal back then. So I wanted to have more cash
flow and I wanted these homes tokind of like be like within, you
know, a short distance of where I live.
So I just started like looking for these homes, right, that we
fix and flip a better location per SE, like in Sacramento.
(43:51):
And we just started with one andwe're trying all this short term
rental model. And then we found out that wow,
that it work out really well. We're able to get like maybe
$1000. So twice, twice the cash flow
that we used to get from out of state rental and say, hey, if we
can get more cash flow in, in California, a coastal state and
(44:17):
we can also have appreciation, we get the best part of the both
worlds. Why don't we just do it here?
So that's how I kind of transition from like doing fix
and flip to doing short term rentals.
But that fix and flip business still there because, you know,
the profit that we make over there, it just give, give give
(44:39):
us more, you know, the the ammunition to buy more rentals
here. Yeah.
That first short term rental, was that a buy, fix and hold or
what was the strategy used to get that first short term
rental? It's it's like a bird strategy.
And so the, the bird strategy that you used on that was buy
(45:01):
it, renovate it, refinance, rentit out.
And then that rent out step is ashort term rental rent out.
It's not a long. Yeah.
So I I I would joke with people that that's like bird 2 point O
Yeah, because because it's not atraditional long term rental,
It's a it's actually short term rental Yeah.
(45:24):
I. Think I've heard the term
burster. Burster OK, yeah, yeah, so.
That was getting more cash flow.That was kind of the idea of
that as to have the same property but producing more.
And can you, can you talk about that journey out of your short
term rental because that's also evolved to where you are today
(45:45):
with a lot of the short term rental society now.
Can you talk about that and, andwhere you're at together?
Yeah. So we bought 1 and then we
bought another one and that justkind of compounded overtime.
It's snowballs to, I don't know,like I would say to the height
(46:05):
of it, we would probably own like 30 short term rentals
until, yeah, until the time where like, hey, people are
catching on and they realize howlucrative it is.
And then we started getting a lot of competition.
I still remember back then Air DNA actually use our homes as
(46:25):
data, right, to market data for people, operators who want to
enter into this market. Yeah.
So, so all of a sudden there's alot more short term rentals and
I think a lot of these landlords, they turn their homes
into short term rentals because they just realize how lucrative
(46:47):
it is. Yeah, so we did that.
But then there's also contraction.
I would say it's like, hey, oncethe competition is coming, you
know, came in, it dries down thethe nightly rate.
So it makes it so that it's not the cash flow is not as good as
before and with a stubborn high interest rate, it's you don't,
(47:08):
you don't really cash flow anymore.
So you kind of have to look at different markets and see what
markets that are going to give you that cash flow that you know
this market will no longer be able to give you.
That's that's why I kind of transition out from California
because in the back of my mind is, hey, it's always expensive
(47:31):
in California and property tax, especially property tax, right,
Insurance now, now and also withthe high interest rate is just
getting harder and harder. The cash flow even with the
store model, Burster model, you know, yeah.
So it's like, hey, what we'll just, we'll just do fix and
flips right now, you know, and then we'll just buy elsewhere.
(47:54):
Yeah. That's that's why we we
transition kind of like from outof state back to California and
then back to, you know, back outto, you know, out of state
again. But right now we're we're close.
We're we're just like do the tri-state, if you will, like
Arizona or Nevada, right. That's where we do business
(48:16):
because they're kind of biz morebusiness friendly and they also
have the appreciation that, you know, closer states like
California has. Yeah.
Awesome. Well, thank you for sharing all
of that. You know, that's really good
stuff. That's really good advice from
someone that's really lived it. It's amazing all the stuff that
you've done. Again, you know, it's only you
(48:37):
said before you've been doing itabout 8 years.
That's incredible. Before we wrap up here today,
can you talk about the mindset that real estate investors need
to have all? Right before I share what it
takes to become successful entrepreneur, real estate
entrepreneur, I want to, you know, usually share with us like
(49:01):
what what what's the mindset to be successful in this business?
Yeah, I'm so glad you asked. We have some amazing books here.
I think it's really important toa learn from people that are
doing exactly what you want to do and be educate yourself.
I think it's so important to read books, watch good videos,
(49:28):
learn from other people. So we have some books here that
I would highly recommend and I can kind of talk about some of
the concepts. So we have the rich Dad, Poor
Dad. I always recommend that as a
first read. Rich Dad, Poor Dad kind of
changes the way you think. It kind of gets you to think
more of how do I build assets, use liabilities, How do I create
businesses that pay me? And then from there, there's
(49:51):
another book here that I really like.
It's called the e-mail for Visited.
And that one actually touches onthe part that you'd mentioned
earlier, which is really important, is that that book can
teach you how to work on your business instead of in your
business, right? So if you create a business and
you're doing all of the work andyou're just created a job that
(50:12):
doesn't get your business to where it needs to be.
So even if we're visiting right here, this book is really good
at training people to figure outhow to set up systems to create
businesses that people don't have to work in, they just work
on and keep developing. So that's one.
(50:33):
Let's see, this is one of my favorite real estate focus
books. It's called the Millionaire Real
Estate Investor by Keller. I call it the real estate
investor Bible. It has everything on there, has
really full case studies too. So as you're reading it, there's
several different stories of people that are using some of
(50:54):
the strategies and it's really cool to read about how real
people have done real things to freak of wealth in real estate.
This is a newer book that I justpicked up.
It's called the the new Automation Mindset.
And I'm really into this book right now because what that one
(51:15):
does, it is not only set up systems, but how to automate
your systems, how to take advantage of what we have with
the AI, and how to create systems that just automatically
do stuff right. Because we're kind of getting
into an era where the same repetitive work is kind of going
(51:37):
away because we can program AI and software to do a lot of that
stuff for us. So I'm really into this book
right now. I really liked that.
Really highly recommend that to anyone that's looking to bring
systems in their businesses, improve systems, improve
automations and AI. So those are some of the main
(51:59):
things that I like to focus on. So I turned it back to you.
What is what is some of the mindset stuff that you think is
important for those the investors?
I'll do one thing is for me is these summits, these
masterminds, these classes, these conferences, workshops,
(52:19):
whatever you want to call them, I find them like really useful.
You know, you go to classes in school, right?
I take those as like classes in school.
You have to kind of stay at the cutting edge of your game And
like the the last one that we went to deal champs.
(52:40):
I got so much out of it and I I find so much friendship or
partnership with people that network with there's a lot of
vendors out there and there's so, so what's what's that guy
guy's name? He's the, we call him the Elon
Musk of real estate. Yeah.
(53:02):
Robert Winston. Yeah.
So he, he gave out a lot of Nuggets.
And I thought that was like, pretty, pretty enlightening.
And you wouldn't really be able to get those without attending
those summits. So highly encourage you guys to
go to like your local meetups sothat you can now work with these
(53:24):
people and then really, really learn from them.
And you will be, I think you're truly lucky if you're in the
same neighborhood or same city as Pace Morby, right?
You got somebody that is truly ago giver, right?
And he's there like in your backyard.
So go to his event where I learn, pick, pick, pick this
(53:46):
guy's brain and you'll learn so,so much.
He's got so many stories, case studies that he can give and all
the forms, right? You can just call this guy and
then use. So definitely, this is not
reinventing the will. This is not like rocket science.
There's so many people that havedone anything under the sun in
real estate and they'll be able to help you.
(54:07):
And the way to get those resources is just by attending
these workshops, summits. And there's actually 1 coming
tomorrow, right? That you're going to.
Yeah. Our local RIA is putting on a 2
day creative financing training workshop, training workshop.
So I'll be sending that. It's actually Miss Craig who was
just on the show episode 8. He he's the leader of the More
(54:32):
Calvary and he's putting on the event.
So I'm really excited for that. Sounds like a wonderful guest.
Super excited to see what type of stuff he's teaching and
showing people. And just to kind of think of
that thought of what you said about conferences.
The other thing that I think is really cool is like sometimes
you can even hang out with the people afterwards.
(54:54):
Like for instance, that deal champ, I mean they had a VIP
after party where you're just sitting there hanging out.
You can have the drains chattingwith all of the main fighters
there. And then the second day they had
another VIP party afterwards at Jason Christopher's house, which
is really cool. Got to talk to a lot of people
there. So yeah, I mean, go there to
(55:15):
learn, go there to network. Go there to network with the
speakers together that work withthe attendees.
Like, who knows? I mean, I'm pretty sure that's
how you and I met. Was that your beta that you put
on? Yeah.
And so, yeah, I highly recommendgoing to local and national
conferences. So good, good point there.
(55:35):
So one thing that I do want to say is I want to tell everybody
that Ian, he's a super knowledgeable guy.
And the reason that he's super knowledgeable and knows so much
in real estate is he is always there like any kind of meet up
(55:57):
or networking event that I go to, I always see him there.
He tries to make his presence known.
Yeah. So you try He's, he's like a, a
sponge, like ready to absorb. So he can't ask him anything
under the sun rest day. He knows it's not just like
tasks, tax liens and he knows a lot, a lot of things.
(56:20):
So definitely. And how does he know he go?
He spent his time, you know, he takes his time to, you know, go
to these events, taking off likewhat 2 days to go to this
workshop. Not many people can do that.
So there there's a lot of, I would say persistence, right?
(56:42):
You need to be very hard workingin that regard, you know, to be
so knowledgeable like Ian. Well, thank you.
I appreciate those kind words. And you know, the other reason
why I like to all show up is just because I feel it's so
important to network, to meet people in this business, right?
Yeah, like. There's Ian's a people person,
yeah. I like, I like.
(57:03):
There's so many things that, youknow, I need, you know, I've
always need, you know, capital, I always need deals, I always
need this. And so if I meet people that
have that, then they kind of fill in that family space, so.
He's got a great mom too, who helps out, who helps him out in
his business. Hey, tell us how you celebrate
(57:24):
it your Mother's Day for your mom.
Oh, OK, so yeah, Mother's Day just passed.
We actually spent time with my mother-in-law too.
So, you know, we took her to theriver and just hung out.
She doesn't get it out as much, you know, kind of health
conditions and such. So it was really important for
(57:47):
her to get out in nature 'cause she was a sloshed kind of
nature. Got her cane suit stuff and just
had a good time with her. And after that, we spent time,
we actually went to Bing Palace,which is a good Chinese
restaurant. And I got her kid, my sister got
her plan that she's really been wanting.
(58:07):
And so, you know, just, again, just showing up, right?
It's just with your business, with your family, with your
friends, you got to be there forpeople.
You have to be accessible big time for people.
And so, yeah, so both my sister and me and my wife, we all spent
time with my mom had a great hada great Mother's Day and she
(58:30):
sent me a message out there weretaking me for it.
So yeah, well, every week we do a free book giveaway.
Some of the books we have here give away is Rich Dad, Poor Dad,
cash Flow, Quadrant 10, extra E meth, go Giver, any of these to
(58:52):
enter, all you need to do is comment and like this episode
and comment which book you'd like.
And seven days after the air date, we'll pick a winner.
And then if you're a winner, we'll set it straight to your
house. And so Kevin, the story shows
what happens when you combine consistency with strategy.
(59:12):
You don't have to build something right away.
Just need to build something that works and you develop it
out. Real estate doesn't have to be
about chasing big exits or big deals.
Sometimes it's about designing alife that works, whether you're
in Sacramento or other markets or travelling in the world.
(59:34):
So whatever stage you're in, just start and keep going.
Never forget why you started in the 1st place.
Thank you all for joining us andwe'll see you on the next
episode. Thanks for having me.
Thank you.
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