Mastering the Art of Real Estate with Guest, Brian Davis Real Estate Investor and Co-Founder of SparkRental

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
M h.

Speaker 2 (00:23):
M.

Speaker 3 (00:39):
Welcome to Mastering the Real Estate. I'm your host, Debbie Demaggio,
and we are here today with Brian Davis.

Speaker 1 (00:45):
Brian Davis is actually today.

Speaker 3 (00:48):
In Lima, Peru, and we're going to learn a lot
about his story and why he gets to travel and
make money at the same time. I just love it.
I'm super excited. Let's welcome Brian into the into the group.

Speaker 4 (00:59):
Here.

Speaker 2 (01:00):
Hi, Brian, Debbie, it's so much fun to be here.
It's great to chat with you.

Speaker 1 (01:05):
So excited to have you here. All right, I'm going
to properly introduce you.

Speaker 3 (01:09):
Brian Davis is a real estate investor, personal finance writer,
and co founder of spark Rental dot com.

Speaker 1 (01:15):
With over two decades in.

Speaker 3 (01:16):
The real estate and finance industries, he owns an interest
in over two thousand units, adding more each month in
a form of dollar cost averaging. In addition to hosting
the Live Off Rents podcast, Brian regularly contributes as a
real estate and personal finance expert for Bigger Pockets Inman,
Best Ever real Estate r Hips, Tipster, and more. Brian

(01:38):
started his career working for hard money lender and saw
firsthand how investing can build wealth and passive income. He
started buying rental properties, albeit without knowing what he was doing,
and gradually learned how to do it better. Today, Brian
invests passively, going in with other investors on fractional property
deals through a real estate investment club, direct ownership to

(02:01):
people who want it, to a real estate side hustle.
Along with his wife and daughter, Brian spends most of
the year overseas, living by his own rules. He loves hiking, cooking, traveling,
scuba diving, and occasionally surfing badly. Most of all, he
loves show showing others how they too can create the
ideal their ideal lives through investing and lifestyle design.

Speaker 2 (02:24):
My god, it.

Speaker 1 (02:24):
Sounds so exciting.

Speaker 3 (02:25):
I'm sure everyone is like, tell me, tell me, tell me,
how can I live this life that Brian lives?

Speaker 1 (02:31):
It is so incredible. So okay, let's before we go forward,
because I.

Speaker 3 (02:35):
Have so many questions, and I was on your website
and I was reading all the topics you like to
talk about. But I love to travel as well, and
I love the whole thing of work from anywhere, and
so I just want to hear how you do it.

Speaker 1 (02:47):
But first, let's paint me a picture.

Speaker 3 (02:49):
You're you're currently in Lima, Peru, and you and tell
me where you grew up, did you go to college,
and what was your journey to spark and rental and
then we'll go deeper into that.

Speaker 2 (03:01):
Yeah, big questions.

Speaker 1 (03:03):
I know, I know, I know.

Speaker 2 (03:06):
So I grew up in Baltimore, Maryland, and I went
to University of Delaware and I graduated UD in two
thousand and three. So I by day myself here a
little bit. But I had no idea what I wanted
to do when I graduated college, you know, as a
lot of young people don't, right. So my stepdad was
friends with a guy who was it was a co

(03:27):
owner of a subprime mortgage lending company, which you know
nowadays is a bad word, but in two thousand and three,
that was all the rage, right, you know. They were
like saving the world and stuff like helping the little
guy get loans. So anyway, I went to work for
this guy as a summer intern, basically because I didn't
know what else to do after graduating college. And at
the end of that summer, he and his partner offered

(03:49):
me a full time job, but not doing subprime mortgage work.
They offered me a job working directly for the two
of them because they had a side hustle as hard
money lenders at the time, and they didn't need another
subprime mortgage loan officer. What they needed was someone to
handle their hard money loans. So I said, well, yeah,
I don't really know anything about hard money loans, but

(04:10):
why not let's do it so as you know, over
the next few years, you know, this is really the
real estate bubble in the mid adds. So I'm working
with nothing but real estate investors, mostly house flippers, some
BurrH investors, and I'm watching these guys just make money
hand over fist, right, So you know, I'm sitting there
thinking like I'm smarter than these guys, Like, you know,

(04:31):
I can make a bunch of money in real estate
investing too. So I went out and I put every
cent that I could spare into rental properties and way
overpaid and just made every mistake you could possibly make
in the book. You know, I was young and arrogant
and had just nothing but hubris, you know, didn't get
a mentor just every mistake just horrible. And then two

(04:53):
thousand and eight hit me like a ton of bricks.
So not only did I lose my day job because
no one's borrowing hard money loans anymore in two thousand
and eight, But also my all my investments collapsed, so
you know, and these these rental properties went from kind
of like barely breaking even because I had over leveraged
them to being cast on a negative and I had,

(05:13):
you know, all these rent of faults and it was
just a total nightmare. It was a mess. So that
was how I got into real estate.

Speaker 1 (05:22):
That's incredible.

Speaker 3 (05:23):
So so what did so how did you pivot from that?
I mean, you're now in two thousand and eight, two
thousand and nine, Now did you you lost?

Speaker 1 (05:31):
Did you sell those properties or did you lose them?
What happened at that time?

Speaker 2 (05:36):
You know, I wish i'd sold them. I ended up
kind of holding onto them by my fingernails until much later,
and you know, after I moved overseas many years later
from that, I wish i'd sold them, you know, back
in two thousand and eight. I mean, I would have
taken losses on them, but it would have been it
would have saved me a lot of headaches and trouble.
That being said, you know, you look back over your

(05:58):
career and you're like, well know that was painful at
the time, but it laid the path for all these
other things that ended up being great. So for example,
you know, I went through all that pain and suffering
with the you know, the all that collapsing, but another
window opened right as they say, I took a job
with an e commerce company that was selling legal forms

(06:20):
to landlords and real estate investors. And the only reason
I got that job was because I myself was a landlord.
So you know, you know, your your previous mistakes do
pave the way for future opportunities. And you know, then
I worked for that company for eight years probably, and
I you know, that exposed me to the whole world

(06:43):
of online marketing and digital products, and you know, we
that company ended up expanding into tenant screening reports and
all these other things. And I got to be there
through all that and work for a startup, and you know,
I grew to become their their vice president, and it
was it was fun and I got to see a
whole nother side of the industry. And in twenty sixteen,

(07:03):
after I had moved abroad, a colleague of mind from
that company, she and I split off and started our
own company Spark Rental, which at the time, yeah, so
we you know, Spark one has been through many iterations
over the years, you know, a lot of different business models.
But at the time, we thought that our main business
was going to be creating a one stop shop software

(07:24):
platform for mom and pop landlords basically, which she and
I both were at the time, and we felt like
there wasn't really a good software platform at the time
for you know, people who worked in unrelated job but
you know, had a couple of rental properties on the side.
So anyway, we thought we're going to be a software business,
but neither one of us is a technical founder, so
you know, that was its a whole another story, but

(07:46):
you know that's that is how owning of a small
business goes is. You know, early on, a mentor of
ours taught us, like, what you think your business is
is not necessarily what the market or your potential clients
think your business should be. So you have to listen.
You have to listen to the market. You have to
listen to your potential clients. And we have over the
years and we've we've you know, evolved and produced a

(08:09):
lot of different products and services over the years and
that's part of the journey and it's part of the fun.

Speaker 3 (08:14):
So right, well, so, so you were so after the crash,
then you started the job with the e commerce company,
and then did you Were you working with them when
you moved abroad?

Speaker 2 (08:28):
I was, so, yeah. I'll back up for one second here.
My wife is a school counselor. So we met in
Baltimore and she worked for US schools at the time
doing counseling. But she knew that I had some wander
lust and I wanted to do some traveling, and she
also wanted to do some more traveling, so she signed
up with a recruiting service for international schools. So, you know,

(08:52):
because there's a whole network of international schools around the world,
you know American schools and and you know European schools
and English schools and and they all need people who
know that world. And they pay really well, and they
provide free furnished housing and full premium health care for
the whole family, and paid flights home every year. And
that's the world that we've been living in for the

(09:13):
last decade. And it's been great. It's been awesome.

Speaker 3 (09:17):
So I want to ask. So it's so it's because
of her job.

Speaker 1 (09:24):
That made it able.

Speaker 3 (09:26):
It was made available for you to travel and to
move because of all these perks she got from her job.

Speaker 2 (09:33):
Yeah, so I I was working for this e commerce
company at the time. It was a one remote job
and it was and I figured, ah, you know I can,
I can move across the world. What's the difference, you know,
So she took a job. I went to your job
in Abu Dhabi and we moved over there. And it
turns out my boss didn't have the same feeling about
that that I did. He did not really like the

(09:55):
fact that I had moved across the world. So yeah,
he and I we had always kind of butt heads
a little bit, but we parted ways about six months
after I moved abroad, which was fine. You know, that
was around the time that you know, I really wanted
to go off and start my own company, which I
did with a coworker of mine from that that business,

(10:18):
that company. But to answer your original question, yes, I
did have a full time remote job before moving abroad.

Speaker 1 (10:26):
Okay, I like to hear.

Speaker 3 (10:28):
The nuts and bolts because I want people to you know,
there's always like how were they able to do that?

Speaker 1 (10:34):
So it does help.

Speaker 3 (10:35):
It's like, it's not you had a partner that helped
with that you were able to work remote. It just
you know, gives people an idea of how to you
can maneuver to do these things, because I'm sure there's
a lot of people who, like you, want to live
abroad and work and enjoy life while you're making money.

Speaker 2 (10:53):
Yeah, So that's something that people ask me about a lot,
and I do a lot of writing about as well
as a side hustle. I'm a freelance writer about personal
finance and travel and real estate. And what I always
tell them is the biggest piece of the puzzle is
income from anywhere. You solve that piece and the rest
falls into place pretty easily. So, you know, go take

(11:16):
a take a remote job, or figure out a way
to create your own streams of income that you control,
you know, either as a small business person or as
a freelancer or you know, gig worker, you know, which
is what I do now of course, But find a
way to earn money from anywhere in the world, and
then the rest is actually pretty easy. In fact, the
hardest part of moving overseas, that income piece, aside, is

(11:39):
actually not getting set up in the new country. It's
tying up all the loose ends from your home country.
That is that's the harder.

Speaker 3 (11:46):
So I want to We're going to take a car right, No,
it's okay, We're going to take a quick commercial break
because I'll never stop talking and asking questions.

Speaker 1 (11:55):
But and then I want to come back.

Speaker 3 (11:57):
There's two Well, I want to dive into spark runts
and understand your whole business. And I also want to
talk if we could about how you live abroad and
taxes are handled generally, how if you know when you're
living abroad that it would be so interesting to do,
but then you hear that there's a lot of tax problems.
So we'll be right back with Brian Davis and Spark

(12:18):
Rental dot Com. Welcome back to mastering the Art of

(13:03):
real Estate. I'm your host, Debbie Demagio. We are here
with Brian. Brian is with Spark Rental dot Com and
he comes to us today from Lima, Peru. I love
that you get to travel around and live in new
places and make money so you so I want to
let's dive into Let's dive into your company, Spark Rental.
I know there was a lot on your website and

(13:25):
just tell us about it and how people, you know,
how people can get involved with you if that's a possibility.

Speaker 1 (13:32):
So let's start there.

Speaker 2 (13:34):
Yeah. So I mentioned that we thought that our business
was going to be property management software basically, and it
was for a little while. But what we what we
had been doing at the time is we had started
selling online courses and teaching people how to invest in
real estate, and we kept getting the same question over
and over again, which was like, hey, I'm not ready
to buy property by myself just yet, but I want

(13:56):
to get involved, Like can I just partner with you
guys on a deal that you guys are doing, And
we kept saying no. I mean we must have said
no fifty times to people who asked this question. So
you know, there I was preaching like, you know, oh,
listen to the market, and here we were not listening
to the market, right. So you know, at a certain point,
my partner and I looked at each other like, well,

(14:17):
you know, maybe we should actually take this seriously and
think about this. And we had felt kind of out
of alignment because we were teaching real estate investing, but
neither one of us was actually buying rental properties. At
the time, I was living overseas and my partner was
no longer actively buying rental properties herself. So I had
started investing passively in syndications and crowdfunding platforms and some

(14:41):
of that sort of thing, and we wanted to do
a couple pilot deals just to see if this would
even work. So we took some of our core students
and we partnered with a boots on the ground real
estate investor in Michigan, and we did a couple deals
with him, and it was fine, but it was just
way too much work. I mean, we weren't making like
an extra cut or any of these deals. So it

(15:03):
was a lot of work but no money. And it
was it was great because it was hands on and
it was educational for our students, but it's just the
economics of it were not there, right, I mean, you know,
we're doing all this work and not getting paid for it.
So we went kind of back to the drawing board
and we were like, well, we like this idea, and
we're getting nothing but good feedback from our students about this.
You know, they like it, but you know, it's too

(15:26):
much work. So what if we tried a passive real
estate investment instead. So you know, I had just at
the time invested in my first real estate syndication just
passively as a as an LP, as a limited partner,
and I was like, well, we could try that. So
we did a pilot deal with a pilot syndication deal
and it went well. It was it was popular with
our students. So then we thought, well, you know, do

(15:49):
we have to just confine confine this to our students,
Like could we open this up to our broader audience
and to the public at large. So we sat down
with an attorney and we're like, well, you know, actually
can we do that? Like is that legal? And he
signed off on it. So we opened. We started what
we called the co Investing Club. So we are like
an old school investment club that gets together every month.

(16:09):
We vet different investments, we go in on them together.
Our unique spin on that is that we only do
passive real estate investments. Sometimes that's real estate syndications. It
could be a private note, could be a debt fund
or an equity fund, it could be a private partnership
with an operator, but it's always some kind of hands
off real estate investment because we're all busy professionals who

(16:34):
don't necessarily want to be landlords. I know, I never
want to be a landlord again. I hated it, and
we we already talked about that. But I still I
love real estate. I want to have a lot of
it in my portfolio, but I want it all to
be completely passive. I just want to wire the money
and then watch the distributions come in, basically. So that's
what we do together as an investment club. We meet

(16:57):
online every month. We invite an operator to come in
and present their current investment, and we all grill them
together as an investment club. You know, we got fifty
sixty people on the call, all slinging questions at the operator,
and then after the operator gets off the call, we
all talk about it and say, well, how do you
feel about this? You know, what are the risks? You know,
what are the advantages? You know, pros cons, you know,

(17:18):
and we all just kind of share our thoughts and
feedback about it, and then anyone who wants to go
in on that investment can do so with five thousand
dollars or more. And that might sound like a lot
if you've never invested in a syndication, but the typical
minimum investment for these is fifty grand to one hundred grand.
So our idea here is to make it possible to
diversify and buy a lot of these every year instead

(17:41):
of only investing in maybe one or two of these
a year. It's really hard to diversify if you have
to park fifty grand or one hundred grand at a
time in each investment, right, And that same principle applies
if you're buying rental properties too. If you're going out
buying rental property, you're going to pay fifty or one hundred
grand between the down payment and posing cads and I mean, yeah,
I'll do cash reserves and all that. So, yeah, this

(18:02):
is a way for people to invest relatively small amounts
in real estate and diversify across geography and across asset class.
You know. So it's multi family, it's single family, it's
raw land and mobile home parks, and industrial. Some of
it is debt instead of equity, So it's a way
to diversify and across timelines too. A lot, you know,

(18:22):
a lot of the investments that we make are you know,
the typical like four to seven year syndications, but some
of them are shorter term. Some of them are one
year or two years, because we want that timeline diversification
as well. So, yeah, it's a way. I look at
it as a way to practice dollar cost averaging with
your real estate investments, you know, investing month in and
month out, regardless of what's going on in the market,

(18:44):
you know, regardless of h Yeah. So yeah, not not
trying to time the market or do anything goofy like that,
but just month in, month out, plowing you know, slow
and steadily into the market.

Speaker 3 (18:55):
So tell So it sounds very exciting and I would
love to get on it. Would it be possible for
me to get on a call and listen sometime?

Speaker 2 (19:02):
Do you?

Speaker 1 (19:02):
Is there a cost?

Speaker 3 (19:03):
I guess for the audience too. I'm sure they're wondering
can they can? Is it a cost to join your
group or is there a subscription fee to join your
group or how does that work?

Speaker 2 (19:15):
Yeah? There is. It's a membership business. So as an
investment club, we charge membership fees. It's fifty nine dollars
a month or four ninety seven a year, whichever you prefer.
And we realized that it's it's not for everybody, right,
I mean, this is great for a certain type of person.
But you know, it is, you know, a form of
alternative investments that we're doing. So we have a very

(19:35):
generous refund policy. So we encourage people to join the club,
show up for a meeting or two. If you decide
it's not for you, drop out, and we'll refund you,
because I mean, we only want people to be in
the club who are actually into it and who are
actually investing in deals. Right, So yeah, we get that
it's very what we're doing is very new for a
lot of people. In fact, that's kind of what we're

(19:56):
offering is I got my first passive real estate investment.
So yeah, come join us for a meeting or two,
see how you like it, and then if it's not
for you, that's cool, you can go do something else.

Speaker 3 (20:07):
No, I love it, it's great. So now take I'd
love to hear a couple of examples. So what the
product was that you invested in or your group invested in,
and maybe how much money you guys earned each of you.
Maybe someone put in five, someone put in fifteen, someone
put in one hundred. Maybe, So give us some real
examples so we can really get a feeling for how

(20:27):
this works, it sounds very exciting.

Speaker 2 (20:30):
It's fun. It's a lot of fun. So you know,
every month it's different, and that is by design. We
really want to diversify across every one of these axes
that we can. So last month, for example, our March
investment was a partnership with a land flipping company. So
this company, they actually have two different business models and
I really liked this. So one is the traditional land

(20:50):
flipping model where they just go out and they buy
parts of land at a deep discount and then turn
around and sell them at full market value, which is
a great business model. I love that business model. But
they also have a secondary business model that I love
because it's recession resilient and that feels extra pertinent at
this moment. Yes. Yeah, So their other business model is

(21:13):
they will be gotten. They'll buy a piece of land
and then they will install a manufactured home on it
and sell it as a residential property to a first
time homebank. So and in the markets where they're operating,
they're able to buy the land and install the mobile
home or manufactured home and sell it for about half
of the local median home price.

Speaker 1 (21:33):
So where is that? Give me an idea of where
that would be.

Speaker 3 (21:38):
I'm in California, so we are so dense and we
don't have land really so not much. But left, so
where give me an example of where these deals are happening,
where they're doing this specific behind the land.

Speaker 2 (21:51):
And so that particular operator, he's mostly working in North Carolina,
and I think Florida and maybe Texas. I think he
also does a little to work in California as well.
Actually okay, but yeah, so you know, in the in
the main market where he operates in North Carolina, the
local median home price is around four hundred and sixty thousand,

(22:12):
and most of the homes that the manufactured homes that
they're selling the first time home buyers, they're selling for
around two hundred and thirty thousand. So even in a recession,
there's there's going to be demand for entry level homes
that are half the median home value.

Speaker 1 (22:26):
Right.

Speaker 2 (22:27):
Wow, that's not going to go away even in the recession.
So I really move on.

Speaker 1 (22:32):
How much did how many people were abled?

Speaker 3 (22:35):
I mean, coming from California, two or four hundred isn't
much money in our area. But how many investors invested
in that one deal and how much let's finish this one?

Speaker 1 (22:47):
How and how much did everyone make?

Speaker 2 (22:50):
Oh? Well, yeah, great, great questions. Okay, So we had
I think sixty one club members participate in that particular deal,
and we invested around nine hundred thous collectively as a club.
Now that is that's higher than the usual amount that
we invest as a club. More often we're investing, you know,
four hundred five hundred, six hundred thousand dollars a month

(23:10):
in different deals. This one was our highest investment to date,
which was exciting.

Speaker 1 (23:18):
Congratulations, that's very exciting.

Speaker 2 (23:21):
Yeah, and that the way that partnership was set up,
we're aiming for total annualized returns in the high teens
to low twenties with that flipping partnership. So yeah, obviously
we just started that investment. Fact, we're still collecting everybody's
money to transfer over to the operator. But yeah, as

(23:44):
a general rule in our investment club, we're aiming for
mid teen returns or higher, and then we're looking for
risk that is in the low to moderate range. So
the way we frame it is we're looking for asymmetric returns.
We're looking for you know, those high potential returns with
load medium potential risk because you know, most people have

(24:08):
this this way of looking at risk and returns thinking
that it's one dimensional. It's a line that you know,
you've got high returns on the one side and high
risk and you've got low returns on low risk on
the other side. And it's just a linear line literally
one dimension. It's just a line. That's actually not how
investments work. That those are two of the dimensions of

(24:28):
an investment. But there's a lot more than just risk
and returns. There are other factors at play with investments,
such as liquidity. For example, you know, can you pull
your money out at any time? And in most of
the investments we make, no, it's not liquid at all.
Sometimes you're tying up your money for four or five, six,
seven years. There's you know, time commitment. You know, how
long is the time commitment? That's another factor in these investments.

(24:51):
What's the minimum investment? I mean, you could have the
best investment in the world, you know, with very high
returns and very low risk. But if the minimum investment
is two hundred and fifty thousand dollars and you you
have twenty five thousand dollars, you can't participate, right, you
can't do it? And I've seen those. I mean, I've
seen very good investments that have a really high minimum
investment and they only cater to the wealthy. Along similar lines,

(25:14):
a lot of these types of investments, you know, these
sort of private equity real estate investments, they only allow
accredited investors. Because of the way that SEC regulations are
set up, it makes it much easier for operators to
collect or to raise capital from accredited investors. Just for
any audience members who aren't familiar with that term, these
are wealthy investors. Basically people with a net worth of

(25:35):
a million dollars or more, not including equity in your home,
or you're earning two hundred grand and more as a
single person, three hundred grand or more as a married
couple every year. So yeah, I mean, you know, there's
all these other dimensions to investments. You know, there's tax benefits,
there's personal values. You know. For example, the classic example
I give for personal values is oil and gas drilling,

(25:59):
which has historically the pretty high returns and you know,
not super high risk, but a lot of people don't
believe in oil and gas jolia. They don't want to
put their money in it, right, So you know, there's
all these other dimensions to investments beyond risk and returns,
And once you wrap your head around that, then you
can you can go out there and you can find
investments that have high returns, high potential returns, and low

(26:21):
potential risk, knowing that there's all these other factors at
play and you have to be okay with those other factors.

Speaker 3 (26:26):
Right, absolutely, So give it. I love that example of
what And I did hear there's a lot of people
relocating to North and South Carolina because there's a lot
of companies who have moved there, so I hear that's
a huge eye was interviewing an agent from there and
she said they just are having multiple offers and there's
just so many people relocating there.

Speaker 1 (26:45):
It was incredible. So that I love that example. So
give us another example of an investment that you Let's
one that you've done and closed and made money on
and you were excited about.

Speaker 2 (26:56):
Yeah. So we've made thirty one investments total as an
investment club. Only one of them has gone completely full
cycle and closed out. That was a note. It was
a pretty short term note actually, I think it was
only nine months. But that note was paying fifteen percent interest,
which was great. So we collected our interest, we got
our principle back at the end. But you know we've

(27:17):
done We've done a lot of sort of the vanilla
multi family syndications just because there are so many of
those available. When we do those, we try to find
some kind of extra downside, a risk protection. I'll give
you a quick example of one of those. We invested
with an operator who they specialize in buying apartment complexes

(27:41):
in Texas, and then they partner with the local municipality
to get a huge discount on their property taxes in
exchange for setting aside a certain chunk of the property
for affordable housing where the you know, it's limited to
people earning a certain percentage below local area and median

(28:01):
incomes and so forth. So in that case, in this
particular example, they negotiated for a fifty percent reduction in
their property tax bill in exchange for setting aside fifty
percent of their units for affordable housing designated units. And
I mean that's instant equity because they gained a lot

(28:22):
more cash flow from the tax benefit then they're losing
from setting aside some of those units for affordable housing.
So they were able to create basically instant cash flow
from doing that just from day one, so that took
a lot of the risk out of it right there.
But it also that provides some recession resilience too, because

(28:43):
there's a waiting list for those affordable housing designated units
because they're under market rents. So in a recession, you
know everybody's going to want them even more.

Speaker 3 (28:54):
Right, absolutely, absolutely, are you doing another project with them?

Speaker 2 (29:00):
We would like to do another project with them. We
have a rule in our investment club that we never
invest with the same operator within twelve months of our
first investment with them because we want to see, you know,
how they perform, you know, how's their communication style, you
know all of these sorts of things. You know they
are they paying distributions the way they said they were
going to pay distributions to us, and that that particular group,

(29:23):
I think that was our May investment of last year.
So we're coming up on a year with them, but
they have not been eligible for another investment with our club,
because yeah, we really want to put people through that
probationary period before we're willing to invest with them again,
just as as a protection mechanism for our money as
an investment club.

Speaker 3 (29:43):
Absolutely, and are those distributions monthly or quarterly or yearly
or just the end.

Speaker 2 (29:49):
So most syndications and funds pay their distributions quarterly, some
of them will pay monthly. But in our investment club,
we what we do just from a structural standpoint, We
created a new LLC for every deal that we invest
in as a club, and then every member who participates
gets just listed as a partial owner of that LLC. Basically,

(30:11):
so we create a joint bank account that everyone can view.
They've got log and access to view the joint bank account.
At the end of each quarter, we basically just go
out and empty all the bank accounts of all the distributions.
You know, pay them out to each person proportionate to
their investment. So even the syndications that pay us monthly,
each each person in our investment club, they get their

(30:33):
portion of it quarterly because it's just too much administrative
work to send out those distributions every month for us.
But yeah, I know, I mean that is we do
like income producing investments. You know, occasionally we'll invest in
more of those value add deals where someone's buying an
apartment complex and just renovating the entire thing, and it's
going to take a couple of years before there's cash flow,

(30:56):
but in general, we like income. We want to we
want to start seeing the income relatively quickly from these
if for no other reason than it feels good, right,
It makes you It makes you feel confident about what's
going on at the property. You know, you see the
cash flow statements and actually, you know, get your hands
on that cash flow and feel good about it.

Speaker 1 (31:16):
Right.

Speaker 3 (31:17):
So, how so how long has Spark Rental been in
existence this way with the investment membership club?

Speaker 2 (31:25):
So we we did those first couple of pilot deals
that were single family properties, We did those four or
five years ago. In its current form, we've been doing
this for about three years.

Speaker 3 (31:35):
Okay, And who is and how many deals do you
have going on? Or how many investments do you guys
have going on right now?

Speaker 2 (31:44):
We do one a month, so every month we get
together when we've got a new investment, and.

Speaker 3 (31:49):
How many altogether? Oh, but it doesn't close out in
a month, so how many?

Speaker 2 (31:53):
No, the ability to participate closes out, but then the investment,
you know what, will stay open and we'll pay the
distributions or the interest or you know, whatever the kind
of income is and then eventually the property sells or
the note matures, or you know, whatever the case may be,
and then we close out that LLC and close out
the bank account and just you know, everyone gets there

(32:14):
their portion of the profits. What was the other part
of your question?

Speaker 3 (32:20):
So, like, I have four listings right now? How many
projects do you have right now that you're I mean
you're managing them. You and your partner must be overseeing three, five, ten, twenty.
How many at a time?

Speaker 2 (32:33):
You know?

Speaker 1 (32:33):
Right now? Are you guys handling, managing, overseeing.

Speaker 2 (32:38):
Thirty ones that are in our active portfolio? If you will?
I mean, you know, we're not a fund manager or
anything like that, so it's it's but yeah, we've done
thirty one total. Like I mentioned, one of those has
cloyed out, closed out completely, and it's it's over and
done with.

Speaker 3 (32:55):
So they're all all happy. They're all right now in
existence thirty one of them because someone has to. I mean,
you guys have to still keep your eye on the ball.
You might not be managing them, but you need to
make sure everything is, you know, going along smoothly and
nothing has happened that you're not aware of. So I
was just wondering that takes some you know, is it
just you and your partner overseeing the thirty one at

(33:17):
this current time.

Speaker 1 (33:18):
Or do you have other people that work with you.

Speaker 2 (33:21):
Yeah, we have a couple of employees. And you know,
to your point, there is a lot of accounting administrative
work involved in this because we've got dozens of LLCs
and dozens of bank accounts and yeah, they're they're there,
and then we have to file tax returns for all
of those, and we have to for every one of those,
we have to divvy up individual k ones for each
person who participated. Right. Uh so that has been a

(33:43):
lot of work, way more work than we thought it
was going to be initially. So yeah, so thirty that
are like active at the moment, thirty one total, you know,
one of them closed out and everyone there's any.

Speaker 1 (33:57):
One right, No, it sounds very exciting.

Speaker 3 (34:00):
All right, We're gonna go to a quick commercial break
and we'll be right back with Brian and we will
learn more about Spark Rental. It's very exciting. Thank you,

(35:04):
Welcome back to Mastering the Art of Real Estate. I'm
your host, Debbie DiMaggio. We are here with Brian Knox.
He is an international traveler work from Anyone. That's my
new name for him. Although he's in Lima, Peru, he
does travel about and he works with his company and
his partner on spark rental dot com. And we're learning

(35:25):
how we can invest with his group. If you want
to join his membership membership monthly check him out, and
if you want to stay in and invest, you can
continue with your membership. But I think it would be
a great opportunity for people to learn how they can
invest in putting in smaller amounts, not necessarily huge chunks,
but you can start as little as five thousand dollars

(35:46):
I believe. So Brian, with that, let's talk about the
different kinds of investments you invest in as a club.
I looked on your website and you have quite a
list there.

Speaker 2 (35:57):
Yeah, So we try to diversify as much as possible
as one of our core values in our club. And
you know, as we mentioned that that goes for everything
from geography to operator, to investment timeline, to the asset
type so on the on the big picture level, that's
debt and equity. I would say that the majority of

(36:21):
what we do is equity investments, but we do make
debt investments as well that are at a fixed interest rate.
On the equity side, you know, we have invested in
every type of real estate imaginable. I mean that's not
technically true, but we've done industrial properties, We've done obviously
multi family properties. We have invested in portfolios of single

(36:44):
family rental properties. We have invested in hotels, in airbnb
short term rentals. We have invested in mobile home parks
and raw land, as we talked about. So yeah, I
mean it's really everything across the board. And you know,
there's there's no one perfect asset class, and there's no
way to predict the next hot asset class either. And
you know, anyone who says otherwise is probably trying to

(37:05):
sell you on that that next hot asset class, right,
So you know, again we're not we're not trying to
time in the market. We're not trying to pick the
next hot city or trying to pick the next hot
asset class. We're just trying to diversify across the board,
knowing that you know that is going to form a
bell curve of returns for us over time. You know,
we talked about earlier, how if you have to invest

(37:28):
fifty grand or a hundred grand at a time, and
you're only getting into one, two, three of these. If
those happen to be at the bottom left hand corner
of that bell curve where you know those investments underperformed,
you know you're gonna be lying awake at night twing
on your fingernails, boring about those investments. Right. Whereas if
you're spreading out money every single month in different projects
and different timelines and different cities and different types of properties,

(37:51):
then those returns just form a bell curve where you
know a minority of them are going to underperform inevitably
because these are investments, right, some of them underperform, and
then the other opposite end of the curve, at the
far right corner, you're going to have some of these
overperform and hit it out of the park, and then
most of them are just going to fill in the
middle of that bell curve and you know more or
less perform as promised. And that's that's okay. That's a

(38:15):
lower stress way of investing, and it's how I prefer
to invest.

Speaker 1 (38:19):
Yeah, no, I think it's it's great.

Speaker 3 (38:22):
Let's talk about how you took a red month and
traveled to Patagonia with your family, and what is a
red month?

Speaker 2 (38:32):
Yeah, you know, I would take a clean credit for
that term. I love that term. I can't remember where
I heard it, but the idea is basically, you take
a big red magnet marker and just cross it to
your calendar and say, I'm not available that month. I'm
not available for calls or meetings or you know, don't
book anything with me because I'm going to be gone
out of here. So, yeah, my family and I took

(38:55):
a month and we traveled around Patagonia in Argentina and
down into his Here del Fuego and we went down
to Ushuaia at the very tip of the continent, and
you know, we yeah, we went to Mendoza and did
some wine tasting, and we went to see the big
glacier in El Calafate, and you know, I did hiking

(39:16):
in l Shalten and it was great, it was wonderful.
And you know, I, yeah, I did kept up with emails,
you know, so I might spend an hour a day
or something, you know, just keeping a sort of baseline
pulse on the business and you know, not being completely
out of pocket, so that I didn't have like a
you know, ten thousand emails and you know back up
in my in my inbox when I got home, but

(39:37):
I wasn't doing meetings or you know, active work like that.
It was great. And that's the kind of thing that
you can do when you run your own business or
you're a freelancer, you can do that stuff. And yeah,
I mean sometimes we talked to our audience about we

(39:58):
called it the five freedoms. But you know, two of
those freedoms are time freedom and location freedom. You know,
being able to choose when you work and being able
to choose where you work where you work from. So yeah,
I mean, I I think I encourage everyone to just
put a little bit more thought and intentionality into their

(40:20):
lifestyle across the board, like holistically, you know, where do
you want to live? And you know, it doesn't have
to be the same city where you grew up, right
even though statistically most Americans live within fifty miles of
where they grew up, It doesn't have to be that way.
You don't have to just drift down the current of
life and stay living in the same city, right, you know,
So you know, think about what do you want to

(40:40):
do for work? You know, a lot of us have
that golden handcuff where we're doing a job that we
don't really care for that much. We probably tolerate it,
it's probably okay, but it's is it like fulfilling our souls?
You know for many of us the answer is no.
And you know that's is that how you want to
spend your life? Because we do spend the majority of
our waking hours working or at least doing something related

(41:03):
to our work. So you know, think holistically about that stuff.
You know, where do I want to live? What do
I want to do for work? You know, what do
I What kind of family life do I want? What
kind of social life do I want? You know, how
do I want to give back? What kind of hobbies
and interests do I want? And you know, as you
dig into some of that, you know you can you
can start sketching out a picture of what your perfect

(41:24):
life looks like. But it helps to have location freedom
and time freedom.

Speaker 1 (41:29):
Right And what were you? There were five? You said,
what are your five?

Speaker 2 (41:33):
Yeah? So the five freedoms that we talk about. The
first is sort of the foundation that you need for
any of the others to make any sense at all,
and that is freedom from financial stress, because if you're
laying awake and night worrying about money, none of the
rest of it matters, right Like, you can't you can't
proceed up from there. You can't build on top of
that foundation if you don't have this foundation of freedom

(41:54):
from financial stress. And then you have time freedom and
location freedom, which you already talked about. So the fourth
is work freedom. And that's something that people don't really
talk about enough, but the freedom to pursue the work
that is most meaningful and fulfilling for you. And there's
no right answer to that. Of course, it's different for
all of us, but for most of us, it's probably

(42:16):
not like the highest paying thing we could be doing, right,
you know, you're probably looking at maybe taking a pay
cut to do that, and that's okay, and you just
have to be willing to wrap your head around that.
And that's where you know, having passive income streams from
investments you know, could be real estate investments, the stuff
we do, could be other stuff you know, could be
dividend paying stocks or whatever. But having passive income definitely

(42:37):
helps you can you can buttress your income with with
that so that you can take that pay cut, you know,
instead of earning one hundred grand a year, you know,
maybe you take that pay cut to seventy five grand
a year doing something you really love and maybe you
can make up a big chunk of that twenty five
thousand dollars difference with passive income. Right. And then finally,
you know, the cherry on top is really financial freedom,

(42:58):
you know, being able being work optional, right where you
no longer have to work in order to pay your bills.
You earn enough passive income from your investments to cover
your living expenses. But if you have that work freedom,
if you're doing your ideal work, that that thing that
really lights you on fire and you know, leads your
soul or however you want to put it, then you
don't need financial freedom. That is just a cherry on

(43:20):
top because you're already you know, even if you reach
financial freedom, you're going to keep doing the work that
you're doing because you love it so much. So uh yeah,
everyone kind of rushes to that fifth freedom, you know,
that the financial freedom, and I think, oh, you know,
I got to get there. I'm going to sprint there
as fast as I can. And I believe in financial
independence as much as the next person. But if you're

(43:43):
living if you're doing everything else in your life, right,
financial freedom is just a cherry, right, It's just it's
just a nice thing to you know, glow, bask in
the glow of like, because you're going to keep living
exactly the same way. If you're living your ideal life,
regardless of whether you've reached financial independence or not.

Speaker 1 (44:04):
Yeah, as long as you're enjoying the journey to that,
and I love it.

Speaker 3 (44:08):
No, I coach a lot about you know, whatever that
purpose is, you know what follow that passion that will
allow you to live your purpose. And yes, at the
end of that if the financial bit, as long as
you're enjoying the journey and learning, and even if you're
making mistakes, but you're learning from those mistakes like you
did along your journey, and you're clearly doing what you want.

(44:29):
And you made yourself available to be able to travel
and enjoy your life as you're working on your different things.
So with that, I every time I'm getting my Italian passport,
hopefully everything continues to go right. In June, I have appointment.
It's my parents. This woman worked with my parents. It
took them a long time because when their grandparents came

(44:50):
over the names were changed a little bit, so anyway
they got it. So my kids and myself we have
an appointment. Hopefully everything goes all right. But then I
think about and you hear this with people who are
trying to live abroad, and you do, for the most part,
live abroad, and my one question is do you have
a base in the United States still? And then how
do you deal with taxes? I know it's probably different

(45:12):
from different countries, but how do you deal with taxes?
Are you paying you not US taxes and the tax
in the country you're living or how does that work?

Speaker 1 (45:21):
If you can give it.

Speaker 3 (45:22):
I know people need to speak to attorneys and their
tax accountants, but can you disclose for you? But if
you can give us some idea, that would be really helpful.

Speaker 2 (45:31):
Yeah. So as far as a tax home in the US,
before we left the country, my wife and I moved
our legal domicile from Maryland to Florida because Florida has
no income tax and we didn't want to pay income
taxes to the state of Maryland if we're not living
in Maryland. So there's we found a service in Florida

(45:53):
that it's a private mailbox service, but you can set
that as your legal residency address. It's a it was
originally designed for like r veers and yachts and you know,
people who don't have a permanent home in the US,
but they still needed somewhere to get their mail right
and register to vote and all that stuff. So we
moved our mailing address there and registered to vote there.

(46:15):
And you know, we got Florida driver's licenses, so our
legal domicile is in Florida. Now, like I don't live
in Florida, but you know, that's our legal domicile. As
far as the tax piece, so when you Americans living
overseas can take advantage of the Foreign earned income Exclusion,

(46:37):
which is basically that your first it's about it changes
every year. It goes up based on cost of living,
but it's around one hundred and fifteen thousand dollars right now.
I think per person, per adult, your first one hundred
and fifteen thousand dollars or so is federal income tax free.
Now that's your regular income taxes. That does not apply

(46:57):
to self employment taxes like I still have to pay
sof ployment taxes, you know, the double fighter taxes being
a business owner. But regular income taxes, So FIRS one
hundred fifteen grand is tax free in the US. You
still have to file a tax return, of course, but
for a married couple that's two on thirty grand in
tax free income. Now you do still have to pay

(47:20):
taxes potentially in the country where you live now some
there are a few countries out there that don't have
income taxes. The UAE, where we lived for four years,
does not have income taxes, at least I don't know
they did. They didn't when we were living there. I
don't think they've changed that since then. There are a
few others as well, you know, depending on the income

(47:45):
you know you don't. I don't report my US income
to Peru, for example, I don't. I don't file a
tax return personally in Peru. My wife does because she
works for a school here, So I mean her income
from the school is reported to the proven tax authority.
So you know, that's just case by case, country by country,

(48:06):
you know how you handle that. But yeah, I mean,
there are a lot of advantages being an expat on
the tax side.

Speaker 3 (48:15):
And are you so are you how long have you
been in Peru or have you been moving around more
or less over the over the years or have you
been in Peru now for a period of time.

Speaker 2 (48:25):
So we've been in Peru for two years. We spent
four years before that in Brazilia and our daughter was
born in Brazilia Actus she has Brazilian passport Brazilian citizens
sim And then the four years before that we were
in Abu Dhabi, which was our first international starting point.

Speaker 1 (48:42):
Okay, very exciting, it's so fun.

Speaker 3 (48:45):
So what do you have any any are there any
negatives to what you're doing or is it, you know,
any kind of I don't know anything. I mean, I
can think of all the good stuff that would come up,
but are there any things, anythings that you know, are
might get you down sometimes living abroad and not being

(49:07):
you know, in the United States where you're from and
where you know.

Speaker 2 (49:10):
Yeah, absolutely, So it's mostly missing the people from back home,
I mean, and missing major life events. I mean, we've
missed a lot of weddings and funerals. We've missed you know,
family members being born, you know, my sister's sons being born.
We weren't there for that, you know, And that's that's hard,
no question, I mean, now it's been We've made a

(49:31):
huge effort to go home twice a year for about
a month at a time, So we spend a lot
of time in the US and a lot of time
at home with family. And we can do that because
my wife works on the school calendar.

Speaker 1 (49:44):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (49:45):
Yeah, and international schools, by the way, they do have
much longer winter breaks for this very reason, you know,
because people are traveling home to another country, so you know,
they typically have about a month off around Christmas, and
then in the summer breaks are maybe a little bit shorter,
more like six seven weeks, sometimes eight weeks. So yeah,

(50:07):
I mean we've we've gone out of our way to
spend a lot of time in the US for that
very reason. You know, that component aside, you know some
sometimes you know, the social piece. You know, it takes
time to make friends and form deep friendships with people
in a new country, a new city, and that's you know,

(50:27):
easier than others. Yeah, I mean, when we moved to
Abu Dhabi, we were incredibly lucky. We formed very close
friendships almost instantly, and it was it was great, especially
you know, given that it was our first stop internationally,
right and then you know, in Lima it was a
little bit harder to form closer friendships, and we've done

(50:49):
so now, but you know, I mean it took it
took some time, so you know, there was some loneliness
when we first got here, but I would say those
were the biggest, the biggest things here it's really about
it's about people. No matter where you go in the world,
people miss home, you know, feeling like you don't have
close people with you in your new home country, and

(51:09):
then you do often end up forming very close friendships overseas,
you know, both with other expats and sometimes with locals.

Speaker 3 (51:15):
Right and are you part of so you're in Peru
now do you are you part of any is it
groups through through your kids or your wife's friends or
how are you finding community and right now in Peru?

Speaker 2 (51:28):
Lima, Yeah, So, you know, with my wife Katie working
for international schools, often we form very close friends with
other people who work at those schools. You know, most
of the teachers are other expats, you know, all speak English,
of course, so we form friends through her work, you know.
I there's there's a group called Inner Nations that you know,

(51:52):
you know, this has chapters all over the world, and
it's it's an expat group, English speaking expat group. Uh
you know that that cored Nate's events, and you know
they'll they'll do dinners and bar nights and they'll go
on hikes together and stuff like that. So yeah, I've
done some of that stuff. And then you know, wherever
we go, there's usually some There are always these sort

(52:16):
of informal groups as well that you know, they're hard
to find that once you find them, their gold. So
for example, I'm in this this WhatsApp group for expat
guys called book Club, which it started it started as
an embassy group where all these these women who were

(52:37):
working for the US embassy and some of the other
you know, the speaking embassies. You know, they actually had
a real book club and they would get together and
all the husbands would be like, well, you know, what
are we going to do while they're all talking about
their books, Like, you know, let's go have a beer.
So then someone that's what it was like, you know what,
we're forming our own book club. But it was actually
more of a beer club, so we don't actually read
any books. But you know, so it has grown into

(52:59):
just a group of XPAC guys for Friday happy hours
and you know, at a local group hub and you know,
we just get together and unwind after the week and
you know, speaking English with each other and have a
beer and it's great. So, you know, you find and
I've found things like that in yeah, just the various
countries where we've lived, Like there's always these sort of

(53:19):
informal groups out there if you can just tap into them, right.

Speaker 1 (53:23):
Right, I love it.

Speaker 4 (53:24):
No, that's super that's super helpful. So what would you
tell how would you guide or what would be the
first couple steps someone could take if they wanted to
move abroad. How would they tidy up their life in
America to if even if it was for six months
or a year, and then they decided, Okay, I want
to make do this long term? What would you suggest

(53:44):
for them? I know there's a lot of people right
now very interested in doing just that. So we have
a couple more minutes, please share.

Speaker 2 (53:54):
Yeah, So the first first step, like we talked about earlier,
is find a way to make money from anywhere in
the world. That's the biggest thing, because if you don't
have that, then you're in trouble, right, Like, you need money,
you need income. Once you solve that piece of the puzzle,
the rest of it is relatively easy. There are a
lot of countries today with digital nomad visas that basically

(54:14):
say and make it really easy for people who can
earn money remotely to come and live there. And you know,
these tend to be relatively shorter term visas, but they
get renewed basically automatically as long as you can show
that you have a certain minimum amount of income every
month from another country. Right, they want you to bring
your money to their country and spend it there. Right,

(54:35):
makes total sense. So they've made it really easy for
people to do that. You just need to be able
to prove your income and then you can stay for
as long as you can earn that income. So look
into some of those countries. That's the easiest starting point.
You don't need to go out there and do the
whole citizenship buy investment thing, the whole golden visa thing.
Forget all that. That's expensive and it's time consuming. You

(54:56):
don't have to do that. Just find some of these
countries that will let you come in long as you
can show income. So that's the residency and visa piece.
You know, it's much easier than most people think. And
by the way, if you look into if you're interested
in Europe, look at Schengen Area countries. Yeah, because then
you know, if you have a residency visa for one

(55:17):
of those countries, you can go live in any of
those countries. So anyway, yeah, the visa piece not as
hard as people think, like, that's not a huge hurdle
tying up your life back home. That's actually where some
of the work comes in. So when my wife and
I moved abroad, I owned a house and furniture and
all the trappings of middle class life in America, right,

(55:40):
you know, we eat had cars, I mean, we had
all that stuff. So we thought when we first moved abroad,
we thought, oh, we're just going to go have a
little two year adventure and then we're going to come
back and just like step right back into our life
in Baltimore. And of course ten years later we're still abroad,
but we've rented out our house furnished as a furnished
rental property and that and we rented on a two

(56:02):
year lease and that was fine for that first two years,
and then it wasn't fine after that, you know. So
those those tenants were great, but they moved out and
then it was it was harder to find tenants who
wanted to move into a furnished apartment, and then we
had people move in, but they didn't treat it very
well and they didn't stay that long, and you know,

(56:23):
so eventually we sold that house and it was sad
because I loved that house. But we got rid of
all of our furniture. We packed away all of our
stuff into bins and our parents' basements. Basically we sold
our cars before we moved abroad, and that was fine.
I mean, you know, that just is what it is.
And in fact, that is one of the things about

(56:44):
moving overseas that no one talks about, but it can
make life cheaper and easier, so that outside the US,
most cities are designed for you to be able to
live perfectly normal lives without a car. So when we
moved to Abu, Dobbie, my wife and I, we we
managed to we had that that pause where we said, oh,

(57:06):
maybe do we actually each need a car? Because as
an American you to think every adult needs to have
a car no matter what, and that just is what
it is and you don't question it. We moved abroad
and I was like, well, could we share one car?
Like maybe let's try it, and within like two days
it became clear that it was going to be fine
with just one car. So for four years Nabudhabi we

(57:28):
shared one car. And then when we moved to Brazilia,
which is a very walkable city, we're like, well, do
we need any car? Like could we we live without
a car entirely? And it was great and we did,
and we walked everywhere, we biked, we took ubers, and
then we moved to Lima and we still don't have
a car. So yeah, I mean that is one of
the perks that no one really talks about in the US.

(57:50):
You kind of in most places you need a car.
Right outside of the US, there are a lot of
places in this world where you can live without a car.
Come from Yeah, happily and.

Speaker 3 (57:59):
Ubers, car insurance, all the things that go around, I
mean there's and then do you get health insurance? I guess,
or how does health insurance work when you're abroad?

Speaker 2 (58:10):
Yeah, so international schools provide well, I mean they're each different,
but most of them provide premium health insurance coverage for
the entire family of a worker. So we do get
health insurance to my wife's job, that being said, you
can get if you don't have that, you can buy
international health insurance for much less than what you pay

(58:31):
in the US. And contrary to most Americans beliefs, the
healthcare systems in other parts of the world work just fine.
They work just as well as the US, if not better.
In most cases. There are exceptions to me, of course.
Right in most cases you get great healthcare for a
fraction of the cost.

Speaker 4 (58:48):
Yeah, I was.

Speaker 1 (58:49):
We were in Mexico. We had gotten to Tulum, and
I forgot my thyroid medicine.

Speaker 3 (58:53):
And I was panicking, of course, because I have to
take a pill every day.

Speaker 1 (58:56):
And I guess the hotel put us in touch with
the doctor something.

Speaker 3 (59:01):
We ended up they the far so I guess I
told them what the petic medication was. Next thing, fifty
pills came, which I never get fifty pills out of
fifty pills, and it was like fifty dollars total, including
the cab that went to pick it up from the
doctor's office. And I said, Adam, this cannot be true.
There's something wrong with this. So he went online and

(59:23):
he was matching up what the ingredients were and everything, and.

Speaker 1 (59:26):
I was shocked.

Speaker 3 (59:27):
It was so inexpensive, and it was just seamless, and
I got way more than I would in America, and
that was, you know, it was pretty remote and to
loom at that point, and it was ten years ago.
So yes, I agree that it's much better in some
of these places we.

Speaker 1 (59:43):
Then were made to be aware of. But well, it
sounds like.

Speaker 3 (59:48):
An amazing, amazing experience in life you're having, and please
send me the link to your club.

Speaker 1 (59:55):
I would love to share it with everyone.

Speaker 3 (59:57):
And then also I have a few people that I've
met along the way and my podcast over the last
year that I would love to connect you because I
know they have investment opportunities to come to mind right away,
and I will connect you with those people and maybe
you guys will invest, and maybe I'll join in and
invest at the same time. But it's been so wonderful

(01:00:17):
to have you, Brian.

Speaker 2 (01:00:19):
Oh, Debbie, thank you so much for having me on.
This was a lot of fun. And I would love
to connect with any and all of those operators out there.
We are constantly trying to meet new.

Speaker 1 (01:00:27):
Operators and how do people get in touch with you?
What's the easiest way?

Speaker 2 (01:00:31):
Yeah, so visit our website Sparkrunnell dot com. You'll see
our co investing club front and center on there. You
can email us at support at sparkunell dot com. You
can check us out on Facebook and LinkedIn. You'll find
us at Spark Rental. You know, very simple and yeah,
don't be a stranger reach out. I mean, we are
very much a mom and pop business. In fact, you know,
one of our two employees is my partner's daughter, my

(01:00:53):
business partner's daughter. I mean, yeah, we're very much a
mom and popcorn company, and we want our investment club
to feel close knit, even though it's virtual. You know,
wean you don't mind. Uh, you know, we want to
be a community and we want people to you know,
have that community feel and you know, recognize each other
when we hop on calls together. And you know, my

(01:01:14):
partner and I make ourselves available every week and live
zoom calls for everyone's to show up. So yeah, we
want to we want to keep that intimate feeling going
throughout our entire business.

Speaker 1 (01:01:24):
I love it.

Speaker 3 (01:01:25):
It sounds like a really great business you've created, and
I wish you and your wife and your daughter well
and I look forward to staying in touch.

Speaker 1 (01:01:32):
Thank you so much.

Speaker 2 (01:01:34):
Debbie, Thank you, this is a lot of fun.

Speaker 1 (01:01:37):
Thanks.

Speaker 2 (01:01:40):
Tune in each week for another episode of Mastering the
Art of Real Estate with host Debbie DiMaggio. Here Friday's
New n Easton on the Bone Brave TV Network. Tune
in to wear real estate Matters Matter

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