The “Pickle Jar” Offer That Could Score You a Property

David:
This is the BiggerPockets Podcast show 738.
Never be discouraged by a lack of results. Only get discouraged when there is a lack of progress or pattern recognition. You may take the wrong path nine times, hit a dead end, come back, but now you know the wrong nine paths. And then the next path you take will be the right one and you’ll have advantage over everybody else. Some people get lucky and they hit the right path on the first try, and then they assume this is how real estate investing works. And then they take the next nine paths for all the wrong ones and they lose a lot of money because they made those mistakes. So as long as you are recognizing patterns in what you did, like you said, this is not the right realtor, this is not the right type of property, this might not be the right market, you are making progress, okay? Don’t just measure how many deals you close as the only result that you’re measuring.
What’s going on everyone? This is David Greene, your host of the BiggerPockets Real Estate podcast. You already know this. We’re the biggest, the best, the baddest real estate podcast in the world with the two most handsome co-hosts in this space as well. This is me and Rob Abasolo bringing the heat today with our last episode with our three mentees. In today’s show, we are going over Philip, Wendy, and Danny’s Journeys. Their stories give you an update on where they are in their real estate investing journey, what’s gone well, what hasn’t gone well, and what they’re going to be doing in the future. It’s a very nice bow to put on this journey that we’ve had. Rob, are you sitting with a little tear over there?

Rob:
I am. A little proud dad tear over here because I feel like they’ve all just had really massive wins. It’s like I’m nostalgic, right? Because it does remind me of when I was getting into real estate and what it was like to have those few big wins at the beginning of your journey that really lit the fire for what would eventually become my real estate portfolio and everything. So it’s cool to see this at the beginning of their journeys and just how much progress you can make in 90 days.

David:
Yes, the wonderful bipolar cocktail that is real estate, equal parts, fascinating wonder and crippling anxiety rolled into one stiff drink. And in today’s show, we have all of that and more. You’re going to hear about deals that were put into contract and what they can do moving forward, backup plans do backup plans, things that started off and did not go well, and how we’re backing up and coming up with the new plan, and ways personal growth happened and market conditions have changed and our mentees have pivoted and adapted to them.
Before we get into the show, today’s quick tip, what is your next 90 days going to look like? Look, if you give yourself an entire year to get something done, it usually doesn’t get done. But if you break your year into 90 days and you set a hard and fast timeline regarding what you are going to do during that time, things can change. We like to use the acronym GPA, goals, planning, and action. Have you set goals? Have you come up with a plan? And have you taken action on that? Don’t waste a year. Ask what your next 90 days are going to look like.
All right, Rob, anything you’d like to get in before we get to our first mentee?

Rob:
Yeah, just stick around into the very end so we can get a nice little sendoff of our little baby birds going off into the world of real estate and so you can find out the perhaps the best domain name I have ever purchased ever. It is such a great domain name and I talk about it at the very end of the episode.

David:
I was going to say the same. That one simple hack can make people billions. All right, let’s get to it.
Philip, last time we talked, you were working on how to negotiate a timeline that works for you when you have a counter offer, as well as getting the details about all the regulations and the code rules where you’re hoping to develop land. So walk us through your update.

Philip:
Yeah. So since we talked, I got a 22 acre property under contract that’s within my zone that will work for the retreat center. We’re really stoked. And just to make it as difficult as possible, there’s all sorts of hair on the deal. There’s a bunch of manufactured homes that are unpermitted, there’s certain access issues. But we’ve spoken with a number of folks that have expertise in zoning and also due diligence. And so far, they all seem like things that we can move through and that there’s a solution for still making this… This property could still be the right one. A huge part has honestly been reaching out to and talking to a bunch of people that are way smarter than me That’s essentially where I’m at.

David:
Can you share some of the deets, as Rob would say?

Philip:
Yeah. So shout out to some of the advice you gave me a while ago. So it was listed for 1.3. And for me, the property was in really poor condition, a ton of junk. We’re budgeting for cleanup and demo potentially of some of the structures on there. And so my initial offer was at 715,000, which in the classic style I was told to take a hike. And then two weeks later I submitted another offer at 775,000 and then they came back 950,000 and we’re under contract right now for 850,000.

Rob:
Whoa.

David:
Wooh.

Rob:
Dude, first of all, congratulations. The way you said that when you were explaining this was very nonchalant. It’s kind of a big deal. You’re under contract on the property. Regardless of some of the hair that that’s in the offer right now and in the deal, I think it’s really cool, man, because I got to imagine you feel pretty good to at least lock something up. Regardless of how it turns out, at least you’re in your first accepted offer and you’re ready to rock.

Philip:
Yeah, no, I’m beyond stoked and a lot of the community that has been really supportive of this process, it’s like I’m the one that’s sort of leading the charge, but I definitely don’t feel like I’m doing it alone, which is really firing me up a lot about this project.

David:
All right. I have some actual practical questions, but before I get to those, I want to ask you a riddle. Are you ready?

Philip:
Yeah.

David:
What do you call an offer on a deal that has a lot of hair in it?

Philip:
What do you call an offer on a deal that… A hairy deal?

David:
That’s not bad. Actually, that’s a good guess. Anyone else want to guess?

Rob:
An escrow? You’re in escrow?

David:
Actually, this came from our producer Eric.

Rob:
Oh, I got it. Okay. An offur, but F-U-R.

David:
That would be good too. We were actually going with something more specific to you, Rob. It’s a coiffeur.

Rob:
A coiffeur. Also very good. I’ll take that.

David:
So this coiffeur was accepted. Congratulations on that, Philip.

Philip:
Yeah.

David:
Now, I do want to ask you, when you say hair, can you give me a couple of what it is that concerns you about this deal so maybe we can give you some advice going forward?

Philip:
Yeah, so the one that’s the most present with me right now is that I was on my phone with my agent this morning and it turns out that the tenants that are on the property, the seller has not told them that he is under contract and he’s not told them that they’re selling. So we’ve been assured that he’s going to be having that conversation in the next couple days or at the latest by March 1st. But I’m extending my timeline because now I don’t really know what the deal is going to be with the tenants moving out. And then also, there’s three manufactured homes on the property, I haven’t seen the inside of them. Our business plan works with even just demoing them out and putting completely new stuff in there. But it’s definitely of concern to me like, what’s the status of these and are they usable?

David:
All right, here’s the advice I’m going to give you moving forward. This is good for everyone to hear. Buyers make decisions on a certain path that we walk, okay? So we tend to go through a deal making a step and then evaluate a step and then evaluate. It’s kind of walking a path up a hill, right? You see something you don’t like, you either stop walking or you go back and say, “I don’t want the deal.” It’s not the same process for a seller. And you can easily make the stake when you’re a buyer of trying to look at the deal from the seller’s eyes and projecting your eyes onto theirs. Sellers, it’s more like falling down a cliff in a sense. They have a belay that stops how far the fall could go. Then that becomes a new baseline. They put a new belay in and then they might drop further. So originally they had a purchase price of what was it listed at? 950,000 was it?

Philip:
Well, it was listed at 1.3.

David:
Okay. So they had a ceiling of 1.3. Or maybe I shouldn’t say a ceiling. A floor. This is what I will accept. As time went by and they emotionally were worn down by no one buying the house, they would slowly accept, “Maybe I’ll get 1.2. Maybe I’ll be 1.1. Maybe it’ll be a million.” If you had written the offer at a million when they first put it on at 1.3, it would’ve been a hard no because their ceiling hadn’t dropped that far. But emotionally, that starts to change as time passes and it’s a terrible experience as a seller because you’re marinating in your own anxiety. It’s horrible. That’s what gets sellers to drop the price. So it got all the way down to where their ceiling hit 850,000, which they never thought they would do, but they got to a point of pain, okay? That is now the new floor. And it could go further down. I don’t want you to think that it can’t go further.
As new information is introduced, that comes with fear. So if you go to inspection reports and it’s like, “Oh, these three mobile homes are terrible. We need to do all this work to fix them up,” or I’m trying to remember what the other thing you said that concerned you. You remember what it was? The tenant’s not leaving, right?

Philip:
Yeah. Yeah.

David:
“Oh man, we might have to pay for an eviction. That’s going to cost 100 grand,” right? Whatever it is that you can give them information and say, “Well, we’re at 850,000, but it’s going to cost me 100 grand to fix this, I need a price reduction of 50 grand and another 25 grand off of closing costs or something to make up for this,” they’re now seeing that like that’s $25,000 more than what would’ve accepted at 750,000. All right? So I just want everybody listening to understand. As you go through the deal, sellers are just having these big drops, okay? It’s not like a buyer that’s sort of taking a bunch of little tiny steps moving forward. And understanding that will give you an advantage when it comes time to renegotiate.

Philip:
Yeah, I got similar advice because I was on the phone with my agent how to approach some of these issues this morning. We had a road guy going to the property that also does demo last week. He’s going to be getting me a bid tomorrow or in the next two days. It’s going to be at least probably 100 grand for the cleanup and the demo. And yeah, I decided I’m not going to say anything to the seller about concessions or anything until I have that bid in hand.

David:
There you go.

Philip:
That’s my next step.

David:
Give that first, create the fear. Now that there’s fear, maybe you take some time, make them wonder are you going to back out or are you going to stick with it? Let that anxiety do its thing, then come with your approach.

Rob:
Yeah. Yeah, and I think for everyone listening at home, this is a really good example of remembering that there are multiple finish lines to get to the end of a deal. You get your offer accepted and it sounds like you’re in a really great position here, Philip, but that’s just the first finish line. The negotiation isn’t over. The negotiation happens throughout the entire deal until you’re literally at the closing table signing. So with all that said, it sounds like you got really good advice from David here. But Philip, I’m curious for you, what homework or next steps would you assign yourself moving forward on this particular deal?

Philip:
Yeah, I think one of the things that’s made me feel so confident in how I’m moving forward honestly has been networking with other professionals. A huge benefit of being on the podcast, I’ve talked to so many incredible people. I actually have a meeting scheduled with somebody that their entire business model is that they help people with due diligence on land. We’re meeting on Monday. I have a foundation guide that’s going to see the property in the next couple days. All of these people have so much more knowledge in their area than I do. And really, I only feel confident moving forward as much as I do because they’re on my team. So yeah, just keep networking and keep getting advice from people that are smarter than me.

Rob:
Great. That’s great. And I also will say that the due diligence people that you talked about, it might be expensive, but I promise the cost of that is worth. Its weight in gold because they will help you so much. They’ll help you get through the process a lot faster than you could yourself.

Philip:
Awesome.

David:
All right. Thank you for that, Philip. Appreciate your update.
Wendy, last time we talked you had decided to house hack your Vegas property. Walk us through where we are with that.

Wendy:
Great. So I feel like I’ve gone two steps forward, one step back sometimes. And perhaps I’m not the only one that this happens to in real estate. I’m actually headed to Vegas tomorrow and I’m meeting with my realtor and I’m going to drive around town and we’re going to see a bunch of properties and we’re going to put the nail on the head as to what exactly is the criteria that we’re looking for. But what I started to realize was there’s a lot of beautiful houses in Vegas that are available for $500,000, even $450,000. But as I crunched the numbers and crunched the numbers, I really couldn’t make it work as a long-term rental, which is my backup plan. And then I saw this thing where it said, “This house is going to rent for $2,300.” Well, it was for sale for 500,000 and I thought, “Wait a minute, I’m doing this all wrong. Why would I even buy a house to begin with? Maybe I should just rent a house and then re-rent it out if I want to do it that way.”
So I’ve had to kind of pivot, if you will, a little bit to just figure out what’s really the criteria that makes a good investment for me. Living in the property, I could maybe break even, maybe make $400 or $500 a month extra, but I’m like, how much more time and effort am I spending to make that happen? And so I really just had to sit back and say, “What do I really want to do here and what’s my time worth?” And kind of figure out that model. So I’ve kind of scaled down the size of properties I’m looking for to maybe just buy an investment property there and put somebody in it and not house hack it. So I’m a little bit in a spin right now to be perfectly honest. I thought I was going down one path and I’m just midspin, unfortunately.

Rob:
Well, you may not be making the progress that you want to, but I do believe that you’re working through this the right way. You’re asking important questions. Because a lot of the times, people in your position, they’re so desperate to get in the deal that they’ll buy a bad deal. They won’t get in a good deal. And in some capacities, I think people will always figure out how to make it work. But I do think it’s a very smart thing to be cautious, right? If the numbers haven’t worked in any of the simulations or any of the modeling that you’ve put out there, then it’s probably a wise idea to reconsider it.
And then also evaluating your time and assigning a worth to that, I think that’s perfectly viable too. I still think you probably have other options. I mean, I know renting a home probably wasn’t super ideal, but that is a form of house hacking. I’ve known plenty of people that have rented a space and then they rented the other two rooms to completely subsidize their rent and then they didn’t pay rent anymore, right? Or they paid a very small amount. But at the end of the day, I think the faster you get out of renting or paying a mortgage, the more money you can save up to actually get into a property that you can probably make the numbers work on.

Wendy:
Yeah. So I think going forward, what I’m definitely looking at is still I want to use my money that I have and my W2 that I have to buy a primary residence that maybe has an ADU or something else I can Airbnb on the backside. And the question then becomes, where can I do this and have it be a good scenario? Southern California is a challenge. We all know that living here. But I did finally just reach out to somebody here to just say, “Help me gut check this. Is there any way I could buy something in Long Beach or San Pedro and Airbnb a back unit?” And we’ll see what the numbers come back on that for. But I would do that in Vegas in a heartbeat if I could find that kind of a property there, but it just doesn’t seem to exist.
On the house hacking in one house, I know people do it. I know people share houses, but it just seems even with the midterm rental folks that I talked to with Jesse Vasquez and all of them, their model really works great around a one bedroom condo or a studio apartment or a casita in the back. So if I don’t have that model, I’m just not as confident about going in gangbusters and spending a bunch of money doing it. And I feel frustrated because here we’re leading up to this podcast and everything is going so great and now as we’re like down the road, I’m like, “Wait a minute, wait a minute. Am I getting over my skis a little bit?” But I don’t know yet is the answer.

Rob:
David, you deal with this a lot, right? Because you are in the Bay Area, and so you’re always trying to help clients that are specifically looking for a property with some kind of rentable or house hackable aspect, right? How often are you finding success on the first, second or third try? Is it pretty common out there? What kind of advice do you think you could give to Wendy here? Because I know you’re sort of the pro at this.

David:
I think for Wendy, it wasn’t so much that she wasn’t going to find success on the first try. I think either your criteria changed a little bit, Wendy, or you just didn’t factor in some of the criteria in your search. So when you said I wanted as a backup plan to work up as a long-term rental, immediately almost all track housing is going to be out the window if it’s in a growing market. So you’re not going to find 1% rural stuff or something close to that in the single family residential space with one unit to rent track houses that can’t be modified in a hot market. When I say hot market, I just mean a more expensive than average market. Not the Midwest, right? You might be able to find something like that in a market that isn’t experiencing as much growth, where you could buy a property for 210,000, maybe it rents for 1,700 a month. So it could work as a long-term rental, but then you have the option to go short-term rental and actually get more profit.
Most markets where we’re seeing a lot of growth, you can’t just use that traditional long-term rental model almost at all. If you had just said, “I want to buy a long-term rental in Vegas,” I would’ve said don’t. You can only do that with small multi-family. You’re not going to be able to do it with a residential house. So I don’t know that you did something wrong other than we just probably didn’t measure this up well enough before you went into the market that you wanted it to work as a backup also. So I think for you, it’s going to be some clarity, like do I want a short-term rental? Do I want a house act? And then does it also have to be something that as a backup plan would work as a traditional rental? If so, you got to pick a different market. You’re just going to have to go to a lower price point where the price rent ratios are going to work out.
That doesn’t happen as often in our market because people don’t have that backup plan. It needs to be a long-term rental. They’re just going to live in it, right? Like backup plan is, it will be cheaper than if I had to pay rent living somewhere else. And then they sort of put the odds in their favor where they wait until they live in the house for a couple years and then as rent increases, eventually it is something that they can use a long-term rental if that’s what they want to do. Or they buy a house that has more than one unit. That’s the other shortcut, is if you can get a property with two ADUs or a property where you convert the garage and then also have an ADU now, it does work as a long-term rental because you got income coming from more than just the one space. Does that make sense?

Wendy:
Yeah. You said something really important there. Maybe it’s I’m taking insights from this realtor that I’ve chosen in Vegas and they have a very specific criteria that they will only recommend to their clients, which are in certain areas that are primarily these track homes. Maybe I should not necessarily take their advice and I should go into some of those areas where there are beautiful places that I could do so much more with than these track homes. And so maybe that’s something for me to look at while I’m out there.

David:
Track homes really do limit your creativity with real estate. And I probably should explain why. When a new home is built within a subdivision and all the neighbors are really close to each other, first off, neighbors don’t love investors. So when you got houses smashed up against each other like most track houses are you’re begging for complaints. There’s also going to be parking issues because everyone’s trying to share the same parking spaces. But more than that, they’re built with a really cool flowing floor plan that works for a family. It is very difficult to create separate units out of that one big structure. It’s what I found. It’s almost impossible because most of them are two-story houses that have a separate entrance into the second story.
Now, when you buy houses that are older, they’re on a hill, maybe they’re 1,100 square feet when they were built in the ’40s and then in the last 70, 80 years, they’ve added on several times to the house, the way they added on make it very easy to create separate units out of those homes. Track homes tend to be newer because it’s like a new way of building houses. So that’s why we’re saying you’re limited when you’re looking for that. But that is what most agents are going to be used to selling because that’s what most home buyers are wanting. So I don’t know that you made a mistake here. I think you learned something because you took action.

Wendy:
Understood.

David:
You probably wouldn’t have got to the point that you would’ve realized, “Vegas won’t work if I want to cover my bases with this backup plan” if you hadn’t have taken some steps moving forward. So you walk down the path, you hit the dead end, you’re going to go back, you’re going to find another path arm with the new knowledge. Rob, what say you?

Rob:
Yeah, I would say looking back at your 90-day journey, you’ve made a lot of progress. Just because you’re not in a deal does not mean you haven’t progressed, right? We’ve figured out what you don’t want. We’ve figured out what won’t work. We’ve examined your professional path and what you want out of that. And even though you’re not in a deal now, I just feel like you at least have the clarity on, “Okay, this stuff’s not going to work.” Now move that over to the side and continue down a path of figuring out what other markets can work for you. So I don’t want you to feel bad that you’re not in a deal, because I think you’ve gotten a lot more out of this than you probably realize.

Wendy:
I’m sure. I have gotten a lot out of it. I’ve lost a lot of sleep, but I’ve gotten a lot out of it.

Rob:
And that’s how it should be. So with all of that said, Wendy, as you sort of examine where you’re at and you’re moving forward down your path, what next steps or homework would you assign yourself to get you a little bit closer to that full clarity that you’re looking for?

Wendy:
Yeah. I really think I probably need to do a little bit more networking than I’ve been doing, which of course takes time, but I need to step outside of my Zoom zones and really just go to some more meetups and meet some people and see where people are investing and what’s moving the needle for them today. I feel like I need to increase my access to people like that.

Rob:
Yeah Yeah.

Wendy:
So that’s one thing I definitely want to do.

Rob:
I think it’s great. And that’s even something that Philip talked about too, right? He’s like, “I just need to talk to more people that are kind of higher level, a little bit more advanced.” And that has opened up some doors for him too. So I think that’s going to work great for you.

Wendy:
And I’m going to continue down the mid rental or midterm rental path. I’m going to go to that conference they have in a couple of months. I’m not throwing that baby out with the bathwater. I just got to keep crunching some numbers. I am going to be in Vegas for the next several days and I’m going to look there while I’m there and just see if there’s something I can find or an angle that works. Maybe not necessarily a property, but narrow down my criteria so I’m not just crunching numbers for four hours every night and saying no to every deal that comes past.

Rob:
Awesome. Well, I think you’re taking action. You’re going down to the Mid-Term Rental conference. You’re in Vegas right now looking at properties. You’re talking to people that can help you on this journey. So I think you’re going to get a lot of that out of that too. We’re going to be following along, and I just wanted to thank you for your time and for taking this journey with us as well.

Wendy:
Absolutely. It’s been awesome.

David:
Last piece of advice for you, Wendy, before we go on to Danny. Never be discouraged by a lack of results. Only get discouraged when there is a lack of progress or pattern recognition, okay? You never know when you’re going to hit that finish line that Rob talked about. You may take the wrong path nine times, hit a dead end, come back, but now you know the wrong nine paths, and then the next path you take will be the right one, and you’ll have an advantage over everybody else.
Some people get lucky and they hit the right path on the first try, and then they assume this is how real estate investing works. And then they take the next nine paths for all the wrong ones, and they lose a lot of money because they made those mistakes. So as long as you are recognizing patterns in what you did, like you said, “This is not the right realtor, this is not the right type of property, this might not be the right market,” you are making progress, okay?

Wendy:
Mm-hmm.

David:
Don’t just measure how many deals you close as the only result that you’re measuring.

Wendy:
All right. Good advice.

Rob:
Awesome. Okay, Danny Zabata. Zapata.

Danny:
Zapata.

Rob:
Last time we talked, you were about to make some aggressive offers on some multi-family buildings and maybe even following my strategy of making some offensive offers that might just get you a no right out the gate. Walk us through some of the updates on your end.

Danny:
Yeah. So I did wind up making some offensive offers because honestly what I’m looking out there, that’s what works for me. So I kind of approached this from what’s the price that I needed to be at in order to do this deal versus how do I get to the seller’s asking price, because I think that’s kind of a mindset that I’ve had early on. So I made two offers. One’s an eight-plex in North Oak Park. It’s been sitting for several months. It was listed for 1.9 million. I offered 1.05 million, which is a very aggressive offer. But they did respond it. It wasn’t an outre known necessarily, but they did kind of come back with their limits. So they said, “We can’t take anything under 1.7 million. The sellers looking to get into the next property, and that’s what they need. So that’s kind of where we’re at there. We’ll let it sit for a little bit longer.” It has been sitting for a while and continue that conversation.
Another property that I put an offer in was a 12-plex in Southland Park area of Sacramento. That one’s a little newer listing. Started listing in the beginning in January for 2.9 million. Offered a less offensive offer of 2.25 million, but they seem to be more offended than the previous offer. So they were just like, “Hey, we’re not even going to look at your offer. We haven’t been responding to anything under list. Basically, go away.” But I still plan to follow up on there and kind of follow the progress because that one in particular, I like the area the most out of the two. I feel like it has the most long-term potential and just have a nice stable asset. So yeah, that’s kind of where I’m at, and just continuing to follow up every couple weeks and looking for more opportunities to make offers.

David:
All right. So a couple things to highlight here. I have this analogy that I call the pickle jar that I tell a lot of our clients. You know how sometimes you’ll be trying really hard to open a pickle jar and you can’t get it, and then the next person tries, it pops right off? What do we always say when that happens?

Rob:
“Oh, I loosened it for you.”

David:
I loosened it for you. Exactly. “You’re not stronger than me.” A lot of the times I will step in and I’ll get a deal at a really good price, but I don’t know how many Danny Zapatas came before me and loosened that pickle jar. So they wanted 2 million, you wrote it at a million. They start thinking in their head, “Maybe it’s not worth 2 million. I’d be lucky if I could get 1.3.” And then I come in with 1.32 and they’re like, “Yeah, I’ll take it.” And I’m like, “Well, I’m such a great investor, I got a great deal.” But I don’t know everything that happened before I walked into that scenario, right? So the moral of the story here is you want to get the pickle from your own labors. You want to follow up with these people every so often so someone else doesn’t step in and steal your pickle, right? You’re grabbing the marks on your hand and your forearms are all swollen even wrestling with this pickle jar. You don’t want someone to come in and take it. So don’t forget to keep following up.
As the sellers are wrestling with their anxiety as rates are going up and their property isn’t selling, and doom and gloom is starting to happen more and more on the news, you never know when they’re going to hit that point where they might say, “Hey, you know what? This other opportunity passed us up. We’re going to make so much money on it. If we lose money on this one, that’s okay because I need to move the equity from this one to this one.”

Rob:
That’s going to be a good Instagram reel right there. I already know it.

David:
Protect your pickle.

Rob:
Protect your pickle. But it’s very true. I mean, I think in real estate it is all timing, right? And so you could be the one that capitalizes on the timing if you keep following up. But David’s totally right, man. You could have offended them. They’re going to get offended five more times. And if you’re not following up consistently, someone else is going to come and offend them less and that’s the offer that’s going to get accepted. So you definitely want to make sure that you’re checking in and saying like, “Hey, I know this deal didn’t work before. I know this offer didn’t work before. I’m curious, what have you been hearing? Is there a way to make this deal work? I’d love this property still and I’d love to talk about this a little bit more with you.” So I think getting in there, talking to them.
But Danny, I got to say, man, I think it feels from just the first episode, it feels like you hit your groove, man. You found it. You just seem a lot more confident kind of talking through this. So I am wanting to know when you put these offer in, what did it feel like? Was it scary? Was it a relief? Was it a relief to hear a no? How was that all for you during that process?

Danny:
Yeah, I think you called me out correctly in the last episode about having to make that first offer and kind of rip that bandaid off. It still felt really challenging to go and do it. I did hesitate a little bit, but I kind of had you sitting on my shoulder, talking in my ear, “You got to make that first offer.” So it felt liberating and just kind of really good to get that out there. I think along with utilizing David’s advice around just generally talking to more people and being more comfortable, I think putting those two things together have kind of resulted in what you see today. So yeah, I do like it. Once you make those first offer or second offer, it does feel like it’s starting to snowball and just getting more comfortable doing that.

Rob:
Yeah. So looking ahead, as you kind of walk down your path here, I know we’re at the 90 days, but what homework and what next steps would you assign yourself as you kind of go on to your next 90 days?

Danny:
Yeah. So go… 90 days flies really fast, by the way. But the homework, key is to keep making those offers and keep the momentum going. Additionally, I’m finding as I’m collecting more data over the months, there isn’t a lot ton of properties that fit this buy box, this 10 to 20 multi-family buy box. So now I’m thinking as I’m kind of churning through the existing inventory, what else do I need to do next? So I think about two things. I think are there ways to create more opportunities, things that are not necessarily listed, things that I learned from the single family and the small multifamily world where you couldn’t go bird dogging or talking to people that have properties that may not be up for sale now and just continuing having conversations with them and seeing where there’s opportunities to go and put offers in or say, “Hey, are you looking to sell? If you’re ever looking to sell, give me a call”?
And then the other part of it is being realistic and reevaluating that buy box every once in a while. So as I mentioned, there’s a limited set of properties out there today. So is that pool big enough to continue down this path or should I extend that box a little bit? In the beginning, I think the first episode, Rob, you had talked about you kind of pushed on me, “Is this really where you want to be? Have you thought about other things?” So I am not necessarily changing my buy box, but I feel like I’m open to expanding a little bit more. So instead of that one 10 to 20 unit, are there opportunities for a couple of eight-plexes? Are there different ways that I can look at it and make that similar numbers or similar goals work, just kind of approaching it from a different way.

Rob:
That’s good, man. The more you open that buy box, the more of those opportunities will start falling in you up. Things that you probably had in front of you the whole time that now you’re just like, “Ooh, that actually seems like a cooler deal than I remember.” I think that kind of stuff will start coming across your desk more. David, what about you? You got any final words here to send Danny off on his next 90 days, if you will?

David:
You know, as I’m listening to you talk about your struggle, it’s a very common one where you have set personal goals, okay? “I want this many properties by this much time with this much cash flow and I’m willing to do the work to get there.” What I realized as you were talking is oftentimes real estate does not line up with our personal goals. What the market’s doing can sometimes be working against you. So imagine that you’re in a river and there’s no current at all. You got to swim really hard to get where you want to go. Well, sometimes the current goes with you and it makes it much easier. This current of real estate flows with you. It flows fast, it flows slow. And sometimes it flows against you and you’re swimming against the current, which is kind of the case of where we are right now.
You can’t get discouraged when real estate doesn’t line up with all our personal goals. It’s not completely independent like other things would be that we have complete control over maybe our fitness. We control what we put in our mouth, we control how often we work out. You’ve got a situation with real estate where the market’s tough, not a lot of deals are working out, but there’s not much inventory either. So we’re in this stalemate where deals don’t work, but there’s not so much inventory out there the sellers have to drop their price. The current is flowing in your face and you’re having to swim against it. It is not uncommon to bust your butt swimming and become a really good swimmer and think you’re getting nowhere. And then the minute the market shifts and the currents behind you, you’re flying past everyone else, okay? So it is not a linear progression. It comes in these short spurts where you can get a ton of good deals and make a lot of money, and then sometimes longer marathons where you’re not really making as much progress and it can be discouraging.
So don’t get caught up by the people that bought a bunch of houses between 2010 and 2013 and they crushed it and you’re like, “Well, how come I can’t go do that?” It was a different market. And don’t be discouraged when you’re out there networking and analyzing deals and riding low offers and learning about real estate, but you’re not getting anything under contract. You are still getting stronger. You’re improving your ability to swim and it will turn around, but you’re not in control of when that happens. All you’re in control of is the action you take, the attitude that we bring, and the level of commitment that we have. So you kind of have to trust the process over the long term and fight those feelings of like, “Why am I even trying?” Because Rob can attest, when it turns around, it can turn around so fast.

Danny:
Absolutely. You don’t want to be in that zone where you give up too easily. And that’s kind of where I’ve also been thinking about like, “Hey, I’ve tried a couple things, should I go shift to something else?” I think there’s a balance there of trying enough or putting in your best effort and making sure that you’re staying consistent and not just giving up and jumping to the next shiny object. And I’m very aware of that.

David:
Yeah, 100%. Great attitude. All right. Well thank you for that, Danny. Let’s bring the rest of the group back in. If you guys could come back and I’m going to hand it over to Rob.

Rob:
All right. So looking back on where you were 90 days ago, would you say that your goals have changed since then? Wendy, I’d like to start with you because I know that you’ve shifted a few times on some of the strategies, but how have your goals changed since the beginning of this journey?

Wendy:
Right. So one of the goals that I’d outlined initially was around my career and moving more into something real estate oriented. I think I was able to get some clarity through guidance by you guys and just really starting to put to think through it that I’m going to stay in my career doing what I’m doing as a marketing professional because I know it, I’m good at it, people pay me well to do it. And until I’m at the point where I’m doing something in real estate that a job kind of comes to me, I’m not going to go try to be a loan processor or go try to be a syndicator. If something works in what I’m doing, whether I’m doing short-term rentals for myself and then I decide to take that on, that would be the better career path for me that I could get into it that way. But in the meantime, kind of stay on the sidelines.
But all that being said, as David said I think in week two, it’s like it’s really tough out there to just be a real estate investor. You’re going to run out of money at some point. So what’s my next move there? Considering I’ve got nine houses that are turnkey now, and those bring in some income to me, the next step was to invest some more of my own money or find partners to do something else. And so the goal that I had there was to find a house that I could live in, maybe have an ADU, maybe house hack it. I’ve honed what I want a little bit on that. This is a good time for me in my career and the timing in my life for me to buy something that allows me to do that.
And so my goals haven’t changed, but I think I’ve done a lot of work to hone what that should look like. First, I think we talked about me moving into my Colorado property next year. I could still do that, but I think now’s the time for me to buy something else and turn that into it. So those goals haven’t really changed, but I’ve honed them a lot more just through your tutelage.

Rob:
Yeah. Yeah, totally.

David:
Well, thank you for that, Wendy. Philip, how about you?

Philip:
Yeah, I think some of the feedback that you were giving Danny about just following up and not being afraid to submitting an offer that the you’re told is ridiculous or offensive, I think those were things that I had a certain self consciousness about and I just kind of was like, “All right, I’m going to trust these guys. They have more experience than me.” And it definitely worked in my favor to just put the number that works for me. And if they tell me to go away, fine, but I’m going to come back in a week.
And so yeah, my original goal was to get the retreat center under contract. That’s something that we have right now. And sort of a little different from Wendy, I’m finding so many people that want to help with the vision that I have. And honestly, I’m running out of bandwidth with the number of things that I’m doing with my career and with responsibilities that I have with my family. When this comes out, I’m getting married two weeks after this episode releases. So my bandwidth is super thin and really the most important thing is the retreat center and locking that up in a good way. And yeah, I think just focusing on that is going to really pay dividends.

David:
What would you say would be your biggest win that you’ve experienced throughout this process?

Philip:
Yeah, I mean, the way that my network has been growing has been so cool. I have talked to so many people that have a lot more experience in me, certain people that have capital and they’re interested in investing. But really just feeling confident moving forward with the land and the retreat center that is still… We haven’t closed yet, so I’m not going to check that off, I’ve completed it or something like that. But it’s going to get done. So I’m really excited about that. I feel great about it.

Rob:
Well, it gives you hope, right? I know you said that you’re not through the deal yet, but sometimes hope is a win because at the beginning of all of this, you’re going roadblock against roadblock. You don’t know things, you don’t know how to maneuver it, and it can be very discouraging. But getting something in contract is like, “Wow, things are shaping up for me. And even if it doesn’t work this time, at least I have this one win to give me hope for the next time that I go under contract.” So that’s huge, man. Thanks for sharing.

Philip:
Thank you.

Rob:
Danny, what about you? How has your thinking changed over the last 90 days and what about your actions?

Danny:
Yeah, so my thinking has changed. I think I can categorize it as moving from more of a bookworm mindset to more of a networking mindset where I’ve always been somebody to really necessarily analysis-paralysis, but dig deep and learn a as much as I could about things. I felt like in the beginning that kind of limited me to taking action. So just being able to shift from that, constantly sharpen your ax and taking that big swing to finding a balance where, “Okay, I think the ax is sharp enough. Now I need to move on to the next thing. I need to build up this network. I need to talk to more people. I need to go take some action and put those offers in.” I think that mindset is the biggest shift for me.
I guess for my actions, similar to Phillip, these 90 days when you’re adding these kind of goals on top of your daily life and all the things that you have going on, it’s really forced me to prioritize what’s important and figure out ways instead of being crushed under the pressure, figure out ways to make sure I can get these done. How do I get these things done? From our last podcast, making the most of my in-between time, figuring out what are the highest and best value things I can do with my time and what needs to get done, but I don’t necessarily have to do them. So I’ve engaged virtual assistant and leveraging my partners more have really given me the opportunity to open up and spend more time on what I think is the most important things.

David:
Success is a function of who we become, not just what we do, right? Now, we often say taking action is required to have success, but that’s because taking action improves who you are. And then as who you are improves, success finds you. That’s one of my favorite things I’ve found about your journey here, Danny, is you’ve embraced the fact that parts of you need to improve or parts of you need to change and become more flexible. You have embraced networking. You’re writing offensive offers that you never would’ve wanted to do. You’re putting yourself in these uncomfortable situations knowing that that’s going to help. And it’s not only going to help you with real estate investing, it’s not only going to help you with growing your wealth. Your overall life, your relationships, your friendships, lots of other things benefit when we do step out of that comfort zone and find improvement. So I just want to commend you on taking that step.
Really you, Philip and Wendy, all of you who have come on here and admitted, “I made mistakes, I did things wrong. I looked into something I never thought I would do. I took this action and I didn’t get the result that I was wanting,” but you are closer to becoming the person that as is going to get it. I know for you, Philip, congratulations on your upcoming wedding. This is going to make you a better husband. It’s going to make you a better partner. Hopefully, that’s going to rub off on your partner and they’re going to want to sort of jump in line with it and do things that are outside of their comfort zone, get more focused. Like Danny was just saying, focus on where time can be better spent. All of us become better versions of ourselves when we commit to this process. So I’m proud of all you guys.

Danny:
Thank you very much. This has been a lifelong dream mark. I can’t say a lifelong. I can’t literally say lifelong, but kind of when I started this journey, being on BiggerPockets was one of those goals that I thought was several years away. So thank you very much.

Rob:
Awesome, man. Well, thank you guys. We really do appreciate all the vulnerability and just checking in with us and staying to it and actually coming back with homework and the assignments that you completed. You get out what you put into this kind of thing, right? I’ve seen so much of what y’all have put into this, so I’m excited to see and keep up with y’all over the next 90 days and see how things change. If people want to learn more about you, if they want to get in touch, if they want to find you online, where can people get in touch and follow along with your journey? Danny, I’ll start with you.

Danny:
So Instagram, I just started Investor on Fire Instagram account and posting a few things there. I’m learning. As I’m going through this process, I want to start uploading more reels and kind of putting more of that out there.

Rob:
Awesome, man. Investor on Fire on Instagram. Wendy, what about you?

Wendy:
I’m wendysc_invests on Instagram. You can also find me on LinkedIn at Wendy St. Clair. A lot of people have found me there. I’m not as active on Instagram as so many other people are in the world of real estate, but I’m going to try to get a little bit better at it. wendysc_invests.

Rob:
Okay, awesome. And Philip, what about you, man?

Philip:
Yeah. So on Instagram and LinkedIn, I’m the_educated_investor. I have a podcast called The Educated Investor where I interview incredible people in the real estate and entrepreneurs and find out how they did it. And I have a website, educatedinvest.com where I have all my podcasts and all the good stuff.

Rob:
Okay, awesome man. Educated_. Give us the Instagram handle one more time.

Philip:
[inaudible 00:44:57] too complicated. The_Educated_investor with underscores in between them.

Rob:
Okay, cool.

Philip:
You can see a picture of my shining face.

Rob:
Great. And then David, what about you man? Where can people learn more about you?

David:
You can go to the_agent_BiggerPockets_flipper_buyandhold_mediumtermrental_bald_wealth builder. Just kidding. No, you can just go to my website. It’s just been remade, davidgreene24.com. You can see all the stuff I got going on. And then if you want to follow me on YouTube or any of the social media stuff, I’m @davidgreene24. It’s kind of the opposite of Philip. At least his handle makes sense, you know what it is. You see mine, you’re like, “What is DavidGreene24? Is this a diner that he owns? Does he think he’s Kobe Bryant? Is he saying that he works 24 hours a day?” It’s very confusing and frankly, I don’t blame people for being confused. Rob, how about you?

Rob:
You can find me over at www.If this was a good episode and it inspired you to take action, please consider leaving us a five star review on the Apple Podcasts platform or wherever else you download your podcasts.com. I know it’s really long, but everything else was taken. So yeah, if this inspired you to take action and get started or optimize or scale your real estate journey, leave us a five star review and thank our awesome guest mentees here in the review.

David:
Absolutely. Thanks again to all of you for doing this. And thank you listeners for following along on the journey. We hope you’ve been inspired, that you’ve learned something. And please reach out to all of our guests and just tell them thank you for being transparent and vulnerable and signing up for this. It’s not always easy or fun to be in the spotlight, but they are willing to do it because we care about all of you and trying to give you best experience and the best show possible that we can. This is David Greene for Rob www.abasolo signing off.