Keith welcomes back Todd Drowlette, star of A&E's The Real Estate Commission, to help demystify commercial real estate for residential investors.

They explore which sectors are most resilient to disruption from AI, automation, and Amazon, why certain office and warehouse assets still work, and how service-based retail like nail salons and quick-service restaurants can offer durable returns.

Todd breaks down the basics and advantages of triple net (NNN) leases, key considerations in office-to-residential conversions, and how rising interest rates are reshaping commercial deals.

He also shares negotiation tactics from large commercial transactions that investors can immediately apply to their next rental property purchase.

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Complete episode transcript:

Keith Weinhold 0:01

Welcome to GRE. I'm your host Keith Weinhold. We're talking with the star of the A&E show, the Real Estate Commission today. What real estate sectors are safe from AI, robots, and Amazon disruption? How many deals on the commercial side are still going to implode due to mortgage rates resetting higher? And some of the best negotiation techniques from $100 million deals that you can use in your own deals, and more today on Get Rich Education. You know, Mid South Homebuyers, that top Memphis turnkey provider. I learned that a secret weapon behind their explosive growth is more than just you buying their properties. It's an executive coach. For nine years now, their CEO Terry Kerr and his COO Pat Nix have worked privately with a coach who I've now learned from too, and he doesn't market himself online anywhere. After 12 years behind the scenes, that coach is now making himself available exclusively for GRE listeners, his name is Daniel Thomas Hind. If you're a hard-charging business owner or investor who wants to get in the best shape of your life, physically, mentally, and professionally, you can fill out an application for a free consult. This is private one-on-one coaching for those willing to go to uncommon lengths to achieve uncommon results. Thanks to Daniel, we've all become better leaders, better operators, and better men. It started by showing up for ourselves. Now it's your turn. Go to DanielThomashHind.com. H-I-N-D. That's DanielThomashHind.com and sign up before spots fill. What if you got your mortgage loans the same place I get mine? You sure can at Ridge Lending Group NMLS 42056 They provided GRE listeners with more loans than anyone because Ridge specializes in investment property. They'll help you build a long-term plan for growing your real estate empire with leverage. Start your prequal and even chat directly with President Caeli Ridge. While it's on your mind, start at ridgelendinggroup.com. That's ridgelendinggroup.com.

Speaker 1 2:19

You're listening to the show that has created more financial freedom than nearly any show in the world. This is Get Rich Education.

Keith Weinhold 2:35

Welcome to GRE from Peoria, Illinois to Peoria, Arizona, and across 188 world nations. I'm Keith Weinhold, and you're listening to Get Rich Education. Though we're a show centered on how to build wealth through residential real estate investing, today we're talking mostly about the commercial side with a guest that's more comfortable investing in commercial real estate than he is residential. We'll learn why. He is the star of the new real estate show called the Real Estate Commission that airs on A&E Network. Todd Drowlette, because he was here with us last year shortly before the show debuted, and he had so many interesting things to tell us then. That's why he's back. Now we know that residential real estate is positioned well at surviving the boom in artificial intelligence's influence because everybody still needs a place to live. You can't download a kitchen or living room, and a chatbot can't replace a roof. But some types of commercial real estate are vulnerable to AI. I'm going to ask Todd which types and businesses are the most resilient to survive AI, robots, and Amazon, because there surely are some. He does a good job of making commercial real estate approachable to those that have never invested in it before.

Keith Weinhold 3:59

Contrary to the narrative, he also likes to talk about why office real estate is not dead. Occupying both worlds, I will ask him about office to residential conversions and also get his take on what is happening with commercial loans because apartment investors have been feeling the pain ever since mortgage rates doubled and nearly tripled in 2022. I'll ask about commercial loans blowing up and just how much more of that is expected to happen because the pain is certainly not over there. Let's meet this week's guest. A series on A and E Television and streaming launched last year called The Real Estate Commission, and it's going well enough that it's gearing up for season two. The star of that show is with us today. He was with us last year just before the show debuted, and that's when he shared all kinds of interesting insights with us, like why. A gas station is on a certain side of the road. He's perhaps the most prolific commercial real estate broker in the nation. He's managing director at Titan Commercial Realty Group in New York, closing deals totaling over $2 billion all across commercial real estate sectors. He's represented everyone from local startups to national reits. Hey, welcome back to Get Rich Education, Todd Drowlette.

Todd Drowlette 5:26

Thank you so much for having me back. I appreciate it. It's always great to talk to you.

Keith Weinhold 5:30

Yeah, same. It was so interesting when you were here last year, and I do want to ask you about how it's going with the A and E show later. Most of our listeners own single family rentals or small multifamily, and I think the commercial side, Todd. Frankly, it it intimidates some people. I know I've thought of it that way before. What are some of the misconceptions that the residential side seems to have about the commercial side?

Todd Drowlette 5:56

So a big misconception is that you have to be smart to do it. You certainly do not. A lot of people also think you have to already be a multimillionaire to do it, right? So the same way with residential, there's levels to it. There's levels to commercial real estate. So I say there's pros and cons, right? So in commercial real estate, if you have an office building or a shopping center or a ground lease, you rent to a McDonald's, whatever. You don't get phone calls at two in the morning saying my hot water tank just exploded, my furnace isn't working. So you still get property management calls, but they're typically from you know Monday through Friday, nine to five type of thing, and you don't need millions of dollars. People think you do. It's like you can buy a small two or three tenant office building or a two or three tenant retail shopping center, maybe something has a nail salon, hair salon in it. Depending on the market you're in, that could be a couple $100,000 to buy. If you're in a tertiary town in the United States, if you're in a major metro, it could be a million, 2 million bucks. But the rent is commiserate with what you're paying. So if you can make an 8 or 10% return, a lot of banks will finance startup people as long they're looking in commercial at the quality of the tenant and what the lease is. So you could have no experience, but if you're going to rent to a Hertz rental car, a Starbucks, a McDonald's, even if you personally have like say a 750 credit score, it's decent. It's not a perfect credit score, but you're financeable. They're lending in commercial real estate based on the credit and the length of the leases, not necessarily on your own financials. And a lot of people don't realize that, and they think, "Oh, bank's never going to approve me because I've never done commercial real estate before. Well, nobody's ever done anything until they do it, right? So as long as you start small, banks will lend to people, you know, on smaller things, there's a ton of pros to being in commercial real estate compared to residential. There's less competition. It's easier to repeat deals because once you know one tenant's looking for something, then you can find the next thing they're looking for, and it's a small knit group. You know, if there's 3 million real estate agents in the United States, I would say across the entire country, maybe 10,000 of us are commercial real estate agents.

Keith Weinhold 8:05

Yeah.

Todd Drowlette 8:06

So if you get into commercial, once you get into that network of people with a deal with the tenants and the whatever, you know, if you're in, you're in. If you're out, you're out. That was a very long answer to a very short question.

Keith Weinhold 8:16

Well, some people even have one of the same hangups about residential real estate investing-they think just to buy income property takes an awful lot of money, not realizing you can start with a single-family home of less than 300k or even less than 200k still today and make a small down payment on it. And you know, Todd, I think one thing that refines commercial real estate for some people and piques interest among residential investors is one of the first things that they learn when they're finding out about commercial real estate investing is the triple net lease. Oftentimes, you see that abbreviated NNN out there, and how that can make things somewhat more hands off for that commercial real estate investor. So, can you tell us about triple net leases?

Todd Drowlette 9:00

I sure can. Number one, the funny thing about triple net leases: none of the three things the N's represent start with an N. So your triple nets are literally your real estate taxes, your insurance, and your commonary maintenance. None of which start with an N. Yet it's called N N N.

Keith Weinhold 9:14

It's kind of like reading, writing, and arithmetic. The 3r is what only one of them starts with an R. It's a terrible acronym, but yes.

Todd Drowlette 9:22

Exactly. So there's different types of triple net properties. So essentially, a triple net property, unlike most residential, where you're responsible, you get X amount of rent, and then out of that rent for your income, you're going to subtract out your school tax, your property tax, your property insurance, liability insurance, you know, snow plowing, lawn mowing, all that type of stuff, right? So triple net properties, you have absolute net properties, which is the best thing you can own from a landlord's perspective. Those are things that are called absolute ground leases or an absolute net lease. Typically, you'll see those in like many gas stations. Will be that a lot of McDonald's. Deals are that where essentially you own a piece of property, you buy a piece of property, and you go here. You have X amount of time to put your building up, do construction, get your approvals. You're going to pay me X per month in a ground rent. You build your own building, you own your own building, you're responsible for it, and I just own the dirt. And those are typically 10 to 20 year leases with options. The downside of a triple net ground lease is you can't depreciate anything because it's just ground, right? So you don't get the depreciation you get with other properties, but you have no risk other than the credit of the tenant. So if you're signing a lease with the United States Postal Service and it's the federal government, you know you're getting that. Those will trade typically about one percentage point higher than U.S. Treasuries because there's very, very little risk in it. But there is some risk, so as an investor, you need a little bit better return than the guarantee of a U.S. Treasury.

Todd Drowlette 10:54

Then you have roof and structure triple net properties, where basically, okay, the roof and the structure I'm responsible for as the landlord. Anything inside of that, or you're responsible for, and then the tenants pay the proportionate share of, like I said, the taxes, the snow plowing, whatever. If that's a multi-tenant building, then you run the risk. Oh, tenant moves out as the landlord, you got to pick up that percentage. If if you have a 10,000 foot building and someone's in 2000 feet and they move out, well, now you're responsible for 20% of that tax and CAM and insurance bill until you replace it with a new tenant. But typically, if you're investing in small strip centers, smaller office buildings, which people say office is dead, I've made a fortune in office. Office is not dead. You just have to own the right office in the right place. A lot of downtown offices are dead, where they're moving to the suburbs for drugs and a lot of other issues. But typically, you know, strip centers today, people are buying those for 8% returns to as much as 10, 12% and a lot of times they're vacancy. That's upside you can add into it as well. But again, these are all things that you can get into for a couple $100,000 down, and there's way more room for error than people think there is. As long as you have a professional that's looking at the lease for you before you buy it, you know you just want to make sure the guarantee is on the lease that you have corporate guarantees. But typically, if a bank will finance it, they're also looking at that. But it's not as scary as people think it is, and it's really a strong alternative to investing in single-family homes. Not that I'm knocking single-family homes. There's pros and cons to literally everything you do in life, as you know. 100.

Keith Weinhold 12:28

A triple net lease, where in commercial property the tenant covers three main expenses or nets: property taxes, insurance, and the maintenance and repairs. And in a lot of the situations, like Todd is describing, that really leaves landlords responsible for little more than the mortgage, really increasing the passivity here. And you know, tenants that are willing to shoulder a triple net lease, I don't think of them as taking on those extra costs for nothing. I think about it is in exchange, tenants typically pay lower rent then, and the tenant also gets more control over the property in a triple net arrangement.

Todd Drowlette 13:08

That's a generally safe thing to say, but I hate saying this. I can't believe I'm even saying this, but you know they say location, location, location. So it really depends on the market. The biggest mistake people make to go, oh, I get asked all the time, should I invest in land? I'm like, hell no, raw land. I go when I develop stuff, I have a use for it. Once I get the approvals, then I'll close and buy the land. Land banking stuff and just going and buying land and hoping it goes up in value. I have a number one rule that I always say to people, and it's anytime you can buy $1 for 50 cents, you buy it, but you don't buy property for $1 hoping it goes to $2 because there's no guarantee that that'll happen. In raw land, you know you have a guaranteed. You're paying taxes every year, so just paying taxes on something that's also not returning you anything is a terrible investment, in my opinion. You're speculating. If you want to speculate, just go to the casino, play roulette, pick black or red, and you have roughly a 50-50 shop minus the three greens, but there's a lot easier ways to make money than buying raw land. But shopping centers, triple net properties, there's definitely ways for people to get into that that are much lower risk, and they're not as scary as you'd think. And many banks will finance them.

Keith Weinhold 14:18

Now, if you had to buy one commercial asset today, what would that be? I know that might depend on some factors, but generally, I've got to say, industrial comes to mind for me as one of the hottest commercial real estate asset classes in quite a while.

Todd Drowlette 14:32

So I would pick two strategies. One would be high bay warehouse, whether it's specifically industrial or just warehouse, but things with high ceilings, open floor plans, like you know, a 20,000 foot warehouse, 30,000 feet, something in that range, that a lot of people want that type of use. Warehouse rents have been increasing way faster than office or retail rents have been in the same markets. And as things get more and more automated, you still need to ship stuff. You still need to. Stuff you still need to get things to people's houses, so with the whole AI boom and the crazy things that are happening, I think there's going to be a lot fewer people with jobs sooner than people realize. But I do think the warehouse is a good thing to be invested in, especially if it's on main streets. It could be retail, could be warehouse, could be whatever. The second thing I'll say that's very low risk are any businesses that Amazon can't compete with you for. So, a small strip center that's two or three tenants, that's a hair salon, a nail salon, service type business, retail tenants, because it's a turnover business. So, like nail salons, they're never going to come to your house and do your nails unless you're a billionaire, because they can make more money with people coming to them in back-to-back appointments. So any type of service business tenant that you can have, and typically nail salons, hair salons, they don't usually go out completely. Usually, if they don't want to do it anymore, they'll sell the business to somebody else, and you keep a tenant. From an ownership standpoint, there's very low turnover and having to pay new brokerage fees or do give tenant fit-ups or free rent to like get their business up and running. So I would either go high bay warehouse with loading docks like 18 foot, 20 foot or higher ceilings, open floor plans, overhead doors, 20, 30,000 square feet, or two or three tenant strip malls with high traffic counts, good suburban locations that have service type businesses. Those are your two. Would be very hard to lose as long as you don't overpay when you buy them.

Keith Weinhold 16:25

This is such an interesting thing to say when you think about a resilient business, something that can't easily be disrupted by AI or Amazon, which something like a nail salon would fit into. Tell us about some of those other types that might fit into a small retail center that are resilient that way.

Todd Drowlette 16:45

End caps, so any kind of like a Popeyes, a McDonald's, anything that's drive-through or food. Even you're starting to see, you know, the Tesla robots, and you're seeing more and more of that. However, people will still buy the food. So whether the employees are actually still in there, it's all robots. They still physically need a place that's close and convenient for people to drive to, or even the food delivery apps. Like a lot of the retail restaurants now are telling me 30, 40% of their orders are delivery through like Uber Eats and whatever. But those are great tenants to have because they're still making money, and as the world's changing, they're adapting. And I want tenants that adapt to the changing world. And honestly, they can afford to pay more. This is terrible. But from a strictly landlord perspective, the fewer employees they have, you don't have workers' comp claims, you don't have the insurance, you don't have all those things. The more you can afford to pay rent to landlords. So as the world's changing, those type of retail, small strip centers, end caps, fast food, QSR type food, quick serve retail. Those are definitely things that I would be considering if I was someone getting into this, and they're things that I also own. So I always recommend what I would do myself.

Keith Weinhold 17:55

Right, and with that commercial tenant, if they're serving fast food, yes, it's not like their customer has to physically show up there at that business for that business to thrive.

Todd Drowlette 18:06

And actually, if you have them as a tenant, because of the delivery, like with a drive-through, you're typically only working off one or two miles. But Uber Eats or these other meal services, they're now going out five, six, even seven miles in some places. So that actually means their sales could be higher. And another thing I didn't mention, but now I'm thinking, a lot of restaurant tenants will pay a percentage rent. So actually, as their sales go up, even though there's not more infrastructure, you know, strains from more customers coming in and out of your property, as they're doing the meal delivery, you're actually potentially be getting cut of that as a landlord with percentage rent, which is a thing that doesn't exist in residential real estate, obviously, there's multiple streams of income for triple net properties at times when you have percentage rent that doesn't exist in warehouse, where it's in retail. It doesn't exist in office, doesn't exist in warehouse, doesn't exist in residential. So that can be a nice bonus, and you see that with supermarkets, restaurants, different types of retailers pay percentage run.

Keith Weinhold 19:05

Okay, so in a sense, Todd, we've been talking about going against the flow, if you will, in being in businesses that are resilient toward disruption from AI or Amazon. But while we're talking about industrial real estate, warehouses do come to mind for me soon afterward, I think generations ago maybe industrial had the connotation of a dirty factory. But today, when I think about warehouses, I think about Amazon fulfillment centers or AI data centers. So, what is the business like for investing in those sort of warehouse deals, and how do those deals even get put together for these warehouse types.

Todd Drowlette 19:42

So you have two types. So you have people who do spec building. So there's guys that will go out and say, "Hey, I'm in the warehousing business, and they'll go through. They'll get approvals and they'll say they'll buy 10 acres, 20 acres, 30 acres, and they'll say, "Okay, we're going to." Put I'm making this up. 500,000 square feet of warehouse on this. They'll go get approved, but they basically will put up a spec building of 40,000 50,000 feet, and then they'll lease it. Depending how long it takes them to lease it, then they'll build the next one. Once you kind of have one building up, it's much easier to prelease. If you just have a piece of dirt and say, hey, I'm going to do a warehouse building here. Unless you have a direct in specifically with Amazon, and they're like, hey, we need to be in Skoda, New York, you know, at this exit within 10 miles of that. And it's like anything. Once you do something for someone once, they're working across the whole country. So if you're particularly good in a specific region as developer, they will often say, "Hey, find me a spot here, here, because they're in the business of getting open and running data centers. They don't care if you're making a profit on the real estate, and they're not set up to locally go through the approvals, know the politicians, know the process, that whole thing. So there's opportunities like that. If you don't know anyone from a hole in the wall, if you have a big piece of property and you start with whatever you're comfortable with to spec out a warehouse, 10,000 feet, 5000 feet. See how long it takes. Do you lease that in six months? Does it take three months? Does it take a year? And then you can kind of take some of the profits from that, either refinance, or if you have a construction loan, then build the next one, build the next one, and build the next one. You can kind of build out as the demand comes along.

Keith Weinhold 21:22

You're listening to Get Rich Education. We're talking to the star of the A and E show, the Real Estate Commission, Todd Drowlette. So much when we come back. He's going to update us on what's happening with office to residential conversions, how much higher interest rate pain is still going to surface in some of these deals, and a negotiation tactic or two that you can use for your own residential deals. I'm your host Keith Weinhold. Flock Homes helps you retire from real estate and landlording, whether it's one problem property or your whole portfolio, through a 721 exchange, deferring your capital gains tax and depreciation recapture. It's a strategy long used by the ultra wealthy. Now, mom and pop landlords can 721 the residential real estate request your initial valuation. See if your properties qualify at flockhomes.com/gre. That's flockehomes.com/gre. Let me ask you something: If you've worked hard to build wealth, is your money positioned to actually support your goals? A lot of accredited investors leave capital sitting in cash because it feels safe, but inflation and missed income opportunities can quietly erode its value. Freedom Family Investments offers freedom notes for investors seeking structured income backed by real estate. It's a straightforward approach built on real assets, not speculation. And full disclosure, I'm an investor myself. What I like is that their team walks you through how it all works, so you can decide if it aligns with your portfolio and income goals. Every investment carries risk, and nothing is guaranteed, but with a track record of consistent, on-time investor payouts, they built real credibility.

Todd Drowlette 24:15

Well, I'll tell you about some of the pitfalls, and I'll tell you the huge opportunities. If you have office buildings that are vacant, you know, particularly in downtown municipalities like in Albany, New York, you know, our state capital in New York. Politicians and the government right now are creating a lot of incentives to convert those, where they're putting up grant and giving away millions of dollars to private developers that you don't have to repay. So there's a huge opportunity to have people take on a lot of the risk for you to do it. Some of the pitfalls people get into are you want to pick the right office building to do it for. So you want to a make sure that that office building either has on site parking garages or on site parking because I've seen people try to do it and that. Downtowns where there's no parking, and you can put a lot of money in a building with no parking. And if you're not in New York City, where people are used to, and you're competing against suburban apartments, that's a tough sell. So that's number one. Number two, for whatever reason, people really want in office buildings and downtown settings floor-to-ceiling windows. So you really want to pick office buildings that already have floor-to-ceiling windows because it can be very expensive. If you get over three floors, it can be very expensive to cut out windows and make them larger. And another, this is a huge money potential pitfall if you're not careful. Many municipalities and states have different codes for elevators for residential buildings than they have for office. It makes no sense to me, but office buildings. It has to do with fitting the elevator has to be large enough that you can get a stretcher if someone had a heart attack and needed to be wheeled out. Ah, for some reason, residential buildings require larger elevators, and if your shaft isn't big enough and your car isn't big enough. You could have a million dollars or more of an unexpected expense to either make the shaft bigger. Some buildings you can't even do it.

Keith Weinhold 26:08

Well, but if it was originally set up for-

Todd Drowlette 26:09

It doesn't make any sense either. This is new. If you have an office building that's 30 stories tall, people could have heart attacks in the middle of the day at the office. So how is that any different than if they're at home in an apartment and have a heart attack, so it doesn't make any sense to me why the code is different for the fire code. But in New York State, the fire code is different, and that can be astronomically expensive, or it can literally stop your project dead in the tracks if it just becomes cost prohibitive to do it.

Keith Weinhold 26:34

That's something that I never would have thought about. I generally like to see office to residential conversions revitalizing central business districts in our cities. You know, you talked about the parking before having less need for parking. If people can walk to work and where they work, that increases the walkability of an area. I like so many things about office to residential conversions, despite all the hardships and the pitfalls you have to avoid.

Todd Drowlette 27:01

Oh, they're great. You just want to make sure you're picking the right building. So my point is, if you have five or 10 vacant office buildings, mostly vacant office buildings, just make sure you're choosing the right one. And before you buy it, do your due diligence and go through with contractors and engineers and architects that understand all the codes and say, hey, the other positive thing that saves money in office conversions is most office buildings. If you have an elevator bank, typically have bathrooms directly across from the elevator bank, so water and sewer can be very expensive when you're running apartments. So having central lines going up through usually concrete floors can save you a ton of money in the design and the layout of how you place the units and do it around central bathrooms, but typically larger office buildings will have plumbing and sewer on different parts of the floor. So it just means you have to go less distance and it saves money. And a lot of office buildings, even older ones, have higher ceilings, which today is very desirable for apartments. So if you can have a building that has natural light, high ceilings, and you can get grant money to do it, that's definitely something people should look into. And even with a smaller building, I've seen people in New York people are converting 5000 foot office buildings into like five units. You know, there's money to be made. You just have to buy right. I always say, you know, if you can buy $1 for 50 cents. Buy it. Don't buy $1 and hope it goes to $2 A

Keith Weinhold 28:25

lot of these physical limitations, oftentimes in the office to residential conversion, and Todd in the residential world, oftentimes apartment buildings have been problematic. A lot of these syndicators have had their deals blow up because in 2022 or earlier they got five to seven year fixed rate debt. Those deals are coming due. The mortgage payments double, and a lot of times the operator just can't meet it, and it blows up. And apartment building values have been down about 30% nationally, largely for that reason, even though an apartment building owner gets a commercial loan, I still want to know from the commercial side and the commercial use type how much higher interest rate pain do you see that has surfaced and is still going to surface.

Todd Drowlette 29:17

So, I'll answer this by quoting my grandmother. She said, "Anytime you want to cook, whatever size pot you think you need, pick twice that size pot and start using that.

Keith Weinhold 29:29

Yeah.

Todd Drowlette 29:29

So I say the same thing when you're financing a deal or you're writing it out and seeing what your returns are. I always say to people, make sure that you have a big enough cushion in there for all the things you can never predict in commercial loans, there's a ton of guys that are about to lose their shirts, and you're starting to see it because, unfortunately, I don't know if it's true in residential real estate, but in commercial real estate, I've seen guys go from nothing to 50 million, 100 million, $200 million net worths, but I've also seen. Lose everything. So what happens in commercial real estate that you don't want to do is so many people say OPM, use other people's money, use other people's money, use other people's money, which is fine as a strategy. But what you don't want to do is cross collateralized loans. So if you have one property and then you go, oh, let me refinance that and then buy a next property and I'll refinance that and buy the next property, and then the bank's like, okay, we'll refinance that, but we're going to now tie all these properties together as one mortgage, or you're going to cross guarantee these properties. Right. The problem with that is, the people who do that strategy, if you started at that, you know, in 2021 when interest rates, you could get things at three and three quarters percent. Well, commercial loans are five-year loans typically, and they might have 20 or 20-five-year amortizations. So, unlike a residential mortgage that's a 15 or 20 or 30-year self-amortizing loan, they're not. At the end of five years, you have a balloon payment that you have to pay off. So, if interest rates are going down, that's amazing because if your tenants are the same, and even if your rents didn't change, and you bought something at 6% and now it's at 5% Your cash flow goes up significantly, and nothing happened other than your refinance. The problem is you have a ton of guys right now, guys, women, people that were financing stuff five years ago at three and three quarters, and now interest rates are hanging six and a quarter, six and a half, depending on the property, is might maybe seven. Same tenant, same everything. You're giving the keys back to the bank because you're broke now. Because all of a sudden you're financing, you squeeze too much out of the deal. I always say you can take on the in in or you can take on the out, but you can't have both. So when people are financing stuff, they just need to make sure. Like here's another thing I'll go off on. A lot of people will buy stuff with tax credits, and you see even with residential apartments, a lot of guys are financing that, selling people tax credits. Economies and things change and things move. If a deal is so tight that you need the tax credits to make the deal make sense, yeah, don't do the fricking deal because tax credits should be an added bonus. That's just, hey, that's a nice adding to the cushion. So many people have razor thin margins. They go, oh well, I do the tax credits. If I can get 70 cents on the dollar, this is how I make the money. I tell people I will have nothing to do with tax credit deals unless it's strictly a bonus. The deal has to stand on its own, and always assume in the course of five years interest rates could go up three points or down three points. Most people will not listen to me and will not do that. If you do that, you'll never get killed and you won't lose a property. It's super conservative, but there's enough money you can make, and if you buy it right, that's how you can afford to figure that spread in when you're financing something. But just so many people get greedy, and I just think back to my friend Bob Bear, who died. I met him when he was like 70-five. He was a billionaire, self-made, and he used to say to me, "It's not what you make; it's what you keep. And when people would ask how rich are you, he knew how rich he was. He would say, "I don't owe anybody in the world a dime.

Todd Drowlette 32:59

And to me, my entire strategy is I don't owe anybody in the world a dime. So I personally look at deals and say, out of my own cash flows, what can I buy? And instead of buying four properties a year, I might buy one property a year. But if I'm buying that and compounding my returns, I'm not paying interest to the banks. So it's just a different strategy. I sleep at night. I'm like the multimillionaire next door. I don't live extravagantly. I don't drive Ferraris and Rolls Royces. That's just not my thing. But I sleep at night and I have peace, which is important to me, knowing I don't owe anybody in the world a dime. But will I get as rich as the guy who's risking everything? No. But real estate to me is musical chairs, and the music always stops at some point. And there's never enough chairs for everybody. But if you're somebody who's in a cash position, which you're going to be going through in the next six months to a year, on the residential and commercial, I think there's going to be blood in the streets. And I think people who are sitting in cash are going to have like a once in a lifetime opportunity to buy things at a deep discount.

Keith Weinhold 34:02

Philosophically, we're different in one way. I use debt and leverage to grow larger, but ensuring that I do have enough income to cover the mortgage and all the operating expenses. But Todd, to your analogy about your grandmother in selecting a bigger pot than what she would need to cook whatever she's going to do, when it does come to debt, the last time I bought an apartment building myself, which wasn't recent, I could have chosen seven-year fixed-rate debt with a balloon at the end, or 10-year fixed-rate debt with a balloon at the end. The 10-year fixed-rate debt cost me one quarter of a percent more in mortgage rate, which dented my cash flow during the entire duration of that loan. But I did indeed choose that 10-year loan in order to have that much more certainty, and I sure am glad that that's what I did.

Todd Drowlette 34:54

That's always the game because it's people think that rich people know what you don't, or it's inside. Whatever I'm like. Number one, if you sit in a room with a bunch of rich people, yes, they will work against you if it benefits them to work together. But if it doesn't, you have egos and separate interests that are all competing. And there's always that thing of I know very very rich people who could buy and sell me 100 times over, and I also know that you don't know what you don't know, and the world has gotten so complicated, and financial markets are all intertwined globally. Anyone to be able to predict, it's like it's a crapshoot when you're like, okay, do I take seven years? Where do I think interest rates will be in seven years? It's hard to say where interest rates going to be tomorrow. You ask a banker tomorrow, they can't tell you. So it's like, what's your best educated guess of seven or 10 years? What's the better play? But I always go the conservative route.

Keith Weinhold 35:43

I think it's easier to predict the future direction of capital prices than it is interest rates. Myself,

Todd Drowlette 35:50

but I will say also, I am the exception. And if you have 100 other guests on here in the next year, well, 50-one more guests in here the next year, yeah, they would all say Todd's an idiot. That's terrible advice. If you want to get rich, literally leverage, leverage. Just do it intelligently, and I acknowledge that. I don't see the world the way other people do, but my end game is to be rich and comfortable, and to sleep at night with peace. And that's why I choose to do what I do, realizing I'm giving up. It's the you know what are you giving up to what do you gain benefit analysis, and I'm realizing I'm giving up some upside in my total potential net worth. But I like peace, and you know I had anxiety for years. I don't have it anymore, and I live my life to be as anxiety free as I can possibly be.

Keith Weinhold 36:34

That's interesting, and that certainly works for you, Todd. What's one negotiation tactic that you get from dealing with, well, let's say Decca or Centa million dollar commercial deals that our listeners could use the very next time that they buy a rental property.

Todd Drowlette 36:53

So the number one mistake I think people make is they assume what's motivating the other person, and they assume it's always price. So anytime I'm going to negotiate a deal from someone, whoever has the most information always wins, and whoever doesn't need the deal always wins. Yeah. So I want to know as much about that other person on the other side as I am. Are they going through a divorce? Are they desperate? Do they hate each other? Is it a partnership breakup? Did somebody inherit it and they live five states away and don't even know what this thing is worth that they have. So the number one thing from a negotiating standpoint is understand exactly who you're negotiating with and what's motivating them. From an actual tactic standpoint, just think logically through whatever the process is, and you can always go up. You can't go down. So the key is to offer as little as you can without insulting the person, so they don't even respond. So figure out what that fine line is, and before you go into the negotiation, know what your walk away number is. That's just the point you're not getting over. The fast way to lose in a negotiation is to get stuck in a bidding war. There's nothing I want so much that I'm going to overpay for it. So when people go, "Well, if somebody else is interested, I go then sell it to them. Yeah, I don't need it. Sell it to them. And then the other thing I'll say is, if you start the negotiation, this is the one piece. Say your number and shut up. So many people are scared of silence. And then, right, if the person doesn't immediately respond, they go, "Oh, well, I guess I offered you 500,000 I mean, I guess I could go 550. As soon as you talk after you give a number, you're negotiating against yourself. So throw the number, let it land wherever it lands, and do not talk until that person responds to you. That's like the number one mistake I see people do. They throw out a number, they get nervous with the silence, and then they immediately go up in their offer. That person could have been thinking, "Oh my God, did I forget to call back my whatever? And they're not even thinking about the number you just threw out. But people just assume, oh God, the number was too low, and then they negotiate against those. Do not do that.

Keith Weinhold 38:48

Risk the awkward silence. And yes, to your point about learning more about the other side, terms are often more important than price for sure. Well, Todd, you know a lot of commercial real estate content in mainstream media it tends to focus on these big institutional deals. But what has made your A and E show interesting, the Real Estate Commission, is what it's called. Is it focuses more on sort of leasing and this negotiation that we're just touching on there, and that's what makes you interesting. So tell us about what audiences can expect for season two of the Real Estate Commission on A and E.

Todd Drowlette 39:24

So, season two, you will 100% see real landlords, real brokers, real investors. You'll see real retailers. You'll see people relocating their offices in New York City. You'll see stuff in upstate New York. It's generally in the Northeast. In the first season, we helped a kitchen cabinet manufacturer relocate their suburban offices in Philadelphia. I sold a 50-unit HUD property that has a HAP contract you might be familiar with. That was crazy going through a bankruptcy foreclosure proceeding two year. That was crazy. Yeah, so you are going to. See more of that. It's a documentary. It's not a reality show, so you're watching the deal as it unfolds. Some things have happy endings. Some things have terrible endings, but they're real endings either way. So people will see a lot of that of deals happening in the Northeast. And if someone's listening and they're a business owner and they want to be part of the show, they can apply. We're announcing the casting will be open for about three weeks across the U.S. They can go to the realestatecommission.com/forward/tv and they can apply to be part of the show.

Keith Weinhold 40:32

Now, since you started this last year, I want to ask: Has this A and E exposure helped you generate more business and create traffic? I would really think so.

Todd Drowlette 40:42

Yeah, I wasn't sure. You know how because you never anything new. You never know, right? Like I put time and energy into it. It definitely did. Definitely, people start to notice you, which is a little weird. I was in a cell phone store, and they literally it was playing, and the guy's like, "Oh, it's you! Like, and then everybody who's walking in, he's like, "Hey, look, it's the guy on TV. He's right here. That was like kind of an awkward. Like, I'm like, "Okay, this is weird. Guy was excited, so that was fine. It's an adjustment of things, but it definitely has increased our overall visibility and people reaching out to do deals with us for sure.

Keith Weinhold 41:18

Is there any last resource you'd like to tell our audience about.

Todd Drowlette 41:21

I would just quickly announce the first season did so well. We're actually doing a spinoff show that'll also air on A and E called the Real Estate Commission New York that we're casting in upstate New York as well as New York City for brokers, agents, home sellers, home buyers that will actually document real buyers, real sellers, same thing. It'll follow our format, which I know there's a million shows on TV about real estate. Those are reality shows, not docu series. And I'll say, without going into the details, there's a very big difference between those two and what you're actually seeing on camera and what's happening. That will air in March of 2027, back to back with our show, I will make cameos in that. But I'm executive producing that show, so from your residential audience, that's a show they should tune into. I think they'll get a lot out of it.

Keith Weinhold 42:12

Congratulations! Your show has had so much success that it's setting the template for another show, and it has been most interesting since we first had you here last year to follow this along, Todd Drowlette. It's been a valuable chat. Thanks so much for coming back onto the show.

Todd Drowlette 42:28

I'd love to come back anytime, and thank you so much for having me on again. I appreciate it.

Keith Weinhold 42:38

Drowlette is spelled D R O W L E T T E. Todd and I talk a good bit off mic as well. In addition to the elevators, sometimes he emphasizes how cumbersome to impossible HVAC system compatibility is when you're doing office to residential building conversions. Too, you just never seem to hear about an easier than expected office to residential property conversion. It is most interesting and rare that Todd is not much of a leverage guy at all. Whereas in the vein of financially free beats debt free, I like to approach deals where the interest cost is lower than the expected opportunity cost. When it comes to negotiating, some of Todd's approach, you know, it's similar to what prominent hostage negotiator Chris Voss shared with you here on the show a few years ago. That silence is powerful in negotiating. In fact, if you feel like you need to say something to fill the silence. Use what Chris Voss calls the mirroring technique, and the mirroring technique that is simply repeating what the other party just said, kind of like a parrot would. For example, if you're trying to buy a property and the seller says that the best they can do is sell it to you for 550k and a delayed 90-day close. Reply with 550k and a 90-day close, and then listen to see if the seller comes down from there. Or instead, you can simply say nothing and just sit there with the silence like Todd recommended. The reason I like these particular negotiating techniques right here is that they're easy to remember and they're easy to do. You either remain silent or, per the mirroring technique, you just repeat the last words that the other party said. Thanks to Todd Drowlette today, you can check out the real estate commission on A and E Coming up here on the show soon. Back to residential, where for the first time ever on the show here we discuss what might be the greatest real estate cash flow strategy because it's becoming quite popular today. Until next week, I'm your host Keith Weinhold. Don't quit your daydream.

Speaker 1 45:08

Nothing on this show should be considered specific, personal, or professional advice. Please consult an appropriate tax, legal, real estate, financial, or business professional for individualized advice. Opinions of guests are their own. Information is not guaranteed. All investment strategies have the potential for profit or loss. The host is operating on behalf of Get Rich Education LLC exclusively.

Keith Weinhold 45:36

The preceding program was brought to you by your home for wealth building getricheducation.com