Investor Cheat Code Podcast with Mike Simmons

Ryan spent ten years in the electronics manufacturing industry before transitioning to real estate investing and property management in 2007. Today, he is VP of Acquisitions at Open Door Capital, a real estate investment company from Bigger Pocket’s Brandon Turner. Ryan has extensive management experience in many facets of real estate including retail, office, multi-family, HOA, nationwide consulting, and mobile home parks. He has been a licensed real estate broker since 2008 and owns and operates a portfolio of residential rental properties.

Before Ryan got into real estate investing, he worked as a production facility technician in the electronics manufacturing industry, traveling all over the world. His priorities really changed when he got married and found himself having to decide if he wanted to continue to live overseas. He bought his first rental property when he was thirty years old and has been building his “empire” ever since!

Ryan’s first investment was in a duplex in Bangor, Maine and he lived on one side while renting out the other, “house hack” style. He financed this investment very traditionally and talks about how this was his first experience with having difficult tenants to deal with. He bought a few more duplexes and was looking aggressively at foreclosures to find other deals, while at the same time, he started his own property management company. He ran this company himself for about five years and then eventually paired up with a bigger management company that had a network of employees that he did not. At about this same time, he also got his real estate license so he could pursue his own deals.

Eventually, Ryan got to a point with his own portfolio where he was able to leave this company and go back to managing only his rental properties, aided by much better systems, technology, and automation. As he started to broker other deals and do some consulting, it made sense for him to give the project management portion to his past employers so he could spend his time in more profitable endeavors.

Ryan utilizes the BRRRR strategy with his properties, so we spent some time discussing how that worked for him. He talked about how he was completely reinvigorated by finding the BiggerPockets podcast and learning about different strategies that he had not yet explored. It made him take a hard look at his portfolio and get money out to use as working capital to invest in more properties. He encourages our listeners to take a hard look at their own properties in order to maximize their cash flow.

I then asked Ryan what made him pick up his life and move to Maui and join forces with Brandon Turner. Ryan and Brandon had partnered to buy a mobile home park and developed a relationship through that process. When Brandon moved to Maui, he asked Ryan to come out and give him a hand, and a week-long stay turned into a month. Brandon eventually hired Ryan as his personal assistant.

Because Ryan initially hooked up with Brandon by feeding him a mobile park investment lead, we spent some time exploring this investing strategy. Ryan talked about how to evaluate these types of investments and the techniques they used to add value to these communities. Once Ryan moved to Hawaii, they got really invested in Open Door Capital, Brandon’s company which exclusively buys mobile home parks. At the time of recording, they owned about 10 different communities with approximately 1500 lots. Ryan went into quite a bit of detail about what they look for in an investment of this kind and also the type of investor that they look for to partner up with them. He also pitched the “Bring Brandon A Deal” promotion they are running now if someone finds them an off-market mobile park deal.

Ryan has an incredibly diverse background in investing and in life, so you do not want to miss this entertaining and informative episode of the Just Start Real Estate Podcast!

“The real driving factor for getting into real estate was that I just couldn’t see myself in another corporate job for the next thirty years.”

“I went on Amazon and bought every real estate and property management book they had because I had no idea what I was doing.”

“Maybe if I had read some different or better books I wouldn’t have made so many mistakes.”

“If I am going to be married to my own rental properties, I might as well start managing some for other people and generate a little income.”

“If you feel like you are getting close to hiring help, you are probably already past the point when you should.”

“I think a lot of people are like me - I had 10 cents in my bank account and every day is a struggle to hustle.”

“There are different tiers to financial freedom… it doesn’t happen overnight.”

“Finding and listening to the BiggerPockets podcast really lit a fire under me again.”

“I encourage other investors to keep an eye on their properties’ financials.”

“I just want to buy and hold everything.”

“Because of Brandon’s platform and reach, he is able to attract some extremely talented people.”

“I’m always amazed at the ways you can make money in real estate.”

Real Estate Investing for Dummies

Property Management for Dummies

BiggerPockets Podcast

Open Door Capital

Welcome to this version of the Just Start Real Estate Podcast! I am excited to bring you another solo episode where I discuss the ins and outs of wholesaling. I can’t believe how many conversations I have had recently where people are interested in getting started with this investing strategy but don’t really understand how it works. I have been wholesaling at a high volume for seven years now and what to share that knowledge with my listeners! I hope you enjoy this latest episode of the podcast!

“There seems to be a lot of gaps in peoples’ knowledge concerning wholesaling.”

“You have three primary people in a wholesale deal: the seller of the home, a wholesaler, and a buyer.”

“Part of building a business is building a reliable marketing strategy.”

“Someone has to receive those inquiries and we call them lead intake.”

“An acquisitions manager’s job is to ultimately negotiate an agreed-upon price between our company and the seller.”

“A dispositions manager’s job is to take the purchase agreement from the acquisitions manager and market it out to buyers.”

“The transaction coordinator works with the title company, supplies all of the pertinent documents, and gets a closing date set.”

“A bookkeeper is a very important member of your team regardless of the type of investing strategy you are employing. Everyone needs a bookkeeper.”

“Wholesaling is not hard, it is not complicated. Like anything else, it takes doing it once for you to feel comfortable in understanding the process.”

“We don’t make excuses, we make money and have success. We move forward. That is the mindset I want you to have.”

I am excited to have my friend, Terry, on the show today! He is a super smart investor that has pivoted strategies several times in his career and I believe he has a ton to offer my audience in the show today!

To kick our conversation off, Terry shares that he is a classically trained musician and believes that demonstrates that he knows how to work hard, be disciplined, and get the work done. He taught orchestra and band to middle and high school children and decided to leave that vocation when he felt like it was similar to the movie, “Groundhog Day” - just very repetitive. He moved into being a real estate agent, selling over 1000 houses in a fifteen-year span, and then transitioned into full-time investing in 2015.

We really take the gloves off, so to speak, in this interview. We talk about different investing strategies, the pros and cons of scaling, how to achieve work-life balance, comping properties, and so many other pertinent topics. Terry talks about how he transitioned from flipping houses to holding onto the winners and turning them into short-term rentals. He explains that his motivation to do this was to build a true cash-flowing business and says that it is more of a challenge than flipping a dozen or so houses a year. We discuss extensively the large property that Terry has acquired where he says “life change” can happen in the form of church retreats, family reunions, micro-weddings, and the like.

Make sure you don’t miss another amazing episode of the Just Start Real Estate Podcast with Terry Burger and take a look behind the scenes of a casual conversation I have with a close friend who happens to be killing it in real estate!

“Everything Terry has done has worked.”

“I know what it takes to be disciplined and get stuff done.”

“That has been the pattern of my life. When it starts feeling like “Groundhog Day”, I try something new.”

“Terry, you have seen me when I am hungry, tired, and irritable, and you are still my friend.”

“I have always been a work-life balance kind of guy.”

“I feel like I have never made more money than when I was doing 12-18 flips per year.”

“I have to know the part of the symphony that is mine to control.”

“It is like a mini hospitality business that you have started.”

“I have learned a lot of hard lessons in the STR world and the best lesson I have learned is that uniqueness matters.”

“The bleeding is more like a hemorrhage rather than a slow drip, so it feels like a bigger risk.”

“They represent my middle-class upbringing and I like them.”

“Instead of a Starbucks experience, I have a Dunkin’ Donuts experience.”

“I hate it when people say, ‘I am waiting for the market to change.’ It just sounds like an excuse to not take action.”

“When I see someone do something, it gives me the confidence that I can do it myself.”

“I try to surround myself with people who inspire me to go do crazy stuff.”

Previous Episode with Terry

Bison View Lodge

Airbnb Homes for Sale

Terry on Facebook

Welcome to this version of the Just Start Real Estate Podcast! I am excited to bring you another solo episode where I deliver my thoughts on building a real estate investment company with a partner. I am sharing a presentation that I gave concerning the important issues pertaining to whether or not a partnership is the right choice for you.

“I have found over the years that there is a framework and guidelines you can follow to know whether or not a partnership makes sense for you.”

“I know people that have lost millions in bad partnerships.”

“I only ever want to talk about things that I am completely passionate about.”

“I think what people do, without a whole lot of thought or research, is they jump into partnerships.”

“Being an entrepreneur can be lonely.”

“Having a partner can be very comforting because it is someone in the trenches with you and understands the struggle, but trust me - that is not a good enough reason to partner.”

“You don’t need a partner to have a sounding board.”

“One benefit to having a partner is that you can take time off.”

“There is always a price to having a partner.”

“You have to have a similar risk tolerance.”

“I was sleeping like a baby because risk doesn’t bother me.”

“We all know that we can recover from mistakes.”

Justin is the Founder and President of The Science of Flipping and Phoenix Wealth Builders. The Science of Flipping is a top-ranked real estate investing podcast and Justin now has a second podcast called The Entrepreneur DNA for those going through the entrepreneurial journey. His real estate investment company, Phoenix Wealth Builders, specializes in purchasing, rehab, wholesaling, and wholetailing properties in the Metro Phoenix Area and they have flipped and wholesaled over 1500 properties to date. Justin has been called a master at finding deals in a market that many say is the most difficult market to be a real estate investor in.

Justin began by telling us that he started as a realtor in 2005 and then bought a brokerage with a friend. He talked about how it was almost impossible not to make a lot of money in real estate in the years before the market crash. Being really young at that time, he spent a ton of money and had a really expensive car and condo, which all went away in 2007. He shares how he lost everything and ended up sleeping on his buddy’s couch.

Things started to turn around for Justin when he and a friend decided to begin investing in real estate. They ended up using transactional funding for their deals, which was popular at that time, where they would get a deal funded and closed basically simultaneously or same day. I asked if, at this time, he was doing any work on these properties and he said no, effectively what he was doing was wholetailing. Justin talked about setting a goal for himself of calling 100 realtors a day in order to find deals and people to work with, and it took a full nine months before they had their first deal.

After Justin talked about his resilience and fortitude in getting some traction in his new business, I asked him to share how he gets his deals. He addressed several different marketing strategies, including pay-per-click advertising, direct mail, cold-calling and auto-texting, and driving for dollars. Justin also examined the level of seller motivation and relative cost for each, as well.

I then asked Justin to describe how he is brokering deals by working with iBuyer companies such as Opendoor and Offerpad. If a deal isn’t attractive to his company for wholesaling, wholetailing, flipping, or even buy-and-hold, he will inquire with his realtor about the price one of these companies will offer the seller for their home and take a portion of the transaction fees if he can successfully hook them up. This is a really creative way of working with them instead of getting swallowed up by them as a smaller investor.

We discussed how the COVID pandemic was affecting his business and how he has been able to adapt. Justin says he really prides himself on the ability to stay flexible and make adjustments, if necessary. He talks about how he had refocused his energy on his business after a partnership fell through, and when the pandemic hit, it was actually good timing for him.

Justin was incredibly transparent in his business dealings and if you join us on the Just Start Real Estate Podcast, I know you will get a ton of actionable wisdom!

“The beginning years were the fun ones - when I was broke, busted, and disgusted.”

“Pain is more of a motivator than the carrot.”

“Just talk about what you are doing and people will get excited and gravitate toward you.”

“Here is my secret sauce - I’m a people person.”

“I just had fortitude - I was willing to endure pain when other people can’t or won’t.”

“I know what I want to achieve and I am relentless in trying to achieve it regardless of when I achieve it.”

“People overestimate what they can accomplish in a year and underestimate what they can accomplish in ten.”

“You can get exactly what you want if you are willing to: (a) work for it but (b) have patience.”

“You need to have more than one market strategy going at all times.”

“I have been able to make adjustments and pivot when required, and remained very flexible.”

“The only times I ever got hurt was when I chased money.”

Propstream

TSOFData.com

Fortitude by Dan Crenshaw

Launch Control Text Messaging

DealMachine App

Opendoor

Offerpad

The Score Takes Care of Itself by Bill Walsh

The Science of Flipping Academy FB Group

Justin on Instagram

Welcome to this version of the Just Start Real Estate Podcast! I am excited to bring you my first solo episode where I deliver my thoughts and strategies for real estate investing in this changing market. Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water! You can still do what you love to do with a few tweaks in your business!

“It is absolutely crazy trying to do five episodes of a podcast every week.”

“There are definitely subjects I want to talk about that I may not get to if I am just doing interviews or Q&As.”

“I know the majority of questions I am going to get are, ‘How can our business survive in this market?’”

“You don’t have to change everything that you are doing.”

“That is not a logical, rational reaction to a fairly small-to-medium-sized problem.”

“I wholesaled when the market was down, I wholesaled when the market skyrocketed, and I am a wholesaler now.”

“You don’t throw out the engine when you are having an engine problem - you tweak the engine.”

“You wouldn’t do it with your car… why are you doing it with your business?”

“You have to change the language that you use.”

“I might be a little more helpful on the back end and more sympathetic to my buyers’ concerns.”

“When the house prices were soaring, you had to focus on what your sellers’ motivation was in order to make your offer make sense.”

“When it comes to real estate investing, you usually have a challenge with one end of the investing cycle.”

“Zillow can be your friend. It isn’t always accurate, but homeowners don’t have anything else to look at.”

Zeona is a licensed realtor and a mid-term rental investor located in the Boulder area. She has a great group of experienced investor-friendly agents who can help people find the perfect home. Zeona also has a nationwide referral list of vetted teams that allows them to connect clients with investor-friendly agents in any state. 

We begin the episode with Zeona sharing her background story and how she ended up in real estate. Zeona shares that she is a real estate consultant and agent. She started her journey with Airbnb in 2012 and is in the early ramp-up stage in the mid-term space. Zeona has been investing in real estate for 10 years, and she loves helping people get into furnished rentals because whether they are mid or short-term, they are a great boost for cash flow for people. Zeon’s goal is to help get as many people as possible to be financially independent. 

We then discuss medium-term rentals and why you should invest in this model. Zeona shares that based on her book, mid-term rental is anything over 30 days, but the typical stay is 90 days because most traveling nurses have assignments for 13 weeks. From her mid-term rentals, she often sees people staying for a month to several months and sometimes even a year. On the other hand, Zeona explains that what differentiates long-term rentals from mid-term rentals is that long-term rentals are unfurnished and rented by the year, while mid-term rentals are by the month. According to her, the number one benefit of mid-term rentals is regulations. Mid-term rentals are seen as long-term rentals because regulations are enforced in the 30 days or fewer markets. So it’s a comfortable space when your numbers for short-term rentals are not working out.

Next, we talk about the downside of mid-term rentals. Zeona shares that when she started with Airbnb, it was new, and she has watched short-term properties get all the cool automation that it has today. Automation didn’t exist when she started, and now, with the medium-term rentals, it also doesn’t exist, but you can borrow some from the short-term rentals. It will not be a perfect fit, but it will help. Zeona also shares that you can modify a long-term lease to a mid-term lease. 

We then discuss how to get into medium-term rentals by hosting traveling nurses. Zeona shares that you can start by looking into your area using a map for hospitals. Hospitals are rated by trauma levels. Level 1 and 2 hospitals take the most extreme cases, while smaller hospitals don’t do much and don’t get as many travel nurses. Zeona recommends investing in areas with levels 1 and 2 hospitals and places closer to them, within a range of 30 minutes distance. You also need to look at the number of beds in the units, and 200+ would be a solid option. According to Zeona, all these are online, and all you need to do is to search for the name and check the trauma level and bed capacity. From there, you can connect with HR and inform them of your offering. You can also do it through Furnish Finder. It will give you a list of people searching in your area, and you can connect with them. This is easy and effective, and you can do it now or even before you purchase a property to assess the demand in an area. 

Lastly, we talk about how to manage your calendar. According to Zeona, you’ve to be careful how you open up vacancies because you don’t want someone to book something you will not be able to fulfill. Managing your calendar is all about knowing your high and low seasons to plan your openings, rates, and occupancy. Zeona explains that it’s good to plan ahead and use your mid-term rental in a hybrid way, especially in slow seasons.  For her, she used the mid-term rentals as short-term rentals in places where she can legalize them as such.  

Make sure you don’t miss another amazing episode of the Just Start Real Estate Podcast with Zeona McIntyre and get valuable information on how to win big with mid-term rentals!

“Furnished rentals, whether mid or short-term, are a boost for cash flow.”

“Mid-term rentals are seen as long-term rentals with regulations, and it’s a comfortable space when your numbers for short-term rentals are not working out.”

“Plan ahead and use your mid-term rental in a hybrid way, especially in slow seasons.“

“Managing your calendar is all about knowing what your high and low seasons are and planning your openings, rates, and occupancy in advance.”

30 Days Stay

Stayamo

Zeona’s Website

Zeona on LinkedIn 

Zeona on Instagram

Zeona on YouTube

Welcome to this version of the Just Start Real Estate Podcast! I am excited to bring you my first solo episode where I deliver my real estate goals for this new year. I am trying to do some things differently this year, so in this episode, I tell you a little about what I did in 2022 and how I am changing that up to achieve new goals in 2023!

“I am going to go out of my comfort zone a bit.”

“I decided to put what I am working on out there so you could all hear it.”

“I think that being accountable is a huge part of achieving goals.”

“I am not talking about some high-level sales amount… I am talking about money that was actually deposited into my account.”

“We weren’t doing owner-financed deals before 2022.”

“It is a way that we are hedging against some of the market fluctuations.”

“At the end of 2022, we hired a Chief Operating Officer. This is a game-changer for us.”

“Hiring an operations manager can be high-reward, but it is also high-risk.”

“The minute you stop looking, the right person comes along.”

“I think we can see increased profit margin by just tightening the processes and by buttoning things up a lot.”

“Raising money is always something I am interested in learning more about.”

“I want to get on really significant stages in 2023.”

“The workload is about the same regardless if you make $1,000 or $10,000 per month with a rental property.”

“Reach out to poor old me and give me some feedback.”

“Hopefully it was a little fly-on-the-wall moment for you and you found it helpful.”

Justin is the owner of JS2 Homes and Open Letter Marketing. Justin has been investing in real estate since 2011 with extensive experience in rehabbing, new construction, wholesaling, and multi-family rental properties in and around the Boston area. Justin founded Open Letter Marketing in 2016 with a focus on providing real estate investors with a more effective direct-to-seller marketing approach than outdated methods. Justin’s company works with hundreds of investors throughout the country and is recognized as one of the top real estate investor marketing companies.

Justin begins by telling us about his background and how he always had a love of houses because his dad was a contractor. The flipping television shows that came out around 2009 really piqued his interest as he was working as an accountant, but didn’t love it. Partnering with his father in finding and rehabbing houses married two of Justin’s passions together - love of houses and of numbers. For the first five years in real estate investing, Justin and his dad were flipping houses while he continued to work his full-time job, also while doing marketing for new properties. We talked about the challenges inherent in the situation and how it is possible to make it work.

I asked Justin how they funded their first deal and he described the process he went through in order to pitch three regional banks to do business with them. He did his homework, knew what information the banks wanted to see, and put together a five-year business plan to get funding before selecting his first property. 

Justin then described what his business looks like today. He went from rehabbing entry-level homes to mid-level homes, to high-end homes and new construction, to what he is doing today which is primarily multi-family condo conversions. The bulk of his day-to-day business dealings is made up of wholesaling homes while staying involved with the multi-family developments which are more long-term projects. He talked about how competition and profit margin per time spent really drove him to switch his business model.

Justin then told us about his company Open Letter Marketing, which was created to provide real estate investors with direct-to-seller marketing. I asked Justin to describe what their program does better than his competitors and he spoke to the fact that his product looks at the very fine details. With his product, they promote campaigns with a sequence of letters where each letter builds off of the prior.

I asked Justin to describe the current project he is working on, software called OLM InvestorHub, which is a lead and marketing management system based on his own business process. It will enable investors to purchase or import multiple lists, identify properties on more than one list, and identify the quality of a list once it is imported. Once the lead quality has been identified, you can create marketing campaigns specific to each. Justin talks about the software’s dashboard and how it organizes all of the marketing tools an investor is using and sends reminders to perform certain tasks to keep everything organized and visible to the user. They also have a CRM product that communicates with InvestorHub called OLM DealFlow.

Going forward, Justin is concerned with defining a systematic process for his wholesaling business so it can grow and expand. He also talked about looking at the more technical side of direct-to-seller marketing and how that can influence the direction of Open Letter Marketing.

During this interview, Justin speaks about being on the front lines in order to engineer new things to help people get better responses in changing market conditions. This is an incredibly informative episode for helping investors use the most current tools in order to fuel their business and I hope you will join us!

“The degree is just the gateway to the world you want to get into.”

“I know I have something that works much better and there is nothing on the market that offers this.”

“If a marketing strategy works in my real estate investment business, I’m going to offer it to my customers.”

“It is almost like you are building a conversation with the seller, and you do it in a specific way so that they are getting to know more about you with each letter.”

“I’m just trying to create a solution for my own issue.”

“My goal is to truly make an impact and provide value to as many real estate investors as I possibly can.”

“How can I create a product to make everyone an expert in marketing?”

“You end up doing lazy marketing, out of convenience, rather than strategy.”

“We are trying to build the tools to free up everybody’s time.”

“Marketing for most investors is just disjointed.”

“I always want to be on the very front line.”

“What you are working on is like the oxygen of a real estate company.”

Open Letter Marketing

OLM InvestorHub

OLM DealFlow

Welcome to this version of the Just Start Real Estate Podcast! I am excited to bring you another replay of my Live Question and Answer sessions. For those people that are unable to join us live, this will provide an opportunity to hear the awesome questions I am fielding about business, taking risks, real estate, and so much more!

This presentation is the live Q&A that I did the week of January 4th and each Thursday we will offer you another chance to take advantage of listening to the answers to our guests’ fabulous and compelling questions! Don’t miss this new episode of the Just Start Real Estate Podcast!

“No, we don’t provide comps when asked. We are not a comps service.”

“They don’t want my comps or repair estimates, because if they are really interested in buying the house, they will run their own.”

“I refuse to do other peoples’ work for them.”

“You have to set the table for a possible price reduction ahead of time.”

“Give me 10 days, and I will come back and give you a very honest answer.”

“It is very hard to go back for a price-reduction conversation if a price reduction was never discussed as a possibility.”

“To me, negotiations are negotiations.”

“I would probably try to be smarter about it.”

“After my first flip, every other one I funded with private money.”

“If I had no private money available, I would find a hard money lender.”

“People have gotten comfortable with working outside of the office since Covid, but at the end of the day, it is your company and if you want them in the office, they need to come to the office.”

“I don’t want to go all Elon Musk on people.”