Learn Real Estate Karate with Brie Schmidt

Jack Butala:                   Welcome, Brie Schmidt. Brie is a real estate broker, investor, and landlord, and founding partner of Turnkey-Reviews.com. Brie started purchasing investment properties in 2011 and currently owns and manages a rental units in Chicago and Milwaukee. She opened her own brokerage company and now works with investors to start or build their own portfolio. In 2015, she launched Turnkey-Reviews.com which is a one stop shop for turnkey buyers. The site features reviews of turnkey providers, articles, properties for sale and a podcast interviewing buyers about their experiences. Welcome, Brie.

Brie Schmidt:                     Thank you for having me.

Jack Butala:                   Hey, share with us please your business model. Jill and I are super intrigued.

Brie Schmidt:                     Well, depends on what part. I technically think I have three different businesses. I've got the buy and hold properties which I self-manage our Chicago portfolio. Then I hire out property manager to manage our Milwaukee portfolio. Then I have my brokerage business in both states. Then I have the TurnKey Reviews site. Those are the three kind of area that I involve myself in.

Jack Butala:                   Which one is your favorite?

Brie Schmidt:                     That's a hard one. I like them all. They're all interesting. The good thing about each of them is they're somewhat tied to each other, so there's a cohesiveness involved. Then they're all kind of different. Whether I'm representing clients here in Chicago, or dealing with my properties in Milwaukee, or hosting my own podcast and managing the website, I'm pretty much spending 90 percent of my life talking to real estate investors. That's fun. I get ideas from everyone else and different ... Being able to talk with investors all day long, you get to kind of take nuggets from what they say, and then apply them in your business, which I find very interesting.

Jack Butala:                   What's the biggest question you get from a potential investor?

Brie Schmidt:                     Mainly it's about the market. What's the market like? What kind of returns can I see? What are the pros and cons of investing in this type of area? Because I do Chicago and Milwaukee, those are both two very different markets, so they each have their pros and cons. I like both markets, and I wouldn't trade one for the other. It's really understanding what are your goals and what are you looking to accomplish, and then what market is going to really best fit those needs for you.

Jack Butala:                   As I understand your model, you guys either buy or control, let's say, a house, clean it up or maybe not clean it up. Do you get it rented out and then offer the whole package kind of as a turnkey investment to somebody who just doesn't want to get involved in all the details?

Brie Schmidt:                     I don't sell turnkey properties. With the TurnKey website, we are a disinterested third party that allows people to review their turnkey providers on the site, but we have no involvement whatsoever with actually marketing, selling or doing anything with turnkey properties.

We took that position specifically because ... It all kind of started with my partner who has funded a bunch of turnkey providers. He has been involved with the turnkey industry for a couple of decades, I believe. He and I both had people reached out to us constantly for advice on either our local market or other market just based on our experience level. The reality is 90 percent of turnkey providers are fantastic, and people have great experiences with them. The other 10 percent, you hear these horror stories of people having their money taken, or they buy a house and they lied about the renovations, or they bought in a bad area and now they've got six, seven, eight months of vacancy.