The 6-Step Guide to Buying Your FIRST Rental Property

David:
This is the BiggerPockets Podcast show 703. Hey, hey, hey, what’s up, everybody? This is David Greene, your host of the BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast, here today with a special episode. In today’s podcast, we are getting into the 90-day challenge where I walk you through exactly what you need to do to hit your goals in the next 90 days. I hope those goals involve buying some awesome real estate. The 90-day challenge helps you make a goal, set a plan, and get your next property in 90 days. We’d like to put a timeline on it because you’ll often operate better when you’re under a constricted amount of time. If I gave you the whole year to do something, you take the whole year to do it. So 90 days is a really good time period to give yourself the time that you need to get some progress going on, and in this webinar I’m going to show you how to do that.
With the timing of the episode, the year is almost over, and that means it’s really good time to set yourself up for 2023. You want to make sure that next year is better than this year was, and that’s what we call momentum. If you listen all the way to the end of the show, I will give you a special code that you can use to get a discount on your pro membership, but if you don’t want to listen all the way to the show, I’m going to give it to you now. Write down, Goals 2023.
If you guys sign up for a pro membership to help you with getting your next property, you will not only get 20% off your first year at the pro membership, but you’ll also get a free intention journal. This is the journal that Brandon Turner wrote and uses to track his goals so that he can stay on time, and I’m recommending that you start to do so as well, especially if you’re a journaler. So sit back, buckle your seatbelt, get ready for some high energy, high octane content about what you need to do to get your next property in the next 90 days. All right. Let’s get started with today’s webinar. Yup, my pleasure. Thank you for asking the question.
The 90-day challenge, how to get your first or next property in the next 90 days, hosted by your truly David Greene, host of the BiggerPockets Podcast. Please feel free to follow me on Instagram or anywhere else, @DavidGreene24. There’s a chance, a good chance that you’ll be listening to this and have a question that I won’t be able to get to. So you can DM me or even better, you can send me a message on the BiggerPockets platform and I can get to you there.
So as you’re listening, go ahead and take your phone out because there’s going to be several times throughout this slideshow where I’m going to ask you to take a picture, like a screenshot, because you’re going to want to remember that stuff. So you’re going to want to have your phone handy when you do that. All right. Thanks for coming. This should be fun.
Here’s our goal. It’s very simple. I want to help you build a step-by-step plan to buy your first or next property in the next 90 days, no matter how much experience, time or money that you currently have. Let’s talk a little bit about us, the BiggerPockets. Basically, it’s a website that has a blog, a forum, podcast, webinars, webinar replays, analysis tools, networking opportunities, books, videos and more that are all designed to help you use real estate investing to achieve your goals. There’s a free membership that includes education, networking, Q&A forums, and confidence to take action.
There’s a pro membership, expert education and data, investment calculators, landlord, legal forums and tools to take action because in BiggerPockets, we believe that real estate is the greatest wealth building tool in the world. It’s not quick and easy, but simply a business that can be learned. Anyone can invest regardless of past or current position.
I’m David Greene. I’m a real estate investor myself. I live in the Bay Area in California. I own rental property. I flip houses. I invest in commercial real estate. I invest in short term rentals. I hold some notes, basically people that pay me like I’m the bank on their mortgage. I am the host of the BiggerPockets Podcast. I’ve written a couple books for BiggerPockets, The BRRRR Book: Buy, Rehab, Rent, Refinance, Repeat, A Long Distance Real Estate Investing, as well as Sold: Every Agent’s Guide to Building a Profitable Business, and there’s two more books coming out after Sold that are written towards agents to help them be better at their job and to understand how to serve clients at a higher level.
I’ve been featured in Forbes, HGTV, CNN, and more. Like you, I was once a newbie to real estate. Here’s why I put all this in there. I just want you to understand that you’re listening to someone coming from my perspective because the advice I’m going to give you today, it’s good that you understand what I’m doing so you understand why I’m giving you the advice I am, but it doesn’t matter where I am right now. At one point, I was sitting right where you are. I just kept going on this journey of real estate investing. I really liked it and I ended up getting able to do all that cool stuff, and that’s what’s awesome about real estate because the more you give to it, the more it gives back to you.
Succeeding in real estate is similar to succeeding in anything. This is what I really want to highlight. There is no magic or secret to becoming an amazing real estate investor. It’s probably, in my opinion, one of or the easiest ways to succeed at building wealth. I don’t think there’s a better way than real estate, at least not that what I’ve ever found.
So you shouldn’t be surprised that investing in real estate success is just like success in anything else you do. What do I mean? Well, what do people do to succeed in general? They have a strong reason or a why for getting into shape. People have to know why they’re doing something if they’re going to stay committed to it. They then think about it, read about it, talk about it and, in other ways, obsess about getting into shape. They focus on a particular set of workouts. They don’t just do anything, right. It’s very purposeful and intentional what they’re going to do when they go workout.
They educate themselves on the proper form so they don’t get injured. They surround themselves with others who are trying to improve their physique. They don’t fall for get ripped quick schemes or programs, but they do pay for equipment, tools, and gym memberships. This one’s so important is you’re going to spend some money if you want to get into shape, but it doesn’t have to be a get ripped quick scheme or a get rich quick scheme. You see what we did there? It’s just finding the right equipment, the right tools, and the right gym to put their time into.
Then this is what’s super important. They show up consistently despite not seeing immediate progress. They just keep pushing play. This is so, so big. Anything you do, like right now I’m trying to undertake jujitsu and it is super hard, I’m not seeing a lot of progress, but I have to keep going. Every single person I talk to says, “The secret is you just keep showing up. If you’re tired and you don’t want to actually roll or spar, then don’t just come to the class and learn the techniques. Watch other people doing it. Get in the community of people. Have fun. Build relationships here, but you have to keep coming.” Every single person is saying the same thing. It just makes me think about all the other things I’ve been successful at. How did I become successful? I kept going when other people stopped.
This is a fourplex that my buddy Brandon bought. That’s his little daughter Rosie that he’s holding in the front door. This thing makes him $1,432 a month. This is a triplex that he owns. This makes him a little over a thousand dollars a month. This is a fourplex that he turned into a fiveplex. This one makes him almost $1,600 a month. It doesn’t take that many properties to achieve financial freedom. It just takes the right ones, and that’s what we’re talking about is how you can identify the right property so that you can get to the same place that Brandon and I and tens of thousands of other people have got to.
We’re going to call this the real estate investor master journey. This is your step-by-step guide to mastering real estate investing, and it’s going to be so much more simple than you think. So go ahead, get yourself ready. We’re going to get started at the meat and potatoes of our presentation today, and I hope you guys are excited because I’m not blowing smoke. This is all stuff that I’ve done, and I was just a police officer that didn’t want to have to be a police officer anymore and I worked my way right out of it. In whatever situation you’re at in life, you can do it too.
Step number one, your purpose. This is the why that we talked about in the workout analogy. Why do you want to invest in real estate in the first place? Let’s go over a couple reasons why some people do it. They want wealth. They want flashiness. They want nice cars. They want to feel like they’re somebody. They want to show off. They want to go to conferences and be able to say, “I have 700 units,” and use fancy phrases like cap rate and say finance instead of finance and talk about their door count, which is hilarious to me because I know quite a few investors that end up including the garage door, the front door, the side door, the back door, the bathroom door, the closet door. There’s a lot of doors that get worked into these accounts. Is that why you want to do it or are you looking for a different motive?
Here’s why I say that. If your motive for working out is because you want to look good to find a romantic partner, it will usually be enough to get you in the gym and eating better and in shape, but when you find your partner, you’ll probably stop. Your why was just to get to that point and that was all. If your reason for working out was that you wanted to be healthy so you could live longer or you wanted to find a partner and make them proud of who they’re with, you wanted to really, really serve them by being fit, when you find that partner, you’ll continue to work out. The why really, really matters.
A lot of people are in a situation in life where they’re not happy. They have a lack of security. Maybe they’re insecure as a person. They’re watching other people around them doing better or they don’t like their job, they just want to get out of their job right now. Well, if that’s your reason, you’ll probably pursue real estate until you get out of that pain and then you’ll stop. The thing that sucks about that is that real estate is designed to get better and better and better over time. It’s like the compound interest theory.
To me, real estate investing is much, much more like planting a tree. The reason this works so well but that so few people do it is the delayed gratification component of it. Every time I buy a house right now, I am serving future David. All the money that I make in real estate right now came from decisions I made in my past. You don’t get the immediate gratification of it. So I’m bringing this up right now to just make clarity to you that the reason to get into this is for the long term.
It’s just like when you first start going to the gym. You don’t see progress. You just feel sore. It just hurts all the time. The worst thing ever is when you start going and you get in some progress and then you stop and then you got to start all over again and you’re always in that just agony of getting started but you never see the results. The only reason that you should get into fitness is you’re going to consistently stick with it. You’re going to keep going to the gym. You’re going to keep eating healthy. You’re going to build good habits, and then it’s impossible to not be in shape, but then you get all the benefits of being in shape.
Well, we’re talking about financial fitness today. Real estate works just the same way. You’re looking at what this property’s going to be doing for you in five years, in 10 years, in 30 years, not what it’s going to be doing for you immediately. So this is a good question for you to ask yourself. I think you guys should all take a picture of this. I’m going to give you a minute to take a picture of the screen here. As you ask yourself this question, why do you want to invest in real estate, I want you to consider writing down your answer. Come up with a list of all the reasons why you want to do it.
Brandon bought that house where he was holding his daughter in the picture to give to her. It’s one of the coolest things he’s going to do. He’s buying this house. He put it on a loan that will be the property will be paid off in 18 years. He’s going to live off the cash flow for those 18 years, and when Rosie turns 18, she gets that house. At that time with the loan being paid off and the appreciation that’s happened, she should be able to pay for her college, her car, her first property, a vacation anywhere she wants to go, and more just from that one house. She will be set for life if she makes good decisions. Brandon made a decision and in 18 years after he made it, his kid will have incredible benefit which will then benefit him.
That’s a wonderful story of how real estate can work and when it works well. When it doesn’t work well is when you’re in a financial bind and you’re trying to get out of it using real estate right away. Okay? So if you guys write down all the reasons why you want to invest in real estate, you’ll start to see it’s because you want to leave a legacy for your kids, because you want to put your money in a good safe place where it’s going to grow over time, because you want something to focus on other than the stuff in life that you’re staring at right now that isn’t doing anything for you. Those are powerful whys and you will need them to get through this long-term commitment that we’re talking about.
Step number two is plan. How are you going to invest in real estate? You’ve got a lot of different what we call niches or if you want to be fancy, you could call them niches, single family homes, small multi-family, large multi-family, office space, retail space, mobile homes, mobile home parks or raw land. Those are examples of different ways you can invest in real estate. Then you’ve got these strategies, buy and hold, I use that one all the time. Fix and flip, I use that one occasionally.
Now, here’s the cool thing is all of these strategies can work in most cases for any niche. Wholesaling, that’s where you put a property under contract and then you sell the contract to someone else for a profit. Development, buying turnkey properties using the BRRRR method, house hacking, student rentals, vacation rentals. There’s a lot of strategies you can use with each niche. All you got to do, it’s not important which one you pick, it’s just important that you pick one and that you start making progress on it. Pick a niche and one strategy to begin with. You don’t need to learn it all.
So where will you invest in real estate? Well, you’ve got options. You’ve got local versus long distance. Then once you pick one of those two, you’ve got neighborhood. That’s really where you got to be asking, “Do I want to start in my own backyard and make a niche and a strategy work here or do I want to go somewhere else where I like the market better?” Then once you pick the overall area, which neighborhood do you want to be in, and then study your market. You want to know the ins and outs of what type of people buy house is there, what an average house is worth, what part of town is where the best deals are going to be, where the demand for tenants is going to be, where the best school districts are.
This is why most people start where they live because they already know the market, but it’s not about where you live, it’s about what you know. So pick the market you want to know and then study it so well that it’s like you know it as if you live there.
Step number three, you got to find the deals. Now, a lot of people start off with step number three as step number one, and that’s the problem. They didn’t start off with their why, “What’s the reason I’m doing this?” and then they didn’t come up with a plan. So every deal looks like a good deal or a bad deal. They don’t know because they don’t know what they’re looking for. That’s why you shouldn’t be doing this until step three.
How are you going to find these real estate deals? Well, here’s a few different ways. The simple way, go to realtor.com or zillow.com, sort by your criteria, and then look for hidden potential. I’m going to describe hidden potential in a second here, but I can give you an even easier way than this. Find a real estate agent that you like and have them start looking for you. Tell them what your criteria are and have them start sending you deals, and then you can supplement that with Realtor or Zillow.
If you live in California, you should be hitting me up because we can do this for you. If you don’t live in California, you should be trying to see if I know a realtor that I can refer you to or if you can use the BiggerPockets agent finder to find one, but going on Realtor and Zillow is only as good as what’s in the MLS, and then you’re going to have to find a realtor to ask your questions to once you find a house anyway. So starting with the real estate agent in my opinion is the best way to go. Then supplement your search with stuff like Realtor and Zillow.
When I say look for hidden potential, here’s what guys like me look for in a property. There was a time, 2010, ’11, ’12, where what I was looking for was the most motivated seller. There was a ton of houses on the market. Nobody was really trying to buy them, a deal was getting it below market value. So I would look for the seller that needed to get rid of the house and I would make the most aggressive offer I could and that’s how I made money in real estate. We are now in a market where there’s hardly any motivated sellers. Everybody wants to own the asset. That’s why you’re here right now. You want to own real estate.
Back when there were deals everywhere, there weren’t people showing up to webinars asking how to buy them. Nobody wanted to buy them. That was why there were deals. Well, we’ve done a 180. We’re now in a position where everybody wants to buy this stuff. So instead of trying to find a motivated seller, which isn’t going to happen because they’re not motivated if everyone wants to buy their house, I look for things that other investors are missing.
So I’m looking at a house right now in Moraga, California and I wrote an offer on it and, actually, you know what? I’m going to text my agent right now. When I say my agent, he’s one of the agents on my team, and ask where we are with it. Just remembered. So this is a property that sat vacant for a long time and eventually came off the market because the owners were unhappy with the lack of offers they got. They blamed their agent for it.
So I went and looked at this house and I saw it’s a weird floor plan. I can see why people weren’t wanting the home, okay? That was the obvious answer, but then I also saw it has a huge basement that already has plumbing and electrical run to it but isn’t finished. It also has an area in the upper floor to build a loft. That would massively increase the square footage of the home. Then it has a setup that it can be split up into different units and rented out individually.
So when I look at that house, I see the ability to create a lot of rent potential in an amazing area and add square footage. What everyone else saw was a weird floor plan on a house that was in a gray area but they didn’t like. That’s what we mean by looking for hidden potential. If you can develop these creative eyes and see angles that other people missed, you can find deals in plain view, basically, where other people are looking at them but not seeing what you’re seeing.
Then there’s the medium method. Get in your car and drive. Find a vacant or a rundown property and add it to your CRM. That stands for customer relationship manager. This is basically a database to attract things with. Mail letters or postcards to the prospect so you can actually say, “Hey, that house right there looks rundown. I’m going to send a letter or a postcard to the owner of that house and tell them I want to buy it.” Continue to repeat those first three steps over and over and over and over. Then once you actually get people that are saying, “Yeah, you can buy my house. What do you want to pay for it?” You can start to spend your time negotiating with those people that are calling and hiring other people to drive for you. Then they go find the addresses, they tell them, and then you look them up and then you call the owners and you just spend your time negotiating.
You can download a large list of prospects from Listsource, Propstream or other places. You can mail letters or postcards to thousands of people a month, and then just answer your phone. We call this direct mail. So the media method will be driving and looking for the houses yourself. The advanced method is sending out letters and letting those people come to you. These are all ways that you’re basically just filling up a funnel of leads that you can then start to pursue, and we’re going to talk about that pretty soon, but you got to get leads however you can, whether your agent’s helping you find them on the MLS, which is my preferred method or you’re going after them yourself, which is what a lot of people do like wholesalers typically do that. That’s where it all starts is you start with leads.
Remember that I said success in one thing is usually the same way that you’re successful at a lot of other stuff. It’s true. If I want to run a successful real estate business, I start off by looking for leads. How many people want to buy a house or sell a house that I can get to come to me? I have a mortgage company. How many people want to get a loan that I can talk to and I can say, “Hey, you should use my company,” right? That’s where every single business starts, so you shouldn’t be surprised that that’s where we start now. How do I get these leads to analyze? Well, here’s one way. You go to biggerpockets.com/blog/provideos, and why don’t you guys go ahead and take a picture here?
Here’s the thing to understand about a property. Every property has a home run number. This is a price you can get it for that makes it a home run. Now, here’s a caveat I’ll add to that. Real estate markets change and shift just like economies change and shift. What are the mistakes that I see people make when it comes to building wealth or making money? How do I want to say this? I’m about to use a sports analogy because we’re looking at a ballpark. So if you’re not into sports, hang with me, right?
The way you build wealth is very similar to the way you win at sports. The thing that makes it similar is you are competing with other people who are also trying to get what you want, right? You want money, so does other people. You want the best job, so do other people. You want these best properties, so do other people, right? Sports is I’m trying to get the ball in the basket or the football in the end zone or I’m trying to get the baseball into an open space that I can hit it and the other team has a whole bunch of people that are trying to stop me. All the strategy of sports has to do with how do we do what we want and stop them from doing what they want. That’s why I can use those analogies when we’re talking about building wealth. So we’re talking about a home run number because there’s other people that are trying to stop you.
The thing about sports is that the rules of the game change the way the game is played, change, and evolve over time and so do economies. What worked to make money in different aspects in 2002 is different than what works to make money in 2010, which is different than 2020, and I can give you examples of this. In 2001-2002, having a website or being able to code and make websites gave you a huge advantage, right? At that time, computer networking was massively popular. If you could take two computers, connect them to each other, and make them communicate, you could make a buttload of money. That sounds crazy right now, but technology hadn’t increased to where it’s at. So you had to have really good problem solving skills to connect two computers together in the same office. Well, we didn’t have just like a cloud that everything would connect to.
Well, at a certain point, the technology improved to where that could be done automatically. You didn’t have to manually do it, and then computer networkers were out of business just like people that could create a webpage became much less needed when you could just go to Wix or Squarespace and have a template to make your own page. You see how that talks?
Well, let’s fast forward to 2010. There’s tons of real estate out there. Nobody has the money to buy it and nobody wants to own it because we think we’re going into a depression and buying real estate felt like buying an anchor. It’s going to pull you down. You’re basically just signing it for a mortgage you’re going to have to pay. You don’t know if you’re going to have tenants that are going to want to live there because none of those people had jobs. The way you won in that area or in that market, I should say, would be to get a house way below what you thought it would appraise for. That would be your home run number in 2020.
In 2020-2022, in the future, you don’t win that same way. It’s not like there’s nobody that wants to buy a house. The government’s printing money. They’re handing it out to everybody. The economy’s doing relatively well. Most people have jobs and are not afraid of not having a job. In fact, a lot of them are working from home. There’s a shortage in housing. So now that your home run number has to be calculated differently, now you have to look at it more like, “What is this house going to be worth in five years or 10 years and where else can I spend my money?” In that case, real estate almost always ends up looking like the home run when you compare it to other asset classes.
Step number four, analyze the deals. So you’ve got leads. Now, you’ve got to analyze them. This is what we call the lapse system. Guys, take a picture of this screen. This is the easiest, simplest way to understand what you’re trying to do as a real estate investor. It’s four steps. Really, it’s only three steps. The fourth step is just a result. You start with leads. We talked about that. You can get them from a realtor. You can get them from zillow.com. You can get them from telling all your friends, “I’m looking to buy houses.” You can get them from driving around and looking for properties that need help. You can get them from sending letters. All these things, they’re just ways to get leads.
When the leads come in, you analyze them. That’s how you look to see, “Would this be the right property for me?” and we’re going to talk about how BiggerPockets can help you do that in a little bit here. When you see one that makes it through your analysis and looks good, you pursue it. Then once you’ve pursued it, you either have success or you don’t. So it’s finding leads, analyzing them, and pursuing them that we’re just doing over and over and over and over as real estate investors. Then when you do it enough times, you find success.
So here’s an example. You send out 300 direct mail letters. You get back 40 people that said, “Hey, I might want to sell you my house.” So you now have 40 leads to analyze. Out of those 40, you make 12 offers. Those are the ones you pursue. So we started off by sending out 300 letters. That gave us 40 leads. We analyzed those 40 leads. Out of those 40, we liked 12. We wrote offers on 12, and then one of them was accepted. That ends up with 1432 a month in cash flow and a hundred thousand dollars in equity.
This is how simple it is. This is why I told you in the beginning you’re not a rocket scientist, but it’s not easy, right? You still have to send letters. You still have to find leads. Then you got to know how to analyze them, and that’s not rocket science either, but it does take some time. Then you got to pursue the ones you like and you have to be able to make that decision and pursue them correctly. So it’s not complicated, but it’s not easy, which is the best thing. It’s just like fitness. Getting fit is really not complicated. It’s eating good foods and burning calories, which is hard. That’s the thing is we don’t like doing it. We don’t want to commit to it.
So what does your process look like. As we’re talking about this, are things coming to mind that you think you could do? How will you generate leads? Right now, what is the next actionable step that you can commit to doing that will get you leads? How many leads or how many deals will you analyze out of those leads? How many are you going to analyze in a month or a week or a day? Can you commit to that? If you were going to get in shape, you’d say how many times a week you’re going to work out, you’d plan out your workout session, right? Mine typically looks like Monday is chest and triceps. Tuesday is shoulders and biceps. Wednesday is back and usually a little bit of abs. Then Thursday or Friday would be legs and then weekend is some form of cardio or whatever I missed during the week, that muscle group’s ready to go. Then I supplement that with jujitsu training and trail running.
So I know if I want to be in shape where I need to be. It’s in my calendar and I know what I’m working out. I have a plan. I’m not in the best shape, but that just shows I don’t commit to this the best and I don’t eat the best, right? I’m slowly eating better, but I still don’t eat great. Real estate will work the exact same way. I put way more time into business and real estate, which is why I’m more financially fit than I’m physically fit, right? I want you to be that way too. I want you to get financially fit, but the process of getting there is exactly the same as getting fit in anything else that you do. How many offers will you make in a month, in a week, in a day?
So let’s do one together right now so that you can see how incredibly easy BiggerPockets makes it to do what I’m talking about, right? We’re going to analyze this deal right here. This is 185 Landings Drive in Frankfurt, Kentucky. Let me show you how easy it is to analyze the deal. You’re going to hover over tools, and then you are going to go to Rent Estimator. Now, we’re going to put in the address of the property. We’re looking at 185 Landings Drive in I think it was Frankfurt. Yes. Got to click on this, okay? Don’t hit search address until you’ve clicked on the button because it won’t know what it’s searching for.
Now, this property was a two bedroom, one bathroom, and I realized you guys probably didn’t see it. I just took it right off of the screen. It showed that it was eight bedrooms and it was four bathrooms and it was four units, okay? So we know that if it’s eight bedrooms and four bathrooms, every unit has two bedrooms and one bathroom. So we are going to tell the BiggerPockets software to look up properties near this one, 185 Landings Drive that have two bedrooms and one bathroom, and this is what it tells us. The confidence is high that this property will generate $630 a month. That’s what those are renting for right now, okay?
Now, let’s say you’re skeptical and you go, “Ah, I don’t know. How can I trust this?” Well, that’s actually good. You should be that way. You scroll down here and you can see all these other comparable areas or properties and you can see what they’re renting for. Now, I do this all the time. So I see this one here is renting for 925. That’s significantly more. It’s also a two, one, right? Well, it might have more square footage than mine, so maybe that’s why it’s renting for more, but let’s say it doesn’t.
Well, what I would do is I would Google 112 Lee Court in Frankfurt and I would look at the pictures of it and I would see, “Ooh, my property has dingy carpet and oak cabinets and outdated appliances.” The only difference between this one is it has hardwood floors, an updated kitchen and tile shower bathrooms. So the question would be, “How much money would I have to spend and make mine look like Lee Court because then I am more likely to get 925 a month instead of 630, which would significantly improve my cash flow?”
Now, that’s assuming that it’s in the same neighborhood. You see how a lot of these properties here, I think this one’s ours right there? These are in a similar area, probably all multi-family housing. These ones are spread out. These three look like they’re in the same spot, but these are spread out. This might be a better area maybe because it’s closer to Kentucky State University. It’s a little bit nicer. Maybe these aren’t quite as nice, and so that 930 comp is one of the properties that’s down here like you see this one, right, 902, whereas these ones don’t quite go for as much. These are more in the 600s, right?
This is how we real estate investors value properties. I’m better at doing this maybe than an average person because I’ve run a real estate team for a while now and I look at real estate and I understand how it’s valued, but you don’t have to be an expert to be able to understand the basics I’m going over right now. I’m really hoping that as you’re listening to this, you’re learning something and you’re seeing how you could do the same thing. If you have any questions about this I didn’t get to, just send me a DM or send me a message on BiggerPockets. I’ll do my best to get back to you there.
So now that we can see that we believe we would get six 30 a month per unit and we know there’s four units, I just went in my calculator and I did 630 times four, and that told me 2520. So I can expect to get a gross rents of about 2520 on this property. Now that I know what it would rent for, I’m going to go back to tools and I’m going to click on calculators, rental property, start a new report. I’m going to let software do all the work for me. You guys are going to be amazed at how easy and how accurate analyzing deals can be once you have leads.
So our lead is 185 Landings Drive. I hope it was Drive in Frankfurt. Yup, there it is. Click on it. If you want, you can add a photo of the property. You can put it in here because you’re going to save this so you can go back to it later. We’re going to put a purchase price. What was the purchase price? 240. Put that in here, 240,000. It’s asking me for the closing costs. “Well, David, I don’t know that. I’m not an agent like you that buys a bunch of properties and writes books, and I have better hair than you, but that’s about all.” Okay, don’t worry. You click right here on calculating closing costs. BiggerPockets has it set up so you can see what number you should put in there. Typical closing costs are one to two percent of the purchase price of the property, but can differ depending on location and financing. If unsure, one and a half percent of the purchase price is a good number to begin with, right?
Now, when you get closer to actually buying this deal, your realtor and your title company can tell you what they’re going to be, but in the beginning, we don’t need exact numbers, we need ballparks. So we’re going to go with five grand, which is a little closer to 2% than 1% just to be a little conservative. Then you click next and it takes you to loan details. Now, if you’re buying the house as a house hack, you might put in 10% down, maybe 0% down if it’s VA loan. We’re going to assume that we’re buying this as investment property, which means we’re going to need to put 20% down, and because that’s what we chose, like you see if you click on 25, this number goes up, 20 goes back down, it knows at the purchase price we said you don’t have to do the math. It’s telling you right now your down payment is going to be 48,000.
Let’s say the interest rate on an investment property I’d say is right around 4% right now on a primary residence. It’s a little closer to three and a half, but investment properties are a little more, and no points. Points would just be money that you would pay to buy your rate lower. Then for the loan term, you always want to put in 30 years because that’s what most loans are, 30-year, and you want to go for a fixed rate, not an adjustable rate in most cases. Click on next for income. Gross monthly income, remember I said it was 2520. That was the 630 per unit times four.
Now, we’re going to talk about expenses. What are the property taxes going to be, right? Well, you’ve got a button right here if you want to figure out how you can determine your property taxes. I know in most cases it’s about less than 1.5% a year. So I’m going to multiply 240 times 0.015, which is 1.5%. That’s 3,600 in a year. It will most likely be less than that. We’re going with a higher number here, right? So we have 3,600 and we’re going to click annual. That’s how much you’re going to pay for property taxes.
The insurance on this thing is, I’m going to guess just based on my experience, is going to be about $75 a month. Now, when you actually put it in contract, if you’re pursuing this deal, you can call an insurance company and get a quote. You’re going to have to. The lender’s probably going to make you do that. So if it ends up being $500 a month, you just back out of the deal, but it’s never going to be $500 a month. It’ll probably be less than the 75, but when we’re initially analyzing a property, this is what we want. We want ballpark figures because the time it takes to go get exact numbers for every property that you haven’t even buy yet is usually not a good investment.
We’re going to budget for repairs and maintenance, 5%. We’re going to budget for vacancy, 5% of the gross rents. Same for capital expenditures, and we’re going to put 8% in there for management. Now, the tenants are going to pay their own electricity and gas and their own water and sewer. Let’s say we’re going to pay the garbage. So in that case, let’s say that’s going to be $50 a month. Click finish analysis. Here is the awesome. Get ready for it.
This calculator is going to do all of this for us. We don’t have to be good at math. So what the numbers that we’ve put in here, it’s telling us that we can expect a cash flow $604 a month. It’s getting that from the 2520 of income that we put in and the expenses of 1915 that it calculated for us giving us a cash on cash return of a little over 13.5%. This is just a breakdown of how it came up with the numbers if you’d like to see information presented this way, and it’s telling us the total cash needed would be 53,000.
The monthly expenses breakdown looks like this. This orange part is going to be the variable expenses. That’s going to be the vacancy, the capex, the maintenance. This blue part, the biggest part of it is going to be the mortgage, right? It’s just showing you of your expenses. This is how they’re broken down. The net operating income, that’s how much money we can expect to make this property to make in a year. Then again, we see the cash on cash return.
Now, here’s my favorite part. I love this graph. This graph shows me over extended period of time like 20 years what I can expect the property to do. Now, personally, I think us at BiggerPockets, we are very conservative. We’re assuming a 3% growth rate. Most parts of the country are seeing way more than a 3%. So it should be much better than this in real terms than it is theoretically, but you can see we brought the property for 240 and the value of it is slowly going up over time.
You can also see right here, this purple line, this is the loan. This is the money that we borrowed in order to get the property is slowly going down over time. The difference between what it’s worth and what we owe is the equity we have. You see that it really grows. If you come down here and you look at the cash flow, the year one cash flow is going to be around $7,613. Well, that grows and grows and grows as rents go up every single year until in year 30. It’s more like 22,000. I bet you it’s going to be three or four times that with the way things are going right now, but this is a conservative estimate.
Same thing for the equity, right? You see your equity that’s growing, growing, growing, growing, growing over time. Who wouldn’t want to make a decision right now that would be worth $435,000 in 30 years? What if you made 30 decisions like that, where all of them were worth 435,000? Do you think there’s any way real estate won’t make you a multimillionaire if you take action today and wait, and then take more action and wait, and you keep taking action so that your future you becomes massively wealthy because of things that present day you did right now?
So here’s what the experts know. It’s not about timing the market. This is what everybody wants to do is, “I want to wait to buy the dip.” It’s about time in the market. I, David Greene, don’t wait to buy the dip. I buy all the time. Now, what I will say is I am more aggressive at dips, but that doesn’t mean I do nothing in the meantime, all right? Sometimes in life I need to focus on fitness or health and I put way more effort into it. Sometimes in life you’re going through a hard time, you’re going through a breakup, you’re having a hard time with your family, you got some bad news, and you actually got to be in the gym a lot more to work some of that out. Other times, I’m super busy and I just have to find a way to get in there sometimes. That’s how I look at real estate.
When there’s a dip in the market, I’m in the gym all the time. I’m looking at deals constantly. I’m writing way more offers. I’m being way more aggressive. I think it’s a great market to buy. I really ramp up what I’m doing, but when it’s not a dip, it’s not like I just don’t go to the gym at all. That would be crazy. I still buy, I’m just a little more careful or I use a different type of strategy or I adjust the way that I’m planning on doing this so that it’s not going to be immediate gratification, maybe it’s longer term. You guys want an example? Let me know in the chat if you want me to give you an example of what this would look like in real life what I’m describing here. If not, I can move on with the rest of the presentation. We don’t have to get into a real life analysis of timing the market verse time in the market. Anybody else want me to share what that would look like from practical terms? Okay, you want an example. There we go.
In 2010, it was or maybe I shouldn’t say that. In a market like 2010 when there’s tons of deals out there, okay? So there was a time where I was investing in North Florida and there weren’t a lot of other investors there and there was a ton of depressed properties. They were just distressed and depressed and they needed a lot of work. I was buying three to five properties a month at that time. I wasn’t competing with anyone else. I hadn’t been foolish and talked about it on the podcast to where everybody started doing what I was doing. Properties were sitting on the market for six months at a time. I had a really good contractor that was doing all the work. I was scooping them up left and I really wasn’t focusing much on real estate sales.
I didn’t have a mortgage company. I wasn’t hiring agents and training them on my teams. I was like, “Man, I got a great opportunity. I’m going to buy as much real estate as I can,” and I went hard. Then at a certain point, because I talked about it too much, other people started investing in that same area. Then the contractors got harder and harder to use. Then the deals started to dry up. Other people were going after them. Then it just got harder and harder to do, right?
So when I recognized, “Okay. I can’t get as many deals here as I was before,” I shifted my focus and I started hiring new agents and growing my team and training them and selling houses for clients and making money and building wealth in other ways, but I never stopped buying there. I just put less time towards that exercise in the gym, right? I’m not working on my biceps as much. Maybe I’m doing leg day more would be a good way to look at it.
When I did buy, I shifted into different things. So what I would do then is I started to move into where I am now, where I’m buying luxury properties in really good markets that are very expensive because I know that if we do have a crash, those markets don’t get hit as hard. I also know my cash on cash return is going to be way lower when I first buy them. Those are long-term plays. In 10 years they’re going to make me hundreds and hundreds, if not millions of dollars per property. In short-term, it’s going to be lean. It’s just that’s the way that it works.
So I’ve shifted my strategy to that because it’s so competitive right now. If we get to a point where for whatever reason we hit another depression, no one wants to buy real estate, I’ll go back to the other way, but the thing is it’s not … What I’m trying to highlight is it would be foolish to say I’m not going to buy any real estate right now. There’s people that are making really good money in short-term rentals. I’ve moved into that myself a little bit, but it’s more work. You actually have to manage a short-term rental. It’s not like it used to be where it was set it and forget it, I just bought it and gave it to a property manager. Maybe you have to do the same thing. To get time in this market, you might have to go to a more active source of income where it’s not quite as passive.
Then once the market shifts, maybe that house becomes just a long-term rental. You don’t have to worry about it anymore. You’ve got all kinds of options, but what I don’t want you to do is say, “It’s hard to get a deal, so I shouldn’t buy right now.” I’m making more money in the deals I’m buying right now in a hard market than I was when it was easy. I don’t want you guys to miss out.
Then number two, focus on what your portfolio will look like 10 years from now. Cannot stress this enough. Everyone who three or four years ago was telling me maybe two to three years ago would be a better example. “David, there’s a pandemic. We have shelter in place. The economy is going to be crippled. We’re never going to recover from this. I’m selling everything. I’m not buying anything right now and I’m going to hold onto my cash.” I said, “Okay. Well, I don’t think you should. I don’t think that’s going to happen. I think you’re thinking very shortsighted. This is actually a great opportunity to buy,” and a lot of people said, “Nope, I’m getting out of the game,” and they sold properties or they dropped out of escrows or they just stopped looking.
Those same people, those have lost out on over six figures of equity minimum at the market that I’m in in the Bay Area. So the houses that we had under contract for clients that backed out were over $200,000 cheaper than what they are right now. The reason is that we didn’t go into a recession. We printed a bunch of money, we caused a lot of inflation. So the number one thing that I see that stops people from buying is when they feel like it’s too hot, prices are going too high, and they don’t realize that it’s not just that prices are going high, it’s that the value of money is going down.
A million dollars is not what it used to be. A hundred thousand dollars is not what it used to be. It used to be if you made a hundred thousand dollars a year, you were set. That’s middle income in the Bay Area right now. I don’t mean to sound … It’s just so expensive to live here, but that’s not really that much money. In the future, a hundred thousand dollars won’t be considered hardly anything with the way inflation is going. You can’t make decisions based on the snapshot of right now because you’re not buying real estate for one year. You’re buying it for 30 years, 40 years, 50 years.
So what I do is I say, “In 10 years, what will this property look like?” So let’s take for example, the one that I described that I just texted my agent to see if we have it under contract yet in Moraga. I wrote an offer for 2.25 million on that property. It’s going to have an extensive rehab. In 10 years, I think that property is probably going to be more like five to six million dollars, and I can say that because the rate of inflation that we’re seeing, that is not ridiculous to think about. This is even before I fix it up and before that area takes off, just off standard rates of inflation. That’s what I would think we’re going to see.
So what I’m saying is in 10 years, this will be worth five or six million. Now, what do I have to do to make it 10 years? Well, I have to increase the cash flow, okay? I’m going to do that by adding square footage so I can rent those areas out. All right. How do I get my money back out of this deal so it’s not like I can’t buy more real estate? All right. Well, I also have to upgrade the house, make it look nicer so that I can increase the value, so I can refinance it and get my money back out. Okay. So I need a remodel that makes the house nicer, add square footage, which makes it worth more and increases the cash flow. I can do that. Let’s move on it.
So now, what’s going to end up happening is I’m going to have this place, fixe it up, refinance it. I’ll probably leave a hundred or $200,000 in this deal, but I’ll get most of the money back out. Then in 10 years, it’s worth five or 6 million, right? I’ve made three to 4 million from this one property. What if I do that three or four times a year? It’s not like I’m running around with my hair on fire. It’s funny hair on fire because I don’t have hair, but these are examples. Maybe you don’t live in a market where there’s two million dollar houses, I get that, but you might be where they have four or $500,000 houses, and in 10 years, those are going to be million dollar properties, probably more.
So what are you doing right now so that you 10 years from now has 10 to 20 properties that have all gained $500,000 in equity. There’s not a lot of these assets going around. Either you’re one of the people who get them and benefits from it or you’re one of the people who doesn’t and says, “Oh, I wish I would have …” like all the people 10 years ago from today that are saying this, “I wish I would’ve bought back then.” This is why you’re here today at this webinar. This is why God, the universe, whatever you believe, has you here because it’s telling you real estate is the safest, most dependable delayed gratification. It’s just like fitness. It takes a long time to get going, but no one ever says, “Oh, I really worked out a too much and was too healthy. I wish I wouldn’t have done that.” Everybody says, I wish I would’ve built better habits for working out,” okay?
I’m sharing with you how I did it and how I’m still doing it because I’m still into it. I’m not trying to take your money. I’m not saying, “Hey, I want all your money. Give it to me so I can go build wealth.” I can invest your money for you. I do that and I do pay people, but I’m telling you that you need to go do this. If you’re here today, you need to get these tools that I’m showing you and you need to get into the game now so that the 10-year version of you in the future is thanking you for what you did.
Step number five, get funding. You know what? Take a picture of this one. I want you guys to really dwell on this. Did that example of how I shift strategies help you guys? Looks like most of you are saying yes or at least you’re sending emojis that would indicate so. Awesome. I’m glad I could help there. All right. Step number five, you got to get funding. So how will you fund your real estate deals? Well, you’ve got several options, conventional loans, partnerships, hard money lenders or house hacking. They’re similar, but these are the ways that people typically borrow money to buy their real estate.
The key to financing real estate is to get a great deal. If you get a really good deal, it’s going to appraise for what you’re paying for it. You’re going to be able to raise the money easy. Now, I have a company that can help you with this and you guys can reach out to me and I’ll connect you with them. Basically, we have loans where if your property makes enough money, it would cash flow enough, which most of them will. You can use that income to get the loan. So as long as you’re getting a good deal, as long as you’re getting a property that brings in more income than it’s going to cost to own it, the lender will let you borrow on it. Then you can go to somebody else that might have more money than you and say, “Hey, do you want to cover the down payment? I’ll take care of the deal, the loan and the management. We can split it,” right?
The point here is is if you get a good enough deal, the money will find you. The people that have trouble with financing are usually not getting very good deals. “But what if I don’t have any money?” Well, BiggerPockets has something for you too, the pro videos page. It includes a workshop run by Brandon Turner and me, How to Invest With No or Low Money Down. It’s this guy right up here. This is probably the best work that Brandon and I ever did together. It was magical. It was like The Beatles. What’s the best Beatles album? The White album, the Black album? I’m not really a big Beatles fan, but when you know you’re in that zone and you’re just doing some great, great work, that’s how it was.
The whole thing was about how to invest in real estate when you don’t have a lot of money. If you’re a BiggerPockets pro member, you get access to all of these workshops, lease options, house hacking, partnerships, the one I did with Brandon. You get it all if you’re a pro member for free.
Then step number six, motivation. How long will you stay persistent for the long haul? Nobody got fit in two months of intense work. They were already fit if two months of intense work helped them, okay? This is the long haul you’re signing up for. Are you going to get involved in a mastermind group? I run one for this exact purpose. A lot of other people do the same thing. It’s a way that you can hold people accountable, teach them, get them excited. It’s the difference between if you have to go to the gym yourself or if you’ve got a workout partner. Man, I’ll tell you what. If I got a time in life where somebody’s working out with me, I am 90% more likely to go and more likely to enjoy it and I get a better workout in because now I have a spotter.
What about daily journaling or tracking? Are you daily reminding yourself of what your goals are? How about performance coaching? I have performance coaches and let me tell you, they are expensive. I spend $6,000 a month and more sometimes just on coaching for the various businesses that we have, okay? Now, that $6,000 that I spent earns me way more because of the way that they improve how well me and my team perform, but you got to spend a little bit of money sometimes to get a much bigger return just like investing, and that’s it.
That is the real estate investor master journey. It’s six steps. It’s purpose, finding your purpose, having a plan, finding the deals, analyzing the deals, getting your funding, and staying motivated. You do these six things and you’ll be successful. Why don’t you go ahead and take a picture of the wheel here so you can remind yourself of how simple this is, the 90-day challenge, plan, prepare, purchase? Complete all six phases of the master journey in the next 90 days by working on your business 15 minutes a day, five days a week for 90 days in a row.
“Life doesn’t get better by chance. It gets better by change,” great, great quote by Jim Rohn. There’s two kinds of people, all right? If you’ve ever dated somebody who’s the wrong type, you know the frustration. I’m talking about if you’ve ever had a partner with somebody like a business partner that was the wrong type. If you’ve ever had a friend, whatever it is, you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about. There are people who wait for life to come to them and change things for them. These are often people that live by their feelings. If they’re in a bad mood or a depressed mood, they just don’t do anything. If they’re in a good mood, they’re really excited, but they wait for life to bow to them. I know this is a deep thing, but it’s so true.
There’s people that are just waiting for their boss to come say, “You know what? We’re going to give you a promotion. Will you try harder?” They’re waiting for Prince Charming to come out of the woodwork and say, “I’ve been waiting my whole life for you. Now is when you should actually start trying to be a better person.” They’re waiting for that amazing deal to drop in their lap and then their phone to ring with a lender who says, “I’ve got a bunch of money. Do you want to use it?” and a contractor that’s like, “I need work so bad, I’ll do it for cheap,” and they just keep waiting for that, for chance, and it doesn’t happen because life doesn’t get better that way. It gets better by change. It rewards the people that go seek, right?
“I want a partner. I’m going to become the kind of person that a partner would want to be with. I want a business partner. I’m going to learn skills a business partner would want. I want that raise. I’m going to do a great job right now and make sure my boss sees it.” Those are the people that are rewarded and that’s what I mean by the two kind of people. If you’re attending a webinar like this, it does not matter how much information I share with you. It does not matter how much I talk about what I’m doing or I give you strategy. If you’re waiting for life to do something for you, it will never ever happen. You will dance around the dance floor but never actually find a partner. You’ll orbit the planet but never touchdown. You’ll get close, but you won’t get to where you’re actually benefiting. That happens when you make a choice to change and you make it your responsibility to go get the things that you want.
Real estate investing often feels like this. This is so good. I know this because as an agent I’ve had more people than I can count come in my office and sit down and when we really, really, really get to what’s behind their fear, it’s, “I don’t want to end up with a house that I don’t like. I don’t want to end up with a property that I don’t realize everything is going to go wrong.” What they think is they pick a property, they jump off the cliff, and they hope that they like where they land, and the property that they get is where they land. That is not how it should feel.
If you’re feeling that, you’re doing it wrong. You have the wrong agent, you have the wrong strategy, you have the wrong mindset. It is not like this. I’ve never bought a deal that felt like this right here. If you catch yourself hoping that you like where you land, you need to get off the hopium. Hopium is not a good strategy. It doesn’t help you. It’s a lie. What it should feel like is this. Let me give you a practical example. Do you guys like that? Tell me in the chat if you want me to give you a practical example of how real estate should feel like walking on a trail, on a path with other people. I don’t want to belabor the point if you guys are already seeing what I’m saying, but tell me if you want me to give you an example of how real estate investing should look like this. Okay. I’m seeing the yes.
It should be step by step. Every step on this path, at the end of this path is the property that you’re trying to get or the goal that you’re trying to achieve. All right? The first thing that you should notice is you’re not doing it alone. There are other people with you that will help you, teach you, be there for you when you fall. Maybe they’ve walked this path before. Like me, I’m a guide. I do this constantly. I’m up and down this path all the time. So I can tell you, “Here’s where you avoid the poison ivy. Here’s where the water’s going to be. Here’s where the shade is. This is where we’re going to stop. Oh, we don’t want to go that way. Oh, this time of day, you shouldn’t go that way. This is not the right market for that.” We’re a guide. We know what to expect, but even more practical than that, it is one step at a time, okay?
You look at leads, you get an you leads, you analyze them. 60% of them won’t work on those leads, you stop moving forward. You’re okay, you’re safe. You didn’t jump off the cliff. On the 40% that worked, you pursue them. Out of those, maybe 10% of them get back to you. Okay. The other 90% of those leads, you throw them away. You’re okay. You didn’t jump off the cliff. Out of the 10% that got back to you, you maybe put it in contract. That still isn’t the end of the journey. That’s just one step.
After you go into contract, you order an inspection. You look at the inspection report. If it looks bad, you stop going down the path. You don’t buy it. You didn’t jump off the cliff. If the inspection report looks good, you negotiate with the other side to see if you can get a little extra money. You take another step. Now comes the appraisal. Oh, the appraisal came in low and the seller won’t come down on the price. Okay. We stop moving forward. I didn’t jump off the cliff. I’m okay. Right?
Then we agree on the appraisal or the appraisal comes back well. You look up what the rents would be for the area, “Oh, rents are way lower than I thought. I talked to a property manager. They said we’re not going to get that much.” You’re okay. You stop. You quit walking. It is a little step after a little step, after a little step with very little actual commitment on your part to that deal. Now, you have to be committed to the process of walking this path, but you don’t have to be committed to the process of every single deal taking that path.
That’s why you shouldn’t be scared. It’s why I’m not scared. I routinely will have a person come to me and say, “David, here’s this amazing deal. I think you should buy it,” and I will say, “Great. Write up the offer right now, put it in contract.” I’m known for this. We call it the five-minute offer. I will just wrap something up and put it in contract right away, but I will have contingencies in that contract that I can back out if I don’t like something and I know exactly what I’m looking for.
Then if I move forward with it and I get the inspection report done and, “Oh, man, it’s got some terrible termites or horrible foundation, it’s going to be $50,000 to fix,” I go to the seller and I say, “I need you to give me a $50,000 credit or I need you to fix these things or I need you to drop the price. You don’t want to do it? Okay. I’m just backing out of the deal. No harm, no foul. Give my money back.”
I’m not scared to take this journey because I realized I’m not just jumping off a cliff and hoping that I like where I land, and that’s the same way that it should feel for you. It’s only scary when you feel like you don’t know the path, but when you’ve got a guide with you or other people walking the journey with you, your risk is significantly decreased and it’s not scary anymore. At BP, we build tools to help investors on their journey toward their life goals. This is not just theory. This is how thousands of real estate investors, including myself, have found financial freedom.
So here, two big questions. Are you fired up and truly committed to using real estate to obtain financial freedom? I’m not just saying, are you interested in it, okay? Do you feel some emotion? Do you feel some passion? Are you excited? Are you like, “This is where I’m supposed to be? This feels right. This is one of the only times in my life where I’ve been like, ‘That’s it. I know that’s what I need to do. I just don’t know how to get there.’”?
Number two, will you take on the 90-day challenge and commit to working 15 minutes a day, five days a week for 90 days pursuing the lapse funnel, looking for leads, analyzing them, and pursuing them? Here’s another great quote, “If more information was the answer, we would all be billionaires with perfect apps.” I’ve given you a lot of information. You can get a lot of information on our podcasts, on our YouTube channel. You get a lot of information anywhere. It won’t be what you need. We all know what it takes to get abs, and it’s discipline, it’s accountability, it’s passion, it’s action, it’s not information.
So what’s the key to success if we want to get a financial six pack? It’s action. There’s no way around it. This is the only way that you get abs is you eat really, really good and you work them out, and not only action, but daily consistent action, right? You can’t get abs by eating really healthy for half the day and then the rest of the time you don’t. It has to be consistent with what you’re doing.
Here is a line from Ethan, who’s a pro member in Washington. “I just put my first investment property under contract today. Your webinar challenged me from the planning stages to taking action. Thank you for the motivation and valuable information the BP team provides.”
This is from Dawn, “Congrats, Mindy, on your book. Great information as always. I wouldn’t expect anything less from BP. I did the 90-day challenge last year, which led me to my first rental property after analyzing dozens or even a hundred and placing offers on several to land the best one for me. I love BP and I love the BP books and other products. Still waiting on T-shirts.”
I don’t know why you came here today. Are you tired of working your full-time job? It could be draining if you don’t like it. Do you need to start preparing for your future retirement? Are you tired of being a wantrepreneur instead of an entrepreneur? Well, here’s what I do know. Real estate investing works if you work it. It’s just like saying exercise works if you exercise. Our goal at bigger pockets is to help you reach your financial goals through real estate, and that’s why we created incredible tools to help you get there faster and with less pain.
BiggerPockets Pro is the way that I recommend you go about doing that. BiggerPockets Pro helps you analyze properties and get your next deal faster. You can analyze properties in minutes like we just did together and determine which ones are worth pursuing with unlimited access to deal analysis calculators. Those are what I walked you guys through when you saw how easy it is to work this lapse funnel. You can become a better investor with curated article and video content, webinar replays, and exclusive articles covering everything you need to make smart investments and avoid bad markets.
This is all the content that’s available to BiggerPockets Pro members. We’ve got multifamily investing tips with Brandon Turner and Brian Murray, Investing in Today’s Market: Economic Trends and the Impact of the Real Estate Landscape. You’ve got videos on how to use SEO to grow your business, finding and funding great deals with Anson Young, who wrote the book of the same name for BiggerPockets, Canadian Investing: How Newbie Can Start Building Wealth Through Real Estate. All of this cool stuff available only to pro members.
You could show the community that you mean business with your pro badge. Blaine Alger here has a pro badge. So if Blaine messages me or anyone else, we know he’s not just a looky-loo, he’s not a wantrepreneur, he’s committed to this process. That’s a person I know that really, really, really wants to be a real estate investor.
You can save time and money and minimize risk with lawyer-approved lease documents for all 50 states. So BiggerPockets has had their lawyers put together standard lease agreements for all 50 states. If you want to manage your own properties, available to you for free if you’re a pro member. Then you get thousands of dollars on loans and other tools that you can use in your real estate business with BiggerPockets perks. You can save that money. Plus, you can gain access to our discounted educational boot camps. So these are all companies that are partnered with BiggerPockets to give discounts to their members, foreclosure.com, where you find foreclosures, AirDNA, where you analyze deals for short-term rentals, Open Letter Marketing, a company where you can send letters to people to find leads, all kinds of cool stuff.
Then you can accurately estimate rental rates based on local property comparables, listing recency, and proximity to your location using the BiggerPockets Rent Estimator tool. This is the one that I walked through with you guys where we figured out how much that property would rent for. That’s available for pro members as well for free. Very, very powerful tool in your real estate investing world, but what’s the biggest reason to go pro? Because it works.
The BiggerPockets calculators are my go-to for analyzing potential properties. There’s no way I could analyze the volume properties I do without being a pro member. I locked up my first three unit almost a year ago that I’m now selling for a almost $70,000 profit that will go towards something larger. “The BiggerPockets calculators were a huge factor in making sure my numbers were right.” This is from Aaron Carajo.
Is there any of you here who don’t want an extra $70,000 just because they got a deal? I know that sounds crazy, but in many markets, that’s actually not even that much. There’s bigger amounts. I mean, I bought one in Pleasant Hill, California in October, so that’s about four months, and that one’s gone up $200,000 in four months, right? There’s just so much money floating around right now that there’s so much inflation that if you’re not taking action, you’re falling behind.
“Back in June, I attended one of your webinars. Right afterwards, I signed up for pro. In the next couple weeks, I analyzed a bunch of deals. Eventually, I found a fourplex. I got it under contract three weeks after signing up for pro, and a week later, I closed on another property that was six units. Big thank you to you and the entire team. Final quick tip, sign up for pro. I made my money back at the closing table.” This is from Patrick Menifee.
Now, because you sat through this webinar, I have the authorization to give you 20% off of a pro membership should you desire to do one using the code on the screen. So please take a minute to grab your phone and take a picture of the screen so you can get that code, and there’s more. I can give you more than just 20% off. All right. So you’re going to need that code there. You have to make sure you spell it correctly. If you want a BiggerPockets Pro membership, it’s $390 a year. Now, for a premium one, that’s what I have, it’s actually $1,200 a year. That’s for agents and other people that are trying to get leads out of BiggerPockets.
If you’re pro, it’s way cheaper, it’s only $390 a year. It’s not that much, but if you sign up now with that 20% off code, it’s only 312, okay? This is a incredibly low expense for the year for your real estate investing journey. This is less than one home inspection, right? This is less than one home warranty. You’re going to spend way more than this just looking at properties that you put in contract doing your due diligence. This is less than a roof inspection in many cases, but you’re going to need this to find the properties that you even want to put into contract in the first place because it has the tools to help you figure it out.
Okay. You’re also going to get the intention journal. This is proven accountability tool to keep you on track towards your next investment goal. There is weekly battle planning pages for goal review, habit tracking, taking notes, and more, and a daily action pages for your morning routine, time blocking, goal review, evening reflection, and more. Because this is the 90-day plan, we’re giving away the intention journal, which normally costs $40, for free.
You’re going to get this workshop that I told you was the best thing that Brandon and I have ever done, a $200 value, for free. This is the Investing With No or Low Money Down Workshop. You’re going to get the Finding Great Deals Masterclass. This is where Brandon Turner sat down with four experts in four different niches, door knocking, direct mail marketing, building relationships, and driving for dollars. He interviewed people that crush it at these things and we are going to give them to you so that you can watch how you could do the same, a $990 value, for free.
You’re also going to get Brandon’s free ebook, The Best Ways to Find Real Estate Deals for Investing Success, for free. Now, you’re going to get access to boot camps as well. So if you’re pro, you get exclusive access to BiggerPockets’ 12-week real estate investing boot camp. If you’re not pro, you cannot go to these. Pro annual members can join a la carte at a discounted price. Every week, you get access to on-demand videos from Ashley Care, live Q&A sessions with real estate investing experts, homework assignments to apply your knowledge, and an accountability group based on your investing interest locations and more, a thousand dollars value, if you sign up now.
So let’s talk about everything you’re going to get. It’s over $2,000 value in bonuses. You get 20% off your pro annual membership. You get the $40 Intention Journal. You get the workshop with Brandon and I together. You get the How to Find Great Deals Class. You get the online bootcamp access, and all you have to do is take the code I gave you and go to biggerpockets.com/proupgrade. So if this is something you guys are interested in, I’m going to give you a second to go to biggerpockets.com/proupgrade and put that code in, biggerpockets.com/proupgrade.
Now, you have to choose the annual option if you want all the perks. You can still sign up for pro if you want to go monthly, but annual is the one that you need to pick if you want those free perks that we talked about. Now, what if you’re already pro? Well, you’re going to get access to all the same things. If you want to watch the videos, you go to biggerpodcasts.com/pro/videos and you can find the online bootcamp information at biggerpodcasts.com/bootcamp.
Here’s our guarantee at BiggerPockets Podcast. Give pro a try for up to 30 days. If you don’t love it, just email support at biggerpodcast.com and get a 100% refund just for trying it out. You’re going to go to biggerpockets.com/proupgrade, and you’re going to put in the code that was on the screen. I want to make sure that it works. So anybody here that signs up, please tell me if that code is working or if we have some glitch so I can make sure you don’t miss out on the discount and you don’t miss out on the perks.
This is a great quote that every successful person I know believes, “If you really want to do something, you’ll find a way, and if you don’t, you’ll find an excuse.” Very true words. If you want to become a millionaire, you will. Everyone else, oh, not everyone, a lot of other people have done it, you can do it too. If you don’t want to do it, you’ll find a way to make an excuse not to, and that’s it. That just tells you what’s in your heart. There’s people that really want for it to happen, they make a way, and there’s people that wish that it would happen and they make an excuse.
Okay. What questions do you guys have? I’m going to see if anybody here was able to sign up. Dean, “Is a membership like this tax deductible?” Yes, you’d have to check with your CPA, but I deduct mine. It’s a business expense for your real estate investing business, absolutely.
“Do the tools work for Canada?” Yes, there are many Canadian members that are pro members and they use the same tools. Good question there too. All right. What questions do you guys have for me? It looks like I’ve given you guys a lot to go on. I would highly encourage you if you’re on the fence to go ahead and do it, especially because there’s a guarantee that if you don’t like it you can get your money back.
Relatively speaking, it’s not that much money compared to what you are going to be spending money on as a real estate investor and what you’ll get out of it. The $312 a year when you consider how much money you’re going to make in real estate, you’re going to make more than that in one month and you’re going to have these properties for many months, right? 12 months in a year times 30 years, you can do the math, and that’s only for one property. I would highly recommend it.
Let’s see. Ian says, “That was a really motivating webinar. Thank you so much.” That is my pleasure.
Dean says, “I’ve become an accidental landlord through military moves and have a good chunk of equity in two properties. Would you recommend selling to use the equity or more aggressive investing or just keeping them long-term?” Dean, you’re going to need to message me about that on BiggerPockets and let me know what area they’re in and I can give you a better idea of what to do. What it’s going to come down to is we’re going to analyze how much of a return you’re making on the equity that is in them, and then see if we can get a higher return if we invested somewhere else.
Palal, pro, for sure. Congratulations, Palal. I love that you just took your first step towards being a real estate millionaire. That is awesome.
All right. I’m going to let you guys get out of here. Thank you very much for your time. Again, if you want, if you’re in California, make sure you reach out to me because I want to meet you. If you are not in California, that’s okay. Follow me on social media, DavidGreene24. Send me a message through the BiggerPockets platform. Let me know how I can help you. I have lots of different ways. You can also check out my website, davidgreene24.com. That’s got a little bit of all the stuff I’m involved in, so go through that, see which of those things might be interesting to you, and then send me a message and I’ll see how me and my team can help you.
Really appreciate you guys. Thank you so much. Love that you’re in the BiggerPockets community now. You’re on a journey with over 2 million other people that are all searching and seeking for the same thing as you and I’ll want to help you get there. So you’re in the right place. I will see all of you on the next one and God bless you.
That was our show. Thank you very much for listening. Again, I really hope, if you’re not currently a pro member, that you consider getting one. Again, the code is Goals 2023. If you use that code, you’ll get 20% off your first year of a pro membership and a free intention journal. Thank you for listening and being here with me, and I just want to remind you, BiggerPockets also has other podcasts, as well as a YouTube channel. Simply look us up, BiggerPockets on YouTube and check out the host, the library of other content that we have for you. Not all of it’s in webinar form, not all of it is in podcast form. A lot of it is just short videos. If you prefer the five, 10, 15-minute videos, you can hear me on there or you can hear other BiggerPockets personalities all educating you on real estate.
Thank you very much for your attention. You can find me online on any social media at DavidGreene24. Go listen to some of my YouTube videos and leave me a comment, tell me what you think about them and what we can do to make them better. If you got some time, listen to another BiggerPockets video, and if not, I’ll catch you next week.