Renting WHILE Building Wealth by Buying Properties Close and Far from Home

Ashley:
Are you nervous to invest out of state? Are you worried that you won’t select the right market or be able to build a remote team? Our guest today has two out-of-State properties in her portfolio, proving that distance is no barrier to success. Whether you’re dreaming of owning properties beyond your backyard or just starting out, there’s so much to learn from her journey, from navigating new markets to scaling up smart. This episode is packed with tips in real life strategies to help you grow your own portfolio. Welcome to the Real Estate Rookie podcast. I am Ashley Kehr and I’m here with Tony J Robinson.

Tony:
And welcome to the podcast where every week, three times a week, we bring you the inspiration, motivation, and stories you need to hear to kickstart your investing journey. Now, today’s guest is Mary Ho, and I feel super fortunate to have met her just at the BiggerPockets Conference in Cancun. She was with her beautiful daughter. So Mary, thank you so much for joining us today. And I think the most important question is, is your baby going to be joining us as well?

Mary:
You know what? I banished her upstairs. She’s with my in-laws right now. She doesn’t always respect the rules of podcasting, so

Tony:
It makes total sense. It’s a little hard at that age to get ’em to play along. But super excited to chat with you today, Mary. What we’re going to cover, and I think our listeners will get a lot of value from this, but it’s how to choose an out-of-State Market because a lot of people maybe don’t feel confident in investing in their own backyard, but there’s that hesitation of going out of state how to actually build and maintain that portfolio remotely. And then lastly, why networking has been so crucial for you and why it will be so crucial for most of the folks that are listening and how it might even be able to land you a better interest rate than what’s being offered out there today. So let’s get into it.

Ashley:
So Mary, tell us a little bit about yourself before you started your real estate journey. What was your career? Give us the snapshot of your life at that time.

Mary:
Yeah, so we’ve only been in it for a little over a year and prior to that I was and still am a nurse. I’m a nurse educator, so I help nurses learn how to be nurses in a big hospital. And I live with my three kids and my husband in Manhattan in New York City. We’ve been here for about 15 years and we rent our primary and every year we have the same conversation. Like this is the year we’re going to leave, right? Yeah, we’re definitely going to leave and we just haven’t done it yet because we love the city. We love being in the city and I’m sure we’ll talk about it at some point, but we’ve got a lot of family here now that’s helping us out. So we just keep making it work in the city and investing out of our neighborhood, out of our backyard so that we can continue to invest, but still stay where we are.

Ashley:
When you had that conversation about investing with your husband, why did you decide on real estate?

Mary:
Well, we started pretty superficially. I’d been exposed to real estate growing up. My parents had rented out the attic in our home, and when I was younger, before we got married, I rented out a room, I furnished a room and rented it out to, so I kind of had a little bit of exposure to it, but my husband and I, two years ago decided we wanted to buy a beach house and there wasn’t really any depth to that. It was really just we wanted a beach house, that was it. And so in trying to figure that out, we came across the rookie podcast and that’s when we really learned about the power of real estate, about financial freedom, about time freedom, about passive income, if you can call it that. It doesn’t feel super passive to me right now, but that’s when we kind of had a deeper appreciation for what real estate can do for us and then why the reason why we wanted to start investing in real estate really shifted because of that. And we still don’t have that beach house, but we’ve turned our sites on other things that are a little bit more attainable for us right now and that have long lasting strength to support us and one day maybe offset our high rent in New York City.

Tony:
And we talk a lot about living inexpensive markets, and I think you live in probably maybe the number one or number two most expensive market in the United States. So you’re living proof that even if you live in a city where purchase prices are high, there are still ways to go out there and get started as a real estate investor. So I guess with that in mind, when you think about your first investment, Mary, what strategy did you go after given that investing in your own backyard wasn’t an option?

Mary:
Yeah, so we wanted to start small Beach House was a little bit too high of a purchase price for us, so we went north of where we live in Manhattan, so it’s about an hour away from us and in the state of New York, but it might as well be in another state. I could get to New Jersey sooner than our first property, but we went for a long-term rental. We thought about other options, but the property itself really lends itself to long-term tenants more than anything else. And it was a total fixer upper a bur, maybe not a perfect one, but a bur at that.

Ashley:
Mary, what made you decide on this market? Can you walk us through that process of here’s all these markets across the us? How did you narrow down into that specific neighborhood?

Mary:
Yeah, there was definitely a psychological component to it. We were really fearful of investing in real estate. We don’t own our primary, so this was a huge undertaking for us and we felt like we could be safer if we stayed closer to home someplace where we could get to in a moment’s notice or within an hour or so if we needed to. So we worked with an agent who we found through BiggerPockets, and initially we were looking in New York City with him, but then we realized New York City was out of our price range. So we started looking north of where we were. And so he wasn’t local to the area, but he really helped us to narrow down a neighborhood that worked that fit our criteria. So we’re looking for a single family home under $300,000, something that needed some work that we could add value to it pretty early on.

Mary:
And hindsight is 2020. I probably would’ve done some things differently knowing what I know now, but at the same time, I just wanted to get into the game and this kind of afforded us that ticket into real estate. And so we might’ve learned the hard way in a couple of instances, but I don’t think I would trade it for anything because it’s made us better landlords, it’s made us better investors. It’s helped us to realize, okay, next time we’re looking for a market, we’re probably going to do some things differently. But we looked at job growth, we looked at population growth. We started off with a place that we just liked to go to. So this is an area that is very popular this time of year because you can see the leaves changing. It’s really beautiful and it’s a short-term, long-term market, but we picked a house that wouldn’t work as a short-term. It’s not all that exciting. And so we decided to do the long-term and hopefully just have this in our arsenal, the first part of our portfolio to kind of build off of over time.

Tony:
Now, Mary, one of the things you said was that with that first investment, you wanted to be close enough that you could get to it if you quote needed to. How long have you owned the property now?

Mary:
A little over a year, year and a half,

Tony:
A little over a year. And in that timeframe, in those 18 months, how many times would you say you had to drop everything and actually go to that property?

Mary:
Zero.

Tony:
And I was hoping you would say that because I think it’s a common misconception that a lot of rookies have is that, well, I got to get there just in case something happens. But the truth is it’s very, very rare that something happens at one of your investment properties where you literally have to drop everything and go run over there and try and figure out what’s going on save for, I don’t know, I can’t even really think of anything that would be that severe where say it’s a fire, you’re going to call the fire department, they’re not going to call you whatever it may be. So I think for a lot of Ricky’s that are listening, you can kind of put aside that limiting belief that you’ve got to be close enough just in case something happens. Because just in case is probably, it’s like hitting the lottery, right? It could happen, but is it really maybe not, right? What are your thoughts on that? Have you ever had any situations in yours where you’ve had to literally drop everything and go get there and get something handled?

Ashley:
Just because I’m nosy and I get alarm call that the fire alarm has gone off and they’ve dispatched the fire company and I see that it’s just the Mexican restaurant has smoke coming out of their grill or something like that. So I have dropped everything to, I’ve learned my lesson the hard way that you don’t have to go to properties. But I think more of getting started and investing, it’s more of that peace of mind and that security of if something happens, I can get to it, I can get to my investment. I’m close to this hard-earned money that I’m putting into this property. I can be there if I need to be there. And I think that’s just one hurdle that gets you one step closer. If that’s something that’s holding you back, go ahead. Find a market that’s close to you, be able to get to it as fast as you can if that’s going to be the one thing that puts you over that hurdle to buy that first property.

Mary:
Yeah, I absolutely agree. I feel like it’s like having training wheels. Our kids are learning how to ride bikes right now and we needed those training wheels and now we don’t need ’em anymore and we’re ready to jump into the next thing. And it’s definitely not going to be close to us probably.

Ashley:
And I think too, Mary, you said that you’ve gone to this town before you guys like to visit there, so having that familiarity of it too can be very, very helpful in getting over that fear of investing in that area too.

Tony:
And I guess just one final idea to add to that point, because I also don’t want what I say to get misconstrued by the rookie audience. I, I’m not encouraging people to avoid investing in their backyard, but what I want is for you to pick markets that actually support your individual investment goals and not only choose a market because of proximity and familiarity, you could have a market that’s close to you that you’re familiar with, that could be an absolutely terrible place for you as an individual to invest. But you could also have a market that’s close that is a good mix. So it’s choosing the market based on your investment goals and how well it matches, not necessarily how close you are to it.

Ashley:
Stay tuned after a break. For more from Mary, if you’re hoping to invest out of state, you will need a team to help manage your properties. Go to biggerpockets.com/property manager to learn more.

Tony:
Alright, welcome back to the show where we’re joined by Mary Ho. But Mary, one thing that you did mention, I want to circle back on, you kind of quickly ran through, you said, Hey, we were looking for something under this price point, this size, ballpark, whatever it may be. How did you come up with that buy box given that it was your first real estate deal?

Mary:
Yeah, we knew that we had a couple. We had our savings, so we were limited in what we could buy based on what we had in our savings account. And now I know that I am not necessarily limited by the amount of money that I have, but at the time we wanted to just start off with our own money. So if we screwed it up really, really badly, our money was the only money that we were losing. So we’re limited by that and looking for single family distressed properties. I think we had, after we met with our agent, he connected us with lenders. And so once we were talking to a couple of lenders, they put some things into perspective based on the money that you have for a down payment, this is how much you could afford in a house. So that definitely kind of solidified some of those numbers that we were using to figure out what our buy box was. And then beyond that, once you figure out, okay, this is how much money I have, then you can more easily say, well, that would get me approximately this square footage or this many bedrooms or this lot size. So we were dealing with pretty small numbers. We didn’t have a million dollars saved up, but we knew we had enough for a down payment and a sizable renovation.

Ashley:
Mary, I’m going to throw some rapid fire at you to kind of break down this deal. So what was the asking price of this property?

Mary:
Asking price was 180 5 and we paid 180 5 and it was a cash only deal.

Ashley:
And did you have tenants in place? Did you do rehab or what was kind of the situation of the property when you purchased it?

Mary:
It was unoccupied at the time. It had been lived in by a woman who had since moved to a nursing home, so it was in pretty rough shape when we looked at it. So there were no tenants, no inhabitants at all in place and everything. It was pretty obvious looking at it from the outside, even as a very untrained person, I knew everything had to be switched out. The roof, the walls, the flooring, all the bathrooms, the kitchen, everything had to be redone.

Ashley:
And what was the cost of that? To redo that

Mary:
Projection was $80,000. That’s what we decided on with the contractor. We went way over budget. It was 120 by the end, but they did it fairly quickly. So I guess that was on our side. But yeah, so 120 was the final price of the renovation.

Ashley:
And how did you fund the rehab for the property?

Mary:
We paid for it ourselves. We actually, my in-laws had set aside some money for us to buy our primary and we took that money and instead with their permission, put it towards the renovation.

Ashley:
Okay. So with the down payment, the 120 into the repairs and renovations, how much total cash did you actually put into the property?

Mary:
I would say it was like there were some things that we had on an interest free credit card that we didn’t have to pay off right away. So I would say it was probably close to 300. And then we were able to pay off some of the things like materials from Home Depot and that sort of thing with that interest free credit card over 12 months instead of putting all that money up front. But yeah, 300 is probably my rough number.

Ashley:
And then after you’ve done the rehab, what did you end up renting the property up for?

Mary:
Yeah, so we started it in March of 2023. We had finished by June and we had a renter in place by June 15th and we were charging 2,400. It was a little bit more with a pet fee, but basically 2,400.

Ashley:
And then with the appraisal and the refinance, how did you end up, what was the appraised value of the property and what were you able to pull back out to refund your cash?

Mary:
Yeah, we had an appraisal for 3 27 after the rehab, so that was actually higher than what we had projected, which was great. We couldn’t pull all of it out. We had refinanced it so quickly. We refinanced within three months and rolled that money, the cash out refi into our next property. So because it was such a short timeframe, less than six months, we could only pull out what we had purchased the property for, so we could only pull out 180 5, which ended up working out in the end because with our interest rate of 7.25, the mortgage payments, if we had pulled out much more, the mortgage payments would’ve been more than what we were getting in rent. So at this point, we are cash flowing just a little bit with that mortgage of 180 5.

Ashley:
And I think one of the big takeaways from this is that you knew going into it that you may not pull all of your cash out. And it wasn’t like a panic of, oh my gosh, I have to pay somebody else back. What can I do now? Not being able to get access to all of that money, but also now you’re not over leveraged. You have a lot of equity into a property that you can access at any other time too. And I think that is something that as a new investor, you want to do the perfect burden. You want to pull all your money out, but it’s not a bad thing to leave some money into a property and have that security of knowing that if you need access to capital, you can go get a line of credit or you can refinance or you can sell the property and get that cash back out.

Mary:
Yeah, absolutely. We were feeling a little bit sore when the bird didn’t work out as perfectly as we wanted it to, but then when we looked back and realized all the things that we had learned along the way, we kind of got a pretty inexpensive education for everything that we learned in that short timeframe.

Tony:
Yeah, you guys definitely learned a lot. It sounds like pretty quickly. You talked about going over budget, you talked about different pieces of the rehab, and I think that’s where I want to drill down a little bit, Mary. So what was the biggest driver, if you guys going over budget?

Mary:
Yeah, there were a lot of unexpected. When the contractor goes through the house, I think they do their best to figure out exactly what is needed to get a renovation done, but when you start taking down the walls, there are just things that you don’t expect. So I think one of the things that they had done when they took the roofing off, they found that the plywood underneath the roofing needed to be replaced. And so that was an extra cost or some of the plumbing work that had been done prior to us closing wasn’t done very well. So then they had to redo that, and then the city inspector came by and said, oh, you need a new electrical panel. And we weren’t expecting to have to replace that. So I think one of the things I learned in that process was I just said yes to everything. My contractor would call me and say, this is a problem, we need to pivot. And I would say yes. I didn’t ask any more questions like, okay, well where can we cut the budget elsewhere? Where can we save some money with something else? Is there anything else that we can adjust? I didn’t really know to ask that question, so I didn’t ask that question. But now moving forward, I ask a lot more questions when the contractors are giving us like, okay, here’s the problem, we’re going to fix it.

Tony:
I think Ash and I can both probably speak to that, right? Contractors, a lot of times they want and understandably so a lot of times they want what’s maybe easier for them or simpler for them or whatever it may be like, Hey, let’s just do this, not understanding that there’s a budget behind this project.

Ashley:
Mary, what would be your advice? How much did you guys have extra available where it wasn’t the end of the world and you had to scramble to pay that overage for the rehab?

Mary:
Yeah, I think we had earmarked a hundred thousand dollars in our account to say, this is for our future primary home. Whenever we move out of the city, we want to make sure that we always have that ability to access that. So that kind of became our cash reserves account, and it still is to this day. So it’s like it’s a sizable amount of money, at least in my mind, to be able to handle some of those bigger projects. Like if a roof goes out, which happened to us this year, or you need to put in French drains, which happens to us this year, that was enough money to cover all of our extra expenses. So while we didn’t realize we would ever have to tap into it, we didn’t think of it as reserves. It has kind of become that because some of the bigger expenses that you hope will wait for maybe five years didn’t wait for us.

Ashley:
So if you’re listening, I think that is a huge takeaway is that if you save up money, make sure you’re not spending it all, you’re not investing it all in your down payment or your rehab budget, that you have those reserves in place and it is going to make it a lot less painful and risky for you if you are able to tap into those reserves to use them if you need to.

Tony:
Now, Mary, one of the other questions or statements that you made was about the refinance, that you did it after three months, you were only able to get out what you purchased the property for. So just for our rookies that are listening, most lenders want to what they call a seasoning period before you complete a refinance. And usually it’s around six months, I guess for you, Mary, what was the reason that you guys decided to do it at month three versus just waiting the extra 90 days to be able to maybe pull out a little bit more cash?

Mary:
Yeah, I was far too impatient. I had made a goal for myself. I’d been from January one analyzing properties and looking to get into real estate. So my overarching goal for the year was to get two properties closed by the end of the year. And I think once we got things rolling with the first property, once we got renters in place, what you could do is just sit back and let things just go right, let the tenant live there and pay their rent every month and just let things be as they are. But I just wasn’t willing to sit and wait any longer, and I wanted to make sure that I hit that goal of two properties. So as soon as I was able to, we found another market and we rolled straight into the second property. I think in hindsight, if we had waited and we had been able to take out more cash, it wouldn’t necessarily have helped us because our mortgage payments would’ve been more than what we were getting in rental income. So it wouldn’t necessarily have done us a huge favor with the current interest rate at that time, which our interest rate for that mortgage is 7.25%. So I hope to one day refinance, but we’re not quite there yet.

Ashley:
We have to take one final ad break, but more from Mary on what’s next for her portfolio.

Tony:
Alright guys, let’s jump back in with Mary.

Ashley:
Well, Mary, after you did that refinance, you mentioned you used that to purchase your next property. So what was the timeline for this and how did you find that second property?

Mary:
We found an agent through BiggerPockets. He’s the best. His name is Jeff Schell, and we loved working with him. And we picked the market again a little bit based on feelings, less about data, which I’ve learned after listening to you guys and hearing all the data points that you can use to pick the right market. I’ve learned a lot since then. But we have friends in Minnesota, in Minneapolis, and we love visiting them. So we were going out every year to visit them and after purchasing our property in New York, we knew we didn’t want to do another property in New York. So we thought, okay, training wheels again, where can we go where we know somebody, where if something hits the fan, we’ve got somebody to fall back on that can help us out. And that landed us in the Twin Cities, St. Paul and Minneapolis in Minnesota.

Mary:
And it’s funny because our friends who live there who we adore, they’re not in a partnership with us, they don’t help with the property at all. So it was again, a mental thing that we needed in order to go to that, but we haven’t really had to utilize that at all. So we’ve since released ourselves from the training wheels and we’re just on our own doing our own thing. But that’s what landed us in Minnesota to begin with. And then after working with Jeff, he showed us what a great job market St. Paul and Minneapolis are. We ended up purchasing in St. Paul, but the job market, we were hoping to do midterm rentals. There are several very large hospitals in the Twin Cities. And as a nurse, I felt like I could understand renting out to travel nurses. That was something that we really wanted to do. And the rent supported being able to purchase a property that didn’t need a ton of work and be able to cover our expenses, PITI and CapEx, maintenance vacancy, all of that.

Ashley:
So looking at this property, is there anything that you would’ve done differently with investing out of state and how does it compare to the property that you have close to you? We kind of touched on this a little bit as you’ve been to that other property times, what are the big differences between having a property in state that’s within an hour and then the property that’s out of state?

Mary:
Honestly, I think the closing process was easier. New York State is notoriously difficult when closing properties actually, I know you know that. And I think with our New York property, we started the process in November and we didn’t close until March in Minnesota. We started the process in June and we closed in July. So it was one month from start to finish. We did the closing site on scene, so we signed the papers at the table behind me. It was incredibly easy. The hard part I think comes after and it’s just a process that you have to go through of building your team. And we had a couple of team members in place prior to closing, and our agent has given us so many recommendations. He was really pivotal and went above and beyond in other ways. He changed out the locks for us when we first closed. He just did a lot of things to make us feel really comfortable with the purchase. But the easy part was closing. The hard part is now just learning how to manage it. So the property is a side-by-side, duplex, long-term on one side with inherited tenants easy. And then the other side we decided to furnish as a midterm rental. That’s the part that has really been the learning curve for us in the past 12 months that we’ve been getting better at.

Ashley:
Yeah. So let’s start with the furnishing on that as to you’re out of state. Did you travel there and like Tony’s early days, you’d see the videos of him and Sarah putting furniture together, living out in Joshua Tree, putting, furnishing everything. What was that experience like for you? How did you handle that living out of state?

Mary:
Yeah, so I came prepared with a million spreadsheets and I thought nothing can hold me down, but spreadsheets don’t always warn you about the series of unfortunate events that can happen when you’re furnishing a unit. So it all worked out in the end, but we had 10 days to furnish, a three bed, one bath, a two floor unit. It was the middle of August, and we couldn’t anticipate the rental car that we had, the battery died. We couldn’t anticipate our friend who came out to help us got hit by a city bus on her way to the property. There were a lot of little things that the spreadsheets did not warn me about. And we also had our two kids at the time, we only had two kids and we had them with us. So my husband was pretty much full-time, kid duty. So when you’re hanging out with two toddlers all day long, you might want to lose your mind.

Mary:
And then I was fully at the house 12 to 15 hour days just trying to make ends meet. We had a friend who came out who got hit by a bus, shout out to Laura for making a vacation out of helping us furnish this place. It was a labor of love. I wouldn’t recommend doing it with kids if you don’t have to bring them or just give yourself more time. It is definitely doable, but the end was very stressful trying to get everything done before our flight, which was a very definitive end time. We had to make that flight home, so it was hard.

Ashley:
Now that you’re managing it out of state, what are some tools, software systems that you’re using to be able to manage a midterm rental?

Mary:
Yeah, there are a couple that just make it so easy. Hospitable has been awesome with sending out automatic messages, assigning the door lock, so I don’t need to worry about if a guest is coming to stay. That’s all kind of taken care of. We have the schlag on code door lock, so that is compatible with Hospitable, so Hospitable can assign that door code for the guest. We use Price Labs for our dynamic pricing, and that really helped me because I just didn’t really know what to price it at or how to adjust it from day to day. So that kind of mapped everything out for us. And then Airbnb is where we list our property. We’ve listed it in a lot of different places, but Airbnb is where we get almost all of our guests coming through. And for midterm, it’s a slightly different space. Some people book through Airbnb. We’re trying to get more into corporate rentals and insurance claims. So we’re still a little bit new to that space, but we have gotten some longer term guests stay and book through Airbnb.

Ashley:
Tony, I know short-term rentals are a little bit different than midterm rentals, but some of the software that Mary mentioned I think coincides with short-term rentals. What are the tools and software that you’re using for your rentals?

Tony:
Yeah, literally everything that Mary said is the exact same software that we use. So hospitable, we use Price Labs, so the SLE on code, everything you mentioned, it’s the same stuff that we have. So it is cool that a lot of those tools, I think translate.

Mary:
I stole it all from you, Tony.

Tony:
Okay, there you go. You got a good teacher. I love it.

Mary:
I’ve been listening.

Tony:
No, I love it. And it’s cool that you took, hey, your experience being in the medical field and said, Hey, how can I take that inside knowledge that I have and use it in a way that serves that local community? I want to circle back though, Mary, to one thing that you mentioned because you talked about finding an agent that was really critical to helping you build your confidence in this new city. And for all of our rookies that are listening, if you don’t know, head over to biggerpockets.com/agent Finder. Okay. Agent Finder. And you can find an amazing agent just like Mary did with Jeff. And actually I went through it just to kind of see what the flow looks like. It’s super quick name, email a few details about what it is you’re looking for, and as soon as you hit submit, you get a whole list of realtors and agents in that market that you can then reach out to or who can reach out to you. So it’s a super, super simple process. I think the question that I have, Mary, is your portfolio is growing and we know how you funded the first one. It sounds like took some of the cash that you got back from the first one to help you buy the second one. Did that cash you got back fund everything for the second deal, or were there additional funds you need to come up with? And if so, how did you get those funds?

Mary:
Yeah, we ran a pretty tight line. I think the extra cash that we had for the total cash out refi from our first property funded our second property. And that was both the down payment, the closing costs and furnishing. Since closing on the property, we had to replace the roof. We didn’t have any more money from that cash out refi to pay for the roof. So we dipped into our own reserves. We’ve built up a little bit of reserves from the properties, but honestly, it hadn’t been live for very long. So it was mostly from our savings account.

Tony:
And I think that’s the challenge that a lot of people have is I can wrap my head around the first deal, but how do I get to deal number two and deal number three? And I guess, let me ask Mayor, as you’re maybe thinking about the next property in your portfolio, what is the strategy for the two of you to actually acquire that deal from a financing and kind of cash perspective?

Mary:
Yeah, that’s what we’re trying to figure out right now. I think we’ve been exposed to the world of networking. I think going to BP opened our eyes. We’ve been getting more into social media because it’s a limiting process. If you’re only using your own cash to fund these deals, you’re going to run out really quick. And that’s kind of where we are. So I don’t know exactly how we’re going to fund our next deal, but I feel like I’m not as worried about it as I once was because we’ve met so many people in the past few months that once we’re ready to purchase, I feel like we have the proof of concept. We have the two properties that we’ve been successful with. So the missing piece would just be the money partner, and I feel like we would be able to find that once we find the right property.

Ashley:
Mary, have there been any lifestyle changes that you have made to be able to focus and continue on your real estate investing journey?

Mary:
I will say we have a superpower and that is our family. So one thing that’s unique about us, one of the reasons why we will not move out of the city is because we have my in-laws who live in the apartment above us. So right now in our building, we have three generations living under one roof. And at one time we had four generations. My husband’s grandmother lived in our building as well, and another apartment. It’s given us a lot of support. So financial support, they watch our kids every day. So we haven’t had to pay for childcare even. I feel like I’m bragging, but we don’t even have to hire a babysitter if we want to go out one night. It’s really incredible. And they’re right upstairs so they can just come down and put the kids down whenever they want to go to sleep. So it’s been a huge financial burden that’s been lifted off of our shoulders. But they also offer us time freedom. So there are times when we’ve gone up do this podcast right now without a baby screaming in the background. It’s because she’s upstairs with my in-laws right now. So they’re incredible. They’re wonderful people, and we’ve really hit the sweet spot of everybody having their own space while also being really close to each other when we need to lean on each other.

Tony:
Yeah, Mary, I love that you have that. What’s the saying? It takes a village to raise a family, but I can almost guarantee there is some people listening in the rookie audience right now who’re thinking, I don’t care how much money I’m going to save. There’s no way I’m living next door to my in-laws. And so it is amazing. It’s amazing that you have that good relationship with them where it’s a win-win for everybody.

Mary:
I couldn’t have predicted this. It was very organic and I feel very blessed that it’s working out the way that it is.

Tony:
You guys are in a great spot, and I love my in-laws, so don’t take that the wrong way, but I love mine. But now, Mary, I guess last question. You’ve shared a ton of incredible tactical advice for our Ricks about choosing out of state markets, building out your team, how to not go over budget on rehab. But I think the last question I have, because you’ve got a growing young family, you’ve got a day job your husband does as well. How are you balancing all of these external responsibilities with real estate investing? Do you feel like it’s eating into your time with your family for your work, or have you found a way to strike some semblance of balance there?

Mary:
We’ve definitely had to have a lot of conversations to make sure that our priorities aren’t messed up. So one of the things that I heard at BP Con, I think it was Chris Feki who said, when you’re going through life, you’re juggling a lot of different things and your family is like a glass ball. Don’t drop that glass ball. Other things that you’re juggling like your job or your outside relationships, those are rubber, they’ll bounce back up. They’ll be okay, but do not drop your family. So my husband and I, throughout this whole process, we’ve had to at times take a step back and reprioritize to make sure that we are keeping the family at the front of our focus. But in other things, when it comes to juggling your job, my W2 job versus my real estate, I wake up really early and I make time for the stuff that I want to do.

Mary:
So it means less Netflix. It means making sure that the extra pockets of time that I have throughout the day go to checking off that to-do list. So you have to be really insistent on getting to where you want to go and really driven. And I feel like I might not have gone out as often the past year. I’ve definitely lost a little bit of sleep over it, but I think what we’re building right now is going to set us up for life. And so it’s a sacrifice that you make for the things that you want to do.

Ashley:
Well, Mary, thank you so much for coming on today and taking the time to share your real estate journey and giving great advice and also motivation for people to take action on their first or next deal. If you want to find out more about Mary, you can visit biggerpockets.com and search for Mary in her BiggerPockets profile. Thank you guys so much for joining us. If you’re watching on YouTube, make sure you like and subscribe to the Real Estate Rookie YouTube channel. If you’re listening on your favorite podcast platform, make sure to leave us a rating and review. We’ll see you guys next time. I’m Ashley. And he’s Tony. And we’ll be back with another episode of Real Estate Rookie.