Using OnlyFans to Fund Ownership in Her First BRRRR w/ Brin Amberlee

Ashley:
This is Real Estate Rookie, episode 125.

Brin:
We just got some numbers for fixing up the siding gutters, downspout, I have to build a garage out back. All of that is already like 30,000. I was like, “Ah, so maybe it is going to be more.” But honestly, even if I only refinance out half of my money, I’m just excited to have my first deal done.

Ashley:
My name is Ashley Kehr, and I’m here with my co-host, Tony Robinson, and we are live in Los Vegas.

Tony:
This is Ashley’s first time partying at the pool parties in Vegas. So me and my wife, Sarah, came out earlier to show her a good time before we recorded today. So this is Ashley and I, not hungover, but recovering a little bit from yesterday’s fun.

Ashley:
The best part was that it was day drinking, so we had our 14 hours of sleep to recover, but I’ve been to Vegas, I don’t know, maybe eight times and I’ve never gone to a pool party. So Tony gave me that experience yesterday.

Tony:
And she was very thankful for it.

Ashley:
Yes. It was a great time. Today, we have Brin on and we are going to do a live podcast recording for you guys.

Tony:
Yeah. And it’s fun because we don’t do this often. We did it once before with my wife, Sarah, and Ashley’s partner, Joe, but the first time that we had an actual guests onsite on location somewhere, so I’m excited to dive in.

Ashley:
Okay. Brin, welcome to the show, and thank you so much for joining us.

Brin:
Thank you guys. I’m so excited.

Ashley:
Yeah. Well, why don’t you start a little bit with your backstory and how you got started in real estate.

Brin:
Okay. I just got started very recently, I’m probably the most rookie of all rookies on your podcast. I just got my first property just closed last month. I haven’t even seen it yet, but this Friday, I’m heading back to Ohio where I purchased the property and I’ll start renovating it myself with my dad. So I live in Las Vegas, so I’m basically traveling all the way back to Ohio to do the renovation hands-on with my dad.

Ashley:
There’s so many things we have to break down with that. First of all, why did you decide you wanted to buy a property? Why did you pick that market? Why did you pick that house? Let’s start with first, why did you decide to invest in real estate?

Brin:
We bought our first house here in Vegas, I think about three years ago, and not because I wanted to invest in real estate or anything, I just wanted to buy my own house. So after we bought it, my boyfriend was looking into Grant Cardone, and he always talks about how, if it has one door, you shouldn’t buy it or something like that. Basically, if it doesn’t have multiple doors, you shouldn’t buy it. So my boyfriend’s like, “I just listened to this guy and he said we shouldn’t have bought this house because it only has one door.” So I was like, “What?” So I just started looking into real estate from there on, I didn’t know anything about it, but a lot of people suggested that I should listen to BiggerPockets. So I was like, “Okay.”
So I just listening to BiggerPockets, and then I learned about the BRRRR strategy, which I was like, “Holy crap. I didn’t even know that was possible.” So that’s basically where I started becoming interested when I learned, it’s not like a guessing game, you can actually work the numbers and, you know what I mean? Build wealth that way. So I was like, “I need to do that.”

Ashley:
That’s such a great point, is work the numbers, and you can see if it’s going to be a good deal or a bad deal. Can you explain what a BRRRR strategy is? What that is for anyone that doesn’t know?

Brin:
Basically you buy the property, you renovate the property, then you rent it, you refinance your money back out, and then you just basically use the same money to go buy more and more deals. So to me, I was like, “That means I only have to come up with money one time, and then from there on, I can just keep snowballing into more properties.”

Tony:
Brin, I want to take you back a little bit because I think what also makes me love real estate investing is that it doesn’t matter who you are, where you come from, what your background is, if you apply the strategies, you can find success in doing it. I share my story on the show a lot. I’m a young black guy, I became a dad when I was 16. If you look at the statistics, I’m not supposed to be sitting here in the seat being a real estate investor. We had someone on the podcast the other day that spent eight years in prison and he bought his first investment property less than two years after he was released from prison.
So I want to get into your backstory a little bit because I know it’s unique and I want to share that with people to show that it doesn’t matter what you’re doing before, but real estate can be a path for anybody.

Brin:
Okay. Basically, I do OnlyFans and it’s known to be a pretty risque site and stuff, I’m not going to go into what I do on there, but I don’t do anything crazy, but a lot of people just assume that we’re all stupid and we just spend our money on lingerie and vacations, which is fine if you want to do that, but I’ve been hoarding my money in my bank account for the past year and a half, and I’m just like, “Now’s the time, I’m using all of this money that I’ve saved up and I’m going to use it for something that’s going to benefit me in the future.” Obviously, I’m really tempted to always just go on vacations and do things like that, but I’ve tried to have some self-control and save up so I can build for my future, so in 10 years, I don’t have to worry about anything.

Tony:
I love that you touched on the stigma, because it doesn’t matter what your background is, someone’s always going to place a stereotype on you. Like I said, as a young black guy, growing up, I got that a lot myself too. But I guess, what was the trigger for you that said, “Okay, I’m making all this money, I want to make sure that I’m not blowing it on… ” Was it the conversation with your boyfriend? Was it something else? Did you always have that inside of you just to be a little bit more frugal? What was the trigger there?

Brin:
Actually, before I started making money on OnlyFans, I was already doing OnlyFans, but I wasn’t making that much money on there. I had a friend who helped me out and basically told me what I was doing wrong and told me how I could make more money. So I was used to living on a very, very small amount of money every month, barely scraping by. So when I just quadrupled my income in a month, I didn’t know what to do with it, so I was just saving it. And then I realized it’s not that hard to just save my money.
And I did have a little bit of a lifestyle creep for a minute, I went and bought a Tesla, and I did go on a few vacations, but I still managed to save a lot of money and I was able to buy this house and still I’m going to use my own money to do all of the renovations as well. So I’m just thankful that I didn’t let the lifestyle creep way too high?

Tony:
So it was the fact that you were already living on the smaller budget?

Brin:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Tony:
But I guess there’s a little bit lifestyle creep, but I guess was that conversation with your boyfriend, they gave you the goal of, “Okay, let’s make sure we put this money to use,” or were you just stashing and saying, “We’ll figure out what to do with it later”?

Brin:
I was just stashing and saying I’ll figure out what to do with that later. I knew if I just saved, then I would just have the money saved. But then once he started talking about the multifamily investing and Grant Cardone and all this stuff, and I started looking into real estate, that gave me a bigger reason to actually start saving more?

Tony:
One more comment on that. I think that for a lot of people, they think that they can save their way to big wealth, that they can save their way to massive wealth.

Brin:
I did at first, I was just like, “Oh, I’m just going to hoard this and have $100,000 for when I retire.”

Tony:
Just like you got to put it to work in some way. And for people, Grant Cardone actually talks about this a lot too, Robert Kiyosaki, Rich Dad, Poor Dad, it’s like, you can cut out the $5 that you spend a day going to Starbucks and save however much money that is per month, or you can figure out how to quadruple your income, and then you don’t have to worry about spending $5 in latte. So for the rookies, for those of you that are listening, obviously controlling your expenses is super important, and living beneath your means is super important, but focusing on exploding your income is even more important because that’s what’s really going to give you the leverage.
When I was working my W2 job, it wasn’t until I started really seeing gains in that way where my income was going up and up every year that we finally had enough money left over to start really aggressively investing in a property. So you got to attack both sides, you got to save and you got to focus on the income.

Brin:
Right. Especially at first, even if you are just saving and you don’t have a purpose, that’s okay, it’s better than not saving, but definitely, I feel like real estate is the number one easiest way to, I guess, the safest way to invest. You know what I mean? So that’s why I always preach to everybody, “Get into real estate instead of any other investments.”

Ashley:
Because you have more control over it.

Brin:
Exactly.

Ashley:
Yeah. Going back to doing your OnlyFans and saving your money, how long were you doing that before you started investing in real estate?

Brin:
Since I just bought the property two months ago, closed a month ago? Yeah, closed a month ago, I guess I was saving for probably a year and a half maybe, I think. I kept telling myself, “Yeah, I’m going to buy an investment property,” but it was the analysis paralysis thing. But then I started doing this program called 75 hard words, 75 days of mental toughness. And that’s when I decided to just say, “I’m just buying a property, screw it. I’m not waiting any longer. These numbers seem good, even if they don’t work out perfect, I don’t care, I’m just doing it. I just need to get in the game.”

Ashley:
And doing your OnlyFans, that’s like a business for you. So you’ve learned how to run a business. You do your marketing, you took constructive criticism to triple your income. So how do you think that’s going to help you with your real estate business as having that entrepreneurial spirit already?

Brin:
That’s a good question because I feel like OnlyFans is definitely a lot different because, I don’t want to say it’s easy, it is mentally somewhat exhausting, but it’s easier because it’s just me selling myself, and I already had a fan base. So a lot of women will ask me for help and I give them all the pointers that I can, but I can’t lie, I had it easy because I already had a fan base. So I didn’t have to start from the ground up, but there are girls I know that make more money than me that have less of a following that started from the ground up. So it’s not like it’s impossible, you literally just have to work hard. That’s all it is.

Ashley:
And that’s what I’m trying to get at is that you have that endurance, you took action, you set your mind to do it. We’re going to have you back on in a couple of years and see what you’ve grown.

Brin:
Hopefully I’ll have 100 properties come in.

Tony:
But I think what you’re going to see, Ashley, is that skills translate. And we were talking about this in one of our other recordings as well, there are so many people who develop these skills in their worlds and their lives outside of real estate investing, not realizing how those habits, how those abilities, how those character traits can translate in a positive way into real estate investing. So if you’ve already built this successful business, you’ve already practiced a financial discipline, all of those things are going to translate into the investing side as well.

Brin:
I think that’s definitely important too, the financial discipline thing because like I said, I started getting the lifestyle creep and then I was like, “Nope, nope, not doing that. I need to calm down, I’m going to wait until I actually for real have lots of properties and millions before I started on-

Tony:
Let’s just run that a little bit too because for a lot of rookie investors, they’re looking at the people around them and you’ve heard the same, you’re the average of the five people you spend the most time with. And for a lot of people, your five average, they’re probably not real estate investors for most people. And when they hear that, “Hey, I want to buy this rental property,” or, “Hey, I want to go do this thing in real estate investing,” they look at you like you’re crazy. Are you seeing any of that from people that you know, whether they’re friends, family, other people in the industry that you work in?

Brin:
Yeah. Pretty much everybody that I know. No, I’m just kidding. One thing that really helped me was I started following you guys and following more real estate investors. So even though in real life I wasn’t surrounding myself with those people, it’s almost the same thing because we spend a lot of time on social media, so you really have to follow the right people. I’m muted a lot of people that their content wasn’t serving me anymore, I started following people who were going to lift me up and motivate me to do better. But as far as in real life, my parents support me with everything I do, so they didn’t try to talk me out of it, but they were like, “Well, just be careful?” Because they don’t know anything about real estate investing, so they were just like, “Be careful. I don’t know, that property doesn’t look so good or whatever.” And I’m just like, “Trust me, please. I promise, I promise it’s going to be okay.”

Tony:
I guess one quick plug for those either watching, they’re listening, Brin’s talking about the importance of community. If you’re not in the Real Estate Rookie Facebook group, there’s what? 30,000 plus people on there. It is literally one of the most active, one of the most engaged real estate Facebook groups that I’ve been a part of. So if you’re looking for that community yourself, you haven’t found it, reach out to a us on the BiggerPockets Real Estate Rookie Facebook group.

Ashley:
Yeah. And also on the forums too, biggerpockets.com. You’ll find a lot of people there to connect with.

Brin:
Yeah. Not even so much as seeing posts, inspiring and motivating yourself, but you really do make connections with people. I made the connections with you guys. I listen to podcasts and I’ll go and follow the people that I hear interview, and I’ll just tag them or reach out to them. And a lot of the times they’ll respond and I’ll actually get to meet them and have conversations with them online. So it’s super beneficial to constantly be learning from the podcast. And then not only that, but reaching out to the people that inspire you or that sparked an interest for you. And you never know, you could make a connection that could not just benefit you, but-

Tony:
Change your life.

Brin:
Yeah, exactly.

Ashley:
First time we had talked on Instagram, you had done a post and tagged, used the #realestaterookie. So it came up on my feed and I loved it because you had put an offer out there about $2,000. You want to tell everyone about that?

Brin:
Yeah. I made a post and I just said, “I’ll give anybody who can bring me an actually legit, you worked the numbers already and it’s a good deal, I’ll give you $2,000.” So obviously people were just sending me Zillow like, “Oh, here I found this property down the street, it’s $500,000.” It’s like a whole one and like “I’m that’s not what I meant. I’m sorry. Thank you, but never mind.’ I never paid anybody $2,000 because nobody sent me a good deal, but it was worth a shot. I was trying to get creative.

Ashley:
Yeah, definitely.

Tony:
But it connected you guys.

Brin:
Exactly.

Ashley:
Yeah. Let’s talk about this deal. How did you choose the market that you did?

Brin:
I’m actually from Columbus, Ohio. I moved to Vegas seven years ago. I wanted to get a property there first because my whole family’s back home, my dad’s done construction, not construction, but carpentry his whole life, so he can build a house from the ground up. So I was like, “He’s going to be my partner, he’s going to help me do all the renovations and then I’m going to Airbnb it. So that way I have a place to stay when I go back.” Airbnb is definitely not as tough to get permits for out there, which in Vegas it’s nearly impossible. So I had a lot of reasons for doing Columbus first as my first property. I’m trying to think of the other reasons, oh yeah, it’s cheaper.
I did try to get more downtown area, so it was a little more expensive, but compared to Vegas, it’s like half the price. So I was like, “I can get more bang for my buck on this first one.”

Tony:
And was that your initial market that you focused on or were there other markets you potentially analyzed and landed on Columbus or was that from the jump the only one?

Brin:
I actually got my real estate license out here in Vegas because I was like, “I’m going to use the MLS and find myself a deal.” But it’s way tougher out here, at least so far what I’ve seen than it was in Columbus. So I just found a realtor out there. I actually was interested in buying an Airbnb out there a couple years ago and it just never worked out. So then I had him, my realtor update my MLS search, because I was going to buy already-done condo out there, and then I was like, “Never mind, I’m going to do the BRRRR method. I want a super shitty house.”

Tony:
But the timeline that you’re following, I think that’s common for a lot of people, even from me, from my first deal, my wife and I, we went out to Louisa. Let me back it up. I live in Southern California, we bought our first property in Louisiana, multiple states away. And it was a very similar process.

Ashley:
And it’s still for sale.

Tony:
And still, one of them is still up for sale. I got one of them is still up for sale. So if anyone wants to buy it, it’s side note. So I don’t even think I’ve told you this yet, Ashley, but as we were trying to get the house sold, we have notes coming back from these other agents saying that there’s buckling in the floors, in the living room

Ashley:
Oh, because you just had the tenant move out.

Tony:
The tenant moved out, it was vacant. But more and more, people started commenting on this. So we had a handyman go through, apparently there was a pinhole leak in the guest bathroom that seeped water into the sub floor underneath. So we just spent $8,000 trying to repair the floor in this house, so the house just keeps on giving. So if anyone wants to buy it, we just spend like $8,000 fixing this portion of the floor. But back to my point. Gosh, now I lost the stupid house in Louisiana.

Ashley:
I’m sorry.

Tony:
But my point was that it took us about that same level of time. We started off, “Can we do it in our backyard? California’s too expensive. Where else can we go?” I went to Louisiana because my mom, my stepdad were there, so it’s a similar story. And I think the lesson here for the rookies is that even if where you live is too expensive, don’t be afraid to go somewhere else. You can either, A, go somewhere else where is cheaper or B, find a strategy that works in your expensive market. Because now we’re investing in California, we’re not doing long-term rentals, we’re doing Airbnb, we’re doing short-term rentals and we’re doing well with that.
So either go to a market where you can employ the strategy that you want or find the strategy that works in the market that you’re in. So you went with the latter and it seems to be working out well for you.

Brin:
Yeah. That’s another thing I learned from BiggerPockets too, was you can find ways to invest in your market. It doesn’t matter where you live, even if you live in downtown LA, there’s probably somebody that’s come up with some creative way to house hack or something there. You know what I mean? It’s not too expensive. So I’ve learned all types of ways of investing off of BiggerPockets.

Tony:
Well, let’s talk about this first deal. You spend some time going through the MLS listings, about how long would you say you were looking? How many offers did you put in before you got that first one secured?

Brin:
After I decided to switch up the criteria for houses, I think I put in three offers and that was my third offer and I got accepted. And actually my second offer, my realtor texted me the next day and was like, “Your second offer also just got accepted.” He was like, “Do you want both?” So I was looking which one’s better, so I just decided to go with the third one and back out of the second offer.

Tony:
Let’s pause there. Why not take both? Why not do both?

Brin:
I know I could have figured it out, but I knew that this house that I did actually end up buying needed a lot of renovations and I’m doing it with my own money, so I just didn’t want to overextend myself for the first one. I know that later on I can find people to partner with and I could do different types of, what’s it called?

Tony:
Like Partnership structures or?

Brin:
Yeah. Pretty much, just financing. I don’t know why I couldn’t think of that word, but yeah. But for the first one, I just want to do it all myself with all my own cash, and I was just like, “Uh, I don’t know, doing two at once seems a little bit too much for me at first.”

Ashley:
That’s something we don’t talk about a lot is we always talk about growth, scaling, figuring out how to get the next deal and we don’t talk about taking it at a pace that you’re comfortable with too.

Tony:
I suffer from the other thing, I move too fast.

Ashley:
Me too.

Brin:
Honestly, I feel like I’m going to be the same way. As soon as I get this first one done, all right, I want five. Give me five.

Tony:
When I got my first deal, it was almost the same exact situation. I’ve had submitted a bunch of offers, I get my first house, it’s under contract, and then a week later, a house I had put an offer months ago finally coming back and say, “Hey, we’ll take your offer.” And I was like, “Well, what the heck? What am I going to do?” That’s how I ended up finding my partner. So my wife’s cousin, who’s my partner on all of our deals now, I sent him an email and said, “Hey, look at this property we’ve been talking.” He replied five minutes later said, “I’m in.” And that’s how we end up getting that second property. Now we’re partners on everything else.
But I think you’re right, there is a level of pacing yourself and not overextending yourself. I’m sure my wife, Sarah would appreciate if I did do that a little bit more, but I can’t help it.

Ashley:
So you purchased this property with all cash then?

Brin:
Well, no, I did do financing on it. I could have done it, no, actually I couldn’t have done it all cash, but I could have done most of it all cash, but I just wanted to do the renovation with the rest of my cash. So that’s why I decided to do financing on the house. And because the numbers I worked for the ARV seems pretty high, so I’m pretty sure I can refinance all of my money back out. So that’s why I decided to do financing on the house and use the cash to do the renovation because I’m really new like I said, so I didn’t want to have to stress out about trying to figure out how to finance the renovation. You know what I mean?

Ashley:
Yeah. Well, let’s dive into the numbers of the house. What was the purchase price of it?

Brin:
160.

Ashley:
And what were they asking?

Brin:
They were asking 139. The reason why because my realtor was like, “It’s under priced, you should offer more on.” I was like, “I trust you.” So they actually did the appraisal and it appraised for 165. So he was right, it was really undervalued. And after I fix it up, from what I worked, the numbers will be 340.

Ashley:
Wow. Awesome. How much rehab are you going to put into that?

Brin:
Since I’m Airbnb, it’s going to be more. I think for just the renovations, it’s going to be around 80,000. And then, hopefully, maybe I can keep it under that, but for furnishing it and stuff like that, I’m going to have to spend more, hopefully no more than 20,000. I worked the numbers as best as I could, but like I said, I’m pretty new, so we’ll see.

Ashley:
Is it a single family house?

Brin:
Yeah, it is.

Ashley:
But you have your dad, did your dad help you put together the rehab budget or did you do that on your own?

Brin:
He was like, “What’s the budget.” I was like, “Well, I’m going to try to shoot for around 80,000.” He was like, “Okay.” And then we just got some numbers for fixing up the siding, gutters, downspouts, I have to build a garage out back. And then there was the fascia we had to get redone, and all of that is already 30,000. I was like, “Oh, okay.” So maybe it is going to be more, but honestly, even if I only refinance out half of my money, I don’t care. I’m just excited to have my first deal done. Even if I mess up, it’s like “Whatever.”

Ashley:
It can be a learning experience.

Brin:
Exactly.

Ashley:
And I really liked that you held some of your cash back so that you have those reserves in place. And if you do go over budget, worst case scenario, you spend that money that you were planning on spending anyway.

Brin:
Yeah, exactly. I definitely think that’s one thing that I’ve learned also from BiggerPockets, is to always have reserves no matter what. The 80,000 that I wanted to have for the renovation, I have a little more than that already stashed away just in case, just for anything, anything could happen.

Ashley:
And that makes you feel a lot more comfortable about getting started. So if it takes somebody even longer just to save that extra money, that’s fine. You don’t have to take action today, you just can’t have analysis paralysis for five years.

Tony:
But I think the other important point too, Brin, is that you said, “I don’t care if it’s not the perfect BRRRR. I don’t care if I don’t get all my money back, it’s just about getting started.” And I think that’s what holds a lot of rookies back is that they’re looking for that perfect deal, where it’s got to check every single box, but sometimes it doesn’t have to be perfect, and sometimes it’s not going to be a home run. Have you met any investor that’s retired off of their first deal? I haven’t met a single person that made so much money on their very first deal they never had to work another day in their life, but there’s going to have to be a second deal, there’s going to have to be a fifth year, there’s going to be a 10th deal.

Ashley:
If they did make a lot, they probably had the lifestyle creep and blew it on [crosstalk 00:23:56].

Tony:
But I think that that’s an important point for the rookies, is that your first deal, and we say this all the time, the purpose of the first deal is to educate yourself, it’s to give you the confidence, it’s to give you the training wheels so you can keep moving forward in this journey to your financial freedom. So I love that you said that, I love you pointed that out.

Brin:
Yeah. And even if you do find the perfect property, you wait so long and you’re like, “Okay, finally I found it. The numbers are perfect,” something’s probably going to go wrong and it’s actually not going to be perfect, so you might as well have started two years ago. That’s how I thought of it. I was like, “It seems good, I’m just going to do it.”

Ashley:
Yeah. You have to take action at some point. So with the bank financing, what kind of loan did you get onto the property?

Brin:
I did a conventional loan, 20% down because it was an investment property.

Ashley:
And then just a 30-year fixed?

Brin:
Yep.

Ashley:
Okay. And then you’re going to go and refinance in how long? How long do you think the rehab will take?

Brin:
The lender said that they would refinance me at six months after purchase. I’m assuming since I’ve already had it for a couple months, the renovation is probably going to take three, four or five months, so I feel I can refinance right as soon as I’m done with the renovation, which is perfect timing. But even if I finish early, I could probably find another lender that would refinance me right out. But if it’s one more month, I don’t mind to wait if that lender gives me better rates or whatever.

Ashley:
Yeah. And I think there’s a stigma that when doing the BRRRR strategy, that you have to use cash or use hard money or use a line of credit or something and not go and get a conventional loan and then refinance out of that. You want to talk about how it’s not that bad actually that?

Brin:
That’s actually one of the things that I would always listen to David talk about and everything with refinancing out all of your money, and I’m like, “How do they refinance it all out if they had a loan?” But he was probably talking about not having a loan. So I just did that because I knew the numbers weren’t. So even if I refinanced and then I had to subtract what I owed on the loan, it was still going to be the same amount of money I put in to the property. So that’s why I decided to do it less cash up front, I have the cash to do the renovation, and then I’ll just pull it back out at the end.

Ashley:
Right. So really, the only thing that’s different is really just the closing costs, you’re paying closing costs. But you’re using a hard money lender, you may be-

Tony:
Super points. You’re paying crazy points.

Ashley:
… paying more than the closing costs actually before that hard money. So it’s definitely a lot to know.

Brin:
Yeah. Hard money kind of scares me low key. I’m sure eventually I’ll use it, but to start off, I’m like, “I’m not even going near that yet.”

Tony:
Well, and the other thing I think to look into, as you get closer to finishing off this refinance is, since you plan to use it as an Airbnb, ask your lender about a vacation home mortgage, because those that can… It might be different though, because you’re doing it as a refinance so I’m not sure how they would look at it in that stance, but typically, they’ll let you do 90% loan to value as opposed to 80% loan to value if you’re using it as a second home. But since you’re using it as an Airbnb, there’s no long-term mortgage, you are going to stay there when you go to Columbus to visit, you should be able to qualify for a vacation home. So, you should look into it.

Ashley:
Okay. So say that she went and purchased it with a vacation home mortgage, doing the 10% down, she could still refinance in six months to that same kind of mortgage rate.

Tony:
Yeah. I’m just not sure how it works since the original mortgage was a 20% down. I don’t know if they’ll allow it. I don’t know. I don’t know.

Ashley:
But I’m saying if she would have done that from the start though, she could have-

Tony:
Oh yeah, from the jump, for sure. Yeah. So had your first mortgage been the vacation home mortgage, you definitely could have just refinanced it again at the same mortgage.

Brin:
I wonder why my lender didn’t say any of that, because I told him, I was like, “Yeah, I’ll be staying in it sometimes when I come back,” but I don’t know.

Tony:
It depends on who you talked to you. And this is a really good point, I’m glad you brought that up. Because it’s important to talk to a few different lenders and just tell them what it is that you’re looking to do and then see what feedback they have for you. Like you shared your story all the time about how you shared what you were looking to do, and they gave you a really cool… Tell us the story of-

Ashley:
Yeah, a 90-day unsecured loan. I was there closing on a line of credit and I said, “I have been looking at this deal,” gave them a BiggerPockets calculator report and said, “How can I buy this?” So he gave me a 90-day unsecured loan, no collateral to go and purchase this property in cash. And then as soon as I closed, I went and refinanced with this bank and paid off the short-term loan they gave me and put on long-term fixed financing. I never would have even known that was an option at all, I wouldn’t have asked for that.

Brin:
Yeah, I’ve never heard of that, so that’s cool.

Tony:
How many lenders did you talk to before you bought that one?

Brin:
I just went with who my realtor sent to me, I’m not going to lie.

Tony:
But then again, for the first deal, there’s nothing wrong with that. But I think that’s the lesson to learn as you go onto the next ones, is, okay, can I shop around to a few different people, can I have a few different relationships. So I think in each market that we’re in, we have at least two go-to lenders that we work with mainly. And as you get more mature in the business process, you start developing those relationships, but I think that’s the lesson for those you that are listening, is to shop around, to see who can give you the best loan terms based on what relationship you’re trying to build.

Ashley:
And all you have to do is go on the websites of the banks and get their email addresses and then copy and paste the same exact email to 10 different lenders and say, “Hey, this is what I’m looking to do, what kind of options do you have?” Anytime I purchase a property, I send it out to the four lenders I use and say, “This is what I’m looking at buying, what can you offer me? What’s the current interest rate? What will the terms be?” Blah, blah, blah.

Brin:
Yeah, that’s definitely a good tip. I definitely know that moving forward, I’m going to do that, I’m going to ask more lenders. But the rate he gave me was good, so I was like-

Tony:
What was the interest rate here?

Brin:
3.5.

Tony:
That’s good.

Brin:
So I was like, “I’m not mad about it, that seems fair.” Especially because it’s an investment property-

Ashley:
And if your realtor recommended this person, probably-

Brin:
And he’s an investor himself, so that’s why I trusted him. He has multiple properties himself.

Tony:
Can we talk about that? How’d you find this investor friendly realtor? That’s like every new rookie investor’s dream, is to find that investor that has the relationships and invest themselves. So how did you connect with that person?

Brin:
So, like I said, I was back in Ohio, I think a couple years ago when I was just trying to find an already done nice property to buy, and I literally just on Zillow, and I found a property. I was like, “Ooh, I that.” And it was contact Zillow agent, or whatever. So they set me up with this guy, and I didn’t even know he was really an investor until we were talking. He was like, “Yeah, I own a few of my own properties.” I was like, “Oh, that’s cool.” So I guess I found him from Zillow. I got lucky, honestly.

Tony:
I think you’re the first person that we’ve ever interviewed that said that they’ve found their agent through Zillow. Usually it’s like, “Oh, BiggerPockets forums.”

Brin:
That was before I discovered BiggerPockets, else obviously, I probably would have found-

Tony:
But I think it’s cool because you showed that it works. As long as you guys have that relationship and it works, then who cares where you find them from. So now we’ve got another resource to give to rookies.

Ashley:
So Brin, what’s next? After this deal, what are you going to go after next?

Brin:
I think after this one, I want to try to find a place in Mexico because I love going there. I want to buy properties in places that I go to to do short-term rentals.

Ashley:
Right, then you can use the vacation mortgage.

Brin:
So I’m not having that lifestyle creep, having to find a place to stay, I just already have a property. I think Mexico next, and then I also want to do some deals in Vegas because even though it seems harder, more expensive, I know I can make it work. So it’s going to be a challenge.

Ashley:
And that’s the mindset to have. Yeah, go after it.

Tony:
Before we move off of this deal, because there’s also the construction portion. So is your dad managing that part of the project for you, or do you actually have a general contractor? How are you doing this living in Vegas when the properties all the way in Columbus?

Brin:
I’m actually going to move there and live in this house while I’m renovating it. I keep forgetting, it doesn’t even have air conditioning yet, so that’s going to be great when I get out there on Sunday, I’m going to have to hurry up and try to find somebody to put an air conditioning unit on it. But luckily it has, what’s it called? The vents all throughout already, so I just literally have to get a unit. My dad is just going to help me, we’re just going to be hands on ourself. But I think I will probably contact some contractors when I get out there just to get quotes and see what they’re saying about all the stuff we’re doing. And if it’s fair price, I might hire them to work on this bathroom while we’re doing the kitchen, or whatever, so I can get it done faster.
If the price is right, I’m not opposed to hiring people, but I just know that it’s me and my dad just start and then go from there, I guess.

Tony:
So what’s the plan with your primary residence here in Vegas while you’re out there? Are you guys going to rent that out to other people or what’s-

Brin:
Actually, Mason’s staying behind, that’s my boyfriend, he’s going to live in our house. And we actually just had a roommate move in because we have a three-bedroom house and we only occupy a one room. So we had a roommate move in, so I guess it’s kind of house hacking.

Ashley:
That’s definitely house hacking.

Tony:
That’s the definition of house hacking.

Brin:
Honestly, I never really wanted a roommate, and I always said when I bought the house, I’m never going to have roommates ever again,” because I was over it, but he’s super cool, he’s literally the best roommate ever. He’s a professional chef, so he’s always cooking food.

Ashley:
Oh, awesome.

Brin:
He’s like, “You want to try them?” I’m like, “Hell yeah.” He’s going to be staying there, renting out one of our rooms and then Mason’s going to be there, so they’re going to man the fort for me.

Tony:
Can we touch on that a little bit? It definitely is a house hack. What you’re doing is the definition of a house hack. So how did you guys find that roommate? Was it just Facebook groups, asking around?

Brin:
He’s actually just one of my friends and he was trying to move out of the place that he was currently in, and he was just like, “Hey, you remember that one time when you said I could rent your room for 400 bucks? Well, can I still do that?” I was like, “Why not?” Even though I didn’t want a roommate, I was like, “You know what, who cares? I’m just going to try it and see how it goes.” And it’s been great. He’s been cool.

Tony:
Beautiful.

Ashley:
With doing OnlyFans too, you can probably do that from wherever.

Brin:
Yeah. That’s definitely why OnlyFans is so awesome because you can literally live anywhere and do it.

Ashley:
And go to Mexico, at your house, wherever you want.

Brin:
And actually it’s cool because those can be write-offs because it’s like a business trip, I’m working, I have to create content from new places. So that’s cool.

Ashley:
And before we transition off of this property or after this deal, do you think social media and having a following has helped you not even for real estate investing, but just in general, you had said you had a following before you even did OnlyFans. Do you want to give some social media advice for people who are trying to either get their real estate business out there or to get investors or anything like that? Because you do have a great social media.

Brin:
I started building my social media probably 10 years ago when I was getting into modeling, and Instagram was a lot easier to work back then because the Explore page now is tailored to you as your own personal Explore page, but back in my day, when I first started, it was like, if you go on the Explore page, every single person on Instagram saw your photo. So it was way easier to build back then. It is a lot tougher now, but I would say if you are trying to build on social media, TikTok is honestly the easiest way to build, because the algorithm on there, it’s just so much easier to build a following.
I just had a video two days ago, it was the dumbest video ever, and it went viral and it has 1.3 million views, and it got me 4,000 Instagram followers from TikTok. So it’s crazy. Instagram for me, at least personally is hard for me to understand, so that’s why I always just tell anybody, if you want to start getting more social media followers, go on TikTok, even though it’s mostly just 16-year-olds dancing, there is other ways to build your network on there. So that’s my suggestion.

Tony:
Should we take us to the mindset segment?

Ashley:
Yeah.

Tony:
We talk about this with every single guest where we want to get into the psyche of your brain a little bit. If you think about all of the assumptions that you had about becoming a real estate investor, about buying that first property, all of these kinds of fears that you had, swirling around you in your mind, which of those turned out to not be true?

Brin:
To not be true. I think that a lot of the times I hear that you have to put in 100 offers to get accepted and it takes forever, but I put in three offers and two of mine got accepted, so I don’t know. I guess that would be the only thing, but that’s not really like a mindset thing. I’m not sure, that’s a tough one.

Tony:
Let’s go back to the analysis paralysis piece, like you said, it was a year and a half. What was holding you back for those 18 months?

Brin:
That was definitely just my own self-limiting beliefs, and just being just scared in general or not working the numbers right. But if you just plug in the numbers on BiggerPockets, you don’t even have to use BiggerPockets, if you just plug in the numbers and figure it out, it’s really not as complicated as it seems. And like I said, even if it’s not perfect or even if you do mess up, that’s probably going to happen anyways no matter what, every time. So not every time, but on your first time.

Ashley:
There’s so many ways to verify numbers too. So BiggerPockets has the rent estimator tool where you can go in and see what apartments are for renting for a two bath, one bath right on there. And you can pull up the property taxes, you can call and get a quote on landscaping. There’s so many things that you can verify so that your numbers are even accurate, but it just takes work, putting in that effort to analyze the deal.

Brin:
And that was another thing that was holding me back too, is I wasn’t really analyzing deals, but then once I started to, I was like, “Okay, now that I have the hang of it, it’s not as complicated.’ Because when you first go to the BiggerPockets calculator and you start plugging the numbers, you’re like, “I don’t know what that means, I don’t know what that means, I don’t know what that means, I don’t know how to find that, I don’t know how to do this. What does that mean?” But then once you do even just like five, you get quicker and then you start realizing it’s not as crazy as it seems.

Tony:
I still vividly remember my first time opened up the BiggerPockets Caterpillar and you’re right, it’s almost intimidating that first time. I got my first deal in October of 2019 and I started looking at deals a year before that. So I’m not that far removed from having that same rookie mindset, but like you said, the more that you do, you analyze five deals, then 10 deals, then 100 deals, and by that point, you’re knocking everything out.

Brin:
It’s just like with everything in life, anything you do, you just have to start, and it’s the repetition. You know what I mean? The consistency. You have to be consistent and keep doing stuff or you’re not going to get better at it. So real estate should do just the exact same thing.

Ashley:
I think for my first deal, well, I definitely didn’t know where BiggerPockets was then, and I’m pretty sure it was just pen and paper, like, “This is the income, and these are the expenses and this is [inaudible 00:38:37] and this is the cashflow.” That’s literally all I knew about, was cashflow, to look that it would cashflow. I didn’t know ROI, I didn’t know a cash-in-cash-return, I didn’t know any of those, the 2% rule, none of that. And pen and paper worked.

Tony:
Still got it done. Still got it done. Still got it done.

Brin:
The old-fashion way, it still works today.

Tony:
Cool. So that’s the mindset. You want to hit the request line?

Ashley:
Yeah.

Tony:
All right, Brin, are you ready for today’s question?

Brin:
I’m ready.

William Banks:
>Hello. I’m a rookie investor, calling out of Columbus, Ohio. My name is William Banks. I’m calling because I’m a rookie investor and I actually just closed on a second duplex. I’m calling to see what would be my next step that I want to take to acquire my next doors? I’m really interested in multifamily investing, small multi-families between two to four units. I started off with stocks, so I have a nice brokerage account about six figures in it, but I didn’t want to liquidate my positions. I just wanted to know if there was any more ways that I could get financing so I could continue down this journey to purchase more properties. Thanks.

Brin:
I would say, go with financing if the numbers work out. If he’s doing like a BRRRR-type method where he’s going to refinance out, if you can get the after-repair value to be enough after you subtract what you still owe for your financing, then I would do it. That way, you don’t have to liquidate your stocks because your stocks might grow a little bit more in the next year or so, but then again, they might not, I don’t know. I would say do the financing.

Ashley:
Come on Brin, give us a prediction.

Brin:
Microsoft went down three points.

Tony:
But I think that’s a good piece of advice, is if you’ve got a specific set of capital that you want to keep recycling the BRRR method, is the best way to do that. We’re in the middle of a 1031 exchange, we sold one of our properties in Joshua Tree, and you have a limited amount of time to identify the property before you get hit with taxes. We’re six days away and we’re scrambling to try and figure out what that property is. So for us, the importance isn’t so much being able to recycle that capital, it’s just putting it into a property so we don’t have to pay taxes on it.
So everyone’s situation is going to be a little bit different, but I think I agree with you, for William’s situation, I think getting the BRRRR and recycle that makes a ton of sense. Cool.

Ashley:
Well, Brin, thank you so much for coming on. Do you want to tell everyone where they can find out some more information about you and reach out to you?

Brin:
All of my social media handles are the same, it’s just my first name Brin and then Amberlee. So I don’t know if you guys want to spell it or if you want me to spell it.

Ashley:
Go ahead, spell it.

Brin:
B-R-I-N A-M as in man, B-E-R-L-E-E.

Ashley:
And then what about your investor one?

Brin:
Oh yeah. I did just start a little baby account, it’s called the Sweatpants Investor because I love wearing sweat pants. I’m in them every single day. So that’s my other social media. Well, actually it’s just on Instagram. So if you want to follow on there, I’m going to be posting all of my investment stuff on that account.

Ashley:
Yeah. I can’t wait to watch the rehab. You’re going to have to do time lapses.

Brin:
I’m so excited. I’m trying to, Brittany Arnason, I’m trying to go DIY like her. She’s my role model.

Tony:
We’ll call you InvestorGirlBrin instead of InvestorGirlBritt.

Brin:
She’ll be like, “Wow. You really stole my name.”

Ashley:
She would love it though. She would love it. Well, thank you so much. Brin actually joined us at the pool party yesterday and I’m so glad she decided to show up today after seeing the rookie co-hosts in the wild.

Brin:
I was actually going to say, when you said you guys were hung up this morning, I was like, “Wow. I wish my hangovers were that smooth.” That’s literally why I quit drinking because my hangovers were not like that. I’d be in bed till 8:00 PM the next day. You guys did very good.

Ashley:
Well, thank you so much for coming on the show and we love your story and I love your mindset stuff that you post on social media too. And so it was awesome to meet you in person and have you on the show.

Brin:
Yeah. Thank you guys so much.

Ashley:
I’m Ashley @wealthfromrentals and he’s Tony @tonyjrobinson on Instagram. And we will be back on Saturday with a Rookie Reply.