Rookie Reply: The Best Career Moves for an Aspiring Real Estate Investor

Ashley Kehr:
This is Real Estate Rookie episode 158. My name is Ashley Kehr, and I am here with my co-host, Tony Robinson.

Tony Robinson:
And welcome to the Real Estate Rookie Podcast, where we give you the inspiration, the motivation to get started or keep going in real estate investing. And actually every Saturday, we pick a lucky, lucky listener, and we answer their question live on the show. But before we do that, Ashley, what’s going on with you? What’s new in your neck of the woods?

Ashley Kehr:
Well, I went to this real estate event for my property management company recently. It was their 10 year anniversary since they’ve been open, so congratulations to them. But I met one rookie listeners there and we were talking and I was telling him the story of what happened. He was like, “You’ve got to tell that on the podcast.” So if you don’t mind, I’m going to go ahead and tell a story real quick.

Tony Robinson:
Yeah. Story time. Let’s go.

Ashley Kehr:
So I think one of the great benefits of being a real estate investor and becoming financially free and becoming in a better financial position is that you can help other people. And my goal, really, is to be able to do things for my friends, like buy a huge cabin somewhere and say, “Hey, you guys, go stay there for free.” Things like that, I love to do. And so I have a friend that needed to move into an apartment just for a short amount of time. And she was willing to pay whatever, it’s just she couldn’t find anything. And I had something available and that was super nice that I had that available at that time she needed it, and it just worked out really well. So she moved into that and it was a super tiny, tiny one-bedroom apartment for her, her boyfriend, and her dog.
And they were doing rent-to-own on a single family residence. And they were remodeling it before they moved in, so that’s why they needed somewhere to stay for those couple months. So she was about a week before moving into that property and she’d let me know her move-out date and said, “Just thank you so much for letting us stay here for only a couple up a months and worked out really well. We’re going to be leaving in the states. You can get it rented. We’ll have it all cleaned. Everything.” Well, about five days before she’s supposed to move out, I get a text from her at almost midnight saying, “Somebody rammed their car into our house. Can we stay longer? I am not kidding. This really just happened.” So what happened was two meth-heads were escaping the police and drove their car at 90 miles per an hour into the front of her house, and shifted the house off of its foundation.
Just did tons of damage to the house. The people ended up dying on the front lawn there. Well, she had never signed the rent-to-own contract yet. So all that money, all that work, all that time put into rehabbing that property for her about to move into, she lost all of that. And basically, the owner just said, “I’ll give you back the first payment you made.” And I think she had maybe put a security deposit or something down. So, that was really devastating for her and, I guess, a lesson learned that you sign a contract before you go in and do work on a property.
Well, it ended up, I had another property that came up for rent, and so I was able to give that to her to rent for a reduced rate, and now she’s moving into that property and actually hopes to eventually buy that property from me. But just a crazy of something that could happen to somebody. And she is just such a trooper. She just had surgery, too, and she’s transitioning, trying to move in between these places when she thought she was moving somewhere else. And so, yeah, just a wild, wild, crazy story, I guess. I mean, who thinks that someone’s going to drive into the front of their house?

Tony Robinson:
I’m so glad you shared that story, Ashley, because I think a lot of what drives people who are entrepreneurial in spirit isn’t just for their own financial wellbeing or for their own success but like you said, it’s to be able to provide, I guess, to let that success extend to the people that you care out, and to allow your success to positively impact and benefit other people. And what a terrible experience for your friend, and I’m sure so many emotions that she experienced, but where to live was one less thing she had to worry about, because of the success that you’ve had. So, man, for those of you that are listening, obviously, we’re all motivated for what real estate can give to us personally, but sometimes it’s also helpful to think about how all the hard work you’re doing can kind of impact people around you as well.

Ashley Kehr:
Yeah, around here, it’s a very hard to find an apartment right now. And if you are looking for apartment, you have to go through background check, credit check, get approved, fill out an application, pay an application fee, things like that. It was so cool for me to just be like, “Hey, here’s the lockbox code. Start moving your stuff in.” It was awesome for me to be able to do that for my friend and just say, “Don’t worry about it. Stay here as long as you need to.” And so I think that’s definitely a really awesome part of real estate investing, is being able to do those things for your friends and family.

Tony Robinson:
Yeah. Well, thank you for sharing that story, Ashley. I’m sure it inspired a lot of folks.

Ashley Kehr:
Just a crazy story in general.

Tony Robinson:
That too.

Ashley Kehr:
This is the person that something like that would happen to, just these crazy, crazy things. But, okay. So let’s get to today’s question for the rookie reply. So today’s question is sent by Ryan Costner, sent this to my DMs. You can send me a DM at wealthfromrentals, or one for Tony at tonyjrobinson, and basically, whoever jumps into our recording platform first gets to upload their DM. So who knows who it’s going to be?
So Ryan message says this. “Hey, Ashley. I’m Ryan from Chicago. Got a question for the rookie reply. I’m looking to get into rental properties, starting with single-family household or a duplex and doing the stack method. I’m not happy at my current job, and I’m looking to make a change into the real estate world. What would y’all recommend for a job to immerse myself in real estate without making crap for money? Not a part of this question, because I think keeping it broad would help the question for the podcast, but talk about it where you want. I currently work for a contractor who does the maintenance for a property management company.
I thought I would learn more in the position, but after a year with minimal takeaway, I think it’s time to move on. I would also like to go back to a W2. I’m very handy, just got done with a full gut rehab on my personal residence. I also have a bachelor’s degree in business for management. Based on that, what would be your recommendations to change my future by helping me along my journey for financial freedom?”

Tony Robinson:
So do you want to go first or how do you want to take it? I got some ideas [crosstalk 00:07:10] .

Ashley Kehr:
Yeah. I guess kind of break it down real quick is that is in a job right now where he thought that he would learn more about real estate investing by working for a contractor who works for a property management company. So the property management company probably uses his employer as a contractor or saying, “Hey, I need this job done here. Go to this unit and take care of it.” Things like that. And then he’s asking, what are some other positions or other jobs he could do to help him learn more about real estate investing? So go ahead, Tony. What do you have on that?

Tony Robinson:
Yeah, I guess just a couple things come to mind, Ryan. So I think my first question to you would be what were your expectations walking into that position, right? What were you hoping to gain by taking this maintenance position with the contractor? And just kind of ask yourself if those expectations were, I guess, realistic to begin with, right? Were you hoping that you would get this crash course on how to become a world star investor? If so, then maybe your expectations stepping into it are what’s giving you this kind of jaded feeling about the position. But if your goal stepping it was, hey, here’s how you efficiently and effectively manage a maintenance request within a property, then, I mean, I would hope that you’ve gained some experience with that. So I guess that leads me to my next question is, can you reflect, Ryan, within your current role, on what are some of the things that you’ve learned that have benefited you as a potential real estate investor?
The property management side of things, and specifically managing the maintenance requests, I think, is one of the biggest headaches for a lot of new investors, right? A lot of people shy away from managing their own properties, because they don’t want to deal with broken toilets, right? And if you have worked for a company that’s given you a playbook on how to effectively do that, then you’re 10, 20, 30 steps ahead of other new investors that haven’t learned that skillset yet. So, that would be my first question is reflect on what you have learned that has already made you a great investor, and can you lean into that even more? Then my last question, I’m asking you questions, but you can’t ask me back, so take it for what it is. But my last question is, is there an opportunity for you, Ryan, to take some initiative outside of your general job description?
Can you go to this contractor that you work with and offer to help him with some other parts of the business? Can you even maybe go to the property manager that you guys are contracting for and offer him maybe some additional work in exchange for whatever, allowing you to shadow him when he’s doing all these other things? Can you create more opportunity with the seat that you’re in? Because you’re already very much surrounded by real estate professionals, you’re surrounded by a contractor. You’ve got a property manager. Those are two key pieces for everybody’s team when it comes to real estate investing, and you’ve already got a line to those people, so is there a way for you to expand your job description within the current role that you have? Ryan, I know I didn’t quite answer your question, but more so just kind of pointing questions back at you, but hopefully that kind of gets the wheels turning a little bit.

Ashley Kehr:
Yeah, I really liked that last point you made there, Tony, expanding on your current role or even if staying in your current position and taking on a side hustle or something different added on. So maybe working weekends or nights or something for that property management company, even if it’s just doing little handyman things for them. But I think as far as the big things I think of to get started in real estate is so you already have the construction knowledge, the construction skills, and it says that you do have a bachelor’s degree in management, so maybe is there some kind of project management role you could take on? Also, working for other investors. So instead of working for the property management company or a contractor, maybe you could work for an investor directly and get that side of you, because sometimes property managers and also contractors, they’re not investors themselves.
And I think that there’s a big difference as to how they look at a project, as to how an investor looks at a project, and it looks at a property and analyzes a property. So I think going and seeing that if you could be of use to an actual investor and work with them directly would be a really big benefit for you, or even staying in your current role and taking on business partner who is an investor, and maybe he’s going to supply the money, he’ll help you analyze the deal. And then you actually go and do the rehab, since you have that knowledge, and you did your whole personal resonance, too. And you can show that as a sample, as like, “Hey, look, this is my work.” Take them through your house and prove that you can add value to a partnership that way, too. So I think there’s a bunch of different options for you.

Tony Robinson:
Yeah. I just want to add onto that last point, Ashley, what a great idea, right? And maybe even take it one step further. You’re working on different properties for this property management company all day, every day. Can you reach out to some of those property owners and say, “Hey, I’ve actually worked on your property. I know it inside and out. Here’s my skillset.” And then maybe that’s the person that you end up partnering with, right? Because, they’ve already seen your work. They didn’t know it was you, maybe, right? But they’ve already seen your work. You’ve already somewhat established a relationship there. So you can say, “Hey, I’m looking to get started. I have this skillset. You have the experience. You have the funds. Can we come together to take a deal down together?”

Ashley Kehr:
Yeah. And to be clear, Tony’s not saying to go and poach things from the property management company, or the guy that you’re working for now, but to actually partner on a deal and become a part owner on a different deal, and then hand it off to the property management company when you’re done with the deal. Yeah. I think that’s a great idea, Tony, because you can find out who those owners are pretty easily. You can go on to PropStream, you can go on to your county’s GIS mapping system and just type in the address to get the owner’s name and to get their address, and then Google white pages, type in their name, and find their phone number. So, okay. Well, should we wrap this one up, Tony?

Tony Robinson:
Yeah. I don’t think I got anything else for you, man. I know I didn’t give you as much advice. I just asked you a bunch of questions. But hopefully that at least points you in the right direction. But just I guess the last thing I’ll say, Ryan, is that sometimes we don’t see the opportunities that are right in front of us, right? When you’re in the grind every day, you sometimes become blind to what’s right in front of you. And I’ve shared this story before, but I have a friend who lives here in SoCal, and she’s telling me that, “I really want to get started in real estate investing, but I don’t have the team. I don’t really have the resources.” She was like, “I don’t know if I should do this. I don’t know if I should do that.”
And over the course of that conversation, she ends up mentioning to me that her dad is a general contractor for a big commercial real estate company. And I said, “You were just telling me that you don’t have the team or that you don’t have the resources, but your dad is a general contractor.” I was like, “You have all the resources that everyone would die for.” Right? So it’s just sometimes when you’re so close to it, you don’t see the opportunities are in front of you. So hopefully this conversation, Ryan, helps you see some of those.

Ashley Kehr:
Yeah. And one final thing from me, too, is that Ryan had mentioned that he didn’t want to take a pay cut either. So I think a lot of times that there’s two opportunities that are presented to someone. And the first one is you take a pay cut and you work for an investor, you work for somebody where you’re going to be getting that experience and knowledge, and that’s what the reasoning is behind taking that pay cut. The second thing is that you make more time with the job that you have.
So we just had Anthony Michael on, and he works full-time for the military, he works part-time as a hard money lender, and he’s still flipping houses. So do a time study if you need to, and see where your time is going and see if there’s still time to become an investor, or to wholesale deals or work for another investor as an intern for free, and finding that time in your schedule to actually do that, instead of taking a low paying job to learn more. Well, that’s another rookie reply. My name is Ashley at wealthfromrentals, and he’s Tony at tonyjrobinson on Instagram. And we will be back on Wednesday. But first, let’s check out something you can get value from at BiggerPockets.