BiggerPockets Podcast 092 with Brandon Turner Transcript

Link to show: BP Podcast 092: No (and Low) Money Down Real Estate Investing with Brandon Turner

Josh: This is the BiggerPockets podcast, show 92.

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Josh: What's going on everybody? This Josh Dorkin, host of the BiggerPockets podcast here with my fabulous cohost. Wait a second. Something’s not right here. Today, I’m interviewing my cohost so today is the Josh Dorkin show.

Brandon: Does that make me not a cohost just because I’m being interviewed?

Josh: You’re being demoted my friend.

Brandon: Does that mean all of our guests are demoted of us.

Josh: Oh.

Brandon: How cocky.

Josh: I don’t know. Don’t confuse me. Don’t confuse me. Alright, alright so today is the No and Low Money Down Episode and today I’m going to be interviewing you, Mr. Brandon Turner. Technically, you’re not really my cohost even though you kind of are, but anyway.

Brandon: You can’t stop me from talking. Anyway, I’m going to.

Josh: I know, I know. I know and for those people who’ve never listened to the show before normally our show is Brandon and myself talking to other people. Sometimes, we talk amongst ourselves, but today is going to be a different show and a great one at that so that said, very very very quickly no money down, let’s talk about that really quick before we get into the show. No money is—it’s a buzz phrase in real estate investing and we’re going to take it kind of from a different standpoint here. We’re going to talk about numerous strategies that our guest, this guy, Brandon Turner, that’s right, has used to invest with little or nothing out of his own pocket.

That’s because he has nothing in his pockets. We’re going to talk about the dirty and dangerous side of creative investing as well and what you can do to watch out for it. Finally, finally, this stuff that we do cover today, is not just for new real estate investors. It’s for anybody, anybody looking to do more deals so no matter where you are in your real estate journey, this show is definitely going to be for you and there’s just a ton of stuff we’re going to cover and I’m really excited and I know Brandon is as well because we’ve had a lot of people asking for this particular show so.

Brandon: Yes and we’ve had, I mean, this is the question that we get—I mean every single day, Josh and I get from an email or on the forums or in a private message. It’s always, I got no money or I don’t have a lot of money or even like guys who have money, but they want to get bigger projects in and they don’t have enough, right. We get this question every single day. How do I do this? Today, hopefully, we can shed some light on that.

Josh: Yes, yes, let’s do it.

Brandon: Alright, cool.

Josh: Before we do, get into the show, we’ve got today’s Quick Tip. Alright, today’s Quick Tip. Today, we are releasing, finally, drum roll please. There we go. Today we’re releasing a brand new book and announcing it here on the podcast first. We’ve been talking about it for months and months, but today it’s officially happening. This is it.

Brandon: Woohoo.

Josh: It’s called The Book on Investing in Real Estate With No and Low Money Down and it was written by my cohost here, the man the myth, Mr. Brandon Turner.

Brandon: Yes, it’s me.

Josh: Alright, alright. Alright, Brandon so really quickly, maybe you can give us a quick 30 second explanation of what the book’s about and then we’re going to kind of roll on and get into this thing.

Brandon: Sure, sure. Alright so it starts because every—like you mentioned earlier, right. Every deal that I’ve done I’ve generally had money in my pocket right so I’m obviously not some like super genius in figuring this out. I just like hustled and tried and screwed up a whole lot on kind of my path so this book is kind of—we put together, I don’t know, about a dozen, you know, maybe a few dozen if you combine the different, within in each chapter, but different strategies for that I’ve used for investing in real estate without using a whole lot of my own money. Now, not everything is zero dollars, but some of it is a few thousand dollars or less so, yes, I think people on BP are going to like it and I think it turned out pretty good.

Josh: Awesome. Yes, we’re really pleased, but we’ll talk about it more later so.

Brandon: Cool.

Josh: Actually, we’re not going to do that. We’re actually going to you know, kind into the—some of the meat here on this show, which is I think what’s exciting. I’m going to interview Brandon about his real estate journey. How he’s done all of these things, all of these different deals and for those of you guys who might want to pick up the book, you can get it today at BiggerPockets.com/NoMoney. That’s BiggerPockets.com/NoMoney.

Brandon: That you can. That you can. That you can.

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: Oh, and before I forget, the—because this is a podcast, I want to make sure to mention this. We did do an audio book version of this.

Josh: Oh yes.

Brandon: You can listen in your car, it’s—I think it’s like eight hours long or actual like audio so somewhere between seven and eight hours. Anyway and there’s a bunch of other cool stuff you get, but yes, we’re going to talk about it all later so.

Josh: Nice, nice. Yes, it turned out great I think and we had a lot of people request this from out last book so we’ve decided.

Brandon: Yes.

Josh: To add that and we’ll talk more about it later. Why don’t we just kind of get into this thing, get into Brandon’s life or those of you who know him, lack there of and before we do that, why don’t we let you give a shout out to today’s sponsor.

Brandon: I’d love to. Today’s sponsor is, The Book on Investing in Real Estate With No Money Down.

Josh: Oh.

Brandon: Pick up a copy, alright.

Josh: Yay, alright get a copy. Alright guys, let’s dig into this. My guest today, as you know is Brandon Turner so Brandon, how are you? Welcome to the show man. It’s good to have you here today.

Brandon: Thank you, Josh. It’s good to be here. You know, I listen to you every single week on the podcast and I’m always like I don’t know, amazed by you and you’re cohost. You guys have great, you know, rapport. You’re cohost is really good looking too.

Josh: Nice. Nice. You’re also living in a fantasy world. That’s great. That’s great. Alright man, let’s dig into this. Let’s talk about you and your first deal so tell us about it.

Brandon: Sure. I’ve actually liked this because I don’t think you and I have even ever talked about like how I got started. Like I don’t think even in our like millions of hours of conversations we’ve gone over it so.

Josh: It’s possible.

Brandon: Alright, so my first deal was what we like to call like a live in flip or some people call it “flip in” so I bought, let me actually go back.

Josh: Fancy.

Brandon: Yes so let me go back. In college, I needed a place to live. I was going to like a few different colleges, kind of like community college and then I graduated from one of them and I was moving on and I was going to get married pretty soon and I needed a place to live so I was looking for a house to rent and my real estate agent, friend, who was you know, an agent said, “Hey, why don’t you just buy a house? It’s cheaper.” I looked at the numbers, sure enough, it probably would be cheaper so I was raised by.

Josh: Really quickly where were you living? I mean.

Brandon: I was out here at the time. Well, I graduated college in Minnesota and then I moved out to Washington State where I live today.

Josh: You were in Podunk at the time when?

Brandon: I was in Podunk at the time, yes so.

Josh: Okay, okay.

Brandon: I was in like the city part of Podunk at the time or Aberdine, Washington.

Josh: City Dunk.

Brandon: City Dunk. Alright so yes, I’m in like the city part right so I was raised by a garage sale mom, right so like my mom went to garage sales every Saturday.

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: Packed all of the kids in the minivan and we’d drive around the garage sales and then she would like buy just crap that we didn’t need and fill our garage with it and then twice a year, she’d have a garage sale and sell it all.

Josh: Nice.

Brandon: I don’t think she pro—I mean, I think she actually made money off of this, but like, I wouldn’t do it today, but I do.

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: The lesson I learned from that was to buy a good deal, right. My mom always taught me like never offer full price. Always, you know, get a good deal so that’s the only thing I knew about real estate at the time besides that it existed is I’m like.

Josh: Nice.

Brandon: I’m going to buy good deals so I went on and asked my agent what’s the cheapest house in our county and she found it and I said okay, well let’s buy it and back then this is—so this is 2007, now part of the story might not apply to everyone because I’m—I’m a 21 year old kid and I have no credit and I just—my job, I’m making like $9.50 an hour, something like that.

Josh: Nice.

Brandon: Yes.

Josh: What were you doing at the time by the way?

Brandon: I was working at a group home for like developmentally disabled adults.

Josh: Nice.

Brandon: Yes so it was like overnight job so I mean I’m making no money, no credit really no job stability, just out of school and had no—like no personal savings of my own money whatsoever.

Josh: Right.

Brandon: It’s time to go buy a house and so you know I go—I tell the bank this and being 2007, what did they say? Sure.

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: Yes, take $250,000.

Josh: Why not, come on.

Brandon: Yes, come on.

Josh: No money down, yes

Brandon: Yes.

Josh: Here’s a million dollars, sure.

Brandon: Yes, yes, they actually approved me for like—it was like 260 or 280, but again, garage sale mom, I knew I was you know, at least I was trained not to do that so I actually bought an $80,000 house.

Josh: Nice.

Brandon: It needed work so for the next like nine months, me and some friends fixed it up and we lived in it and then we sold it and it wasn’t a plan to sell it. I bought it just to live in, but then I realized equity in it and the market was still like good and it was like late 2007.

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: We sold it right as the market was looking over the.

Josh: Nice.

Brandon: Yes, the downfall.

Josh: The top of the fall.

Brandon: Yes, top of the yes, I mean it was at the top as you could possibly get and I got out.

Josh: Yes, yes.

Brandon: Now like, I got lucky there, I mean I fully will admit that was a luck deal and I made about $20,000 off that deal.

Josh: Okay.

Brandon: You know it was good it was like $20 grand. It paid for my wedding. It paid—I paid cash for my wedding. Well, I borrowed it from my dad.

Josh: Nice.

Brandon: Then when it closed I paid him.

Josh: Oh, big spender, look at you.

Brandon: I know, look at me.

Josh: How fancy.

Brandon: Yes, we had a fancy wedding. No, but.

Josh: Nice.

Brandon: There is one story so in the midst of this, while we’re in closing on this property. It leads me into the second property, which hopefully you’re going to ask me about because.

Josh: Oh, I’m not going to ask you.

Brandon: I want to tell you about it.

Josh: I was—I wanted to know the numbers on that property.

Brandon: Oh ok.

Josh: You spent how much was the end for? What—give me the quick numbers?

Brandon: Sure, I think the loan was right on $80,000.

Josh: Okay.

Brandon: It was essentially 100% loan. I think what they did at the time and this what the second loan was as well is they did these like weird like—it was like 80-20 like loans, right.

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: You could 80% first mortgage, 20% second mortgage and I think it was essentially that. I bought it for 80. I put 20-25 into it and then sold it for 130 something.

Josh: Okay.

Brandon: Somewhere right around there.

Josh: It took right about six months to sell.

Brandon: It probably—actually took pretty quick to sell, probably like three months to sell, but it was.

Josh: Well, I mean the rehab process and everything.

Brandon: Yes, the whole thing beginning to end was just under a year. I bought it December I sold it in—on Halloween. We closed on Halloween so October 31st.

Josh: Nice.

Brandon: Because I remember, we were emptying the house out as trick or treaters were coming by and we were giving them cans of pop because we didn’t have any candy so we were like.

Josh: Cans of pop?

Brandon: Yes.

Josh: What’s that? What’s pop?

Brandon: Soda, geez.

Josh: You were throwing cans of soda at trick or treaters?

Brandon: Well like, we were like cleaning out our fridge, handing things to kids because that’s all we had in our house. Anyway so okay so, during this time, we needed a place to live.

Josh: Got it.

Brandon: My agent again said, well you know, there’s a duplex just came on the market. Why not live in the duplex and you can rent out one half and live in the other half and I’m like, “That’s a smart idea.” I was like, “This is great.” Then I looked at the paper and I saw I’m going to make $20 grand off this live in flip.

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: I’m like, you know, this is what my life going to be. I’m going to become a real estate investor. At that point, I was like I’m going to be a real estate investor so I tell—I at the time I was studying for the law school.

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: Like I wanted to take—I was taking the L—I took the LSAT, I was going to law school and I call up my dad and I say the words, “I’m not going to law school anymore.” I was like, “I discovered a whole new like venture. I’m going to be a real estate investor. I just, you know, I’m flipping this house, it’s great.” He actually like helped me out a little bit with it and so he knew I was doing it and then “I’m not going to go to law school anymore. I’m going to be a real estate investor. I’m going to buy a duplex and start rental properties.” He looked at me and said, “You know, you’re crazy.” Like, “You’re going to.”

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: His words I think were essentially, “You’re going to go broke and be homeless because you’re tenants aren’t going to pay rent and then you’re not going to have the money to pay for it. You’re going to get kicked out in the street and you’re life’s going to be over.”

Josh: Nice.

Brandon: That was the message I got and.

Josh: Nostradamus, look out.

Brandon: I was—I mean and I was like, “Oh man, he’s right.”

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: I’m like, he’s right. Like, I don’t know. I can’t cover two payments. What if a tenant doesn’t pay? We got a lot of you know, bad people around here and so that night, I went online and I typed into Google, what to do when tenants don’t pay and I still have—I should have grabbed it for this thing. I still have the paper that I got off the internet and it was on a site called BiggerPockets.

Josh: Shut up.

Brandon: This is like, I think this was 2000 and—it must have been. It was later than 2001 when I got this one. It must have been 2000, I lied, did I say 2001, earlier because I graduated.

Josh: You said seven, well you said seven on the property so you probably bought it.

Brandon: Okay, yes, yes, I think earlier I said the number 2001, but I meant 2007 if I said 2001. This is 2007, I find this paper and it says, the title is called, “What To Do When Tenants Don’t Pay Rent.”

Josh: Nice.

Brandon: It was an article. Remember you used to have articles on BiggerPockets?

Josh: Articles, I do remember.

Brandon: Yes, you used to have articles, right. It was an article and I read it and I—it blew my mind in that, I was like, there are people actually doing this and they’re not homeless and broke living under a bridge. There’s actually people with an answer and so that is how I found BiggerPockets the first time.

Josh: Wow.

Brandon: I thought people—people often think that I started this site, but just because, you know, I’m better looking than you, I didn’t actually didn’t start this.

Josh: Wow, oh, wow. Wow.

Brandon: No, wait.

Josh: A little megalomania, little you know personality problem.

Brandon: Yes, yes, there you go.

Josh: Yes, that’s awesome.

Brandon: Yes, you’d been around for a few years. I think—couple—probably what—two—when did you start?

Josh: We started October 27, the 22nd 2004 and those of you who are listening when this comes out, the ten year anniversary of BiggerPockets is coming next week.

Brandon: Yes.

Josh: We’re really excited. I know I’m extremely ecstatic and yes, you know, right it’s funny people all of the time come up to me. They’re like, yes, so—actually last week. It was this week. Somebody’s like, “You know, you’ve got a really good.” In fact, it was a reporter, which really like killed me. It was a reporter and this guy’s like, “I love your site. It’s amazing. You know, it’s really really awesome so tell me, how did, you know what—how did Brandon Turner start it and what do you do there?” I just like—I just about lost it, but I, you know, listen, you do such as a great job here and.

Brandon: Thanks.

Josh: You’re a great asset and people love you and you know, whatever, the facts will come out.

Brandon: Yes, well, yes, they’ll figure it out.

Josh: Alright, so you found BP. You found the site.

Brandon: Anyways, I found BP. That’s how I got connected with BP and that’s when I said, I—you know, okay there are answers to this questions that people have. I mean like—just like the—to pull out my story here and just talk to the people directly listening to this podcast, like if that is you, if you have questions or if there’s people like—that look at you and are saying, hey, you know, well, what about this? What about this? What about this? Like, the point is, there are answers to the questions.

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: That people have, like it’s not like we’re the first ones to invent this game. This has been around for thousands and thousands of years so.

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: You know, there are answers, there are ways to figure it all out and those people who seek out those answers are the ones that seem to you know, find good success so.

Josh: Yes, awesome.

Brandon: With, yes, anyway.

Josh: Alright, alright so.

Brandon: Alright so.

Josh: Let’s get in here, you’re talking about this duplex and.

Brandon: Yes.

Josh: You’re kind of looking for answers, but I feel like you’re—I think I know the story.

Brandon: Yes, yes.

Josh: I mean the second house was not—this was not like a duplex. This was like, you went and bought like the house of one of the most famous icons on the planet.

Brandon: I didn’t know that at the time though.

Josh: Okay.

Brandon: Yes, I actually never—I didn’t know that so here’s the story.

Josh: You’re second deal was the Cobain house, right?

Brandon: It was, it was. The second deal was the Cobain house so basically what it was is I bought a little two house on lot, little tiny one house, little tiny other house. We paid—oh boy, I really should have written out all these numbers before the show. I knew we were going to talk about this.

Josh: Way to be prepared.

Brandon: I know, way to be prepared. I think it was $82 for the duplex for two houses on one lot and they’re—I mean just little shacks essentially and they were.

Josh: This was a duplex. It was duplex because it was two houses on the same lot.

Brandon: Because it was two houses on one lot, yes, but it was like a bungalow and like a little two bedroom. Two bedroom one bath house and a one bedroom one bath house.

Josh: Okay.

Brandon: My wife and I moved into the one bedroom, one bath house. Remodeled the entire thing in the inside and then moved in some friends into the front one and that’s a whole different story.

Josh: Oh, that sounds like trouble.

Brandon: Yes, yes, it was bad. He got arrested and it was, yes.

Josh: Good friends, good friends.

Brandon: Yes, good friends and I mean that I could go on all day about the things you don’t want to do and that’s one of them, but we’ll talk about that maybe later. I rented to some friends and then they moved out later when he got arrested and moved some other people in and it actually was great. Here’s what I loved that, first of all, I financed that with what was a very similar to an FHA loan. We’re going to talk about maybe FHA, maybe later and I talk about it in the book a little bit, but—or actually, a whole chapter on it. The idea was I think that loan, it wasn’t technically FHA, but it was like 4% down.

Josh: Okay.

Brandon: Which FHA is 3.5% down. It was like a 4% down loan from a bank, which they don’t have that exact loan because FHA became more popular. Yes, we bought it with almost nothing down. We put our sweat equity into painting it and I sanded the floors myself and made it look really nice. We lived there. Our total mortgage payment was $600 bucks a month.

Josh: Nice.

Brandon: Including, yes tax and insurance, everything was $600, we rented the front house for $650 a month. At that moment, like I realized like something like flipped in my head and I’m like holy.

Josh: $600 was for both properties?

Brandon: Yes, for the whole thing, it was $600 payment and we were getting $650.

Josh: Got it.

Brandon: Out of the month—now we had to pay water and sewer.

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: That was $800 bucks a month, but essentially, I was living for free plus utilities and.

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: Getting paid to learn how to be a landlord, which.

Josh: That’s because you live in the middle of nowhere.

Brandon: Because I, you—I got a friend Jeremy who’s doing that right in Minneapolis.

Josh: You could do it in certain cities.

Brandon: You could do it anywhere. You could do it—we know a guy, we interviewed him on the podcast back like six months ago who’s doing it in Boston. He bought like a $600,000 four—or triplex.

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: Right?

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: Like Paula Pant, she’s doing it down in Atlanta.

Josh: House hacking.

Brandon: House hacking, yes I love the term so that’s where it all came from. I didn’t know what it was at the time and I just stumbled across it, but.

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: Anyway, the Kurt Cobain part of that people want to know. The idea was—or the story was. We moved out a couple of years later, a year and half later. Moved other tenants into the back, the lady’s still there.

Cute old lady, I love her and she—the people in the front house at that point—some other people moved out and new people moved in and everybody who lived there including my friend and later people on what I always call and say, they keep, there’s flashers in our window every few days. There’s flashers in the window. I don’t know why there’s flashers in the window.

I thought the county was just doing a bunch of like work or something or appraising, but it—for years, I mean every—I mean people just randomly take pictures of the house. Then we found out it was some Swedish tourist knocked on the door that it was Kurt Cobain’s childhood home like where he was born. He actually lived in both houses of the duplex. Both houses from like zero to six months and then six months to two years.

Josh: Nice.

Brandon: Then he moved on so. I can officially say I’m the only person alive who owns two of Kurt Cobain’s houses.

Josh: That’s awesome. That’s awesome and if anybody is interested, they’re for sale.

Brandon: They are for sale. I did list them.

Josh: They are.

Brandon: I doubled the price on them.

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: Hoping that some rich, Swedish tourist will buy them for nostalgic sake.

Josh: If you’re a fan of Nirvana, then you know you can come to Washington with Brandon.

Brandon: Yes, you can come to Washington with me, yes.

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: Here’s the cool thing about this property, is that and I wrote a post. My like second post ever for BP was called this, it was called, “How I Bought Two of Kurt Cobain’s Former Houses and Why That’s Not Even the Best Part,” right?

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: Because the best part had nothing to do with the story. I didn’t buy it knowing it was even there. The best part is that this is a property, right now, today, after paying water, sewer, garbage, budgeting for vacancies, maintenance, all those things, I’m still clearing two, $250 sometimes $300 a month in income on that property and they’re stable.

Josh: Nice.

Brandon: They’re in a great location, 30 year, fixed mortgage, because when you house hack and you use a mortgage like a you know, a 30 year fix mortgage. When you move out, you don’t have to get a new mortgage that stays with you. It stays with the property and yes, I love that property. It’s one of my favorites.

Josh: Can you move out right away or is there a way to create.

Brandon: I think you have stay the year. I’m not mortgage person, but I’ve always heard one year is what they tell me.

Josh: Yes, that’s what I think it is.

Brandon: Yes so.

Josh: Well, that’s great. Alright, so we got the first two deals. I mean do you think—well actually, I know you do, house hacking is something that you really recommend people. We’ve talked about it a couple times, but.

Brandon: It has.

Josh: Do you have anything you want to kind of add on that or?

Brandon: It’s got to fit right? I mean like we know, it’s got to fit your situation. I mean like, you Josh are not going to go and live in a crappy duplex in you know, Aberdine, Washington. Like that—it’s—a one bedroom, one bath like it just doesn’t work for some people.

Josh: Right.

Brandon: You might live in area that doesn’t work; however, if you think about it both things I did were house hacking and I didn’t know it.

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: You can buy a flip. You can buy a house to fix and then sell a couple of years later and or you can buy a multifamily house to live in. I mean both of those kind of aren’t able to use what you have to do anyway. You have to have a place to live no matter what so why not combine that with your investment and get started and get free on the job training while you’re doing it?

Josh: Nice.

Brandon: That’s my—yes, so that’s what I think.

Josh: Oh that’s great. Good advice. Good advice, alright. What’s next? I mean we’re ’07-’08, I mean the bubble’s probably getting close to popping.

Brandon: Yes, it was crashing as I was buying this property so.

Josh: Oh.

Brandon: It was like going over that hill.

Josh: Okay, okay so I mean, what did you do? I mean you bought these properties?

Brandon: Well, I did what a lot of people did. Well, I mean a lot of people did—we looked around and like the market was like you know, a typical single family house in my area was going to sell between $120 and $130, that was our market at the time. You know, for like a certain type. I mean, obviously, it’s—there’s a range, but let’s just say $120, $130.

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: The market dropped like $110 and I’m like everything is on sale.

Josh: Nice.

Brandon: I like jumped in with both feet. I’m like, I’m going to be a house flipper.

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: Now, I got—you know I got my housing paid for for free. Now I’m going to flip some houses.

Josh: You’re buying on the way down.

Brandon: I’m buying on the way down so I watched the flipping shows. I mean that’s what got me really excited about flipping. I watched all the flipping shows and I love them.

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: There were so many of them at the time. I worked the overnight job, remember?

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: Like overnight, I would watch them like they’d be like nine hour marathons of like the flipping shows and I’d watch one after another after another. I didn’t realize that we weren’t at the bottom of the market. I don’t think anybody did and I don’t know if there was a way to figure that out, right? I mean nobody knew where the bottom was so I actually bought the cheapest house I the entire area to flip and it was like $50,000 and I put in $40,000 worth of work so I was up to about $90 total. I quit my job at this point for the first time. I quit my job a few times in my life.

Josh: Nice.

Brandon: The first time I quit my job, I’m going flip houses and make millions, bought this—bought this house for $50,000, put $40 into it and then let me tell you how I financed it before.

Josh: Yes, I was going to say, yes, that was my question.

Brandon: Okay, yes, yes because—okay good because I have a diff—I have a better story that’s kind of related to that, but so I financed it with a hard moneylender and.

Josh: Ooh.

Brandon: Yes, for those people who.

Josh: Yes, what is it?

Brandon: For those people who don’t know what hard moneylender is, I actually—they play a very good role in a very limited role in real estate and so I do have a whole chapter on it in the book, but there’s a.

Josh: I wasn’t oohing like, “Oh they’re terrible people.”

Brandon: Yes, yes.

Josh: I was oohing the excitement.

Brandon: Yes, I got you so the idea is you buy—they’re these companies, they can be an individual person, but typically, they’re companies who are professional in doing this. This is what they do. They lend money at extremely high interest rates, like anywhere between 12% to 15%-16% and then they charge you hefty fees like anywhere between two-three-four-five percent of the purchase price and a fee so my first guy was 10% interest and 10 points.

Josh: Ooh.

Brandon: Ten points is a lot, but on a $50,000 property.

Josh: Okay, hold on, that’s loan shark right there. I mean that’s you know, hard money, okay, 10% I don’t have much, ten? Ten points?

Brandon: Yes, ten points.

Josh: That is crazy.

Brandon: That is because it was such low price right so five grand was the fee the charged.

Josh: It’s still ten points.

Brandon: It’s not—yes, but it actually was more than that. It was nine grand because he actually lent the entire purchase price and the repair cost.

Josh: Okay.

Brandon: He lent the entire thing so it was—it was like a $9,000 fee on top of it. I think it was actually maybe like I borrowed $35 from him, I think it was and then somehow I worked that out. Essentially, the loan amount was for $90,000.

Josh: Okay.

Brandon: I’m still like thinking, this house is going to sell. It was the most beautiful house. Now, me and my wife actually fixed the thing up with a couple of buddies, but mostly me and my wife would go there everyday and work on it for an entire year. This is the year of 2008.

Josh: Okay.

Brandon: I worked on it the whole year as the market just this—I mean crumbling, the US markets was crumbling right?

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: I’m like, oh no. Like watching this happen, but I didn’t budget for a contractor come in so I had to do it myself. I mean.

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: My budget was and we did everything, bottom to top, everything from roof, foundation, and everything in between.

Josh: Nice.

Brandon: I mean I liked the wood floors, I finished them—refinished them and then walls, we got them most drywalled, but gutted the kitchen, added a bathroom, added an upstairs, all this stuff. We listed it at $139 to sell and I’m like you know, see like, you know, $50 grand in my future. I mean that’s what I’m thinking and then it goes to like, it doesn’t sell so we drop it to $134, then $129 then $124 then $120 and still. I mean, I can’t chase the market fast enough.

Josh: Yes, right.

Brandon: Was how fast it was falling and that is when I’m like and so oh I forgot hard moneylenders. Yes, they’re—the thing or the high points, high fees and short term.

Josh: Oh yes.

Brandon: This guy, allowed for two years. Now, that’s actually really long for a hard moneylender.

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: Most only allow a year. He allowed for two years. We spent one year working on it. It sat on the market for seven months and nothing. I mean I just—I was chasing the market. It wasn’t going anywhere and so I’ve been like you know, freaked out. What to do? I’m talking to the lender, trying to work—you know like.

Josh: Really, quickly, what happens if you hit two years?

Brandon: Yes, he can foreclose on you.

Josh: Okay.

Brandon: Like the hard moneylender can and they will. I mean like, I mean they might work with you, but that was a scary time. I mean like I didn’t know what to do so this is actually where like my entry into other kinds of creative finance came from and what I did so my best ideas I’ve ever had have come at three in the morning after like seven hours of brainstorming and like sweating in bed. I mean like that’s really like where the best ideas have come from and I think most people are like that. It’s probably for BiggerPockets too. Alright, like.

Josh: Not while sweating in bed I you know.

Brandon: Well, you know what I mean like they come up to like.

Josh: You know I’m sweating in bed, I’m not thinking about real estate, but you know.

Brandon: Yes, yes, Josh Dorkin, make me all flushed here.

Josh: My brainstorms come in the shower.

Brandon: Yes, whatever right. Like it’s when you’re

Josh: Yes, sure, we all have our own place.

Brandon: Yes, you’re focused on something, you’re thinking about it and that’s when it came to me. I said, “Okay, I’m going to add on a partner. Now, I’m not afraid to admit this. I went and called home to dad, right? The same guy who told me you’re going to go broke.

Josh: There you go.

Brandon: Homeless and I called, “Dad, here’s my problem.”

Josh: Can we role play this out? Can we let—let’s repeat the script of that entire phone call.

Brandon: Alright, I’m like, “Hey dad, what’s up?”

Josh: Hey son, what’s going on?

Brandon: How would you like to make some money?

Josh: Oh, is this that real estate thing you’re talking about?

Brandon: Yes, yes, about. About. That was a very Minnesotan accent, that was good.

Josh: Alright, so forget the role play.

Brandon: Alright.

Josh: You go to your dad, you ask dad for some funds.

Brandon: I go to my dad and I asked him. Yes, I said, “I got a problem. I got a house and I’m in trouble and I don’t—I can’t sell it. Now grant it, what I could have done is dropped the price to $95,000 and fire sold it.

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: That was my worst case—I mean that was my last option and I think it would have sold there. I’m sure it would have, but I didn’t. Hey, quick tip for everyone listening. One of the main reasons this house did not sell and actually, probably could have sold if it wasn’t for one thing.

Josh: What was that one thing?

Brandon: There were two things, dog number one and dog number two in the backyard. Like this is the thing nobody thinks about right? These dogs barked non-stop for hours and hours and hours and hours a day. I mean hours a day. They would just bark and they were huge dogs like Pitbulls or something like that.

Josh: These were not your dogs.

Brandon: The neighbor dogs.

Josh: These were neighbor dogs?

Brandon: Yes.

Josh: Yes, yes, yes.

Brandon: That borderline backyard so I had probably three different people that came and looked at the house that put an offers that backed out during that period because of the dogs. They all said the same thing, the dogs and so like.

Josh: Did you eventually kill the dogs?

Brandon: I wanted to so bad. I was like, like I wanted to get like pounds of chocolate and chuck it over the thing.

Josh: Oh geez.

Brandon: I’m a nice guy. I was so mad of those dogs.

Josh: I don’t advocate such a thing.

Brandon: No, don’t do it. That’s not it.

Josh: I love dogs.

Brandon: That’s not the quick tip. The quick tip is, know you’re surroundings.

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: Like know your neighbors when you’re going to flip a house.

Josh: Well, that should go for everything by the way.

Brandon: Yes.

Josh: I mean, if you’re looking at a buy and hold.

Brandon: Yes.

Josh: You want to do the same thing and let me add to this quick tip. Not only do you want to look at it during the day, you want to look at it at night, first thing in the morning.

Brandon: Yes.

Josh: You want to go and visit this property at all hours of the day.

Brandon: Yes.

Josh: Because that’s the only way you’re going to actually figure out what’s happening with the surroundings and definitely definitely talk to the neighbors.

Brandon: Yes.

Josh: That’s like a big big big one.

Brandon: Yes and I went and talked to them about the dogs a few times and they just blew me off and said I’m not doing anything you know, screw you, yes, whatever.

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: Like, it was just—it was rough.

Josh: Yes, I got you.

Brandon: I had the dog catcher come out several times, but he’s—he wouldn’t do anything.

Josh: They actually have dog catchers?

Brandon: Yes, like I don’t know what they call them.

Josh: Like in the cartoons?

Brandon: I’m all.

Josh: With the big old net and like.

Brandon: Yes, they call them animal enforcement agent or something I don’t know.

Josh: Animal control.

Brandon: Animal control, yes so.

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: Yes, I don’t call them dog catcher like the cartoon. Like I said, I don’t call them that. Anyway, so my dad agreed to and here’s what we did. Here’s how we saved the deal. We added my dad to the title of the property and with—I told the hard moneylender, I was doing this so it wasn’t like shady. We added him to the title. We went to the courthouse and added him on the title. Then we went to a bank and said, “Hey look, we’ve got this house, my dad’s on title. He makes really good income,” because I—I didn’t have job.

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: I didn’t have a job so he makes great income. He makes great credit. He’s got everything he needs. He’s the perfect borrower can we get.

Josh: Perfect what?

Brandon: Borrower.

Josh: Borrower.

Brandon: Borrower so the bank said “Great, okay, we’ll refinance it.” They gave us $92,000 and we paid off the hard moneylender and I still have that house today. The tenants that moved in right then are still there today with me. It’s actually my main general contractor I use all the time is actually my own tenant.

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: Which is a little bit weird situation, but yes.

Josh: You were—your plan was to flip. The market’s going down, you couldn’t chase it fast enough and you didn’t have a back up plan?

Brandon: Yes.

Josh: When you bought this property as a novice investor, you didn’t really think, hey, what are the other options I’ve got here, but circumstance made it so that you had to come up with that and figure it out.

Brandon: Yes.

Josh: Okay, so you brought on a partner, partner allowed you to refi.

Brandon: Yes.

Josh: The refi got you out from the hard money loan?

Brandon: Yes, and that’s when I realized, I mean there’s a couple lessons here, right. The first one is well the first one is.

Josh: Backup plan?

Brandon: Have a backup plan.

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: I was going to say, you know, stay up until three in the morning, sweating, but have a backup plan, right. Like.

Josh: That’s always, a good option.

Brandon: That’s what I always tell people when I—when they want to flip houses now. I always tell them at least have two exit options, right.

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: I technically did because I could have fire sold it for what I had into it. I just—it was such a depressing thought for you know, 22-year-old, 23-year-old Brandon and you know, I was going to make millions of dollars off this and I would make nothing.

Josh: Right.

Brandon: Well, that came later, but I don’t know if we’ll get to that today, but so that’s one of them and also like this is what taught me that partnerships can be really really valuable and we’ll probably talk about that today because that’s one of my favorite strategies in the world.

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: Is partnerships that is—that’s what this lesson taught me. I thought, wow like I didn’t have anything needed. My dad had everything needed, but my dad wasn’t going to go flip a house.

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: What if we’d worked on this—what if we did this together and so since then, I’ve done you know, a dozen or so projects that have all used different partners.

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: I’ve always had pretty good luck with that.

Josh: Can we move on and get to everything?

Brandon: Let’s move on.

Josh: Man, wow, you just keep, yes.

Brandon: Yes, yes, yes, I like to talk.

Josh: Alright so hard money, well, really quickly, let’s close up on this hard money thing. Do you recommend people use hard money?

Brandon: I recommend that people can use hard money. I’m not saying that people should or should not necessarily. Hard money has a lot of risks. I mean it really does like that quick, especially if it’s your first deal, that quick time is rough. I mean you can screw up and you can loose your property.

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: That said, hard moneylenders have like I said, a very very valuable role to play and both for a flipper and for a landlord because if you can buy the property and fix it up using the hard moneylender’s money and then go refinance it or sell it. That can be a terrific way.

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: To get started or to get a deal done, now grant it most hard moneylenders honestly will not—they’re not going to generally lend the entire purchase price and the repair cost on a property like this guy did.

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: Which is—it’s not very likely. It’s possible, but chances are, you’ll have to come up with a strategy which then you can say, well what about a partner? Do you have a partner that can bring in $20 grand?

Josh: Right, right.

Brandon: There’s a lot of creative options you can do with that.

Josh: I mean other than the deadlines and timelines and very high fees, potentially, what else do people want to look out for? I mean any good points of practice when working with a hard moneylender?

Brandon: I would say hard moneylenders need you just as much as you need them. I think when we talked with Anne Bellamy on the podcast back way, one of the early like—in the first dozen.

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: She’s a hard moneylender, right and that’s one thing she talked about is she needs us just like we need them.

Josh: Oh sure.

Brandon: Hard moneylenders are just real estate investors, they’re just doing notes instead of whatever so, treat them as a person. They are just a person, they are investor, be honest with them up front about everything.

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: Then interview them. I mean you don’t need to go with—just because somebody’s going to give you money doesn’t mean you should be taking that money.

Josh: Great advice.

Brandon: I mean that’s a tweetable topic right there.

Josh: Great advice. Great advice. Yes.

Brandon: Yes, so like hard moneylender might say sure, you know, I’d love to finance your deal, but if they’re a six month hard moneylender and this is your first flip that’s not a good.

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: I mean I wouldn’t recommend that ever because.

Josh: Scary.

Brandon: Yes, who can flip a house in six months their very first one. I mean maybe somebody can and you’re cooler than me, but it took me a year.

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: More so.

Josh: Yes, right on. Well so can somebody use hard money if they’re not doing flips? Can you use it for like a buy and hold or?

Brandon: Yes. Yes, you can, it’s dangerous in like in that situation with me—exactly that situation, right, you can buy a property with a hard moneylender and then go and refinance into a long term thing. That’s actually kind of a cool strategy. I’ve used it a number of times now, but you have to have exit strategies even more than you do on flipping right? I mean like you got to be able to fire sale it if you need to, fire sell it, is that the word? You got to be able to fire sell it if you need to.

Josh: Something.

Brandon: Yes.

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: You need to know that you can refinance, which means you got to know your numbers.

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: I didn’t know my numbers. I thought $139 was what I was going to sell at and it was like—it probably would have sold for a $100. I mean I was like.

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: That much off. I mean I was just getting started, but still it doesn’t—I mean no excuse for not knowing my numbers.

Josh: That’s—you know, for other—the new investors, I mean, I think that’s probably the single most important thing that you need to learn before you buy your first property.

Brandon: Yes.

Josh: Hands down is knowing the numbers. I know that I that I got in trouble because I didn’t know numbers. I think from all the shows that we’ve talked to and the countless thousands and thousands of people we’ve talked—I’ve talked to over the years. Through the forums and site. I mean, really it all comes down to that.

Brandon: Yes.

Josh: If you don’t know how to evaluate a deal. If you don’t know what a good deal is then when somebody puts a deal in front of you whether they’re an agent or another investor and you can’t evaluate and so you know what, yes, you say it’s a good deal, but you know what, you don’t actually know how to evaluate a deal either. The deal that you’re telling me is a good deal is a terrible deal.

Brandon: Yes.

Josh: You have to know this stuff. You know, counting on and this is not to besmirch real estate agents, but counting on somebody who says, “Hey, I’m an agent that works with investors,” is—could be potentially dangerous for you. You have to know how to evaluate

Brandon: You have to do it yourself.

Josh: You have to know your numbers.

Brandon: Yes.

Josh: You know, if they do, that’s great, but you want to be able to check and double check it so.

Brandon: Yes.

Josh: There’s some good info.

Brandon: I think even more—like that’s super important right for any kind of real estate investing.

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: It’s even more important for low and no money down real estate investing.

Josh: Oh yes.

Brandon: Like yes, I mean like the foundation, I say this all of the time, but like the foundation of a great creative real estate investment is getting a—like great deal and the only way you’re going to get a great deal.

Josh: Absolutely.

Brandon: Is knowing the numbers.

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: I mean you just have to—you have to know those numbers.

Josh: Well, you just don’t know if a deal is a great deal if you don’t know the numbers.

Brandon: Yes, exactly. Yes, you have—you have—it’s so important and.

Josh: Yes, yes.

Brandon: Like I mean, you’d like—I don’t know, I bet you I don’t know the numbers. I bet you 90% of investors out there, not on BP, but like you know, other ones. Like buy a property, you know they spend more time like picking out their wardrobe in the morning than they do on analyzing a deal.

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: They’re just like.

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: Hey, that’s a pretty house.

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: You know, that’s kind of how I did it and I got lucky on my first, you know, couple.

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: I fully say I got lucky on the first deal I made $20 grand for my wedding, but you know, it’s you know, luck rewards those who hustle, isn’t that a phrase? Something like that?

Josh: I don’t know what it is well just really really quickly along the lines of this stuff. If you’re a new investor and don’t know the numbers, definitely check out our ultimate beginner’s guide, BiggerPockets.com/ubg and not only does that covering the numbers, but it covers pretty much everything else for getting started and there’s a whole chapter on deal analysis so I definitely, definitely recommend that BiggerPockets.com/ubg and we also have—we’ve got a set of calculators for flipping and for buy and hold at BiggerPockets.com/Calc, which is really really good for helping evaluate numbers.

Brandon: Yes and that’s—I mean just to jump in real quick and then we’ll move on.

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: If you want to anyway, you’re the host.

Josh: I’m the boss.

Brandon: No, the—what I like to say and I’ve said this on webinars before because it’s so true. If I had had the software, the calculators, I mean even if it wasn’t the BiggerPockets one of the time because it didn’t exist there, but if I would have done what I do today on the BiggerPockets software, I would not have made a third or I don’t know—three quarters of the mistakes that I made. The majority of my mistakes I’ve ever made in my business have been because I didn’t do the numbers good enough.

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: It just comes down to that.

Josh: Yes, nice, nice.

Brandon: Yes.

Josh: Right on. Alright, man, let’s move on. I you know, going through your story I know you’ve got, you know, you’ve got the Cobains, the you’ve got the flipping and then you got into the big buildings. You got into the apartment complex. Does it—we’ll kind of circle back to the partner thing, but let’s talk about that. You went and bought a big old apartment complex at some point, right?

Brandon: I did. I mean not like massive, but it’s a 24 unit.

Josh: No, but. That’s big enough for most people.

Brandon: Yes, yes, I mean it was a really—it’s a really good—I mean it’s a really good property.

Josh: What got you to do that? I mean how did you get there? You know, hey I’m going to buy a couple of houses or duplexes.

Brandon: Sure.

Josh: I know you’ve got a couple of multis and then you’re like hey, you know what, let’s just get a 24 units.

Brandon: Yes so I don’t even know where to start the story so first of all, I mentioned this on the episode with Ken McElroy. I don’t remember what podcast that was we did back a few months ago, but.

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: I don’t know, a year ago. We interviewed Ken McElroy. He’s the author of a book called the ABCs of Real Estate Investing. When I read that book, this was back in must have been 2010, I’m really bad dates now.

Most of them I bought 2010, I read that book at the library, but when I got started by the way, I mean this is just another side note. When I got started I went to the library and I got every single solitary book on real estate they had over the course of a year. I read over a hundred in one summer on just real estate and so if you want to know how to get started read some books, but I read Ken McElroy’s book, ABCs of Real Estate Investing followed by the Advanced Guide to Real Estate Investing both by him. Like it blew my mind to the possibilities of apartment complex investing and I mean it’s a very basic book.

It’s not going to—it’s not like you know, a thousand pages of in depth, you know stuff, right? Like, this is like the introduction to how—why apartment investing works and I loved it. I remember reading it on a Saturday. I read—I think I read both of them in one day, right, back to back and I loved them both so much. The next morning, I met this couple at my church and I said to them, I mean I’ve known them for years.

They had actually seen me in my investing like over the last few years you know flipping houses and doing whatever and I used to talk about my investing with people just like I do. You know, I’m proud of it and I mentioned to this couple—just casually, I said, yes, I just read this really good book on apartment buying and I can’t wait to someday buy an apartment complex. He looks at me kind of funny and he goes, you know, that’s interesting because we actually have an apartment complex we’re looking to sell and it like blew my mind, I’m like, like how? Now, you could say that’s luck or coincidence and I hate when people say that like yes, well, you know I never get that because you know, he got lucky, right? Like the fact.

Josh: You created your own luck by talking about what you do.

Brandon: Because I talked about what I do and.

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: Talk about what I love with everyone. Like I talk to a hundred people a month on real estate investing right? I love this stuff and I talk about it and so.

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: I got in the path of luck and so he says I got an apartment complex. It took us a year to actually close on it. We talked about it a lot and we actually did two different strategies, both of which—you know are chapters, individual chapters in the book. That’s coming out, but the first one was a lease option. We actually did a lease option first. Let me back up, so what happened is he had sold the property eight-nine years earlier.

Josh: Okay.

Brandon: He sold it to a guy and they used seller financing. They sold it for $550,000 for 24 units back in.

Josh: Okay.

Brandon: Yes, this would have been, I don’t know, eight years before that since 2002-ish, 2001-ish, the guy who bought it ended up losing it.

Josh: Okay.

Brandon: Because he had another business that was failing. He was taking all of the cash flow from the apartment and then every time a unit would go empty, he wouldn’t replace it because he had money so then it would just went from 24 to 23 to 22, 21, 20, 19, 18, down to 11 so when they took it back in foreclosure, they got that 11 units rented and they’re an older couple—mid late 60s, maybe even early 70s and they started fixing it up. You know and going to work every they had to fix it up at 65-70 years old.

Josh: Wow.

Brandon: They realized very quickly they don’t want to, well then like you know young whipper snapper, Brandon comes in and like I can you know, fix a leaky pipe and stuff so they saw an opportunity there. I don’t—I’m not going to—I wouldn’t have time to get into exact mechanics of why I did a lease option to start and then we did seller financing, but essentially had to do with the—when you buy a property, you have to pay the county’s tax—or their county, what’s it called? Excise tax is what we call it and on a $550,000 purchase, which they sold it to me for the same price. I would have had to pay that right away and it was like $15 grand and I didn’t have that and so we did a lease option so no money down. Then I saved the money.

Josh: Excuse me.

Brandon: Right so a lease option, you want me to go into that?

Josh: No, I want circle back on the price so they had sold it to somebody for $550 was it? $550? For $550, a 100% rented.

Brandon: Yes.

Josh: You went and bought it for the same price $550, this commercial property with 11 units right rented?

Brandon: Correct, so.

Josh: You were kind of a sucker huh?

Brandon: In a way, so there’s one eight years had passed and so the market went really up and then really down a little—you know, quite a bit, but.

Josh: Right.

Brandon: Rent had gone up by about a $100 a month per door and so rents were a lot better and yes, I over p—I flat out over paid for that property.

Josh: Can you explain that? Why did I call you a sucker? I mean just for those people listening?

Brandon: You can—yes.

Josh: Commercial properties? How is analysis done on these things?

Brandon: Sure so a property, like a commercial property, like a large—like anything that’s not you know single family home or one or two or three or four unit is valuated by the income that comes in so it’s based.

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: On the amount of money that comes in. It’s not based on what are the 24 unit down the street sell for because there is a 24 unit down the street. You can’t compare them that way.

Josh: Yes. Right.

Brandon: You do it based on the income, well with eleven units rented out, it was getting half the income that it normally did so when I did my analysis, it showed me that it was worth about $325,000 based on those numbers and the reason I paid more is because I knew that I could quickly fix those units up. A lot of investors would say no, you should offer $325 or walk away. I’m not so sure because I knew the potential that this thing is worth a million dollars in a good market. Now I mean like completely fixed up and done, it’s worth a million.

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: I can pay $550 knowing that I can get it there within six months to a year and that’s what we did.

Josh: Okay.

Brandon: I took—yes, my wife and I—that was the second time I quit my job. I think it was. Yes, second time I quit my job was this time.

Josh: Okay.

Brandon: I don’t remember what job I had before that. It was I think another group home so I quit my job again. I had re-got a job after that flip that was—I made no money on. Quit my job again and my wife and I then spent everyday over at the apartment complex fixing it up and just doing one unit after another after another. The couple that sold it to us, they actually let us do like a step up plan so we paid a little bit more every six months knowing that we had to have the money to fix it up.

Now you, again, people will say, “Well, he got lucky. You know, that was really nice of them because he went to church with them right, but that’s not what it was. This couple had—they had a problem, a major problem. Like who are they going to sell an 11 unit occupied property to and they don’t want to fix it up so like they help me. I help them. Then after the place was fixed up. After we got enough units rented out, I was saving the cash flow every month I was coming in at that point. I used that cash flow as a down payment, the $15,000 needed to actually buy the property to cover the thing and then they carried the contract with no money down, essentially.

Josh: Got you.

Brandon: They carried the contract itself. I paid them every month now up to $3,750 a month I pay them. They travel the country in their ARV and they are thrilled that that they don’t have to worry about it. They have a check in their, you know, in their bank account every month. It’s like the—I mean I wish I was them right? Like they.

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: They get the perfect.

Josh: Yes, well they’ve got an income stream from you they.

Brandon: They’ve got an income stream, yes.

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: It will last them for the next forever like as long as they need it for.

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: They can sell that note if they wanted and we’re not going to get into note selling, but they can sell that note if they need a quick cash.

Josh: Right.

Brandon: There’s a lot of stuff that they could do with it too. It’s just all around. It was a really good.

Josh: The only money you needed to put down to actually purchase that was the excise tax, which was the $15K.

Brandon: Yes, it was about $15K and so here’s what I actually did so the other down side was this. If people wonder where did you come up with the down or the repair costs?

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: Because the things aren’t free to fix up so here’s what I did for that. I did not buy this property alone. I went back to dear old dad.

Josh: Oh boy.

Brandon: This is a good thing though. This is like my redemption right? I go back to my dad and say, “Dad, I got a problem. Well, more like, I got an opportunity, right. Like I’ve got this deal that I can get for $550,000, I need about $60 grand worth of work to do on it and I’ll do all the labor myself.

I’ll manage this thing. I’ll run it to the end. The deal we worked out after a little bit of discussion—discussing it back and forth was this. He said, “Okay, I will fund the $60,000.” He didn’t have the money. I mean like he used a home equity line of credit, which is also something we talk about in the book. He used a home equity line of credit on his own house, gave me access to it. I used that money to fix it up and then I make the minimum payment so it doesn’t cost him a thing. It doesn’t even affect him.

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: Other than the fact that it’s tied up some equity in this house I made the payment on that and then we had a deal that I get cash flow on the property, he gets 50% of the proceeds when we sell it someday.

Josh: Okay.

Brandon: Then in turn, he wants to turn that over and do it the deal and then the next deal then the next deal and then someday gives to the kids so in kind of a roundabout way, like we worked the solution that worked for him that worked for me and we made it work. Again, that’s like the definition of creative financing. Again, people are like aw he had a dad that helped him, but my dad didn’t have any—like he didn’t have the money to do it either.

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: Like it wasn’t like my dad was you know super rich and he was, you know.

Josh: Isn’t that—I mean that’s what we do though, right. Isn’t that I mean what investors do is they find solutions?

Brandon: Yes.

Josh: You know, being creative is really—it’s not hard and it’s not necessarily dangerous, right?

Brandon: Yes.

Josh: It could be.

Brandon: Yes, sure it could be. I could have paid $750-$800, a $1,000 for this thing at the time.

Josh: Right.

Brandon: You know, but you know it wasn’t and I think a good creative investment is a win, win, win, win, across the board, right?

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: I mean for this—the couple that sold it, for me, for my parents, for everybody involved, for my wife, for the people that you know our resident manager that lived there. Like for everyone, it was just—it was a good deal across the board for everyone. Except for the guy who lost it obviously.

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: You know, years earlier, but.

Josh: How does somebody go and find a property that somebody seller financed? Seller financing—I can’t—seller financing. I had to say it three times. I mean you know, for those people who don’t have cash and think, oh well this might be a good way to go is there an easy way to do that or do you just have to you know, go look at enough properties and ask the right questions?

Brandon: Sure. There’s a few ways you could do it. When I was doing research for the book on No Money Down and No and Low Money Down, I came across this staggering number and it said 30% of all homes in America have no mortgage on them. Like that blew my mind.

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: I thought it was like you know, one percent of homes have no money.

Josh: It’s a crazy number, yes.

Brandon: Yes, 30% have no mortgages them. What does that mean? It means that a third of every house around you is probably has no mortgage on it so my first piece of advice is I mean like ask.

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: Because you have a one in three chance of whatever property you’re offering on. You have a one in three chance of it being owned free and clear, which means that they could do seller financing and we could you know, I don’t know if we want to get into the whole due on sale clause stuff, but there are some things you.

Josh: There’s rules, yes. I mean.

Brandon: Yes, there’s rules and there’s problems that could come and if you want to learn more, get the book or go search BiggerPockets if you don’t want the book.

Josh: Or talk to your attorney of course.

Brandon: Talk to your attorney, all of those things, yes so.

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: There’s a lot of like things you maybe want to look out for, but the fact is like there are a lot of opportunities out and so if you just ask, that’s one. If you want to get really fancy, you could go out to a place like ListSource.com where you can buy lists. That’s what wholesalers typically do, which by the way, the entire last chapter of the book is all on wholesaling like.

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: It’s an entire chapter on wholesaling, but that’s what wholesalers would do though—do direct mail list and they’ll send out a list to a thousand people. You can actually find out who has a mortgage and who doesn’t so if you want to direct mail to only people who have no mortgage, you could essentially do that so.

Josh: That’s great. That’s a great way to go and a relatively inexpensive.

Brandon: Yes, it’s not—I don’t know how much it is exactly, but it’s not bad.

Josh: Well, it’s easier than spending your time cold calling.

Brandon: It’s easy.

Josh: Everybody.

Brandon: Yes.

Josh: You know.

Brandon: It’s probably much easier.

Josh: You send mail out.

Brandon: Yes.

Josh: Say, “Hey, we’re looking to buy a property for—from people who might be you know.

Brandon: Yes.

Josh: Selling and you’re good to go. Alright, cool so you talked about resident manager. You talked about how you found it, talked about how you financed it and you have a resident manager today, correct?

Brandon: I do. I’ve gone through a couple actually and we might be transitioning again to another.

Josh: Okay, but.

Brandon: It’s an interesting, yes.

Josh: You’re not dealing with the headaches. I mean you’ve got somebody in house who lives there, who’s got a free place and in turn they’re taking.

Brandon: Yes.

Josh: They’re care of it.

Brandon: Yes and also I mean like so my wife manages her properties essentially.

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: I mean she’s the one in charge, the buck stops with her. She—so I don’t work that much on them because I spend my time on BiggerPockets and that was kind of the trade. We made back when you know the position at BP came open and I said, “Okay, Heather you quit your job at Starbucks and come do you know managing.” She hired her mom to just kind of to help out for a few hundred bucks a month just to help out answer phone calls and then we hired a resident manager, gave him free rent in exchange for doing a set number of tasks around the place so we’ve been through two different ones and he had the. That is not always easy and here’s why. I am not very good at managing people. Josh, you can testify to that right? Like, I’m not, I’m a good at like ideas and creation and doing fun stuff.

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: When it comes down to like telling somebody that they’re doing something wrong.

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: Yelling at them or firing them, I’m the worst guy on planet earth for that and so and so that’s the problem I’ve had with resident managers. I don’t blame them. I blame myself and that I’m not.

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: Very good at training them how to be better so just keep that in mind if you’re looking into getting a manager who will live on site. Make sure that you are the kind of person that can handle that.

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: In the near future.

Josh: No, that’s great.

Brandon: Yes, in the near future, we hope to either hand whole thing off to property management, an official company or you know try to get somebody else in charge of dealing with that person or just like in like you know grow a pair and learn how to deal with people, but.

Josh: Yes, there you go. That might help. That might help. Alright.

Brandon: That might help so.

Josh: Hey, so I want to finish up really quick on this property and then move on.

Brandon: Sure.

Josh: We got a whole lot of stuff to cover and we are.

Brandon: Yes.

Josh: We’re getting through it man. It’s taking forever, oh boy. It’s hard to interview you without your. Tell me about the numbers so you got this property now, right?

Brandon: That’s right.

Josh: You’ve got—you paid $550,000, you know presumably today it’s pretty close to completely rented out.

Brandon: By the way, earlier I said we had to pay $15,000 for the excised tax.

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: Technically speaking the sellers had to pay excise tax. You don’t pay when you buy. I had to pay them a down payment of $15,000 so they could buy it. I just want to so my actually is $535. Just people might be wondering.

Josh: $535 on the note.

Brandon: Yes, $535 on the note because they needed the $15 grand because they didn’t have it to be able to—they might have had it, they just—they wanted me to pay the $15 grand so anyway. Back to you.

Josh: Thank you. Thank you for clarifying it for us.

Brandon: $535 note.

Josh: Calling out the fact that neither of us caught up on that so as you were saying.

Brandon: Yes, I didn’t think of that until now.

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: $535 and then it’s worth probably about a million, right around there. I mean.

Josh: At what kind of cap rate is that?

Brandon: Right around a nine cap rate, nine and somewhere nine to ten. It’s like a.

Josh: Okay.

Brandon: I’d say it’s a B. It’s a B building in a C plus, B minus neighborhood so it basically means it’s a nice neighborhood. It’s not going to be a brand new building, A building in A neighborhood. It’s in a decent neighborhood. It’s in a decent part of town. There’s no flood insurance required, which is wonderful and.

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: It’s probably about a million, maybe a little bit less.

Josh: Okay.

Brandon: People are going to offer less if I put it on for a million, but.

Josh: If people have questions on cap rates and evaluating commercial real estate.

Brandon: Yes.

Josh: You can jump on BiggerPockets and look up cap rate.

Brandon: Yes.

Josh: You know, we’ve got tons articles on that.

Brandon: Yes.

Josh: Alright, cool so you got this apartment, you cleaned it up. You got it rented that’s awesome and you are creative in how you did it once again. You know, I’m sure there’s lots of people saying, “Well, that Brandon sure is lucky.” No, no, no, smart man. I listened I admire it. I really really do. I don’t know a lot of investors who’ve done as much real estate as you have in as creative a way as you have so that’s awesome. Tell me what you’ve done since then? Then we’re going to kind of dig into you know some of the finer points on some of these creative strategies.

Brandon: Sure. Sure. Since then, I’ve really gotten into small multifamilies. I really like them a lot people know that I talk about them a lot so I bought like a triplex with a partner and then I bought another triplex with another partner. I bought a fiveplex with my wife and I bought a duplex in there so like I really like these small multifamilies.

Josh: We’re these all just totally creative, no money down properties?

Brandon: Yes, yes I mean, I think everything was no money down.

Josh: Somebody else’s cash.

Brandon: With somebody else’s cash. I mean I can talk about something because they’re all partnerships right. Everyone except for the fiveplex was a partnership and if you want to know how I funded that one, I wrote post on—you can check it out on the show notes at BiggerPockets.com/Show92. I will link to article called “How to Buy a Small Multifamily Property.”

Josh: Cool.

Brandon: I can talk about yes, the other ones were all partnerships and that’s how I managed to them all. Generally without money, there is one that I could say technically I use money to buy it, but I hope to get that money back very shortly and so I don’t know. They were all done with partnerships and.

Josh: Okay, okay. Well let’s get into that. Let’s talk about partnerships here we are right? This is your bread and butter. How does somebody go and find a good partner if they don’t have Daddy Warbucks like you do? I’m just kidding Mr. Turner, we know.

Brandon: Yes, yes, yes, how do they find partners so there are a few ways. One, we already talked about earlier is just talking to everybody that you know about real estate, right because.

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: Here was how I explained it. It’s like this real estate is cool it’s like Fonze right, like people like real estate investors like we—like we thought before we got into real estate, we looked up people that were involved in real estate and like man, how do they that? Like that’s alright there’s something just.

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: There’s something just cool and attractive about people who are you know fighting the man and out there making millions of dollars. You know what I mean, like you know, there’s something cool about it. People want to be cool and they want to associate with cool people so I’m not saying I’m cool. I mean I’m kind of a nerd.

Josh: I was going to say.

Brandon: The concept is a cool concept and so.

Josh: Yes, of course.

Brandon: Yes so the more you talk about it, the more people want to know more and so I—in my entire life, I don’t think I’ve ever once said to somebody, hey, well okay. I lied. My dad I did say it to, but other was that I never say, “Hey, would you like to partner with me? Like I’m looking for a partner will you partner with me?” They generally always just come in conversation of less like so, “What do you do? How does that work out? Why do you like real estate? I mean, like how is it going for you? What’s your latest deal like?” Then somewhere in that usually, they’re the ones that pitch it of like, you know, well if you ever need anything, you know, let me know. If you ever want to work together and then because people want to get into that flow, that cash flow stream or the flipping stream. They want to do that.

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: That’s how I—typically, then there’s just people that I know. I mean almost—I mean every partnership has been with somebody that I know.

Josh: Nice.

Brandon: I’ve never done a partnership with a random person. It’s all been based on relationships. Now, some people, you know, they engage on BP all of the time and they get partners and then they get financing just of people that have no idea who they are. I typically only work with people that I know and I trust because a partnership is like a marriage.

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: Very much so and so you need to know who you’re getting into bed with.

Josh: You shouldn’t vet vet vet vet and vet.

Brandon: Yes. Yes.

Josh: Because we and we’ve had a lot of conversations on the show with podcasts guests who have talked about partnerships that have gotten really really bad. If you have not listened to any of those shows I highly recommend going through the previous 91 shows of the podcasts and finding them because.

Brandon: Yes.

Josh: It’s well worth it. Well worth it. Alright, so you talk about finding good partner, you got to get out there and you got to just tell everybody everybody everybody what you do and then you want to be able to demonstrate right that you’ve got a track record of success. You know keeping notes and you know, almost having a no perk for each deal and spreadsheets that you can deliver and say, “Hey, okay, potential partner, here’s the last eight deals I’ve done.”

Brandon: Yes.

Josh: “Here’s all the numbers. I mean having that binder or whatever it is, is a really really good way to present to these folks.

Brandon: That’s why I.

Josh: Once that happens.

Brandon: That’s why I always push people on the BiggerPockets, you know, software calculators right because the—like I always tell you like, if you could just print out like an organized thing, you can convince people, not like you have a bad deal, but you like you can demonstrate why a deal is good if you just you know, get organized. Like really, just get organized. It’s amazing what you can convince a bank or a partner or a spouse of if you just have an organized something to show them so.

Josh: Yes. Awesome, awesome, alright. How do structure them? Clearly, you’re not the one who’s putting money in. You know, we know you’re pockets are not quite full, well they’re getting there, they’re getting there, but you’re I mean you’re usually finding money partners right? What does a deal look like? What do you do, you know, they’re putting up all of the cash as 50/50. What’s your role, explain all that?

Brandon: Sure. Typically, that is what I’ve done is they put the cash in and then I run the deal. Like I bring the deal to the first place. Like I fund the deal however I find it and then they bring the down payment or the entire financing, but typically, like that’s—I’ve done this a number times and I really like this strategy. I’ll work with a guy. I call him Bob in the book right. There’s a guy Bob, he has a good job, a good career, he’s got a good credit score. He’s got a, you know, pretty little wife. Like and you know they’ve got their nice little house in the country and they want to be cool like Fonze and so they like—they are happy to jump into a deal with me because they’re not going to do it anyway.

Josh: Right.

Brandon: They’ve got everything they need, but the drive to do it, which I have the drive to do it and so typically, they’ll put in the 50% or the down payment for the property then they go get a mortgage on the property in their name. Both of us though have been on title and so if—for those people, I mean it’s a little bit complicated, but essentially the mortgage is in their name, the property is in both of our names and the banks—every bank that we’ve worked with have never had a problem with this. I just have to sign paper saying yes I understand that I’m not on the mortgage and they have to sign that whatever.

Josh: Do you have a contract with them really quickly before? Presumably, you have something in writing so that they don’t just go get a mortgage on their own and say, “Haha.”

Brandon: Yes.

Josh: “It’s mine.”

Brandon: We have it all in writing and like you know the original like sales document that I draft up with the seller, you know says me and or assigns usually are a time. I think one said just flat out both partners and that’s the other nice thing about working with people you know and people who you get along well with is that like things change. I mean like I don’t know I don’t even know how to say this, but like when things go wrong, we just have a discussion. It’s not like this formal board meeting we need to go have it’s like hey, you know, Bob, let’s talk about this deal. You know, here’s how I want to structure it. Is this cool with you? “That’s fine with me.” I’m like, “Okay, well you know so here’s our—here’s basically the point that is mapped on this paper. Can you—you know let’s just sign this so that way there’s no second guessing later what did we say to each other.”

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: That’s the biggest problem, right like we don’t write things down like, people think that—that it’s because if you go to court, you got to have something to back it up, well that’s one of the reasons, but the real reason you write things down is so that you remember what you talked about so one party doesn’t accuse the other later of being weird.

Josh: Yes,

Brandon: I think that’s the most important reason.

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: At least I do.

Josh: Yes, I mean you want to—I mean.

Brandon: You want to protect yourself.

Josh: It’s the easiest and yes, the legal is one thing. Absolutely.

Brandon: Yes.

Josh: Knowing the roles of

Brandon: Yes.

Josh: Each person is huge, you know the most often when I hear about partners fighting it’s because they didn’t do a good job of.

Brandon: Yes.

Josh: Just deciding who is going to do what up front.

Brandon: Yes, that’s exactly what it is I mean people just say, yes and, they just—they get mad, they distrust each other and this one of the pitfalls of partnerships like I’m not—like I—if this is not clear already in this podcast everyone of these strategies that I’ve done has been a pain to do. This is not easy. I—like—I’m like the only no money down author to ever say anything. You know, to.

Josh: You’re not going to get rich tomorrow.

Brandon: Yes, you’re not going to get—like this not easy—this is not going to make you rich tomorrow. This is much harder than normal investing.

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: Creative investing is much harder than normal investing; however, if you don’t have the money what are you going to do? Well, I wish I had—I you know, a job that paid $500,000 a year and I could drop a $100 grand a year on a you know, that’s not me, right? Like that’s not what we do so if you got to hustle, you got to hustle, and if that—if you want to be in this game. Anyway, I don’t know, so the idea is with the partnerships, they have usually brought in the 50%--the down payment.

They get the mortgage in their name, both of ours on the title. I manage the property or at least my wife does or our company does. Then we deal with everything, problems, you know, like if there’s an issue with tenants, we handle everything. Then we split 50/50, in the future, anything that comes in or goes out, meaning if something drastically bad happens and one time we had that. We had an eviction and we were remodeling at the same time and it wiped our reserve fund.

We had ten grand saved up in a reserve and we wiped the entire thing and we we’re two grand over so I go to them and because on this paper, it was written there. It was written that if anything happens, you know, and we both recognize that, I went over there. I said, “Hey guys, so here’s what we’re at. We’re going to be $2,000 over our numbers so we need to you know, we need to start back over again. We need a $1,000 each.” They wrote the check, here you go. Great and they wrote the check and you know, it just made that very very easy and so we split all future profit 50/50 and people asked me this question. I get this every time I say this and I know people listening are going to say this too, “Brandon, why do you deserve 50%?”

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: “Why do you? You didn’t bring any money.”

Josh: That’s a good question.

Brandon: Yes, why do you?

Josh: Yes, what did you bring to it?

Brandon: Yes and here’s what I say.

Josh: You’re useless, right? I mean look at you?

Brandon: I mean, I’m useless.

Josh: God.

Brandon: Because here’s what they—you always say, they could have just gone and got the deal for themselves.

Josh: Well, they weren’t going to.

Brandon: They weren’t going to right?

Josh: What?

Brandon: My phrase that I say all of time, I mean people have heard it say before is it’s like—it’s better to have 50% of great deal than an 100% of no deal.

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: That’s the truth about the partners so Bob would—is better off having 50% of a great deal than all of the deal he was never going to get.

Josh: Right.

Brandon: Yes, and so and again, the key there is a great deal, right? I’m not going to go to a party and be like, “Hey, you want to earn one percent on your money and maybe lose some money?” It’s just not—you know, you got to get a good deal and that goes back to what we were talking about earlier with the numbers and all of that stuff so.

Josh: Got you. Nice.

Brandon: That’s one way to do partnerships. There’s a lot of different methods to use partners, but that’s just one way that I’ve.

Josh: Well, that’s how you do it right?

Brandon: That’s how I do it and I’ve done it. Like, I like it a lot. It just—it’s very—it feels clean to me.

Josh: What works for you doesn’t necessarily.

Brandon: Yes.

Josh: I guess I want to press upon this. We’re talking about what you’ve done and the book.

Brandon: Yes.

Josh: That you know, that—also talks about kind of what you’ve done and you know, that said, what’s in there doesn’t necessarily mean that that’s what’s going to work for every individual who looks at the book or who’s listening to the podcast, which is why, you know, I’m so proud of what we’ve done on our site because there’s so many different strategies and there’s so many different techniques and so many different ways to go about doing things so when somebody asks a question and they get you know, 25 different answers that are 25 different ways to do it, it’s telling you that there’s no one right path.

Brandon: Yes.

Josh: There’s no one path for real estate investors and we talk about that a lot and you know, it’s important for people especially new investors to know that.

Brandon: Well and I was going to say, I think that’s like, you said it in the foreword to the book. You said and I love that, you said, “Don’t think of this book as a recipe book. Think of it as an art book.” I think that was perfect because it’s not like, okay, step one, sign this document here. I mean, yes, I have the parts in there that you need to do and a lot of these things, but that’s not what it’s about. If—this—if you have like—this different in all of real estate because nothing’s black and white. Everything’s.

Josh: Creative, yes.

Brandon: It’s creative, it’s putting things together. It’s how your mind works, not how a step by step plan is and I thought yes, an art book is a good way to describe. It’s more of, here’s a bunch of different ways you can do things, put them together, make something cool happen.

Josh: Yes, alright, well before we move on. I’m just curious in terms of like structures right? You know, how do you—you talked about the partnership, do you create different entities for each of these deals? Do you just have Brandon Turner company and each property goes under it, how do you do that? Really quick.

Brandon: Sure. Again, of course, I mean I’m not a lawyer, I’m not an accountant; however, my lawyers and accountants have advised me—this is the way that it works for me so don’t just take this and run with it. This is how it works for me.

Josh: Please talk to your lawyer and accountant.

Brandon: Yes.

Josh: Before you create an entity or make a decision on how you’re going to structure any kind of business.

Brandon: Yes, but this is how it works for me and my tax situation so I like to tell people. I use LLCs and I have a different LLC for each property partnership, grouping that I have, if that makes sense so.

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: The LLC that I have or the properties that I own with my wife together, that’s one LL—like that’s an LLC so there’s a few of them that me and my wife own just alone. There’s a few that we own—I own with partner Bob and a few that I own with partner Sheryl, those are two different LLCs.

Josh: Dad.

Brandon: One with dad that’s it’s own LLC. We have with her—my wife’s parents. That’s another LLC. You know so, every LLC we have different ownership structure. We have a different LLC for, which just makes sense anyway right. You don’t want an LLC with I don’t know, like.

Josh: Different people.

Brandon: A bunch of different people. Yes.

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: That’s just—that’s really weird.

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: I would imagine so, anyway.

Josh: Nice.

Brandon: That’s how I do it so.

Josh: Nice. Alright, cool so I mean we’ve talked about your path right? A little summary here, right? We’ve talked about your path I mean you’ve done, you know, some creative financing technique you’ve used hard money, you’ve done refi—refi to get out of the hard money deal. I know you’ve done wholesale deals so you’ve done wholesale. You did seller financing, you’ve done lease options. I mean you’ve done all of these different strategies and used these different strategies to kind of get to where you are with your portfolio and starting at zero, you’re—you know, we’re not going to talk about how much money you’ve got, but I mean you’ve come.

Brandon: Millions of dollars.

Josh: If you were—I mean on these properties.

Brandon: No.

Josh: Where you’ve come in with partners.

Brandon: Yes.

Josh: If you were to sell your portfolio. You know, grant it, they’re going to get a nice chunk out of it.

Brandon: Yes.

Josh: You’re going to walk away with some money.

Brandon: Yes.

Josh: You’re a—so let’s just kind of really quickly think about that. You came in here with very little to nothing, right? You started to kind of step up, use creative techniques, pick up each new property, you’re getting—you’re not getting all of it, but you’re getting a—you know, a fraction of these profits now it’s a great way to building wealth.

Brandon: It is and let’s just say this. Here’s a good way to look at it. If you would typically accept—a typical investor might go accept a hundred dollars a month in cash flow on property A. Let’s just say, which means as a creative investor, you just need to go out and find a better deal. You need to go get $200 in cash flow on property A. Then when you split that with your partner or however, fancy method you put it together, you still come out okay and so even if you have to sacrifice a little bit and hustle, whatever, just means you got to do a better job of finding good deals.

Josh: Yes,

Brandon: Which we’ll talk about in a minute I’m sure is one of the things that comes with the new book that coming out is I wrote a second book, but we could talk about that later.

Josh: Yes, well let’s talk about it alright we’ve got this book. We’re releasing it today, as we speak, right. We’re putting it out there. Is this going to tell people exactly how to do these low money down deals? I mean—I know the answer, but I’m.

Brandon: Yes, you’re interviewing me. Good job.

Josh: I’m interviewing you, there you go. I mean what are people going to get here?

Brandon: Well so kind of going back to what I said a minute ago. It isn’t—it’s like in our book. It’s not a science book. It’s definitions, it’s a little bit more big picture. It’s not going to say—I mean it’s hard to say, it’s kind of a cross between it. I mean it’s not going to say go knock on their door say this word followed by this phrase. It’s not a script for every single thing in this thing. That’s what it is.

Josh: It’s not handbook.

Brandon: It’s not a handbook on how to do absolutely.

Josh: Or a how to guide right? It’s not a how to guide.

Brandon: Yes, yes. It’s more of an introduction to every one of these techniques so you can take everyone of these techniques and say let’s say you wanted to learn more about owner occupied investment properties so like FHA or Flips or USDA or Two or 3K, VA, those things. You want to learn more about them, you can read the chapter on this and then you will know a ton to get going. You can get going from that point I guess is my point. Yes, you’re going to have to learn more when you talk to a mortgage broker. They’re going to tell you more information.

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: This is—this will get you down the path you want to go and it will open your mind. It’s like—the way I describe it is this. My favorite analogy that I use is a real estate investor, a creative invest—a creative real estate investor has tool box. The more tools you have in that tool box, the more projects you can tackle and so if you have got one tool then you can do like one job. If you have 50 tools you can now do a whole lot of jobs because you can mix and match those tools to invent cool stuff so, yes, so I think that’s kind of how you can make it work that way.

Josh: Got you. Got you and before I go on really really quickly because I’m sure there’s people who are listening, who are going to be like, wow, Josh, you’re whole thing with BiggerPockets was—you’re not going to sell stuff and you’re not going to sell information and so I—because I’ve gotten this before, right.

Brandon: Yes.

Josh: Really, the foundation of BiggerPockets was we’re going to do this stuff—we’re going to give everything away for free.

Brandon: Yes.

Josh: Everything that’s in this book.

Brandon: Everything.

Josh: Everything that’s in this book can be found on BiggerPockets for free.

Brandon: Yes, there’s not one word in this book that you would say like, “Wow, that’s never been heard before. Brandon’s you know, coming up with new stuff.” Right?

Josh: I’m creating a new technique here.

Brandon: Like I hate—I just saw one the other day on Facebook. It was like, brand new secret strategy to make millions in real estate. I’m like.

Josh: Yes, there’s no secret.

Brandon: There is no such thing right?

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: Yes.

Josh: The reason we did this. I mean Brandon and I have been talking about this for awhile. The reason we did this was, we’ve had a lot of people come to us and say hey, you know, there’s all these information, but it takes some work to kind of dig through and find it. You know, we decided that it made sense to kind of put this together in a cohesive format that would be easier for people to digest.

Brandon: Yes.

Josh: Thus, the book was created and you know, obviously, we’re not—but still only for $997, this is reasonable. Who is this best suited for? You know, I mean about flippers? I mean buy and hold guys or can anybody get stuff out of it?

Brandon: I would say anybody in the basic big, like the big three or four, right like if you’re a note investor, I don’t—you’d probably pick up a thing or two, but like I’m not a note investor so what do I know?

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: Right like if you’re a landlord, if you want to be a rental property owner, if you want to be a flipper or wholesaler. I mean the chapter on wholesaling is actually the longest chapter in this book.

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: The reason why is because it’s all about finding good deals and.

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: It’s the things that kind of tie in a lot of the other stuff together is what do you do once we have them.

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: It’s not just for wholesalers, but it’s the—anyway so yes, I’d say the big three or four especially would be like the flippers, wholesalers, buy and hold, those kind of guys.

Josh: Cool, cool and you know, I mean, yes it’s a silly question, but like what’s your favorite chapter I guess? Like house hacking or wholesaling or?

Brandon: Yes, I really like house hacking because I like talking about it.

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: I really like partnerships so I mean if I had to pick two like or one, I don’t know. If I had to pick one I couldn’t. If I had to pick two, I’d—I really like the house hacking stuff like the stuff on like USDA, like the group the certifies your beef.

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: Like it’s just really cool stuff that most people don’t know about.

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: Like you can buy a loan through the same government organization that certifies your ground beef.

Josh: Well, I don’t it’s you know, why does the secret service handle finance—I mean, you know, the government is all whacky.

Brandon: Yes, it’s weird.

Josh: There’s weird stuff, but yes, there’s some cool stuff in there. Well, so there’s another bonus book that we’re selling—that we’re giving away as part of the package was How to Finance Incredible?

Brandon: How to Find.

Josh: How to Find Incredible Real Estate Deals, what—tell us really quick about that?

Brandon: Sure so as I was writing the chapter on wholesaling, it ended up becoming like a book in its own and I didn’t—I’m not looking to write the book on wholesaling because I’m not like a—that’s not my calling to be a wholesaler so I actually took that part about it and said well this doesn’t apply to wholesalers anyway. This applies to everyone.

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: I took that out and I expanded it and I made it bigger and I made it into it’s own book. It’s a shorter book. It’s like 15,000 words, which is like, I don’t know, a typical book is probably.

Josh: 300 per page? It depends.

Brandon: Yes, yes, whatever, yes, it’s a good size book but it’s not like, you know, a novel, but it’s all on different strategies that people use to find deals so there’s a whole chapter on direct mail, a chapter on.

Josh: Nice.

Brandon: Yes, just random stuff like that so if you want to check that out that comes with—if you buy the ultimate package, which you can tell them what that is.

Josh: Right, no right alright. Alright, so yes, we are going to shamelessly use our own podcast to publish that pitch our books, but we’ll keep it quick so before we get to the Fire Round and there are some cool questions coming so stay tuned. We’re going to test this guy here.

Brandon: I have not looked at them, I probably—like I—you know, I put together like, I got the little show notes in front of but I refused to scroll down the pages because I’m excited.

Josh: I refuse.

Brandon: Yes.

Josh: I refuse. Alright, let’s talk about.

Brandon: I refuse.

Josh: How people can this book. We’ve got a couple of options so first option, you can buy what you call the ultimate package and.

Brandon: Ultimate package.

Josh: Yes, that thing includes the physical copy of the book. You get the actual hard, you know—not hard cover, but you get the book that you can hold in your hands, have The Book on Investing in Real Estate with No or Low Money Down mailed to your house. You get the PDF version, PDF version to download immediately and the audio book to download immediately, plus you get the second book Brandon wrote in his releasing we just talked about how to find incredible real estate deals, which is going to help you beat the competition to find deals in today’s market and you’ll also get. This stuff is kind of cool. We put this together really exclusively.

Brandon: Yes.

Josh: Just for this package.

Brandon: It took a long long time.

Josh: Yes, yes so there’s seven one on one interviews between Brandon and some really really great real estate minds that you guys probably have heard of if you’ve listened to the podcast. It includes J Scott, Ben Leybovich, Aaron Mazrillo, Chad Carson, Douglas Larson, Mike Simmons, Michael Blank, and you also get a one hour wholesaling round table discussion between three awesome wholesalers, Sharon Vornholt, Jerry Puckett, and Tim Gordon. All of those guys—all of these people we’ve had on the show in the past couple of years and they’re all really great investors.

Brandon: I just want to say also.

Josh: Sure.

Brandon: I just want to shout out to thank those people for their time.

Josh: Oh yes. Oh yes.

Brandon: Yes, those people were awesome in like volunteering their time to like teach like and share what their stories and how they do these creative deals like.

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: It’s going to blow your mind like there’s such good stuff there.

Josh: There’s really really good information there.

Brandon: That is going to be audio and video so you can listen in your car so.

Josh: Yes, yes so if you want to either watch the video interviews or listen to the MP3s, you want to get the ultimate package. This thing is going to run $79 bucks for everything, but what we’re going to do is we’re going to just do a $30 discount. It’s $49 bucks for the next couple of weeks so if you want that package, definitely definitely get it now as you’re listening to this right? Well, let’s talk about some of the other stuff. For those people who don’t want all the extra bonuses, the interviews, all of that other stuff, you can get what we call the triple threat.

Brandon: Triple threat.

Josh: Yes, the triple threat, which is the physical book mailed to your house. The audio book to download right away and the digital PDF to download right away. You get all three for $35 bucks total, which is under $12 bucks a piece and finally for those of you guys who want the book in any one of these formats, you can get—you can those. The physical book by itself is $25 bucks or you can get the digital PDF or audio for $19 bucks so we kind of wanted to make it so people can kind of buy it as they wanted to. Whatever format works best for them so really all this you know, the book itself is $19 bucks if you just want to kind of be a cheapo. No, I’m just kidding. I’m just kidding. It’s okay.

Brandon: Those interviews are worth like the price of the ultimate package alone so I don’t know.

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: If can ask you to do that, do that one.

Josh: Yes, alright and really quick, if you want to get it, you go to BiggerPockets.com/NoMoney and you go on the sales page there and choose whatever you want so let’s get to the Fire Round, finish this thing up. Brandon, you’re ready?

Brandon: Fire Round.

Announcer: It’s time for the Fire Round.

Brandon: I’m ready, I’m ready. Let’s do it.

Josh: We are keeping that in.

Brandon: Okay good, we’re keeping that in.

Josh: Yes, yes, that’s awesome. Alright, how strict was your criteria for picking houses to flip and how did you select that criteria?

Brandon: Well, this has changed so I used to flip a lot more than I do today. I mean I haven’t flipped a house in—that I actually like sold and like in almost a year, but I blame BiggerPockets for that. I know Youtube was.

Josh: Save me, I’m in trouble.

Brandon: Yes, so and besides my market’s not the world’s best for flipping, but how did I pick criteria for flipping? Was that the question? How do I pick criteria for flipping?

Josh: How strict was your criteria for picking houses and like you—how did you decide on the final criteria?

Brandon: Number one, I always would filter it through location so I wanted a good loca—like a location that people want to buy in.

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: Then, I would look at price and this is where I screwed up a lot. I mean honestly I screwed up a lot is I’d look at price early on. I mean that’s all I cared about. $50,000 that’s great, I’ll buy it. Alright like, you know price only tells you part of the story. You know right like, how much work does it really need? I mean how much—how long is it going to take? I once bought a house that was like 3,500 square feet. Like somehow the math never occurred to me. Nobody ever told me, hey if you buy a house 3,500 square feet, it’s going to take three times longer to fix up than house at 1,200 square feet. Oh, that makes perfect sense, but nobody ever told me that so I didn’t realize it would take a year to do it instead of three months.

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: Or four months, anyway.

Josh: Alright so your criteria would seem fairly loose. You didn’t quite answer the question.

Brandon: Yes, yes.

Josh: How did you choose that? You pulled it out of the air.

Brandon: Most properties came from the MLS, the bulk of them.

Josh: Okay. Okay.

Brandon: Again, the MLS is drying up and that’s why we wrote The Book on Finding Good Incredible Deals because.

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: The MLS is getting harder to find deals on.

Josh: Got you and this is the Fire Round if you couldn’t remember that so.

Brandon: Yes, yes.

Josh: You have to be prepared. Thank you. Thank you.

Brandon: You’ve always wanted to say that to a guest.

Josh: Oh yes. Well, I did have a guy, Angelo who called me a wanker a couple of weeks ago so you know that one devolved into some kind of chaos.

Brandon: I love that guy. Alright, moving on.

Josh: Have you—I know the answer to this question so the question is have you ever had to evict a tenant and I know that answer and what advice would you give to a landlord with a problematic renter and you’re probably not the right guy to even ask that question to.

Brandon: Oh, I’m getting.

Josh: I’ll ask it anyway.

Brandon: I’m getting good at evictions so I don’t—I’ve only done three in eight years now or seven years of doing this. I’ve only done three.

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: One of them, two of them were inevitable, there’s nothing I could have done about it—one of them we just screened bad, it’s honestly what it comes down to. We just—there were too many red flags in her thing. We let her in anyway was a bad idea so whatever. I definitely learned screening is the number one tool to try to—to stop an eviction right. If you—and if you want to—I mean there’s all sorts of information on BP about screening, I’ll link to some of it in the show notes, but screening number one tip. Number two, I pay people to leave.

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: Don’t—hopefully my tenants don’t listen to this podcast, but like I’ll pass them.

Josh: Give me your keys.

Brandon: Yes, cash for keys. I’ll give them like I’ll show up and be like, “Hey, I’ll give you, you know, $300 bucks if you leave by Friday and the place has got to be cleaned.” Because I know, my lawyer cost $1,200 to evict. I know that they’re going to about $1,000 of damage so what’s better? $300 or $22? You know, $300 and my pride is much better spent than the $22.

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: Yes.

Josh: Absolutely and really quickly, on the tenant screening, we wrote the ultimate guide to tenant screening on BiggerPockets, which we will link to also in the show notes.

Brandon: Sure.

Josh: That’s—it’s an awesome awesome guide to help folks out if they’re interested in screening tenants, which you really should be if you’re going to be a landlord so.

Brandon: Yes.

Josh: Definitely check it out. It’s free and amazing. Alright, number three what piece of advice would you give to the investor and newbie who’s motivated, but struggling to finally finally take that action to get going?

Brandon: What advice would I give a newbie who’s struggling?

Josh: Yes, somebody who just, you know, having a hard time getting started.

Brandon: Yes. Yes. I mean the number one tip I give people all of the time is like there’s a quote. I think Jim Rohan said it first and Tim Ferris took it after that was, “You are the average of the five people you associate with the most so make sure you fill your life as much as you can with those five people of people that you want to be like.” You know the main way I say to do that is like listen to the podcast. I mean that’s shameless, but like it really is like listening to 91 episodes of the podcast. If you don’t know what you want to do after 91 episodes of the podcast like you know.

Josh: You probably don’t want to be a real estate investor.

Brandon: You maybe don’t want to be a real estate investor.

Josh: Yes, yes.

Brandon: Maybe that’s being mean to some people who are listening and maybe that just means you need to be—you need to take action.

Josh: Make decision, not just go with something or find and then secondly if it’s not the podcast, maybe that’s not right for you. Some people listen to podcasts and the audio wasn’t how they learned best, maybe you learn best by hanging out with an investor in real life. Maybe that’s how.

Josh: Go to your local REA.

Brandon: Yes.

Josh: Go to.

Brandon: If you have listened to 92 episodes and you are not yet jumping in like it might just be that you’re not an audio learner whatever, you want to learn from somebody.

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: That can give you more direct so.

Josh: Fair enough. Fair enough, alright, cool. Here’s a good one. Alright, your tenant calls you with five repair issues, your rehab contractor disappears for five days or your rental cats just fire, which one of these stresses out for you? Well, well like, which one stresses you about the most?

Brandon: Were you talking to my wife today? Those are like everyday, right like.

Josh: Well, you’re stressed out when talking.

Brandon: I’m always stressed out like right like and I’m trying to be.

Josh: Which by the way everybody who’s listening. Pay attention.

Brandon: Yes, this isn’t.

Josh: This is not easy and again, all the gurus and all these guys are like this is great. You’re going to get, you know. It’s not easy.

Brandon: It’s work.

Josh: It’s absolutely absolutely not stress free investing and real estate comes with a lot of stress.

Brandon: Now, here’s like—one thing that I found is that more systems I create for my life, the less stress I am.

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: However, on thing I’ve—the problem with that is one of the main systems I’ve invented is have my wife take care of problems. That doesn’t fix my stress problem, right.

Josh: The fix the factor it’s stress for Heather.

Brandon: Yes, it creates.

Josh: Now she’s stressed.

Brandon: Exactly, nobody told me that before so now I’m like trying to figure that system out because I built this whole system around her so anyway what was the question.

Josh: I would stop calling your wife a system. That’s a good piece of advice.

Brandon: Yes, sorry hon.

Josh: Hopefully she’s not listening.

Brandon: Yes, so they all stress me out to a degree. The ones that have the better systems in place, like evictions don’t stress me out anymore at all because like I have a process down. It’s like I offer them money to leave. Alright, three day notice when they’re late and then if they don’t leave after the three days, I serve the you know, this and that. I go to my lawyer, offer them the money, like I’m not going to go into the entire process, but I have a process down and my wife handles it and.

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: It’s just what a worst case scenario, I’m probably in $2,200 bucks. Right like and I got a security deposit from them so you know, those don’t stress me out. The things I have—don’t have a system for, the things that are like fly by the seat of my pants are—those are the things that stress me out.

Josh: I remember you and I were on a call late one night so this was a couple of months ago and you’re like, I saw your eyes just open up and you’re like, Josh I got a call and there was there were gun shots at one of the houses.

Brandon: Oh yes. Yes.

Josh: You were like freaking out. You’re like, “What do I do?”

Brandon: Yes, that’s one of those things you can’t plan for.

Josh: Call the cops. What do you mean what do I do? This is what you do, you call the cops. Well, should I go down there?

Brandon: The story was.

Josh: I can remember you probably want to call the cops. You don’t want to be there when there’s a guy running around with a gun, you know.

Brandon: Here’s—I got to tell that story real quick. Okay, I know this is the Fire Round, but real quick so my resident manager calls me and he’s a young guy. He’s a young guy. He calls me. He’s like, “Hey, Brandon I got to talk to you. There’s a guy—I just walked out to the garbage dumpster at the apartment complex and there’s a guy sitting in his window with a big rifle.” I caught eyes with him and freaked me out so I ran away and like, I’m like, “Hol.” He’s like, “Oh I.” Then I got back to my apartment and I heard a gunshot and so like he’s thinking this guy broke into an apartment and shot somebody. He was hunting squirrels is what it was. The guys was like.

Josh: I’m sorry, I often sit at my window shooting squirrels.

Brandon: The guy was he had—he had squirrel that was like eating stuff in his back deck so he was like, “Oh, take my rifle and go shoot a squirrel.”

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: It was like a bibi gun supposedly, though I don’t buy that. I think he just didn’t want to get a felony when the cop showed up, but.

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: Anyway.

Josh: Being that you live in Podunk, he probably cooked that sucker and put it in his table.

Brandon: He probably did I mean like everybody in my county has a gun so it’s actually fairly normal to have a gun like we all have guns.

Josh: Right.

Brandon: You don’t sit in a window and it might have been a raccoon. It might raccoons not squirrels, I don’t remember. Anyway, well moving on.

Josh: Awesome, awesome. Good story, alright what is your—what’s your best time saving hack?

Brandon: Best time saving hack?

Josh: Yes, like prioritization, time saving for your business.

Brandon: Sure, ooh, that’s a good Fire Round question. I’m going to go with.

Josh: By the way, anyone listening notice all the compliments that are coming my way. Normally, I’m just getting beaten by this guy, but he knows.

Brandon: Today you’re like.

Josh: He knows the game’s just changed.

Brandon: Yes, this is weird. I’m going to go with this. It’s making a list—I mean lists are important, but more so than that is prioritizing those lists on what has to get done.

Josh: Put it in the calendar?

Brandon: Put it in the calendar.

Josh: After that article you read this past.

Brandon: After an article I read, yes, that was an amazing article.

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: Anyway, I’ll try to find and link to it. It was all about that and I’ve done that for the—like that’s my favorite tip. It’s my newest tip too. I’ve just been doing it for like a week now and it’s wonderful.

Josh: Yes, this was a great article, Brandon found which talked about not just creating a to do list, but taking a to do list and putting the items on your calendar.

Brandon: Yes.

Josh: Because you—when you have a to do list, you’re never going to get to it if you actually put it on your calendar and say, “Hey, this time slot is set for this thing.”

Brandon: Yes.

Josh: You’re going to actually force yourself to do it.

Brandon: Yes.

Josh: It works.

Brandon: Cool.

Josh: It works. Alright, let’s see what’s the most creative thing that you’ve done to get your properties rented?

Brandon: Facebook advertising. I just started that.

Josh: To find renters?

Brandon: Really, I found renters. Yes, I started doing that so just saying just putting my apartment like vacancies on there.

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: I just say, you know, apartment in Aberdine, starting at $495 a month in rent. You know, here’s a phone number and.

Josh: Do you target it to the local people?

Brandon: I target it to people only within like 20 miles of the apartment complex and here’s what I find. It’s not the people that rent it end up finding it. It’s like their mother or their friend or their sister and they tag them in their Face—in the thing, they just like at mention or whatever they call it on Facebook. They tag people and so I get like 20-30 tags in a thread and it will cost me, you know, ten bucks. I’ll get like a ton of leads. It’s really kind of really cool because nobody’s doing it in my area.

Josh: Nice.

Brandon: Fascinating.

Josh: That’s a great, great idea. Nice, nice. I would never have thought that would work.

Brandon: Yes, I didn’t either.

Josh: That’s amazing.

Brandon: I tried it and it worked.

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: Like I got a tenant. I mean like it was better than newspaper, not as good as Craigslist.

Josh: Nice.

Brandon: Craigslist is still the best.

Josh: Nice, cool. Alright, most valuable life lesson you’ve learned from your real estate work and I think that’s it.

Brandon: Alright, I’m going to go with this because I didn’t say it yet. Always plan for property management and maintenance. Whether or not you do it yourself or not.

Josh: Absolutely.

Brandon: If you want to do it yourself, do it yourself. I’m not going to say don’t because I do it, right, but if you don’t plan for it, if you don’t budget for it, you can never get away from it. That’s kind of where I’m at today. I mean that was my early mistake with the apartment when I ran the numbers I mean I could get away from it, but I’d lose most of my cash flow and I’m too greedy and I want it right so it hurts. If in my head, if I were to separate those two things of cash flow and this is what I pay myself for property management, it would be so much easier to say, “Okay, I’m no longer going to pay myself for property management. Now, I’m going to pay this person for property management.”

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: I’m still going to cash flow. It’s a weird mental thing, but it’s important budget because if you don’t. If you’re successful, yes, you can manage one property, two property, three property, you can’t manage 50, 60, 70 properties.

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: If and you’re going to be successful and so why not just plan for it today.

Josh: Yes, nice.

Brandon: Life lesson.

Josh: Alright, cool. Well, that’s it. Let’s move on to the.

Announcer: Famous Four.

Josh: Alright so first question, favorite real estate book not including your own Brandon.

Brandon: Alright, so I knew this question was coming, you know.

Josh: Wait you did, really?

Brandon: I knew it was coming.

Josh: Wow.

Brandon: I sat down.

Josh: Shocking.

Brandon: I sat down this one and actually tried to think of my favorite and I really had a hard time so I’m going to list a few and I know that’s wrong, but I’m going to do it anyway. Rich Dad, Poor Dad was one of the first books I read that really got me interested in real estate general.

Josh: Sure.

Brandon: The ABCs of Real Estate Investing, which I said later by Ken McElroy was huge.

Josh: I know him.

Brandon: One of the most important, if I had to pick one favorite, it would probably be The Unofficial Guide to Real Estate Investing by Spencer Strauss and Martin Stone.

Josh: Okay.

Brandon: Like that was the most instrumental in terms of defining the path that I wanted to go down, like buying property, the style. You know, I modeled kind of like my Seven Years of Seven Figure Wealth book, which we give away in the file place. I modeled it after this book in a way, the strategies that I learned in that book so and then Landlording on Autopilot by Mike Butler.

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: It’s been—all of these have been mentioned before on the podcast.

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: They’re all just great books.

Josh: Nice, nice, good choices, alright, favorite business book and I think I know what some of these are going to be and finally I have one book that can’t grief about, but that’s fine.

Brandon: Alright, so number one would be—so these are the books that at different points in my life made the most dramatic impacts, right?

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: Like my life can be defined by like moments of books. Like it’s really fun. I divide my life in terms of what book I recently read.

Josh: Nice.

Brandon: These business ones.

Josh: Nice.

Brandon: The first one ever like I said earlier was Rich Dad, Poor Dad, which is a business book as well.

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: Yes right.

Josh: It’s more of a motivational book. I mean it’s not.

Brandon: It is, yes.

Josh: I don’t really call it much a real estate book, you know.

Brandon: Yes, it’s a mindset book, right.

Josh: Yes, absolutely.

Brandon: The first that defined my life was that one after that one came The Total Money Make Over by Dave Ramsey. Just like transformed the way I thought about money. After that came The Lien Startup, which doesn’t apply as much for real estate, but it’s really good for BiggerPockets stuff.

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: Then finally the last one I just read last week, the only book I have ever in my life sat down and read all the way through and then picked it up and read it all the way through again. I’ve never read the book twice in a row, but it was so good and it was recommended on the podcast here. It’s called The One Thing by Gary Keller, blew my mind. Like I mean I’m still like processing and I have pages of notes on this thing.

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: If you have not yet read the one thing, it’s amazing book for any business or real estate investor. It’s seriously amazing.

Josh: Nice.

Brandon: I’m going to make Josh read it next so.

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: Oh and 4 Hour Work Week, come on that was the other one.

Josh: Oh man.

Brandon: That’s what got me interested stuff is why I started out BiggerPockets.

Josh: That’s a great book. It’s good book. I finished it. Don’t bother me and don’t forget to Pitch Anything, which.

Brandon: Pitch Anything, like work class.

Josh: You and I talk about a lot.

Brandon: Yes, that was a great book for learning. Yes, Pitch Anything by Oren Klaff that was great.

Josh: I like how I’m telling you what your favorite business books are.

Brandon: I wrote them down to you earlier, alright.

Josh: Alright so hobbies, I know you do real estate, you’re a BP guy, I mean you’re busy guy, you’ve got your Saturdays, Sundays that you’re—you know, you—what do you do, Brandon? What do you do for fun?

Brandon: I hang out.

Josh: I feel like I can answer for you.

Brandon: I hang out on BiggerPockets a lot. I hang out on BiggerPockets a lot because really do like. I find myself, that’s like my—everybody has kind of like their fall back position in life. What do they do when they’re—like and a lot of people, 90% of Americans it’s TV. They fall back to TV. When there’s nothing to do, they fall back to TV. I ended up on the forums every time.

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: Because I’m like, that’s what I enjoy doing. I also play guitar. I like guitar a lot. I play that all the time. Drums and then my—probably favorite thing on planet Earth is to travel.

Josh: Nice. What’s the one thing that our listeners have never heard you say about yourself. One interesting thing? I’m mixing it up, man.

Brandon: Oh man.

Josh: It’s going to be the Famous Five just for today.

Brandon: In one given week of my life within a seven-day period, I shave my head into a Mohawk.

Josh: Nice. I have pictures by the way.

Brandon: I kissed a girl, my first kiss ever.

Josh: Okay.

Brandon: This was my of first year college. I kissed a girl because I had never had a girlfriend in college. I asked my first girl out who was the girl that I kissed. Well, I asked her out and then I kissed her.

Josh: You kissed her when she was like, “Yes, alright.”

Brandon: No, it was like five days later, but and then I dunked a basketball for the first time in my life.

Josh: Nice.

Brandon: My only basketball dunk ever was the same day that I asked a girl, my current wife—my she became my wife. That was the day so.

Josh: Wow.

Brandon: There’s something nobody knows about. I had the most epic week a person could have. It all started with the Mohawk.

Josh: Nice so if you’re thinking about investing in real estate.

Brandon: Mohawk.

Josh: Shave a Mohawk.

Brandon: Josh did it too. It’s a thing.

Josh: I used to have a Mohawk.

Brandon: He used to have a Mohawk.

Josh: Yes, yes, yes. I’ve got some photos.

Brandon: Yes.

Josh: I’m—I’m actually shocked because Brandon’s like eight feet tall and the fact that he’s dunked once is somewhat pathetic, but you know.

Brandon: I can’t jump. I have no vertical.

Josh: There was a movie made about this, but.

Brandon: Yes, there was and I, yes.

Josh: Alright, last question and I—I’m not going to get this right so you may have to actually ask yourself. There is a reason that Brandon asks this question every week because I can’t even say it and he could barely say it so what sets apart successful investors from those who never take action and end up doing anything or whatever it is.

Brandon: Yes, give up, fail, and never start.

Josh: Something similar to—give up fail, yes, yes, yes. What sets these guys apart?

Brandon: Yes and it’s kind of what of you just said and it’s—in my mind it’s very simple. It’s people who are a person of action. Are you a man or woman of action? I mean, for everyone listening to this podcast, right now ask yourself that. Are you a person of action? When I look at my life that is the thing that’s defined my life so far is that everything that I think I want to do, I do.

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: Whether or not I’m going to be good at it or not, I don’t know. Like I just do it anyway. I’m like I’m going to write a book. Boom, I wrote a book. You know like.

Josh: Yes.

Brandon: It’s like I have to do it because I take action because I feel I have to and I think that’s one trait that’s gotten me to where I am today.

Josh: I think that is probably the single best trait for becoming successful. If you talk to the richest of the rich, the most successful in pretty much most fields that’s going to be something that’s repeated so I think that’s awesome. Wow, well, here we are, not quite the longest podcast.

Brandon: I know it.

Josh: Which is going to make Ben Leybovich happy.

Brandon: I just spent the last week with him in Ohio. Me and Ben hung out.

Josh: Nice, nice. Lima, Ohio there you go, there you go. Alright, so Brandon, Brandon Turner, where can people find out more information about you sir?

Brandon: You can send me a telegraph or.

Josh: Oh nice.

Brandon: A letter, but your probably best bet is going be on BiggerPockets.com.

Josh: Nice, nice.

Brandon: That’s where I hang out.

Josh: Awesome awesome.

Brandon: Well, right here, same time same channel next week.

Josh: Awesome. Awesome. Well, listen man, I think people are really going to love this. I know people have been dying to hear more about your story and you pepper it in every once in awhile, but kind of getting the full package was really fun and insightful and so thank you very much for taking time away from work to be on the show.

Brandon: No problem. I submit it in my note later to my boss. You know, if you don’t mind.

Josh: Nice, yes, I think I might write that for you.

Brandon: Thanks.

Josh: Right on man, well you know, I know you’re not my head cohost, but I’m going to let you actually wrap the show so why don’t you tell people more about this whole like you know, what they should be doing here. Following us on different places and doing different things.

Brandon: Okay, alright, well this is cool. I feel honored. Alright if you want to you know, connect with us on BiggerPockets please do so. If you’re not a member, already join BiggerPockets it’s free and you can do so at BiggerPockets.com. If you’re not following us on Twitter or Facebook or LinkedIn or G+ or any of those you definitely should. We share a lot of cool stuff there and if you’ve not yet gone to BiggerPockets.com/NoMoney.

Josh: Go.

Brandon: You should probably go over there right now. Go and get the book.

Josh: Ouch.

Brandon: Yes.

Josh: Yes, yes, go get.

Brandon: $49 bucks for the next two weeks. Go get it before the price goes up and with that, we’re done I think.

Josh: We are done. I’m Josh Dorkin, signing off. Thanks for listening guys.

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