All Forum Posts by: Brandon Schlichter

Great story! Very interesting to hear about your paintball adventures in there as I too played paintball for a looong time and often thought of trying to run my own field as a business :)

@Brandon Schlichter first,congrats. I went from 0 to 11 units in 2018. Somehow while running a kitchen 70+ hours a week. But REI is my exit strategy from the restaurant world.

I'd love to chat. Pick your brain some. Also, would love to see the videos on the laundromat piece.

Have you looked into self-storage? It is a Cash cow in the right locations. Absurd how much passive income they can bring in.

You need to start calling more banks. I got turned down a lot when I was building my 1-4 unit portfolio, but with enough calls to banks - over 100 banks, I found enough lenders with good terms to lend on over 75 units - mostly SF homes. The biggest issue that I see in your case is that you have partners in your deals, so the bank will want them to sign in most cases. 

can you help a newbie investor find funding, and show me how to locate such deals? I had invested $400,000 in promissory notes, pretty much all my wife and I had. They were supposed to be short term, and afterwards, we were going to continue buying SFH. Make a long story short, the investment was a scam, (you can find some info here, or Google EquityBuild )and now I am trying to come out of retirement to make a full time income, which isn't working too well.

We are desperate. Foolishly, I strong armed my wife into agreeing to mortgage our primary home, in order to have more to invest. Now, it’s all at risk. You make this sound so easy. 

@Brandon Schlichter great story. Thanks for sharing, congrats on the success and good luck going forward!

@Jarrod Senechal interesting take. Have you ever read Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell? He talks about how the uber-successful (the "outliers") all were beneficiaries of serendipity, coincidence, hand-of-g-d, whatever you want to call it. In a nutshell, people who were massively successful no doubt have skills, knowledge and work ethic, but were in the right place at the right time in order to take advantage of an opportunity presented (or, even, an opportunity created).

If Brandon's story would've been 6 years earlier (not even considering what may have been if he was 6 years older), meaning he really got into RE in 2006-07 instead of 2012-13 (I may have the timeline off), it may have worked itself out differently. I think timing had a lot to do with his success.

I guess that's a long winded way to say I disagree in part :).

But I think Gladwell overemphasizes the chance circumstances in which each successful person was placed and underestimates the ability and/or work ethic to capitalize on opportunity. Brandon's story epitomizes one's hard work, dedication, constant growth, and the ability to grab an opportunity by the horns and own it, and not merely be beneficiary of timing. So I definitely agree in part also :)

@Brandon Schlichter great story! Can I ask how you found these great deals?

Very cool, a story that doesn't involve accidental success due to the timing of the recession or large amounts of start up money. This is something everyone can do. 

@Brandon Schlichter Cool story Brandon,truly very inspiring. I have a full time 9-5 gig , but If I could get to 15 SFH ,I would be happier. Would you be able to advice how someone like me can proceed to get to my goals without affecting my full time gig?

@Brandon Schlichter Great story.

It's amazing what we can do when we have to do it. Of course you never wanted your dad to suffer a heart attack, and your family to suffer the hardships they did, but then you were forced into supporting a household with your brother and mom. I imagine that helped in future endeavors when everyone else was/is complaining about "there's no deals" or "I can't find money to start investing", you had/have the experience of being resourceful and getting stuff done from a young age.

Thanks for sharing. Congrats on the success.

@Brandon Schlichter Very inspiring story! You mentioned having banks that will take rent check deposits as part of your management strategy. Do you use any property management software or have other tricks for managing that many units on your own?