Bronson Hill - Evolution from Single Family to 2000 Total Units!
LISTEN TO THE FULL EPISODE ON:
Bronson Hill's original goal was to obtain 30 single family homes. After acquiring a few of them, he realized he could grow faster and a larger scale by going bigger. This led him to his next deal, with was a 225 unit building in Texas. Fast forward to today and Bronson is the managing member of Bronson Equity, where he is a general partner in 2,000 multifamily units worth over $200 Million, with one of his top areas of focus in Jacksonville, FL. He was able to grow quickly because he had over 1,2000 one-on-one calls with investors to help raise $20M for his real estate deals, which allowed him to able to 10x his net worth in 18 months. He also co-leads a large multifamily meetup in Pasadena, CA called FIBI Pasadena Multifamily and is the host of The Mailbox Money Show. Bronson is also the author of "The Single Best Investment Strategy During (or After) a Pandemic" as well as "How To Use Inflation To Your Advantage".
In this episode, hosted by Mike Swenson, we discussed:
- It's challenging when you've never started a business, never raised money for a deal and you've never done a multifamily deal. However, you can do it if you keep chipping away and working hard
- You can organize a syndication if you have time but don't have money
- It's important to action even though you will make mistakes
- With Commercial Real Estate, you have control over the value of your building based on the rents you bring in
- When doing a deal, make sure you put together your business plan and property management team to have control over the outcome of the deal
- If you look at rents long-term, it typically keeps pace with inflation
- The single best investment strategy is multifamily
- It's important to look on your goals and the things that an asset can do for you
Timestamps
0:00 - Intro to Bronson’s Career
5:56 - Raising the first 100k
10:43 - Partner
11:27 - Where to invest
14:33 - Commercial Real Estate
16:33 - Business Plan
20:35 – Inflation Advantage
24:35 – Full time in Real Estate
26:14 – The Future
29:42 - Contact Bronson
FOLLOW BRONSON 👇🏼
https://bronsonequity.com/report
https://www.facebook.com/bronson.hill.37
https://www.instagram.com/bronsonequity/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/bronson-h...
SUBSCRIBE IF YOU'RE LOOKING TO BUILD WEALTH THROUGH OPPORTUNITIES IN THE REAL ESTATE INDUSTRY
✅ http://relfreedom.tv
GET STARTED INVESTING TODAY AND ACCESS OUR DEAL LIST!
📈 http://investwithelite.com
PARTNER WITH US ON BIG DEALS!
💵 https://eliteadvantagepropertieshq.com
BUILD YOUR REAL ESTATE AGENT CAREER WORKING WITH INVESTORS
👨👩👧👦 http://eliteadvantageagent.com
LEARN ABOUT REL FREEDOM & HEAR MORE REAL LIFE STORIES
🎙️ http://www.relfreedom.com
FREEBIES: DOWNLOAD YOUR FREE FREEDOM FOUNDATION BLUEPRINT
💵 https://www.relfreedom.com/blueprint
LOOKING FOR A REAL ESTATE AGENT ANYWHERE IN THE US? FIND A TOP AGENT IN YOUR COMMUNITY
🏠 http://www.eliteagentreferral.com
JOIN OUR FACEBOOK COMMUNITY
👨👩👧👦 https://www.facebook.com/groups/relfreedom
SUBSCRIBE TO THE REL FREEDOM PODCAST
🎧 Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/rel-freedom-podcast/id1535281574
🎧 Google Podcasts: https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5idXp6c3Byb3V0LmNvbS8xNDA3NjIyLnJzcw==
🎧 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5nXA5hLHbDzRwxypc2wLur
LET'S CONNECT
👉 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mswenson13
👉 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/getrelfreedom/
👉 TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@relfreedom
🏠 Minnesota Real Estate: https://www.eliteadvantageteam.com
Full transcript here:
Mike Swenson
Welcome to The REL Freedom Podcast where we inspire you to pursue your passion to gain time and financial freedom through opportunities in real estate. I'm your host, Mike Swenson. Let's get some real freedom together.
Mike Swenson
All right, welcome everybody to another episode of The REL Freedom Podcast where we are talking about building wealth through opportunities in real estate, really looking at gaining time and financial freedom. And so we've got a good example today of somebody who has recently retired as a REL of building wealth through real estate. So we've got Bronson Hill here, Bronson is the Managing Member of Bronson equity and a general partner in over 2000 multifamily units worth over $200 million co lead in person multifamily meet up in Pasadena called Phoebe, Pasadena multifamily, you're also the host of the mailbox money show.
Mike Swenson
And in addition to that, you've got a couple of books, the single best investment strategy during or after a pandemic, as well as how to use inflation to your advantage. And like I mentioned, you retired July of last year from your day job, and now you're in real estate full time. So just a great example of how getting into real estate can help you build that time and financial freedom. So welcome, Bronson. We're so excited to have you on the show.
Bronson Hill
Hey, Mike, really excited to be here. I love talking about real estate, it's all about freedom, right? It doesn't matter in real estate is great. But it's what real estate gives you what it can provide for you and your family can free your time up and allow you to really not have to do a time for money trade, but where you can actually start receiving passive income, growing your wealth, you know exponentially over time. And I'm a product of that. So I'm really excited to share with your audience and to be here today.
Mike Swenson
Why don't you share just a little bit about your background and the what sparked you to get into real estate, and then talk about how your career evolved and changed as you started to do more investment deals now leading up to now where you can retire from your day job.
Bronson Hill
I always wanted to do real estate, I ended up going the route of kind of corporate sales. So I basically became a medical device sales rep. And then as I went, I wore scrubs, went into surgery, consulted with heart surgeons on how to use their devices. But it was really interesting. And I was making really good money I was making 200 To 250 to 250 K a year. And but yet it really wasn't challenging. And other people say it was a first world problem, right? You make too much money, you're not working hard enough. But I always again, just wanted control over my time I wanted the ability to grow and to not have to work, right. So what happens if I'm not able to work if I don't want to work if I want to travel and I'm just such an adventure guy, I love traveling.
Bronson Hill
And so I started doing you know, what I thought everybody should do is basically start buying single families. And so I did that. And I realized I had four or five single family houses, I realized it was a lot of work even with a team of people helping me. And so I decided to scale up. And so my next deal was a 225 unit deal in Texas. And people say Well, how'd you go from saying? I had three heart attacks on the right. No, I'm kidding. No, actually, it was interesting. Because the process of it, I wanted to do single family and to get 30 single family houses. And I have a cousin who's I just hadn't seen in years. And he's been doing multifamily for 25 years. And he said why don't you do multifamily? Just seems like it'd be easier. And I said, Well, I'd love to but I don't have the money. And so a core a big block for me.
Bronson Hill
And we have these kind of things that we put in our own way of thinking like, Oh, I could never do that. Or I could never raise other money from other people. And now it's been four years and I've raised $27 million. There's just like, how is that happened? But I started getting training, I started learning. And so I started this meetup, as you mentioned in Pasadena, California. And at my first meeting, we promoted the heck out of it. I had a partner, we had 60 people show up in the first meeting, a guy that I've never met before, says, Hey, I'd invest in one of your deals. Now again, I had never done a deal. I literally had only done single family stuff, but it because I was providing value in the space. He said I'd invest with you. So I got together with him showed him a sample deal. It was kind of like a fake deal that didn't exist. You just like here's what a deal would look. 123 Main Street. Yep, yeah, exactly.
Bronson Hill
Here, here's what it would look like. And he said, Yeah, I'd be interested in that I'd put 100k in that. So I introduced him to a guy from that same meeting that I met who was raising money for a deal, and I just connected the two of them. And so that's how I became a general partner raising my first 100,000. And, yeah, it's just been an amazing ride. You know, a lot of this stuff starts small. But once you actually get experienced, you realize it goes from you know, I can't do that to really how can I do that. And so again, it's just we're only limited by our own thinking of what we're able to do and our own our own desire to learn and our our desire to grow. So a product of that I was able to leave my corporate job about a year ago. I thought about leaving right about when COVID happened but decided Hold on, and I'm glad I did now my passive income has replaced my living expenses.
Mike Swenson
Now, so So what we learned is have one meeting and you raise $100,000 On your first meeting, right? It's just that simple.
Bronson Hill
Yeah, you equity, my good friend, former partner or partner on some deals, Michael Blanc, he has said this he calls it the law of the first deal that it's it's the idea and Peter Thiel, who's a kind of a hedge fund or like a tech guy, he says, he has this book called going from zero to one, so that when you've never started a business, or you've never raised money for a deal, or you've never done a multifamily deal, that's the hardest part, right? They always say like, the first million is the hardest, right? Or the first billion is hardest, right? Whatever you're trying to get, first, your net worth. So the idea of going from, I've never done this deal. Now I've done a deal. And it shifts.
Bronson Hill
So instead of chasing deals, deals start to come to you, right, the brokers get to know you that you're a serious player in that area. I know you guys have experienced that in your business as well, Mike, you know, once you're in an area, you're established, the deals, the flow, the money, it all starts to come to you, and then you become this person of value in the center. And but at the beginning, it's like you're trying to push a giant ball up a hill, right? It's really hard. And then when you get the top of the hill, then this thing starts to roll. So it's really fun.
Mike Swenson
So how did you go through from raising that first? 100? What does that look like? So for somebody who's, you know, maybe investing, they've invested in a couple single family, maybe they've got a couple duplexes, and they're like, You know what, I get it, I want to do something bigger. What does that process look like for them?
Bronson Hill
So there's really, you know, the qualification really is there's kind of two paths. One is I have actually three paths, but one is, I either have time or you have money, or you have neither. And so if you have, if you have, you know, time meaning okay, I've got time, but I don't have money, then you can look down the road of how do I learn about syndication? How do I learn about raising money from other people to be able to do deals because you know, only people only have so much money. Now, if somebody is in the second category where they have money, but they don't have time, maybe their physician, maybe someone has a CPA, or they have a business, it's more about trying to get the money that you have working for you.
Bronson Hill
And that's kind of what our audience really are, you know, the mailbox money show, we really focus on helping people reduce taxes, grow their wealth over time, really, for the busy professional. Now, the third one is you don't have money, or you don't have time, and I was kind of I think in the third category, right? You know, I was getting, I mean, I was making good money, but I didn't really have any savings to kind of like, Hey, I'm just gonna do a lot of stuff on my own. What I did is I just hustled, I just said, I'm gonna spend my, you know, my full time job, I've said some flexibility. And then I said, I'm just going to hustle to try to learn as much as I can go to as many meetups go to as many national conferences, listen to as many podcasts, you know, make offers on as many deals as they can talk to as many people about real estate. And in the process of just taking massive action.
Bronson Hill
As Tony Robbins says, you know, things become clear. So if you just simply stay back and you don't take any action, the person that just takes action, and is willing to make mistakes, and is willing to just try all kinds of different things and throw stuff on the wall and see what sticks, that person is going to be wildly successful, because they just keep taking action, right? That's really in the process of doing it. That's how we learn. So I think you know how someone can do it is go to local meetups, if you're in a metro area, I know you're in Minnesota and Minneapolis, there's some some meetups that meet they're a great way to as these national conferences, I probably go to 15 national conferences a year where I travel for them to meet people that are very serious about real estate, how I went from 100,000 raised to raising, you know, the next 15 million was I went to an event and I've been kind of following a you know, somebody who's a very successful syndicator.
Bronson Hill
And I basically said, Hey, how's this element going in your business? And what if we work together to help raise money? And he said, Yeah, that sounds great, let's, let's be partners on this. And so they went from basically having trouble raising $600,000 for a deal to you know, we raised $15 million together over the next 18 months, I had about 1001 on one phone calls with investors by really partnering with this really successful person and trying to help their business to grow. So sometimes, too, it's not that you have to do it all on your own. It's that maybe you can find a partner or find partners that can help you get there. I didn't do the tuner 25 units on my own and give me because I didn't have all the experience. I had a team member, you know, this guy who had been doing this for over 10 years. And so you can leverage other people's experience and try to provide value.
Mike Swenson
Well, I don't want to gloss over that too. Because I think sometimes, you know, like people watching this episode, or maybe they see the you know, your bio, and they're like, oh, this dude's got 2000 units, you know, 200 $200 million. How do you get there? Well, like you, you kind of just glossed over it you made 1000 calls. So that was over the course of 18 months was 1000 calls. So what does that kind of workout two per day per week?
Bronson Hill
Yeah, so it was around. I think it was like 15 to 20 calls a week. And again, this is while I'm working my full time job. So when I said if you don't have time, you know, money, you can hustle and I figured it would be a year to have a hustle. And sure enough, my I 10x my net worth in 18 months. And so and then I was able to basically cover my living expenses through passive income. So again, in some of these calls, were at six in the morning. Somewhere in the afternoons, I had a job that was a little bit flexible, so I could kind of like okay, I'm gonna take a Tuesday and just from seven in the morning until 5pm I'm going to do Back to back to back to back calls. And that would happen someday, you know, or you go on vacation and come back and have a million calls.
Bronson Hill
So, you know, get everybody's situation is different. But I think it really comes from what what am I able to do and really, people that are very successful, they'll, they'll need help. And so if we can try to find a way to provide value to them, just in the same way we provide value to investors, it may look different, but it's just trying to help solve a problem, right? So over those 1000 calls, I learned, you know, how do I serve this person who's you know, 40 to 70 years old, typically male, they're a high earner, and they're trying to figure out how to pay less in taxes and how to retire and how to generate wealth outside of the stock market. Right? So it's all about providing value to who you're trying to help.
Mike Swenson
Now, is this people that your partner had already had relationships with or already was in some type of database?
Bronson Hill
Yeah, so my partner at the time, he had a huge database of like, 40,000 contacts, and he was helping people how to syndicate teach them how to syndicate. So it's like, Hey, here's how you do this. But I knew from just experience that people followed this guy, that were never going to buy apartment apartment building themselves, they were never going to syndicate, they're never going to raise the money, they just had money. And they were trying to figure out how to deploy it. And so that's really who I said, Hey, let's target this person. And it was it was very successful. So. So that's who I was talking to was, yeah, basically, people in this network that we're following that weren't part of his kind of core that were necessarily going to do it themselves. But we wanted to be more passive.
Mike Swenson
And let's take a step back and kind of shift focus here. So you had you had mentioned about the 225 unit deal, kind of your first big deal. I know a lot of people are curious, like, you know, site selection, their investment criteria? How did you go through that process of identifying where you guys want to invest? What's a typical, you know, property gonna look like for you?
Bronson Hill
Well, there's been some, you know, kind of a journey, how that's gone. I think, you know, really, I have a friend, Robert Helms, with the real estate guys who says, you know, live where you want and invest where the numbers make sense. So I live in Southern California, and I don't own any property. In California, we own it all. And you know, it's been in Texas, Florida, Georgia, Alabama, and Arkansas. And it's really been, you know, what are the numbers telling us the numbers make sense, and the things that I really look for in a market are, you know, population growth, job growth and income growth? And then I also look for, you know, is it landlord friendly?
Bronson Hill
So, you know, and also, you know, what are the tax? What are the other? What are the things going on in that market that make that attract at an attractive market. So, we've really shifted from focusing on you know, Texas and Georgia and other areas to almost exclusively focusing on Jacksonville, Florida. And what I like about Jacksonville, Florida, I feel like it's like the perfect market, at least in my mind, because I'll just give some examples. So we have all that all those things, population growth, job growth, income growth, and well, why are people moving to Jacksonville, Florida? Well, you can buy a decent house in Jacksonville for $300,000, that, you know, in Southern California might be 1.5 million, or Minnesota might be, you know, 500,000 readers, whatever that amount would be. People can live in Florida, which they want to live in Florida because of the weather.
Bronson Hill
They also want to live in Florida, because there's no state income tax. So if you get retirees that want to move there, they want to live in Florida, it's a little cheaper to live, you get people that are COVID workers that can work remotely, they can live there and have a pretty good life. And it's just we're seeing so much population growth for those reasons. Also, there's no rent controls, it's very business and landlord friendly, wages are rising, incomes rising. And so you know, this is the type of area we like. And it's really we're also buying properties, at least right now, at the time of this recording, where it's below replacement costs. So a Class C apartment goes going for around 165,000 or so in Jacksonville versus in Phoenix.
Bronson Hill
That's about 300,000. Right? So in Phoenix, it's above replacement costs. I mean, there's still a huge demand in Phoenix, but you can actually build cheaper than you can buy a classy apartment. So to me, I don't really like that equation. But the fact that, you know, 165,000, maybe it cost 190 or 200,000, to build in Jacksonville. So the fact that you can get it below replacement costs, I think is really huge as well. And then the rent upside is kind of the final thing is the stuff that we're buying, you know, rents are, you know, 925, whereas there's a going rate in the 1200 units we have in Jacksonville is about 1460 after renovation.
Bronson Hill
So the upside is 50 to 60%. And really that provides what Warren Buffett talks about is that margin of safety, right that you're buying something that you know, you have a lot of upside in that even if you know cap rates and interest rates rise, which would decrease valuation, you have this huge upside and the rents which provide some margin of safety. So that's why we like it or like Jacksonville.
Mike Swenson
Well, and that's one of the things too, you know, thinking about commercial real estate versus residential real estate or smaller unit investment, real estate, if I'm buying a duplex, I'm pulling comps based on you know, the neighborhood and what that looks like even up to a four Plex. Now that you're in commercial you have control over the value of your building based on the rents that you're charging, increasing the value renovating it, that sort of stuff. So you have a lot more control and you're not dependent on what's the market around We say the value of my building should be you get to dictate what that is. Yeah,
Bronson Hill
I think that's the idea. You know, we talked about appreciation. And I think, you know, people say are isn't aren't REITs, kind of similar to syndication? I say, Well, no. And that's why I personally don't like, you know, Class A large apartments in general, because you're buying brand new stuff that doesn't, you know, it basically is the market, right, you can't really control as much of, you know, stuff that, you know, we talked about forced depreciation, right? It's not market oppression, it's forced, it's something that we see it in the market, it could change a little bit, but it's there. And the more you know, it kind of what you were saying is, the more that we can control on a deal, we can control, you know, the property management, we can control the, you know, the running the business plan, obviously, we have to execute on it.
Bronson Hill
But that's a lot of there's a lot of things that we can control, things we can't control, or things like interest rates, or things like what's going to happen in that particular market. But the things that we can control, if we feel like it's a good upside, it allows us to do and you're right, with commercial, there's a lot of efficiencies that we get versus single family or smaller stuff that you know, we can have on site maintenance, rather than one maintenance guy go into 20 houses and to Home Depot back and forth all day long and 50 bucks an hour, we can hire full time at a reduced rate that person to do maintenance, or we can have a full time property manager that's on site all the time. And so just these these assets multifamily, the larger ones, they tend to run much more smoothly and more of the financial asset because they're they're larger. So most of our stuff is between 150 and 300 units. It just runs more efficiently. I think that way.
Mike Swenson
So as you're assessing a building, what do you when you're when you're looking at the current management, the current condition, trying to find, you know, maybe if you're going to do updates and renovations finding contractors walk through that process of, like you said, executing the business plan.
Bronson Hill
Yeah. So I think it really comes down to multifamily. In general, somebody who's new to this is all about team. So for example, you might say like, oh, I don't have any experience in construction or in acquisitions or whatever, well, you just need to find a team member that can help you to do that. Right. So my my strength is really helping to educate people about multifamily deals, I also approach things as a passive investor, and I raise money, I raise capital for deals, I'm a part of the asset management and I'm involved in the processes of reviewing deals and things like that. But that's not my primary focus, right? So. So as far as team, once you start to develop your team, and you get partners, and one of my partners now that we've done, you know, 1500 units in or we're getting ready to close on another 115 100 units in Jacksonville. He, he basically has 28 years of experience, and over 13,000 units, right?
Bronson Hill
So it never really comes up of hey, well, what's your experience in managing multifamily assets? Well, it's not my experience, it's my it's my partner's experience, right? That's how I get around it. The other thing too, is when you're looking at a particular property, if you have a relationship with a property manager, that's very helpful. So again, of the 1200 units we've closed on and you know, the few 100 More that we're about to close on in Jacksonville. You know, we have a great property manager that we know, they're going to be able to execute the business plan, because they've done it before now, is that 100%? Sure thing? Well, no, nothing's ever 100% Sure, but we've got a good team member there, they can help with that they can help with the renovations, whether we do them in house with that team, or we decide to have a third party Construction Group come in and do it.
Bronson Hill
And that's just kind of is a, what makes more sense for this project. So but a lot of it comes from experience, there's there's trial and error. And of course, even then, if you have to hire a new contract, or a new property manager, that's where your diligence is really important, and making sure that you're asking really good questions, hey, what's your experience with this particular type of asset? What has gone wrong with this type of asset? What's the biggest risk that you see Mr. Property Manager with this particular business plan, or this particular asset? And then the more you have those conversations, you'll kind of see who actually knows what they're talking about? And who's really be acing it. And then as you get some experience working with them, you'll be able to see, you know, was this a good decision? Or is it time to switch to move to somebody else? And we have, we've switched property managers before and it's not fun, but you do it because you really want to make sure that the business plan is achieved, right?
Mike Swenson
And how long typically does a deal go between Hey, this, this is the first that this deal ran across my desk to we're closing on the property? What's the length of time they're on some of those larger deals?
Bronson Hill
You know, it really varies. We've had some that we we lose, you know, especially when it was really competitive. It's honestly a little less competitive now, because there's still a standoff between buyers and sellers of sellers wanting a really good price and buyers saying, hey, we need something that, you know, we need to pay a little bit less. But there's a while where, you know, there's there's 20 or 30 offers on the table, and we lose the deal, right? We don't get the deal. But then it comes back, you know, three, four months laters hey, these guys weren't able to close or hey, they wanted to retrain or they got unreasonable. Do you guys want it and so you know that that will happen?
Bronson Hill
It just every situation is different. We have a special relationship with a seller in Jacksonville where we're buying, they're selling quite a bit of their stuff and we're buying a lot of their stuff and to be honest, it's their property manager has have been a very Mom and Pop property manager that has not raised things to market, they've just kind of been a maintenance thing that, you know, the group has done well over the last 510 years. But we see so much more upside than what's there. So. So I would say, in general, you know, from the time we get to, you know, a property we're looking at usually might take a few weeks or a month to kind of go back and forth with the purchase and sales agreement, get that signed, and then from there, we'll try to close within a couple of months, you know, so typically, within a few months, we'll have we'll have a new deal. And we'll try to close it, sometimes it might take a month longer. So but in general, you know, within a few months
Mike Swenson
looking at, you know, a couple of the books that you've put out here, right, so single best investment strategy during or after a pandemic, and how to use inflation to advantage talk about some of the kind of the key concepts that you want to get across with people or educate people on as they're thinking about this as a potential investment vehicle.
Bronson Hill
Right, right. So the I just finished the inflation, how to use inflation to your advantage, that ebook, it's about 50 pages, you can get that at my website, bronsonequity.com, as well as the single best investing strategy during an after a pandemic, how to take advantage of inflation, that's just talking about the new inflationary environment, kind of the different things, but what do I do? Do I hold cash? Do I am losing, you know, eight to 15% per year? Like, what are the choices out there? You know, what do I do with that and talking about just some of the different options between just precious metals, real estate, multifamily, all kinds of different things.
Bronson Hill
So that one's interesting, and really relevant today, the single best investment strategy that one's more about multi about multifamily. And why I really think multifamily is it's kind of like the gateway drug to all passive investing, right? It's kind of the thing people get started with, where, you know, there's some reason why they're hooked into IT people that are, are well paid professionals, their biggest thing typically is generating consistent cash flow, or, and or reducing taxes. So if you can find a way, a lot of you know, people that I worry a lot of physicians that I worked with, they're paying 50% or more in taxes, which is crazy.
Bronson Hill
And there is a way for people to potentially reduce their taxes or defer them, and sometimes even potentially reduce them to zero, I actually, the last few years of working in my consulting job, it was able to reduce my taxes to almost zero is about 1%. And I'd saved about 150,000 in taxes, I would have paid. So that's something that I love kind of talking with people. Now, I'm a consultant on that I'm not a CPA, so I'm not giving any specific advice. But I think really, that's a big one. Because if you can just keep more of what you have, you can generate more wealth that way, or just defer taxes. So that's one benefit. And then, of course, tying it with inflation, having an inflation hedge, right, just something that actually keeps pace with inflation. And if you look at rents, for housing, and over a long period of time, it typically keeps pace with inflation.
Bronson Hill
So that's something that I really try to encourage people to look at as, hey, doesn't matter what you know, you're just, if you're getting a five or six or 8% return, if inflation is 15%, you're actually having a net loss, you're actually losing money in real terms. And if you're just holding cash, or you're having the stock market, you could also be just losing money by having money sitting there versus rents. And multifamily generally keeps pace with inflation. Yeah, I
Mike Swenson
mean, there's so many ancillary benefits, right, you've got, you've got the rent coming in, you've got the you know, the the loan balance going down, you've got the appreciation, you've got the tax advantages. And so as the market changes, there's so many different ways that you can benefit from it. Versus like you said, just holding cash, or I'm putting cash in some short term asset with a with a fixed return. It's different here, you've got your you've diversified the opportunity.
Bronson Hill
Exactly. Yeah, that's it. And that's, I think, you know, people we really haven't, I was born in 1980. And really, it's been since 1980, since we really had significant inflation. And so people just don't realize, you know, there's like you were talking about both ends of it is, one is, you're getting dead at a reasonable rate, we're still at the time of this recording, you know, four and a half percent is really what we're getting for multifamily debt. And inflation is eight to 15%. And so you know, you're paying, you're getting a lower rate, you're getting almost free money and money cheaper than what money really costs. And then you're paying it off in the future with dollars that are worth less because they keep inflating.
Bronson Hill
So it's something that, you know, again, we have to kinda get our minds around that it can look very different than what it used to look like. But it is very similar to late 70s, early 80s, where, you know, just holding cash and being sometimes in in other assets and even things like the stock market, which as rates go up, typically the stock market goes down, it's not for sure that that will happen. But that could happen.
Mike Swenson
What is kind of a typical day or typical week look like for you now, now that you're you're out of your job in your full time in real estate.
Bronson Hill
Yeah, so you know, I sleep until noon, I can get a Mai Tai and sit by the pool and do a podcast today and you're good to learn. I've had people that are gonna say what do you do all day? Do you just sit around and do something it's like there's a there's a joke. There's a saying that you can go from working 40 hours for someone else to working 60 plus hours for yourself. I think it can be true. It's just there's so many, I'm really passionate about what I do. But I work really hard. And so it's you know, it can be through Podcasts can be through creating content and information, we have a YouTube channel, we put out about 10 videos a month, and you know, going to look at properties, going to conferences, educating myself, and then having calls with investors, I still love connecting individual with investors trying to help provide value anyway, again, whether people are active or passive, just trying to help people get to the next step.
Bronson Hill
So, you know, everyday looks a little different, you know, I do quite a bit of traveling both for fun, I'm going to Chile later this year for Patagonia, which is going to be nice. And then I go to a lot of conferences, I go to conferences to senators, I'll speak at conferences, or be on a panel, or I'll just go and try to meet people and try to learn because, you know, everything is changing very quickly right now. And there's a saying, I'm probably gonna butcher it. But it says there, there are years where nothing happens. Or see there's something like there are decades where nothing happens. And there are weeks where decades happen.
Bronson Hill
And where were some of those things if you're really paying attention to the macro economics, there really happening now? I mean, he's all the stuff that's happening with the money printing and some of the different things that's being talked about. There's a lot of changes that have happened the last couple of years that it's really important to pay attention.
Mike Swenson
And where do you see the future going for you? So you mentioned Jacksonville is kind of a hot spot? What would you see, you know, kind of coming out as you're adding more and more units as your company's growing? What else are you looking to do? Yeah, so
Bronson Hill
it's a good question right now in Jacksonville, it makes a lot of sense for us. You know, again, it may not make sense in a year or two, but right now it does. And so again, that live where you want invest where the numbers make sense. The other thing too, as I say, even more than real estate, or even more than multifamily is, is I think it's important to look at what are your goals? And what are you looking for the asset to do for you, we actually also partner with the fifth largest operator of ATM machines in the country. And basically, we have a fund where it's really high cash flow, and it's a very unique investment involves no leverage, there's no interest rate risk, and it's 100% depreciation.
Bronson Hill
So we started doing that for accredited investors, that's another thing we're working on. And then we're looking at some other alternative things just outside of this, I want to do more writing, I want to provide more value to people and just really help people on their journey. I think people are looking to become financially free in the tools of Wall Street, and Main Street don't help people to get there, I call myself a recovering investment advisor. Because I just looked at you know, there's all these hidden fees in the average, you know, person that has a money guy or a money person.
Bronson Hill
Typically, when you look at all the fees, and they take 2%, on top, everything's typically about four to 6%, just in fees, and the average returns the stock market's about seven to 9% per year, if you include the down years. So most of people's money, and this has trillions of dollars is going to, you know, fees. And so I just think people are really interested in finding a different way to grow wealth outside of Wall Street. So that's really my passion is helping people to learn because until I learned about, you know, this world is there, I just, it's it just it seemed totally foreign. But then when you get outside of kind of the mainstream way of thinking, it's amazing what doors can open.
Mike Swenson
Awesome. Well, it's been quite the journey for you. exciting to see, you know, how it goes from a couple of single family homes to all sudden now you've you know, you've accumulated all these assets, which is awesome, and, and the value of great partnerships working with great people. Obviously, you couldn't have done it yourself. So yeah, it's a it's an awesome story. So people want to learn more about you. What can they do? What are some good next steps?
Bronson Hill
Yeah, so I like I mentioned I love connecting with people. And we also have our investment club that will find investors who would like to join, hear about upcoming deals, I have those two resources. I have a website at bronsonequity.com, you can just go into there on the learning tab. And there's there's also a bunch of videos and blogs and different information about all sorts of different topics. But this has been great Mike really appreciate you having me on and it's great talking with you. I can tell you're adding a lot of value to people and really trying to help people in their journey. And it's been fun to see your journey as well. I'm excited to see where you had your future here too.
Mike Swenson
Awesome. Well, thank you so much. And yeah, reach out, reach out to Bronson, grab the book. Definitely a great story. And what always intrigues me is people in real estate, don't get started with investing because they're too scared. They're too nervous. They don't they don't feel like they know enough. And then you've got people like yourself, like you're coming from outside the industry and you just jump right in and get it done. And so I think whether you're listening to this podcast in real estate or outer real estate, just a great example of what's possible when you just dive in, put in the work and build great relationships. So thanks so much for coming on. I appreciate it.
