Mike Swenson - 200 Units In 22 Months

We have some exciting news to share! With a recent closing, REL Freedom's Mike Swenson has now surpassed 200 Units owned in 22 months! How did he do it? What wisdom does he have to help you on your journey? Tune into this week's episode as he walks through some of the key things to help you move to the next goal in real estate.

In this episode, you will be able to:

• Master the basics of real estate investing for beginners and kickstart your wealth-building journey.

• Learn the art of building a profitable rental property portfolio, paving the way for long-term financial stability.

• Uncover the secrets of analyzing real estate investment deals to make informed and profitable decisions.

• Unlock the power of networking to expand your real estate investment opportunities and connect with like-minded individuals.

• Develop the winning mindset for real estate success, setting the stage for achieving your investment goals.

Timestamped summary of this episode:
00:00:00 - Transitioning to Working with Investors
00:01:40 - Journey to 200 Units
00:09:03 - Transition to Working with Investors
00:12:33 - Turning Point: From Agent to Investor
00:15:44 - Building the Portfolio
00:16:11 - Four Key Factors for Success
00:17:16 - Importance of Analyzing Deals
00:20:05 - Building Relationships
00:25:08 - Building a Track Record
00:27:00 - Investing in Mindset
00:30:14 - Overcoming Fear and Taking Action
00:34:36 - Seeking Guidance and Support

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00:00:00
Decided that I wanted to focus on working with investors. And so for me, that was a really big transition. I looked up and I said, okay, I can continue to do real estate, right? Real estate for a lot of people, it can feel like a hamster wheel, especially if you're an agent. You're going around and around and around, and I'm always chasing that next sale and trying to figure out a way to build my business.

00:00:20
And I looked up and I said, if I can figure out a way to build a business and focus on investment properties at the same time, I kind of feel like I'm double dipping on my work.

00:00:35
Welcome to the REL Freedom show, where we inspire you to pursue your passion to gain time and financial freedom through opportunities and real estate. I'm your host, Mike Swenson. Let's get some REL Freedom together.

00:00:51
Hello, everybody, and welcome to another episode of REL Freedom, where we talk about building time and financial freedom through opportunities in real estate. I'm your host, Mike Swenson, and today I get a chance to share a little bit more personally with you about my journey investing in real estate. Building 200 units in 22 months. And so I want to be able to share with you. I don't often get a chance to share what I'm doing, the lessons that I'm learning and what's happening.

00:01:16
We tend to sprinkle in a couple episodes here and there, but wanted to be able to share some number one really exciting news with you that we finally crossed the 200 unit plateau, or threshold in terms of investments and what we've done. But to want to be able to just offer some tips, tips and advice for you listening at home. How to get started, what actions can you take and how can you start to build that, to be able to offer some advice to you. So I wanted to share my story, 200 units in the past 22 months. Now, for those of you that haven't listened to the podcast recently or have missed some episodes, I want to share a little bit about my journey.

00:01:51
So number one, we first bought our first property, not a rental property, back in 2006. This is when we first got married. I was working for a nonprofit at the time. My wife had just graduated college, and we had just gotten married and she was going back to school. And so she was working part time as a nanny to be able to fill in some time as she was also going back to school to get her master's degree.

00:02:15
So number one, I want to be able to show you the whole journey started. Now, granted, this is a different time, but the whole journey started from scratch, right? We didn't have anything. We had to save money that I had working at a nonprofit that my wife had as a nanny, and then eventually as a family therapist. So we didn't have a lot to start with as, as we went along, and so want to be able to encourage you.

00:02:37
It's not like we came from money. It's not like we had just opportunities dropped in front of us. And so we figured out how to take those next steps. So we bought our first townhouse right before the market crashed. And then the market crashed, and our townhouse was worth half the value of what we bought it for, uh, within the next two years.

00:02:55
And so at that point, we had to look up and say, what are we going to do? Do we foreclose on the house? Do we do some sort of short sale? A lot of the people that were living next to us, that's what they chose to do, is some sort of short sale or foreclosure process. And so we looked up and we said, okay, the balance is worth half of what we bought it for.

00:03:13
Is there a way where maybe we can turn this into a rental? I had figured it was probably going to take at least ten years for that value to return. And so either we could choose to stay there for ten years if we didn't want to do some sort of short sale or foreclosure, or we figure out a way to turn it into a rental. So, one of the pieces of advice that I would, would give you guys is right, you can't change your current situation, but you can figure out what you can do moving forward. So I decided to educate myself, come from curiosity, and figure out what were my options.

00:03:46
And so I reached out to a few people, read some books, there weren't really podcasts at the time, and figured out, okay, what are we going to do? And so I asked a lender friend of mine, could we potentially purchase another property with this existing property? How would that work? What would we need to do? Would we need a lease ahead of time to be able to show you to count as income?

00:04:08
What does that look like? And so, answered those questions and figured out we would have the opportunity to do something. So we secured some renters. So we went, uh, before I would feel comfortable turning that into a rental. We wanted to see if there was somebody that we kind of liked or knew that would be our first rental before we would just jump in as a rental.

00:04:27
And so, as it, it turned out, we had some co worker of my wife, they were looking for a townhouse. And so they said, yes, we'd love to rent your place for a year. And so we had that lease kind of lined up as we were starting this process, so I could feel good knowing that we had somebody that was going to stay there for at least a year. And so that made me feel comfortable to find the next step. And so we decided to figure out, could we buy a property?

00:04:51
It was going to have to be cheap because we couldn't afford it, and could we find some way to fix it up? And so I had worked construction in college, and so I had some skills, my know enough to be excited to do some projects, but at the same time, I don't have a ton of skills. And so I looked for a property that would. Would kind of match my skills. Right.

00:05:10
I wasn't going to do electrical. I wasn't going to do plumbing. I wasn't licensed, number one. But number two, we knew that, that those costs would add up. So we looked for something where, you know, we could improve the curb appeal, do some things that would make a lot of sense.

00:05:23
And so we bought that property and then turned our first property into a rental. So that was rental property number one for us. And, you know, we continued to work our jobs. I wasn't in real estate full time and just continued to work on the property a little bit, doing some weekend stuff, you know, updating some flooring, doing some painting, doing some work on the exterior, doing some. Some landscaping, you know, different types of stuff as we were able to, or, as, you know, things would allow.

00:05:51
And we slowly chipped away on that over the course of a couple years. Now, in the meantime, an opportunity presented itself where I had a family member that was looking for a place to live at that time. The market had crashed, property prices were really low. And I started to analyze some numbers of, okay, if I had a property that turned into a rental and if I could rent it out for x and I purchased it for y, what would that mortgage payment look like? And so it was really my, my kind of first analyzing deal experience and came to the conclusion that with my family member living there, I would just need to find one other tenant, and then we would more than cover our mortgage.

00:06:32
And so we decided to make a leap and, you know, purchase another property that we were going to fix up and flip, uh, and rent out to a family member as well as somebody else. So I went into that one, um, not having all the. The tenants lined up, but we had to find somebody, and we put some work into the property, my wife and I and some other family members, and we fixed it up and turned that into a rental. So now we had two rental properties as well as our additional house. So I learned to take an additional risk.

00:07:03
I learned to ask some questions, to educate myself a little bit, figure out how that was going to work. And so we ended up holding on to that property for a couple of years and then ended up actually selling it as a contract for deed, which is something else. So outside of real estate, before I got into real estate full time, I had two rentals and a sale on a contract for deed. So fast forward, we took our primary residence, sold that, bought another house that we fixed up a little bit, didn't need a ton of work. But I think for me that was one of the lessons that I had, is I can gain equity that I'll be able to leverage in the future if there's a property that, that I can fix up a little bit.

00:07:42
Now, don't get me wrong, we definitely got exhausted from working on house projects. Um, you know, other, other friends would ask me, okay, Mike, what project are you working right now? There was always something that I was doing, but I found ways where just little slivers of time that I could add value. Right. If I purchased a fixed up done property, I couldnt add value to that.

00:08:03
And so we focused on some properties where we could find ways to add value, eventually sell them for more than what we bought them for. So I would say this whole story is to inspire you that I didnt do anything drastic, right. I just kind of took what came to me, made some small decisions that turned into bigger opportunities. Now we were able to sell that flip and pay off my school loan. So that was significant.

00:08:25
But we didnt do anything grand for those first ten years. Then eventually I changed jobs and got into real estate. Now I was on the residential real estate side, and I was also on the operations side. So I was not an agent. So most of my job, and I guess education was systems and processes for residential real estate teams.

00:08:45
It wasn't Mike, the investor expert, knowing what to do. So I would say it got me comfortable in the field of real estate. I picked up some relationships that I had, but it certainly wasn't anything significant at that time. And so. So after working for that role, I decided to start my own team.

00:09:03
And quickly, I would say within the first twelve months. Now this is around Covid time, decided that I wanted to focus on working with investors. And so for me, that was a really big transition. I looked up and I said, okay, I can continue to do real estate, right? Real estate for a lot of people, it can feel like a hamster wheel, especially if you're an agent.

00:09:21
You're going around and around and around and I'm always chasing that next sale and trying to figure out a way to build my business. And I looked up and I said, if I can figure out a way to build a business and focus on investment properties at the same time, I kind of feel like Im double dipping on my work. Im getting paid to learn more. How to invest in real estate is the way that I looked at it. And for me that was really crucial because I didnt have a lot of investment experience, but I was able to leverage what I had to grow.

00:09:51
And so for me then we focused on helping investors identify single family properties, smaller multifamily properties to purchase. And the way that we did that is we went out and we found deals. So I was scouring the MLS, right? Information. The information that I had at the time was just what was on the MLS.

00:10:12
I hadn't networked much off market and yet I would still say we can find a lot of great deals of what's on the MLS. And so I would scour the MLs. I had a deal calculator that I would use and I would just analyze deal, analyze deal, analyze deal. And I got more and more comfortable identifying what a good deal was when I learned how to analyze deals. And so that was really important for me to know.

00:10:38
I feel comfortable telling somebody, I think I found a good deal. It should be something that you would look at. And so as I was building out a database of investors, I knew what I felt like were really good deals. And what was interesting to me was the deals that I found sometimes that I thought were really good deals, we wouldnt really have a lot of investor interest. Now, granted, there were some good deals that we did have a lot of investor interest, but then I would also find some deals that I wasnt super excited about, but I thought they were okay and a particular investor would be really excited about it.

00:11:12
And so what I learned about that is every investor has a different set of criteria that they choose to invest in, whether its location, whether its price point, whether its future opportunity, different things like that. Everybody has a different buy box. And so I was looking for deals that would fit these peoples buy box just because something I thought was a great deal for me wasnt a great deal for somebody else because it didnt fit their buy box. And so I had to learn that everybody had different areas of expertise and areas that they wanted to focus on. And so I would go out and I would try to find deals that would be a fit for them.

00:11:49
So I felt like I grew a lot of experience that way, you know, analyzing deals, identifying good deals, finding fits for other agents, doing a lot of property walkthroughs, doing a lot of inspection walkthroughs with people. I got a good sense of what I felt was good deals and what I felt people liked. And inevitably, what would happen is, like I said, there were some deals that I felt were really good, and we just didn't have investor interest. And at that time, I hadn't yet built relationships to where we could go purchase some of these ourselves. Right.

00:12:23
I kind of had more of my agent hat on than investor hat. And so I wasn't looking at purchasing these myself. I was looking at, how do I help service clients as an agent? And, you know, we found a couple of good deals. And I remember other people on my team would say, hey, if I had the money, I would buy this.

00:12:40
And so for me, that was really a turning point where I was more thinking about how could I become a better investor, how could I grow my investment strategy short of not just helping clients as an agent, right. I knew that agents, being an agent, working for investors, I was going to kind of learn on the job, on the job training, right, get more and more experience. But it really had a mindset shift for me where I thought, oh, I could be buying more of these to myself. And while I did have one or two units that I've had here and there, um, I could really focus on growing a portfolio short of me just buying a property myself, buying a fix myself, buying a multifamily myself. And so I started to be thinking about, how can others partner with me, or how do we, we put together the puzzle pieces to make a deal come together?

00:13:35
And so that mindset shift is really key. So we'll get back to that. However, I continue to kind of build my resume and help other people to where now people would trust me. Okay, Mike can find a good deal. Mike has something that I would like.

00:13:48
And so I continue to build that reputation of being an investor agent, helping investors. But at the same time, internally, I had this mindset shift of, how do I build a portfolio myself? And so over time, I saw people doing larger deals, and I thought, oh, that seems interesting. I wonder how that comes together. And what I found out is, a lot of times, it's through a team.

00:14:12
Right. There's a lot of people that come together now. Larger deals for me at that time was ten plus units, 20 plus units, 50 plus units. It wasn't 100 or a thousand units. And so I was thinking, like, how do these bigger things come together?

00:14:28
And so I started to focus on interviewing people, learning from people. And so I started to ask more questions. And so I want to pause for a second in my story and just kind of share with you guys. Okay, where are we at today? Right.

00:14:44
So you can see. Okay, here was my backstory before I got into real estate. Here was what I did the early days in real estate. And where are we at today? So today we have a 25 unit apartment building in southern Minnesota that we purchased in the fall of 22.

00:15:02
We have a short term rental, might not be holding that long term, but as of, as of today, we have a short term rental in New York. So that's an additional unit. And then really in the last seven, eight months has been where this momentum has built. And so we have a 20 unit that we purchased with other people in December of 23. We have an eight unit that we purchased in southern Minnesota with some other people in March of 24.

00:15:29
Eight more units up in northern Minnesota with a different group of people April of 24. And then we just closed on 146 unit deal here, June of 24. And so in, in total, adding that up, if my math is correct, we're at 208 units. And so in sharing that timeline, it was 25 units. Then it was almost a year later before we picked up an additional unit.

00:15:52
But at the same time, I was still working with investors, analyzing deals, helping them as an agent. And then really in the last seven months is where that momentum has picked up, because I've learned some of these valuable lessons that I'll share here going forward. So that is kind of the snapshot of the portfolio of what we have today. And then I. How did that happen?

00:16:11
So I've alluded to this before. So there's really kind of four key things that I would say that have helped me along the way. And so you have to listen to this and figure out for you what's going to be the thing for me that's going to work. How am I going to be able to build an investment portfolio or how am I going to be able to grow my investments in real estate in my own unique way. You're not me.

00:17:50
Analyzing deals is like that. It's the, it's the stretching. It's the first thing that you do. And so you need to be analyzing deals to kind of keep sharp on what are the returns, what are the rents, what are the opportunities out there, what are the different strategies. And so for anybody out there, if you want to get started in building a rental portfolio, you have to get started in learning how to analyze deals.

00:18:14
And the first thing you'll say is, I don't know how to do that. Well, we do have a deal calculator that you can use. You can reach out to me and we can share one with you or it really is just a function of income and expenses, right? So what, what's my potential income on a property or on an investment opportunity? What's my expenses?

00:18:34
And you can just put together a spreadsheet, right? Income, expenses, what's that look like? Now some of these more sophisticated deal calculators will help you look at the mortgage payoffs. You know, how much is the mortgage being paid down, what's the appreciation and all that. But really you just have to learn how to, how to find those numbers.

00:18:53
And I have a whole podcast episode that I've shared about analyzing deals in the past. And so you guys can go find that and watch that, but really knowing how to find a deal. But then number two, see the potential opportunity in the deal, right? A lot of times people get so stuck on the spreadsheet is what's today's numbers, but you're really looking at what's tomorrow's opportunity. And so if the rents are XDev and I think I can raise the rents by $100 a month, $200 a month, what would that potential future look like?

00:19:25
If I look at the current expenses and I see, oh, is there a way that I can lower expenses? Then that's a benefit to you? Or it could be things like adding an additional unit or changing the use of the property. So you have to understand what are some future opportunities out there that I can do to turn what might be an opportunity that a lot of people pass on? What creative ways can I look at this from to make it into an opportunity that people would be, would be worth investing in?

00:19:55
And so analyzing deals, it's, it's just like getting up every day, stretching before I go to work out. You've got to get used to that. So that's number one. Number two, building relationships. Now, this is a little bit of a different, difficult one to pin down because it's like, well, what relationships do I need to build?

00:20:13
And I would say, for me, I didn't necessarily know what relationships I needed to build. I also didn't know a lot of information. And so I would come from curiosity, reach out to people and ask them open ended questions. So people that I think could be beneficial in my future journey in real estate lenders, you know, this could be hard money lenders, traditional lenders, commercial banks, brokers, anybody who has money, right. Property managers, people who are out there, they're working the deals, they're helping their investors.

00:20:47
You know, one of the exciting things is one of the property managers that we use at a high level. I met him before we even had any properties in that area and before we were really starting to look in that area. So I just reached out and said, tell me more about what you do. And I think this is a good piece of advice, is, um, just come from curiosity and how, you know, how you ask questions, how you meet people, what do you do? Um, you know, what, what does your work look like?

00:21:12
What does your future look like? What are you looking to do in the future? And you can just ask some of these open ended questions and see if there's alignment or not. So, property manager, check wholesalers, people who source deals. So not necessarily wholesalers themselves, but you can also find who are the people that source deals and find deals, building relationships with them, because that's really the water faucet, right?

00:21:35
As the water faucet turns on and we see more deals, we analyze more deals. Um, and then we're looking for better deals, deals that might fit our buy box. And so you're looking for, who are the people sourcing deals that might fit something that I would like to invest in and then other investors. Right. What area do you like to invest in?

00:21:52
What does your buy box look like? What does your portfolio look like? What lessons have you learned that has really come through the podcast for me, interviewing people? I set up meetings in LinkedIn, where I network with people asking questions like that. And then also agents, right?

00:22:06
Agents could also be, you know, people that source deals. They could be investors themselves. And so asking, asking them, hey, I'm an investor focused agent. Do you know anything about investing in real estate? Do you do any investing in real estate?

00:22:19
And so I would say those main buckets have been the source of the relationships that I've built. But it's taken time, right? If you go back and you look at those 200 units, it actually started well before that, where I was meeting people, building a track record, trying to figure out what questions to ask of people, right? And there's a lot of people that I've met that we haven't done business together right now, and yet business might come from them in the future. You never know what the future is going to hold.

00:22:49
And so meeting people is crucial to be able to put together for future, future relationship building. And so if you think about it, for a lot of people, let's say, outside of those buckets, what barriers do people have for investing in real estate? Right? So you're going to meet a lot of people that might not fit one of those buckets and they think about, I don't know where to start. I don't know how to find a deal, a good deal, and I don't even know what a good deal is.

00:23:11
Right? Like what number should be? Should I be looking for? I don't have enough money to do it myself, and I don't know how to get the money to do that. I don't want to manage properties myself.

00:23:20
I don't want to find a property manager to manage properties. And so there's all these people there that want to invest in real estate, but don't have that experience, that knowledge base. And if they're working a w two job, they may not even have the desire or the time to be able to do that, but they'd love to invest in real estate. And the day that we're recording this episode, there's a lot of uncertainty in the stock market, right? So people are looking at their stocks and they're seeing, well, is there a better way?

00:23:46
Is there a different way? Is there a way to diversify? Right. My investing strategies and real estate can be that. So there's a lot of people out there that want to be in the real estate space.

00:23:56
And so working with them and finding and nurturing those relationships is key. So number one, right, learn how to analyze deals. Number two, build relationships. And that's the part that it's a little challenging to give advice on knowing who to build relationships with and when. But you just have to, you just have to call people, message people, email people, and then you're slowly going to get sharper and sharper on what you're looking for to identify those key relationships.

00:24:22
So that's number two. Number three, build a track record of experience, right? People want to work with people that have been there and done that. But I had a little bit of experience, right? I had some rental properties.

00:24:34
I had fixed up some properties before. And when I got into the investment space, what I really, how I really separated myself was analyzing deals, being a deal, analyzing machine, recognizing those deals, and finding people that wanted to invest in those deals. Well, then if I helped one person buy one investment property, then, oh, hey, I helped that person, you know, when I'm talking to my first person. Mike, what experience do you have? Well, I got a couple investments myself.

00:25:01
We fixed up a couple of properties, made some money off of them. Um, and I, I've had a rental for, for ten years, twelve years. Okay, great. And here's the deal that I analyzed. Here's why I think it can be a good deal, right?

00:25:14
So people are looking for some sort of experience to hang your hat on. I hadn't sold, uh, uh, an investment property to somebody else as an agent until I sold my first one. Right? Then when I sold my first one, hey, I helped somebody else buy one. Heres why I think this one might be a good deal.

00:25:30
Okay, great. And that slowly starts to build and build and build to where you get a track record. So now I have a track record of somebody that has invested in properties, has owned properties, has helped manage properties, has worked with a lot of investors. And so now people trust me a little bit more with their time, right. To be able to talk to them about what I think might be some good investments and with their money, being willing to put up money into some of the deals that I find, but that takes time.

00:25:57
And so what I can say to you is you have to find a way to put a tally on the board, some way, whatever you want to do in the future in the real estate space, find something, whether it's doing a deal yourself, right, doing a house hack, whether it's partnering with your best friend or somebody where you have a really, really good relationship with to start with. Now, for some people, they might not want to do that, but find some way to get experience property management, right? You might find a job in property management or a way to help somebody with property management to gain some experience for property management. Um, so you can learn to do that, um, analyzing deals, right. You can do that from your home.

00:26:37
You can do that, you know, sitting, sitting on the couch at night, find some deals, analyze some deals. And then when you start to talk to people, you'll have more and more confidence in the deals you're analyzing because you have more experience. And so you gotta find a way to get some experience to build a track record so that more and more people want to trust you and work with you. And so that's the, the most challenging thing is what does that look like? So for you, based on your age, based on your experience, based on the amount of money that you have, you don't have to have any money to get started.

00:27:09
You just have to figure out, how can I put a tally on the board to get some experience? And then how do I find a way to leverage that on the side? Another thing that we do is we, we have some short term rentals, and I have one until I had one, right? Once I had one, then I found a way to get number two. Once I found two, then I find a way to get to number three.

00:27:28
And so you're just looking to put a tally on the board that you can then leverage to show some experience that you have to earn and build some trust with somebody to put another tally on the board. And it just grows and grows and grows from there. So that's number three, I think one of the most important things for you. And then number four really comes down to mindset once again. This is kind of a challenging thing to define, but I've spent a lot of time being in different groups, talking with different people, spending money I've done that.

00:27:58
I've spent money on mindset coaching, on accountability, coaching on different real estate investment platforms. Some of them have worked out and I've used them. Some of them I haven't used, but I learned a lot through that process. And so I've spent some money to grow my thinking, right. If I have a bachelor's degree and I feel like from a career standpoint, the next thing that I need to do is to go get a master's degree.

00:28:24
I'm going to have to spend some money to go get that master's degree. The same thing is true in real estate. If I'm sitting at a bachelor's degree level of investment, I probably have to be expected to spend some money to get to a master's degree level of investment. And so that's how I've done that. You can, you can throw a lot of, a lot of money away in a lot of bad places when it comes to investing, coaching or consulting or education.

00:28:48
So I would say talk to people, find trusted people out there that you can use. Find out what their track record is. Right? Same way, if, if I think an investor is going to vet me for what's my track record, I think I would expect to vet out somebody before I spend my money with them. So, yeah, I've spent some money.

00:29:04
Some, like I said, hasn't returned dollar for dollar in closings. To me, however, it's, it's also helped my mindset grow. Right. And so there's a lot of value for that. So being able to think bigger, think differently about things, maybe identify some limiting beliefs that I have, I'm standing before you today with, without a clue two years ago, being able to tell you how I would get to 200 units, and here we are.

00:29:30
And it's kind of been, you know, the next step has led to the next step, which has led to the next step. So there's a lot of ways that you can grow, but getting in rooms with other people, getting into rooms where people are challenging your thinking. Like I said, the podcast has been great for me, but I've done a ton of 15 minutes meet and greet calls or even just emails, right. Asking investors, lenders, you know, tell me more about your buy box, tell me more about what you do. What do you like about what you do, what don't you like about what you do?

00:29:57
And so just enough of those conversations has helped to either refine what I'm looking for or say, you know what, I don't want anything to do with that. And so that's, that's been really helpful. So challenging and growing my mindset has really been the fourth thing. And then kind of some extra parting advice here as we go. So, so those four things, I think, are really the key.

00:30:17
You know, learning how to analyze deals, building relationships, building a track record, and then growing your mindset, those are really the four key things. But one of the best pieces of advice is when I was in that spot where I was scared to make that leap of that 25 unit property, somebody told me, Mike, you just got to get it under contract and then figure out that next step. And that's what we did, right? We had a contract. We had a contract where we had a way out where it wasn't going to cost us any money.

00:30:43
But I couldn't figure out how to go through from contract to close on a 25 unit property unless I've done it before, right? And so going through that process, it ended up working out. You know, we, we structured it in a way where we weren't going to lose earnest money right out of the gate. We eventually would have to spend some money for an inspection. So that would have been money that we would have never gotten back if, if it had fallen through.

00:31:07
But we wouldn't have ever gotten there unless we got it under contract. So every market's different. You're not going to necessarily have a seller who's willing to put something under contract. But I will say, I also leverage my past track record and experience. When we put that deal under contract, they said, Mike, who are you?

00:31:24
What have you done? I was able to leverage my past experience working with investors. And I can say, look, we're looking to buy this property. And here's all the investors that I've worked with in the past. And that was enough for them to say, okay, we'll put this under contract.

00:31:42
And then we had to go find the money from there. And that's what we did. And so I had to make that leap. I had to go from I'd never done a deal before, more than one unit, to now. My first deal is a 25 unit property.

00:31:54
I did that also knowing I had some investors that I knew were looking for something similar to this. Once we got it under contract, we talked to those investors, and we had an investor come forward. So now, being at this threshold that were at 200 plus units, its the same process. I just go about it a little bit differently. Instead of, of, is Mike gonna find the deal?

00:32:17
For Mike to put up the money himself, to manage it himself, now it's who do I know? What relationships do I have to be able to make this deal work? So it's find a deal through my relationships, get it under contract, right? Going through the due diligence period, which is my experience now, learning how, knowing how to go through due diligence, but then working through my network of investors to see who might want to invest in a property like this. I have to find deals that I know my investors are going to be excited about and then find a way to partner with them.

00:32:49
Right. There has to be enough meat on the bone, I should add. I hadn't shared this before. I don't own 100% of those 200 units. Um, I had somebody tell me I'd rather have a slice of watermelon than have a whole grape.

00:33:03
And so that's kind of been my approach, is, how do I find others to partner with me? I may choose to do deals on my own in the future, but for now, there's so many people out there that want to put money into real estate. I love helping them. I love people putting up 2030, $50,000 on a deal that we can work together with others through a syndication to be able to do that. And so now it's just find the deal, have my investors pool.

00:33:30
Who do I know, what are they looking to invest in? And if it's a match, great, we can do a deal together. So now, instead of being so self focused, I'm thinking much more about others and finding good deals that are a fit for everybody. So in the future, we may look at other asset classes, so deals in asset classes that we've never done before. It's the same type of process.

00:33:50
Right? Learning something new. Okay. I'm leveraging my experience of what I've known in multifamily into another industry. But I know how to, I have an investor pool.

00:33:59
I know how to analyze deals. I don't yet know what's a good deal in that industry. So I have to learn about the industry, but I'm still using those same skills over and over and over again in new asset classes. And so those are ways that we'll continue to grow. Um, now, I will say there's a lot of information here that isn't necessarily, you know, take this step.

00:34:20
Right, building relationships. What does that look like? Analyzing deals, what does that look like? Working on my mindset, building a track record. Those are things where you're going to have to do some self assessment and figure out what is going to be the next step for you before you can be feel comfortable moving forward.

00:34:36
So you're going to have to take some time, sit down, think about this in these four areas, what can I do to grow? If you want, I'm here for you. I've started this podcast. I've started REL Freedom as a way to help people lower the barriers so that you can build time and financial freedom through opportunities in real estate. And I love helping people do that.

00:34:56
So if you want to get started or if you want to kind of talk through things with me, I'll do a 15 minutes call with anybody just to be able to kind help you process through what might be those next steps. So if you want to go to freedom through realestate.com, freedom through realestate.com dot, there's a connect button there, you can schedule a call, but I'm willing. You know, I don't have anything to sell, right. I truly just want to help people lower those barriers and I've enjoyed doing that. And what I should also add is through these 200 units, we've helped probably close to 75 people invest in real estate.

00:35:32
Now. These are people that have investments in real estate in other areas and want to partner with us. It's people who have never invested in real estate before and this is their first thing. There's everybody, right? Everybody's buy, got a different buy box.

00:35:45
Everybody has different strategies. So in me building the 200 unit portfolio, we've also helped close to 75 people also grow their real estate portfolio, which is really awesome. So. So hopefully there was some good advice here. Hopefully there were some nuggets for you guys to be able to take with you.

00:36:01
But there you have it, 200 units in 22 months. A little bit about my story. Feel free to reach out if you like. If not, go figure a way to build and grow your own portfolio yourself.