Successful real estate investors don’t find success alone. Real estate is a relationship business, so eventually, you need someone—an agent, contractor, cleaner, or handyman. At times, your success depends on these people, so you need to build a relationship with them. Once you cultivate a relationship, maintenance becomes the next step, but how do you do that? How do you find the balance between too friendly and impersonal? How do you turn a transactional relationship into a transformational one?

Today’s guests, Evan and Katie Miller, have prioritized relationship building in their business and have seen tremendous success. The advantage of investing as a couple is they balance each other out. Evan enjoys numbers, while Katie enjoys working with people—creating the balance they need to be a well-oiled real estate machine. They have sixteen units across seven properties in Florida, Denver, and Nebraska. 

While growing their real estate business, they both work full-time jobs with a baby at home. Katie is the General Manager of  BiggerPockets Publishing, which motivated her to invest because she sees the power of real estate every day. Since they still work full-time, they prioritize time management, relationship building, and organization. Evan and Katie hope to hit fifty properties in five years while keeping a full-time job.

Ashley:
This is Real Estate Rookie episode …

Katie:
Two hundred …

Tony:
And seventeen.

Ashley:
Get out of here.

Katie:
And really when you’re working with guests, working with tenants, or working with your cleaners, there’s three things, right? Treat others as you want to be treated. It’s pretty simple. A golden rule to live by irregardless of if you’re paying someone or they’re paying you. Two is just treating them as real humans. They have bad days. I have bad days. The third thing is just leading with honesty. It goes both ways. The more that you are honest with them, they’ll bring it back to you.

Ashley:
My name is Ashley Kehr, and I am here with my cohost, Tony Robinson.

Tony:
And welcome to the Real Estate Rookie podcast, where every week, twice a week we bring you the inspiration, information, education you need to kickstart your investing journey. And usually I start off with a cool review from iTunes or wherever, but I don’t do that today. Today I’m just going to ask you, please leave us a review on whatever platform it is you listen to. The more reviews we get, more people we can help. And that’s our goal here at the Rookie show is to help folks. Ashley Kehr, what’s going on? We’re here.

Ashley:
Yeah, we’re in Denver.

Tony:
We’re in Denver.

Ashley:
Tonight we are doing a Real Estate Rookie meet up with Denver’s badass investing group. We’re doing a joint meet up tonight at Rhino Brewery. Super excited to meet tons of rookies and other investors and just kind of network.

Tony:
And if you guys aren’t here, obviously this is going to come out. We’ll have already have done this. But if you guys want to come to the next meet up, I don’t know, I guess let us know in the Real Estate Rookie Facebook group where you guys want to do this next. Ashley and I have this dream of going on the road with all things BiggerPockets and Real Estate Rookie.

Ashley:
Rookie Road Trip.

Tony:
So maybe if you guys get active and let the people know where you want us to go next, we can try and set something up in your city.

Ashley:
We both really want the Rookie road trip dream. We just visualize it differently. Tony visualizes flying out there meeting me, and I visualize it in a camper van traveling across country. We got to find a way to make those two dreams [inaudible 00:02:08]

Tony:
But either way, we got a really good show for you guys today. It’s a little bit different. We decided we should take advantage of the fact that we’re here in Denver. We brought some BiggerPockets employees on, or a employee plus a husband onto the podcast today. We’ve got Katie and Evan.
And I learned a lot about their story today too. I didn’t even know how big their portfolio was. But they shared so many good insights on working together as husband and wife, about not being afraid to take action, investing in different markets, appraisal issues. I feel like we touched on so many good things.

Ashley:
Yeah. My favorite thing that they touched on was relationships just between themselves as partners, but also relationships with other people, and how they handle that and how they actually add value to other people. And that’s more of a priority to them than actually taking value from other people. Evan talks about that a lot, and that’s a really great piece of advice that I think you guys should take away from this podcast.

Tony:
And Katie had a 30 second piece right near the beginning of the episode. And I don’t want to spoil it, but just look, I call it out after she says this. Just make sure you guys listen for that part as well. But overall fantastic episode. Whether you’re a husband and wife duo listen to this, or you’re just a new investor in general, you’ll definitely get some value from hearing their story.

Ashley:
And they’re also both working full-time jobs and building this real estate business.

Tony:
And they have a new baby.

Ashley:
Yeah.

Tony:
Yeah. Katie, Evan, we’re super excited to have you both here. This is a different podcast, even for me and Ash because we’re in-person. We’re doing this in Denver near the BiggerPockets HQ, and we got some special guests. For the folks who don’t know you, and Katie maybe we’ll start with you, who are you guys? Why are you here on the show today? And tell us what makes you maybe a more special, not more special guest, but there’s something special about you that maybe most guests can’t talk about.

Katie:
Well, thank you guys for flying to Denver to meet us and to hang out. This is so great. We’re really excited that you’re here, so thanks for being here. My name is Katie Miller. I am our general manager of our publishing division at BiggerPockets. I started at BiggerPockets, wow, five years ago now almost to the day.
I applied to a job posting that was on a startup website portal. And sent in my resume, and probably 20 minutes later Scott Trench calls me on my cell phone, and here I am. Yeah, we’ve started with just a couple books and now we have almost 37. A couple of them are in queue. And yeah, so I love it. I love BiggerPockets. Really excited to be here today with my husband, Evan.

Tony:
And let’s not mention the book that Ash and I have been super delinquent on one day that book will make it to the public.

Ashley:
I think we signed the contract to it almost a year ago now.

Tony:
Probably.

Katie:
No pressure, but I really want to publish it.

Tony:
I’m moving a little bit faster.

Katie:
You know what? It doesn’t even matter. We got a book deal. I wasn’t going to bring it up, but now that you did.

Tony:
[inaudible 00:05:07] Evan, what about you, brother?

Evan:
Yeah. I’m Evan, Katie’s husband. And I actually had started listening to BiggerPockets before I met Katie. And then she was working a different job when we started dating and stuff. But had bought a house downtown, and just really liked the process, looking at a lot of architecture houses, the inside and outside of Denver and surrounding area. And I really enjoyed that, so I wanted to keep doing it.
I actually just Googled real estate and investing in real estate, and found Brandon’s how to invest in real estate with no or low money down. And that was before Katie was on the team, so the books have gotten a lot more polished and awesome since then. But that one was, it kind of got me hooked. And it was really cool that Katie found a job posting on BiggerPockets, I was like, “I listen to them every day, twice a day.” And so it’s been kind of history ever since, but that’s-

Ashley:
I want to know who is more excited about this actual job, Katie or you.

Evan:
… I’m pumped about it. Yeah. Yeah. Stuff like this, I definitely wasn’t expecting that. I knew BiggerPockets was in Denver, which I thought was pretty crazy once I learned that listening to Josh and Brandon. I was like, “Oh, sweet. It’s like we’re sort of neighbors, but I have no idea where you guys are.”
And then since then getting to go to conferences, showing up at things like this, meetups, getting to meet a podcast host like you guys, it’s been really cool. And then also getting to see the behind the scenes of how BiggerPockets works. And as a consumer of their content, I’ve really enjoyed that.

Tony:
I think something else that’s unique about the two of you, and I don’t know if we said this already, but your husband and wife. And I know me and my wife, Sarah, we’re business partners, husband and wife duo. And there’s always, I think, a lot of questions that come up about what does that dynamic look like, how did you get the other person on board? So kind of give us the origin story of, not necessarily the marriage, but I guess we get that if you guys want to as well, but more so how did the business partnership kind of form between you guys as husband and wife.

Katie:
Yeah. I don’t really know if there’s ever been a start date of like, “Okay, we’re going to do this together,” but it was just I had one building, one unit before we got married and Evan had two. And marriage, we now share assets. Now I had three at the time, and he got one more required and we actually moved into the unit I had.
And so I think from there it was just kind of, “Hey, we can really do this. We can have full-time jobs. We can have a kid. We can have a dog and have a beautiful marriage and family life while still investing in real estate and still working every day.” And for us, it really just came down to kind of our core family values. And how does real estate kind of fit into that?

Evan:
And for me it was basically once she was the publisher of BiggerPockets, I was like, “I got to lock this down.” That was a big reason to propose. I think we were definitely both on board and it felt not being fully onboard together was really limiting us in what we could do. And I remember thinking about that pretty practical mindset when it comes to marriage. I was hesitant, but that was like, we can do so much more once we are a real team together in building this, our future together.

Katie:
And we really have a good dynamic. I don’t care about the numbers. I don’t want to do deal analysis. Show me a spreadsheet my eyes glaze over, right? That’s where his forte is. It really is helpful that we kind of have our own yin and yang of what we’re good at and do best in.

Tony:
Katie, you were already investing, was it an investment that first unit or was it just your primary residence?

Katie:
It was my primary residence that I house hacked, and now it’s a full-time long-term rental. I started at BiggerPockets in August of 2017 and closed on this place in November of 2017, because that’s kind of drink the Kool-Aid.

Tony:
That’s how it goes. And then Evan, yours, they were both investments?

Evan:
It was. That was a big difference between … She bought a lot smarter than I did on the first one. I was just buying because I knew that it was smart. My uncle actually had told me the one thing I would definitely do is buy a house as soon as you can. I was in the military, so I had the access to the VA loan, so didn’t need any capital whatsoever to get started.
And I love Denver. I’m from Denver. I just love the city, and so I wanted to live there, and it’s not practical. It’s actually still the only unit that doesn’t cash flow. We still have it, but its been great for appreciation. But Katie’s cash flow is much better.
She has the type of eye for a unit that people are going to want to buy. She has all the design instincts that I don’t have. That one’s been kind of a pain, but I still love it because it was my first one. It’s in Downtown Denver and …

Ashley:
It’s what got you started.

Evan:
Yeah, exactly.

Tony:
Wait, Ash, can I add one thing just on speaking about losing money in deals that don’t cash flow? There’s a part two to my Shreveport deal that I got to tell you guys about. There’s this house in Louisiana in Shreveport that I tried to sell. It took us over a year to sell the property. We ended up losing $30,000 on this house, right? We sold it.
I thought I was done with it. Turns out I turned on the gas for that property to do the inspections for the buyers, and they sent the final bill, instead of to my primary residence, they sent it to the house. I never got the final bill for this property.
We were going to close on a property two weeks ago and my lender says, “Hey Tony, we can’t close on this deal because you have a delinquency on your credit report,” and I’m like, “What are you talking about?” He’s like, “Yeah, there’s some property in Shreveport.”
And as soon as he said Shreveport, I screamed from the top of my lungs because I thought this house was done, but it’s coming back to haunt me. So now I’m fighting with this utility company in Shreveport to get this off my credit report.

Ashley:
Tony, I wish you would’ve saved this because tomorrow I want to do a Rookie reply with you and it’s basically on that topic. I already pitched it to our producer and everything. I got to get something off my chest too, so we’ll record more of that tomorrow. But before we go any farther, what does your portfolio look like today?

Evan:
Yeah. We have those three that we talked about. It’s a condo and then a town home and then a duplex that Katie bought. And then we have a 10 unit in Omaha. That’s one building. And then we have a single family in Omaha as well. And then the last one that we just did is a short-term rental in Santa Rosa Beach in Florida. It’s a total of 16 units, seven properties and kind of a hodgepodge of all the different kinds.

Ashley:
Well, congratulations, you guys. That is really awesome.

Evan:
Thanks.

Ashley:
Let’s kind of start, you guys had your own properties, and then what was the first investment you guys did together and what was the story behind that?

Evan:
Yeah. The first big investment was buying our first house together. And it was mostly just to buy the house and we were going to be able to use the VA loan again because we refinanced out of the downtown condo. And we were looking, and Denver is super expensive. This was end of 2019 into beginning of 2020. And-

Katie:
The height of COVID, mind you, so everything was crazy.

Evan:
… Everything was crazy. A lot of uncertainty. I mean, that was our schedule, so we weren’t going to let a global pandemic interrupt that. And it ended up working out really well. A lot of things aligned. We had considered continuing to house hack, and what that would look like, because that’s all either of us had ever done.
And put an offer on a couple of houses that we would’ve really had to work to turn into Airbnbs as a part of the property, and we came across the one that we ended up with. And they did an amazing job designing the basement to be a short-term rental. And I think they just got tired of it. We’ve kind of asked our neighbors since then like why did they give up such an awesome income producing asset.
And they almost didn’t. It was really quite the story just getting that deal closed. But now that’s where we live. It’s in East Wash Park, and it’s an amazing location for a short-term rental. People love coming to visit the neighborhood.
And it’s just been a really good experience, as I’m sure Tony you guys both probably know short-term rentals are really fun. And so that’s been the first project together. We combined on both of them on the other three, just letting each other run with our strengths before that. But this one was where it really dug in.

Ashley:
After that, kind of keep going with the story of acquiring them and then maybe we can break down some things that you guys have learned along the way and what your strengths are. After that one, how long was it before you bought the next one after that?

Evan:
That was our second to most recent one. We bought that one in … I guess we closed on April 1st, 2020. And we didn’t actually close on the next one until April 1st, 2022. It’s two years before the next one, and that is the Florida short-term rental.
We had a little bit of experience, both of us together working on doing a short-term rental downtown with my first condo, trying to make a cash flow better, but that’s a whole nother story. We had some experience with that, and then this basement was a really good next step into short-term rentals.
I do all the maintenance. It’s easy to go downstairs at 10:00 o’clock at night when the guest calls and it’s an immediate emergency. That’s a lot, logistically a lot easier to do than trying to find a handyman that’s willing to do that. That was kind of getting our feet wet, getting really good at it.
And then we felt comfortable to try the long-term thing. And so we started looking in Florida. Katie has always wanted to own a beach house, and I was like, “All right, as long as it’s a income producing asset, I’m into that.” And so we were looking at a bunch of different places.
I knew Cocoa Beach pretty well. I had visited it and just paid attention to the area. But we’ll probably get into this later, but the regulations, the Airbnb regulations aren’t very well established there, and they’re super not friendly to, the regulations that there are not friendly to short-term rentals.
And so it was going to be a big project to turn that one around. And Katie has a lot of awesome relationships with authors that she’s produced their books, and one of them is Avery Carl. And we had talked about maybe we should just talked to her. She was listening to one of her podcasts. I think it was on BiggerPockets money maybe, BiggerPockets real estate.
Anyway, that she kind of turned us on that we could really do this with a secondary home loan. And so we called her brokerage, worked with the short-term shop. Rush Valentine was our agent, and just kind of went from there. And we found an awesome spot. It was, again, the turbulent closing. I think probably all the closings have something come up. Everybody gets experience with that, but you get to the closing day and really get to finish the project and it’s all worth it in the end. [inaudible 00:16:51]

Katie:
Not to mention that I was one day before having my baby when we offered on the house. During this whole time Evan is getting all of our loan documents together with a newborn at home, so that was a wild ride.

Evan:
Yeah. We offered on a house, and we’re under contract on a house in December of 2021. And awesome interest rate at that time was like 3.75 or something like that, maybe low fours. And everything worked great until we got an appraisal that was way under. We had offered at 830, the appraisal came in at 760. And anything that was selling in the area was selling for over 900. It was like, “I don’t know where you got these comps from.” We disputed it, some in appraisal [inaudible 00:17:43]

Ashley:
Can you talk about that process real quick? What does that actually entail when you dispute an appraisal?

Evan:
Yeah. Rush in the short-term shop helped a ton. They’re really good at all things closing on real estate. By now, I look at all sorts of deals on a regular basis. And we had been looking in that area for a year by then. And so I was really familiar with the type of property we were looking at.
We were looking at four bed, three bath, three bed, three bath. They’re all really similar. And so you kind of have an idea of what it should be worth. And there’s a reason we offered 830 instead of 760. And in this case there was an extra unit outside that they had turned into a bunkhouse, and that accounted for I think 250, 300 square feet.
And the appraisal agent didn’t want to count that. So definitely should have counted it. It made the property better. It wasn’t like a just add on afterthought that wasn’t very good. And so that was kind of the big sticking point. If he had included that square footage, it would’ve gone way over nine.
But he wouldn’t do it. It was just like you got nowhere with it. But the lender and the real estate agent worked together to submit the request for reconsideration, just kind of got a flat no back. And so I’ve heard what you guys have talked about successfully getting it disputed, and I’ve heard success stories on that, but that hasn’t happened for us.

Tony:
Wait, so you guys weren’t able to successfully challenge?

Evan:
No.

Tony:
Really?

Evan:
Yeah. The-

Katie:
Huge bummer.

Evan:
… Yeah.

Ashley:
Yeah.

Evan:
And so we lost that deal. And at the same month, all of the way that investors treat, loan investors treat secondary home properties changed. They started seeing it more as investment properties versus just secondary homes. That basically automatically increases the interest rate by 1%.

Ashley:
And your down payment probably too. Did it change your down payment that you had to do on it?

Evan:
It didn’t. We were still able to do the 10%. But I mean, loans were more expensive to close at that time too, so it ended up being 130,000 that it took to close, even though 10% of 830, which we actually closed on another house for 830.

Ashley:
Do you know what that first house actually ended up sold for?

Evan:
Over nine.

Ashley:
Oh, really? Oh my God.

Evan:
They sold for overnight.

Katie:
But it was on and off the market at least two or three times.

Ashley:
So it must have been cash purchase or people were able to cover the gap.

Tony:
Yeah. I mean, another lever you can pull is just … And obviously we love Avery. Avery is amazing. And not to take away from her, but you can always try a different lender. Because if you go to a different lender, they’re going to have to pull another appraisal anyway. You might be able to get a better opinion of value if you go with another lender.

Ashley:
Yeah, that’s a great tip.

Tony:
Something to keep in mind if you guys find yourselves in that position.

Evan:
Yeah. I think we consider doing it at the time. And I don’t remember why I didn’t. I think it could have just been we were busy. And then at the time-

Ashley:
[inaudible 00:20:53]

Evan:
… There’s a lot on your plate, but I think it would’ve saved us. It ended up being a full per percent that it would’ve saved us. We had to buy down some of the interest rate in the end for the property we ended up closing on. But yeah, it’s a whole nother process to work with another lender.

Tony:
Yeah, a lot of lessons learned there. But something a lot you mentioned, Evan, that I want to drill in on, you said that you guys have a specific criteria that you’re looking at. It’s like a three bedroom, three bath, or a four bedroom, four bath. How did you guys land on that criteria? What was the thought process behind that?

Evan:
Yeah. You can jump in on why you wanted to do the four bed, three bath. But we talked with our agent and just kind of figured out based on the analysis the short-term shop had done and then what we looked at with AirDNA. That’s where the cash flows the best in that area.
I mean, I make very few decisions without the numbers really making sense, from choosing what college I go to all the way to now. But then as we’re touring that, touring those properties, we kind of fell in love with it. It’s an amazing area that’s so gorgeous. And the houses are really spunky. All of them have really unique character. And whereas the condo buildings not as unique, they’re all-

Tony:
All the same.

Evan:
… Exactly. It’s really fun. It’s a really fun type of property.

Katie:
And when he says touring, this is all virtual. Rush is on FaceTime with us, or taking videos and sending us nine files over the course of a half an hour. It’s like we never went in-person to any of these until after we closed. And really it was nine weeks after our initial offer went in that we actually saw the place in-person.

Ashley:
How did you get comfortable doing that?

Katie:
Just be comfortable with discomfort. Honestly, I think at least for me, I am not a very good vision oriented person. So having a total trash house that some people look at and like, “Oh, I can make this a million dollar building. It’s going to look great. I’m going to have the kitchen here and take out this wall and this bath.” Not me.
I don’t have that eye for design. And so I was totally against this house, this property that we ended up actually getting. Because the way that it was already set up … It came fully furnished as well. The way that it was set up for the short-term rental already, it had crappy ’70s couches that were dingy and had brown stains all over them.
The rugs were just horrible. The carpet was stained. The staircase was just nasty. And I was so tense, I’m like, “Evan, why are we spending almost a million dollars on a property that’s trash?” And-

Evan:
That’s interesting that you say that, because I was just like, “I mean, you’ll fix it, right?” That was my approach, because she does have the eye for design. Maybe not moving walls, but definitely lean on Katie’s … I mean, this place, the pictures that were on the listing and the way it was when we bought it looked like a house I furnished.
I would’ve gone to the thrift store, just like these guys did, and buy a couch for 50 bucks, and sweet, they can sit on that couch and that’s all that matters. But it’s like, what are they sitting in though? And that’s what the stuff that Katie cares about.
That’s interesting that you say you don’t have the eye for design, because I think that’s the only … I mean, if we didn’t have you designing the Airbnb listings, which is so important for how they pop off the page to get people to stop scrolling and actually look at your property and decide to book it, it’s all because of the vision that you have.
I don’t think it’s fair for you to say that you don’t have the design. I think it’s probably I’m just like, “You’ll figure it out, and I’ll move the couches and it will work out.” Yeah. I think it definitely-

Katie:
… That’s nice of you.

Tony:
You’re selling yourself short a little.

Ashley:
You guys have talked about a little bit of what your roles and responsibilities are. You said that Evan does the deal analysis, you do a lot of the design. What about the actual operations? Are you self-managing the properties and taking on those roles, and who does what?

Katie:
Totally. Yeah. All of our properties in Denver, we manage ourselves. The properties we have in Omaha, we have a property manager for those. And then the one in Florida, we’re also self-managing from afar, which is really cool, learnt that all from Avery Carl’s book, Short-Term Rental, Long-Term Wealth.
And it’s really incredible how people oriented real estate is. I feel like a lot of investors and especially rookie investors go into real estate because maybe they’re bad at working with people in their job, maybe they don’t like their manager, maybe their manager doesn’t like them and they’re on their way out. What else can I do?
Real estate is a people-oriented business. And so for us being able to manage all of our properties, both in Denver and in Florida from afar, we really rely on our team that we have out there.

Ashley:
And what kind of team members do you guys have out there?

Katie:
For our Florida house, I joined a Facebook group for Airbnb Hosts of Florida that I found actually from the BiggerPockets Facebook group, a little offshoot of that one. And I just kind of scouted in there as, “We’re closing on a property in a month. Does anyone have any cleaners or housekeeper recommendations for me?” And I probably got, I don’t know, maybe 10, a list of 10 cleaners that-

Ashley:
Wow, that’s pretty good.

Tony:
That’s a lot. That’s a lot.

Katie:
… Yeah.

Evan:
While I’m over here trying to type into Google cleaners in Gulf Shores, and I came up with a few lists and it was like a few options and it was like four options. None of them panned out. Definitely going the relationship route worked a lot better.

Katie:
Yeah. And the recommendations I got, someone linked to Julie who is our housekeeper out there, someone linked to her Facebook profile. I just got to put right on her, and see her whole life and see everything about her that I could. And Evan actually set up the interview with her while we were in Florida and setting the house up.
And she came by and we met her and we hit it off from the start. She’s kind of our go-to there. And we have her team of people as well. She has a maintenance guy that she works with really closely. And she has a secondary helper, cleaner that comes with her as well. Really if anything’s wrong with the property, she either finds it for us or we hear about it from guests and just send her a text and say, “Hey.”

Tony:
You mentioned a really important point, Katie. And I feel like every episode has this 30 second portion where people just need to re-listen to it. And what you said I think is that moment for this podcast, and it’s that real estate is very much a people-driven business. And it’s like, yeah, there’s the analyzing and there’s getting to the closing table.
But at the end of the day, you can’t be a successful real estate investor by yourself. You need a property manager, or you need a cleaner, or you need an agent, or you need a lender, or you need this person, someone to fund your deal.
Every part of this business requires some kind of interaction or relationship with somebody else. And I think the better you get at cultivating those relationships, the easier it becomes for you to be a better real estate investor. I didn’t want to gloss over that because it was really a really impactful statement. But sorry, Evan. I can go ahead. I know-

Evan:
Well, that’s huge. That’s I think one of my biggest learning points since I’ve started is learning that real estate is a people-oriented business, endeavor, everything. I’m not a super charming engaging person, and I like the numbers. I like sitting behind spreadsheets. And that’s probably why I like real estate, because I can swing a hammer, look at spreadsheets, do all that stuff, and it doesn’t require to meet me to be very outgoing.
And then I’ve sat back and watched Katie build relationships. I think the most important relationships we have are with our cleaners, the one that does our basement at home and the one in Florida. And starting with hiring the cleaner, that’s where it starts. That’s not where it ends. Finding the cleaner, then building a good relationship with them, keeping them happy, keeping them motivated to prioritize your building.
There’s been so many times that our cleaner in Denver has prioritized us because she loves Katie. And that’s been so amazing to me when I’m like, “It should just work. We pay you what you said you wanted, and you’re going to show up a very transactional thing.” And there is transactions in business and in real estate, but the relationships behind them really drives it.

Katie:
Well, that’s the thing. I don’t see that as being difficult. It’s easy for me. It comes naturally to me. Evan, let me take that. I’ll take care of the people, you take care of things in the building and the spreadsheets and everything. And really when you’re working with guests, working with tenants or working with your cleaners, there’s three things. Treat others as you want to be treated. It’s pretty simple. Golden rule to live by.
And regardless of who, if you’re paying someone or they’re paying you, treat them as you want to be treated. Two is just treating them as real humans. They have bad days. I have bad days. Hopefully our bad days don’t align and we’re nice to each other, right? But just being able to take a step back when someone’s upset about something and just kind of hearing them out is probably more important than you being heard as the owner of the property or their manager if they’re a cleaner.
And then I think the third thing is just leading with honesty. If something happened to the property, and we’re not trying to rip off our cleaners at all, it’s like, hey, we had a bad interaction. The property might be in shambles. Just FYI, might have a rough day.
Or Julie, if she has a conflict with work, she also works a full-time job while managing our property over in Florida, so she has a conflict with her work it’s like, “Hey, just tell me. Great. Thank you for being honest. We’ll figure out what we can do with the next guest if we need to maybe delay their entry a little bit or something.” But just leading with honesty, it goes both ways. The more that you are honest with them, they’ll bring it back to you.

Ashley:
That was awesome. And I think those are very valuable tips. And it reminded me of this book, Hug Your Haters by Jay Baer. And it’s a customer service based book, but I think everybody should read it. And especially if you are doing hospitality, or even have long-term rentals, or just dealing with people in general.
And it just talks about when people do have bad days and give you that negative feedback or criticize you how to handle it and actually basically kill them with kindness, and turn it around, and then you kind of build that relationship with them.
If you guys haven’t read that yet, check out Hug Your Haters. Let’s get into some of the nitty-gritty. How were the deals financed? You talked about you did the VA loan, you did the second home loan, which ended up being more towards the investment side. What were you guys doing for down payments for cash reserves? How were you able to scale to 17 units so quickly?

Tony:
And sorry. And I’m especially interested in the 10 unit, because I think that’s something that a lot of folks aspire to, especially as they’re just getting started.

Ashley:
Yeah. The decaplex?

Tony:
Yeah, the decaplex.

Evan:
Yeah. It started with the VA loan, because literally you need negative cash to buy a house with the VA loan. They’ll cover your closing costs as well.

Katie:
Didn’t you get paid actually on one of those?

Evan:
Yeah, you get cash back. Yeah. It ended up being a little bit more than the earnest money that I got back, which is … I got through a few properties before I even realized what closing costs were. And it was actually the decaplex that I was like, “Oh, geez.”

Tony:
You’re talking to them you’re like, “Hey, something’s wrong here. I’m supposed to be getting money back.” What is this?

Evan:
This is my lender paying me. What are we doing? I got two properties for myself, and then we closed on the decaplex before, after we were married. But that was my first experience with just more normal lending. We did a commercial loan with that. We’re just refinancing out of it, so I’m trying to separate the two different types of loans. But we did a 25 year amortized commercial loan. I think it ended up being 5.13% or something like that.

Tony:
I’m sorry. What year was this, Evan?

Evan:
2019.

Tony:
2019. What was the interest rate on that debt?

Evan:
5.1.

Tony:
That’s not bad.

Evan:
Yeah, for a commercial.

Tony:
And it was strictly in your LLCs name that the debt, the title, everything?

Evan:
Mm-hmm.

Tony:
That’s not bad. What was the down payment on that?

Evan:
There was a 20% down payment, and I raised most of that. It was like family and friends type of capital raise you could call it. I didn’t realize I was doing a capital raise at the time, I don’t think. But just talking to some of my parents’ friends and some of my friends. And one in specific was willing to … He has a few properties and he’s used to it, so he was willing to take a chance on us as a new multi-family operators.
The asking price was six 50. We bought it for 600. And we put in 120, I think it was. And I raised a total of 160, I think it was, for just have reserves. And I think the big thing was the main investor on that project was willing to put in more. And we had some smaller investors that we wanted to get involved, so we kind of replaced that money.
And I definitely underestimated the amount of capital that we would want to have on hand. And it turns out if you look at the numbers, raising another 30,000 or 40,000 wouldn’t have affected the ROI nearly as much as being able to get those projects done faster because we had the capital in the bank already. That’s kind of how that one looked. Like I said at the beginning, we’ve had a hodgepodge of loans. So the VA-

Ashley:
Did you structure that with the partners?

Evan:
… Yeah. Me and my dad had done my second property together on a 60-40, him getting the 60 and me getting the 40. They brought all them down payment. It was a 3.5% because I lived in it, so it wasn’t a huge down payment. But I didn’t have any of that. He got the 60 because I felt like he’s taken a risk and I got the 40.
We kind of tried to parlay that into the tenplex and it ended up being a really complicated structure. But essentially the operator got 30% of … We as the operators get 30% and then the investment gets 70%. And we put money into the investment side as well, so we get paid a little bit from both sides. But it’s a 70-30 split.
And the reason we did that was to make sure the investors got a good return. And that translates all the way through when we sell any equity gain, any cash flow, just everybody has this certain amount that they’re entitled to. It kind of got complicated with what the exact percentages are though, because the operators being also investors ends up with some crazy decimals that we have written in a spreadsheet that will pull up when it’s time to sell.

Tony:
Time to sell.

Evan:
Yeah.

Tony:
So you guys bought this in 2019. And this is in Omaha?

Evan:
Mm-hmm.

Tony:
Had you guys purchased in Omaha before this?

Evan:
No, this was our first Omaha purchase.

Tony:
Why Omaha?

Ashley:
Yeah.

Evan:
Yeah, I liked Omaha pretty much. I was supposed to get assigned there in the Air Force, and through a major luck I ended up getting assigned in Denver instead. But I heard things while I was trying to make myself feel better about going to Omaha. They were like, “It’s like a new Denver. They have a lot of really trendy breweries. The downtown is really starting to pop.”
Just hearing things that you want to look for as a real estate investor that I wasn’t a real estate investor at the time. But it all resonated really well when I was trying to look elsewhere. Denver isn’t a great fit for me as the type of multi-family investing that I want to do as for one I’m much smaller than most of the players in Denver, and then just have different access to capital, less access to capital than I think it takes to get in Denver, and especially in 2019.
I was looking elsewhere, and it just seemed like a pretty similar, relatively similar city that I felt like I could resonate well with. And then I just started calling realtors and started getting to know people there. And by the time I wanted to look at multi-family, we kept talking about other cities that were Midwestern blue collar cities that were just steady jobs and really good people we felt like that we were able to relate too well, but I was just more familiar with Omaha.

Katie:
Turns out his gut was right though, because there’s like an Amazon warehouse opening there. It’s like a burgeoning college town, so there’s lots of people in and out all the time going to college and grad school and that type of thing. And then there’s also a really busy hospital center. There is a medical school. It’s one of the main hospitals in all of Nebraska is in Omaha, so it’s a pretty good place for that [inaudible 00:38:55]

Tony:
Were you onboard from the beginning or was there some convincing that Evan had to do? I’m always curious, right? Because like you said, you guys played different roles. And I know what’s always helped me and Sarah be successful as a husband and wife duo is that I do a good job of staying out of her way and vice versa, right? Was there a little bit of that here where you’re like, “Evan, we need to get you checked for trying to go invest in Omaha.”?

Katie:
I was actually more bought into Omaha than I probably should have been. I grew up in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, which is just four miles north, or four hours north of Omaha. My memory of Omaha is driving a bus down in middle school to go to the Omaha Zoo for a day. I had very happy memories of Omaha. There was nothing negative going on there. But I was really set on a beach house.
Colorado has many things going for it, but one thing is not water. We’re landlocked. And even the water that we do have, it’s all freezing and it’s in the mountains. I had my eye set on this beach house and I was like, “Cool. Whatever is going to get us to the beach, I’m fine.” I was just like, “Let’s keep going and set our sites on this beach house coming up.”

Ashley:
How did you find this decaplex?

Evan:
Yeah, LoopNet is where I found the listing. Again, I think the networking thing is always an intimidating thing for me, and so it’s happened out of necessity a lot of the time. And I was just looking for properties and it took a while to find properties because I had no relationships with agents.
And the more agents I talked to, the more they were willing to talk to me about different deals. And I found this one on LoopNet, talked to … I had, I think, two agents at the time that were kind of my go-tos to talk about deals, and we decided to put an offer on it. And actually I was on the top of Kit Carson Peak when we closed on this-

Katie:
Carson, for those of you who are not fourteener climbers, is an insane mountain that’s like rock scrambles. You got to use all four limbs to get up to the top. I was not with him, right? [inaudible 00:41:07]

Evan:
… Yeah. We went under contract from the top of that. Good service on the top of mountains it turns out.

Ashley:
That’s so cool.

Evan:
But yeah, it was through LoopNet. I was looking at LoopNet’s multi-family version of the MLS sort of, similar thing, or multifamily version of [inaudible 00:41:23].

Katie:
Or some people say where deals go to die, but you can actually find good deals because people think they’re bad deals.

Evan:
Exactly. And it wasn’t a home run deal, but it was a deal that I could do and get-

Tony:
It got your feet, right?

Evan:
… Exactly.

Tony:
I mean, let’s talk about the numbers. It wasn’t a home run deal, but you guys, you picked it up for $600,000, right? How much did you guys put into the rehab?

Evan:
Well, so far, I think it’s been about 70,000 that we’ve put in total turning in.

Tony:
That’s a really reasonable amount, right? What do you think the property is worth today? Because-

Evan:
We just got it appraised. It’s 787,000 that it appraised for.

Ashley:
And you put 70 into it? Yeah, that’s awesome.

Evan:
Yeah. And that’s been a nice recent win for us to get that appraised and refinanced at that value and start to feel. It’s definitely felt tight over the last three years. It’s weird that you can buy 10 units for 600,000 in Omaha when we’re struggling to buy one for that in Denver.
But the numbers barely worked and they’re going to pay the investors well in the end. We’re not looking at 100% year over year cash on cash, any of that, but still a solid return for the investors. I learned a ton. And we have some momentum now. I feel some confidence around being able to continue to do multi-families in Omaha and build the short-term rental stuff in Florida.

Tony:
Just one last question. I want to keep moving. Just one last thing. Just on the property management side, how did you guys vet and find that property manager in this totally new market?

Evan:
Yeah, it took a while. I thought I should manage myself to learn from the beginning, and I wouldn’t recommend that. I think-

Katie:
Yeah, don’t give out your cell phone number to your tenants.

Evan:
… Yeah, lots of cell phone conversations with the tenants. Eventually I was working with a realtor that helped us find the single family. And she was excited about managing a property, so she worked on it for a little while, and she was awesome. And they remodeled a couple of other units, but it was just getting to be too much for them.
And they’re such good people that they didn’t want to just quit. They wanted to quit with a lead. And so they gave us this lead for CityLine Properties out there. Dan Zimmerman, I think he had been going for maybe a year or something, but he had 30 properties that he was managing at the time. Now they’re well over a hundred, maybe more. But-

Katie:
And as soon as I heard Dan’s name, I was like, “I got to look him up on BiggerPockets.” If he doesn’t have a profile, then he’s not legit.

Evan:
He’s not good.

Katie:
And luckily he did.

Evan:
We definitely used that. We definitely leaned on that to vet him. It’s hard to talk to property management companies. I talked to a lot of property management companies and just didn’t vibe well with them. I didn’t think that they were going to take care of the property the way I wanted them to. In this case, it was one of his first properties as a property manager and it was one of my first properties as a multi-family investor. That worked really well. And it’s turned out to be an awesome relationship.

Ashley:
What are some examples of questions that our listeners could ask when they’re interviewing a property manager to kind of get that feel that this person isn’t going to work out?

Evan:
Do you have any ideas that you wanted to throw out there?

Katie:
Well, I would say the first one is just their experience level, right? And not as necessarily a red flag, because this was also Dan’s first time managing, but just being able to understand where they’re coming from, and what their background is and kind of what they’ve been into since then I think is really important.
I think the second thing is their fees. I know you just had a recent guest on the rookie show who was a property manager and her fees just seemed so wildly different than what actually I think you mentioned what you’re paying and some of your fees.
Is it a mom-and-pop shop? Is it an individual? Is it a huge conglomerate? And what are the separate fees that go along with all of those I think is huge. And they are very so wildly. It’s just trying to figure out what works for you and what works for that property.

Evan:
Yeah. I think looking back now I’d have a lot of different questions than I asked at the time. A big one is just getting to know their organizational structure and their logistics, how they keep track of their properties, how they … What technology they use to manage maintenance requests, and to keep the books, and to send out owner distributions, all of that.
I think a lot of people get into property management because they’re good at doing maintenance, and just don’t want to be working for a different group, for a different company. And they often don’t have a very good business savvy, and you want to really find out that this person is in it to be a property manager, not just to not have to pay someone else to maintain their properties or something like that.
That’s, I think, where I would focus asking them about the logistics, and what tech they use, and how they keep track of everything, and what their team looks like. Do they have a bookkeeper? Do they have contractors that they get to do all their maintenance ticket items? Do they just do it? Do they have somebody in-house? Those types of things have ended up translating to a much different experience since CityLine has a really good system going.

Katie:
That is huge, like understanding what their systems and processes are. There’s emergency maintenance and they say, “Oh, well, we have a phone number they call.” Okay, who’s answering that phone? And then what happens? Do you call someone out immediately? Do they wait till morning?understanding what exactly those processes are in the company can really help you understand if they actually have systems and processes.
This one company we were working with, they had emergency maintenance line. And the fire alarm went off in one unit, the fire company was there. Nobody was home. They were trying to get in, they couldn’t get the Knox Box open, all these things. And they were trying to call the property management company, the property manager’s cell phone, the emergency maintenance number.
And it’s like 8:00 AM. It’s not like it’s 1:00 AM. It’s 8:00 AM. And they’re office didn’t open till 9:00, and so it’s just like, “Whoa!” If the fire department can’t even get ahold of you, how are our tenants supposed to get ahold of you? So really understanding those too I think is a big thing.

Evan:
Yeah. I think I took for granted and just assumed that if you had a business, you had all that stuff worked out. And it’s amazing to me the more I get exposed to different businesses, the more I look into everything. Turns out that, that’s what makes excellent businesses. That’s not what makes a business is having all your ducks in a row when it comes to those types of logistics. And a lot of businesses don’t have that, and a lot of property management companies don’t have that.

Tony:
Can I go off on just a brief tangent? Because I think that’s a really valuable lesson in so many different ways. First, anytime you’re vetting a vendor, you can be easily fooled. Because how hard is it today to slap up a website, get a logo and-

Ashley:
Social media.

Tony:
… Social media.

Ashley:
Oh my God, they have a huge following. They’re legit [inaudible 00:48:52]

Tony:
They’re legit. But it’s so easy to make those vanity kind of metrics look like they’re legitimate, so I think the homework you guys talked about is super important. But the other point that you mentioned, I think this is more so about building your own real estate business is that it is easy to get started.
But to be excellent, I think takes a different level of dedication, a different level of preparation, a different level of sophistication. I know almost everyone who’s listening to this is a rookie still, but even as you’re just getting started, think about what you want your business to look like five to 10 years from now, and start putting those processes and systems in place today.
So that way as you start to scale, you kind of know which direction you’re going. I think I shared in one of our Rookie replies like I had a whole org chart built out for our business, and it was just me and Sarah. Right? And now this past year we’ve been hiring people in. It’s been so easy to hire them, because I already know which part of the org charts I don’t want to do anymore and we’re kind of passing all these things off. So-

Ashley:
Tony, have you read the book Traction?

Tony:
… I’ve read it like five times.

Ashley:
Yeah, I was going to say, that’s exactly what Traction asks you to do. It’s like you set your current organizational chart, you set your three year, five year, and undetermined future org chart there, and you just fill in the blanks from there. It’s a really great read.

Katie:
That would actually be great question to ask a property management company. Can I see your organizational charts?

Evan:
Yeah, that is a good one.

Katie:
You would see how the departments were, who’s selected there, and be like, “Okay.” And so you know like, “Okay, it’s a maintenance issue. I know I need to contact this person.” Because that’s been a struggle with the property management company too is, if there’s an issue, who’s the person to contact?
Because sometimes it’s multiple departments. The apartment is up for leasing, but we notice this maintenance issue needs to be fixed. Do we tell the leasing agent to hold off on showing so this is done? And the communication between departments too. Yeah, that’d be interesting to ask to see an org chart in a property management company.

Evan:
Getting to the point where you are not overwhelmed as a rookie is difficult to do. I like to tell people a lot like, “Don’t bite off more than you can chew.” Especially as a rookie really ever, you hear about dreaming big, have big goals and all of that.
But the habits that you’re going to be building as a rookie, I still consider us rookies for sure, are so much more important than the exact numbers that you, or how fast being able to say that headline of, “I got so many units in such little years.”
But just learning how to be consistent and reliable with one property, even if it’s just your house hack. Katie and I took a year before we even considered looking at another short-term rental property. We really wanted to make sure we had seen a full year and gotten those habits and understood what it really takes.
And we have full-time jobs, so that obviously changes our timeline. But I think it’s important to be and understand the importance of learning the habits and getting all of your logistics well ironed out before you try to scale too much and then just bear yourself in business.

Ashley:
Thank you guys so much for sharing your story with us, coming on here and telling us about the decaplex, your Florida beach house. First of all, congratulations you guys. Really awesome what you guys are doing. But we want to hear more from you guys, so we’re going to go into our rookie exam. This is where we ask three questions to each of our guests and it’s going to be the hardest exam that you guys have taken. Okay. The first one, actually, Evan, I’ll ask this one to you. What is one actionable thing a rookie should do after listening to this episode?

Evan:
I think you should sit down and kind of write out what relationships you have right now, even personal if you don’t have a lot of business relationships. But like we talked about at the beginning of the episode, relationships are what’s going to run your real estate business. And if you’re not giving value to your relationships, then you can’t expect much in return.
This is one of the biggest lessons that I’ve learned that I didn’t know at the beginning. Sit down, write down the relationships that you know, and right next to it what value are you giving to those relationships. And then next to that, how you can improve the value that you’re giving to those relationships.
I think like the Avery Carl example, just different relationships in our life that Katie had been, mostly Katie, had been just pouring value into for months and years. And then one when we needed to talk to them, they were super happy to help us, and I was like, “Man, this is magic.” We accelerated our short-term rental project.
I was slogging through properties in a completely different location, and we were just like, “Why don’t we lean on some of the relationships that we’ve built up?” But if you can do that intentionally, because I think it’s important to be able to think of something you can actually do right now versus buying the sky goals.
You have relationships right now, go look at them, get more intentional about them, even if it’s just your brother or your mom or somebody, and figure out how you’re giving them value so that you can be more aware of it. If you’re not, this is an opportunity to improve the relationships in your personal life.
And if you are, that’s great, you’ll find the holes and you’ll just get better at it and that’ll end up paying dividends like you won’t imagine down the road for sure. It’s mind-blowing to me how important relationships are. And I think I’m probably talking a lot to myself when it comes to that. What can you do now to really build upon-

Tony:
To build on those, right?

Evan:
… what you have.

Tony:
Actually, someone mentioned on a recent podcast, I can’t remember which episode it was, but they said that relationships have an infinite return. That was just such a powerful statement because it’s so true, because it’s like you never know where one relationship can take you.
Ash and I are only sitting here as podcast hosts right now because of relationships that we built before we knew where they were going to lead. And it’s like, you just never know. I mean, I love that. But I love also the fact that you positioned it in a way where it’s like, how can I build up that other person with kind of no expectation of return?

Ashley:
And as you were saying that, I almost expected you to say, “What value can they bring to me?” That was awesome. And that’s so true. The more value you provide to somebody else, you’re going to get more than you could imagine back from them.

Evan:
Yeah. And when you didn’t know, you had no idea you were going to want that or the value. It’s like you said it. I’m really into building momentum. I’m not good at just immediately setting a perfect habit, and here I am, and we’re great. It takes a while to build a momentum, but once I have it’s a really solid asset to my life.
I think I made that mistake multiple times, calling a lender right when I needed a lender. And then that obviously didn’t work. But then I had started building that relationship, so it was much better the next time I wanted to look at a property, and I started to see that retroactively I didn’t know it going into it.
And so again, some of this started by necessity, but I saw the benefit looking back and we’ve worked on … Luckily I have Katie who’s great at relationships. That really helps. But I’m trying to get much better at giving the value, because chances are really good that, that relationship is giving you value. You probably don’t need to worry about it. And later on it will, so I think that’s the right place to start.

Tony:
I love that advice. Katie, this next question is for you. What’s one tool, software app or system that you use in your business?

Katie:
Well, I would be remiss if I did not say the BiggerPockets website has been I spend five years of my life.

Ashley:
Job security.

Katie:
No. But seriously, not to beat a dead horse here, but all businesses are people businesses, and real estate is not excluded from that list. How are you going to meet people? Go to BiggerPockets.com, sign up for a free account and then go to the forums. It’s like the very most simple way to get and give value, the value that Evan was just talking about.
You got to meet people, find people in your area, post a question, answer questions. And the more that you give, the more that you’re going to get back. You’ll start noticing people that you want to reach out to. And you might get reached out to from other people who notice you giving really good advice, or good answers to questions. Even if you don’t have a property, you can still start a conversation with someone in our forums. I’d be really remiss if I didn’t say that.

Tony:
Katie, let me ask you this. As a BP insider, what do you think is one part of the BiggerPockets ecosystem that a rookie isn’t maybe taking advantage of today?

Katie:
That is a great question. I would say our number one place where I think you can get the most bang for your buck is the BiggerPockets Conference. It is offsite, off the website, so there’s that piece of it. But I think truly it’s like a three day, maybe two and a half day event once a year, where you just get so much education in one place.
You have the networking that’s there, you have the educational piece that’s there. You can read a book, you can buy books from there. You can meet all of the authors, all of the podcast hosts, all of the people who you might be listening or reading on a daily basis. And I think the conference is really just the one place where you’re going to meet like-minded people, and be able to also get and give that value to those relationships.

Tony:
Love that.

Ashley:
I think it will actually make you realize that you know more than you think that too. Having those conversations with people, I think that’s a huge … It gives you really a big motivator. It gives you motivation that moment you’re like, “Wow, I actually know what I was talking about in that conversation. Maybe I am ready to start investing, or I actually know what I’m doing.” And I think that confidence boost is a huge thing about going to these in-person events like the BiggerPockets conference.

Katie:
Yeah. And it’s a little like the first day of college. You get to your dorm room and everyone’s trying to make a new friend, because no one has friends. Right? And so the conference is really similar to that. It’s really hats-off, no ego, meet people where they’re at in a new place, in a new city, preferably with a drink in hand.

Ashley:
[inaudible 00:59:51].

Katie:
It’s just a really good place for that kind of authentic and original friendship.

Tony:
Love it.

Ashley:
Well, we have one more question for you guys, and I guess we’ll kind of ask you guys together. Where do you guys plan on being in five years?

Katie:
Yeah. We hope to have full-time jobs while having 50 properties.

Tony:
50. Lovely.

Evan:
That’s the goal. Yeah.

Ashley:
That’s awesome.

Evan:
And we want to be able to operate it while we have full-time jobs, because both of us have careers that we do care about. And that’s one of the awesome things about real estate, why I really got passionate about it while I was still in the Air Force. It wasn’t an option for me to quit my job, and we’re not trying to build into our lives fewer choices.
If we want to five years from now make it a family business and go all in on real estate, we’ll be able to if one of us wants to, one of us doesn’t. But the plan is to be able to continue in our jobs and still be able to have a very big thriving real estate business on the side. Because I think that’s one of the biggest advantages of real estate is that you can delegate a lot of stuff and be able to run it without it consuming your life.

Katie:
And because I have a full-time job, I’m able to do this. Everyone who’s listening to this podcast right now can get 15% off any book, any format in the bookstore. All you need to do is go to www.biggerpockets.com/store, pick out your book, put it in the cart, and then type in the word publishing in your promo code spot. And we’ll call this the publisher special.

Tony:
We’ll call it the Katie special.

Katie:
Yeah. Yeah, 15% off. Just use the code publishing in the book store.

Ashley:
You know what, I feel like she’s really pushing it towards us like, “Your book could’ve been [inaudible 01:01:42]. You need to get writing.”

Tony:
No. But I mean that is the beauty of real estate investing is that you get to move at whatever pace you want. And at the end of the day, that’s why we want entrepreneurship, is for the control, it’s for the power of choice. And it’s like if you want to stay at your job, you can. If you don’t, you don’t have to. But it’s about having that choice to make that decision for yourself as opposed to that pressure of, “Hey, you have to do this one thing.”

Evan:
Right.

Katie:
Totally.

Tony:
Love it. All right, so we’re going to give a shout out to this week’s Rookie rockstar, and this week it’s Rafael Cabrera. And Rafael says, “Just purchase property number three with a nomad strategy.” And Rafael you might need to get an application because I’m curious to know a little bit more about what this nomad strategy is and how you’re using it.
But Rafael says that property number two, which I guess was recently purchased, he just happened to accidentally buy near the site where the new Convention Center is going up, so there’s some good news there. But Rafael leaves some final words of guidance, and he says, “Even if you’re unsure about this nomad strategy,” which is I guess just kind of moving around pretty frequently.
He said he’s doing it with a wife and a two year old and a two month old. Right? He said he’d be lying if he said it was easy, but he said it’s totally worth doing and he’s looking forward to what comes this next year. Rafael, congratulations to you and your family.
And yeah, if you guys want to get shout out as a rookie rockstar, get active in the Real Estate Rookie Facebook group, the BiggerPockets forum. You can slide into my DMS or Ashley’s.

Ashley:
Well, Katie and Evan, thank you so much for flying us out to Denver, buying us lunch.

Tony:
And dinner.

Ashley:
Dinner tomorrow night.

Katie:
For sure.

Ashley:
Yeah. Oh, we really appreciated having you guys on the show, and loved the value and everything that you shared with everyone, not just your story, but the great advice and the insights and the mindset. Thank you so much for coming on.

Evan:
Thank you guys. It was really fun. Thanks for having us on. And yeah, it was awesome to be able to just sit down and talk through things with you guys.

Ashley:
If you guys love the podcast, please leave us a five star review on your favorite podcast platform, and check out our YouTube channel Real Estate Rookie. I’m Ashley Kehr @wealthfromrentals, and he is Tony Robinson @TonyJRobinson. And we will be back on Saturday with the Rookie Reply.

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Note By BiggerPockets: These are opinions written by the author and do not necessarily represent the opinions of BiggerPockets.