Today's interview is with Michael Glaspie, an ex-green beret and successful real estate agent and investor.
Owning over 130 rental units and a real estate team that has 78 agents across 7 states, the knowledge and experience he freely dropped in this episode were amazing.
Grab your coffee and your notes and dive in.
Grab your drink and get ready. This is the caffeinated hustle. The best place to learn about entrepreneurs and FTS and life expert advice and guest interviews to launch your business and NFT journey further than you ever imagined. Now, here's your host, entrepreneur, coffee fanatic and founder of the NFT project, caffeinated creatures, Ben Carson. Welcome back to the caffeinated hustle. I'm your host, Ben Carson. thanks for stopping by. All right team. Today, I have a very special guest for you to meet Michael glaspie is a one of a kind unit that you're just gonna love. He has a commercial consultant and investor that co founded a real estate team was 78 agents across seven states. He's got over 130 rental units. And he's a former CFO of a private equity firm, focused on hotel syndication. And he happened to just sort of just drop in that he was also a Green Berets. So this guy is just one of a kind, and I cannot wait for you to just get some value out of him. So Michael, welcome to the show. Absolutely. Thanks for having me, Ben. I'm excited to be here. Oh, my goodness, man that we just always do a little pre Mic check. And I just the fact you just like nonchalantly threw that out there is just amazing. So I just want to hear a little bit about your backstory. And let's just dive in there. Because that's that's an incredible thing right there. Yeah, absolutely. So I'm actually originally from Houston, Texas. As I was graduating high school, I was looking at how I can get into college. Luckily, I was blessed with an academic scholarship. But the college life got a little, you know, out of control lost that academic scholarship. So I started looking for a different way to pay for it. It just so happened that the National Guard at the time was offering to pay for tuition. So I joined in and immediately that first summer, I was jumping out of planes and jumping out of helicopters. I said, Hey, after I graduate college, let's just try this thing full time. I went ahead and tried my hand at the Special Forces Assessment and Selection. Luckily, I made it through. And then you know, eight years, nine years later, at that point, I decided, hey, it's time to kind of get out of out of this field, where Where else can I go? Well, I actually bought a home back in 2014, it was just a regular home using my VA home loan. So 0% down. And as I was living in it, I rented out the other rooms to some of my other single soldier friends. And I had no idea that was called House hacking at the time, right. And so once I realized that, essentially, I was already real estate investing in a way, then I went ahead and looked into all the other various ways you can invest in real estate, and I got into wholesaling fix and flipping, I used my VA loan to buy houses that I can live in flip and then use it again to buy duplexes, triplexes quads. And then I decided if I'm going to really amp this up, let me go ahead and get licensed. So I got licensed, I met with my wonderful business partner, Shelby Osbourne and build the team really kicked off from there, you know, started selling started investing, and we kind of just grew into, into where we are now. Wow, that's, I mean, it's such a quick version of such an incredible accomplishment right there. There's a lot to unpack there. So how long? I mean, you've been doing this for how long that because you're at 130 units, I'm assuming that took a couple of weeks, maybe a month? I mean, how long does it take to get to that level? You know, that's an amazing thing to have triple digits, just that many rental properties, what's what's that take realistically to get there. So to be quite honest about the first one in 2014. But it wasn't until 2017, when I really decided to buckle down in real estate and I spent that entire 2017 really just learning educating myself and building up capital through wholesales and things like that, come 2018 is when I started buying again. And in less than two years, I was able to acquire 130 doors. But I will say this, you know, hindsight being 2020 That was incredibly fast, alarmingly fast. And I always recommend that anybody getting in and saying, hey, I want 100 doors, you know, I want 1000 doors, make sure that you understand what those doors actually equal for you. So if you're only looking for a certain passive income number, let's just call it $5,000 A month? Well, yeah, you could get it with 100 doors all producing, you know, $50 a month, or you potentially could get it with just five Airbnbs right? So you know, hindsight being 2020 I got it at an alarming rate. But even now I'm stabilizing my portfolio and I'm potentially looking at selling some of those properties as well. I am clearly not in the real estate business because I call them properties and you call them doors so that's a good fact right there. If you talk to somebody they don't say it's a door then clearly you're talking to an amateur so Did your military training help at all with the stress because I'm assuming owning that many properties? I mean, like anytime something breaks, you got to be on it or your your company or management company's gonna be on it. How do you deal with the stress of that much just real estate and play at all times? Absolutely. So the military played a crucial role in it. One of my key responsibilities as a Greenbrae was problem solving. Plain and simple. People tend to think that you know, we have the best equipment we have the best you know, the high tech guns and is that's not the case, we got the old equipment, right. And we have to make do we have to accomplish the mission with what we have. And so we had to be very resourceful. So just taking that mindset and that creative problem solving into another industry, like real estate for me, I was able to look at the holistic picture, there's a lot of real estate agents out there, that will tell you wholesaling is illegal. And we can talk on what these different investment strategies are if you'd like, but all these different investment strategies are illegal, because they don't really understand what it means because they were told, this is what you have to do. Well, me coming in, I just did the research, right, I went to all of the experts, just like we would have done in the military, I went to the attorneys, I went to the property managers, I went to the brokers in charge, I went to the real estate commission, and I found the answers, and then found that nice little, I like to call it the gray line, right of where I couldn't walk and navigate and and keeping everything legal. But finding those solutions to really start to scale, not only the business, but the investment portfolio as well. That's very interesting, because I've heard a lot about what you're referring to. And I don't want to butcher anything here. So I'd like you to explain a bit on this. But I understand the basics is you're basically buying contracts without actually buying the properties and flipping them quickly. But I'd like to get your take on that. Because it's you started there. Correct? Did I pick up on that? Yeah, correctly. So with very little money, the best place to start in real estate still would be wholesaling. Or do you think that's not going to happen anymore? Like, let's just put a pin in that right there? Is that the right or the wrong call in today's society with everyone else going after real estate the way they are? I love this question. I love this question, because so many people tend to think that there is an absolute answer to that, like, Yes, this is the best alternative or No, it's not the best alternative. And honestly, people are gonna hate this answer. But it really depends, right? I know, that's a super cliche thing. But we have to understand what is your situation? Right? Do you personally have time to make 100 calls, visit 100 properties, negotiate one on one, so forth and so on. And I know we just mentioned you know, you got a big family. I don't know if you have that type. So for you wholesaling may not be the right answer, because you don't have the time to commit to that very low conversion rate style of investing, like wholesale. Now the alternative to that is let's say, that's really where you want to start, and you don't personally have the time, then the solution to that is that you have to hire the people, you have to hire the people that do have the time that can make those calls that can get you directly to the appointment. And so now when we think of it that way, well, okay, well, that's going to cost more money. Now. Right. So now, do you have the money? If the answer is yes. Okay. And so I essentially look at everything in real estate as a resource triangle of sorts, I say, Do you have the time? Do you have the money? And do you have the experience? Wherever you find yourself lacking? You have to go out and find a solution for that? And then you need to choose the right investment strategy that kind of falls in line with that. That's a great answer, not the one I was hoping to. I was here hoping for that magic bullet. But yeah, that's the real answer. I like that. So. So let's assume someone has the time and not the money. And let's say, I mean, can you start with just time and no money and experience or you really need to have two out of the three to have any real success here, I believe that you have to have two out of the three, but the two out of the three do not have to come from you on. And so if you have nothing but time you can go and find the experience and you go and find the money. Okay, okay. And honestly, for those who have time and that are really trying to Penny pinch, I would say wholesaling would probably be the best way, or potentially doing something along the lines of fix and flips or something where you can generate a large lump sums of capital, and you can use other people's experience and other people's money. You don't have to have 100% of the deal to start making some real money out there. Okay, that's, that's very awesome. Honestly, I love that answer. Because I think we got to move on past it. Let's just let's do one thing real fast. You said you found the gray area, we can't dive into everything. What's one piece of advice someone is gonna get into wholesale you want to give before we move on? Because you just got this wasn't even part of the podcast. And this just I love this that we're on this right now. Yeah, no worries. This is the one piece of advice that I would say, whatever you can imagine, in your mind, can be done legally. And what I mean by that is if you said, Hey, I have no money, I'd rather acquire this property right now when it deeded over to me, but I pay you just a small amount for the next 30 years. And then I own it free and clear after that. That's called seller financing. Right to some people that doesn't, you know, it may sound like oh, no, that's not possible. Another example would be, hey, I actually want you to keep the mortgage in your name, but I want to own the property myself and and I will rent it to somebody else. So I never came out of pocket anything and I get to keep the cash flow. That's called subject to or deed in lieu of. So if you can become very creative, put it on paper. Now go find an expert to explain to you how to do that legally in real estate. I really want to move on but I got to ask you this question here. What type of person is willing do that if you're the homeowner, what is the reasoning? You would be willing to do something like that to help someone else out that you don't know? Yeah. So remember to be successful in anything really got to be a problem solver. So when you're doing this door knocking, and you're talking to the sellers, if a seller tells you, hey, I'm over my head right now, my mortgage is $100,000. But if I sold this property right now, on the open market, I may only get $50,000. I don't have the money to sell it. I live out of state, I can't do nothing with this property. I don't want to talk to a manager, I need you to handle this for me. Light bulbs are going off in my mind, hey, let me just take over the property, keep the mortgage in your name, I'll pay it give me about five years, and I'll take care of it. It'll be out of your name. All right, that makes a lot of sense. So you said you got serious and you started to get license and everything else? How many properties did you have before you got serious? I only had the one door from 2014 Before I started getting serious in 2017. So someone now that has some experience? Let's get past just the amateurs now they have maybe a rental property one or two, maybe they do an Airbnb, maybe they just like to flip something on the side, when do you think is the right time to get serious if they want to go any further or even if they just want to stay where they're at Is there a point that it makes sense to just protect themselves by getting licensed, my personal recommendation is you want to get licensed immediately. And the and the real reason to that is if you are already experienced in real estate investing, and you are serious access to the MLS alone, you know can pay for yourself when you get licensed. And now I can see all the properties that are on the market that are potentially off the market. Because remember, real estate agents aren't investors all the time. So a real estate agent only knows let me put the property on this specific platform. In addition to that as a real estate agent, let's say because there has been talk about different municipalities putting restrictions on wholesaling. And they said they may make it illegal may make it harder for you to do it. Well, if you're licensed now, you can just bypass that, because you can get a commission now. Also, if you're a licensed agent, you can legally refer another client to another realtor out of state and get paid a commission. So for example, I'm located in North Carolina, somebody calls me from Texas says Hey, Mike, I'm trying to buy a house, I find them a realtor in Texas, make the connection I am hands off now. And as soon as that property closes, I get a commission check. So if you're serious as an investor, even if you don't ever intend to represent somebody on a home purchase or sale, you can still send out referrals and start to make income from that and have access to another large pool of inventory or have new properties. Wow. So you talked a little bit about out of state there. How many properties do you have that are out of state verse in the state? I have? Ballpark doesn't be exact? 63? Yes. Sick about 63 doors, out of state out of the 130. So walk me through something like that? Do you really just buy it sight unseen? Just based off what you've seen pictures of Do you have somebody local or someone you pay to go out there to see it? Like how much of a risk is it buying something that you don't physically see. So I'm going to actually give you a quick example of a of a worst case and best case, because both have happened to me personally. Worst case is you walk in sight unseen, you have people walk it that you've so called trust, they take photos, and then they say that they're going to do the work and rent it out. And then lo and behold, a year later, none of the work has been done. Never been attendant there. They took your money and ran. That has happened to me. The best case scenario is the same situation happens on the beginning. They go in, they take the photos and they actually do the work, send you the proper invoices, send you photos of updated work, and they lease it out. And it really begins to cashflow. What I recommend is there's no way that you can handle all of the aspects of owning property while you're out of state. So you have to build a very credible team. And the way that you interview the team is probably going to be the most important you have to know what questions are most important to you. How can you verify those answers? Where can you get true reviews? Regardless if it's the Better Business Bureau if it's Google review, and you know, you got to be careful with Google reviews because you know, sometimes they can just get their friends to fill out some of those Google reviews. So you have to be diligent, yeah, you know, you have to be diligent in your in your interview process. But if you can find the right team, then it's very hands off. And sometimes it's the best return on your investment in some cases. That's crazy, like so the artwork behind me I'm in print on demand and if I have a bad product, you know, I got to eat it, but I can replace it pretty quick. Like a bad house sounds like such a nightmare. Like Is it as bad as it sounds in people's heads that aren't in real estate? Or is there always a backdoor and it's never like walk me through a bad case if you have a bad deal. How long have you stuck in that bad deal? How do you get out of it can one bad deal wipe someone out or they can never try this again? Or how do you basically keep going through a bad time. This is a great question. So if you are down to your last penny, and you invest everything you have into one deal, that one deal potentially can wipe you out. Okay? And the reason why is because if you, let's just say you put all your money in there, and all of a sudden, that money is gone, you can't chase it back legally, because the contractor ran away or whatever, you can't seem to track them down. And even if you wanted to sell the property, it will cost you money to even sell it. So now you're owning it, and you still have to pay your mortgage or your taxes, and you're now you're really struggling. That can't happen. My recommendation is that if you are that tightly stretched, you should not be in purchasing real estate for the long haul, you should be doing the wholesaling or something where you're not contractually obligated for those payments of the property. If it falls through. Okay, yeah, that's, that's a great point. I mean, you know, it's pretty common sense. And you just got to how much let's just let's just get dive into numbers. I really know everyone's situation is gonna be different here. But let's just make a hypothetical house 200,000. Let's just work off that. Is that too low? Like average house? Do we need bump it up even to half a million? Does that make more sense? Yeah, nowadays, you're gonna see the average home price is somewhere around that. 350,000. But that is also a home that you plan to occupy? Personally, I would say 200 to 250 might be reasonable for an investment property, depending on where you are, obviously. Yeah. Okay, let's say 250. We might be on the low end. But we can do easy math. And how much do you need for a downpayment? How much? If you want to buy a two and $50,000 house and try and make this something you can rent out? How much do you realistically need for how much can you get from a bank? Because you're a business? Maybe you can do it that? How do you get started something like this? And what do you need to do it? Excellent. So let's just talk purely investment properties. For the most case, in most cases, you're going to be able to receive a loan up to 80% loan to value. So for $250,000, you would be able to receive a loan for about 200,000, meaning that your downpayment requirement would be about $50,000. However, there's also going to be your legal fees associated with the closing, you got to pay the attorney, you have to do your title search, you have to do your property inspections, and the lender may actually have some fees associated with the loan process as well. So what I always recommend is to allocate 5% of the total purchase price to additional funds that you would need. So in this case, it would be a total of 25%. So at 250,000, at 25%, you would need roughly $62,500 Liquid before you could even consider purchasing this property. That's to say the property is in good condition, right? Because that's not saying that there's any repairs involved. That's not saying there's any furniture involved if you intended to Airbnb, so forth, and so on. So this is definitely a nice high barrier to entry. So you basically have to wholesale your way to pretty much six figures. And to get into this because you need enough to also do the repairs on those houses. And is Am I right on that? Or can you how do you do this with less than six figures? Really? Yeah, so you, that's the way I started actually was less than six figures. Because when I when I was coming out of the military, you know, we don't get paid that well as a service member. But I was able to find creative solutions as far as solving problems for sellers, distressed sellers, and able to acquire properties, almost pennies to $1. So to kind of go back to my previous example of the subject to or the deed in lieu of were a military couple just purchased a property with a VA loan, which is a 0% down, meaning they were maxed out on their loan to value on the property. So $100,000 is what it was worth their loan was $100,000. So if they went to try to sell it, they would actually need to bring 16 to $20,000 down. Well, they also got military orders to move to another state. So now they're like, oh, we have to move. I want to buy a new property. I don't want to rent this one. I can't sell this one because I don't have $20,000. What can I do? Well, I came to the rescue with the subject too. So I was able to acquire their entire property, the loan stayed in their name. And I only paid for that title transfer, which was about $2,000, a little bit less than $2,000. And now I owned a property worth $160,000. Right. And immediately, as soon as I owned it, I went to a property management company, because I didn't have the time they came in placed a tenant in there. And I was cash flowing roughly about $170 a month off of a $2,000 investment. And so that beautiful home was acquired for very little. And that's how I began to scale. That was the first one. And then I acquired many more that way. So I want to dive into this a little bit. And if I'm going too far, you just told me to stop or we'll just no worries here before. So the house was worth 160 But they sold it to you for 100. Why did they try and sell it for 160? I was using the 100,000 as an example the price was 160. So the loan amount was 160. Yes, and the property was worth about 160. And that's what I acquired it. Now I held on it for two years. yours. And luckily, the market appreciated because I wasn't able to pay down much principal. But when I sold it, I was actually able to sell it for closer to 190. And so I walked away with another profit on the sale as well. So you hire a property management company immediately. What is the fee for property management? Because I'm assuming you do you have this in house at this point? Or are you still using other companies to handle all of your real estate? I guess that's two questions. Let's just knock both out. Yeah, absolutely. So with property management, typically, you'll start off seeing about a 10% management fee, especially on the residential side, it can also be on the commercial side. And then as you scale that 10% starts to decrease. And so typically, you'll see a large apartment complex, having a management fee, somewhere around four to 6%. Total, right, some may be marketed as 2%. But the total fee will be somewhere around four to 6%. I personally still have an outsource currently, because my portfolio is so spread, I need a local experts boots on the ground, and each one of these areas to manage the properties. And so I still use third party. And the beautiful thing about that is, and I've been able to negotiate my management fee across across all states, but let's say it is 10%, that 10% is only on the income or the rent collected. So if they don't have a tenant in there, they're not getting paid, and I'm not paying them. Okay, it's almost like a double incentive. Yeah, for sure. Do you have any apartments? Or do you like residential only, I have apartments and I love apartments, I started off in residential space with a single family one to four, because I thought that that was just that's what you were supposed to do. And again, hindsight being 2020. Using the same skill sets, you can jump straight into apartments if you'd like. I personally like apartments because you have economies of scale, right? All these people are under one roof, you can use one management company get in there. If you have one repairman if the apartment is large enough, you can bring that repairman in on salary, you can negotiate different things such as your internet providers or utilities, you may be able to negotiate that for reduced costs, so forth and so on. And the second part about apartments I like is where single family homes are sold based on comparable sales, right? So how much of the house next to you sell for? How much of the one around the block. So for where as apartments, if they're, you know, fully functioning, they're actually valued on the income that they produce. So if you can produce more income, you can value it for more, sell it for more, so forth and so on. Yeah, it sounds kind of like the sweet spot. But I feel like you really want to have some experience and money before you go into that one. Because it sounds like you know, if it's a higher return, it's a higher risk more or less there. Do you recommend that or even if you have the money, like maybe you take the shot? Yeah, so it is a little bit a little bit higher risk versus reward. But when we talk about real estate, when we talk about higher risk versus reward, we're just talking about the monetary amount there, right. So if you put 5000 into a deal, your risk is, you know, $5,000, if you put in 100,000, then your risk is 100,000. So there's a little bit higher risk versus reward. But going back to, you know, the resource triangle I like to refer to, if you have time, you can go out and find the money and the experience, even on apartment complexes, right. So you can go out and you could be what they like to call a limited partner, or a passive investor, and a huge apartment deal, you're not the one sourcing the deal, you're not even operating the deal. And you get all of the benefits of owning that property, right. It's a prorated amount, but then you get to sit in on quarterly or monthly meetings from these big general partners and learn how they're doing it. And as you're sitting there making money owning actual real estate, and learning from the greats, then you can turn around and over time, you can start it on your own. That's an amazing piece of advice right there. I hope. I hope the listeners took advantage of that, because that sounds like an awesome way to get in, where they're actually going to help you out because you're helping them out. And it's not just you're hoping someone's gonna give you a leg up. No, you gotta you got to earn it here. So let's talk about risk just for little longer. We've already addressed parts of it, but you have 130 plus properties. Do you have each one of these in your own LLC? Or protection? Do you just have one big company that owns all of them? How do you mitigate your risk from property to property? Oh, I love this question. And if we need to slow it down a little bit, let me know because I kind of get carried away. Alright, so the way I like to look at it is so what the reason I say doors is because I may have 20 doors under one roof, right? And so I say 130 doors and they may be 30 properties, whatever the case may be, but the way I like to do it is I do separate them by property or buy roofs, okay. And then what I'll do is I'll say how much equity is in this series of properties. So I'm looking to always protect a certain amount of equity, well, that equity, or that property will have its own LLC, that LLC will be state specific. Okay. Now after they're all separated, if I need to continue to divide, let's say here in North Carolina have too much equity. I'll continue to separate them and create new LLCs if I have a new partnership for whatever reason, that'll be its own LLC and all Those LLC s will then be owned by a holding company in a state. And I'd say it's Wyoming for me, but you can use Nevada or somewhere else where the corporate veil is a little bit harder to pierce a little bit more protection for the landlord. And then that holding company is then owned by a revocable living trust. That's my series of legal protection as far as how I go in separating that, you know, and then I have my own personal assets that are completely severed and tied, so forth, and so on. So I like to balance out the risk that way for the majority. And then I also look at it from a financial standpoint, it's, like I mentioned earlier, if you put in $100,000, right, you have a risk of losing $100,000. So I try to minimize my capital contributions as much as possible through creative problem solving or negotiations. Wow. No, that's, that's amazing. Of course, this is not legal advice. But that's some pretty solid advice, you can take that to a licensed lawyer and see what they say. But that's a way someone very successful in this industry is doing it. So don't ignore that either. How often, if you have all your money protected, if you have the risk handled, you have a lot of properties. Let's talk about big repairs. So you buy a house and you're cashflow positive 150 200 bucks a month, and then all of a sudden, your H back goes out. And that's 510 grand. How do you handle these big repairs? If your cash flow is very small, and your goal on these properties is appreciation? You're going to sell it that way. But now you're hit with reality. And you don't have the option to wait for that big appreciation? How do you handle these big repairs? That's a great question. Because I actually got hit with this. And this was a hard lesson learned for me, I always recommend that you invest for cash flow, not appreciation for that exact reason. If you do not have reserves set aside for your big capital expenditures and capital expenditures will be your major items like your H HVAC, your roof, water heater, things of that nature. If you do not have reserves set aside for that, when the bill comes, it's going to hurt. All right. However, however, I will say this, there's always different things like home warranties, right now you have to be personally in this property, let's say let's say your house hacking it, you could have a home warranty where the H back goes out Now you simply just pay a deductible to have it replaced. And it may be $75 or $100. But it's not 5000. Right. The other option is you can actually finance a lot of these things. If your credit is good, then you may be able to finance an H fac or hold new replacement and then spread out the payments over three to five years, which again will make it more affordable. So there are some creative solutions to that. But my recommendation is before you go out and just buy a property for the intent of just buying a property and by buying a property. And now I'm talking strictly buy and hold right. This is a rental that you intend to have for a long time. Before you do that, make sure that you have some reserves set aside prior to even purchasing the property for those situations. Okay, would you consider reserves some sort of flat amount like five or 10% of the property value or is reserves as case by case and just going to kind of know what you're doing to decide how much you need. I personally like to say at least a minimum of 5000 10,000 would be nice. And the way I kind of this is just my own personal accounting method as long as my reserves are met, and that's five to 10,000 per door, right. But as long as that reserves is met, anything in excess of that can now be put back into the property or it could be owner distributions, if you'd like to kind of run from there. But you want to always have that reserve. As your property is getting bigger. That reserve probably needs to increase. And then it also is when you're thinking of reserves, it's in relation to the condition of the actual capital expenditure items, right. So if that H back is 20 years old, you need to have 5000 ready to go for that. And then another 5000 for anything else that might go because that H bank is right on the border. Right? Yeah. So just it's a little bit of art and science. Okay, I'm loving all this. I know, the listeners are just having a blast, because you are very experienced. And there's a lot of people out there on social media that talk about real estate, it's you know, they're all selling courses. Oh, very few people actually do it. And you're very established, very successful. And it's nice to talk somebody that actually understands what they're doing. Well, let's try and give the intermediate people here that are trying to get from let's say they have five, and they want to go higher, but they're their leverage pretty high. They don't really have enough for a bank. Was there ever a point that you kind of were just leveraged out yourself that you wanted to keep going? You didn't have it and you found some sort of gray area that got you more properties, more exposure, wherever you want it to keep going. And it worked out for you is there. I mean, this is not financial advice. But is there a way that you can recommend someone that wants to get past that plateau of five to 10 properties and really book it when they don't have the resources to do it currently? Absolutely. So once you're leveraged out, we have to remember the leverage really is the concern of the lenders. And when we talk about lenders, now we're talking banks and other institutional lenders that will take an application type of thing, but typically private money doesn't have that concern. And when I say private money, I'm talking friends and family, essentially from person to person. If you already have the experience, let's whatever five doors 10 doors, now you have a track record of success. Now, when you go out and you present a new property to let's just say it's a family member, you can say, hey, I have an opportunity for you to earn eight to 10% on your money, right through a proven system through a proven track record. Right? It's not asking them, if you can borrow money, it's providing them an opportunity to make money. And so raising private money was the catalyst for me to accelerate the growth of the portfolio, because I wasn't able to go to every lender put 20% down on every deal, I needed that private capital to really start to accelerate it from there. Another just quick tip is, I always do quarterly portfolio reviews. And what I mean by that is look at your entire assets from a 40,000 foot level, and see where the equity is see where the payments are going. See where the appreciation is that because you may be able to refinance some properties, you may be able to package all the properties together. And then you may be able to get a line of credit on all of the equity of your properties as well, which is another tool that you can use to kind of recycle into more investments, and so forth and so on. And there's a ton of ways to skin that cat. But it's always about just evaluating where you're at, and finding where you can kind of plug in the pieces. Excellent advice right there. I really appreciate that. I think our listeners do too. Let's talk for a minute about the current market, you know, with Zillow buying these random properties with just big money coming into the space, it seems like and started trying just buy up as much as they can. Is it harder compete now than it was a few years ago? Are there still ways that people don't want to do it? What's your take on the current market? Yes, it's definitely harder to compete nowadays. Because as you mentioned, you have Zillow, and a ton of other institutional investors, like if your audience is familiar with Blackstone, and all these other hedge funds, they're coming in. And now instead of buying commercial properties, they're buying single family homes, because that's where their return is at. So if you guys have been shopping recently, you see people are paying 50,000, over asking all cash in some of these places. It's insane. Yeah, so if you're going out and you're trying to just win offers, by simply offering the most money, you're going to lose nine times out of 10. And even if you do when your return on that property is going to be it's going to hurt, it's going to struggle a little bit. So the recommendation for all of our investor clients, as we're out there shopping for them, and helping them buy some properties is understanding whatever your key performance indicators, whatever your metric is, right? So if you say, Mike, I want cash on cash at 15%. Great, now we can focus on that instead of the overall purchase price instead of the overall you know, location, whatever the case is, because now we can structure and negotiate the terms of the deal to fit that metric. And that's honestly going to be the best approach to start finding more deals and winning more deals in the current market. Okay. So where do you see this market going? Because, you know, right now, it's kind of crazy. And Sandy, but a year from now, where do you see the market at in 1218 months? Do you see this continuing? Do you see something shifting from what's going on? Currently, I think it's going to shift slightly in more of a stabilized manner. So if you guys seen the appreciation skyrocketed, it has been an insanely hot market. But interest rates are now starting to rise a little bit, which simply means that everybody who could afford more homes can only now afford a little bit less, right because that interest rate is going to change their their monthly payment. So that's going to stabilize a little bit. But the the new wave of remote work conditions are now having people work. And I mean, they're working from anywhere, they're traveling to all these places, they're willing to spend money in a nice comfortable home because now that's their office, that's their everything. I feel like over the next 12 to 18, maybe even 24 months, that craze is still fresh to the US people. So we're still gonna be buying homes, but it's going to stabilize, we're not going to see as much appreciation as we have over the past 24 months. Well, Michael, this has been some incredible information. I really appreciate you taking the time. Where can our listeners get to know you more or find out a little more about you check up on social? Absolutely. So on Instagram, you guys can find me at Michael dot s dot glaspy You guys can check out my YouTube channel. I have a Michael Glasby CR e made easy. It's all about commercial real estate. You guys can go check out some content there. And then if you guys are interested in any of the real estate services, you guys can go to five pillars realty.com Fantastic. And I'll put all those links in the show notes. Michael, last question. We asked every guest What is your favorite caffeinated beverage to get through the day? I am coffee, black, no cream, no sugar type of guy out of a good old golf cup much. I mean, if it works for Greenbrae it works for us. That's awesome, man. Well, I really appreciate your time and we'll talk soon and also sounds like a plan. Thank you. Thanks for listening to the caffeinated hustle. Sponsored by caffeinated labs LLC. For more information or to connect with Ben, check us out online at caffeinated labs.io. Or email us at support at caffeinated labs.io. Be sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode, or give us a follow on social media by checking the links in the description. We'll see you next time.