Investing in Florida… Market trends and new construction opportunities.

So Jim, welcome back to the show.

Marco. Thanks for having me. Always good to be back.

Well, it’s great having you on. We’ve had some conversation before this recording about what we want to talk about and we thought we’d focus on Florida, the market trends in Florida, what’s going on in terms of real estate investing in Florida new construction, maybe new construction compared to newly refurbished properties and all kinds of good stuff. So you and I don’t really know what we’re gonna title this episode yet, but <laugh> we’re gonna figure.

We always come up with some really good ahas it seems, when you and I start brainstorming back and forth.

Yes. Always, always, always. Well, good. Well, listen, let’s let’s kind of jump in. I’m not even sure where to start, but I think the most broad question I could probably ask you or, or bring up is about market trends. Like what are market trends that are happening within the state of Florida? And yes, we are talking about a state, so feel free to break it down as granular as you like, city by city or market by market, but what’s going on in Florida?

Yeah, you know, Florida, again, we’re the third most populous state in, in the country. So there are a lot of markets in Florida, but to try to give a 20,000 foot overview is there are still a ton of population growth happening here. In fact, I saw a stat last week that 60% of all growth in the US is between Texas and Florida. Just those two states. Wow. Which is monstrous. And obviously that’s a great win to have at our back, and we’re really happy about that. However, you know, as you and I always talk about, price point is very important. It’s extremely important. So you hear about, you know, at least I have, there’s, there’s two things that I’ve heard about that I’m sure will hit him. We’ll hit on insurance. Oh, you can’t get insurance in Florida, which has not been the case for us.

And I’ll explain why. But also, man, I heard things are softening or, or prices are too high. And I would agree with that in certain markets. And, and as you know Marco, when, when we started doing this, gosh, we’ve been working together over 10 years I, I didn’t, I didn’t do refurbished homes or now new construction for the last 10 years. I didn’t do those in Miami. I didn’t do ’em in Orlando. I didn’t do ’em in Tampa. Not that those are bad markets, but we’re always about that affordability index. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, you know, what is the, the average price compared to the average family income. And those markets, you know, with all the attention Florida got through the pandemic, they had the most growth and now the numbers are really out of whack. So it had such a rise and it, it doesn’t fall in much, but we’re talking a few percent.

But the numbers just don’t work. I mean, for the model we want where we wanna get people into solid areas, solid properties and cash flow off the bat, that just doesn’t happen unless you’re putting a, a ridiculous amount down. So we’re seeing that in those bigger markets and we’re very glad as a builder, we never went there to build the land was too expensive, the numbers didn’t work. But the second tier markets, we’re still seeing quite quite a buzz, quite a push for needed inventory for needed, for needed building projects. Like you and I met a few months ago in Jacksonville for a coffee Jacksonville. We’re still seeing we just did a deal with, with with the military base there where they are have a waiting list for housing. So they’re actually doing a joint venture with us to guarantee rents for a number of their new cadets coming in, both in a lot of our duplexes and quads here. So those types of things in the second tier markets are continuing to happen. And I think we’re gonna continue to see growth in these second tier markets. From what I’ve seen, and I’ll talk about the backing of where we get this from with our Japanese partner in these second tier markets. Again, so it’s not what you necessarily heard of with Miami, Tampa, Florida, I mean Miami, Tampa, Orlando, but these second tier markets,

The problem with the what we’ll call first tier markets, the larger markets like Miami, Tampa and whatnot, is price appreciation has been so large and rapid for a number of years that it outpaced and outstripped the rental growth. So when you measure things in terms of rent to price or rent to value ratios, it just got lower and lower and lower. It started to become more like California, where it’s so low that you really can’t generate a good cap rate or a cash on cash return or even a fair cash flow without putting down a larger down payment, which then doesn’t make sense from an investment perspective. ’cause You can take that same investment capital and apply it to more profitable properties or, or more properties for that matter because you have more capital to invest as down payments on more rental property. So Exactly, and that’s a challenge with, you know, San Francisco, New York and all these other markets, they’re just overpriced. The affordability is too low and it doesn’t make sense financially from an investment perspective.

And, and we’ve seen that, you know, me being a former Californian, and I know you’re still there, although I’m still nudging you for free

As as you know.

But we just had a, a gentleman through the team. He had a townhouse in Cupertino, you know, where Apple’s headquarters is and he was looking to sell it in exchange with us. And we’ve been talking to one of your counselors, he was losing $2,600 a month on this condo. The numbers that we’re looking at, he’s gonna be able to 10 31 exchange forward into two duplexes here with us and go to a positive net of about $1,600. So you’re talking, I mean, a 36, 30 $700 a month swing. That’s a lot less risk to be carrying and moving the equity forward. And that’s where, look, there is a play as you and I have always talked about, of of, of just going for that appreciation. But then if you have to write the monthly checks while you’re waiting for it, and the more of those you have, that could be a very risky play. I’d rather see people, you know, delineate into a few properties that could still have growth, but also cashflow along the way. That’s something I know you and I have always agreed on.

Yep. Yeah. And I know you write about that and we’ll talk about that in your new book later in this episode. So for people who are listening in right now, stick with us to the end because Jim has made a very generous offer for those who are listening at least for the first, let’s call it 150 people or so. Okay, so we’re talking about market trends. You know, I don’t remember ever a time where Florida wasn’t experiencing positive population growth and for that matter, even positive job growth. So for as long as I can remember, Florida has always been a great state to be investing in, generally speaking. But again, you know, you wanna be more granular and be location specific. So the question becomes, you know, where are the best locations, if you wanna say that, quote unquote best locations that can be defined differently by different people. And we often get asked, you know, myself, my investment counselors, what are the best markets? What are the best locations to invest in the country? And we’re talking about Florida here today. So I’m gonna throw this question out to you. Where in your opinion, or based on data, are the best locations in Florida to invest, whether it’s new construction or otherwise?

I, again, going down from where we started, the 20,000 foot view, I don’t like the big boys. I like the second tier. The second tier makes sense. Like for example, Jacksonville, you and I have done properties in Jacksonville together for 14 years now. Jacksonville was always just under the radar from, from those other big boys that I named. And it has words that don’t go together. Marco, affordable, coastal city, those don’t normally go together. And also with a diverse economy. So Jacksonville has just, it’s made millionaires of many of our clients and it continues to be affordable. So I, I know I showed you that stat a couple of weeks ago. We have a lot of buyers come, you know, together through Salt Lake City. Right? Salt Lake City is a pretty area, but like we talked about in the bigger tier markets here in Florida, your median price of a home there is almost 600,000 now, where the median price in Jacksonville is just under 300.

It’s about 298. And the rents right now between Salt Lake and Jacksonville are about the same. So when you look at that, you say, where am I gonna get cashflow? Where is there more room for growth? That’s what I look for. That’s one of the reasons I like Jacksonville. It’s an affordable coastal city. It’s one of the lowest hurricane risk zones there is. There’s a very diverse economy. We have the most experience here. ’cause I’ve been investing since I left four to 20 years ago. I mean California 20 years ago there. So I like that because it’s been under the radar of the other big boys, but it has the same fundamentals. The other secondary areas I really like are the Ocala area in Southwest Florida. Now, when you look at different reports, like the shillings report in 2021, Fort Myers, the greater Fort Myers area was the fastest growing area in the nation, both in population and job growth.

That speaks volumes to me. There is a great lifestyle there. It still has an affordability index way below. You know, if you go to the other coast of Fort Lauderdale and Miami and that and it has a higher hurricane king risk zone, but still way lower than that southeast part of Florida where it’s the highest and we don’t build there. So those are the kind of the three areas that we’ve decided to focus on. And we’ve put our money where our mouth is. I mean, we bought over $20 million worth of land there, right? Going into the pandemic because we got some information on growth patterns. And those are the areas where I see that look, it comes down to those fundamental numbers, Marco, that we always talk about. I can still get you in at a very affordable price, in a good area and cash flow right off the bat. And that is absolutely key to me. And, and the housing needs continue to grow.

I always look at an investment in terms of tenants and tenant demand because you know, you can buy a property virtually anywhere, but if the tenant demand tenant demographics don’t line up with your investment goals, then it might be a a difficult or challenging investment. What can you say, do you have any comments about tenant demand? Tenant demographics? What’s going on in terms of trends with, you know, tenant demand?

Tenant demand is still strong here. Here’s what I’ve seen about tenant demand. It’s still strong. It is definitely not. And nor do I think we should ever expect it to be as strong as it was in 2020 and 2021. The reason why Marco, our average days on market for a rental property to occupy was about 12 days. That was just, just, that’s fast. So sometimes people say to me and say, oh, we heard tenancy is taking three times as long as it used to be. I said, well, that would be 45 days, which is about normal, right? So again, we’ve seen a slowdown in that, but still within a normal range. And so I feel really good about that. And what we know happened, I know you and I have had a few conversations with all the craziness with the commercial banks and what builders have gone through.

A lot of people pulled back on starting new projects that were needed here, you know, by, you know, all reports showing them needed inventory. We have, with the growth patterns happening, they stopped on these starts of larger project, commercial, residential, other small builders because the financing was difficult and they just stopped. So from what we’re seeing as we’re going through the inventory that’s coming on, there’s a lot of inventory that’s come on in the last six months that’s being worked through and stabilized. But what it’s looking like, because there’s been so few starts to what there was supposed to be over the last year, that by the end of this year, beginning of next year, we’re gonna have another inventory problem, which for us investors, obviously when there’s a little bit of an inventory problem, there’s usually an upward pressure on price and on rent in the right direction. So I can’t say that’s a bad thing but I think that it’s something to look for as well.

So I don’t know if this is kind of out of the scope of our conversation here. We’re not gonna mention any names, but you and I both know that over the last, let’s say two years, there’s been some issues with certain builders, not many, but one or two where there was intent, contracts taken, intent to build and land never was broken. Construction never happened, or lack thereof. You know, I don’t know if it’s worth talking about it all that much, but there have been, you know, builder issues in the past. We have many clients that have many contracts on those properties or to be built properties that never, you know, got completed. And you know, let’s just be clear, this is not a common or widespread problem, but it does happen. So I don’t know if you have any thoughts about that. You know, we’re obviously trying to help we as in us here at Nora and you know, in collaboration with you to try and help some of these people transition out of that situation and into something that is real that’s going to be built and something that they can actually own and rent.

Yeah. You know, do you have any thoughts or comments or <laugh> suggestions for people?

There’s, there’s a, i I do, it is always your right to ask for your deposit back. Mm-Hmm, <affirmative> always your right. So I always encourage, and as you know, I’ve, I’ve tried to personally help on some of these. It is always your right to ask for the builder to return your deposit contracts that I see definitely deem that absolute merit to ask for that back. So make sure if someone has a deposit from you from a builder, you ask for that back that is your right. And anything else that’s said is just not accurate. If they cannot build in a certain timeframe and I’d look in your contract, then there is an automatic demand that’s available to get a refund. And if they’re outside those guidelines of build time, then you can ask for that back. And I would highly recommend that. The second thing, which, which a lot of the times too, Marco, and again, I don’t know all the situations I’ve tried to help on a few, I don’t know if there was, there’s ever mal-intent, but there was a craziness.

None of us were, had ever seen, at least I’ve had people way older than me that were like my, my building partner’s father in his seventies who had never seen something like what we went through with those material price increases and the supply shortages. And I think all that played a part, but now we’re through that. So there was a time where, you know, and this is more from moving forward, there was a time where the only way, and we were included that, you know, we could do a new construction house free, is you put down a deposit and it’s gonna take about a year to build. You know, and that was, was standard. Now we’re on what’s called a continual build cycle. So you can put up a deposit, but your house is gonna be done in 30 days, 40 days if that’s what you want.

And so you don’t have to have this longer risk period of that in today’s times. I don’t think if you’re really looking to get your money moving, that that you, you have to, and a lot of people put it up, how long am I gonna wait? There are a few builders like us that, you know, they can deliver product now and obviously the risk is less. And some of these new constructions actually already have tenants in place. So you’re, you’re taking a whole risk factor out. So moving forward, you know, and obviously we work with a lot, there’s the counselors at Rado will be able to, to be able to touch more deeply on that. But backtracking to the, to the few builders that didn’t you are within your legal, moral and ethical rights to ask for your full deposit back if they have not delivered the product within a certain timeframe that was in your contract, no matter what is said. And that would be the pursuit of what I would do. And that’s within your right. So I think is, does that give some clarity and direction on that, Marco?

Yeah. And I just want to like reiterate that it’s not a very common problem, but it sucks when it happens.

Yes.

So yes, anyways, it is what it is. You know, like we’ve been trying to help, we don’t have a lot of leverage, but we’ve been trying to help those people who are under contract that are trying to get their deposit back or their house started or completed. But yeah, I know you deliver and that’s, you pointed out something that I just want to highlight. You’ve got properties that are in construction and or completed or near completion, the certificate of occupancy. Whereas some builders don’t start construction until they actually have a deposit or a contract. And so, you know, you’re in this long build cycle, it could be six months or more, you know, maybe as much as a year. And so you know, you’ve gotta keep in mind that if you are in that situation with new construction, you’re waiting a long time to get the property. Now granted, the value of that property could go up over the course of that six to 12 months. It could appreciate, even though it’s not completed. But that’s, you know, certainly not guaranteed. And there’s the additional risks of waiting out for the builder to start and finish this property.

Yeah, yeah. And, and a lot of the times too, some builders, and this was a bank requirement before we you know, had this partnership acquisition with Sumitomo, which I can talk about, the banks required this, the, the banks would say, okay, we’ll give you the money to build this house, but we need to, you need to get a good qualified buyer here with the deposit. And so that was a requirement. We have known none of those requirements, our building company because and again, this is a good question. Is your, is your builder financially viable? You know, we’re, we’re one of few builders after the acquisition with the, with Sumitomo. I told you Marco, we paid off all of our bank debt. We’re one of few builders of our side. We have zero bank debt which gives us a very strong balance sheet.

That allows us, first of all to build with a lot more speed and a lot more economic mm-Hmm. <Affirmative> ability, you know, for pricing and for higher quality. It also allows us, which a lot of your clients are taking advantage of, we’re able to pre-buy mortgages. We’ve qualified now and not all builders will for builder forward commitments where we can commit to buy large, large trenches of money and pass that mortgage savings onto the, to the buyers. So, you know, we’ve closed several with narta over the last few months and your people are locking in because we’re buying down the mortgages averaging about 4.75%. And on a duplex or a quad, if you went to a normal mortgage bank, you’re talking probably two and a half to three points higher. So that’s an important thing that a strong builder can also bring. They can sometimes bring their own in-house financing like we’re doing. And that obviously, you know, buying a duplex at, at seven and a quarter compared to 4.75% is the difference between negative cash flow and positive cash flow.

Yeah, that’s, that’s a, that’s a great rate and that’s a huge difference. I mean, whatever you did was fantastic. I don’t know how many builders actually do that or can do that, but that’s very attractive from a financing perspective. And I assume those are 30 year fixed rate mortgages.

We have a 30 year fixed. Yeah. We also have a 30 year and 10 year fixed. So no short term, we don’t do any like two or three year adjustables. But we have a 10 year fixed and a 30 year fixed, but both are 30 year and

Speaker 2 ([spp-timestamp time=”19:16″]):

Wow. Impressive. So on the insurance side, I don’t know if you wanna talk about this. I know that Florida always has concerns and issues in and out, up and down with insurance. Sometimes, you know, insurance options are not available. Sometimes they are, sometimes they get pretty aggressive and expensive. What is going on with insurance <laugh>? It’s crazy.

Yeah, it’s, and again, insurance is such, remember, insurance companies are about risk. So certain properties they analyze that have more risk and others to have less risk. And that’s based what your premium’s gonna be. The bottom line here is, and this is something you have to understand about Florida, if you buy a house that’s 2004 or newer, the odds of your insurance rate being much cheaper are very high. And the reason is 2004, hurricane Charlie hit Punta Gorda area, devastated it. My father’s cousin was living there, and the government here changed the rules. They said, that’s it. No more building at two or three feet above sea level. You gotta build it 13, 14 feet above sea level. So you gotta bring in a lot of dirt, which we grumbled about. But glad we did after well we did through the last hurricane.

And then stronger structural design, stronger fasteners. And it’s worked. You know, that last big hurricane that went through southwest Florida, we were building both in Fort Myers and Punta Gorda. You know, you have clients with properties there. The eye of the storm, which was a oddly strong storm, went right over. We had almost no damage. The only damage we had out 278 projects there. It was, we had four houses where the freestanding walls had been put up and not the roof tied on. So they fell over in the wind, but we had no flooding. And so when you perform like that through storms and such, you know, you see the stuff on the news, the devastation it did, it’s normally properties that were built. ’cause The worst thing for hurricanes is flooding. And when they were built at two feet above sea level, that’s the problem.

And so, you know, so for example, you where we, where you and I met for coffee, my house is not far away. I’m one off the ocean here. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, small barrier island, 10 houses wide. My house would be three times the size of like a few doors down a little 1960 house block home. And their insurance is seven times the amount of mine. Wow. Why? Because mine was built in 2004 and theirs was built in 1957. It’s just an old small block home. So the, they, they see it as more of a risk. And so that’s the thing with insurance right now the, the insurance carrier we use actually has dropped rates some since the beginning of the year because we’ve performed so well. And that’s a benefit of new construction. You have to go to today’s higher standards. The insurance companies see that as less of a risk. And so, so that’s, that is a huge plus for your cashflow. And I owe Don, I owe, I own older homes. The insurance is higher and I just do it into my numbers. But a nice thing if you’re buying new construction is all of these rumors you hear, first of all, I can’t get insurance or second of all, the insurance is expensive in Florida, when you look at the real numbers, it’s just not true.

You know, I’m thinking I could probably create an entire podcast episode on the topic of new construction rental properties versus newly refurbished existing inventory rental properties. And I don’t want to maybe deep dive into that today. That’s another topic and probably for another day. But is this something you want to touch on? I mean, you used to be heavily into the newly refurbished resale inventory space and then you transitioned to new construction, which, you know, I happen to like, yeah. But I always believe that there are pros and cons to both. But if we look at it within the context of Florida and maybe even within the markets that you’re involved in, how would you compare or contrast newly refurbished homes versus new construction homes?

Yeah, well, and so remember I’m gonna give everyone a free copy of the new book, the Passive Income Playbook. This is my 25 year journey going from bulk refurbished to new construction. And a lot of that’s in here, Marco. But let me say this, in Florida especially, let’s focus on Florida.

Yeah, yeah. We’ll keep the context as Florida.

When, when we went from, from, and we did a lot of, and I own, I own older homes refurbished. However, what I saw was this, my average tendency on, on the older refurbished homes was about a year. My average tendency, and this is a few thousand properties versus a few thousand properties. When I give these comparisons, my average tendency on the old refurbished a little over a year, average tenancy time on a new construction, a little over three years. That was really interesting for me. Now that I’m able to build to, to my specifications, you know, where it’s aesthetically pleasing, but also more durable right from scratch without surprises, my turn costs went down about 70%. That was a big thing for us. Insurance, again, if we’re trying to cashflow properties, and now we’re, we’re, we’re getting into a higher price point, we gotta really be able to be smart on our numbers.

Not only interest rates on loans, but where’s insurance at? Like I just explained my insurance was lower. I also found that I could build in a little better areas. My, my philosophy now Marco, and it used to be different but I’d like for all the properties I own, I’ll walk down the street at eight o’clock on a Friday night without any concern. And that’s not for everyone, but that’s just something I had. And with the new construction, I could find these better areas to build where I could make the numbers work. And then for us, we wanted to scale. You know, we worked with you for years. We could never provide the amount of properties for ourselves or our investors. Had we gone the old refurbished model Mm-hmm, <affirmative>, you’re, you’re competing with other people. There’s always surprises. You can’t go to scale on supplies and on on bigger subcontractors. So for scalability, we could do that. And, and a lot of people you know, are looking for that longer term buy and hold with, with less e with more ease. And I just found the new construction, you just have to be less involved. And a lot of our investors are like, I wanna be less involved. I want benefit. Believe me, I wanna, I wanna, you know, hold, hold long term and, and create generational wealth, but I wanna be involved less. And the new construction allows them to be involved less.

I don’t know if this, how much truth there is in this. I don’t want to call it a myth, but so often I hear, and I mean I’ve seen numbers too, but so often I hear that newly refurbished homes in existing mature neighborhoods have better cap rates and cash flow better dollar for dollar compared to new construction homes that are typically more quote unquote expensive on a per square foot basis. Mm-Hmm.

<Affirmative>.

So, I mean, I’ve seen that to be true, but I haven’t done like, you know, a hundred side by side comparisons. How much truth is there in that.

You know, I think there’s absolutely some truth to it. From what I’ve seen, and again, I don’t have exact stats, but remember I did a few thousand of the refurbished, now we’ve built almost 10,000 new construction units. And what I’ve seen is, yes, off the bat, fundamentally the old refurbished homes can have that higher amount, but things start to change around year three.

If you’re looking, I call it the three year curse. And again, remember I own older homes too. It just seemed no matter what Marco I did, you know, 1955 home, I did new roof, new heating and cooling, new plumbing, updated kitchens, electric baths. By year three, I just know I need to budget for higher maintenance and repairs. It’s, it’s just the, just what, what happened. And with the new construction now being a decade in, we didn’t see that three year lever up with with that. Now it could be again, ’cause we built it from scratch, it’s a different building integrity. But that’s what I saw. So I do think the, the older refurbished homes can get you off on a quicker thing, but you need to, I look out more longer term, what’s gonna happen year 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 what’s gonna have better resell ability? They’re both a solid option to build wealth for you, but which one will have more involvement? Which one will go the steadier pace? For me, that’s a decision. And again, both ways can get you there. I haven’t really done a rehab in, I hung up my shoes completely about eight years ago. That’s how, how committed I was to this, to this new direction.

Okay, interesting. You know, that’s a good segue to talk a little bit about the type of product you’re building right now. What type of product and where you know, where you’re building it. I know you’re doing single family and duplex. I’m not sure how much you’re doing in terms of tryer fourplex, but kind of break down, you know, what it is you’re building as far as inventory.

Yeah, that’s, that’s our menu. Single family duplex and quads. And, and I think that’s an important part. A lot of people were doing build to rent, you know, building new construction rentals. Only do new only do single family. And we saw that as a big disservice. I mean, you know, in the fixer upper world, I was always looking for a great deal on a duplex or a triplex or a quad because I could get residential financing. You know, the rental yields would usually go up. They had, you know, great value in, in, in, in growth times and then held value in bad times. And, and so I loved them, but they were rare. You couldn’t, you know, you’ve been out in the markets searching, it’s rare to find duplexes in quads. And so we just made it part of our building recipe. And it’s a great combination where a lot of our clients will, will buy a portfolio mixture of them because single family homes are known to have the best equity growth.

But they can’t really keep and compete with the dollar for dollar rent returns on a quad. So we, we build a blend of all of them in all of our markets. And, and we, you know, go from you know, basic single family homes. Again, you know, less than 10% of all builds since the oh eight meltdown are for homes, 1400 square feet or less. So we build a lot of starter homes just under that. We’ll go up to 1800 square feet on our single families, but we really want to be in that workforce housing starter home because a lot of the national home builders, they have no interest. They’re large margin builders. They’ll flat out tell you that we’re low margin builders. We do volume and we do low margin, but we’d make up for in volume. And that’s why we stick to these more workforce housing starter ones. And this is a, a, a need where, you know, a lot of people would rather live in a nice neighborhood and half of a duplex when they can’t afford a single family then to move into a large apartment complex, if that makes sense.

So what did you say is the average size for a typical new construction single family home now? I know there was the time when people were wanting to build bigger and bigger homes and they started calling them McMansions. Yeah.

That’s, you know, our two probably most popular models are, are around 1350 and 1607. So, so you’re talking starter homes, but when you set ’em up and build ’em, unlike those older homes, remember you go in an older home and it was almost like the mouse maze. ’cause Yeah, there’s just so many walls, you know, open floor plans can do wonders, higher vaulted ceilings. So those, those 13 and a half square foot and the 1607 square foot are real popular models for us.

Yeah. Very cool. And what markets break down the markets again, that you’re building those in?

We build those in Jacksonville. We build those in Palm Coast. We build them in Ocala, we build ’em in Inverness, we build ’em in Citrus Springs. And then we’re in about seven markets in the greater Fort Myers area that we focus on doing all those, including Cape Coral pun, go Acres.

Yeah. Yeah, I love all those areas. I’ve, I’ve got some projects going on in the greater Fort Myers area right now. So well technically it’s in Cape Coral, just north of it. But but yeah, just, just huge growth going on there. It’s just a beautiful, beautiful area. Okay, well let’s take a minute. Talk about your book. Tell us about your book and what you’re willing to do.

You, your team is in it. You know, some of the case studies for clients we’ve worked with, you know, have obviously come from Norada. And it’s really just our journey. It’s our journey of how I started out doing bulk renovations on old homes and how I transitioned unexpectedly into the world of new construction and build to rent. And we also talk our whole thing of why did I go into real estate? I wanted to buy back my time and have a great family life. That was it, Marco. That was really my goal. Like we talked about traveling with our, our families last time we got together. And that’s important to me. I wanna be able to do that. But you, you know, my first model, honestly, of real estate, it, it almost bankrupt me, you know? ’cause I didn’t know what I was doing.

My second model, it made money when I was refurbishing a ton, but it bankrupt my time. And now this third model where I hit stride about 10 years ago with the build to rent the new construction, it’s when I really set pace on building my wealth, buying back my time. And that’s how we’ve made the most money for our investors with it. And so I had written a book before and our, our publisher said, you gotta write a book on this with your wife. So I’ve been told it’s, it’s an easy read, it’s a nice journey to follow. And it’s not just my journey. We weaved in a lot of our investors that, that you’ll know a few of them. And, and the journey they took. And, and really what we decided was we wanna go to landlord friendly states that have a high growth potential.

And, and my decision at, at my older age now, I hit 50 you know, this year the big five oh is, is I’ve learned over the last 25 years, Marco, if I can give any advice, is if you’re building a portfolio. My most productive wealth creative years have been when I’ve owned less property of better quality. That’s it. So I’m not looking for hundreds of properties like I used to own. I own a fraction of that now, but they’re of such a better quality and I’m making more cash flow and have more equity than I’ve ever had in my life. And I talk about this journey and kind of the principles and fundamentals and, and a couple of the guardrails that you might wanna do while you’re building. So, you know, we’ll make sure we get this out, however you wanna do it. For the first, I don’t know, whatever you think, 150 people, they contact their counselors a lot. The counselors have handed this book out a lot for, for a lot of the people we’re working with. But it really is just a personal journey of the last 25 years. And, you know, I know you shared some very similar bumps in the road as I did <laugh>.

Yeah, for sure. Well, I appreciate the offer and I’m sure a lot of people are very thrilled to hear about it. So yeah, I think the best thing to do is if you’re listening to this and you want to copy of the paperback version, Jim has been very generous in offering to mail a copy out to you. So just reach out to my team here. Just reach out to your investment counselor and if you don’t have an investment counselor, just contact us through the website. You can phone as well. But the form on the website is actually the fastest way. ’cause We can connect you with someone who’s available right away. And just let ’em know that you were listening to this podcast episode and you’re interested in a copy of Jim’s great book. I have a copy sitting on my bookshelf right over there. So but yeah, thank you Jim. I appreciate you, you know, making that generous offer and hopefully it’ll help to educate and inspire people to continue down the road of building a portfolio in real estate and creating some financial freedom and hopefully some you know, some time freedom.

Yeah, absolutely. It’s, it’s not an easy journey, but, but it’s a worthwhile one, that’s for sure.

It takes time and effort and, and certainly some energy. So. Well, Jim, any final comments or takeaways? Otherwise we’re just gonna wrap it up here today.

I think, I think we had a great discussion. Yeah. I’m still not sure what we call this podcast. Nope. But we got into some good ins and outs and side conversations, that’s for

Sure. I’ll figure out a title, we’ll make something work.

Sounds good.

Well thanks Jim, I appreciate you coming back on. I’ve been suffering with this cold and I think I made it through most of this this recording.

You did good. You did good. I didn’t even notice.

Yeah. Well, I appreciate it. Alright, well that’s it for today. So again, thank you for listening. If you have any questions about real estate investing, just shoot them over to me and my team. If you haven’t done so already, again, subscribe. It takes three seconds to click the button, help us spread the word about the show, visit us on iTunes, leave us a rating and review, and thanks for listening. We’ll see you guys all on our next episode.

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