Hello my friends, and welcome to another episode of Passive Real Estate Investing. I’m your host, Marco Santarelli. So I wanted to do another client spotlight here today. I think I’m gonna do a total of maybe four over the course of the last and coming up few months. But today I’ve got a relatively newer, let’s call him that real estate investor, Cameron Anderson. He goes by Cam and well, might as well just introduce him.
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Cam, welcome to the show.
Thanks for having Marco.
I figured I’d introduce you instead, instead of having you just waiting out there for me to talk about whatever I talk about <laugh>.
That works.
So you’re, you’re up in Idaho, right?
Correct. Yep. Out of Boise, Idaho.
All right, cool. And you’ve been a client of NORADA for a while now. I don’t know how long, maybe you can fill that in.
Yeah. Your market back to September of 2021. At least worth the first closing on our first property.
Nice. So before we get into that, tell us a little bit about you, you know, just volunteer, whatever you’d like. And then we’ll talk a little bit about your journey. I know everybody’s got a different reason to invest. What motivates them, their goals are different, you know, what got them started is different. Tell us a little bit about you and then we’ll kind of dive into your journey.
Yeah, absolutely. So background, I’m a firefighter by trade and my wife is a nurse, so pretty humble income backgrounds. And previous to being a firefighter was into agile design development industry at the product manager, director of product management, VP tech background. But kind of, I guess it’ll tie into more on the journey of how I got to getting into it. But did a, a switch of careers got into firefighting. No looking back. But as you can imagine, there’s a little bit of a income difference from firefighting to private sector in the tech world,right?
Yeah, for sure. What got you interested in real estate investing? It’s, it’s interesting when I talk to people even, you know, even friends, but I go to a, a function or a party and you, you know, the conversation comes up and it’s always interesting to hear what got people interested in real estate and investing more specifically. What was your story on that?
Yeah, so it, it started not too long after I’d switched careers. I went from something where income was good to a little bit more humble budgets and a career that I loved, enjoyed. I was going from 70 ish to 80 hours a week. I had global contractors under me. So sleep wasn’t a thing. I’d wake up at [spp-timestamp time=”2:00″] AM be working with my folks over in India, be working with folks over in Vietnam, whoever needed that, just cuz I knew that if I was sleeping then there’s five hours loss of productivity on their end. So I needed to help any roadblocks that would pop up. So it became pretty consuming weekends, even Sundays were a great a day where I called it a day for me to crush competition. I know they’re sleeping, I’m not, I’m gonna be working and getting ahead. And it, it was good from a business standpoint, but not from a family standpoint.
And I had my daughter, she, my oldest daughter, she was three at the time. It was a Sunday, I’m working, she’s, Hey dad, can you play with me? I’m like, ah, not now I’m working. And I kind of stopped. I’m like, wait, what did I just tell her? This is a, a weekend day day to be with my kid and hanging out. I was like, ah. And that just rubbed me wrong. I was like, I, I need to get my priorities straight. So I kind of switched gears from going after money and hunting aggressively for that and getting my priorities straight. And that’s eventually how it led me down to firefighting career warfare for passion, and I love it. And there’s no looking back. And then things are going well. If you know the Boise market, it’s a little it’s been in the news lately in terms of mm-hmm. <Affirmative>
Increase in appreciation of the homes wildly increasing. So yeah, back in 2011, my wife and I, year outta college, we got our first home, a starter home fully livable, more some aesthetics than we bought at 1600 square foot, single family style ranch house, three bed, two bath for $73,500. And we just sold one, one of our like investments, $3,000, put it down on it, everything, mortgage payments under $500 with insurance and taxes. So we could afford that. It was a great starter home. And we had just getting outta college, the, the basic jobs. And then we bought our next house in 2014. We negotiated down $35,000 just under 2000 square foot ranch house, three bed, two baths, 1990s built and all up to date. And that was for 190,000. And it’s the same house I’m in now. We haven’t done much to it, but the appreciation has gone up to just under $600,000 of current market value.
That’s crazy. That’s an unbelievable amount of appreciation in such a very short period of time.
So the, the market we’re in is kind of wild. I’m at the firehouse in, one of the guys was asking, he was like, Hey, you want your kids to live in Boise? I’m like, yeah, if they want to. It’s, it’s a great place. Love raising a family here. Really fall in love with it. And he was like, cool. Well, how are they gonna afford it? I was like, you know, that’s a good question, <laugh>. I’m thinking about what, boy, what is a starter house in, in Boise anymore? What is rent in Boise? It’s your complicated. And I’m like, gosh, could I, well I, there’s no way I could afford a, a home at Boise for ’em. So it really got me thinking. And then over with some friends, right, where the most brilliant ideas come out over scotch and cigars where the mine’s really working hard and getting creative.
And one of my friends was talking about Norada and mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. He had some properties, let’s see, he had four doors total at that time. He’s over 10 doors right now. And, and was talking about, I’m like, what? Well, how does that work? I’m like, you don’t wanna, what, how do you know, how do you manage if you have this property that’s not there? What kind of this the typical the hands-on? Well, man, man. And he is like, do you go and fly out to the companies that you buy stock in? Well, no, of course not. That’s silly. I was like, come on, I, I don’t do that with homes either. I pencil in the numbers and look at ’em. Okay, all right. So he gave me some information and guide me to Norada. And that’s, things started progressing from there. Getting the, the guide downloaded, the guide started listening to the podcast actively mm-hmm. <Affirmative>
Taking note. And there’s some really good fundamental episodes that helped me educate the basics. And then I was talking over with the wife and we’re kind of like, man, do we, do we want to do, I don’t know. I don’t know. But then after the market mm-hmm. <Affirmative> really accelerated over here. We started thinking like we could take advantage of this with all the equity built in the house. And then, so that’s ended up what we did. We got in in touch with Nate Hall. He was able to help guide us in the right direction, further educate and we started hunting for the properties and the management companies and ended up pulling the trigger using the equity out of our house for the capital to get us started. And now the bug has started <laugh>. And so we’ve got the apartment. Our first property was a, a five door apartment complex out in Pennsylvania.
Really happy with that one. Love our property management company down there. They’re fantastic. Again, that’s just part of the vetting process that Yeah. You guys Norada has with who you work with. Yeah. Which gives me a lot more of a comfort blanket, <laugh>, if you will, going in and, and buying one of these vetted network properties. And then, so we got our second property out in Ohio and just a single family residence. And, and that one is February, 2022 is our second property, our first one in September of 2021. And now it’s like, okay, our free capital’s gone. What’s the next step for us? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And so it’s back to the education phase, looking into OPM strategies to look outta the way, to put aside the nest egg if you will let that build up. And then little down the road, use that for the capital while still letting the cash flows come from the properties and appreciation and having their renters pay down the mortgage and build that equity for us to another option for refi outs as well.
That’s, that’s amazing. That’s great. You, you’re off to a good start. You’ve got two properties, one has five doors, so you’ve got a total of six doors in two different locations. And you’re looking, you got the bug after the first one, obviously, which is, yeah, <laugh> pretty typical by the way. It, it usually only takes one, one property, the first property to, to get the bug. Cuz once you’ve gone through one purchase, like you’ve closed, it’s under management, you’ve got the rental income coming in. It doesn’t take long to say, oh, that wasn’t very hard. You know, it, it might have been a little stressful, but it, it is somewhat enjoyable. And you can see the fruits of that labor. You know, the, you’ve got the cash flow. You, you can map out the equity gains that are gonna happen month to month and year to year. So, you know, you realize, yeah, I can do this and most people can. And now you just want to do it again and again and again because now you set some goals and it might be 10, 15 houses, whatever it is. Which actually leads me to, you know, another question here about goals. Like do you or did you and your wife actually set out to create some investment goals? Like, do you have a plan based on any goals of, of how many properties or doors you want to acquire? Anything like that?
Yeah, good question there. So the plan now, it was just, let’s get a property and, and just enjoy it. And then that one property, like you said, once you can see the fruits of your labor is you take that initial Gs, did I do this? Kind of, oh man, that’s a lot of money pulling the trigger. Oh boy. And you start seeing it and then seeing the numbers come through and you’re like, yes, this is great. This is all that anxiety’s gone. This is the right path that I want to keep pursuing. So my oldest daughter, she turns nine tomorrow. The goal is to try to have 10 doors before she’s in high school. It’s not necessarily aggressive goal, but something that I think we’re comfortable with in, in terms of not over-leveraging certain areas, we’re a little bit more of the risk adverse, if you will. And so it’s a, a steady goal for us that we could slowly incorporate in.
So what held you back? Was it just lack of knowledge, lack of education, what I call ignorance, not in a negative way? Or did you already think that Yeah, one day I’m going to be investing in real estate, I just don’t know when and I haven’t pulled the trigger.
Yeah. I put it as ignorance. I, I tell people that that’s how I refer to it as just ignorant to this as being an option. I didn’t think about that. I think what I used to have the perspective of real estate is you had to have a bucket of cash that you’ve saved up and put that down mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. And I’m like, boy, that’s just, that doesn’t seem feasible for me to be able to do that or that for it to make sense. You had to outright own it. And so I didn’t have a good understanding of how it worked and boy, what a risk and renters, geez, that seems what a pain never looked into any of the, the proformas. So it was ignorant to it. And so I’ve, I always dismissed, never had an idea that oh yeah, I’ll own properties for rental income. That was never a trajectory or a thought that I had in mind.
But just like anything, the education, it could, for me it’s any investment. It’s more of the education evaluate. So once I think of this could be an option, let me evaluate that, and it comes down to the numbers. And then if the numbers are good, execute mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. And so that’s what we did here. And sometimes the execute phase gets the little, the confidence, yeah, I got this. Yeah. Ooh, do I really wanna do this <laugh>, do I really wanna put my money in here? What’s my opportunity loss if I went investment A and it yields 120, but investment B was 150, well my opportunity loss was 30, but for here I really see this as being my best route to go.
Right. And if I heard you correctly, it sounded like you didn’t have a lot of, of liquid cash as down payments to invest it. Correct me if I’m wrong, you didn’t tell me this, but it sounded like you tapped into the equity in your principle residence for down payments.
Correct? Yeah, we didn’t have anything available in terms of like a nest egg. Again, switching to the firefighter career from the private sector, there’s a whole different restructuring and mm-hmm. <Affirmative> financial lifestyle. So there wasn’t <laugh> a lot built up in terms of a cushion or an investment. Any, any thing that I could pull, no liquidity available, no cash available to put down. So how that happened was with the market that we’re in is once our house, the appreciation was going wild. And so what we, we decided to do is take advantage of that and say there’s some equity in here that we could tap into. And so we did a cash out refi and use that refi money not to buy anything with. It was strictly to say, if we’re gonna do this, we’re gonna use the funds for investments. So whatever we take out, we need to recoup we need to get something out of it, not just mm-hmm <affirmative>, let’s buy a boat. It was something to go get value for. And and part of that too is with, with our kids thinking to the future, we’d like to have something to pass along with them that they could have. And so we use that to really start our business. It is a business now. Yeah. And that’s how we got started. So nurse firefighter, pretty humble. We were able to take the value we had in our current residence that we live in and use that to provide the down payments on our investments.
Good for you for building up the, you know, the, the courage to do that cuz a lot of people have a fear of tapping into the equity in their home thinking that, well, you know, I don’t wanna put that at risk. Well, I think the greater risk is the opportunity cost of not taking a advantage of that opportunity. You know, if the equity’s there, it may not be there tomorrow. You know, markets do cycle values go up and down, but you know, if you, if you can see it logically and not get lost in the emotion and take that equity and put it to work. Cause I call it dormant equity, you know, it’s, it’s there, you own it, but it’s not doing anything for you. You’re not leveraging it into, you know, more gains and more property, but when you pull it out, you’re not losing it. You’re moving it. And that’s what people don’t understand. You’re repurposing that equity, you pull it out and you move it into other properties elsewhere. Now you’re taking advantage of the benefits of those other properties in other markets using the equity that you still own, but you borrowed from your principal residence. And when you can do that, it, which is exactly what you did, it becomes very powerful and you’ll see that clearer and clearer as the years go by. Yeah. So all I can say is congratulations for, you know, <laugh> building the courage to do that.
Thank you. Yeah. It, it definitely did take that, it like talking with my wife, the initials like, oh no, that’s, no, that’s way too scary. That’s <laugh>. And it’s like, yeah, it, it is scary. It’s just like anything, if you were to start your own business you open up a restaurant. Although that would, I’d say would be more terrifying.
I think so.
So overhead <laugh> on something like that. Yeah. And getting into it and it’s really looking at the numbers and then having Nate there was, it, it was such a nice comfort blanket because he, he could help guide through and any questions I had, he was able to answer and, and help me out with anything that I had that I wasn’t sure of. And so kind of the education, the evaluation. Yeah. And then execute part was like, okay, we’re gonna do this. Yeah, we’re gonna do this. And going through And then when you first, when I first went through it, it was like, boy, what, what happened you that first month you’re just expecting, or at least for, I was like, oh man, something big’s gonna happen, something catastrophic. Right. But you have the insurance and we also had oh, for one of the episodes with Quin Koontz about inside and outside liability protection. Yeah. Just from being risk adverse, we end up opting to do that at the start. So now we have the protection set up. So I have LLC for each property that they have, and then a holding company. So anything from inside and outside liability, we have that just to help us sleep better at night mm-hmm. <Affirmative> and not run that. I know some people operate differently and that’s totally fine. It’s just for us to, to help us feel better. We went with that.
Well, yeah. No, that’s smart. That’s great. I mean that and, and, and it’s clear you’re educating yourself regardless of whether it’s my podcast, another podcast or, you know, books and whatnot. You’re educating yourself and you’re putting in into practice and that’s fantastic. So Kim as you know, you know, markets are important, you know, especially to us and investors often, especially new investors, don’t really know where to start. You know, they look at their backyard and it’s like, okay, it’s not gonna work here. The numbers don’t pencil out, so I have to look elsewhere. So how far do I look and where do I look? And you, you look at the United States and there’s like 500 plus metro areas and it’s like, okay, I’m lost. How did you pick the markets that you ultimately chose the two to invest in?
Yeah, that one. It’s a good question. Part of the, with, with neuro Nevada’s site, what helped me out is the market comparisons to originally look and see what’s available inventory. When I was purchasing back in into 2021, start of 2022, the rates are still ridiculously low, right? Sub historical. And at that time I thought that’s what made the most sense. Like, I need to get it for a low interest rate. Now I have a different perspective, I’ll touch on that in a little bit. But so I wanted to go in, but it is also kind of a comfort for me cuz that could help with the cash flows, my margins that I get on those cash flows. So for me, getting cash flows is pretty important. More so than the appreciation on the first one just to help build up reserves.
Cuz I’m like, this is the first one I wanna have reserve. If something major happens that needs to be taken care of, I wanna make sure I have something I could pull from. And so the cash flows is more important than the cap rate on the property. And so looking at those markets and, and talking with Nate, he helped guide me to where it is. And we had a, a fair amount of equity built in that we could put down the idea of apartment, an idea where I’d rather have single family residents only. But the idea of apartment really helped, again, with being a little bit risk adverse of saying, oh, if, if I have only three of the two or two of the three five units that are vacant, I’m still covering my overhead. And so that was a lot more like, oh, phew.
Versus just having single family residents to start with. And that being worried if I, if how I would cover that, but really having those reserves or setting aside something on, on the available capital I had for a reserve until I could build that up with the property itself would’ve been fine. But that’s what helped me get into taking advantage of the low interest rates and a bunch of doors for security looked at the apartment complex and through the network Nate helped pull and said, Hey, here, here’s the folks that we work with and the property management company, they’re, they’re excellent. And it, it looked like the one looking at the proforma, I was like, yeah, this, this seems awesome. And so having Nate help run the analysis much more thorough than mine, <laugh> was a another benefit to giving me to be able to end up pulling the trigger on that one. Yeah.
Very cool. So I wanna make a side note for those listening. You know, you’d mentioned Nate a couple times, your experience with Nate is the same experience anybody would have with any of our team of investment counselors. The methodology in the process is the same, you know, we all operate from the same playbook. So, so what you’re saying is true across the board. The other comment I wanna make just for clarity for those listening is, you know, you’re referring to your five unit residential property as an apartment, which is fine. You know, five units is kind of an odd duck number. You know, they don’t actually build properties with five units. It’s usually a fourplex which is just a, you know, another residential property with a fifth unit built at some point added on, you know, whether it’s an, an addition to the property or, you know, there’s a space in that property to turn it into, you know, a studio apartment.
But I, you know, I just bring that up because the people who are listening, you know, need to understand that you’re still buying residential property, whether it’s a one unit, two, three or four unit, four slash five, those are considered residential and you’re qualifying for residential financing, not commercial financing. So it still falls under the umbrella of conventional loans, you know, your Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac loans or even non what we call nine QM loans, which are, you know portfolio loans. All that stuff applies to what you’re buying and what you’re buying is all the stuff that, you know, we have available through our network. And there’s actually a lot more off the website than what we put and can put on our website. So the, the pipeline’s always much bigger than what we actually have listed on our website. Anyway, that’s just extra information just for clarity. But just to kind of close the loop on the question I asked about, you know, how did you choose a market? Were you being driven by price points in that market mm-hmm. Or were, was there some other compelling reason to choose the Ohio market and where was the other one? Sorry? Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania, yeah.
The price point was there. The neighborhood was a big one for me as well. Yeah. Being a firefighter, you get to see firsthand what an, a neighborhood, a b neighborhood in a c neighborhood looks like in those C neighborhoods. I’m like, boy, I, mm, that’s a lot of rehab that goes, has to go into those houses and turnover. So that, that steered me little away from most of the sea neighborhood. Yeah, good. But the, the price point getting started was something, again, just kind of dipping my toe in the water. I, I wasn’t ready for a new construction outta floor to say, and I was like, oh, it’s a little bit more for a single family. There definitely some great benefits to those. And so with where I was at price point wise and the market, if you just look at the market research, I’m like, this is a market I’m very comfortable with on the demographics of it. It, it helped me. So I think there’s a few markets that would’ve been very comfortable going with, with, with the price point. Ultimately helped guide my decision to Pennsylvania to start.
Yeah. Interesting. What about the properties? Was, was there something specific you were looking for or was it just kind of a, you stumbled upon it or was it a conversation that you were having with Nate and your, your spouse in terms of what you chose for a property?
Yeah, this one is one of the off website properties that came through. It just opened up this company was selling someone’s asset portfolio to get into a different segment of the industry. And so it had just popped up and it, it, it hit the check boxes in terms of we’re still getting the interest rate. We could get a bunch of doors at once, so if not all units are rented mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, we could still cover overhead to start building up. And the market was good, the location was good and the price was right for it. So it, for us, it became a, a comfortable buy and the property, which is another good one too. Nate’s like, Hey, don’t necessarily look at this of a property that you yourself would want to live in. But be something that you’re, you’re comfortable with moving forward to, to understand like renters would want to live in that year. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, and that was good because you look and there’s some spots and you’re like, oh boy. But it’s solid. It’s a good rental unit. It’s sturdy. It’s something that it makes nice for turnover to, if you need to do any changes or fixes to it.
Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. Yeah, I, you know, the example I use with that is this. If, you know, if you are a high income earner and you are, you know, are successful in your career and you happen to live in a, in a high end neighborhood with a big, big house, expensive house, that’s great for you and your family, but that will not be a good rental property. You know, even, even if whether it’s the one you’re living in or if it’s the same property in a similar neighborhood elsewhere, it’s just the numbers won’t pencil out. It’s just not practical to have like a 5,000 square foot home in an a plus neighborhood as a rental. So knowing that, you have to understand that you’re not gonna be investing in those same types of 5,000 square foot properties in other markets. You’re gonna have to look into areas that make sense, where people want to live, they’re attractive and they’re desirable and there’s, there’s, you know, a tenant base in a community built around that.
And so that could be a b a b plus an a minus neighborhood. It’s not your 5,000 square foot, you know, home in a, in a high end area. You could live there. You may not want to live, you know, in what you’re looking at as a rental property. It’s nothing bad. It’s just, it is what it is. It’s in an area where you’re serving the needs of the people and the demographic of people that are there. And so you have to kind of separate where you want to live and where you are going to live from, what you’re gonna be investing in. And that doesn’t mean that you should drop all the way down to c c minus type neighborhoods or even like d d class neighborhoods that are essentially war zones. You wouldn’t be investing there either. You just have to ha find what makes sense for you.
And for me personally, it’s generally speaking, b plus a minus neighborhoods. I find that to be the sweet spot. You know, where I get that, you know, appreciation, appreciation potential, good cash flow, reasonable cap rates. You know, that’s just my pick. They’re investors that stick to a class neighborhoods cuz they just want, they don’t care about the cash flow as much as they want the appreciation potential. There are investors who focus on C class neighborhoods because they want high cap rates and high cash flows. Mostly the high cap rates and cash on cash returns, but they don’t care about having strong appreciation. So you just kind of have to have what is your investment strategy and investment criteria defined, and then that drives your decisions. Yeah. But I think you did well, I mean they think you picked in in good areas and, you know, I was curious what, you know, how you chose those areas.
You know, honestly, a lot of investors don’t actually even have a criteria. They just kind of start where they feel it’s right or they get the advice from friends or advisors. Yeah. So, but yeah, you obviously had, you know, somebody or some people to lean on, including us to help drive that information. Exactly. And decision. Is there anything you, you want to add to the criteria in choosing your, your properties aside from what you talked about? Doesn’t sound like you had like a much of a list. It was like, okay, do the numbers, it sounds like, are the numbers attractive? I’m, I’m good with the market, the numbers makes, makes sense. And you know, let’s find the best one.
The numbers definitely the big one. Part of that numbers too is, is it a market that they have more people coming in versus leaving? Yep. Does it seem like it’s a sustainable market in terms of growth and is it a good rent market? I also like landlord favorable markets. Yeah. Just growing up near the Portland area, very un landlord favorable market. Just hearing some of those stories from some folks, you’re like, wow, that sounds brutal. Not that I’d ever want to execute that, but if, if the situation has to come where there’s a a spot and worst case scenario, someone has to get evicted, the markets in are very favorable and it doesn’t ruin anything that you put into that investment. It’s, it’s fairly minimal requirements or, or needs to get a bad tenant out or someone who’s not treating your property
Well. Yeah. So as we start to wrap things up here, I, you know, I always like to say that investing is a journey and it takes people, you know, most people from what I call financial frustration to financial freedom, you know, you, you stick stick, stick to the path you’ll get there. Just a few questions here. What, if any, was your biggest frustration before you got started investing in real estate? If you had one?
Oh and Marco, you mean for getting into it, the frustration, starting getting into it or
Related to anything? I mean, just as part of that journey, you know, you, you’re either thinking about it and you don’t know how to get started or maybe along the path, you know, whatever comes out, whatever comes to mind is your biggest frustration in that journey.
Oh, okay. Yeah. Being the availability of the education, I’d say is you have to hunt for it No for it. It’s not something that you’ll see in the traditional education system. No. Going through college, I had a finance background and I could say real estate investing was never something that was looked at as a focus, right. And as, yeah, the markets, the stocks and, and how to utilize that. It’s like, oh, okay, well I’ve, my portfolio on two homes is much larger than all my investment portfolios combined and my returns are significantly more <laugh> on these properties than is my investment portfolio. And so not knowing this before getting in is like, ah, man, if, if I had known, I think it’s frustrating looking back Yeah. Of how much this was. I’d have a different path getting into this or, or where I’d like to put my money towards.
Interesting.
Yeah.
So your frustration was really not knowing where, where to turn for financial education or even even knowing that it was there let alone, you know, that didn’t sound like you were on the hunt for that information to begin with.
Yeah. Looking for something and, and going towards more of, oh, and investments. The, the Roths setting up through employer provided going those routes. Yeah. And setting aside, setting aside, yeah. Deductions into that, doing the right thing, if you will, or the expected thing and, and now looking at what I have there to what I have now. Wow. I, year and a half, I’ve already significantly built a larger portfolio mm-hmm. <Affirmative> than my retirement assets I’ve had mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, I’m young in the workforce. I’ve only been out since I’d say 2010 in a professional capacity. Yeah. And portfolio I have for retirement is already bigger from the real estate side than it is on traditional methods.
Wow. That’s that’s awesome. Amazing. So what advice do you have for new investors that are just getting started?
Yeah, so for me, just from conversations with friends led me to an education source and happened to be neuro, the podcast is phenomenal. I use it when I’m at the gym. It’s, it’s what I listen to. It helps keep me informed and curious and there’ll be some things I’m like, Ooh, I wonder, or that might sound like a strategy. I want to go down. Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>, there’s some podcast like my sister-in-law it’s interesting, some people are like, geez, you can’t do that. You can’t do that. And then they see the success and they’re like, well how do I do that <laugh>? And so <laugh> don’t listen to the negative of the other people that maybe say you can’t do that because they don’t think they themselves could do it. Make your own in informed choices. So the podcast that really helped me from a fundamental standpoint are choosing the right neighborhood cash flow and rates of return.
That’s really for the defining the terms that are being used. Turnkey real estate investing, explain a great overview, 10 rules for successful real estate investing. Yeah. Those are the big ones that help me really go, okay, I’ve got enough information to know, but I definitely need to know more. Hmm. But it helps me understand how this could work. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> and got kind of that appetite and that spark of, I, I wanna explore this more to the educate and then I want to get one to evaluate phase of looking to actual investments before they execute. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> timing is another one too. I mentioned it earlier than space, getting back to it, but I wear a helmet for a living. So it’s <laugh> to be expected. When it first started it was like, oh, interest rates, this is really my, my time to buy and, and take it before this window closes and then it’s gonna be a bad time to buy.
I’ve definitely since changed my tune. I am trying to get creative on raising capital now cuz I really want to buy now. Even when interest rates are higher, they’re still historically pretty low mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, but the value’s gone down these properties. So if I could get in and buy ’em at a little bit of a discount, once that cycle repeats itself, those rates go down, equity goes up, all of a sudden now I have something I could pull out of this property and look to put it towards the next property. But the other part to remember is you’re not paying that interest rate necessarily. Your tenants are paying it for you. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So it might take down in your margins for your cash flows, but someone else is paying that. And if you could get it now and let the equity build, have them pay down that mortgage, get some cash flow or even a break even, you still have an investment that’s going to go and build up for you. Yeah. So it’s, don’t just wait till the interest rates are low. It’s, it’s a good time to buy now. Yeah.
Last quick question. You know it said that experience is the greatest teacher. If, if you look back at what you’ve done over the last, let’s say couple of years, would you have done anything differently?
I, I don’t know if necessarily I would’ve gone with the apartment to start out or if I would’ve just a house after house after house, single family residence until that capital is gone. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, the apartment’s a great option. It’s more of just looking at opportunity loss. So looking back over it now, what I know from a single family residence or, or my preferred for sure, but at that time in that comfort level, I went the apartment and it still has been excellent, but it’s, what could it have been if I had taken five doors, say in single family residence versus five doors in one unit? What does that look like? And preferably, I like my portfolio six doors right now to have been six single family residences versus two.
But I assume you’re still happy with the accomplishments you’ve made.
Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Okay. I mean, just over the year, one year of owning that apartment unit, just the natural rent increases in that market Yeah. Has already increased the cash flows monthly of over a thousand dollars just so nothing else. So now the margins are increasing just because of time and Yeah. Time and ownership of it.
Yep. Yep. And your equity’s growing and you have have the tax benefits to, to use towards your passive income right now.
Yes. Yeah. Those are, those are nothing to forget about either. Those tax benefits are quite phenomenal. Yeah.
Absolutely. Cool. Cam, I appreciate you coming on. Is there any last comments or anything you wanna share with our listeners as we close? Hmm.
I mean that’s such a big question.
Yeah. <Laugh> I’d say for anybody that’s maybe been in, in my situation where you’re, you’re educating yourself, you’re listening, you’re not sure Yeah. About it. I’d definitely recommend reaching out to one of the investment advisors, one of the counselors. If you’ve done some preliminary education, look at that next step. And, and evaluate. The numbers are phenomenal. The pro performers are good. And if you’re nervous, just cuz the emotions on it, but the logic is there might make sense to, to try one, pull a trigger. I know I was pretty nervous and I was like, man, if I’m, if I mess this one up, I don’t think my wife’s gonna be very happy. And that is a lot to be fearful of. Right. <Laugh>. And so it was but we did it and now it’s very happy. We did.
Yeah. Good for you. Well, once again, congratulations and just keep going. You’ve got momentum, so don’t lose steam. Just keep going.
<Laugh>. Thank you Marco. Thanks for having me on the show, real honor.
Yeah definitely. Well Cam, it was great having you on. Just stay put there. So that’s it for today. I hope you enjoyed today’s episode. If you haven’t downloaded The Ultimate Guide to Passive Real Estate Investing, you could do that on our website for free. Just put in your email address and and the away you go, you could do the same thing that Cam did here. Just start off with a free strategy session with one of our investment counselors. Again, just go to our website, fill in the form, and my team will get in touch with you pretty quick. Usually within 12 hours. And that is it for today. If you haven’t subscribed to the show, remember to do so. It takes you all of three seconds. Spread the word about the show with your friends and family. And that is it for today. Thank you for listening. We will see you all on our next episode.
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