Good evening everyone . This is Niki Adewale , host of the Acaba Home Financial Freedom Mastermind Group , and I am excited to be joining you on this Wednesday , just before December 1st . We are heading into the final month of the year and there's a lot of exciting things happening .
For one and please excuse the background noise , but for one we have interest rates lowering a bit .
I actually just hung up with a lender who said that the FHA rates just hit 6.5% again , which is it's not five , it's not four , it's not three , but it's much better than the seven and a half eight percent that we were looking at , you know , just a couple months ago . So we are shifting gears and moving into a more friendly environment .
So I'm excited about that piece . But tonight is going to be an open session . We look forward to having a couple individuals join just to talk about what you got going on and if you have any questions , comments , please feel free to jump into the chat and or to jump in via joining live .
We'll be happy to answer anything that you got and this is going to be an open session . I'm going to be coming on and off of mute because there's a little bit of background noise in here , but please feel free to drop any questions , comments into the chat and or join live for the discussion . There he goes , Leibon welcome .
Welcome welcome . How are you today ?
Super good , and please excuse me if I'm coming on and off mute . I got a little bit of background noise , so I'm trying to limit that piece , but good to see you again , eric . Welcome . I think this is the first time you're joining as a part of the Acaba home team . Eric , how good does it feel ? No , I'm playing , I'm playing .
It's good to have you on the team .
He's behind the scenes , behind the scenes .
Yeah , yeah , no , no . I just hung up , actually , with one of our preferred lenders and found out that interest rates truly are coming down a bit Literally .
Today FHA interest rates went back to 6.5% , which is not as good as 3% , right the 4% , 2% that we were seeing back in the day , right but it's much better than the 7.5% that we closed a couple of clients on a few months ago , and so 6.5 is moving in the right direction . We're still in the dead of winter , so I don't see it going up .
I see it only either staying the same or coming down a little bit more . So there may be some opportunity to get , even make a good deal even better by locking in some rates here as we head into deeper of the winter . But what do you guys got top of mind ? Leave on Eric , you got anything .
Well , I saw recently the TI news . That was very interesting . I actually looked into it and he started initially flipping and leave on , I think you froze . Oh , can you not hear me ?
And Eric , did you see that news as well ? Or leave on , you are back .
Can I be heard or we can hear you . Okay , awesome , yeah , no , Biggest news I saw was yeah , that I know specifically a portion of them are . I think like 23 of the units are being used to like hose house , homeless youth . So I kind of wanted to understand big picture .
I know the city just from a kind of real estate investing standpoint gives a lot of incentives and stuff in terms of stuff like that kind of how is the process that you go about getting something like that because you're doing something similar in terms of development in Louisville ?
Kind of how Is that process of getting across all the red tape going to the city , having the city agree to your plans , kind of how that process that TI underwent in something similar that to what you're going through in Louisville .
Kind of what were the biggest things you saw in terms of the development standpoint that you said , hey , okay , wow , we really had to convince the city to let us do this or we didn't actually really need to have a lot of pushback on this .
So kind of on your end you know he said that one of the good things of the city was able to help him and kind of wanted it were the developments that you were doing up in Louisville . Was that something more so people were looking for ? Did you have to kind of fight an uphill battle in terms of convincing people ?
So this is a great question and there's a lot of ways we can take this , so I'm going to break it down a little bit . So , first and foremost , it'd be awesome to have some star power like you know TI does in this city to move some things along .
I'm sure people in the office , when they saw his application come through , like hey , let's get this thing moved this is TI . You know like I might be able to get a picture with them . It wasn't so with us , right ? They weren't like , hey , me out of all , let's go get a picture with that guy . You know they're like who is that ? So so .
So to that point I would say , when you , when it came to the project that we're working on , there's two pieces to it . One is the self storage , the other is the townhomes .
The self storage , as you can imagine , the neighbors around the area got used to seeing their green landscape and so there was a lot of opposition , right , and we had to do a bunch of meetings where we went to community planning and like committee meetings where neighbors could come in and lodge their complaints and we had to send notices to all the neighbors and
neighborhood . We got , like it was getting to a point at one point this past summer not this year , but last year when people were almost knocking on the door of my partner because they knew where she lived right , because you know the notices go out and kind of she's , she's the person that's on point . So it was a little bit say risque at that point .
But once we got it fully approved for the storage , it's kind of quieted down . There's only been a couple mishaps of like hey , you know , are we going to be looking at the storage unit ? Are we going to have brick on this side ? What are we going to do to separate it to where all you see is bushes ?
So that piece was one that met a little more opposition . The townhomes is the complete opposite . Like they need this housing , right Like the city . There's like a Taco Bell that's going in there , which is a big thing for this smaller town .
There's a new community center that's coming in here and everybody's trying to move out there so they can get into the school district and get more land , and so they need the housing . And so you mentioned the project he's building , and he's building with helping the city in mind , with creating more affordable housing . We took a bit of the opposite route .
When you do the affordable housing piece , you do get funds from the government , which helps to make that building even quicker , but they do put some stipulations on you , right ?
So one of them , at least that we've seen in the past with some of the clients that we worked with , even here , is if they give you those credits , you can only rent it to people that are meeting X income threshold . Or you got to keep the unit at X price for you know , like a decade plus right , which is if the market goes up significantly .
You can't take advantage of that . And so where we're putting the townhomes , there are other apartment complexes . But those apartment complexes were built in the 1980s and they all took government funding and they're subsidized .
And so they have more dilapidated units , right , because they haven't maintained the upkeep and they're not able to push the rents to market rent . So they're keeping it under on purpose because they have to , right .
And so for us we're like , hey , we're not going to take any government funding , we're going to build the townhomes , we're going to put some nice amenities in there and we're going to take it up to market rent on the ones that we keep in rent and kind of boost it from there . So in a roundabout way , we didn't do the funding piece .
There are some benefits to that . It can help you get the building put up quicker , right , like we're going through a whole fundraising piece right now . It's a lot of money that's just flowing out . But yeah , we made a conscious decision not to take money from the government on this one .
So that way you could allow yourself the ability to . Hey , we can do whatever we want in pricing . We can do whatever we want on kind of sale . We don't have a specific amount of units that we have to do X and Y with , Okay .
Exactly because they put in some weird stipulations too . There was literally a deal we were helping a client that is based in California to try to purchase as a short-term rental . We put under contract , we're moving through due diligence , and then the attorneys come back and say , hey , the title is not clear , this was purchase under an Atlanta dream .
It's a land of dream property and , you know , for the next X number of years , only a owner occupant can actually purchase this house , and it has to be someone that doesn't make X amount of money , and so it's like , okay , that rules out our clients .
So we were able to back out of that deal because they didn't disclose that or they didn't know about it , right . But yeah , it put some weird stipulations on there where , if you wanted to sell it , you know down the road it may be more difficult .
I didn't know because I know in some instances , like France , the way it works on a consumer . I know down payment assistance sometimes will lock you into the house and you can't refinance . Because there were a couple of clients that had mentioned , hey , I did use down payment assistance .
But now because I kind of want to understand that from that point , like , if someone does use down payment assistance , is it kind of the same as that government where , hey , because you're using our money to help you , we're not going to allow you to make financial gain off of this property , so you have to be ?
Yes , in a lot of ways for some of that government assistance . Absolutely .
We actually just helped the client close the two days ago on a property where they were able to get into a program where it's for owner occupants and it's an amazing program at this point in time where interest rates where we're happy about a six and a half on an FHA they were able to lock in a three , nine , nine .
That program doesn't even it's not even available anymore . Right , it was available for like a month . They jumped on it and we closed it , but they were able to get a three , nine , nine interest rate with no PMI , right , but it's an owner occupant only .
That's one that the bank is keeping on their books and if that person decides to move out , they're going to have to either get it refinanced or you know something of that nature or sell it . Right , because they want an owner occupant in there .
That's why they're willing to give you that lower interest rate , similar to why we get lower interest rates to begin with . Right , if you're going to purchase a house that you're going to live in , it's going to be lower than the investment interest rate that you would purchase .
Yeah .
No , okay . And Eric , what about you , man , I know you're you're hot on the heels of this next investment search . Have you identified anything or found any winners ?
I found . I found two that I'm like looking at . One one , one I missed on , I just like someone else got the contract , the other ones opening , I was just trying to like underrated and figure out when to put an offer on it .
When you do your underwriting , are you doing like the full underwriting initially or are you doing more ? Like you know , lead by nice style was back at the napkin math and kind of moving forward . What do you typically do ?
So I guess normally I would do the more back of the napkin , but this one they sent over that she gave me the inspection to , had a early inspection report so I was just going through that to try to like fall apart with the actual repairs would be so I can give a better price for that .
What are we ? What is this going to be ? Another Airbnb ?
So this one in particular , yeah , would be another , I guess , like a house hack , live in the bottom , rent out the top . So good one about this one is every has the kitchen down like two separate kitchens , one in both units . What city is this in ?
Still Atlanta , east Point , east Point . Oh nice , nice Okay .
Yeah , no , they're doing a lot of expansion in this point .
I was just over there and they're doing so much , but allegedly I , because I know I told me about this . But I met a man in a coffee shop who is doing a big , huge , like 60 acre studio slash business complex In East Point and he's spending like so much money on just the like approval .
He was showing me and this really goes to show you don't know what anyone around you is doing , because I was literally at a random coffee shop , me $25 million deal and he like literally walked us through it and I asked him kind of the same question as me about you know , hey , does the city want this ? Are they giving you credit ?
He goes oh yeah , it's in an opportunity zone . They're giving us a lot of money because they need the growth for the area , because it's such a big development .
I don't know if you guys are familiar with Avalon in Alpharetta , but apparently he's like I want to do something like that where , but I also want to , because it's East Point , have a section just dedicated to movie studios and like he was like he wanted 60 square feet of just that .
So it's pretty interesting what's going on , because it's becoming more so the Hollywood of the East , as Ney calls it .
Dude , absolutely . I mean , I followed this thing on Instagram where it points out different movies that are being filmed . And I know right now Clint Eastwood is somewhere in Atlanta filming another movie at like 93 years old , which is crazy . That's great , it's nuts , and they're paying him crazy amounts for this . You know he can do it every once .
Eddie Murphy is filming what do you call Beverly Hills Cop 4 , right , I hope they don't ruin it because I like the first three and there's a bunch of other things that are happening here . So this really is the Hollywood of the East , because the city is giving so many tax credits to the film studios to continue to favor this over LA .
That's just a lot cheaper to film here . There's good , diverse talent . All in all , I like Atlanta , man . There's a lot of good prospects here and it's one of those spots where I'm excited for Eric to continue expanding his portfolio and leave out . I'm excited for you , man , like 2024 .
I'm hoping that you're putting some goals out there around buying some real estate too .
We are . We are , hopefully , like I said , we have been saving this whole time . We're going to get the first one , hopefully this coming year .
And yeah , no , I'm excited , I'm hoping to go down the same route as you , as you all , with the house hack , of course , you know the classic Like that's really a jumping start for most people , because it's really achievable for most people , because anyone can , you know , rent out and live in 800 square feet at the basement , like I already do up here , you
know . So , yeah , I'm excited for that , for sure .
And , honestly , what are some of the key to the ?
whole house , no , no go ahead .
Honestly , the key that whole house thing and I try to advise , like friends that are buying their first house , to go down that route is you don't want to , you want to do it before you get comfortable . That makes any sense .
Like if the first house you buy is a single family where it's just you , it's going to be hard for you to go back and say I'm going to live in a multi unit , right . But if the if this is your first house and you're willing to sacrifice a little bit , living in a small multifamily is not much different than living in an apartment .
The only difference is , hey , you own the place right .
And so it's like , ok , you go from that to I'm living in a small multifamily and then you know you do that a couple of times and then maybe it's like , hey , let me do a single with the inlaw suite and then , once you build up the equity with all these properties , you can go ahead and go get that dream house right .
But the longer you can delay that gratification and just put that money to work for you , the better .
Yeah , 100% , and kind of . I want to ask , because you know I've now said my investing goal for the year , we're going to get that first . What about you guys this year ? What are your investing goals ?
Eric , you want to take it ?
I guess I don't know , I haven't really Don't have a clear goal for the investment part . Actually , I think I more have like income goals . That's more , I think , what I want to work on for the next year . You know , I think like Investing , you know we definitely want to get better so you can get a higher return for that .
But if you just make more income , you know you have a lot more money to invest . I think , at least in the initial stages , and they'll be my focus for that .
That's true true , and I like the income piece right . I definitely have income goals . Literally . This is something I like to do . In December this year I started off a little bit earlier and I keep track of kind of like the goals and things that nature , so I can definitely share a few .
I do goals , whether it be health , whether it be relationship , whether it be spiritual , financial . I started getting back into tracking net worth again and if you guys need like a net worth calculator , highly recommend this .
Is something that you can plug in kind of all the different variables right and really see , okay , in this game of you know wealth , how am I doing ? And so when you look at Goal wise , some of the goals I have for 2024 Leabahn and Eric , you guys already know this right . So one for the team is to hit that 50 piece right .
We're looking to transact 50 million in real estate next year , which is crazy because the goal for the end of 2024 was to hit the 36 million mark .
But with the team members that we have on the Acapa home team and in the energy that we're bringing , I have no doubt that we're going to be able to hit this and exceed it in 2024 and so we're geared towards that .
One of the things we're trying to do with that piece is achieve the mega team award with exp , because that gives a lot more benefits to our overall team , right .
It lowers the splits to be exp in total to where we can cap a lot quicker and they start to , you know , favor us in different events and things that nature , and so it's going to overall help us with Opportunities and really allow the Acapa home team to take over . So that's a couple for the Acapa piece .
For the podcast , we want to bring on 20 unique guests , right , and so starting to line that piece up for next year and the Leabahn's got a couple ideas there as well . So excited about that . And then , when you shift into some of the more personal goals , I want to make sure that , no matter what each week , I'm working out five times a week , right .
So I'm keeping track of that , starting now because we already do the workouts . But there's some days where you're like man , I'm tired , like I just want to chill out , and so you got to make that day up , right .
So ideally you want to get the five days Monday through Friday , but if I don't , I'll make it up on a Saturday or Sunday but doing a run or something of that nature . And Then when you talk about the portfolio which is how we started off here before I went off on the soliloquy I want to add eight units to the ATL portfolio .
Right , louisville is going to take care of itself the storage units . We're going to be working to get those things leased up . The goal is to get it 90% leased up . Right , I've got some net worth goals . I want to double the net worth next year and there's a couple things that'll make sure that that can happen .
Right , a lot of it's going to be investing , but also the income piece that we're going to bring into Eric's point . And I got even weird goals like , hey , I don't want to eat past 8 pm Right , because that's that'll make you sluggish for getting up the next day and it also can lead to Some , like you know , issues and things that nature .
And then when you look at , like the short-term rental team , right With the management , the goal this year was to grow to 30 units . We didn't quite get there .
We got to 25 and so the goal next year is to get to that 30 and solidify right to really get 50% of those with mid-term rentals and and to reduce the personal day-to-day involvement by hiring more team members . We can get to 30 units , right . It allows economy to scale , to hire a couple more team members and be able to Essentially hire myself out , right .
So so , trying to do that on that piece so we can focus on the real estate . But I have goals across the board . Man , I think you've really got a . You got to map it out . You got to think through hey , what do you want your life to look like one year from now , next December , when we're looking back at 2024 ?
I'm writing down and then what I do is I print it out and I put it on top of my little computer station so I can see it each morning . Right , each morning takes , you know , two minutes to read through it and mark progress , like .
One of the goals in there was to read 12 books in the year physical books , right , not to count the audio books that I listen to constantly and so I just check mark every time one's done .
So I have a question how do you go about setting a goal that is achievable but not like Too low or too high ? How do you deter because you you kind of gone through and kind of all facets of life , you said , hey , I want to do X , I want to do Y .
How do you determine , hey , this is a goal I'm setting , this is a goal and this allows me to push myself , but it's also attainable , like we have a rule for . Is it kind of just a feel for you ?
yeah . So the the feel definitely comes into it a little bit , but what I look at is where you are right now , what you're doing right now and how can you get one step closer to your ideal life , right , so one of my goals previously set was , hey , by 2025 , I want to be able to walk away from the w2 . And then and that was a couple years ago right .
And then I started setting the income goals hey , how much do I actually need to make on a month-to-month basis to walk away ? And when we hit those goals was able to walk away .
And so , for example , if you were like , hey , you know , I want to Hit X amount of weight at the gym , right , you can look at , okay , what am I doing right now and what are some of the goals that I can set on a week-to-week basis where it's not a crazy jump you don't want to go from . Hey , uh , I'm 300 pounds too .
I want to get down to , you know , 110 Ripped with abs , things that nature . Maybe we set the goal at hey , I want to cut , you know , 10 pounds a month , right . And hey , I want to hit the gym three days a week , right , something like that to where it's like A goal that's achievable .
So we set the big goal , but , more importantly , you want to set monthly and weekly goals to where you can take one small action each day . That'll get you to that goal . Eric , you got any thoughts on that ?
No , no , nothing , nothing . That on that piece .
I think that's a good one , fair enough .
I did have one question I guess you kind of mentioned talking about before . I know you kind of hire a few virtual assistants . Now I was wondering like what do you , what do you currently use them to , like you know , outsource those tasks for ? And like , how did you go about choosing those tasks first , to be the ones to choose ?
Man . So it took me forever to jump on the virtual assistant kind of bandwagon and it took , you know , the late unfortunately late Marcus Mayfield to convince me that hey , it was needed right . And so so the first task that I outsourced was last year and it was the bookkeeping right .
So bookkeeping was one thing where I was like , hey , I've got to get this because it was all over the place , especially managing all the STRs and trying to get that , that piece going . And so I outsourced that first . And it was painful that first month and I think Desmond just went through this .
But that first month was like , all right , I got to , I got to tighten everything up , I've got to make sure each account has its own you know lane and nothing's getting mixed and all that stuff . So that was one .
The next piece that outsourced was kind of some personal assistant work and I guess , even taking a step back to answer the question fully , I look at what is taking the most time from me or where can I get more value , and I focus on that piece first and repetitive tasks .
So the bookkeeping piece was one where I'm like , hey , I'm going to move into a 1099 . I need to understand and have clean books so I can present it to my CPA and we can actually gain plan . If you present a CPA with unclean books , they can't help you , right .
But if you got clean , categorized , no words going Okay , hey , need we should cost aggregate , hey , need you should go buy a property like now ? Hey , we should . You know they can tell you what to do and help you kind of save on taxes . So that was one .
The other bookkeeper that I have is more of a personal assistant and he helps me at things like invoicing . Right , like you would not think that's a big deal , right , but when you're managing 25 properties in their short term rentals , there's stuff getting purchased every single day . I don't even know half the stuff , I just see the invoices come through .
I'm like , okay , you know because I've offset that to team members that hey , you're the one Purchasing the supplies and shipping it there , and then you email it to this VA , the receipt , and they're the ones uploading it so that the other VA can put it in bookkeeping and they're the ones sending out the invoices , and so that was a repetitive task that was
taken a lot of time . So they're able to take that even like inviting podcast guests on right and trying to coordinate schedules . I did it the first couple of times , recorded the loom , gave it to that same VA and now I just give them an email address .
They'll reach out , coordinate , get them scheduled and just send me an email like , hey , this is the date , and kind of go from there . So it's the task that take a good amount of time or take a lot of back and forth , that somebody else could do .
That doesn't require like a lot of extra mental energy and , for example , like the VA on our team , right , who's now handling our transactions ? That's a piece where our highest and best use is negotiating deals for our clients .
Our highest and best use is having conversations with our clients , conversations with the realtor , and trying to figure out how to piece together creative deals . Right , not working on the back end to collect the documents . Hey , we need signatures here . Like you know , we can have a virtual assistant .
Learn this whole process , send those documents out so that we can focus on the highest ROI on our time .
Yeah , thank you .
Sure Desmond . What is up , man ?
What's up , man ? How's it going ? Super good , are you having a whole meal ? Right now I'm having a whole meal right now . I feel bad because I'm eating out and I feel like I try to be a pinnacle of health .
Every time I see you , every time I see you , we're talking about this hard 75 and eating like an ice cream shake . I'm like , dude , what's going on ?
My mom always said do as I say , not as I do . So I'll say that here now .
Yeah , that's fair , that is fair . No , and are you jumping on ? Actually reminded me of something . So I had a conversation with a lender earlier today and there's a new 5% down low . I think we talked about it before . Right For small multis .
But what we're starting to see across the board and it's given me a little bit of a headache because we're supposed to have a closing tomorrow that I got to figure out is lenders are being a lot more , we'll say , scrupulous on hey , why are you moving over here ? Is this going to be a quote , unquote investment property ? Does this make sense ?
And you're having to do letters and all these things of explanation , especially if you're moving from like a single family over to a multi . And so it's going to take a little tweaking to get through that piece , especially in this first wave , to make sure it is what we think it is . But I would just be careful on that piece .
That 5% thing sounds amazing , but it seems like a lot of these lenders are really scrutinizing hey , why are you moving from this house to that ? Does it make sense ? Is this just going to be an investment , etc .
That's interesting because I , I guess , wonder , like , why do they like really care , right , assuming that you are actually going to be living in it ? Like why , what concern does that have to them if you're going to be paying the mortgage ?
It's literally like good , yeah , also , isn't it assumed if , like , let's see , friends , I'm buying a triplex of 5% , I'm not going to live in all three units ? Isn't it assumed that , hey , I'm two of those units , I'm going to be renting those out . I don't have 12 people in my family .
You might you know , but no , it is , it is assumed and they do . Let you count those other units as credits . The piece that you've probably all seen right that when you purchase houses is , let me ask you this Desmond and Eric , is the person that you purchased the house for still the same person servicing the loan , or has it been sold somewhere ?
Yeah , and probably like more than one time right in a year . And so that's the piece they're thinking about .
It's not them , it's the next person that buys it , and they want to be able to show a full file that says , hey , this is definitely somebody that's an owner , occupant , because when you have it kind of shaky a little bit and it's like questionable whether , hey , does that person live there or is this really an investment , it makes it harder to resell because ,
again , the reason that interest rates are higher and the reason you have to put more money down in investment is to protect the bank . Right , if it's an investment property and your personal property and you're in tough times , you would let your investment property go well before you let your personal property , and so that's the concern .
Still , it's like you're signing documents saying you're going to live there . I'm still trying to work through this piece . I think it's just this first wave of individuals going through this program , and the one that was supposed to close tomorrow is someone that we had under contract for this deal , like over a month ago .
Right , we just had it set up in a way where we would have time to submit on the 18th and now we're getting some pushback but we're trying a couple of different lenders . It's just a watch out , right , we'll see and I'll keep you posted , but this is the first one where it's like hey guys , what's going on ?
Yeah , that's good to know , and I'm curious to know , or I'm curious to see , I guess , if I'll get any pushback , especially given that I'm moving or at least I have on paper that I'm moving across the street into this other building that's also going to be a multifamily foreplac .
So they're like , oh like , like the view better from this side right , like the way the trees and the sun interact . I wanted to be over there , so hopefully .
Hey , man , I've already started to map it out in my head . You know , we're going from a one bedroom to a two bedroom , so we need more space . That's a good one . That was a reason for the move .
So we'll figure that piece out .
We're adapting , we're adapting , so we're going to do a little chat .
That's what it is . That's good to know .
Service animal , Anything else top of mind for anybody , and also this is an open session for anybody in the chat . Please feel free to drop any questions and or join live .
This is the last session before we hit December and Desmond , you didn't hear it earlier , but we were talking around goal setting and making sure that at this point next year you're able to look back and say , hey , I've accomplished a lot . Are you big in setting goals and do you write them down ? Do you have some strategies ?
around . That I do , and I've tried to kind of tone back at least the number of goals I set and have them be a bit better , be of better quality , than setting just a whole bunch of goals that I'm trying to hit .
But one goal that I really want to keep on with and like keep the momentum going with is at least buying one property a year and I was just listening to a podcast of a guy mentioning how that can at times be boring and , excuse me , seem very slow but at least keeping with that cadence and then speeding it up from there if I'm able to and if I think
that would be beneficial . But at least keeping it there and like , I guess , being I don't want to say complacent , but being comfortable with that pace .
If it does just happen to be that right , I think I will want to accelerate that as a bit more time goes on , but at least being comfortable and satisfied and consistent with that goal and not trying to do too much .
I think over the year we've talked about a lot of different strategies and a lot of different things you can do even just with real estate and then also throwing in things like Turro or I don't know day trading for the people that might be into that right , like it can be easy to get overwhelmed with like oh man , I'm going to go try this and like try that
. But I realized this year and realized firsthand , especially getting burned by the arbitrage a little bit that like hey , like you know , there is benefit in building a lot of skill in one thing or like going deep into one thing . So , yeah , trying to keep it simple as well , man , I'm a huge fan of that .
Literally , that's all I did . The first five years Five years of investing was small multifamily , not single family , not , you know , large multifamily . It was two to four unit properties , right , and the 12 plexiobot was literally three , four plexiobots that were next to each other , right , and kind of just mastered that skill before venturing into the STR and MCR .
You can see , over the past , you know , three years that's been a major focus Like all right , hey , how could we make this work , build a company around this and all this other stuff , right ? So I think if you're able to master something , it just allows you to move quicker . You know the numbers .
Like , it took you a bit of time to get this one up and running , right , but the next one I'm sure you're not going to spend two months doing the landscape before you have somebody in there visit .
You know you can do that simultaneously . It's going to be up , right ? Hopefully much faster than the first one , because now you know you understand , especially just after doing one , you understand okay , this is what people care about , this is what people don't care as much about , right ? So you can kind of pick and choose where you focus .
So , yes , won't spend two months on the landscaping , you're right .
Are we going to be doing our own ?
cleaning . No , that is long in the past , man , I don't think I'm not . I'm not built for it now . Yeah , definitely . Especially , I was at the laundry mat like three times a week , and just looking back on that it like makes me laugh .
I was scared to charge a cleaning fee , though is what it was Like I couldn't bring myself to like put the guests through that . I'm looking at the total like holy shit , like this is a lot . And now I'm thinking about like raising prices . I'm like man , like you know , like 170 a night . I don't know if that's the total amount . I know right .
Shake my head . Shake my head . Yeah , he's become that landlord . You know that type of guy , right . But I ain't gonna lie , I just raised , I just raised the prices on our Tenets to . So , hey , you know , any time I see their inflation going up in the news , I'm like , hey , now's the perfect time . Everybody understands .
Let me just go ahead and boost this a little bit . Yeah , no , no .
So when you do that increase .
So typically people aren't gonna question . People aren't gonna question , especially for a long-term rental .
People are gonna question three to five percent Right , because when you look at it like like one of the ones we just increased , it's one of the ones up in snailville , right , it was way well under rented and I had two options either go with a major increase to get it to market rate , which would probably make this tenant leave , and then I got to come in
and renovate that next unit , which is about 30k , and I was like , ah , I think I'm good right now . I just did two units , I don't want to do two more . Right , and so what I did was one of the tenants was renting it for 1450 , other one was for 1550 and I raised the 1550 to like 1650 right , and raise the 1450 like 1550 right , something like that .
Like a hundred dollars raised right . So from a tenant's eyes , if you're gonna go and pack up and move , that's a a lot of money to get all your stuff and kind of go find another spot put down all these funds .
It makes more sense to just sign on and then , for my benefit , both these leases were ending in the winter and so I gave two options either we do a standard one-year lease , where it ends in the winter again and it's a significant increase of like 300 dollars , right .
Or we do a 18 month lease , right , which gets me to next summer or 2025 , and we do the minimum increase . And so for me now we just keep rolling it in , right , and you get more time to get prepared for when you're gonna do that major Turnover and overhaul the other two units . Are you updated and up and running short-term rental ?
So we're good there , and it also gives you a little bit of consistency , right . So now I know , hey , we're locked in . I literally don't got to do a lease agreement until June of 25 , right , and at that point rents are gonna be up , market should be a little more stabilized and things that nature .
So I try to give options that are gonna be a win-win , and so for that situation , I don't got to worry about doing a turnover right , get to rack up another , you know , 35 or so K over that time period , and and for the tenants , they know that , hey , our rents not gonna go up for another year and a half .
We cannot hear you if you're talking , desmond .
Yeah , desmond , I lost you .
Shit sorry , I was just saying that's a good idea . I like that option giving like two choices and kind of letting them pick and like Both . You're okay with both way out . You know could boy out both of you guys is favorite , but it's nice giving them that choice . That's smart .
Absolutely , it makes it a little bit easier . It's always cool . You always want to give some type of choice , right , and I typically just want to make sure I can get it back in the summer , like with one of my first tenants that I had back in Louisville . We're able to sign a 24 month lease right With them with a similar method , you know .
But the main thing is making sure that your lease ends in the summer , because that's when the most people are out looking , right , people get out of school , families are out of school , things that nature . That's typically what other leases are up , and so that's when you have your best opportunity . But in the wintertime it's a bit tough , right ?
Only people moving are those that are going for work . It's cold I mean , today was like 29 degrees . Nobody wants to move in that and so , yeah , for a lot of reasons , I like getting it to the summer and this will do that . But , guys , anything else top of mind for today ?
Okay , well , hey , please get out there and set some goals for next year , and I look forward to seeing you next week , and , desmond , we look forward to seeing you today .
Let's do it , say all right y'all be .
Sir , be safe , I'll catch you .