97. Navigating Real Estate Ventures: Market Insights, Investment Triumphs, and Scaling Success in Atlanta's Property Landscape

We serve as a hub for connecting with fellow members during our sessions so you can share successes , ask questions and keep the momentum going .

It's crazy how quick this year is going by , but , again , one of the things that we stress within our group is setting goals and getting after it and not depending on tomorrow , because tomorrow never gets here and yesterday's gone forever . So you really got to focus on the now and what can you do today to move your goals along .

And so happy to be joining you on a Wednesday that we actually released our latest Acaba Home Market Update newsletter and so we're going to be having Naira Sanders from the Acaba Home team join here shortly and we're going to be able to kind of walk through some of the updates and the changes that have happened in the market .

We also sent this out to the group to kind of give you a preview of what we're going to discuss today . But , naira , how are you doing ?

And then I go into talking about what we love and what we dislike about real estate . And then also I did something new so I added a neighborhood spotlight . So basically I'm just touching on some of the areas in Atlanta and just giving it some recognition . So this month I did little five points . I go there all the time . I love it .

So I talked a little bit about the history and then some things to do . It's known to be like the hippie town of Atlanta . It has a lot of history to it , a lot of thrift stores and restaurants , so I put some recommendations in there too .

And then , to close off the newsletter , I did our client success story , where I talked about the client that we had helped overseas , in Japan . They actually invested in a property in Atlanta . So that was really exciting Be able to help people like all over the world invest . And yeah , and then I close it off with the contact information .

So all of our socials are on the last page . If you just click the little link , the icon , we have the YouTube , facebook , instagram and then our website , and then also I have a link the EventBite link to our very first E-Cobble Home Appreciation Event , which will be held March 22nd . So I'm really excited for that .

This is our first one , so you can get your tickets and it's free and you can bring a plus one , but we're just going to be making cocktails , chit chatting and , you know , having a good time connecting with everyone . So I'm excited for that and I hope to see a lot of people come out .

We don't have a location yet , right , we're still trying to , you know , weigh the factors . There's so many short term rentals that we could do it at that we manage and or own . And then also we've got a bunch of listings , and so we're trying to decide between , okay , what venue makes the most sense and what's going to be available around that time .

But if you go ahead and register per that link that's in Naira's newsletter , then we're going to be able to to kind of have you be alerted as soon as we drop the location . So I'm super excited for that .

Um , and just growing with the team , it's just , it's so much fun , it's such a blessing being on this team because , like , I've just learned so much and I'm just learning like every single day , but other than like work , um , I've just been doing like a little bit of traveling , have some trips lined up . So , yeah , that's about it . What about you ?

It's cool going out there and doing stuff on your own , but it's even funner when you can do it with a team and kind of celebrate wins together and I love seeing the growth across the board . So that's pretty incredible . Plus , we are tracking toward mega team and I got a call from our uh , our broker . Uh , we got a new broker . Her name is Jennifer .

You probably saw some emails going through . But long story short , we got a call this morning from the broker . Haven't told the team this year , I'll tell them on the next team meeting but uh , apparently for the month of January . Uh , for the month of January we were top 10 for teams in Georgia , which is pretty cool . Right For me , please .

So we got a personal call . I was like , hey , okay , I didn't know that , we were just head down trying to get after , but apparently we were top 10 for the teams in Georgia and so , hey , we hit the goals that we want to hit this year . I think we're going to finish minimum in the top 20 . But the goal is to take down that number one spot Eventually .

I just want to make sure that we're all kind of hitting on all cylinders . That's one thing I'm excited about .

Other piece when you start talking about different deals , man , it's fun working with clients and it gives you so many reps that now and you'll see this in your personal deals too when you start to work on your personal deals , you're not nervous or scared to go after things that may be a little bit outlandish .

For example , currently looking to buy another house , hack right , um , that we're actually going to kind of move into , um , because this home that I'm personally in has grown so much in value that we're looking to take that equity and move it .

And so , uh , I was looking at a house today that is still under construction and typically way back in the past , like many years ago , before I became a realtor , it's not one I would have went after , right Cause I'm like , okay , we got to wait till construction finishes , things that nature .

But because we've worked on other deals like this with clients before now there's no fear going in there , taking a look and putting that offer in and just extending all the timelines , right . So already got in my head kind of how we want to work this and , honestly , you can work out a sweetheart deal .

So this house that we're looking at is a little over a million , but it's a duplex with an inlaw suite , so essentially it's a triplex and , uh , we're working out a deal where we could potentially take it down right and have it to where , um , we would get the full amount toward closing , which is 6% , about 60K toward closing right , which would help us knock

it all the closing costs , knock down the interest rate .

We'd only put down 5% to purchase this , which would be about 50K , right , and then we'd have kind of all the rest of the funds in our account to furnish the place and get going from there to make it uh , two Airbnb's and then the unit that we live in and it's also pretty close proximity to the belt line , right .

So right now we're pretty close , about a mile away . This one will get us to less than half a mile from the one that they're building out , and so , yeah , it's pretty incredible .

That I use is because they invest themselves and so they know exactly hey , these are the laws that are utilized and what we use to kind of , you know , take advantage of different things , and they're able to do that for for me as well . So now it'll be good .

But long story short , I have to do it tonight because the other agent is leaving town tomorrow and they're going to be unreachable and due diligence ends tomorrow .

So it's like , okay , let's get this out so we can talk about it , figure this piece out and hopefully have this figured out before she boards that flight tomorrow morning and see if we can't make it happen . But on that investing front that we were talking about , when you talk about the first house , what do you look at a due from that standpoint ?

Are you looking to buy a pure investment or maybe a house hack ? Come on now . Nothing wrong with the Airbnb and house hack and the container home . I view that last piece , though , as that's like it's .

It's so when you talk about doing , it's not ground up because container home , but it kind of is because you got to put everything inside , and so when you look at like a house hack , I look at that as riding a bike with training wheels on it , like you have to live somewhere , right , it's better than paying rent and you're learning while you're on site .

So if there's anything that goes wrong , you're there feeding contractors to come like you're there , right . I look at buying a pure investment . As you know , now you're riding that bicycle with no training wheels and you're kind of growing from there .

And then I look at buying a small multi or doing a ground up build or a major rehab as like riding a motorcycle right , and that's where it's , hey , there's , there's really no restrictions on you , and so things you know accelerate quickly . So definitely a fan of the house hack slash . If you can buy , you know , a small investment , I'm all for it .

Absolutely , and I'm just dropping a message in the chat . Feel free to join via the join button and or ask any questions via chat .

This is an open session and Nyra just went through the new newsletter that we dropped , and so there's a lot of different pieces that were changed as far as the interest rate going down a little bit , as far as talking about highlighting certain neighborhoods , and so please feel free to join in , ask any questions of our resident expert and we'll get going from

there , no , no , and this is a good one , right ? So what I love about real estate is the fact that it gives you a lot of wealth over time , like . What I love is the statistics Back in the day , like 2014 , 2015 , when I was really looking into , hey , I'm going into the corporate world . How do I invest money ? I know nothing . I researched everything .

I researched stocks , I researched real estate , I researched , you know , insurance , things of that nature and what stood out about real estate is the fact that you can control a lot of it , right , like you can control what's tenant you put in there , you can control whether you want to have it updated , you can control which area that you want to buy in , and

it's highly leverageable , right ?

So , instead of having to put , you know , 100% of this fund into the stock and hoping that it goes up , right , and just hanging on not being able to control anything except for attending these , you know corporate meetings , with real estate , you can actually increase the value yourself and you can put down a fraction of the cost .

So , literally the first investment that I got , which was a triplex , out in Louisville , kentucky , I scraped together every dollar that I had .

I scraped the other about $5,000 , which back then is all you needed to buy a $200,000 house and I bought a triplex , lived in one unit , you rented the other two out and I essentially lived for free and it changed my life . Doing that allowed me to save about $1,100 per month .

Right that I was before paying till I got an apartment and I saved up for the next one and just kept doing it , and so I got comfortable to invest in other investments as well . So long-winded answer , but what I love about real estate is the fact that it's highly leverageable . It can really change your life and over time it only gets better .

What do you love about real estate ? Agreed , agree , and even adding onto that piece .

As you get to different levels within the real estate investing career , you can add leverage Right , like when you look at starting out , typically you start out managing your own properties , right , and so in Louisville I managed those three units and then I kept building , even when I moved to Boston , and I was able to build it up to about 15 units self-managing

before I started to go crazy . Right , I was like , hey , with the W2 and managing these and turnovers and stuff I literally don't have time to do anything else . And so I reached out to property . It starts to become a lot .

But then I reached out to property management and was able to get one situated and , long story short , once property management took over it was like , oh , this doesn't take any time for me anymore , just you know , a weekly or monthly meeting .

And so now I moved it and was able to get up to 30 units Right Pretty quickly , because now I just buy a unit and hand it over . And it was the same thing with , like , the short-term rentals out in the Metro Atlanta Right . When I first started I was like , oh man , this is amazing , let me build this thing up .

Then you get to a point where it's like , hey , I can't do this by myself and you start pulling in others . And then it becomes super fun , because now , for example , with our management company right , the max that I could personally manage solo was about five or six , right . And then it started to get to a point where I was missing messages .

But now we have 25 under management and we're taking three units live right now , and it's a lot easier because there's a team around it . So literally we got operations manager who set up all the cameras got me linked in .

So now I look at him like , ok , I got all the cameras there , has the locks getting installed , we've got the punch list getting taken care of Pictures coming next week , deep cleaning and before it was all a one-man shop , now it's a team thing , so it's highly leverageable . Long story short , real estate is . And see , we got a question in the chat .

Robby is asking how long do you typically wait to refinance ? For example , my rate is just under seven . What factors do you think about for when to refinance and when to wait for the rate to drop more ? Naira , did you want to start this or you want me to take this ? Ok ? So here goes how I look at it .

It's a simple math equation To do a refinance , it's going to cost you money , right ? So refinance is part of the close . So it's when you close in a house , there's closing costs . Same thing when you refinance , because you're doing another mortgage on the home , so there's closing costs .

And so , for easy numbers , let's say that your refinance is going to cost $1,000 . And , believe me , it's going to cost a lot more , but let's say it's going to cost about $1,000 . Right , the number and the way I look at it is how quickly can I recoup that $1,000 .

And so if it's going to save me $100 per month on my mortgage , then in 10 months I've recouped it and now I'm gaining $100 every single month . So that's a no-brainer for me If it's less than 12 months to repay that refinance with the savings done .

But if it's going to save me $10 , then it's going to take , you know , upwards of seven years before I recoup that . So at that point I may not refinance . And so when you look at actual percentages I know the percentage rate right now is about six and a half percent and you're just under seven it may not make sense .

When you actually look at the numbers , I would reach out to a mortgage professional and ask him hey , roughly what does it cost to refinance a mortgage ? And if it doesn't make sense I would not do it .

The one caveat to that is if the value of your home has gone up significantly , right , and you put down less than you know five percent like a buy it as a personal home , then it may make sense to refinance to remove the PMI , which is another cost that's built in there , if that makes any sense .

Hope that helped Any other questions from the chat and or Collins . Now , I think this would be kind of cool if you walk through just a little bit at a high level . You talked about it before , but the clients that we were able to help from Japan , do you mind sharing just a little bit about their story and kind of what they were looking to do ?

December , it was like right around Christmas that they closed . Yeah , and it was .

It was one that all the way up to the end we didn't even know if it was actually going to close , because we got thrown kind of a wrench right Like a couple of days before closing we thought , okay , they could just get signed with a notary over there and send the docs and everything's going to be good , because they're military , so there's notaries on base ,

but there's a specific law in Georgia where it has to be like a power of attorney thing , something somebody needs to be in person , basically for somebody who's overseas . And so , long story short , we had to have them FedEx , like a power of attorney from Japan , and it took like 10 days .

It literally arrived , like , I think , the day of the signing or like a couple of hours before their sister was signing and we were just moving by faith to kind of make it happen . So that was one of the wrenches . And then also that time difference was crazy .

I think it was like 13 hours and so we had a very tight window to actually talk to them and be like , okay , 7 , 8am , right , because that's right before they go to bed , or it'd be okay , let's hop on a zoom at like 10pm to make it happen .

But we figured it out , made it happen for them and they are off and running and you should see how that place looks . It looks actually pretty incredible . So they they've been , they've been rocking and rolling for the past couple of months . Come on now . Absolutely . Any other questions or comments from the chat , please feel free .

On a complete side note , while we're waiting for that , we're going to have a couple more guests joining in the near future .

Actually have a flipper who is super active right now I'm just working to know down what date makes the most sense , but it's somebody that we've closed a lot of deals with and he is going to be joining us just to talk about what he looks for from a flip standpoint and how he's built out his team , because he literally doesn't even see these properties really

anymore . It's just like all numbers on the spreadsheet and kind of just his team goes and takes care of it , which is incredible and an inspiring for those that are looking to get into flipping in the Metro of Atlanta . Yeah , we're trying to target March for it . We just don't have a date yet .

He was traveling a bit with the family , so he just got back in town connecting with him later this week , like I think , friday , and then we're going to see if we can't lock in a time that we can get him on to to talk about that piece , because I know we've had a kind of a focus on short term rentals , I want to say to start the year .

So it's good to shift a bit and get more long term rentals , more flippers and people that are doing different strategies as well . All right , now , are you got anything else ? All right , come on . Now we're going to cut this one a little bit short .

I hope that everybody has an awesome Wednesday and amazing start to your March , which is coming up literally in two days . So , guys , we are in the third month . Please , if you have not started getting after your goals , now is the time , but looking forward to continuing to see you guys on these weekly calls and now we're .

Thank you for joining us today to share about the market updates .