The Dealpen

The Power of Vertical Integration - Travis Howard from Travis Buys Homes

Avi Rasowsky Episode 7

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0:00 | 1:11:32

In episode 7 of The Dealpen, Avi Rasowsky interviews Travis Howard from Travis Buys Home, as he shares his extensive experience in the real estate investing industry, spanning over 25 years. He also discusses his journey from learning valuable lessons during the 07-08 financial crisis to adapting his business strategies post-2010.


Tune in to gain valuable insights into the real estate investing world, including tips on evaluating deals, managing properties, and building a successful business. 


TIMESTAMPS

[00:01:15] Real Estate Investing Background.

[00:06:59] Managing Rental Property Debt.

[00:08:23] Building Wealth Through Rental Properties.

[00:13:56] Full turkey investment properties.

[00:17:11] Real estate investment strategies.

[00:20:30] Dealing with difficult tenants.

[00:22:16] Property management car chase story.

[00:26:29] Real estate appreciation rates.

[00:30:33] Manufactured home price fluctuations.

[00:36:07] Investing in trailer parks.

[00:40:48] Characteristics of successful people.

[00:43:31] Real estate success journey.

[00:46:11] Starting a Real Estate Business.

[00:50:27] Partnerships and complementing weaknesses.

[00:51:37] Hiring for profitability.

[00:57:37] Using retirement accounts for investing.

[01:00:08] Investing in real estate for retirement.

[01:05:59] An amazing wholesale deal.

[01:08:32] Real estate industry insights.

[01:11:05] There are always more deals.


QUOTES

  • "A lot of people that try landlording, have a hard time with it because number one, the banks control them." - Avi Rasowsky
  • "Number one characteristic is anybody that grew up athletic, doing athletic sports, they are always the easiest and best to work with… I don't care if you're male, female, whatever pronoun you go by, whatever that may look like. Um, but most of the time, because you know how to win and lose, you felt that pain growing up. Um, that's normally the ones that go out here and just kill it, to be honest." - Travis Howard
  • "My biggest thing is I do not waste time. If somebody is going to kick tires, I don't do that. I need to know that they actually have a 1031. You're going to have to prove it to me that you're doing one." - Travis Howard



SOCIAL MEDIA LINKS


Avi Rasowsky

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/avirasowsky/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/avi.rasowsky

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/avi-rasowsky-b600a18/


Travis Howard

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/travisnofear/

Email: travisnofear@gmail.com



WEBSITE


Travis Buys Home: https://travisbuyshomes.com/



Welcome to The Deal Pen, a podcast that digs into the details of untold stories from crafty real estate investors. And now here's your host Avi Rosowski.

All right, Travis, we are live here with Travis Howard from Travis Buys Home. Travis, it's great to talk to you.

Avi Rasowsky

Good to be with you, man. I never get to see your face live, so this is different. I wish we could be across from one another, but this is perfect.

Travis Howard

Hey, I'll stop by one of these days to the office, but it's very good to chat with you as always. I think the very first time, if we can kind of set the stage for anybody listening, very first time we ever met was in front of a house in Gastonia because I used to wholesale you several deals, probably not as many as you would have liked and probably more than I should have. We'll talk about that. And I want to share for everybody listening, your background, if you could dive into it. Because you have a vast set of experiences in this crazy space we call real estate investing. Wherever you think is a good place to start, I want people to understand how you got into the business and how you built it over time. And we'll go from there.

Avi Rasowsky

Absolutely. Yeah. So I've been doing this full-time since 1999. So I've been doing this full-time for 25 years. It feels much longer from the 07, 08 days, but yeah. And what I've been doing is pretty much learning the entire time. I learned most of my lessons in the 07, 08 on how to do a business differently starting in 2010. But yeah, so I'll kind of give you I got educated in 99. I went and I paid a lot of money to get some education. I took classes. I also was mentored by a specific person out of Raleigh. Did a great job, learned a ton, started doing deals immediately once I started getting educated. So education was the biggest piece. And actually, I love the education so much. In 2003, because myself and my partner at the time, we were doing so well, they asked me to come on board and actually start training around the country. So it was pretty cool. And mentoring people one-on-ones with their business and their teams and helping them build out marketing and advertising and showing them how to do property management, how to buy and sell, how to do flips, how to do wholesale, pretty much anything under the sun. I did it because before I got into real estate, I graduated from college and I started doing insurance stocks and bonds and absolutely hated it from that perspective. I got into real estate and absolutely fell in love with it. It's the best thing that I've ever done. Again, I've learned lots of lessons over the years, but who doesn't? If you do a lot, you're going to fall a whole lot. You're going to skin up your knees, you're going to skin up your elbows, even your face. But that's how you learn the most. I've never made a lot of money if everything's going great. Whenever you do a lot of deals, like what we do every day and every week, every month, quarter, year, you're going to have good days and bad days.

Absolutely. So if I heard you correctly, it's almost like two chapters of your real estate investing life. You've got the 99 to 2010, and then the doing business differently from 2010 through where we're at now, which is 2024. Is that how you look at it as two phases?

Yeah, I do. Yeah, 100%. So I was in my learning phase, and also what not to do phase. I mean, still today, every day, I learn, don't do that again, whatever that may look like, or what it might cost me time or money. But yeah, so Up till pretty much 07, 08, I was, and you could buy everything completely different than how it is today. For those of you that are listening to this, that did it the same time as I did, I mean, I could get somebody to sign over a quick claim deed and have it refinanced the next day or within about 72 hours and pull the cash out of their house. That was back in the day, legally, of course. But after that, because I had so many properties and because there were so many things going on with the banking industry and you couldn't refinance. And if you did, it was going to be so expensive. You lost your cashflow in 2010. Um, cause I was able to sell off almost my entire inventory that I had in my portfolio, uh, by 2010. And then I gave what I had left to one of my business partners and I started from scratch in 2010 completely. Um, at that point I went in with a different mindset on passive and active income. OK, so my active income, I will carry debt. So I'd have someone like you, Avi, that you would lend me $300,000, and I'd go do a flip. And then I'd pay you back whatever the interest or as a partner, right, JV partner. But for the other side of it, the passive piece of it, and I've had people go, you're crazy. You can't grow fast. I don't care. That's the thing. I love to sleep. And whenever I sleep, I want to get my seven, eight hours and sleep well. And I've determined for me the best way to do that. And my partners are also on board because I did go through seven, eight and nine and many of them didn't. They listen to me and they also don't want to carry debt. Again, debt's good on my active, right? For flips, things like that. Even bigger commercial deals that I do, like trailer parks or apartments, I will have debt on that stuff, but I try to pay it down as quick as I can. But on the passive side for my rental portfolio, from that perspective and standpoint, I really don't want to have any debt. Even with offices, things like that, it's just, I just got a call the other day from one of my buddies I've known for over 20 years, and he went through 07 and 08, and he was freaking out. He's like, dude, I'm back exactly where I was in 08. I was like, what does that even mean? He's telling me, I'm over leveraged on some of these houses, and I just said, I don't get it, but okay, do what you need to do. of course, like we had to do in 08. But it wasn't setting in my brain. It's not that I don't understand what he's saying. It's just I can't believe that he did the same thing over again, which really surprised me. But it happens, right? I mean, he didn't learn from his past experience. And not to say that everything's hunky-dory in my life or my businesses, because we have so many things going on daily, that there's always something crazy happening or a lawsuit or whatever it is from a stupid tenant or a stupid tenant. They pay our mortgages, right? But we have to have them. Most of them are smart.

Yeah, most of them are smart. Some of them lose their brain cells every now and then, like the first of the month.

Correct. Exactly. So I chose that with me and my partners that we don't carry debt on anything. Okay. So that's what I've chosen. And it's nice to be able to have $100,000 house that's bringing in $1,000 to $1,200 a month free cash flow. So, you know, once you get, and I always, whenever I'm talking to folks, I always try to say, what, what's your nut that you month, your monthly nut that you have currently. So let's say that's five grand. Well, I would say, well, for every $100,000 that you can make actively, you can go buy a free and clear rental property. Well, because once you've made half a million dollars, which would be 500, you go buy them, fix them, and you'll be at 100, and you're bringing in 1,000 to 1,200, just think mentally how amazing that would feel to have all that cash flow coming in. Because previously, during the downturn, I had close to 50 houses in my portfolio, and I was bringing in a very small amount of cash that I actually netted out to put in my pocket. If I had an HVAC blow up on a house, my cash flow is gone. If you have truly $5,000, yes, if the AC goes out, you still have to have it, but you have that cash hopefully from those rentals and you don't have to go put in a credit card or dig into your pocket. Once you get to that certain point, then my goal was cover my nut. And then my next goal was once a year, I want my cash flow to buy a property free and clear purchase and rehab. And that was my goal. And then when I hit that, several years ago, I was like, oh my God, now this thing just keeps building. I work my active every day just to have another rental property, active to have another trailer park, active to buy another trailer. That's all that I think about and it keeps me focused so that I'm not dealing with all the crap minutiae that does not make us money.

So back, yeah, thank you for sharing that. Cause it's, it's probably eyeopening for many people that use banks all the time to buy property. You, you dealt with the situation, you know, pre 2008, where you were, sounds like leveraging probably too high. Like how, how much leverage did you have in your houses typically back in 06, 07, 08?

90 to 95%.

Okay. And, and now you're at zero. I mean, for the past, if you're at zero, so you, you went totally extreme opposite. But when you're borrowing money these days, it's really just for an active purpose, whether you're flipping, wholesaling, whatever it might be.

Correct. That is the only time. Double closings, whatever it might be. And honestly, most of the time I just do it internal for any funding. And then you lend to your other company and then it gets a percentage and blah, blah, blah. But what's great is that the people that lend to me with the security of the property, what happens is I always know I can make my payment because I have cash flow. I know that I can dwindle all the way down and say that my tenants don't pay to a certain amount. It's a very small amount, still pays my personal net, and also my investors back on a monthly, and it's a very small portion of the whole. Out of all those days, Robert Kiyosaki, the rat race. I've been out of the rat race for a long time. It feels really good. It's doable. But guys, you have to understand, it is a process. It's systems that you set up. But most importantly, it's doing the same things that are working daily to make the money, but you have to be consistent. It's a slow process. It isn't fast. I can go and get, I've got buddies of mine, partners of mine that have hundreds of millions of dollars, but I'm okay with not having $100 million. I don't need that to not be able to sleep. That's really what's happening. I love to make money, but I know where my threshold is also, and my risk tolerance.

Yeah. Your quality of sleep these days is certainly better than it used to be. It sounds like. Thank God. Amen. So another thing, so one thing you touched on for sure is the, um, not letting banks control your business. Obviously that sounds like a huge, a huge win right now. The other thing that I want to get into with you is how you, so let me, let me back up. A lot of people that try landlording, have a hard time with it because number one, the banks control them. Number two, like you said, the HVAC system or the water heater or the anything can go wrong and the cashflow is gone for a year or two or three. You have built a vertically integrated business model. Can you talk a little bit about the span of businesses that you have? Because it's obviously not just a rental portfolio, there's multiple aspects to your business.

Absolutely. I've got my investment company. I've got a construction company. I'm also a general contractor. I have my license in North Carolina. I'm thinking about going to get it for South. We have the full-out construction company. We have a property management company that's got about 700-800 doors that we property manage every day, and we're always adding to that. We have a realty company, so we're able to list our own properties that we're flipping. The big piece of our business is we do full-term key properties for other investors. I'll break that down after I get to this. We have a realty company. If somebody wants to sell a house, we deal a lot with investors ourselves. All the people in my office pretty much that are also the realtors that are licensed in North Carolina and South Carolina are also investors. They understand how to deal with buyer-sellers, whomever it is. If anybody out there does want a list of prop, feel free to hit us up. I'm sure that Avi can get my information to you out there. Also, my last thing is we also had a mobile home and modular home dealership. I'm also a licensed dealer for the state of North Carolina. I own mobile home parks, several of them right now in North Carolina. The best way for me to get the best wholesale price was to go and be a dealer. So if you need trailers, manufactured homes, we have those. If you need modular homes, which are stick-built homes, which you can put in city limits and in the county, whatever, it's the same as guys going out and putting up a stick-built house, we also have those, which are great. In fact, not all of them look like a trailer. Actually, I've put a couple out already and I'm about to put another one out. We're going to start doing a couple a month. On that side, I've got some lots that I'm going to start placing those on. So it's going to be interesting. But the full turkey. So we have a lot of investors that are professionals and or just don't have time. I'll give you an example. We work with a lot of doctors and dentists, attorneys. Those are big people that we work with. They make a lot of money. But they don't have time to do what we do and they don't know what we know. So they actually, they can hit us up. You can hit myself up or my wife, Malu, who is, you know, she's just phenomenal, which you've met my wife and also Mike. If somebody is looking for deals, we've got a wholesale. Oh, and I forgot, we do have a wholesale company that we do, you know, close to 100 to 150 houses a year wholesaling, which is pretty decent.

Yeah. Oh, by the way.

Yeah, I think we did 98 last year, if I remember correctly.

It must be nice to have another business that is larger and more of a machine than most people can even fathom. You name it off as just another bullet point, but it's truly impressive, the ability to have all these balls in the air. But keep going on the turnkey because I want to get into that and then also how you manage it all.

Yeah, perfect. So, you know, if, if there is somebody out there that's listening to this and, um, a lot of people actually buy with their real, their, um, their retirement funds, like what you're doing now and what I've been doing for several years. Um, and, and we've got great people and obviously got great people, uh, that we've connected together, um, for things like that, but they'll buy the stuff from us, cash turnkey. So here's how it works. I bought it first. I did the construction with my team on it, who's been working with me forever. I've got several construction crews that work for us every day. Then we sell it to you, the investor, once it's rented. And then we property manage it back for you on your behalf for as long as you want. And then once say it's seven, 10 years down the road, cause I always tell everybody you want to do this long term, whether it be with a retirement fund or if it's just money out of your savings or checking account, it's all about long-term benefits. So think seven to 10 years. And if you're already there because there's, you know, there's going to be a percentage that is already there. If you're not there then that's fine I get it then you probably don't want to have a rental property. In fact, here's a little rule of thumb that I use back in the day whenever I taught classes all the time. If you literally if you cannot afford. afford to replace an HVAC because you have to give people heat just about everywhere in the country within 24 hours. If you can't afford to do that in a second with a credit card or cash, you should not have a rental yet. It's a good rule of thumb. So if you're wondering, or if you think, oh, I want to get a rental property and I'm going to go get a loan and I'll make $300 after paying the mortgage and everything, don't do it. I've already done that. Work your active more, and then you can come and do something like a turnkey with us. Or at that point, once you've been able to buy a cash, I would highly suggest do it. And again, I'm going to have some people that are like, this dude's nuts, blah, blah, blah. You didn't go through 07 and 08. You don't understand. I'm not expecting you to. I don't want you to understand. Because I would, maybe on some of my worst enemies, but I would not wish that on the worst of my enemies in most cases, maybe a couple. But the turnkey is great for people that want to be truly passive. The way that it works is, if you wanted to buy a turnkey property with us, you would actually have a login into the certain software that we use for property management. Every month, the fourth Monday of every month, we send out for that month of your payment. So it's for the password. So, you'll be getting paid. We make sure that that happens. We take care of all the maintenance. We take care of all that crap so you don't have the headaches. Anything pretty much over about $350, we ask you if you're good with us to fix whatever issue or problem happens. It's a house. It's going to have thousands and thousands of puzzle pieces. So, something's going to break. Something's going to give sooner or later. But just know, over time, with your appreciation, with your monthly cash flow, you should be able to make with us around between 12% to 18% on your money every year, with appreciation included. But we're normally looking at around a 7% to 8% return for most of our investors that buy from us. It can get higher, but it's normally a little bit riskier type of investment.

Okay, perfect. So if we can break it down a little bit, because I think In general, most people listening to this will understand most of those chunks, but I want to slow it down. So you're buying a house that needs work. You're then repairing it with your own crew. You're then getting it rented once it's livable. Yep. Then you're bringing in an investor, let's say a doctor, dentist, attorney, somebody that's got money, typically a high income earner.

Or whomever.

Right. Somebody that doesn't have the time nor doesn't want to spend the time doing what you do.

Or they have money sitting on the sideline and have nothing to do with it. And I'm like, guys, real estate's a tangible asset. You can go kick this damn thing. It's insured. If it burns down, if it's vandalized, you have insurance that you're paying for it, blah, blah, blah. So you're covered. I'm very biased on real estate. I buy in all the asset classes, but I'm biased. Yes, I have some stuff in the stock market, I have some crypto stuff, but it's not anything like my real estate returns in my real estate business, because my returns overall in real estate kill everything. It's not even really close, to be honest. Even if I did the S&P, I mean, you and I discussed, like I've got a trailer park that we can talk about here shortly, but I can tell you what those returns are as an example. But yeah, with a turnkey, we take 10% of the gross, but we only take it if it's coming in. So we're babysitting your house as the property manager until it's making money. So if somebody leaves or say that the lease is up, they're going and buying a house, hey, happy for them. Now we're going to have to do a term. We have the guys that will actually do that term for you. We'll send you the invoice. We'll tell you a quote on, hey, this is what needs to be done. You want to have all these things completed. And as soon as it's done, we'll get it re-rented for you. Boom. And then it's going to hopefully run as smoothly as possible. But sometimes evictions happen. People don't like to pay on occasion. Sometimes you just have a crap tenant. There's not a checkbox. that says batshit crazy in the application for rental. Don't you wish there was? And don't you wish they were honest? Yeah. And you know what was craziest? Probably half of them would actually check that box. Exactly right.

They'd be like, Oh, that's me.

Yeah. So I am not the person that runs the property management. That is my wife. She's the one that's licensed everything. So we are licensed in the state of North Carolina and South Carolina to be able to do it. So it's, and, To be honest, I have people ask me all the time, hey, are you third-party rental? Will you third-party property manage for me? And honestly, I ask lots of questions that they normally don't like to answer because if they're a pain in the ass, I'm not going to manage for them. I won't because I'll fire you. I can fire you just like you can fire me because there are such a thing as a bad investor and non-passive investor. And we like to deal with just passive investors. Yeah. It gets really, it's very time intensive and management intensive. And property management is the hardest thing in this business.

I can imagine. It's all fun and a rosy, colorful picture when they say, Oh, you're going to get all this cash flow. But when people don't pay and when problems... Yeah.

Stuff happens. It's not fun dealing with them. Yeah. Storms come through. Things happen. People... Jesus, we just had somebody that... There was a car chase. is in short one of our properties that the owner, I mean, it's a killer deal. They got it from us a long time, like 10 years ago. Well, it happened to be a car chase, caught behind a car, they ran through the stop sign, wind up plowing into a van, then going into, and it plowed into the garage, $20,000 worth of damage. Tenant's still okay, nobody was hurt, but that's not expected. The stories that I could write a book on, is incredible from the property management. And it's insane how people are.

I can imagine. So if, let's take an example of an investor, because this took me actually several years to sort of wrap my head around how you're doing it. Sure. Believe it or not. That's why I always ask you like, so wait a second, you do, let's just say an example rental rate in one of your markets might be how much per month?

Say 1300 bucks.

Okay, so you're gonna get the house ready, rented, $1,300 a month is coming in, right off the top, $130 is going to your property management company. Yep. And then what else, just to give a sense of what other expenses come out, taxes, insurance?

The rest of it goes to the homeowner. It would go to the property where that's what our software is that we use. Everything goes to them and then the homeowner would be, they have to take care of the taxes. They have to take care of the insurance. But this is what's cool. For insurance, you can use my insurance person. It's totally up to you. We've got tons of investors like ourselves that need insurance. Hopefully, everybody has it. but that is on the homeowner to get the insurance. It's a one-time thing. You get it signed up and then you can set up monthly, quarterly, yearly, however you want to pay for it, but that's done. On September in North Carolina, tax bills go out, but it's due by January 5th. So that's something that they also have to, because I mean, think about it. Your IRA is an example. I mean, because you and I have talked about Roth IRAs at length. My Roth would then, it's got the money coming in, it gets sent up to Chicago where my Roth is. And then every year on January 5th, the IRA club will then send a check down to Mecklenburg County and pay for our taxes. It'd be the exact same thing for you or whomever's doing it.

Okay, perfect. So let's just take that $1,300 and assume we're not going to get into the weeds on this, but let's just say about $400 comes off the top for management, taxes, insurance, maybe some additional. Yeah.

So yeah, you're going to be close to probably $325 to $370-ish. I would say even 300 to 350, I would say is pretty fair because our taxes are so damn low here and our insurance is pretty damn cheap. So you got to figure your house's insurance a year is going to be around probably 950. So divide that by 12. And then your taxes, your tax bill, you won't pay more than 1.32 in any city and county and state in anywhere in North Carolina, at least that we buy and sell, and we buy and sell in 15 counties around the Charlotte market, the MSA. So that's gonna be probably around another figure 12 to 1300. So divide that by 12, figure it's 100 bucks a month. So there's your taxes. Those are pretty much in numbers.

So yeah, three, a little over 300. So you're walking away with close to a thousand a month as the passive investor in your mailbox every month. And in exchange for that, you talked about two different types of return. You've got your, your annual return from that investment. So, so let's just take a thousand times 12 is 12,000. I'm just doing the math with everybody so they can listen to it. Sure. Multiply your 12,000 and we're dividing that by what? 7%, 8%?

That's it. Yeah. Seven to eight.

Yeah. All right. Let's go seven and a half. Yeah. That's 160,000. So you have a passive investor says Travis and team, here's 160,000. Give me back seven and a half percent every year. That's just for the income.

Yeah. So you're looking at, um, and I, I tell everybody to do this, go to chat, GPT, go to, go to the Google. What's the average appreciation rate? Our average in Charlotte has been then between 12 and 15% every year, pretty much for like, I think the last six years. Oh, dude, it's ridiculous. My investors that bought from me 12 years ago, 10, 12 years ago, their houses are selling for, I mean, like they want to sell them. They bought them from me for 100, 120. and their rents are astronomical, the house they could put on the market for 350 to 450, it's ridiculous, man. It's always that thing like, oh, what is the one property that you hated selling that you wish you could have back? All of them. It's every single last one of them that I sold to everybody. Because these guys are making it, killing on the rents. Because the rent went from, literally in Charlotte at the time, $950. They're getting $18,000 to $2,000, $2,300 a month on some of these properties, even up to $2,500. It's absolutely ridiculous. Now, and it's different neighborhoods, it's different places. And we're in 15 different counties. So the numbers change, and they're a little bit skewed in different areas. But we're looking at, and for my own self, if I can get a 6%, 7%, 8% return on my rentals, I'm pretty damn happy. Because I know my appreciation. And then you're going to have somebody, obviously, that goes, yeah, but I don't count appreciation. OK, cool. Give it to me then. You give me the appreciation since it doesn't matter to you. And then all of a sudden they go, well, maybe I do care about it. You think? Well, I haven't sold it. Well, it doesn't matter. Is that still your net worth? Well, but I don't care about my net worth. Bullshit. Everybody cares about their net worth. And that's the kind of conversations that I've had with other investors. And I'm just like, I'll take all of your equity. You don't want it. We'll call it a day. It's okay. I'll sell the house, you know, whatever that difference is of what you bought it from me for and what it's worth today. I'll keep that difference. They always back up really quick. I'm like, I'm just telling you equity and the rental return is a real thing. That's a dollar amount. And that's a actual yearly return that you can run.

Yeah. Somebody who has not gotten to see the fruits of their equity cashing out may have that argument. And then once they see it a few times, they're like, Oh, wait a second. Yeah. I'm not giving that up for anything. I totally get you. Yeah. They're like, Oh, I get it.

Yeah. Very cool.

So that's the turnkey business. Yeah. That's the turnkey business. You want to, you want to shift over to the kind of the mobile home modular manufactured business, just so people can understand how you do those deals.

Absolutely. Yeah. So if somebody wants to order any mods or manufactured homes, just hit me up. The price points change every week. It's insane. It depends on the material cost. It's a real thing. Where during COVID, so I'll give you an idea. I can get a modular home built and delivered. This is a stiff built house right now in three weeks. In three weeks flat. I mean, it is crazy. It's a deposit of 20 percent. And three weeks later, that house is done and they're rolling it out and craned into your spot. So you got to have your foundation done, all that stuff. Right. So that's mods right now. Manufacturers, and I like to bring this up because everybody's understand that depending on what time you're doing stuff, things change, right? COVID completely killed me in certain aspects. It helped me in some things, it killed me in others. So I own several fair parks in the market in this area. And so do my other partners. We have them all across the country in several different cities. to get a manufactured home, which is a trailer that everybody knows, your trailer park, that. They're amazingly built. They're going to last forever. Most of the time, they're going to last as long as the house is anyways. The price point went up 35% in about a three-month timeframe. Then it went up another 20% in another three-month timeframe. I was paying so much for a trailer to put into my park and it was taking me 12 to 18 months per trailer to build. It was absolutely ridiculous. This was, this was during the COVID times. Wow. And I'm talking to my manufacturers that I've bought and sold a ton of stuff with. And they're like, Travis, we just can't keep up. And plus the, the expense of everything. Cause it did, it practically doubled over a six month timeframe for me as the dealer. So for me to sell it to somebody was absolutely ridiculous. The prices have come down a good bit, but still not all the way down to where we want them to be and where they were. But I think that may happen over time. I hope it does. But if you have a trailer or if you have a spot you think a trailer can fit on, give us a call. I'll get you in touch with my right-hand man, and we can see if we can get you a trailer or a mod. It's a conversation. Our mods are going to be close to what a cost of an actual stoke built home is, but you can get it in a couple of weeks. It's been, it was built inside where there's been no weather that can touch it. There hasn't been rain, there hasn't been wind, there hasn't been hurricanes. It's a great product. I've seen it, I've done it. I have them myself. I'm still putting them out today and continue to. And it's really the one of the only ways between the two, mods and manufacturers, we can do them so fast, that affordability, it makes sense for affordable housing across the country. So we're doing a lot of them across our different markets in the country.

Talk about someone looking for deals. Let's say me, for example, who's really done just single family houses mainly, or someone out there that may be wholesaling houses right now that comes across a mobile home park and they can't get their head around, well, how would I even monetize an opportunity? Because you know, wholesalers are some of the best prospectors out there. How do they think about that? And if they're going to call you, what do you need to know if you're going to buy it from them?

Great question. So if you're looking at a mobile home park as an example, let's just say, and I've got one, I'll use one of mine as an exact fact. So I've got one, it's a four unit, I literally just closed on it a month and a half, two months ago. I picked it up from a wholesaler. The wholesaler was asking 140, And I offered a hundred, I mean, and everybody can go and find these things too. And it's in North Carolina. I offered a hundred, took it and it's four units. So three of the units were rented at 500 a piece. So that's $1,500. Look at my return already. Yeah. The fourth unit need, right. I mean, that's huge, right? That's what a, uh, a 20, no, a 15 cap right off the bat enough to know it's good. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So this is, this is what I'm doing. So this is how, if you can think about it and then you'd be like, yeah, this could be a great deal for someone like a Travis or an RV. So I buy it and I put 25 grand into one of the trailers, the one that was empty. Right. I'm going to be able to rent that baby for $800. So we just evicted one of the tenants. They didn't pay last month. So we're evicted. He's evicted. Now he's out. Now I'm going to put probably another 25 in. So now I've got 150,000 into the trail park, right? I've got one practically brand new unit. We'll have another practically brand new unit that we're going to bring in 800 and 800. And the other two trailers are still burning at 500 a piece. How much is that total?

8, 8, 5, and 5 is 2,600. Yep.

That's a lot of money. How much do I have in it? 150. Yeah. Cash, right? So what does that return?

Oh, that's pretty good. Let's see. So cash on cash, we've got 2,600. Well, what's your net on 2,600? 26.

By the time everything's said and done, I will probably be around 22.

All right. 2,200 times 12 divided by 150. 17.6% cash on cash.

So 18% return. That doesn't include what I'll wind up doing with the other two trailers that are 500. What happens when I get those to 800? I'll probably wind up putting 15 in each of those right over the next 12 months. Now, if I've gotten them all to 800 times four,

Yep.

So 3,200 minus, what do you think you'd be at? Probably 28. Yeah. So what could I sell that at? Cause I should be able to sell that at a selling cap. What could I actually sell that?

So let's say you're at 2,800 times 12. Times 12. Yep. Divided by 0.07. 480. So you're in it for less than 200. You sell it for over 450, 480.

I'll have less than 200. And how much am I collecting every month? That's what I need more of.

That's beautiful.

That's what we all need more of. But everybody thought it was a shit deal. And I'm like, it makes sense to me because I've bought enough trailer parks to know like, wait, uh, what's the absolute worst that can happen. And then this is what you, cause you asked the question, need to get the rent rolls for the last 24 months. Right. Um, I want to know, is it septic? Is it, well, is it city water or city sewer? And if it's septic, how many trailers per second? Okay. Right. So say, for instance, that if I, God forbid, if I have to go in and replace a septic, we'll figure it's going to be 12 grand to replace that septic more than likely, but that's 12 grand out of my pocket. But now I don't have maintenance issues. Right. So I need the rent roll. I need to know what you're asking for the property because I need to make sure that it makes sense. And one of the things that I want to try to get wholesalers to understand is because we're also a wholesaler. Don't be greedy. Because when you find somebody like me that I'll buy everything that you send me, when you have a buyer like me, there's not many of me. You know there's not a ton of me. I don't bust balls. I immediately tell you if I want it or not pretty much within 24 hours. I make it really simple. Everything's cash. I don't have to wait for somebody to fund me. I don't, I just, I, yeah, man, I can close on that. You know, if it helps you to be able to go and renegotiate. So here's something big too, since you asked. So if you don't know if it's a good deal or not, send it to me. I have, I've been doing this forever. I'm not going to steal your deal. Right. Let's get that out of the way first. Avi and I've done a ton of business together. He already knows I could go and backdoor somebody. Why am I going to do that? It's going to give me a shit name that doesn't make me any more money. I want all of us to be wealthy and get rich together. It's a lot more fun to have really rich and wealthy friends around you. So send it to me. If it's not anywhere clear or close, I'm like, dude, if you could go get it at this, this makes sense for me. And if you can get it less than that, I don't give a damn what you make. I'll be, you know, for a fact, a good buyer. I have never one time counted your money, have I?

No, never ever. And you're very, very clear when you want it. You'll, you'll. Yes. I mean, there's no games. I've sold you guys several deals and it's just, Oh, wow. They do exactly what they said they were going to do. It's very simple.

Exactly. And we already have the attorney set up. We already have everybody in place. Um, I said my project manager out there, it depends on where it's at. If it's two hours away, it might take me two or three days, but I got to get my project. One of my project managers, cause I have a couple out to look at the property, do a full walkthrough on say it's four units. Like it is that I bought, but there, there is the process and the system, but it's very simple. It's very clean. And I will tell you, any and everything you need to know while the process is happening. Because you have to understand, I want more deals. I'm not going to carry your money. I want more houses. I want more apartments. I want more trailer parks. I want more lots. I want more land. I want more storage facilities. In order to do that, you have to trust in me. And I know it's not the easiest thing because most of us, it's like none of us trust anybody and I get it, nor do I, but verify everything. And let me know where you're having a hard time. And let Avi know, because between the two of us, man, we've got a wealth of knowledge to be able to help people build a business. Really simple.

Yeah, I think what somebody might not realize, because look, I love to buy from wholesalers. I haven't done much of it, but I wish I could find more people that are willing to do it. I think a lot of people that are especially getting new to the business, they're just getting their feet wet. think, yeah, well, I can't share this address with anybody. It's like, well, yeah, you don't want to blast it on Facebook and you're going to have 13,000 people looking at it. But... Yeah. ...to your point, if you're dealing with somebody that has a reputation in the market like yourself, they're not going to go around you. You just tell them, look, I'm not going to steal your deal. I'm not going to go around you. I don't want to spend time dealing with the seller. You did that. Good job. I'll pay you for that. Yep. How would you... On that note, how would you convey a message to someone that's looking at you and saying, Okay, this guy's got 5, 6, 8 business models, all feeding the machine. You've got multiple layers of... I don't know how many layers of management, but you have management in place. And you've got somebody out here who's just a solopreneur that may just be driving for dollars. And they can't even fathom the path to get to where you are. How do you help somebody just get into the game that has the ability... And maybe talk about that too. What are some of the characteristics that you see in people that win?

Number one characteristic is anybody that grew up athletic, doing athletic sports, they are always the easiest and best to work with. I was one. I grew up. I know you did too, Avi. But that is one of the number one characteristics that I've seen. Um, I don't care if you're male, female, whatever pronoun you go by, whatever that may look like. Um, but most of the time, because you know how to win and lose, you felt that pain growing up. Um, that's normally the ones that go out here and just kill it, to be honest. And I'm sure you've probably seen the same. Um, but one of the biggest thing is, you know, how to most of the time deal with a teammate. Because I see, I look at everybody as a teammate. I don't, I don't look at somebody as being a wholesaler. No, you're part of my team because I want to buy several houses from you or several properties from you every year. So you're part of my team because you helped me make money. And I hope that I can give your family a great Christmas and birthdays because I have staff, you know, we have, we have 25, however many people in our office that work for us every day. So we have real staff. Um, if you count the contractors, Jesus, we've got, Seven, I think, contractor crews, between three and five guys. So you can see these are payrolls that I got to hit. If you're not bringing me wholesale deals, and it's hard for me, and if my marketing's not kicking butt, it's hard for me to pay staff. So this is a big beast. I mean, big for me. It's a machine. It has to be fed every single millisecond. It has to be fed by something. So for anybody out there that is new, I'm going to tell you what I did. I went directly into marketing and advertising. I started learning the heck out of that. And then I started wholesaling houses. My first deal that I ever did, I wholesale for $1,050. And I was telling one of my staff yesterday after hours, I was like, that's still the best feeling deal I ever had. And I had not had that feeling since because it absolutely made me think to myself, Oh my God, I can do this. This real estate shit is real. I just made a paycheck. So after that, I did a flip and I did a lease option that I wound up flipping. because they backed out. After that, I did the trailer park. That would have been in at 99-2000, was a trailer park, a 10-unit in Concord, and then we did apartments. I've done a few thousand houses at this point or doors. but mainly single families for the most part. We're buying and selling between the wholesale and the turnkey and everything. We're doing 250-ish, 300 doors a year, somewhere thereabouts. Yeah. So it's a few.

It's amazing. You do it quietly too. You're not out there beating your chest saying, look at me, look at me. You just You just perform and I love under radar. Yep. Under the radar. I love it. Thank you for doing this, by the way, I'm going to get you a little bit more, more eyeballs, hopefully. Hopefully people will send you more deals from this, but, but in terms of, I mean, okay, let's say you're speaking to that one person who's maybe been a, uh, you know, decent to, to good athlete growing up through high school, college, whatever they, they find out about real estate in their twenties or thirties. Now they're just learning how to get a deal. One of the things I remember was there are so many questions. You're like, well, I have no idea what I'm doing. How do you, how do you help someone navigate that?

You're talking about from the seller standpoint, talking to a seller or all of it.

Yeah. And someone that's getting into the game, just, just stick with single family houses right now. And they don't know how to deal with even just getting a deal to the finish line.

So real quick, let me kind of give you my college background. So to me, it's funny. So I sold Bibles door to door for my college internship. So that's how I literally, when I got out of college, I was okay with the finance piece of it, going to knock on doors, doing phone calls. I just didn't enjoy it because I felt like I was being a fake because I only had a few stocks in my name and I was trying to get people to do stocks and I had no insurance because I couldn't afford it, right? So I got into real estate. So fast forward, a year later and getting into real estate. If you really want to learn this business, and I'm telling you exactly how I did it, go knock on doors. Get out in the market because you're going to learn what sales are. You're going to learn what the rent comps are. You're going to learn how to talk to people. One of the best things you can ever do. You need to find time on the weekend, a Saturday or whatever day that you need to go and can do it. But I would tell you, highly suggest, go knock on doors for at least an hour or two. And what do you need? So knocking on doors is what broke me out of my little shell to be able to go and do stuff. And it's not just the athletes. I know that you and I know that. Yeah. It's people that really want to make money are the folks that I normally are the ones that that I speak to directly and say, you only need to do these certain things. You got to stay focused, right? Marketing and advertising, knock on doors, start wholesaling, but learn how to speak to people. If you're already a salesperson, this is the dumbest and easiest business that you could ever get into. And let me say this too. I see a lot of people spending time on worried about their business card and getting their website up and all that bullshit. Do not care. You cannot give a shit about any of that stuff. Start talking to people. Go to like a pop stream, start pulling cash buyers list. Start pulling the vacant properties list. Get traced in both. Start calling people. I was just reading a book this morning for I read every day. That's what that's one of the things that's like one of my hobbies. And it said, the point of it was, you need to spend three hours. And this is for you too, Avi. This is pretty cool. I can't remember the entire quote, but it said, it was something like, you have to spend three hours every day on acquisitions. That's it, plain and simple. However, whatever, wherever, you have to figure out how you're gonna spend a minimum of three hours per day on acquisitions. And like Avi and I have discussed in the past, I have three things that I have to accomplish every day. That's it, three. And all of them are really easy to prioritize. What's the biggest moneymaker or saver? Number two, what's the biggest moneymaker or saver? Number three, what's the biggest moneymaker or saver? It's really that simple. And actively, what do I need to do to get another free and clear rental property?

Which could be the biggest moneymaker or saver. Yeah, for sure. And that goes to... Yeah. I mean, you, you've got a lot more going on in your brain than the average, you know, the average person out there. So you have, I mean, you, you have trusted partners that you work with. You want to talk about that a little bit?

Absolutely. Yeah. A hundred percent. So I have my wife, Malou. She is a rock star, absolute tricking rock star, brilliant at what she does. Um, our first year and a half was a real pain in the ass until we figured out our lanes. Like I already had done everything right from the property management to the construction. I knew that stuff. And she was kind of in and learning this stuff, but she's really academically smart. So it's not a big deal. Thank you, brother. And it's not a really big deal. And then a couple of years later, I brought on Mike, who you spoke to, which I'm guessing you'll probably have on the podcast. He's also brilliant. He is the technical person, the engineer brain that he does title. He also runs the wholesale and acquisition side of stuff. So each of us have our own. I run the company stuff. I do the finances, funding, taxes, the business things, a lot of other stuff. If a fire pops up, I'm normally the one that they ask. And I'm not saying of all that, it's probably because my dumb ass had done something and I learned from it. Right.

You would touch the hot stove before, right?

Yeah. I was like, yeah. And then I went and did it a second time probably. So they asked me from that standpoint. But if it's financing, it's always a conversation with the team. But I've also got great project managers. I've got great management in-house that... We have KPIs on every single company that we have. And we go through those weekly and monthly. And then We look at it month to month and then we look at the yearlies and all that stuff. It's really just trying to track everything and knowing what each one of those KPIs actually means, means something. So it's learning those things. I'm not big on operations every single day. I will get into them because I know it, but I don't enjoy it. I hate it. My partners know that. I absolutely hate operations. I love the business aspect of it, of how to grow business on, hey, we're going to now start doing this, or hey, this is what we can do passively. Those are the things that get me going every day. But I still, right before we got on, what was I doing right before I got on with you?

Sending a wire probably to buy a house.

Exactly. I was finding a deal. So, you know, that's where all that comes in. But my, your partners are everything. Like I'm a partner with my wife. Like I said, our first year and a half was really tough. So we figured out our lanes respect enough that each person it's really simple in my head now. So whoever you partner with, they should be covering your weaknesses and you should be covering their weaknesses. You do not want to have somebody that's just like you because trust me, I've also done that and it totally gets nothing done. Um, but don't do that. Find somebody that's going to be complete opposite. Also find somebody that's not scared to speak up and tell you you're being a dumb or, Hey, you know, here's a different way of looking at this. And cause there's always somebody that, um, that's very factual. And then there's somebody that's not. And you need to know who you are. And this is what's crazy that I've seen with different businesses and different partnerships, is that I also change depending on who my partner is, depending on what business it is. So it's very interesting.

Yeah. So you may have a different partner in the manufactured house dealership versus the wholesale business versus the property management. Gotcha.

Yeah. Yeah. And whenever I bring partners in, um, you know, it's always, you want to know exactly who's doing what in the beginning. If they hate it, I tell them, all right, we need to find somebody to give that away to, or I'll take it. Um, but you've got to train people. That's the biggest thing, just like employees, you have to do a minimum two weeks, you should be doing 30 to 60 day trainings. And here's a rule of thumb that I do is if I hire somebody at, you know, pay my salary early, they should be making three to four times within about three months after they're hired of what I'm paying them. So that's where you always know you're making money.

Okay. Interesting. Say that one more time. So if you hire somebody, they should be making you.

Within three months, they should be making you three to four times of what you are paying them. Okay. In their job.

Interesting. Oh, I like that. So you're, you're, you're hiring.

So you. Correct. And it makes it so that you can... You don't have to think about it. You can just focus. And are they doing their damn job or not? Which makes it so that maybe I need to cut this person or I need to drop their salary. Or maybe their butt is just not in the right seat for the company. Let's bring them over here and see if they do better and give them 2 weeks or 30 days to figure it out. If not, then you gotta cut them.

So on that note, there's 2 other topics I want to ask you about. Are you okay on time? So one is, speaking of performance metrics, and then I want to get into some tax-free growth, just your thoughts on tax-free future, things like that. Absolutely. With goals, one thing that I personally struggle with is, how do you look at... It can be a boring, repeatable process, but it's so important to set specific goals that are bound by a certain timeframe. How do you look at that? And what types of goals do you set for your company or companies?

For me, it was exactly cover my net, and then once my monthly income can start buying houses to add to my portfolio. Literally, that's the easiest goal that you can, in my opinion, that you can ever come up with. Because all you're doing all day is you're active busting your ass to just get another property. It makes it really simple. So on KPIs, things like acquisitions, stuff like that, it's the same idea, same concept, but you have to start with the end in mind. Well, how much money do you need to make? Well, how much money have you already made per deal, right? So an example is if you're making $15,000 per wholesale deal, well, then how much money did you just state that you wanted to hit as a goal? Well, then now you already know how many deals you have to have, right? It's really simple math. And I was thinking about something else, but each company needs to have those types of KPIs, like property management. I've learned this, as a property manager, it's really hard as hell to make money until you hit your hundredth door. If anybody out there wants to have a property management company, I don't know why you'd want to. I mean, there are absolutely some valid reasons, but again, it's the armpit, but hundred doors is where you can really start making money. And this is why. you can hire a full-time person because it's making enough money so that it pays them and you can still have a portion. So in every business, you're going to have to step, almost every business, you're going to have to step backwards to bring people on, to be able to leap forward. Again, then it comes back down to that three months. Is that person pulling the weight and making the income for the company or saving the income for the company that it makes sense to keep them on board.

You've given a sense of the level of volume you're doing with 250 houses a year or deals a year, I guess. Can you give a sense, whatever you're okay sharing on numbers with your property management business so people can get a sense of the size? And then also, if you can, the breakdown of... You have people in there with 30 houses each, 20, 10, 100. What's the breakdown of that?

Absolutely. I can tell you, we've got about $800, I think, right now, or close to $800. I can't remember. It's a little bit less, a little bit more. We've got probably, I would bet on the $800, we probably have $250. or so, maybe 300 investors. And if you kind of just average that out, we do have some people that bought, like I had one lady that bought almost 24 houses from me. She had sold some stuff in another state on the West coast and had to do it. And if you've got to do a 1031, call me. Cause I always have stuff that we can put you into that are going to give you a good return that we're already property managing. That's already more than likely already performing. That's the difference. We have a ton of people that we do 1031s for. We help them. I've got a million dollars that I'm 1031ing. Okay, cool. Well, let me see what inventory Malou and I and Mike have. And at that point, we would go into our books, see if there's anything on our books, and we can start pulling things out and trying to make a portfolio for someone, as an example. It might even be that I'll sell the trailer park at that point for $480,000. It just depends. But yeah, because we've always got, I think we've got close to 50 or so houses in construction as an example right now. So if you've got something and you want to, right, if you want to wait for the end of summer and you tell me, hey, I got a 1031 that I'm going to plan on doing in September. Okay, great. Well, let's go look at the houses and let's see if this is going to work. My biggest thing is I do not waste time. If somebody is going to kick tires, I don't do that. I need to know that they actually have a 1031. You're going to have to prove it to me that you're doing one. Oh, I'm about to do one. No. It just depends. It's a conversation because I don't have... When I have time, I don't want to waste time. And what else did you ask me?

Well, so on that piggybacking off of that, the 250 or so investors that you are now basically providing them with mailbox money. Turkeys. Yes. About how many of them, just a rough estimate percentage-wise, are using retirement accounts and tax-deferred or tax-free. 70%.

Wow. 65% to 70%. Oh, absolutely. Oh, it's the best investment. With your IRA or a SEP, whatever it might be, just like you and I, my IRA may or may not have houses. Who knows? But let's just say that it does. You've bought it with your IRA, you've rehabbed it with your IRA, and some of you have that much money in there. If you don't, Avi one day can teach you guys how to wholesale. He and I went about that at length. You can actually wholesale with your IRA. I do a Roth myself. But people are like, I can only give 7,500 or whatever a year. I'm like, yeah, but that's not the point. You can do a contract with your IRA and wholesale that contract and say that it made $30,000. Well, you got your 7,500 plus whatever you just wholesale goes right into your self-directed Roth IRA tax-free forever for life. until you're 59 and a half, and now you can do whatever you want with that, whatever, say it was 37.5, well, you could do a lot of stuff with 37.5 quite possibly. You could lend it to Avi or me, or go do another flip, or put it into a rental property, or say that your partner or whomever, like Malou and I will do a 50-50 on a rental property. Half my IRA puts in, half her IRA, and then it gets split from the property management company, And then you just got cash tax-free that just got sent back as rental. You know, it gets insane, man.

So one of the things you told me that was very helpful was setting rules for yourself on just being consistent buying with your retirement accounts. Even if you feel like you can't afford it, you can partner with your IRA. You can just do a little chunk at a time. How do you set rules for yourself nowadays?

So the way that we're doing it, the rule now, like you and I discussed, is I started out one of every, I think it was like one of every seven I would have to do with my IRA, right, as a rental property. Right now, I don't decide, and you and I have discussed this, Malou, my wife does. Because I'll get lost in the minutiae because I'm thinking of 10 other things over here that I'm doing business stuff. And she knows I'm like, babe, you make the decision. I do not care. You tell me whatever. I'll make sure that the finance and funding with our closing team in our office, we have a full closing team in our office. We have a paralegal. We do not have an attorney. In fact, I'm looking for one if anybody is looking to find a place to open their own firm, give me a call. But real estate related, estate related, whatever, however that looks. And they would do addictions also. I mean, kind of like a jack of all trades. And I know how to do all of this stuff myself for the most part. So if I bring somebody in, I also be able to train them and then we can start doing that stuff together. No, they'll have a real income. But I do, I want somebody in house in my office sometime really soon. I've been hunting. It's not as easy. I thought it was going to be, but nothing ever is that's worth it. Right. Um, so where was I at? Um, Oh yeah. So yeah, go ahead. Yeah. You just got to figure out what's going to work for you. Like for you, Avi, I know you and I have discussed it at length. Um, right now we're probably doing one, every 10 houses that we do, one's going to be into her and my IRA, we'll just split it 50-50. Our IRA, every couple months has a brand new, free and clear house. It's pretty badass. Again, think about it from this perspective, by the time I'm going to be 50 this year, So by the time I'm 59 and a half, and I can start pulling this money out tax-free, or I can become a lender, because you can do that now, like you and I both can. But think of if you had $5 to $10 million in property, just even think if you only had half a million dollars in properties, And that's just what you have in it, but it's worth $1.3 million, $1.5 million. Think about that. You can sell those. It goes back into your IRA. That shit's tax-free if you did the Roth. You can't beat that, in my opinion. And if you can, somebody please tell Avi and I about it, because I'd love to hear about it. That's not a scam. But it's something that you get to control. You get to direct. And it's like, what, 175 bucks? $200 to sign up for the program like you and I have, and then it's like $175 per property that you do per year. Trust me, if you look at your Vanguard or whatever thing that you've got all of your freaking money in, you're a minimum. And Ram has probably said it, what is it? 3.5%, I think? is the average. And if you're sitting there going, that's not what I pay. Please feel free to go through the documentation because it has absolutely been looked at, at length and at depth with one of, one of my buddies, Ramez at IRA club. It's three and a half percent. We're taking a, they're taking a very small percentage so that you control your destiny. And I don't make any money from it. I don't make a damn penny. It's just, I know that it actually works because I've been doing it for several years. Dude, one of our investors that started hers like six years ago, she's got over $3 million in the bank. I mean, come on. That's ridiculous.

Yeah. And Ramez, well, yeah, we just, uh, we just had a opportunity to talk with Ramez at length and he talked about the, you know, the traditional non self-directed, right. The Vanguard fidelity Schwab's of the world that control what 70% of the retirement funds out there. They're when you say, Oh, I want to diversify. Well, they push you into a mutual fund and they make four, four and a half percent on that. So you look at, I mean, you look at that compared to,

Well, and this is what drives me crazy is, and somebody might have a turn on a property or something or whatever it may look like, well, look at what your returns were from whenever you had it in Vanguard or whatever. In Vanguard, if your account loses money, do they still get their 3.5%? Yep. Absolutely. If your account makes more money, do they get to three and a half percent? Yeah, absolutely. Nobody in real estate gets money unless you're making money in your account and you've got the appreciation to always stand back on. It's just in tax free from all the rents. And then whenever you sell it, it doesn't nothing else makes sense. In my opinion, I've had people tell me all kinds of crazy, stupid stuff. And I'm like, whatever, dude, I know what I'm staying in my lane on. Right. I don't care about all that other stuff. Um, you know, the only other thing that I do is, you know, discusses insurance stuff, but that's a whole different thing that we don't have time for.

Yeah, no, that's all right. Yeah. It's a, yeah, there's no need to convince anybody, right. If they believe a certain thing about the worldview that they have, then good for them. And once they sort of, dip their toe in what I like to consider the tax-free river, they'll never go back.

They won't. It's amazing, man. We've got so many people that they are absolutely clueless or don't have the time to be able to do what you and I do on a daily basis for our lifestyle and our life that we're able to help and make really wealthy. It is unbelievable, man. And to be able to do it with retirement funds, it's crazy. Think of it from this perspective. God forbid, if you had to lose everything, they can't touch your retirement funds. Yeah. it does not matter. They can't touch them. It's just these little things like that that are huge, big things, because there's so many things that can go wrong in life. We hope that they don't, but sometimes they do. Hopefully, we're positive enough so that it doesn't happen. Yeah, the retirement's a no-brainer to me.

Um, the only other thing I want to ask and then we can wrap it up is, uh, is there any kind of, um, I don't know, outlandish story. I mean, you've had decades of experience, any outlandish story about an amazing deal, a crazy deal, uh, um, you know, yeah.

One of my biggest wholesale deals, it was a double close. I made almost half a million dollars on a wholesale deal. I was able to get a big parcel of land under contract, and I was able to sell it to a fast food company franchise. So that was still my biggest one. I made almost a half mil. So this is where I screwed up. There's always something. Should have kept it, right? Well, that being, yes, that being one thing, always. The other thing was, I did not know this until I did this contract with this company. Time is of the essence in the contract when you're selling. Yeah. And I'm not an attorney. I'm not trying to play one. I'm not an accountant or a CPA. I don't talk about taxes. That's not what I do. I'm not licensed. It cost me 50 grand because it took these guys nine months because I had to pay a hard money lender on this deal. It took them nine months. They pushed it nine months. But luckily, they did it. Time is of the essence in a contract. Your contracts, every single... You know what those words mean. And if she does... I do my best. I'm down in Florida. They didn't get done in time, all the builder. Luckily, she was financing all and... She told me I just had to buy a couple of the howdy out of the 15, which I, me and my partners, we did. And then she took the, but she took all of our earnest money back to, which was a Travis to me at that point, it was a whole lot of money. Um, probably one of the worst. Um, I mean, yeah, yeah, I got you. I was seven or eight since lips. Okay.

Sorry. It broke up on me for a second there, but I got, I got a, uh, most of the gist of the story on, it sounded like two different, two different scenarios there.

Yeah, it was. Um, so, but yeah, altogether, this is a great industry. Anybody can do it. Um, from any walk of life, it doesn't matter if you're broke ass off. Um, I always tell everybody, I kind of as a closing, figure if you can deal with just hell for two years, for two years, anybody can replace their income or whatever you're bringing in right now. If you can figure out how to get into this industry and spend two years, so giving up, You need to be giving up anyways, men, women, however, whatever. I ain't here to judge, but you got to do everything up, go and hide and just brand yourself. That's the only time you're coming out is to brand your company and what you do. Hide from all the stuff, put your friends and everybody to the side for two years. You will be able to absolutely change every piece of your life for a positive.

If you can share best way to reach you, if you have money you want to place or a deal to sell you or something, whatever else you, what do you want people to bring to you?

Absolutely. If you could please send it to my email subject line, I'll be AVI podcast. Cause I promise you, I get, I get several hundred emails a day. It drives me crazy. So please put Avi Podcast and I'll get back to you. Give me at least 48 hours and I'll get back to you. It's travisnofear at gmail.com. No fear like the old clothing line. So nofear at gmail.com. And yes, I do have a Travis at Travis Buys Homes, but I never check it. So please don't send it to there. My partner will actually probably see that one. And then if you are looking to want to lend... Actually, we'll just do email for now. Hopefully, get a couple people that might be interested in that. And then Avi, of course, I'll bring you in on some stuff with me on top of that, man. It'll be awesome.

That's awesome. So travisnofear at gmail.com. You got it. All right, amazing. Yes. Thank you, Travis, as always. I mean, absolutely. You are one of the most selfless people ever. You always answer questions, even when it's been a while since I brought you a deal. So I got to I got to get on my game here. Let's go, man. I need houses badly. No, seriously. It's it's an amazing attribute. So thank you for being so open.

It was a pleasure. Good luck with this man. Hopefully we'll be able to do it again sometime soon. It was, this was great and it was fun. Talk to you guys soon. Yeah. Travis buys homes.com.

Be good. Amazing. Thank you very much.

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