Money Focused Podcast
Helping ordinary people, become extraordinary with MONEY! Each weekly episode is packed with actionable tips, expert insights, and real-world advice to help you grow financially and take control of your future. Whether you’re just starting out or looking to level up your wealth, you’ve found the perfect place. Get ready to transform your financial journey, one episode at a time!
Money Focused Podcast
EP 49 - It's Apartment Building Investing or NOTHING!!
Discover how Apartment Building Investing can turn your passion for real estate into a thriving empire in our latest episode with Grant Warrington. From overcoming personal challenges to achieving financial freedom, Grant's journey offers invaluable lessons on taking action, continuous learning, and problem-solving. Hear how he and his wife went from their first single-family rental to owning 41 units. Grant emphasizes his tagline, "Single Family Sucks," teaching listeners the importance of upgrading to bigger investments in apartment buildings for true financial freedom. Learn strategic insights on multifamily properties, off-market deals, and effective property management. Tune in for practical advice and inspiration to fuel your real estate ambitions and master apartment building investing.
📺 You can watch this episode on Moses The Mentor's YouTube page and don't forget to subscribe: https://youtu.be/IWyUZyVZ9lo
🎯Connect with Grant Warrington @grantwarrington on Instagram and visit his website apartmentbuyingblueprint.com
🎯Connect with Moses The Mentor: https://mtr.bio/moses-the-mentor
☕If you value my content consider buying me a coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/mosesthementor
📢Support Money Focused Podcast for as low as $3 a month: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2261865/support
🔔Subscribe to my channel for Real Estate & Personal Finance tips https://www.youtube.com/@mosesthementor?sub_confirmation=1
Welcome back to the Money Focus Podcast. I'm your host, moses the mentor, and on this episode I have the pleasure of bringing you guys Grant Warrington. Now Grant went from being a construction worker to earning in excess of $10,000 a month with his small apartment buildings. With his small apartment buildings, he also founded the Apartment Buying Blueprint to help others, just like you, achieve financial freedom without the pitfalls of single family rentals. So let's dive into this. All right, grant, thank you so much for joining the Money Focus podcast. Really appreciate you, because I know you're pretty busy. So the first thing I always ask my guests is to really walk us through your career journey, your professional journey, just ultimately, how you started your career in real estate. So the floor is yours.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thanks, thanks for having me, moses. I've been looking forward to this man and again, I wanted to just say I checked out your YouTube man and you're crushing it over there, bro. So very impressive. I just was taking a look at that, thank you, thank you. My journey.
Speaker 2:I was a construction worker for 24 years. There's so many different parts to it, I don't want to bore everybody, but in 2003, they were giving away loans and I took three of them and you know what happened in 2008,? Right, well, I had no education. I bought Carrollton Sheets. If you remember who he was, if you've ever heard of him, he used to give you these tapes on how to buy real estate with no and low money down. So I bought all the tapes and I listened to zero of them. I bought three houses.
Speaker 2:I had a bad drinking problem, I had no education and I thought you know what? I'm going to buy these houses and I'm going to allow people not to pay rent at Christmas. I'm going to be this nice landlord and we never even got to Christmas. Everybody owed me money. Nobody paid me. I put in horrible tenants, I didn't screen them, I didn't know what I was doing and a few years later, everybody owed me money. I wasn't working and my health was bad because of it. It was just stressing me out so bad I had to declare bankruptcy. Luckily, it was just me and the deal. I gave all those properties back. You know, I was trying to work my construction job during the day and it sucked and I was done. I knew I'm like one day I'm going to buy property again. I just knew it.
Speaker 2:And then, 2011, with the help of God, I quit drinking. Slowly, my life started to change. It doesn't change overnight. So if you got a problem and you quit, you got to become a better person and go through those steps and you will be rewarded.
Speaker 2:Three years later, I met my wife and my wife said you know what? I've always wanted to own property. And I was like, ah, look at all these real estate books I have, look at all this stuff I did and told her about all my failures. But I told her I still have that same dream and we bought our first single family rental together in December of 2014. I actually jumped on BiggerPockets October of 2014. Two months later, we bought our first property. So that's the one thing I've always done is take action. I didn't know what the hell I was doing. I was still scared. All I had was bigger pockets, but I had an education. Two months I listened to everything and I did everything I could to develop that education because I wasn't going to make the same mistake again.
Speaker 2:I took action and we bought that property and I'd love to say it's been so easy from there. And we bought that property and I'd love to say it's been so easy from there, but it's been tough. We did it with very little money, just her and I, no other partners. And now we own 41 units, we've leveled up to apartment buildings, we've got out of single family rentals and now we're financially free. We decided we lived in Detroit, michigan. We decided you know what, let's close that chapter, let's move to some sunny, warm weather. And now we live in St Petersburg, florida. So that's like the Cliff Notes version. I just kept thinking it's got to work, it's got to work. I just kept saying that it's got to work. It has to over and over, because I knew a mentor, I knew a friend that it worked. For we just said we just got to keep going, we got to buy more. And you know what it worked.
Speaker 1:I love that you focus on taking action. That was a good one, but I want to ask you about your construction career. So what was it like transitioning from your construction background to real estate? Because on the surface, it sounds like, hey, that would be a huge positive having a construction background in your pocket. But talk to us about that.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So that was the. Everybody tells me that, right, like, you're so fortunate, you're a construction worker and I'm like, dude, I was a crane operator. Like, I ran heavy equipment, I ran cranes. You can't take a crane to an apartment building or to a house and rehab with a crane, right, I mean you just those skills don't transfer.
Speaker 2:So it really didn't help me at all. I wasn't handy, I really didn't know what I was doing. I was I'm very, very good at problem solving, so I can look at a problem and I can figure it out, but for me the best thing to do is to hire somebody to do it. So that's kind of my unique advantage is I'm very good at troubleshooting. But I got to run the lows a hundred times. I don't have the correct tools and really the skillset to get it done in a timely manner.
Speaker 2:So that, yeah, that did not. I got better over time because there's just little things you have to do here and there and then you work with the contractors and you figure out how to do things. So I did get to a point where one day my wife was like I can't find a handyman, you're going to have to do it. And I was like, all right, cool, that's fine, I got tools. This might have been four years ago. I'm like, yeah, I'll do that. No-transcript, just been focusing on doing all my own repairs and I wouldn't have had time to go out and find these apartment buildings and make these deals happen.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so that was the opportunity. Costs were there. So yeah, and you just mentioned, you know, apartment buildings, but at some point you started with single family homes and I love your website. You know you've already got these provocative statements about single family. You say single family homes suck, yeah, so kind of you know. Enlighten us on why you feel that way. Maybe your journey from when you had them compared to where you are today. So give us a breakdown.
Speaker 2:Okay, and this is awesome because I know all your listeners are going what? Why would he say that? Right, because when I say it, the internet goes crazy, like how can you say that? Everybody on BiggerPockets is trying to buy a rental? And you have all these influencers that are teaching people how to buy a single-family rental, which is great.
Speaker 2:But the problem is those same influencers have already leveled up to buying apartments and they just forgot to tell you. And that's the truth. You'll see these people you follow now that have bought boutique hotels. That's multifamily right. So they're leveling up. They're doing bigger projects because you need to level up in real estate and the problem that nobody tells you is single family rentals do suck. When you buy one and you have to, let's say, replace a furnace and an air conditioner or a roof or a major plumbing, repair happens that can wipe out all of your cashflow for a couple of years, and that's what happened to us. I'm like this thing it doesn't even cashflow now for two years and that sucks. Now you're still getting appreciation, you're still getting depreciation and all those other things. So real estate hands down is the best way to go, but you need to level up into bigger properties. That's what we did.
Speaker 2:But, having said that as well, and I tell people, I teach them how to buy five units and above, because you can get into a commercial loan at that point. And it's so much easier to get a commercial loan because the loan is based off the performance of the property, more so than when you get a residential loan and they're basing everything off you and your balance sheet, so it's easier to get that commercial loan. So that's why I teach people five and above is what to look for. And if you can only start in single family, then start there. Okay. Just whatever you can do to get moving forward, do it. Get moving forward. But just understand and this is what people didn't explain to me in the beginning you just need to realize one day I'm going to need to level up. Now, if you only want to buy five houses and you want to pay those off and that's going to be your retirement in 20 years or something, then that's great.
Speaker 2:This message is not for you. This is for people that really want to make big things happen and really want to go big in this and own a lot of properties. So to do that, you're not going to own a thousand single family homes spread out all across your state and try to manage all those properties right. I mean it would be a nightmare. You can do it, but it would be a nightmare. But if you get into five apartment buildings that have 200 units a piece, you build into that. Now you can see that's a lot more manageable. You have people on site that work at those properties. It's just a whole nother ballgame and it's a lot easier to manage. So just keep in mind you're going to have to level up at some point, or you should.
Speaker 1:Let's peel the layers here. So you're saying, as far as like multifamily, like you know, if you're looking to scale up, you know, like this is the way to go and I, I thousand percent agree with you with that, because it's just the numbers just make sense. Yeah, but do you feel like there's any good reason? Cause, like you say, you're from Detroit, so that's a cashflow market as well. So you know you're from Detroit, so that's the cash flow market as well. So you know you can buy a single family home and cash flow pretty well in Detroit. I'm in Cleveland and you know I cash flow net, you know, anywhere between four to five hundred dollars per single family home. I live in Atlanta and I can probably be negative in cash flow because it's an appreciation market.
Speaker 1:So do you recommend single family for anyone? Or should you say, hey, like, if you really want to quit your job, for example, like you know, if you're looking to replace your income, should you start immediately with the multifamily commercial five and above? Or is it OK to start with a single duplex, build some repetition, get some equity and then level up? What do you recommend for someone with that type of intention that want to replace their income. They don't want to wait 30, 40 years to retire, they want to do it in five years. Can they start with the residential or should they go straight to commercial?
Speaker 2:It just depends what your comfort level is. If you know nothing and you're going to buy a 20 unit apartment building, I would really suggest against that, but it's easier to fail smaller on a single family unit. So, whatever your comfort level is, wherever you can get in, that's what I would recommend. But if you want to replace your income and you don't want to wait, I think we became millionaires in five years after we bought our first 20 unit building, so it can happen very quickly. The other thing I wanted to mention too is we don't invest in Detroit. So we live in Trenton, michigan, now St Petersburg Florida, but we don't invest in Detroit. So we live in Trenton, michigan, now St Petersburg Florida, but we didn't invest in Detroit. Because Detroit a lot of people can look at Detroit on paper and it looks sexy. Boy, I can buy a house cheap. I can do this. Well, here's some things that happened in Detroit. If your house goes vacant, they'll steal your furnace and your hot water tank. I sold two houses in Detroit both of them. That happened.
Speaker 2:It's very, very hard to find somebody to manage your property in Detroit. Uh, it's very bad, and especially I find somebody to do it. Well, my contractors do not want to go there because you'll get your tools stolen and it can be unsafe where you're buying these properties. The other thing is tenant base. You're going to be renting to people that have to live in that area, right, it might not be the best area, but those are. That's going to be your tenant base.
Speaker 2:Sometimes they're a lot harder to deal with. Moses, I want you to rent for me, right, I want me to rent for me, and I'm not going to live there. You're probably not going to live there. So you got to keep that in mind and think, because your tenant base can put you out of the business fast too. So you got to kind of take everything with the good and the bad. There's reasons why those houses are $20,000. It's a lot more risky and it knocks a lot of investors out of the game quickly. And you, though, you have a tie to Cleveland, right? You know Cleveland, so there's your advantage in Cleveland, but a lot of people, if you're in California and you buy some houses in Detroit, good luck, good luck.
Speaker 1:You're going to be in trouble and you'll probably be out of Detroit in five years, maybe less than that. Well, what you're saying, it applies to Cleveland too. So I know I say Cleveland, maybe I should clean it up, but I'm in the suburbs of Cleveland, I'm on the east side suburbs of Cleveland. So everything you just said about Detroit in some areas is very true. You cannot get property management. You can't get.
Speaker 1:I remember one time there's an area in Cleveland called Shaker Heights and it has two zip codes. One zip code is completely different than the other. Like it's crazy. Yeah, one zip code is completely different than the other. Like it's crazy. I called for a pest control service and I said hey, you know, I'm looking for someone to come out. I got a new tenant coming in. I just want to, you know, spray the place. You know that's something I like to do. And the first question he said is hey, what is your zip code? Because he was like oh, okay, good, because literally the other zip code was in such a bad area that they couldn't even serve as it. And I'm talking about it's like one street light across.
Speaker 1:So for someone who really doesn't know the ins and outs of how to invest in Cleveland, they can see those homes that are 20,000. It's a trap. It's not investable right now. Now, at some point in life because my wife is from there I would love to be able to get some government intervention and have a group of investors to go in there to really do it in a collective way. But for a mom and pop shop to go in and do that, stay away from it, just don't even do it. You have to go in the area that you would be comfortable living in yeah, a family member, because, like you said, it'll attract the right tenant. Yep, so 100% agree. So I'm happy we cleaned up a little bit. So it's not that it sucks in every facet, no, it sucks in every it sucks in every don't put words in my mouth, Moses.
Speaker 2:It sucks in every facet. No, it does To me it sucks. I did not enjoy single family, and when we leveled up and leveled out of it, that was a game changer for us and that's where things really started to change. The other big thing is you can force appreciation with an apartment building. We bought a building $625,000 in 2019. It was 20 units 625,000, yes, and 16 months later we rehabbed it. It was worth $1,030,000. So we refinanced it, got a check back for $300,000. You can't do that with single family rental. Your home's going to be worth what your neighbor sold his for. That's comparable in your little area there, and that's the big difference with multifamily. That apartment, too, we found off market and we got seller financing on that deal. So I've found two buildings 31 units total off market, and I teach people how to do that as well.
Speaker 1:Gotcha, so for your single families that you used to have. So you eventually you sold those to level up to what you're doing today. Is that correct?
Speaker 2:Yeah, correct, we kept a duplex. It's a side-by-side brick duplex. We could split those houses and sell them individually. So we thought, and they cash flow really well, we paid next to nothing for them.
Speaker 1:So we've kept those. So three apartment buildings and one duplex is what we own today. And how does? Because, believe it or not, I manage my properties remotely. So how does property management work for your apartment building? So walk us through that process.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we manage everything ourselves. Previously, when I quit my construction job, I took a job as a and when I say construction, I was a union. When I quit, I was a union business agent. So I was at the top of my profession. I had two pensions, I had a lot going for me. I quit and I took a job as a director of operations for a property management company. It was my mentor's company. I managed with mine over 800 units and I've done over a hundred rehabs. So I know property management very well. So we manage our own stuff. And now we've always managed.
Speaker 2:My wife and I are 50-50 partners. She now manages everything herself, all of our stuff. Everything was in our backyard and it was great. But we decided you know what, let's move to Florida. And we talked to some management companies and it would end up costing us around $30,000 just in management fees 30 grand. That's not maintenance, that's not anything else. And we were like, oh, we can't do that. So we thought we're just going to continue to manage remotely. So what my wife did was put a job application on Indeed for a part-time person and she found somebody and they work 10 to 15 hours a week. They run to the properties, run errands, do showings, just whatever my wife needs done and one of our properties we did have to put cameras in because we are having an issue there. You can completely do it as long as you have good systems in place and you know what we're doing.
Speaker 2:So that's, we're still managing ourselves, but this is what we're going to do. We're going to level up eventually one day. This is our plan. Now I'm not a hundred percent sure on it. Things always change. I used to want to own 100 single family rentals, but things change. But our goal is to sell these properties in Michigan and buy a bigger, complex, level up somewhere in the South, away from winter and salt and snow plowing I don't know where yet, but that's kind of our goal. This market's not the best to sell, so we're just kind of hanging on taking in the cashflow tax-free cashflow too, by the way. We take owner, draws out of the property and that's tax-free.
Speaker 1:See, this is the thing. Two things could be true for me. I like my single families, but commercial is definitely something I'm interested in for sure. I actually invested in a program, a mentorship program, through a company and it was really during the time where interest rates were, like you know, it was historically low. So we were doing a bunch of you know letters to reach out to people for, to do creative financing, like the seller financing, master lease agreements, stuff like that, and we were just not getting any bites at all because, you know, I guess they were able to just sell it traditionally and they were getting what they wanted.
Speaker 1:But now that the market has shifted, I was thinking about pursuing that again. But I just have such a good flow going with my single family homes and I was like, OK, well, I'm trying to get to this number and if I get this many homes I can get to that number. But speaking of numbers, you talk a lot about getting the $10,000 a month and with your apartment buildings, and I'm just curious how do you make that happen? And how did you make that happen? To clarify so, $10,000, was that your goal to retire or did you exceed it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that was our goal. That's where we're at now and again it's just a level. So again we moved to Florida. Things are more expensive here and we've always want to level up. So now that's not our goal anymore. So it's not like we hit 10 grand.
Speaker 2:We were happy. I mean it's a big milestone. That's probably what everybody sets out in the beginning. If I could make $10,000 a month, my life would be completely different. And then you hit it and then you're like well, this is cool, but my wife and I aren't driving him and her Mercedes, we don't live on the water, we don't have a second home over here on the water. So, people, you got to realize that we're multimillionaires, we own a bunch of real estate and we have a great net worth. And I recommend to people track your net worth every month, because in the downtimes or the bad, when you don't think things are happening, it's nice to watch that net worth continually grow. But we've moved up that cashflow number because we would like to drive brand new vehicles or have a second house or have all these other things. It's just good to hear. You know what I mean, because people think, once you hit that number, once you become a millionaire.
Speaker 2:We quit our jobs a little early too, and that was the thing for us. It was more important to quit our jobs than anything else. I hated having a boss and that was my number one job, and I hated my wife having one too, and for us to be able to get out of that was huge. But I want to tell people if you have a good paying job, don't quit. If you can deal with it, don't quit. Build and supercharge your real estate investing. Just cut your expenses, take as much money as you can and buy as much real estate as you can so that you're so much farther ahead.
Speaker 2:Because a lot of people think that's just what I need to do is quit and then I'm going to be so much further. If you make a lot of money, you have this income stream. You can do both. You can work that job that provides that income stream and buy real estate with it. So just keep that in mind. A lot of people sometimes are too focused on just quitting and then all of a sudden, they're like all right, now I have this $10,000 a month. Am I going to live off that? And then how do I buy more real estate? Right, so you just got to look at it from a few different points of view before you just quit.
Speaker 1:Appreciate you bringing that up. You'll have competing views. You'll have someone say, hey, as long as you could pay your expenses, jump. You have some people to say, hey, you need to match your income dollar for dollar. Then jump and it sounds like you're saying it's like, hey, hang on for as long as you can, you know so in stack your money up. Yeah, I, I have a great job. I'm blessed. You know, my wife has a great job. So I look at my job and I do an excellent job for the company I work for.
Speaker 1:Definitely, integrity is there to make sure that that's fulfilled. I earned my income, but I also look at the fact that, you know, at some point I just want to wake up and not have to worry about reporting to anyone. You know what I'm saying. That, right, there is probably worth so much to me that I know I don't want to hang on forever, you know. So it's a balance because, but you also have to do the right thing, you know, as a man of the household, I love when you said that you hated your wife having a boss, because, yeah, that really irks me, you know, because I see the frustration that she has at times with and I just just I focus on hey, how can I get her out of that? And I'll hang on for the family as long as I need to. So that's kind of my approach with it, so that that makes a lot of sense. So when someone's able or ready to make that jump, how do you find, uh, commercial properties, apartment buildings, buildings what's like a best practice that you've uncovered.
Speaker 2:Three things. One you know brokers, so you need to find commercial brokers. They're much different than real estate agents, but you need to find them. You can go on LoopNet and you can look for apartment buildings and you'll see who's listing those buildings. They'll have their email address. Reach out to them and tell them hey, I'd like you to get on your list. The more you can do, the better. Like I've emailed them snapshots, excuse me of my bank account, I've emailed them letters, you know letters from my lender saying that, yeah, grant can buy a building up to X amount, just so they take me seriously.
Speaker 2:There's a lot of people that reach out to these brokers and it's tough to get in front of them. But the more you can do, the better. You got to understand that's how a broker eats selling a building. So if someone reached out to me and I was a commercial broker and they wanted to sell their building, I have five guys I know that would buy a building right now, right now. My mentor is one of them. He'll buy it right now if the numbers make sense. So if somebody reaches out to me, I don't have to market it, I don't have to put a dime into it, I just have to call people on my cell phone and go hey, dude, I got this building, here's the NOI, here's this, are you interested? And they'll be able to tell me right away yes or no. And if they say no, then I'll push that out to my email list, then I'll put it out on LoopNet, then I'll start advertising it. But to get to be one of those five people is very, very difficult, so you just have to let the broker know that you're not wasting his time.
Speaker 2:Another thing is a realtor. Find a local realtor because deals do hit the MLS. You'll see five units and above on the MLS. I bought an eight unit off the MLS. I used to be an agent as well and that was a 1031 exchange. So I bought that, luckily with only like two days left on our exchange to identify. That was crazy.
Speaker 2:The other thing that I do is I teach people to. I got a class on this. That I teach people it's how to find an off-market apartment. So you can just go on like Google Maps, you can look from above and you can look at your city and just scroll through there and look for large roofs and large parking lots. You'll be shocked at how many buildings you find. Drop down to Street View and you can tell it's an apartment building. Write the address down and then I just teach people steps on how to find the owner's name, how to find their phone number, and then just call them and you just build that list out and you just keep in touch with those people over time and that's an excellent way to be direct to seller.
Speaker 2:You could also go on Zillow and you'll notice if there's a building for sale that says listed by ABC Property Management, don't call them. Listed by ABC Realty, that's the real estate company. Don't call them. But it says listed by Jeff, that's the owner Call them. Say hey, man, love your building. My wife and I drive by it all the time. I like what you've done with it. You ever think about selling? See what he says. That's a great option.
Speaker 1:Do you do letters or no? You don't, no, okay.
Speaker 2:No, I never have Never have.
Speaker 2:We get letters and throw them away. You know, we get the robo texts, we get all that. But oh, this is the other thing I do. I'll go to a building and I'll just ask a tenant. I'll see a tenant outside and I'll say, hey, is there any vacancies? Can I get your landlord's phone number? They'll give me the phone number, then I'll call the landlord. More than likely it's the owner and that's how I've talked to a lot of owners that way too.
Speaker 2:But I always feel, if I can get in front of people on the phone or in person, in person is the best. So I always drive there, because we invested in a tight little area, so I'd always drive to the building and try to talk to them in person. I've had some great conversations, and if I can't do that, then I'll just call them on the phone and just ask them and then I say, hey, would you mind if I kept in touch? They usually say, yeah, yeah, that's fine. So I'll call you in a couple of months or six months or whatever. It is Right. And and I've had some great conversations with people.
Speaker 1:And so those are some great tips on how to find them. Yeah, so you know, especially the Google Maps one, it kind of to me it sounds like an easier, more convenient way to do driving for dollars easier, more convenient way to do driving for dollars.
Speaker 2:That's exactly what I say in my uh, in my workshop. I'm like you guys have heard of driving for dollars, right? This is that on steroids. That's funny, you say that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I'm like, hey, I'm gonna do that, cause shoot, save a lot of time. What so your course? Talk to us about your course, or what. What else do you actually cover for anyone who would be interested? But what exactly is in your course that you can tell us about?
Speaker 2:It's called the apartment. It's apartmentbuyingblueprintcom Apartmentbuyingblueprintcom. And I built this course because I didn't have anybody to help me and I'm not an engineer. I didn't go to college. I don't have all these other special skills. I'm not awesome with numbers. I didn't go to college. I don't have all these other special skills. I'm not awesome with numbers, like a lot of other people. So I'm like you know what? I'm going to build this for people like me that didn't have a ton of money. I didn't know anybody in real estate. My family doesn't come from that. We're blue collar. I'm a third generation crane operator. So I'm like I'm going to build this for me and that's what I did.
Speaker 2:And I teach people from step one how to pick an area to start investing, all through the process. Teach you how to analyze a deal. I give you my deal analyzer. I spent $1,300 on creating all of my spreadsheets, all the materials we use, and I walk you through every step, all the way through on the end and how to refinance it and how to do it again. And just like we did when we got that check back for $300,000, we went and bought another off-market apartment building with a portion of those proceeds. So that's what I do, a to Z, and I also offer coaching. It's a group coaching with me every two weeks, which is pretty phenomenal. It's group coaching with me every two weeks, which is pretty phenomenal. We got a lot of people doing big things in the program, so I'm really proud of it. I'm really proud about the people that are in the program, being able to help them and getting to know them.
Speaker 1:When it comes to a good deal because you said you have that deal analyzer. What is the characteristic of a good deal when you're looking for an apartment building? What are some things you look for?
Speaker 2:So it would depend. I would teach you how to build your buy box. So, like the age, the location, we don't want to do any student housing, we don't do any low-income housing, so we build that buy box up housing. We don't do any low-income housing, so we build that buy box up. So when something hits that and it checks all those boxes, then we say, okay, this is something we want to look at and put some numbers to. So basically, when we put it in our deal analyzer that I was telling you about, if we can do about $100 per month cashflow per unit on as is numbers in place numbers, then that is something we really look at and that's something we could get excited about.
Speaker 2:So it's really hard to just put a blanket statement out there. It's easier for me to say that and then say but we've bought properties that have zero cashflow, negative cashflow, because I knew what the building could do. So when I bought it we knew we were going to be able to raise rents in two months, $200 per unit. So I just showed the bank that the bank was like, yeah, okay, yeah, that makes sense. But yeah, that's usually a good thing to go by. You want to see positive cash flow $100 per unit per month.
Speaker 1:That's like current state, not performer.
Speaker 2:Correct.
Speaker 2:And one thing I want to tell people, too, one thing any real estate you buy, whether it's a personal home or anything your taxes are going to uncap the year after purchase and they're going to go up and then they will recap. So it's like a catch up. So the owner has owned it for 20 years. His taxes have just gone up incrementally, but the value of the property has gone up to here. Once you buy it the next year, usually in January, the taxes will uncap. They'll come up to here and then they'll recap and they're going to move up incrementally for you and they'll do it again when you sell it. But that means that your property taxes are going to go up. They could double. So you need to be very careful of that. It's even with your personal home. If you've ever bought a house and everything's all great, and then a year later in like February or March, they say your escrow account is too low, we're going to raise your mortgage by $500 a month to catch up. That's what happened.
Speaker 2:Your property taxes went through the roof and it happens to everybody. Realtors a lot of realtors don't know that and they don't explain that to people. So I just want to make people aware. If you get anything out of this, even if you're going to buy a personal home, understand that your taxes are going to go up. Plan accordingly.
Speaker 1:Great, great tip. Thank you so much for that, and I do remember those escrow analysis is coming in and I'm like, really, are you serious? Yes, cool, so I appreciate you so much. What final thoughts or advice would you like to share with the audience, and then also close us out with how to reach you? Shout out your website, your social media. You know the floor is yours. Thank you so much, grant.
Speaker 2:Yeah, man. No, I appreciate it. Tip would be well, let me come back to that. Apartmentbuyingblueprintcom that's my website. You can go there. I'm on YouTube, man, I just made the transition. I'm on Instagram. I got like 35,000 followers on Instagram. You can DM me there. I'll answer any questions. I can't write a book, but I will respond back and try and answer your question the best I can. But I'm on YouTube.
Speaker 2:If you go over there and give me a follow, I appreciate that I'm putting some pretty cool content out there. I guess the tip would be don't ever quit, don't ever quit. It's really easy to quit or to give up. Don't do it. You got to start and then you just got to make the decision not to quit. And the other thing I would suggest screen your tenants. I have a 10-step tenant screening checklist. Should be in the link in my bio. 10-step tenant screening checklist should be in the link in my bio on Instagram.
Speaker 2:Everybody's got an Uncle Frank or an Uncle Bob right that has bought real estate. They were a landlord and they tell you don't do it. It's a waste of time. It's the way I've done it. I lost so much blah, blah, blah, right. Well, they didn't screen their tenants properly and if you don't, you're going to be just like Uncle Bob, just like I was back in early 2000. So, screen your tenants, grab that checklist. It's free. That would be the biggest thing, because a bad tenant will knock you out of the game. So protect yourself.
Speaker 1:Agreed, agreed. You might think, oh, it's just a one-year lease. Oh, my goodness, you feel every single day when you have a guy tenant, so make sure to check out his checklist. And thank you so much, brent. All your contact information I'll put it in the show notes. So again, I appreciate you so much and we're out. Thank you you.
