S6 E3August 21, 2019·17 min·,

How buying one rental a year for 5 years builds a million dollar retirement

Ren Jones lays out how agents can build wealth from investors rather than only commissions. He explains trading intellectual capital for a 30% stake in an LLC, working for rent by owner ads to find investors, and the math where 5 rentals bought one a year produce 1 million and 10,000 a month.

How buying one rental a year for 5 years builds a million dollar retirement
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Key takeaways

  1. Trades intellectual capital for equity, taking a 30% stake in an LLC where the partner brings the money and the agent brings the judgment
  2. Buys one rental a year at around 200,000 financed no longer than 15 years, so 5 properties produce 1 million and 10,000 a month in rent by year 20
  3. Opens the investor conversation with are you happy with your current retirement plan
  4. Calls for rent by owner ads not to list that property but to find out how many others the owner holds
  5. Asks investors to describe the ideal next purchase, price, size, bedrooms and neighborhoods, then only calls when something matches
  6. Stays in touch with investors every 60 days and calls only when a property is genuinely worth their time
  7. Finds out the owner’s own formula, whether that is rent paying the house back in 8 years or rent at one hundredth of the price

Transcript

00:00 — Welcome to the investment show

Ren Jones00:04

It’s that time. Welcome to Roadmap, how to take three listings a week until you’re ready for more. Each week we interview a great agent who’s taking two, three, four listings, but this is the investment show, how to work with investors, everything you’d ever want to know about investing for yourself and investing and getting investors and having them on hand to sell them houses, several times a year. Repeat business, don’t you love it? Anyway, well, want to thank everybody for being here, and I want to introduce my co-host from San Diego, Carley Hathaway. That’s carleyhathaway.com. Hi Carley. How’s the real estate business?

Carley Hathaway00:50

Hey, Ren. Hey, everybody. Real estate is great and I’m really looking forward to this show because I cannot wait to start calling those for rent by owner people.

Ren Jones00:59

Good. And maybe you want to invest?

Carley Hathaway01:02

Definitely want to start investing in some rentals.

Ren Jones01:05

Good. So, let’s dive in and jump right now. So, here’s the thing. A lot of real estate people think they have to invest with cash.

Carley Hathaway01:14

Yes.

Ren Jones01:15

Yes. And you don’t.

Carley Hathaway01:17

No, are we using Bitcoin?

01:23 Intellectual capital instead of cash

Ren Jones01:23

That’s it. You took my line. Yes, turn them in for Bitcoin. Now actually, folks write this down. Intellectual capital, intellectual capital. Carley, when you sell real estate … and you’ve been doing that 10 years?

Carley Hathaway01:38

Yep. Just over nine years, yeah.

Ren Jones01:40

You have a pretty good eye about values and things like that, right?

Carley Hathaway01:45

Definitely, yeah.

Ren Jones01:46

And then you meet people that want to invest, but they don’t know where to buy.

Carley Hathaway01:52

Very true.

Ren Jones01:53

They have the money, but not the wisdom. A lot of agents have the wisdom.

Carley Hathaway02:00

And none of the money.

Ren Jones02:00

Together and just say, “Tell you what, let’s do this. Let’s form a little LLC together, and I will help us buy properties. I will be a 30% partner. You’re the money person.”

02:18 Taking 30% as the eyes and ears

Carley Hathaway02:18

I like it.

Ren Jones02:18

You’ve got a lot of people that will say, “I’m in.” You’re going to sit there and look and go, “Nope, nope, nope, nope.” Because you are the eyes and ears. You have intellectual capital. Your investment, your capital is what you know. And a lot of you out there that are watching this show, you have that intellectual capital. You’ve been doing this a long time or you’re focused in on one area and what’s hot and what’s not, what’s smart and what’s not very smart. So, you’re worth a being a 30% partner with somebody that wants to buy several doors. So take a look at that. And you don’t have to be in one partnership. Friend of mine, she sells 120 homes a year blindfolded. She does it blindfold it. She’s in the Eastern Shore of Virginia. She has six, seven, eight partnerships with people. She’s the intellectual capital. Because if we’re doing it right, if we’re buying investment property right, when do we get our profit? When is the profit realized?

Carley Hathaway03:26

No idea.

03:27 The two ways profit gets realized

Ren Jones03:27

Well, it’s one of two ways. It’s either realized immediately. There are a lot of people that want to find … When they close, they want to immediately pick up 20%, 30%. Okay?

Carley Hathaway03:37

Oh yeah.

Ren Jones03:38

And that takes a lot of looking. But if you’re in the business, can you do that? Would you see something, and you’d go … then you would write on a little board, “OMG. OMG.” And you would say, “Got to move fast.”

Carley Hathaway03:51

Yeah, I mean-

Ren Jones03:52

Then you go and you say, “All cash, close in 10 days.” And they’ll say, “Okay.” All right?

Carley Hathaway03:57

Yep.

Ren Jones03:58

The second way profit is realized is over time, because when you rent these out, the tenant pays the bill, the tenant pays the bill, you get them with put down 20%, 30% you put down, you go no more than 15 years, 10 years is better, 15 years max. And at the end of 15 years, the tenant says, “Ah, I bought you a house.” That’s what the tenant says.

Carley Hathaway04:30

Yep, exactly. So, they’re paying your mortgage while the property value’s increasing. It’s perfect.

Ren Jones04:33

Right, every 15 … so if you buy one a year, at the end of year 15, the tenants there go, “Here you go, Carley.” At the end of the next year, “Here you go, Carley,” five years go by and you have five paid off houses, paid for by the tenant. What about it?

Carley Hathaway04:52

I like it. I love that.

Ren Jones04:54

Right. And so what we look at is can the tenant pay the rent and all the expenses, no money out? That’s fair.

Carley Hathaway05:02

Yeah.

Ren Jones05:03

I think so.

Carley Hathaway05:03

I think so too.

Ren Jones05:04

If you’re doing it right, if you’re shopping, buy something low maintenance. Okay?

05:09 Why investors are pipeline business

Carley Hathaway05:09

Yep.

Ren Jones05:09

All right. Now, the other thing we have to look at with investors and investment is adding investors. People that want to buy investment property, because guess what? Is that pipeline business, sort of like corporate calling we talked about in the last show, it’s ongoing. Somebody wants to buy, I want to buy one home a year. I want to buy two homes a year. How many do you have now? I have 16, but I want to buy two more a year. I’ll pay all cash, close in 10 days. Are those people worth hanging around, getting to know?

Carley Hathaway05:42

Yeah, exactly. Because I mean, your average buyer and seller, what? They do it every eight to 10 years, this person’s buying a house every year. Yeah, your pipeline’s going to always be full with them. For sure.

05:52 Asking about their retirement plan

Ren Jones05:52

So, here’s where we find them. Number one, Carley, you sold them a house, or you sold their house and then they bought a house. Whatever. You know them and you know about them. Maybe it’s their fifth purchase, they put down 80%. Maybe they paid down 100%. And you say, “Have you ever got … ” here’s a good question to ask people say, “Are you happy with your current retirement plan?”

Carley Hathaway06:17

Oh, that’s a good one.

Ren Jones06:19

Are you happy with your current retirement plan? Because when you run the math, if you buy investment properties and the tenant is banking the payments, it’s a sweet deal.

Carley Hathaway06:31

Definitely.

Ren Jones06:32

That’s what you want to tell them. Just say, “What I would like to do … would you be interested in buying one door a year? I will help you find a low maintenance home. Get the tenant for you, get it all set up. You pay cash or otherwise finance no more than 15 years and you buy these things. I will find them for you.” Homegrown, with people you know. And beyond homegrown are lots of people that already have 10, 15, 20 properties. How do we find those?

Carley Hathaway07:05

How do we? How do we?

Ren Jones07:07

Well, think about it. How could you get in the way of finding those people?

Carley Hathaway07:11

Well, I mean, obviously they’re going to be renting the places out. So, the homeowners.

07:16 Three types of for rent by owner

Ren Jones07:16

So, there are three types of for rent by owners out there, that advertise. There is an individual who’s running an ad and saying, “I’ve got a house for rent.”

07:28And then there’s category number two. They own the property. They use a property management company to advertise and show it. And then third one is they’re a real estate agent and they own it and they’re doing it in their real estate agent. Our company will be providing for every Vulcan7 customer, category one and two. Talking to agents by accident. You need to be talking to people that you can help. And then you approach them and there are a few things that we need to say. So folks, write this stuff down and then use the Copycat principle.

Carley Hathaway08:04

Copycat principle.

08:05 The questions that open an investor up

Ren Jones08:05

That’s it. So, what I’d like you to write down is questions that you ask if you want to talk to an investor, because if you’re calling on the house they’ve got for rent, it’s just a reason to talk to them. They may not want to sell that home. Or they may, but they may want to sell the other one on Memory Lane. I can’t remember the exact address, Memory Lane. So, they may want to sell one of their other ones. And you need to ask questions. Just say, “I was calling about the house you have on Willow Glen, is that … You’re renting that out, I see.” “Yes.” This is Carley Hathaway from the bestrealtyintown.com, and I wanted to find out if you might want to sell that instead of rent it?” “No, I’m quite happy with that as a rental.” “Great. Do you have more than one rental?” “Well, yeah. I’ve got nine homes.” “Nine? Good for you. How long you been doing this?” “I just started three years ago.” Those are important questions. Nine homes, three years. Not bad, great.

09:15“Do you have anything now that you might want to sell or exchange for something more lucrative?” You know the word exchange, are you familiar with the exchanges?

Carley Hathaway09:26

Yeah, exchanges, yeah.

Ren Jones09:26

1031 exchange?

Carley Hathaway09:27

Mm-hmm.

Ren Jones09:28

The 1031 tax exchange allows them to move the equity, sell a home and buy one without having a tax implication.

Carley Hathaway09:38

Yep, exactly.

Ren Jones09:38

Move that equity. That’s a 1031 exchange. So you say, “Do you have something now that you’d like to … ” and then they go, “Nah, I think I like all nine.” “Okay, great. So are you open to buying number 10?” They go, “Well, yeah, if it’s the right one.” “Okay, well here, take this magic wand and wave it and tell me what number 10 looks like. What does the ideal home look like? How much do you’re paying for it? How big is it? How many bedrooms, bath, what neighborhoods or neighborhoods? What parts of town? And let me see if I can find that. Would you like to do that? Would you be open to that if I find a perfect home?” “Great.” Okay, now you’ve built a relationship with this investor. You need to talk to them every 60 days or sooner. You find a hot one, put your little searches in, look at it yourself and only call them when it’s a gem. Just say, “This hit the market four hours ago. I need you to know about this because … ” and let them eyeball it, okay?

Carley Hathaway10:40

Yeah, yeah. And not only that, if they have a renter they’ve had for five years and they’re moving out, they may want to test the market with that one and sell it and see if it would move. Just because they’re not ready to sell that day. They might be ready to sell in six months.

10:54 Learning the owner’s own formula

Ren Jones10:54

Right, right, exactly. So you just never know. And then the other thing is finding out what their strategies are. Whether you ask them or not, they’re going to tell you, they’re going to say things, “Well, I like to pay all cash and I want the rent payments to pay the cost of the house back in six years, eight years, 10 years,” whatever. They will tell you that, or they will say, “I want the rent to be one 100th of the cost of the house,” or one 60th of the cost of the house, whatever that is. , they’ll give you things like that as a guideline when you’re looking. So you got to find out the rents. You got to find out does that rent include the heat, or the water, or what’s included in that rent payment? You can’t just go, “Oh, I have no idea.” You have to know before you call them back, just say, “The rent’s $2,000 a month. All the utilities are metered,” so they pay their own water, sewer, electric, and heat.

Carley Hathaway11:52

Yeah.

Ren Jones11:53

You don’t have heat in San Diego, so it’s not a problem.

Carley Hathaway11:56

We don’t. We don’t have heaters. No, I think coming in with that knowledge is really key because this is our job. They have jobs they do, 9:00 to 5:00, or 8:00 to whatever. They don’t have time to do all this research. That’s what we’re there for. And we can be their source of knowledge with this.

12:11 The 20 year retirement math

Ren Jones12:11

All right. Going back real quickly to the retirement plan, just say if you buy one home a year and you can finance it no more than 15 years, and I want you to buy … Say you buy five houses, 200,000 each. At the end of the 15th year, you now have 200,000 in equity and $2,000 a month rent coming in. I’m assuming there’s no appreciation, but there will be. At the end of the year 16, you’ll have another 200,000. Now you’ve got 400,000 and you’ve got $4,000 in cash coming in, plus 400,000 equity. On the end of year 17, you now have $600,000 and $6,000 in rent coming in. At the end of year 18, if I did that right? Yes.

Carley Hathaway12:56

Yeah.

Ren Jones12:56

You have $800,000 in equity and you’ve got $8,000 in rent coming in. At the end of the fifth year, 20, the final mortgage is paid off, and you have $1 million in cool cash, or in investment property and you have 10 grand a month coming in. Those homes are paid for. You will have that forever, except the rents keep going up. And that million dollars worth of house is now worth probably $2 million. And the rents is not 10,000, it’s 20,000. So, it is a goldmine retirement plan if you –

Carley Hathaway13:36

Absolutely. I love those numbers. That sounds so good to me.

Ren Jones13:38

Yes. So, we’re assuming no appreciation, no money out. We’re assuming that the tenant pays everything, all the cost of their payment. So tell them, “Hey, do you want to have a retirement plan that is a lot better than your 401(k)?”

13:55 Why Airbnb rules are creating sellers

Carley Hathaway13:55

Yeah, exactly. And you know what? I feel like now is a really good time to really start calling these owners because all the Airbnb laws are changing really drastically right now. For example, in San Diego, it has to be your primary residence or you can’t Airbnb anymore. And I know that’s the same for Colorado.

Ren Jones14:14

The People’s Republic of California is an interesting place.

Carley Hathaway14:18

It is. Yeah, so these people that are Airbnb are going to be looking to unload. So, it’s just a great time to attack.

Ren Jones14:26

That’s right. So yeah, just get in the way. Get in the way. So last thing, I want to remind people that we at Vulcan7, you will starting September 12th, and maybe we’ll do it a little sooner. September 12th, you will have FBROs, for rent by owners in category one and category two. And these are not like … Some of our competitors have these, but they have crap. You get an agent, you get the property manager, you will get the owner if you call these. The quality is that high. And actually it’s this high, or actually it’s this high.

14:59Anyway, I want to thank everybody for being here, and I want to thank Aaron Wittstein, who simulcast the show on his Facebook group with 52,000 members. If you want to get involved with that, that’s at facebook.com/groups/gotobjections. And we appreciate that simulcast.

15:21And finally, a lot of you have been asking and writing in and they’re like, “What is Carley’s secret? What is Carley’s secret? What is Carley’s secret?” So folks, after she’s done her lead generation and set appointments, she goes to the refrigerator and gets delicious Graeter’s Mint Chocolate Chip. They sell it all across North America. If you go to graeters.com and look for the store near you. If you live at Cardiff-by-the-Sea, the seaside market has a huge display of it. It’s all over the United States. This is the one for listings. If you get one of the other flavors, it’s just ice cream. They have several flavors. Now, the Rocky Road is if you’re working with buyers, so be careful.

Carley Hathaway16:02

Exactly. You sit at open houses on the weekends, you eat Rocky Road.

Ren Jones16:07

That’s it. That’s it. That’s Rocky Road for darn sure. So anyway, if the listing is slow to sell, dig a hole in the front yard, bury it upside down. And a lot of people don’t know that story. They’re thinking it’s about the ice cream. But in the 1990s, if you went into realtor.com magazine, it hit the peak around 1999, real estate agents were buying little St. Joseph saints, the catholic Saints, little plastic St. Joseph by the dozen. Companies would sell them, because the belief was if you buried St. Joseph upside down in the front yard, that listing would sell. And in the ’90s, things were slow, and so these things would sell by the … Real estate agents would have four dozen little St. Josephs stacked on their desks. True story.

Carley Hathaway16:54

That’s great.

Ren Jones16:55

True story. Look that one up, folks.

Carley Hathaway16:55

I will.

Ren Jones16:58

Google that, burying St. Joseph upside down.

Carley Hathaway16:59

All right.

Ren Jones17:00

It’s a wild story and it’s just part of our folklore of being an American. Anyway, see everybody next week.

Carley Hathaway17:07

Bye. Thanks everybody. I’m so excited for September 12th, to start calling.

Ren Jones17:11

That’s right.

17:11 

Questions this episode answers

How can a real estate agent invest without money?

Ren Jones suggests trading what he calls intellectual capital. The agent partners with someone who has cash, forms an LLC and takes roughly a 30% stake for sourcing and judging the deals. He describes an agent on the Eastern Shore of Virginia running six to eight such partnerships alongside 120 sales a year.

How do you find real estate investors to work with?

Start with people you have already sold to, then work for rent by owner ads. Ren Jones splits those into three types: the owner running the ad themselves, an owner using a property management company, and an agent who owns the property. The first two are the ones worth calling.

What do you say when you call a for rent by owner?

Ren Jones treats the advertised property as only a reason to make contact. He asks whether they would sell rather than rent, then how many rentals they own and how long they have been at it, then whether they would sell or exchange anything, and finally whether they are open to buying the next one.

How much rental property do you need to retire?

In Ren Jones’s example, five houses at about 200,000 each, bought one a year and financed over no more than 15 years. By year 20 the mortgages are paid off, leaving roughly 1 million in property and 10,000 a month in rent, before any appreciation is counted at all.

What is a 1031 exchange?

It lets an owner sell one investment property and buy another without triggering tax on the gain, moving the equity across instead. Ren Jones raises it as a way into a conversation with an investor who is happy with their current holdings but might trade one for something more lucrative.

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