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Do I wanna be the kind of real estate investor that goes and does all of the things? Or could I remove geography as a condition for investing and go invest in a market and in a property that is somewhere maybe I’ve never visited, maybe I’ve never gone there, and all of a sudden now, how much lighter do you feel not having to do all of those things and do all that?
What would your life look like if you could replace all of your working income with simple and conservative investments that could do it for you? Over the last 13 years, we’ve helped thousands of clients transact over half a billion dollars in simple and conservative real estate transactions, allowing them to begin replacing their work income with real estate investment income.
Each week, we’ll be pulling back the curtain on the ins and outs of real time retirement based real estate transac. That will transform your financial future even if you have no real estate experience. This is Replace your income with me, Kevin Clayson and Steve Earl. All right, Well, hello everybody and welcome to Replace Your Income.
So good to be with you again, Steve. How you doing, man? Doing great. Glad to be. Good. Hey, I’m super excited for this topic today and so a couple house cleaning items. Just real quick, I, we kind of wanted to let you guys in on what you can expect in terms of what we’re gonna be doing moving forward. We are gonna continue to deliver.
What we hope will be really interesting topics, but pretty soon we wanted to get some of this. We kind of wanted to brain dump a lot of thoughts that we’ve had that we wanted to share with the world. But very soon we’re gonna be bringing in clients who’ve really been replacing their income with real estate one property at a time.
We’re gonna be dissecting deals and really kind of talking to a lot of these foundational principles that we’re talking about, and we wanna share more and more stories with you. So I want you guys to stay tuned for. Because those episodes will be some of the best that we do cuz it’ll be real people really doing real estate and it’ll be real deals and, and it’s not gonna be fluff or hype.
It’s just gonna be the real deal of what it is that we do day in and day out and what we’re helping, trying to help our clients do day in and day out. So Kevin, I love that. I love that because there’s a lot of theory. Being preached out there. And I love to see that theory become reality. Oh yeah. And that’s one of the exciting things about having worked with so many, uh, individuals over so many years, is that that theory has become reality for them.
And it’s so fun to see how each individual property that they have purchased has changed their life in one way or another. That’s true. And, and we’ll talk more about that too, that every property has a story behind it. And I think that that’s such a cool thing. The other thing that we are super excited to do is in the tradition of meat and potatoes, we’re gonna start to bring on members of, of our team that we work with on the daily that can kind of share some additional perspective on what it is that they’re doing and, and.
Some of our folks that we work with in the markets and some of our property managers and we wanna, we wanna introduce the world to some of these folks because they’re really great at what they do and they’ve got great things to share. And so just kind of know we got a lot coming for you. Well, I also just wanted to say a massive.
Huge. Thank you so much for all of the reviews. You guys have been awesome and I wanted to give a couple shouts out real quick. Uh, we gotta review just shortly after the podcast launched from J 3 1 2 A that says, I listen to a lot of these kind of podcasts, but the thing that I like about this one that I feel is unique, Is, I feel like they give me a ton of substance that I can use in my personal investing rather than feeling like I’m just constantly being pitched.
Love this. Well, uh, J 3 1 2 A. I feel like he could be a droid in Star Wars . That’s his nickname. Thank you. And that is really important to Steve and I, that this is not a pitch fest. That this is just meat and potatoes and it’s stuff that’s really applicable that’ll really matter to you. And so thank you, uh, for sharing that.
I also wanted to share just another one that I, this kind of made. Super hap number one. The title of the, uh, review is Grateful for Real Estate. And Steve, you know, gratitude’s kind of a thing I care about. Yeah. And uh, this review says Steve and Kevin are awesome and expertly describe how ordinary people can passively invest in and ultimately retire with single family rentals.
This is the part that I love though. Here’s what they said. My husband recently was able to retire early because of this awesome process. We’re incredib. Grateful. And so I love that. Like that’s, that makes me so when we hear from somebody that this has really worked and we are able to talk to them and find out their experience, that just thrills me.
Here’s another one. That was so cool. Love it. This one was called income replacement. It says, Awesome podcast. I just retired early one year ago at 62 only because I found done for you real estate only nine years earlier. So I’m not sure who that was. They didn’t put their name. But what I love is that somebody that went through this process, and guess what they.
They found, they found our company. How many years? Nine years. Guys. We’ve been telling you this is simple and conservative real estate, one property at a time. Over time, this is not gonna be get rich quick. This is gonna be get wealthy slow. And that is kind of the game. But it’s a game we wanna play and frankly it’s a game.
That’s kind of fun. Love it. It is. It is a lot of fun. In fact, I just have to say, it’s like I don’t go to work every day. I. Come play. I know like really? Like that’s what this is. I mean, it has its moments, right? But for the most part, like it’s just fun to work with individuals like that and to help them through the process of replacing their income.
Well, and you know, Steve gets to come to work and play because his office is filled with beach balls. That’s all it is. It’s a desk and beach balls, so it’s lots of fun. Just kidding. Although Steve, do you know that one time on my birthday we had a couple of folks that we used to work with, They filled my office.
Well, they. Foiled my entire office, everything in my office. And one of the other offices they filled with balloons and it was just, I thought that was a really hilarious joke. And so if you’re listening and you wanna do something hilarious, go foil all of your coworkers things and fill their office with balloons.
It’ll make for a good story. That was funny. I remember you do . I think I got videos somewhere. I may or may not have participated. Oh, okay. Well now I’m learning more information. So we, today we have an awesome topic that we want to talk to, and this is another one of those things where, Some of you, this may sound like nails on a chalkboard because you’re like, Wait, what?
That doesn’t make sense. Nobody’s ever said that. So here’s what we’re gonna talk about today. We wanna talk about how to remove geography as a condition for investing. And let me just kind of set this up. There’s, again, there’s a lot of goos, a lot of real estate people, a lot of podcasts that talk about the necessity or the importance of having real estate in your backyard.
And when I say in your backyard, I don. Physically mean like you go out mo pick weeds and then go to your real estate. I mean, in the neighborhood you live in, in the zip code you live in or near where you live, where it is within driving distance where you can go and visit it and you can go and oversee it and you could go and, and you know, lick the wallpaper or lick the brick every day, whatever you want to do.
That is generally the kind of the mentality. And we’ve worked with a lot of people that go, Wait a second, I’ve never even considered. Steam somewhere where I don’t live, and frankly, maybe they’ve never even been or never even visited. So today, Steve, we wanna talk about how to remove geography as a condition for investing so that it opens up a lot of potential and this is why this is so important.
Grew up in California. If you wanna be a real estate investor in the Bay Area where I grew up, you gotta have, I mean, look, 800 grand to a million dollars is the normal price for a small three bed, two bath home. So that means that if you’re gonna do this the right way and you’re gonna go put 20 or 25% down, you gotta have 250 grand as a down payment in order to get an investment property.
Now, if you remove, and that’s if you live in California, same thing if you live in Manhattan or. Sort of really expensive areas, even in Utah, where I think the average home price now where we live, Steve, is what, 300 something thousand? Yeah, it’s about 3, 3 50, 3 53 85 for the, you know, medium priced home.
Yeah. Okay. So if you remove geography as a condition for investing, all of a sudden you open up a whole world of possibility where you can go find more affordable real estate. But there’s some keys to being able to. Work successfully and stay tuned to the end of the podcast. We’re gonna link to a video.
There’s actually a video, a great video on our YouTube channel that Steve did, um, a while back that’s literally called Removing Geography as a Condition for Investing. We’re gonna give you a link to that so you can kind of go and check it out and, and kind of digest the principles in just a few short minutes.
But Steve, when we talk about this idea of removing geography as a condition for investing, I’m just, I know you’ve done a lot of investing locally and you’ve, we’ve done investing outside of the state that we live in. Give me some of the highlights of why you, how, how you personally view this idea of removing geography as a condition for investing.
Um, Kevin, I mean, one of my mentors when I was first getting started in real. He had a mantra and it was Steve, I wanna be able to see, touch, and feel all of my properties every day. And so I kind of cut my teeth on that concept, on that principle. And I, that’s how I started out. And at one point, I owned 18 doors here in Utah and I loved that real estate.
It was great real estate. And I started out with that philosophy. But let me tell you. Three of my properties are located about 35 miles away from my house. There’s no way I could see, touch and feel that property every single day. And in fact, just having to drive out there once a month was became a real burden to be, yeah, to be quite frank, to be quite honest.
And so this is a subject very near and dear to my heart because it took me years to learn this concept and this principle that we now have been implementing for over a decade now. And, and I have to admit, I like the concept of not feeling like I have this responsibility or philosophy to, to get out and see my properties, properties every day or every week or once a month or whatever.
Right? And it’s really freed me up to be more of a true investor as opposed to having, you know, a job. Yeah. Well, you know what’s funny is, so when it comes to real estate, there’s kind of this prevailing philosophy. Like you said, your mentor said that you should be able to see, feel, touch, visit your property on a regular basis.
But what’s interesting about that is the way that most of us think about investing is a hands off approach, right? We’ve had, we’ve done a podcast on why traditional retirement is. But in traditional retirement, the idea is you turn your money over to a broker or you turn your money over to a financial planner or a 401k or whatever, and then you don’t touch it.
You just kind of watch it. So we’re willing to forfeit control in other. Areas and say, Okay, I’m not gonna touch it. I don’t wanna worry about it. But then when it comes to real estate, I don’t know if it’s because people think that real estate is more risky, but somehow with real estate, you think that you have to be able to control every aspect of it.
Well, ke I love the idea of having control in my investments. That’s why I’m in. I’m invested in real estate and my businesses as opposed to just investing in the stock market. In fact, in one of our recent episodes, we talked about this concept, and so when you. Real estate out state or it’s it’s property that maybe you’ve never even seen.
Make no mistake. You are still in control. 100%. You are still making all That’s the difference. Yes. You’re still making all of the decisions. Yep. You, you’ve just tapped into a team and a system and a process that allows you to pull, you know, the lever, so to speak. Have you ever watched one of these guys with a backhoe moving rocks around and building a, a rock wall?
Oh, yeah. It is mesmerizing. Like I can stand there and watch for a couple of hours and the guy’s just moving these little sticks, moving them just like inches and like this big arm is reaching out and it’s grabbing a big boulder and it’s moving it over here and it’s just like seamlessly. Well, that’s in my mind, that’s how I kind of view the idea of owning real estate at a distance is that you’re not going over there and like sweating and, and like trying to lift this big boulder.
You got this lever, you make this phone call and. A large amount of movement that happens you have, when you have the proper, proper team. Right. That’s how I look at investing at a distance and, and just to, like I’m telling you guys who, everybody who’s listening to. We practice what we preach. Yeah. And like it’s not do, as I say, it’s like do as I do so to speak.
And the 18 doors that I used to have here in Utah is now four doors and my personal property, I have sold those off and moved into like doing the investing that we do. I tap into the exact same system that our clients. Well, my first ever investment property was about an hour away and I never went to it, right?
Like it was literal. I was literally, I was managing it from a distance, but I didn’t have a property manager. This was just a, and I’ve told the story on a previous podcast where I moved out of a town home that I’d purchased and I moved into a single family residence and then, you know, we are renting the basement and, and I had this town home that was an investment.
Well, I still wasn’t going and touching the property and seeing it on the daily, and so the thought kind of occurred to me, Well, wait a second, If, if it’s here in Utah and I still don’t want to go and manage the property and go visit the property every day, well then really doesn’t make that much of a difference if I’m invested across the country or in Utah.
Yes, you could make the argument that, sure, I could get my lazy butt in my car and I could drive an hour to go visit it, but if you’ve got a team that’s doing the work that frankly is an expert team doing expert level, For you than what would be the necessity of having the property, uh, whether it’s in your state or outta your state.
If you’ve got the team doing the majority of the work, isn’t that really what creates, Okay, Kevin, I, I gotta ask a favor of you. Yes. I’m wondering if you can do that thing that you do where you talk about all the different things that you gotta do when you own real estate. Like Yeah. It’s pretty amazing when Kevin does this because at the end of the.
Like, we have well over a thousand clients with, you know, right around 4,000 properties, and the vast majority of them have never even physically seen their properties. And it’s because we’ve been able, we, we, we’ve been able to put together like a system in a team and a process that really is that, that guy operating the backhoe that allows you to be the guy operating the backhoe as the owner of the real estate.
And understanding and knowing everything that is happening behind the scenes. In my mind, I, I just kind of go, Who? Yeah. And, and wipe the sweat off my brown and just sing to myself. Oh my goodness. I’m glad I don’t own this, like here locally, because I don’t wanna be doing any of those things’. Cause that’s, I’m way too busy.
That’s, that’s right. So at the can of three, would you just take it away, Kevin? 1, 2, 3. Here we go. So I always think of it this way. Okay. I always feel like there’s three ways that anybody can do real estate. The first is you can walk out your door. Look for the first for sale by owner. And then maybe go try to negotiate a deal, right?
You just kind of, without learning, you just jump into the deep end and go, Here we go. The second is something you and I have talked a lot about, and frankly why we created the company, which is you go and you pay somebody to learn how to do real estate, and then you go and do the real estate. Now the, the thing with both of those, Instances is you are the one largely in charge of doing all of that work.
So what does that work look like? Well, first of all, you have to decide what type of real estate that you wanna do. Do you wanna flip? Do you wanna do whole selling? Uh, do you wanna do lease options? Do you want do, uh, do you wanna do for sale by owners? Do you wanna do rent to own? What type of real estate do you want do?
And then once you establish what type of real estate do you wanna do, then you have to figure out how you’re gonna find the capital in order to go get the real estate that you wanna go get. And then you also, on top of that, have to decide which market you’re gonna. And invest in. And let’s say that you live in a really expensive market and it’s gonna be really difficult for you to be able to do the kind of real estate that you wanna do once you’ve established the kind of real estate that you wanna do in the market where you wanna do it.
And so you decide, I’m gonna go invest outside of the market that I currently live in. So let’s say you say, Oh, you know what, I’m gonna go to Phoenix. Phoenix Sounds like a good market. And let’s say, you know what, I heard that you can get really good deals at the auction. So now you’ve decided that you wanna do auction real estate in Phoenix.
Well, what would be re required in order for you to do that? Well, first of all, you’d have to get your butt to Phoenix and. Find the capital. Once you have the capital, then you have to find the auction. Once you find the auction, you gotta go into the auction. And then you realize there’s a list of a thousand properties that went out the day before that you never saw.
And so you go, Okay, well I gotta come back tomorrow, but I, How do I get my fingers on that list of properties? Well, let’s assume that you can get your fingers on the list of properties in the market of Phoenix where you’ve now decided to invest and somehow you have the capital that you need in order to go and buy cash at the auction.
Well, now you have to go and see a hundred or a thousand properties the day before so that when you go to the auction, you actually have the ability to bid on the ones that you want. Well, Assume that you were able to find Phoenix. You’re able to find the kind of real estate. You’re able to find the auction.
You were able to get the capital, then you were able to go and bid on a deal, and you were able to win the bid. Well, now you own the home. So now what do you have to do? Well, now you realize it was the at. It was at the auction. It was a foreclosure, and it’s in need of desperate repair. So what kind of repair needs to be done?
Do you have to do countertops? Do you not do countertops? Do you have to do tiles? Do you not do tiles? Do you do carpet? What kind of carpet do you do? What kind of patch should it have? What kind of color Carpet’s gonna rent quicker than any kind of other? Should I do brown? Should I do light beige? And then you have to think about paint.
What kind of paint do I do? Do I do a two-one paint? Do I do a three tone paint? Do I do a one tone paint? Is it need to be good paint? What happens if I don’t get good enough paint and the kids ride all over the walls, then I have to repaint the thing anyway in a couple weeks. So you have to, first of all, you have to find the kind of market, You gotta find the kind of real estate, you find the capital, you’re able to get the deal.
You’re in a market that you don’t exist in. So how are you gonna find the team to be able to do the real estate, uh, and to do the work that you wanna do in the first place? So let’s just, just. Zoom, you’re able to find the market, find the capital, find the auction, get the deal, win the deal, figure out the rehab, figure out what kind of rehab needs to be done.
Then all you have to do is from states away. Just coordinate successful rent collection for the rest of your life or for the, uh, foreseeable future as long as you own the property. But that’s all . I love it. Gabby, or, and I think you left out three or four steps. Oh yeah. Maybe two or three or four are a hundred or.
You work with somebody that’s an expert that can find the deal for you, that can do the fix up for. That can get you the financing and that can select and manage the tenants for you. So the question becomes, do I wanna be the kind of real estate investor that goes and does all of the things? Or could I remove geography as a condition for investing and go invest in a market and in a property that is somewhere maybe I’ve never visited, maybe I’ve never gone.
And, and all of a sudden now, how much lighter do you feel not having to do all of those things and do all that work. And Kevin, if I can add one more element to this that I know that, uh, you were gonna touch on next, and that is everything that you described is just the buying process. Now you’ve become an owner and it’s what do you do next?
Because you’re in a market that you don’t live in. How do you stay familiar with it? How do you know what the market is doing? What. Like, how do you know what to do with your property year over year? Do you refinance it? Do you sell it? Do hold onto it? Do you, What are you doing? And, and that’s another element and maybe even as critically important of an element as all of the buying parts.
That’s right. And that’s one of the things that makes us so unique as, as a, as a company, is that for us, After you’ve bought the property, which is all of this stuff, like our relationship has just begun. Well, and there’s a thing that we say a lot and, and this is if you’re listening, this is something you need to understand if you’re considering getting into real estate, especially if it’s buying whole type real estate.
There is a difference between buying real estate and transitioning from a buyer to an. And owning real estate is different than buying real estate, and that’s kind of what you’re touching on. I could do another really fast talking thing about how to select the tenant. Who do you work with? What kind of family should it be?
Should there be pets? Should there not be pets? Do you do a credit check? Do you do a background check? Where do you do the credit check? Where do you do the background check? How do you select the tenant? How do you do? Should they smoke? Should they not smoke? Does that matter? You could go through everything just selecting the tenant and then how do you collect rent?
How do you communicate with the tenant? How do you take care of repairs? If there’s needing to be repairs, how do you even know what repairs need to be done on a regular basis? How do you work with an HOA if it the proper’s in an hoa? All of this stuff and the thing that you just indicated, Steve, which is.
If you transition from a buyer to an owner, when is it the right time to sell? When is it the right time to do a refinance? Should you refinance? I mean, what are all the things you should do once you transition from buyer to owner in order for that property to be successful long term? And I know I, I have some real close family and friends.
Who’ve invested in real estate and they chose to kind of do it on their own, which, hey, more power to ’em, that’s awesome. But I know that the level of stress that it causes ’em is astronomical, right? Because it’s in their backyard. They’re the ones making all the decisions. They’re the ones having to take care of all of the stuff.
They’re the ones having to interact with the tenants. In fact, I, uh, We should, I, I don’t wanna, I don’t wanna throw him under the bus cuz it’s not throwing him under the bus, but I actually think, uh, my awesome, amazing, incredible brother-in-law listens to this podcast. And he’ll tell you some of the struggles he’s had with some tenants and homes on fire and tenants leaving in the middle of the night and all of these things.
And you know what? He does a phenomenal job managing his properties that are there in his backyard. But I also know, and I think he’d be the first to tell you, it can be real stress. Full. And so the idea of removing geography as a condition for investing and transitioning successfully from buyer to owner and then what you’re going through as an owner can free up so much mental capital that you can’t even put a price tag on that.
Well, let’s be clear, Kevin. It’s not that, all those things, the fires and the issues and the repairs and different. Don’t happen with your property at when it’s out of state. Sure, they’re all happening, but you have this team, this expert team who has a strong relationship with us and with you managing and taking care of these types of issues.
So yes. You will be in the no, and yes, you will be the ultimate decision maker, but no, you won’t be the one having to have those individual conversations and taking care personally of those problems because you’ll have this team that is doing those things for you. I kind of think of it as owning a car.
It’s kind of like this. I don’t know everything that goes on under the hood. I am not a car guy from the stand. I can’t do, I can’t, I, I’m not even, I haven’t even ever changed my own oil, nor do I plan to do it anytime soon. Right? And so what I have to do is I get this vehicle and then if there’s something that goes wrong, there’s a team to fix it.
I got a great place right down the street. They’re my mechanics. They take care of. Yeah, I pay a little bit of money for them to fix it, but it, what it does for me is it frees up the mental capital so that I can focus on the things that I’m good at. And this is a big key, right? If for most of our clients and, and from, I would imagine a bunch of you listening, and there may be some of you out there listening that you are just real estate through and through and you.
Eat, breathe, drink, sleep, Real estate. It’s all you care about. It’s all you wanna do with your life, which is awesome, by the way. You, that is not me. Um, but, but there’s a lot of people that want the, the benefits of real estate without some of the headaches that come along with it. I want the benefits of owning a car, but I don’t want the headache of having.
Fix everything on my own, right? I could take care of putting air in the tires or changing out my wiper blades, but almost anything beyond that, right? I could vacuum my car and clean it, but beyond that, I’m gonna hire somebody to do it. Why? Because it allows me to, rather than take in a day out of the office or not doing a podcast, or not putting content together or whatever, instead of taking a day away from that or away from my family.
To fix the car because that’s not something I enjoy. I can drop it off, I can go back to work. I can do the things I love and enjoy, but I can still have the benefit of owning the vehicle and having a team that can take care of the particulars for me so that that vehicle continues to perform the way I need it to so that it gets me from where I am to where I want to go.
So Kevin, in, in a prior uh, podcast, I intro, I introduced everybody to my son who got started investing in real estate. Yeah. Fairly, fairly early age, and I did everything in my power to get him to want to come and work with me in real estate because I am passionate about real estate. I am passionate about business, entrepreneurship and real estate, and I married those two or three things and absolutely love it.
That’s what I’m passionate about. And I wanted my son to come and, and be a part of that. But he, he, he said something to me that that really helped my perspective and that was like, Hey. It’s like I love real estate for what it does for me. Yeah. It’s like I’m not passionate about it. I love this other thing and I wanna do that.
And, and like the bells went off in my own head and I was like, Absolutely. Down. I said, You go and do that and let real estate be one of those things that allows you to go do that. Yeah. Thing exact. And I feel the same exact way. Like I don’t say I’m passionate about real. But I’m unbelievably passionate about what it is real estate can create for me or create for those that we work with and what it, the freedom and benefits that come from the real estate is what I really, really love.
And so I then become interested in real estate because of what it does for me. But I don’t have a desire to go and swing the hammer and to go and do the flip myself and to go and knock on, And that’s. Exactly because they’re not passionate about real estate. They just understand what it can do for them and they allow us to be their team.
We are the claw picking up the boulders and doing, And while they just kind of maneuver the little levers. Yeah, exactly. And so this whole idea of removing geography for as a condition for investing, Is one that I don’t think a lot of people maybe have really wrapped their mind around before. And we have clients that literally don’t even set foot in the market or in the property before they purchase it.
Now we’re also really lucky because we live in a society now where there’s. Pictures and emails and virtual tours, and you could find just about anything on the internet. You can make sure that the people you’re working with in the market are real people, and they’re actually a real business. I mean, there’s ways to kind of verify, right?
Ronald Reagan trust, but verify, right? You could still trust that it’s happening, but it’s not a bad idea to verify. However, we have tons of clients who don’t ever set foot in their home, and Kev, I’m amazed all the time that we’re here in Utah working with a client in Anchorage, Alaska. Buying a property in Memphis, Tennessee.
Yeah, it’s awesome. And how seamlessly and flawlessly. It just works and flows and it does require a great deal of trust, right On the part of everybody involved, uh, not just the person buying the real estate, but the individuals performing the labor. And, you know, we talked a little bit about capitalism in our last.
Last episode. This is the definition of capitalism at work. Yeah. This concept of like, there has to be virtues in order for capitalism to work, there has to be trust, there has to be honesty, there has to be fulfillment, there has to be work ethic. There has to be all of these things because like the person living in Anchorage, Alaska, like how is he going to enforce what the guy or the gal in Memphis, Tennessee is doing right for him?
So these things have to exist. And so that’s one of the things that we’ve worked hard to cultivate is are these relationships in the different markets with our teams who we’ve worked with for years now that really facilitates this whole process. Yeah, because without. That it just, It doesn’t work. Yeah, you’ve gotta have those, and that’s the, I think the most critical part of, if you’re gonna remove geography as a condition for investing, you have to have a trustworthy and expert team that can do that expert level work for you.
Now, some of you out there made aside to. Select the market. And by the way, we’re, I, I think on the next show we’re gonna talk a little bit about some of the criteria that we go through in selecting a good market. But let’s say that you take that from us and you, you go through the process and you select the perfect market for you to invest in, and.
You then have to go out and sort of find that team, right? You gotta go and find the agents and find the rehab crews and find the property managers, but you’ll wanna go and establish those relationships. The only, Kevin, and even then you’re still. One person working with That’s right. A property management company who has hundreds of properties.
Yeah. Whereas we have the luxury of, of being, call it the 600 pound gorilla. Yeah. Who has this wonderful relationship with our partners in the markets, but because we account for. 80 or 90 or plus percent of their business. We have such a strong relationship. We’re not just like referring you to some real estate service providers that we vetted.
Like these are individuals who are a part of our team, who’ve been working with us for years who are in contact with us on a daily even, I’m sorry, multiple times a day, um, basis. Yeah. That well, and it’s, that’s such a critical piece and you. I think of it like this. Even if you went and did all of that on your own, you are still that one person.
You’re still having to do the work, but how do you develop the relationship of trust over time? Right? You may be able to do one deal, but you’re just one person doing one deal. Well, hopefully that deal goes well, but how many more deals are you gonna do? Is there, is there a reason for that team who you’ve.
Established in that market because you didn’t wanna invest in your backyard. Is there a reason for them to stay super connected and, and sort of faithful to you? One of the things that I think we’re really talking about here is the, one of the conditions of being able to invest in a market you don’t live in is utilizing a different kind of leverage.
We’ve talked about leverage monetarily, right? We’ve talked about financial leverage. This is leveraging. Teams and experience and process and relationships, process and systems, and so that you can take advantage without having to make the full investment. Cause that’s really what leverage is, right? You put some in, then somebody else kind of makes up the rest, right?
That’s kind of how it works when you have a mortgage. What we’ve tried to create with our teams that we use for ourselves, for our company, and for our. Is that leverage where, um, our clients can come in and they can leverage this idea of these teams and this process and this communication and, and, and the systems that are sort of in place.
So regardless of whether, if you’re listening, regardless of whether you work with done for you real estate or you know, somebody else, The, The idea is you wanna make sure that there is a trustworthy group of people who have a significant track record of doing the thing you want them to do. And then, yeah, you’re gonna have to crack the code on how do you become important enough to them , right?
That they really wanna work with you over time. But it is doable. It is possible. And I think at the end of the day, what we’re saying is consider. The idea that you don’t have to look at, see, touch, feel, smell, visit your real estate on the daily. There are other ways to invest in real estate where the vast majority of that can be done for you.
Where you can leverage people, resources, opportunities, and even leverage better markets potentially than the ones you currently live in, in order to help you on your income replacement journey. And before we end, Kevin, like I wanna make sure that. You already touched on this, but I just wanna address it again, and one of the, the, the massive benefits of removing geography as a condition of investing in real estate is this concept that in many different areas of the world, price point makes it very difficult to invest in your own backyard.
True. And in our day and age, we should be in a position where we can leverage. These relationships and these systems and processes in such a way that we can buy real estate anywhere and take advantage of, of what’s going on in other markets. That’s, that’s, that’s one of the beauties, one of the benefits of living in this incredible country is that we have 52 states that equivalently could be 52 separate countries with, with all kinds of borders and tariffs and this and that and the other, but because that part of it doesn’t exist, the fact that we can freely trade between states, And do business in other states by taking advantage of technology and the relationships and the systems and processes and such a way that, that we can go to a market and we can buy a home for $200,000 or $150,000.
Yeah. In a wonderful, in an awesome area. And, and do so in a way. That it’s just as easy or maybe even easier than investing in your own backyard. Yeah. By the way, Steve did say that there are 52 states. We know there’s 50 states in the union. I’m, But there are states and territories. Yeah. I’m counting Canada and I’m counting, you know, some of these other countries.
I just didn’t, I just didn’t want him to discount you. I mean, Steve is Canadian and so, hey, look, look, he could be still learning. I love and admire President Obama, Obama, much to your chagrin. I, I think that he did a lot of great things for us. Yeah. And I really admire. And he once said 57, 52. Oh, I think he was like, it was 52 seconds.
I’m just, I’m just copying what he said. good. Hey, you can’t go, I mean, he was a president, right? He accomplished a, he, he was able to get the highest in the land. If he says there’s 52, let’s go at that. No, but really, um, you know, listen, at the end of the day, you guys, we just want you to know that there’s ways to take advantage of real.
Outside of just the few square miles that in which you live. And a big part of that is gonna be leveraging resources and expertise and teams that, that maybe you have access to already. And if you don’t have access to, there are ways to access teams like that. So we’re gonna put a link in the show. To the video that Steve did called Removing Geography as a Condition for investing.
Go watch that. Take a look at it. And as always, if you have questions or you have things that you want us to talk about on the podcast or address, please let us know. You can go leave us a review on Apple Podcast and you could put your question in there. Or you can email us. You could also reach out to us through the website.
If you go to our website, dfy dash real estate.com, there’s a little chat button. You could always chat with us anytime and we’ll be able to respond. But we appreciate so much that you’re here and that you’re listening and, and I think Steve, let’s, on the next podcast, let’s really talk about the markets and, and how we evaluate what a good, We’ve talked about how to evaluate a good.
Let’s talk about what, what we look at when we’re thinking about is this a good market to invest in? You mentioned, I think, earlier in this podcast that, you know, we’ve been in a total of seven markets. We’re currently investing actively in three. So what is it about those markets? How do we establish whether or not it’s a good market?
Let’s maybe talk about that on the next podcast. Done deal. Let’s do it. Awesome. Thank you as always for joining us. We will see you next week. Take. Thanks so much for listening to Replace Your Income with Kevin and Steve. Do you want to connect with us and other income replacement rangers out to obliterate the status quo and experience real retirement with income replacement through real estate type done for you Real Estate USA in your Facebook search bar?
And make sure to like our company’s page, send us a message while you’re. And I’ll send you a personal hello and make sure you are on our weekly property scouting emails where you can view weekly deals right in your inbox. Until then, thanks so much for joining us on Replace Your Income and just remember income replacement for you and your family may only be one property away.
See you next week.