Buy the sh*thole, your first home is not your dream home | Episode 136

While renting is a great way to start your life post-college, post-trade school, or post-high-school, doing it for too long can hurt you; mostly, in the long-term. Meaning, it's a great way to get started, but plan to invest your rental dollars in an asset sooner than later: real estate, stock market, etc. Enter, "buy the sh*thole." While it would be nice to own the home of your dreams as a first-time buyer, it's not that easy (or the norm). It's actually a smarter move to buy a home that needs a little love ... and some time from you as an owner. My man Cory Jacobson inspired this B&R charger. Sean & Tim hope you snag a couple nuggets.

Big shout-out to our show's loyal and dedicated sponsor: Property Management Redefined. John Sacks and his property management squad love our show and continue to support our mission of helping people through podcasting!

Our goal with Bricks & Risk is that you walk away with 1 or 2 valuable nuggets that can help build your own business. Our audience grows through word of mouth, so if you would please take a moment of your time and give us a review on the platform you’re on, that would be fantastic!

Please also help spread the B&R word by sharing your favorite episode with a friend. You can find all B&R episodes on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube, and anywhere else you get your podcast content. We greatly appreciate your time and trust.

Until next week, keep learning and keep growing!

** Episode Shout-Outs **
→ Cory Jacobson: http://www.youtube.com/@wealthjuiceofficial
→ Episode Sponsor, Property Management Redefined: https://gopmr.com/

📲 Contact Info 📲
→ Sean Mooney, Mooney Insurance Brokers: www.mooneybrokers.com/
→ Tim Garrity, The Tim Garrity Team: www.timgarrityteam.com/

💥 Watch us on YouTube 💥
→ YouTube, Bricks & Risk Podcast, @bricksandrisk: www.youtube.com/@BricksandRisk/?sub_confirmation=1

💥 Follow us on Social Media 💥
→ Instagram, Bricks & Risk Podcast, @bricksandrisk: https://www.instagram.com/bricksandrisk/
→ Instagram, Sean Mooney, @sean.moonee: https://www.instagram.com/sean.moonee/@sean.moonee
→ Instagram, Tim Garrity, @realestateinphl: https://www.instagram.com/realestateinphl/
→ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bricksandrisk
→ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/bricksandrisk

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

SPEAKER_00 0:00

So if you finish around 22 and you don't buy your first house until you're 40, I'm guaranteeing you're probably not living a home until you're 40. You have at least 10 to 15 years of rent behind you. And we just did the math on that. You think about how much money was spent on rent during that time that could have been put into something else. It could have been put in the stock market, a real a home, an investment property, whatever. Could have bought a shithole. You could have bought a shithole. Like that's just the bottom line. Join us as we take you along our own business building journeys with additional wisdom from our network of local and national experts. Welcome to Bricks and Risk.

SPEAKER_01 0:53

This episode is brought to you by Property Management Redefined. PMR is not just managing properties, we're creating partnerships that build long-term success for property owners. John and his team can be reached at manage at gopmr.com or by phone 267-753-6005. Tim. Yes, Sean. Who's a good client for PMR?

SPEAKER_00 1:21

Property management redefined is looking for property owners who value three things accountability, reliability, and a results-driven approach. You want to maximize returns, but still provide client and tenant satisfaction.

SPEAKER_01 1:35

There's a lot of property managers out there.

SPEAKER_00 1:38

What does PMR do really well? Biggest thing is they're seamless and they're worry-free. So with that approach in mind, it allows the property owner to put their trust in PMR and know that the results will be there. The other thing I think a property owner is really going to value because they do it so well is that they have a local expert team, boots on the ground, managing your properties and your tenants' expectations every day so that you feel good about your investments.

SPEAKER_01 2:05

We have millions of listeners out there. Tens of millions. If they want more information, how do they find PMR?

SPEAKER_00 2:12

Right here, guys. Reach out to John Stacks and his team at Property Management Redefine. Take good care of you. Looks like we got a pretty uh pretty dope shirt going on right here. What we got going on? Love and support for Daniel Dumoulet. And it was Diddy Dumalay again. I mean, I know, but who is Daniel Dumoulet for the people who don't know?

SPEAKER_01 2:52

He's a rapper.

SPEAKER_00 2:54

Some guy from New York. Some guy no one's ever had.

SPEAKER_01 2:56

Although I don't think he was born in New York. I think he came to New York.

SPEAKER_00 2:59

Here's a question. Why does Doom have so many aliases? That's like his thing. That's just like how he rolled. Why he wears a mask. And and Vic Vaughn is also an alias, correct? Vic Vaughn is one.

SPEAKER_01 3:11

For for both of us. Why do these packages say Vic Vaughn on them? All right, what do we get into today? Before we get started, Bricks and Riskers, we invite you to come on down, as Bob Barker would say. If you listen to a show and you haven't left a review on Apple, we would love to hear from you. We would love the support to have you come in and leave a review. Whatever you want to say, the floor is yours in the Apple review. We just invite you to come on down because we're trying uh to build them up as it helps with the show.

SPEAKER_00 3:49

So in the words of Naked Gun, I love it. Tim loves it. What are we getting into, man?

SPEAKER_01 3:58

Today we're going to do a real estate focused episode. Right up your alley. Yep.

SPEAKER_00 4:06

There's a little bit of profanity in this one. The topic. You don't really curse that much. Why don't you why don't you introduce the topic on this one?

SPEAKER_01 4:12

Uh yeah, I will uh intro in. Title for today's episode is By That Shithole. Your first home doesn't have to be your dream home.

SPEAKER_00 4:28

Oh, I love this. And we'll give a shout out right now to my boy Corey Jacobson. What's up, man? Uh Mr. Mooney here said you were recently kind of talking about something similar.

SPEAKER_01 4:37

I will get into my thoughts and the recent post that Corey had as we uh Why don't we use let's use that as a starting point?

SPEAKER_00 4:46

So what did he say about this philosophy, let's call it?

SPEAKER_01 4:50

Yeah, so he is, you know, the home hacker guy in a sense. Is that trademarked? It is now. Um, so as we were talking about topics we wanted to go over with the show, uh this came up as a topic, and I said, you know what, Corey did a post on this theme uh recently where he listed a property for sale. It's like $325 for a home in Manioc. And I want to say it was three bedrooms. Um, so a place that you could buy as your first time um your starter home. Home. Yep. And and then he gave the math behind it. And so he said, you know, if you buy this house, put five percent down, this is what you'd be out of pocket to get into the house. You get two roommates, yep, eight hundred bucks a piece, sixteen hundred dollars taken off that mortgage payment. Yep. And then what are you left with, right? And it wound up being, I don't know, eight hundred bucks. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:03

So you could own a three-bedroom home in Manioca, Roxboro for 800 bucks. Well, whatever you're putting down plus they're gonna be. But that's your monthly, you know, that's your monthly uh rental slash mortgage payment, let's call it.

SPEAKER_01 6:15

Yep. And so that was the, you know, it hit me as like, wow, like if if people understood, that's uh I don't I don't think part of the problem is, and we'll get into a lot of the reasons why, but one of the reasons people don't understand that down payments are very low. Yep. I mean, it's gone are the days of 20% down or whatever that mortgage structure would be. Yep. That's total myth. And and what you're actually, and he went through the math because it's his property insurance, PMI, utilities, you know, kind of gave all of the numbers and figures to give you a real number, not you know, what it is on paper or what the so he kind of worked through the whole entire uh picture to give you an idea of what that is, and um and and broke it on down. So you have that mortgage payment and you're into it uh for 800 bucks.

SPEAKER_00 7:13

Yeah, let's um let's use this as a as an example. That was all super helpful, and thanks for your help with that, Corey. Um so let's talk about the problem. Yeah. And I'm really I'm really not trying to like point fingers and say we are, yes, you are, and say, like, it's it's younger generations, younger than us, let's say, but there has been a trend for people younger than Sean and I. Let's just call it. Let's not talk about specific age groups or you know, generations or whatever. Sean and I came from uh growing up with baby boomer parents. When we have baby boomer parents, a lot of what they taught us was, you know, don't spend your money on things that don't provide any value or like be careful or like have a budget, invest young. We got a lot of advice from our folks, so shout out to our moms and dads for all that.

SPEAKER_01 8:02

And I think Are you indicting yourself that we're not giving our children the same advice? We are. Okay. So you're point when you point fingers, you're pointing your finger at yourself. Well, here's what I would say it's going on the record there.

SPEAKER_00 8:15

Younger than our generation, we're basically like Generation X, so beneath us would be like millennial and gen and Gen Z. Um of the mindset was a little bit more on live your life. Like, you don't need to be tied down with a house, like travel the world, like eat well, like have experiences. And I believe in all that. I do. What I think got left by the wayside with living that lifestyle was investing in real estate early on. I bought my first house, it was 24. Do you remember how old you were when you bought your first house? 100? I don't know. Old. Really? Like, do you remember?

unknown 8:54

No.

SPEAKER_00 8:54

You were probably like mid-20s, mid or late 20s. It was like no, it was probably like 28, 29. Okay, so 28, 29. Still, still younger than most people do it today. The average age of a first-time homebuyer is almost 40 right now. Yeah. So you were way ahead. And I was like incredibly ahead. So, so let's look at that. The reason we're bringing this up, it's important to learn that when you own real estate and you continue to own that real estate for a long period of time, it becomes the number one wealth builder in the U.S. for over the last 10 years.

SPEAKER_01 9:26

Let me stop you right there because I think you're missing a very important point. Okay, please. Number one, our parents, my parents, did not tell me to buy real estate. That wasn't something that they didn't say go buy a house. No. Okay. Mine did, but anyway. Okay. Number two, point number two that I think is extremely important, is you bought a three-bedroom condo. Yep. I bought a two-bedroom house. Yep. So as the title says, you know, we entitled it. And they were both jumps.

SPEAKER_00 10:06

Yes. They were. Yeah. You moved into yours with your wife, I moved into mine with two roommates because I house hacked my first place. Right.

SPEAKER_01 10:14

But my my point is we didn't go out and buy the four-bedroom house on an acre of of land. Like we were like, okay, let's get into a house. What can we afford? And kind of Yeah, what can we afford? And not what do I want. But it but it did it also didn't have to be perfect. Correct. Right? So that's in our two instances, that's where it started.

SPEAKER_00 10:46

Yep. Proceed. Okay. So without getting like too much into math here, I'm gonna use an example. So we just rehabbed the old holy family school, 240 Hermitage Street, and turned it into 16 apartments. Right. It's got 14 two beds and two one-beds. So our most expensive two-bed, I think, was right around like $2,400. Okay. So just do some basic math on that. If you rent that two bed for a year, that's gonna be somewhere in the range of like $30K. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So $30,000 a year to rent to rent one of our two bedroom uh units. Now again, I don't want to tell anyone to not rent if that's where you are in life. Maybe you don't have enough money saved up, or maybe you're not really like ready to like kind of plant your feet somewhere because you're like, yeah, I kind of I might want to move around a little bit. What if I move to a different city or a different state? Or what if I just move to a different neighborhood or town? So people are waiting a little bit longer because they're like, I don't know where I want to live yet. Here's what I tell a lot of first-time home buyers. I tell them, if you're gonna buy real estate now, good market, bad market, doesn't matter, you should hold on to that real estate for seven to ten years. The first house you ever buy. Even if you live there for two years, you should go ahead and rent that for an additional, let's call it like five to eight. All right?

SPEAKER_01 12:10

So you follow my logic here? Right. But what I would say is the first thing you started with was that you don't have the money for a home. Correct. That is what you said. Correct. So the Corey Jacobson house was $325 in Manny Yunk. Yep. And they he gave the example of putting 5% down, which is just over 16 grand.

SPEAKER_00 12:40

Right. Yep. Then you have to have your closing costs. Let's not forget about that. Okay. So your closing cost is usually about 5%, which is let's say on average. So you're gonna be at like 32, 33K. Okay. Uh to buy your first house. Right. Yeah. And that's what what was just spent on the first year of rent.

SPEAKER_01 12:56

That's that's my point. So you don't have the money.

SPEAKER_00 13:00

Or maybe you do have the money. Right. So here it is. So I'm gonna say one of the main reasons why this is happening right now is just mindset. It's someone saying that those younger generations, younger than us, were a little bit more focused on like lifestyle, a little bit more focused on education, like freaking YOLO. You only live once. So But that's true. Like there's a reason there's a reason that exists.

SPEAKER_01 13:36

Okay. When you say that, you're painting with a broad brush. I am. I have clients that come to me and they buy houses in like Germantown on the other side of East Falls. Yep. That they're paying, you know, $240 for that that need work. So uh let's just say that the vast majority kind of fall into the one category, but there certainly are younger types that do the home hacking, or they're buying a house that does need some work and they're willing to live, you know, in an area that maybe is up and coming or just suits their um you know, financial status or whatever that that they want to get into a house. So so there are scenarios and instances where I've seen people that do want to buy a house and will take, you know, the the maybe the not prettiest house in the prettiest neighborhood that that's where they start.

SPEAKER_00 14:42

So here's something interesting. When I first started in real estate, so this is 2010, and it was very slow for my first two years. Twenty 2010 to 2012 was was awful. Like there was just no one was buying anything because we were still in the thick of like the great financial crisis. 2012, 2013, you know, sales started popping off a little, a little bit, like people were investors were buying properties again, they were flipping again. You know, people started feeling more confident. Like the bottom is past us. Let's the only way to go from here is up. So people started buying real estate again. There were so many articles around that time. I can't remember which article, which publication, what it said exactly, that were saying millennials are not going to buy homes. They want to rent. So if they want to rent, think about the residential real estate landscape that way. If you want to buy something as an investor, you should buy something not to flip it, you should buy something to rent it because we have this whole generation of renters. And that's true. During that time as well, the millennial generation, a lot of them, like in our generation, not a lot of people went back and got their masters right away. Most of us just graduated and just went to work and we just started grinding. There were people that did get their master's, so I don't want to say no one did. But then the generation, the millennial generation behind us, was it was pretty common. People I went to college with who were younger than me said, I'm just going back for my second round. I'm going back for my MBA. I'm going back for my master's of fine arts, whatever they were trying to get. They're like, I might as well just keep going. So then let me go spend another 100,000, 200,000, 250, whatever you were doing on education to go out and get more accredited. Fantastic. I am Mr. Pro Education. Then on top of that, you're like, well, I just finished with school. I'm 25, 26. Now I need to go get a starter job because even though I have my MBA, no one's gonna pay me a hundred plus grand for my first job out of school. They quickly realize, no, you're gonna probably make like 50k. So then you get your starter job, but then you're like, look, I feel like I'm gonna move up quick because I'm a hard worker and I'm smart and I'm accredited. Then there was that. Now what has happened is the millennial generation right now is in the thick of uh starting families. They're either getting married, they're with a significant other, they have a dog, they have a kid, they have multiple kids, they're thinking about kids, whatever, they're starting to put down roots. And this didn't happen until they were kind of like in their almost like early to mid-30s. Okay, let's start putting down roots. Like, there's nothing wrong with that. This is zero judgment. I'm just painting the picture. If you bought your first house in your late 20s and I bought my first house, let's say in my mid-20s, we were already five to ten years ahead of that generation of owning real estate. And then I get I get the argument all the time. People are like, well, you bought at such a good time. Real estate was so cheap back then. I bought like 2004 was like okay, but then 2008 everything crashed. The first place I ever bought, the first condo, I bought it for like about 145. I think it went up to just over 200 at one point during like 2006-2007. Went all the way back down to less than what I paid for it. Other people in my community were selling three bedroom units for less than what I paid for it five, six years later. So I was looking like, think about that. The asset I bought five, six years later was worth less if I wanted to sell it than what I paid for it. That almost kind of forced me to hold on to it. So again, I bought it, got a decent number, market crashed, met Maria, we get married, she moves in. I said, We're staying here for five years. I don't care. I don't care where you want to go or why you want to go there, we're staying here for five years. If we want to be financially prudent, that's what we're doing. So we stayed for five years. Then we bought our single family home in Roxburgh beautiful home, 1890s, single family, needed everything. We gutted that thing, took it down the studs, every penny in the world we spent on that property. It was really rough the first couple years living there because, again, we overimproved. We spent more than we needed, but it ended up being a fantastic investment for us because we stayed there for nine years. But what we did during that nine-year period, we held on to the first condo as a rental. When we finally moved to Flowertown, which was about five years ago, we rehabbed another house. We sold both properties to make Flowertown happen. Because again, we kind of like shot for the stars again. And I'm not telling them, it's not to say shoot for the stars or don't. I'm just telling the story as an example. When we bought Flowertown, I said we have to sell our first place. We obviously have to sell our second one because we have equity in both. The first house I ended up when I sold it, I owned it for 17 years. And even then, it ended up going up above 200, which is where it was at the peak in 2007, let's call it. Went all the way down below what I paid for at 140, 130, then went all the way back up over 200, you know, within that 17-year period. That's what happened. So there was plenty of equity in there. One, because we rented it for seven of those 17 years. We stayed there for 10. And the equity was being paid down all during that time. Yeah. So the reason I tell that story, like time, I've always told people, time is your friend in real estate. If you're gonna own real estate and you want to sell it two years later, four years later, six years later, you could get lucky and you could be in an up market and still make money. Most of the time, you're not lucky, you're you might not be in a market that's moving up that quick, and you're either gonna break even or lose money if you don't wait seven to ten. That's why I give that advice. Hey everyone, this is Tim, your favorite bricks and risk co-host. But don't tell Sean. I hope you're enjoying this episode, and I'll get right back to it in a moment. Our audience grows through word of mouth, so if you would please take a moment of your time and give us a review on the platform you're on, that would be fantastic. Please also help spread the BR word by sharing your favorite episode with a friend. We greatly appreciate your time and trust. Now, back to the show.

SPEAKER_01 21:21

You talked about the focus on doing more school. Yep. And what year did you say uh you referenced a year in that? In terms of what age? No, like when everything was happening, the market 2008, and then 2000. You said 2010. Yep. So I just looked it up. Okay. I'm an insurance guy. Yes. I think there's a component in here that is insurance related. Please share. Because you know me. Yes. I like to weave. This whole podcast is about weaving. In 2000. 2010, if you remember, it was uh the changeover with Obamacare, health insurance. Uh-huh. Do you know do you remember what one of the precepts of that was? Educate me.

SPEAKER_00 22:18

I have a guess, but go ahead.

SPEAKER_01 22:21

As part of that revamping of health care insurance, you could was it a credit? No. Alright, keep going. You could have your kids on your health insurance until you've referenced this before. Until when? Age twenty-six. So before, I don't know, maybe it was twenty-one. So they basically said, Hey, if you have your health insurance, your parents can help you for an additional five years. You don't need to kick your kids off of your health insurance at twenty two, you can extend them out until age twenty-six. Wow. And so why that is important is because now instead of a kid having to go get a job for insurance for well for health benefits. Yep. Yeah. They can now stay at home. Don't need so it basically delayed kids or young adults, I should say, in terms of moving out, getting a job, getting married, buying a home.

SPEAKER_00 23:35

It allowed them to kind of delay that. Probably also part of the reason, too, a lot of um generations younger than us were going back to school. They're like, look, I don't have rent. Okay. And and who doesn't want to invest in education? I have a master's degree. It's it was one of the greatest things I ever did, even though it has nothing to do with being an entrepreneur. It has helped me so much in my career, corporate America, as well as being a business owner. But like, it was almost like that. It's like, you know what? I'm at home, like, I'm just gonna go back to school. And some people worked and then went to school at night. That's what I did. Other people just said, you know what? I'm not gonna work again for another two years. Most people could complete their MBA, let's say, they just went back full-time for like two years. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:21

And then I just referenced it as a point in time to show that where the market was, where the job, where the real estate market was, where the jobs market was, and then all of these other uh things that were happening at that time to kind of build that reference.

SPEAKER_00 24:38

So let's let's introduce some more things that have happened during that time. Let's say in like the 2008 to like 2020 range. What happened is, you know, uh mobile phones came out, what uh probably like 2012, somewhere around there. I'm not quite sure. Um iPhone comes out, hits the market.

SPEAKER_01 24:57

Well, mobile phone, I mean, we had uh cell phones after graduation.

SPEAKER_00 25:02

So like well, smartphones came out, I should say.

SPEAKER_01 25:05

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 25:05

We all had the Nokia that you could text. Maybe you were lucky enough to take a picture or some kind of like scratchy video, especially with flip phones. You and I were both Nokia fans. I had that blue little thing. Yeah. So everyone had those. Then the smartphones came out, and then when the smartphones came out, social media really started taking off as well because they realized you could do so much social media right out of your pocket. Yep. So then that started taking off. What happened with social media? People the younger generations, us included, were exposed to so much information, visual information, articles, you know, people's pictures, people living their lives that you could not share that before. You really couldn't do it. So then there's like this mindset of like that person's living like that. Well, I mean, I want to I want to go to Bali. Well, why I want to be in, I want to go to Fiji or Tahiti or like Thailand. Why wouldn't I go there? So then you go blow five, 10 grand on going to these like exotic locations, and then you're like, and then you come back and like, oh well, you know, I did that. And again, look, travel is awesome. But I think the picture we're painting here is how people spent their money in those first, let's say, 10 years post-college was a little bit more on like education lifestyle, you know, eating out more, traveling more, increasing my education. Whereas when we both graduated, just to give an example, we just said, like, look, we're gonna grind, we're gonna save our bucks, and then hopefully we meet someone, we get married, and we want to buy a house. Like that was just where our mindset was. And maybe it was because we wanted to stay in the area as well, and maybe some other people didn't. That's not the point. But I think that was just where we were at. We didn't have this other idea to like go about our lives a different way at that stage. So then most people we know bought homes between the ages of, let's say, like 22 and 30. Most people we knew, either through marriage or they were single, they just bought a house. Because they're like, I'm not gonna keep running for like five years, I'm just gonna buy something. Now, they're saying that some people now, the average age, whether it's true or not, let's call it 38 or 40, are not buying their first house until 38 or 40. So let's think about how old you are when you finish college. You're you're you're around 22 years old. I was like 25. Well, we know that, but I'm talking about regular folk. You're the normal, normal person. Regular folk. Um, so if you finish around 22 and you don't buy your first house until you're 40, I'm guaranteeing you're probably not living a home until you're 40. You got you have at least 10 to 15 years of rent behind you. And we just did the math on that. You think about how much money was spent on rent during that time that could have been put into something else. It could have been put in the stock market, a real a home, an investment property, whatever. Could have bought a shithole. You could have bought a shithole. Like that's just the bottom line.

SPEAKER_01 28:08

Let's get so let's take we got the frame, yeah, we got everything, all the components of let's talk about what people should be doing and the actionable steps that people should be doing.

SPEAKER_00 28:22

So, one thing I say all the time if you're buying your first house, first of all, buy within your budget and just know your first home is definitely not going to be your dream home. It does happen here or there, but it's really for the people that are at that 38 or 40 age. They're like, look, I already have two children, like I need a house. I have the money, I've been working for 15 years. I can do it. For the people who haven't been doing that, let's say you're 25 years old. What do I tell you is figure out how much money you're spending on rent right now, if it's $1,500 a month, if it's $2,500 a month, figure out how much money you are giving to a landlord just like me in your first year and understand that. Once you understand that, that's how you know I could have put that money into this and lived this way. That's the first piece. The second piece is before you look even even into like the opportunity of owning real estate, do you want to live by yourself or are you open to having a roommate or roommate? The reason I said if you're if you're only looking to be by yourself, you don't want much more than a one or two bedroom home or condo or co-op or whatever. Let's just call it that. If you're like, no, I would I would take roommates, I'd be like, look at a three-bedroom home, look at a four-bedroom home, look at a duplex, look at a triplex, like buy something where you can have multiple roommates, whether they're in your unit or in a different unit, they call that house hacking now, and look at the numbers that way. What's your down payment on that property? Can you get sellers' assist if it needs work? Can you hustle? Do you have like an uncle or a cousin or a friend that's a general contractor? Do you want to learn how to swing hammers and do your own drywall? Listen, used to swing hammers.

SPEAKER_01 30:07

Listen, my first my first house, let's think about it here. Small house, 1100, 1200 square feet, two bedroom. Shout out to Flowertown. Uh Flowertown. Um I what did I do? I ripped out the whole entire upstairs bathroom and did that myself. Um So you did what? The plumbing? No, I had uh I had plumber and electrician, but I did all the I did the demo, did all the I did the tiling, the flooring. How'd it turn out? Uh great. The heated floor. Oh yeah, I forgot. You did rain and floor. Was it perfect? No, not by any stretch of the imagination, but it was it it was better than most, I would say.

SPEAKER_00 30:51

And it improved the value of your home.

SPEAKER_01 30:53

Yep. Also improved your quality of life. Uh I cleaned up all the landscaping front and back. Uh because there was overgrown hedges along the side and there was trees in the back. I rented a I wish I had that video. I uh I had bought a chainsaw, ripped them all down. I rented a stump grinder from Holland's. Oh damn, you went hardcore.

SPEAKER_00 31:13

I don't think I knew this part. Yep. Um you went out and bought a chainsaw just to take care of the landscape. That's great. Keep going, sorry.

SPEAKER_01 31:25

Uh got the stump grinder from Hollard's. Yeah. Uh shout out to Hollard's. Um and I gutted the I remember I transformed the uh the dining room kitchen area. I gutted that myself and then tiled it. Put I put the cabinets up, um, did all that. The basement was a was a dungeon. Katie must have loved you during this period of time. I remember it had an oil tank and we switched to gas and I took out the oil tank. Get out of here. What? Did you chop it up in the pieces, or you just had enough area to carry it out? Uh so I drained it out because there was oil in there.

unknown 32:06

What?

SPEAKER_01 32:07

I had a uh sawzall, so I split it in half. Holy shit. And then I was cutting it down into pieces. Oh, damn, I didn't know all this. Yep. Uh so once that was gone, it was still kind of a disaster. So I did uh I redid the floor. I did an epoxy floor in the basement. Right. Very nice. Smart. O'Neill came in, did the French drain. Shout out to Jimmy O'Neilling that up. Oh, dude, I did so much of I did so much work on that sucker.

SPEAKER_00 32:35

Do you remember? All right, do you recall what a two-bedroom in Flowertown cost you back then that needed work? I think we paid like 185. Oh wow. Well that's like what year did you buy? It was uh like 28, it was probably what around like 17? Was it that late? No.

SPEAKER_01 32:59

No, it had to have been like oh eight.

SPEAKER_00 33:05

Well, it might have been oh eight, yeah. So let's call it somewhere around like so you bought at one of the worst times. 08 was a horrible time to buy because prices, you know, were starting to go down, but they didn't really go down to where they really went down. That was around like 20. I don't know why I can't get this. 2009-2010 is when prices literally hit like rock bottom and then just like stayed flat for like another year or two.

SPEAKER_01 33:27

Um, and then we sold for I think it was like 325.

SPEAKER_00 33:35

Yeah. So again, didn't set the world on fire, but you bought cheap, you had enough money socked away to like minimum down payment. Yeah. Do you remember if we got any seller assist?

SPEAKER_01 33:46

Yeah, we did because there were some issues and stuff. So it was like 15 or 20 grand um that we had.

SPEAKER_00 33:52

I mean, without getting into like too much of like this is what you do, like a couple things. If you're thinking about buying your first house, go low down payment, FHA and conventional loans both allow for that. Think about a seller assist. If you're light on cash, think about putting an offer on a house, whether it's right at market value or above market value, and ask for some money back in closing costs. It's gonna keep more of your money in the bank. It's gonna allow you to buy the house that you want to buy. And then also house hacking. House hacking is a great way to buy your first place. Whether you're chopping oil tanks in the basement like Mooney was, you just look at it, it's like, hey, I bought a nice three-bedroom, like ready to go. Maybe it's got a brand new kitchen for all you know. Uh we have because you got two roommates, you can do that.

SPEAKER_01 34:33

We had, I mean, I always call my uncle's like, oh, I got some leftover drywall. I was like, bring it over. Yeah, I'll take it. I mean, this was literally You went barebones. Yeah. I mean, I was buying all this, all the tools because I'm like, well, if I hire someone to do it, it'll, you know, cost X. If I buy uh a wet saw to cut my tiles down, it'll, you know, it's 400 bucks. So to me, it was like, ah, no-brainer.

SPEAKER_00 34:58

So what's your advice? So if I said, hey, you know, think about you, roommates, you know, where you want to live, like hold on to for seven to ten years. I've given some pieces of advice. What would be your actionable steps? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 35:10

So uh I would try to persuade everyone to get into home ownership. Some way, get in, don't wait. The earlier you do it, the better off you're gonna be. That's one. Number two, uh do the house hacking. If you're young, who cares? It's funner to live with roommates. Um, so the earlier you do it. My favorite time in life was with Gus living in East Falls. Shout out to Gus. Uh, it was a magical time in my life.

SPEAKER_00 35:42

That was a lot of fun.

SPEAKER_01 35:44

Um, so you know, if you're young, you're gonna have roommates if you're renting a place or you're owning it and be the one to own it. Yeah. And have your friends move in. So I would say that. Um, don't be scared of the numbers. I think that people are like, oh, I can't afford that. Uh make it work. Get with somebody that can put together a plan that can analyze everything from your income to what the rents would be, to build out a uh a very specific plan as to what you're gonna need and what your monthly payments are gonna be. Because I think that people get scared off. They think, oh, that, you know, especially with values being what they are right now. Uh, oh my God, is it you know, this house is $400,000. I can't afford that. Well, if you have roommates, maybe you can.

unknown 36:35

True.

SPEAKER_01 36:36

And that and that home is going to appreciate over time and you're gonna have equity, and you can borrow off that equity, and you can hold it and go buy another one. So it just puts you in a position that you're gonna be much better off down the road. And what I always tell people is your 30-year-old self is gonna thank the 25-year-old self. I got a great line.

SPEAKER_00 36:57

Yeah. Don't wait to buy real estate, buy real estate and wait. That was some advice I got early on when I started out in the mortgage business. I was 22, about 23, actually. And um, it was just like there's no time like the present to own real estate. But I do think the hardest thing is is like wrapping your mind around the payment commitment. I am I gonna stay here, am I gonna own this thing? Like, what if I want to leave? Like, make sure you do all that before you buy it so that you understand if you end up moving out of there, what does it rent for? And can you still own it for another three years, five years, eight years? So let's go ahead and shut this one down.

SPEAKER_01 37:35

Thanks for hanging on, folks. If you enjoy the show, you can find us on all the socials: YouTube, Facebook, Instagram. We have a LinkedIn community. Hop in there. We're trying to push up to a thousand in that community on LinkedIn. You can, like I said in the opening of the show, leave us a review on Apple. We know that 67% of our listeners and nail watchers are on the Apple platform.

SPEAKER_00 38:04

And what has officially happened on Apple? I don't even know if we've talked about it on the show yet. Maybe we have. We have. Okay. What are we doing now on Apple?

SPEAKER_01 38:12

We are on video on Apple. You're an Apple Podcast listener. You are now a listener watcher. I would love to hear someone being like, hey, I always used to listen to your stuff on Apple. And now it's because the prompt is video.

SPEAKER_00 38:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 38:29

So as soon as you hit it, it's playing the video. Yep. So I would love to hear from someone that's like, hey, I've always listened to you on Apple. And now I listen and watch. I watch. Yeah. Um, so you can leave a review there. And if you want to get in touch with the show, topics that you'd like us to discuss or guess that we should have on our show. Or talk trash. Or talk trash. Email bricks and risk at gmail.com.

SPEAKER_00 38:59

And also, we talked about this on the last episode. We do events every six months, happy hours, masterminds, networking, learning opportunities. We've had a panel event. We just did our mastermind event, probably doing a happy hour in the fall. So use that email address. Let us know. That's all we have for this one, folks. Thank you for tuning in again to another episode of Bricks and Risk. See you next week. Thank you for joining us on another episode of Bricks and Risk. Our goal is that you walk away with one or two valuable nuggets, and we greatly appreciate you sharing your time with us today. You can find all BR episodes on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube, and anywhere else you get your podcast content. Until next time, keep learning and keep growing.