The Smartest Way to Invest $100K in Real Estate With Lawrence Potts | Ep 69

James: We have a completely special, totally different style podcast for you guys on the Furlo Capital Real Estate Podcast where we dive into the intricacies of passive real estate investing. And this time we're doing it with a friend. Woohoo. And we are going to do something. We are going to help people.

We are going to equip people. That's what we're gonna do to invest wisely in both properties and people so that together all three of us can build wealth while improving housing together. I'm James. This is my wife Jessi, and this is my business partner Lawrence. Are it going you guys?

Jessi: Yeah. Yeah. You know.

Do you feel a little

James: third wheel ish now? Jess

Jessi: speaking of wheels. That was gonna be my intro. This is such a great segueway. You're welcome. I don't feel like a third wheel. Do you feel like a third wheel? No, not at all. No, this feels fine. Cool. We we're just hanging out. Exciting. Sweet. I had a flat tire today.

That was like my big news.

James: You did have a flat tire. Mm-hmm. And you called me and I rescued you.

Jessi: That's right.

James: You're welcome.

Lawrence: Got the manly picture. Oh, that's great. Yeah. Make sure

James: to get nice and low. Get the. Focused on getting the, you didn't just write, didn't like pose in front of the camera though? No, let's just let the, I let the the viewer use their imagination of how manly I looked

Jessi: changing the mini Van Tire.

Lawrence: Send that picture to Lexie and she could put the AI picture of you

James: in such a way. You can't tell it's the minivan. I, I thought this through. No, you might be able to tell. It

Jessi: kind of still looks like a minivan. Yeah, that's right. It's okay.

Lawrence: Once a minivan,

Jessi: always It's glamorous. A minivan. Glamor. Yes. Glamor.

Changing the tire is always glamorous.

James: Yes. You know what? It's also glamorous. Investing with other people, or at least it's more fun. Touche. Put it that way. It's more fun. Yeah, more fun

Jessi: with friends.

James: So Lawrence, we invited you on this podcast. You are our Guinea pig guest. Yes. Yay. Because one of the things that we wanna start doing and how I'm making a public promise, so we're gonna actually do it, is start interviewing other people and just learning more about who they are, what they're doing, what's going on.

And so Lawrence, for those of you who may not be familiar with you. Like, what is it you tell people you do in like, just a couple sentences? Yeah.

Lawrence: Yeah. So one to two sentences. So I'm a real estate investor in the Willamette Valley. I love house hacking. That's kind of been my mo for the last couple of years and I love it so much that I got my real estate license and I love helping people do the same thing.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Gotcha.

Jessi: House hacking for people who don't know is.

Lawrence: Yeah, so house hacking is you buy a property, a duplex, a multifamily, and you live in one unit and you rent the others out.

James: Okay, gotcha.

Lawrence: Straightforward. You guys are kind of the OGs of house hacking though. Yes. Yeah, we did it

James: before it had that name.

Jessi: Before it was cool. What did you call

James: it then? We just bought a multifamily, I dunno. Yeah. What? But there's different versions, right? Like, so there's what we did. What we have done where it's like, yeah, you buy a multifamily live in one side, rent out the other. But sometimes you do it even just with your bedrooms, like you're rent it out to friends.

Mm-hmm. Like that honestly is when I think house hacking, that's what I think of.

Lawrence: Okay.

James: I think of like, when you're buying a multifamily, I'm like, you're just investing at that point.

Lawrence: Fair.

James: For us, our whole mindset was. What I remember I told her was like, I wanted to become a landlord day one. That was my goal.

I said, what I didn't wanna do is buy a house and then say, and then we'll invest in the future. And then 10 years later be like, remember that idea that we had about investing? I was like, no, no, no. Day one, I want to have that investor landlord mindset.

Lawrence: Well, you said in an earlier podcast, buying your primary is technically a liability.

It's not an asset. That's true. So that's true. But I'd push back, say if your primary's a house hack it, it'd be an asset. Okay. All right. So. I guess it could be my bush. Yeah. Depends on the numbers. That's

James: okay. That's fair. That's for sure. That's fair. So kind of speaking of that, you disagree with me on that.

Do you have any, any other unconventional beliefs that you hold that you don't think a lot of other investors?

Lawrence: Yeah, I, you know, I, I work a lot with first time home buyers or people looking to get started into real estate and house hacking. And I guess my unconventional view is that if you're running your numbers.

And it's okay from underwriting standpoint, it's okay to be at market value on your purchase for a house hack.

James: Mm. Because

Lawrence: ultimately the goal, you know, everyone wants to cash flow. Yeah. And I think the biggest pushback I get from buyers from house hacking or investors is that's not gonna cash flow very well.

Yeah. Yeah. That's really hard in our market. But the ultimate goal when you house hack is to minimize your housing expense and to save as much as you can. Interesting. Okay. Very difficult. So in that case,

James: you do think of it as a liability. Because you are like, Hey, it's all about trying to minimize that cost.

Lawrence: That's fair. That's fair. But you also get the component of appreciation principle pay down, stuff like that. Totally. Sure. So, which I guess you would get that in a primary as well. Mm-hmm. But you could technically move out of it. 10 31 exchange do It's still a vehicle after you move out of it that you can keep

James: or you a holy girl like us, you buy a fixer upper that's,

Lawrence: there we go.

Jessi: There we go. I didn't realize you could 10 31 a house hack. I guess it's a rental at that point. So

Lawrence: well after you move out of it? Well, yeah. Yeah.

Jessi: Okay. So if it, if you turned it into a com, like a hundred percent rental. Mm-hmm. And then, okay.

James: I would imagine. It would be super tricky if you still lived in half of it.

They would probably let you 10 30. They would probably

Jessi: 10 30 want a portion of it? I, no, I was gonna say, oh, that sounds complicated. Well, you wouldn't get,

James: you would only get charged capital gains for half of it. Okay. Okay. Because that was what happened to us where like when we did, there was a, a new home buyer tax credit.

They only gave us credit for half the property. Mm-hmm. That's right. But it turned out that half, half the property was the max they would give you anyway, so like we got the entire thing. Mm-hmm. Yeah. But our accountant, which was kind of funny, like, we were like, how's this gonna work? He's like, I don't know, like honestly.

He's like, yeah, we'll submit it and see if anyone pushes back. We get audited is fine. Yeah. Yeah. No that was good. Okay. Interesting. We didn't, so, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna do the the brand turn of, so, so like who were you before all this? But instead I'm interested, like did you have like a pivotal moment that you remember where you were like, man, real estate's like this is what I wanna do.

It's interesting. I wanna be an investor in it.

Lawrence: Yeah, a hundred percent. So the first house I actually bought was a live and flip. Single family home in Lebanon. And I bought that and I realized, wow, I am cash poor. I'm house poor. Like I'm not cash flowing here. Yeah. And the goal was to rent by the room?

Yeah. It wasn't really working out with that strategy. But I found a fourplex on the market and it was on for like 40 days. It was la it was. Set as a single family home, the listing agent. Oh really? Yeah, they listed it wrong. That's super interesting. So, and I had filters on Zillow. I looked at about that.

Yeah. And it's like I missed it, but then for whatever reason I saw it. Yeah. I was like, I'm buying it. So I listed my house and rolled my equity into that.

Jessi: Okay.

Lawrence: And actually. Went over ask to get it. It was like 2019 and things were kind of getting crazy. Right. I went FHA financing, got a really awesome interest rate on

James: it.

That 19 was before things really went crazy. Yeah. Which I made you look like a genius in hindsight. Yeah. No, a hundred percent. And it was an

Lawrence: anomaly, like during that time got a 2.75% interest rate. Oh FHA. It was crazy. That's amazing. But I had had just enough equity. I negotiated my. Listing agent's commission so I have enough.

Yeah. And so I got enough for a down payment. I had my closing cost covered, so I went over ask to get those concessions. So I went and I didn't pay anything. And then the equity I had, I used to renovate it. At that time I was overpaying for it. Mm-hmm. But then at that time, FHA seasoning process was, I think it was six months.

Yeah. And so you can refinance till after six months? Yeah. Now it's a year. Mm-hmm. But I refinanced after nine months. Okay. And so I bought it 2 98. Then put, I dunno, about $45,000 into it. Okay. In rehab. And that was me doing all the work. I couldn't afford to hire anyone. Right. You were on three 50 at this point?

Yeah. 45. Yeah. And then I appraised for 5 0 5. Oh, okay. Which was crazy. That's insane. And that was, like you said, it's just things went crazy. Yeah. Yeah. So, but then I. Refinanced out. I was gonna say.

James: Yeah. Would you? Okay.

Lawrence: And I, I remember thinking about it. So you turned this into a

James: bur

Lawrence: strategy? I did a house hack bur and I stacking cash flowing.

And I remember I was debating whether I should do it or not. 'cause I was like, oh, I'm gonna refinance to a 3.6%. I'm like, oh, that's a tough one. Did it? And man, the best part about it was I was still cash flowing. I was actually making money living there. And then the cash out refinance, I got like $72,000 out of it.

Yeah. And I was like. Sweet. This is insane. Like I am rich and it was, it was crazy. So that's when I knew that was when it was real. 'cause it, you know, you listen to bigger podcasts or BiggerPockets podcasts. You listen to all the stuff on YouTube and read the books and it's like, you see all the numbers and stuff and it, yeah.

Like, yeah, it's great. But when you actually do it and go through the process. Yeah. Yeah. That's when it's real.

James: Do you have any like books or resources that you think were super influential in your. Investing process.

Lawrence: I mean, rich Dad, poor Dad. I mean, it's a classic, really classic. But real estate specifically Brandon Turner's Zero to No Money Down.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. That was a really good one. Okay. And then David Green had the bird book.

Jessi: Mm-hmm.

Lawrence: Which was really good. You liked that one? It was pretty good. Okay. Though

James: I'm a big fan of David

Lawrence: Green.

James: Yeah. I, I didn't love his writing style, but that's it. He kept like, he would like, here's my main point.

And then he would go down this other journey path. Then like seven pages later, be like, and by the way, here was the original thing. I was like, dude, what? It felt to me like he, I actually think this is the BiggerPockets strategy where they tell them, get on a microphone. Just start talking, we'll transcribe it, do some light editing, and now you have a book like that's like every.

Book that I've read of theirs. It has that feeling to it.

Lawrence: Just talking the no to zero money down book is that way too. I, I realized that, 'cause I remember I bought one of the first copies on Amazon and I was reading through it and like these grammar errors and spelling mistakes were in there and I'm like, how could they release something like this?

I don't know what copy I got, but it was exactly that. It was just transcribed. Interesting podcast. Yeah. Real

James: estate. Rookie had this other one. I mean, she would even say like, come on guys. You know what I'm saying? Like she had a bunch of lines like that. I'm like, wow, this is really like. So weird. How would you write it that way?

Yeah, but weird. But that's right. I get, it's totally like, honestly, I don't have a book, so what do I know? They got published, although they figured out a transcribed figured method, this podcast, and ooh, there we go. This could be the first book that was I think Tim Ferris actually did that where he, he interviewed, I think it was after 50 interviews, he went and said, here's all my lessons learned.

From, it was like Tools of the Titans is what he called it. Mm. Awesome title. Oh, that's right. Yeah. And it was all based off podcast interviews. Here's, here's my big takeaways from 'em.

Lawrence: Knowing you though, like there's gotta be some sort of AI involved in your book writing. No, there is. There is. We've had

James: conversations about this and I think that's actually a line I don't want to cross.

Mm. Okay. If I write a book, I think I want to write it. Okay. I think, yeah. I

Jessi: don't know if you're, if you're transcribing from podcasts, that's a different Oh yeah. Vibe, vibe. That has AI written all over it.

Lawrence: You can plug in all your YouTube videos and be like, Hey, chat. Like, you know, write a book In the style of change furlough,

Jessi: it would probably look pretty good.

It would work.

James: Yeah. It's super interesting just thinking about how, how much technology has changed. I don't know. I'm actually curious about your opinion on this. Like do you think the real estate industry is changing dramatically because of technology like ai, or do you feel like it's just like just still stuck in the past and there's.

Opportunity. This wasn't one of the questions I prepared for you, so,

Lawrence: so, so maybe like real estate investing. Sure. I mean, you can draw it in as far as underwriting, but from a real estate. Agent perspective. Yeah. It's changed it a lot. Mm-hmm. I would say nine outta 10 listings that you see on Zillow. The description is chat, GPT or AI written.

James: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. So,

Lawrence: I had a buddy of mine who's a real estate photographer and he loaded that in, like, took a description, loaded it into an AI tester, and it was like a hundred percent. Yeah. So yeah, pretty, pretty wild, but just little things like that. Mm-hmm. I've used it a lot as far as. Properties where I'm trying to learn about zoning like in Portland.

Mm. And it pulls up all the resources for me. And so I can get smart on it and I don't have to sit there on the phone waiting for an assistant planner to, to tell me what they probably had to tell 20 other people.

Jessi: Yeah.

James: That was like, and I think I've told this story on the podcast where we were doing this deal, we were splitting a lot.

Mm-hmm. And we had to submit an application to the city and one of them was like, Hey, you gotta like. Write these statements. It was like this very, like statements of fact very official and I'm like, should I even put this on the podcast? But city's not listening. Who cares twice? But yeah, I just uploaded the entire Albany Development Code handbook.

I was like, all right, chat GPT. These are the questions they have to be written in this format. And I'm. I mean, it was this process that you could tell was supposed to take hours to complete. Mm-hmm. And I, I was done in five minutes. Mm-hmm. And I was like, man, like they're, they're playing analog game in a digital world right now.

Yeah. We've probably spent

Lawrence: more time on the phone talking about what to do versus you actually doing it. Yeah. That's probably true. Yeah.

Jessi: I think that's the biggest benefit or factor or change is like. Being able to navigate legal documents and have them analyzed and read and processed by ai. Mm-hmm. And just spit out the one or two things that are actually important.

Yeah. You know, it's like, especially working with clients, you know, you present these documents and all the paperwork and things that they're signing and Yeah. Half the time. They don't even read every single line, you know? And so it's just like, okay, to actually have you understand like, what's going on.

Like, I, I, I feel like people start using ai.

James: Yeah. I gotta brainstorm. So I've been, I've started doing this for rent analysis. Okay. I dunno if I should admit this, but so that's one of my o offerings, right? Like, hey, like if you're interested in property management, come to me, let's do a rent analysis.

And yes, I, I do look at listings and like do the thing. Sure. But I actually take a whole bunch of other reports that people have put together. I take 'em all, upload 'em, be like, Hey, here's the house, here's some features, here's what this is, location, all that stuff. What do you think? Mm-hmm. And I've been unbelievably surprised with how good it is.

And I mean, it even gets me where it's like. Here's the range and it's usually like a $50 range. It's not like we're talking like $200, like, dude, this still doesn't help me. Sure. And then what I'll say is like, if I wanna run it fast, what do you think? If I want to get a premium for it and I'm okay with it, sitting for a while, what do you think?

And then like, what's the middle of the road? And it gives me all those brackets and says like, yeah, and here's kinda how to position it. It's unbelievably good. So here's my idea. Okay. Tell me to think about this. So for our business. One of the critical numbers is the after repair value. Sure. The arv, right?

Mm-hmm. And the way that we do this, like your role is you go grab all the comms and say like, here's what I think they're all worth. And we get a report. I wonder if we could do something similar where it's like, yeah, let's grab all these. And I've been watching some of the they have now agents that can do all the surfing for you.

I have a pro plan, which I don't have, but, you know, 200 bucks a month I'm might think about it. But anyways, you can actually tell it. Go do the MLS, grab all the properties that are similar, analyze it, do it anyways. Like, yeah, we should talk about that. That'd be kind of

Lawrence: interesting. And then we can always factor in like a hey, like.

You know, reduce it by 5% just based off marketing conditions or mm-hmm. You know, just be more conservative.

James: But yeah, well see. Even stuff like that, like, I don't even know if you direct it, just go, Hey, let's think about marketing conditions where it's at right now. Pull from recent news articles to get an idea for it.

Oh man. By the way, here's the feature set and Oh yeah. Yeah. It's

Jessi: wild. It

James: needs to happen. All data analysis like that, we we're thinking about it. Cool.

Jessi: Okay. To bring things back on track, I'm gonna ask one of my favorite questions. Okay. If you magically got a hundred thousand dollars today. Tomorrow. What would you do with it?

Well, let say one of our investors

James: is like, Hey,

Jessi: I have some money. Here you go. Okay. Okay. I'm gonna give it to you.

Lawrence: Yeah. What would you look for in this market? It's interesting because most guys are, you know, cashflow is important and that's kind of the real metric they look at and yeah. It's interesting talking to people about, you know.

Underwriting and making sure that they've got CapEx and maintenance and everything. A lot of properties don't pencil out very well. Yeah. Yeah. I think what I would ask an investor that was giving a hundred thousand dollars, like, Hey, let's do real, like I wanna do real estate. I'd be like, what interest rate do you want?

And that would be the question I ask them and bring 'em in as a partner, like a financing partner to do a deal. Mm-hmm. I don't know if I would be like, Hey, yeah, a hundred thousand dollars, 25% down on $400,000 duplex, and then you're cash flowing a hundred bucks a month. I, that's what, like a two and a half percent return, like cash on cash return.

Like you can get 12% on your money and get it back and, or I don't know what, what rate you give, but I mean mm-hmm. They can get a better return that way and they get it back. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, I, I think I might depend on the investor if they want to. If they're new and they want to learn how to, what a bur is and learn, understand, like, hey, this is how long rehab costs or this what it takes to manage contractors.

Like, you know, those nuances then bring 'em along, but, mm-hmm. Yeah.

James: Yeah, that makes sense. And our previous week's podcast, which you haven't heard yet, but you will, is we were talking about how you can get started investing with just a thousand dollars. And Okay. Yeah, I have some great ideas. If you haven't heard it,

Lawrence: you should

James: listen to it.

Would you tell him to do

Lawrence: REITs or?

James: That's, that was one of the eight ideas that I came up with. Okay. But when I was talking with a guy yesterday

Jessi: whenever,

James: whenever recently, I don't remember now. Okay. Anyways, he was like, Hey, I'm thinking about. You know, putting some real estate into my portfolio.

Mm-hmm. I actually think you were there for that conversation. Now I'm thinking about it. Yeah. Sunday. Yeah. Anyways. Yeah. Yeah. And and one of the things I pointed out was like, if you're not gonna move into it, like you gonna have a significant chunk of change to invest in Oregon because not only do you have to do the down payment, not only do you have to have enough money for whatever repairs you're gonna do initially mm-hmm.

But you want to have just a general reserve for it. Like there's a lot there. I went. Or like if you only got like 25 grand or a hundred grand or something like that, which in Oregon only a hundred grand is like, that's a potential limiter. That's a lot. Mm-hmm. Like you can go just jump in on someone else's deal.

Mm-hmm. And like, yeah. And then you bundle a all together into it. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So yeah, I think I know

Lawrence: of a guy that has a company that raises money to do deals, so, yeah.

James: I, I've heard of them. Yeah. That's pretty good. That's pretty good. Nice. So one of the things you know, that we talk about all the time is you know, or I wanna say like, when we're looking at a deal, like oftentimes the thing we talk about is risk.

Mm-hmm. So maybe you can speak to a little bit of that. Like, how do you think about risk or how do you evaluate risk when you're looking at deals?

Lawrence: Yeah, yeah. So it's, it's. Tough because with us, like we're, yeah. With

James: us, like for our company, I mean, it's

Lawrence: other people's money. True. And there's, there's the risk of that.

Money's lost and we personally guarantee Yeah. The bill too. So there, there is that, but for me, like it's, I don't take that lightly. Mm-hmm. Like other people's money is. Very hard for them to get it for some people and like it mm-hmm. Is a big deal. I mean, the big one is like, our underwriting is, is very conservative.

Mm-hmm. And especially when we're looking at ARVs and the offers we're writing, like, we're always super conservative. Yeah. And then at the same time too, for, for anyone, I guess trying to be. Risk adverse, I guess is like having other people that you can bounce the ideas off of and people that are not just friends that are, yeah, go for it.

It's a good deal. It's off market. Yeah, of course you gotta do it. But the one that's voice of reason that understands your long-term goals is always, always ideal. Mm-hmm. So they're. Okay. With telling you no, that's not a good deal. Yeah. So,

James: yeah.

Lawrence: Yeah,

James: yeah. We had that recently. We were looking at a place and brought a contractor friend, and he was like, I wouldn't buy this.

Mm-hmm. I was like, okay. We're like, well, for, for a price. Sure. Thankfully the lady wanted more than double what we were for. So

Lawrence: it made the choice easy. And it was funny because for me and my physician, I really wanted that deal. Yeah, that's right. And so it was super disappointing to walk through that. And as soon as we walked up to the driveway, like I knew you were looking at you, you're like, no, this is not it.

This is not it. So which I've been for you was a lot.

Jessi: I've been there. It's for you. It's a lot. I've been there, Lauren. Yeah, I know.

James: I'm the guy who's like, cat urine is a smell of money. And I went, I don't know about this one. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, ah, for 200, I would've gone for it. That's all right. So I'm curious you know, we look at a lot of deals all over the place.

Do you think there's an, like an underappreciated I. Asset class that's out there that, you know, let's give away our secrets. Like what should we be looking at?

Lawrence: I mean, you kinda mentioned it earlier, rent by the room. I think that one's really interesting. Yeah. In our market specifically. Yeah. Yeah. I think, you know, in our market we're not building enough.

We don't have enough new that's coming in. And you know, OSU, their enrollment continues to skyrocket. I think this year they didn't move a whole lot, but in the last like five years, yeah, it grew a lot. It's

James: grown a ton. They're really focusing on online stuff from what I understand. Mm-hmm. But their physical enrollment is still the same, which, yeah, I think it was, oh gosh, I'm getting old now.

I think it was like 10 years ago. They made a concerted effort. I think they doubled mm-hmm. In that, which is a lot in that time. Oh, it was ridiculous. Housing, I think is just starting to catch up,

Lawrence: but I think Rent by the room Yeah. Kind of is is a big one that's out there. Mm-hmm. Even from like a house hacking perspective is like what you would say house hacking actually is, is living in a room.

Yeah. Yeah. Renting the others out. Yeah. Asset class. Another one. I think senior housing is gonna be a big deal in the next interesting 10 years, I think. You think so? Mostly just because of 'cause of our parents. Well, yes. Kinda getting old. No, no. I'm curious

Jessi: like why it would change though.

Lawrence: I, so I, I remember looking at a bigger gener.

There was a a listing that me and a another broker partnered on up in Portland. Mm-hmm. And it was a senior affordable housing type apartment situation. Okay. And we were trying to get smart on it 'cause we got the listing on it and we're trying to procure buyers for it. And there was a study, I think University of Chicago was saying by 2040 60% of seniors that are gonna be in like a senior housing or assisted living or something are gonna be on some sort of subsidy.

Or HUD housing or something, they're gonna need some assistance in affording it 'cause it's so expensive. Right. And they were saying like of that like 30% can find themselves homeless within a set number of years, which is really sad. Yeah, that's wild. I think that is gonna be an asset class where you're gonna start seeing.

Single family home to kind of be chopped up into a DA compliant homes. Right. And a lot of these assisted living or kind of these bigger care facilities Yeah. Are gonna be signing master leases with these owners. Interesting. And providing care in that capacity. Yeah. It's gonna be

James: super interesting 'cause I was talking with an owner to manager.

House essentially. Mm-hmm. And it's a bigger house, single level. And before I came along, she had been approached by someone else that was exactly what they wanted to do. Mm-hmm. Like, Hey, we wanna start up a, an in-home senior care. I think it was like a daycare thing, whatever. 'cause it was big.

Lawrence: Yeah.

James: But like, but one of the tensions was she went, well, if you're gonna run a business out of this, I'm going to charge you like your business.

Like, so they were like, well, we wanna rent it for three grand. Mm-hmm. She was like, yeah, try 45. And they're like, well, no, that's where our profit margin is. And she goes, yeah, and then I'm gonna rate, and so, I mean, it was in some ways she was saying no, but mm-hmm. But like, yeah. But it's, it's gonna be an interesting, 'cause, you know, homeowners, people selling or wanting to rent out to a master lease, they're like, oh wait, how much wear and tear are you gonna put on this place?

Mm-hmm. It's, it's, it's gonna be a tricky problem to solve, but man, if you can figure it out. Yeah. And it'll be gonna

Lawrence: with Oregon landlord tenant laws. I know they've made some changes as far as tenant being able to do like daycare, like kids daycare out of their home. Yeah, that's true. I don't know.

Yeah. You can't,

James: um, discriminate against that anymore. Yeah. Or you can't say no. So I

Lawrence: wonder if that will change with like at the addition of like more senior care facilities. Right. Oh, so I don't know. So, which is different 'cause they have like. The bathrooms have to be walk-ins with handles and stuff like that, a compliant, but I don't know.

It'd be, it'd be interesting, but I think that's an asset class that gonna grow.

James: All right. Are there any other real estate trends that are getting you excited? Yes. You know, this one around last couple years,

Lawrence: like midterm rentals, like that's always a big one. Traveling nurses. So I talk about that one a lot.

Sure. So but, you know, you know me love, I, but yeah. Work out.

James: Yeah. I mean, that's the story, right? Like we, we make offers on 10 to 15 before one works out. Mm-hmm. So. I get excited about every single, so there's always the Almost did that one. Mm-hmm. Yeah, exactly. No, that's fair. Yeah, that's fair. So if someone.

Is listening today. Okay. And they're on the fence about investing in real estate, either like actively or passively. Mm-hmm. Like what's a small action that they could take this week after listening to this to, you know, help them move forward.

Lawrence: Yeah. And a lot of people I talk to their first time, you know, just trying to get their foot, the door.

I always tell them, you need to be in the rooms with people who go to networking events. Mm-hmm. And just listen to them. Oh, really? Like, here are their stories. Listen to 'em. Mm-hmm. And you wanna be listening for what they did and what they're looking for. And then try to provide value to them. Mm-hmm.

Because a lot of times. They, you know, they've got the experience. Mm-hmm. And for you as a first time investor, your biggest fears are the unknown. Yeah. You don't have the capital or you just don't know what you're doing. What about that

James: opposite side? Someone who's like, they got the capital

Lawrence: Yeah.

James: But they don't necessarily have the experience and they wanna do passively.

Yeah. Any thoughts on

Lawrence: Yeah. What those people

James: should do?

Lawrence: I mean, finding someone that that is doing exactly what you're doing right here is doing what you're wanting to do. Mm-hmm. And then partner with them. Yeah. And, you know, partnership bring value. And that's why it's like, listen to what they're looking for, listen to what they're trying to do and then try to bring that in.

My first partner that I found I knew he had a construction experience, he'd wholesaled for like 10 years. Oh, wow. And I found a deal. I'm like, Hey, I'm gonna fumble this. I don't know what I'm doing. Like, let's partner up. And it worked out really well.

Jessi: Yeah.

Lawrence: So, yeah. Cool. Yeah.

Jessi: So on that same kind of vein, what is a question that an investor should ask but maybe doesn't ask?

Lawrence: Yeah, I, I say ask the big questions like, Hey, what are you looking for? Like, or I've got something, will you partner with me? I think that's the big one. I don't think I'd be bold. Yeah. I mean, be bold. Just ask that big question. And for a lot, some investors too, I, I think the question's like ask the seller, Hey, will you sell your property?

Like, what do you need in order to sell? Yeah. I think it. Sometimes they kind of wait for the stars to line and be like, Hey, yeah, I think I'd be willing to sell, or I think I'd be willing to buy it, but I just, just ask the question and then just go from there. Yeah. Because it may be a no, but you know.

Mm-hmm. Who knows? Six months from now they may say, yes. You don't know. That's true.

Jessi: Circumstances could change.

Lawrence: Yeah. Yeah. Follow up with them too. That's a big one. I think a lot of people forget that follow ups important. Yeah. So, which our follow up game apparently is pretty good.

James: It's decent. Yeah. So we, we were commenting about this earlier, so we so we integrate some AI into our business.

So if someone. If they see one of our ads, they then go to our website, they see how awesome we are, they fill out this form that's like, Hey, here's my property information. And we tell them like, Hey, within 24 hours we're gonna give you an offer. An an offer. Mm-hmm. Which usually doesn't end up being 24 hours.

'cause we get on the phone and they're like, okay, good to know. We'll get back to you. Mm-hmm. That kinda happens. Or they're just like, they're just, they want a lot of money and we go, Nope, not for us. Mm-hmm. Anyways, once you sign up, it then goes into our CRM system, which then has an AI agent that does all the follow up for us.

And so we both signed up for it day one. 'cause we're like, I want, what is this? What is this experience like? Yeah. Yeah. And it still is texting and calling multiple times a week. What? It's just like, Hey, just checking in. How you doing? Hope you have a great weekend. Oh yeah. My word, Hey James, happy morning.

Or whatever. Like it's, it's, and it's ai like just. Coming up with stuff to say, trying to get you. Can you like

Jessi: dial it down a little?

James: I, we could, but why would I? Yeah. Yeah. Well, I know when the call is coming or the text is coming. Well, and I'm trying to like, so mine always says, Hey, it's Lawrence. How you doing?

Does, is it for you? Is it me reaching out to you? No, it's me reaching That's not the best money.

Jessi: You're like, Hey, yeah, I know you. Yeah. 'cause it

James: depends, 'cause what it'll do is it'll look at whose schedule. So we have both our schedules on there, and then it'll ask 'em, Hey are, when are you available to talk?

Interesting. And so it defaults. To Lawrence? Yeah. If we're both available, it'll do his, but then if he's busy, it'll do mine. So interesting. If it see, if, if it's, if they do me, then it's me sending the messages over and over and over again.

Jessi: So wild. And then we

James: just make sure we call from that CRM phone number.

So it's all consistent and pretty awesome. It's pretty wild, but that's the, so that's our follow up. So we don't do the follow up. We've got a system to do it and it is relentless. Mm-hmm. And we just go until they tell us. Stop bothering me. Okay. And then it, and then it's smart enough to know that they said that and just goes, okay.

And it stops.

Jessi: It puts them on a, it

James: puts 'em on like a do not disturb list. DNFI think is what? It's D-N-D-D-N-D. That's it. DND, dungeon Dragon. Do Not disturb. Do not disturb. Dungeons and Dragon. Yeah. It's it's pretty wild, like I said, but we keep it on. I'm just like a part of, it's like, how long will this thing keep going for?

It's been

Jessi: probably

James: forever. It's been a while. Yeah. I don't know. Yeah, it's kind of, kind of cool. It's, it's slowly annoying, but I'll be honest. I would be annoying, but I'm also like, I don't know, like. It's, it is easy to ignore too. And if people like timing's everything, right? Like one of the things we've talked, you and I, Jesse, have talked about is like everyone's life changes every six months.

Mm-hmm. And so when that happens, you kinda wanna be there. And that's why I usually tell people, Hey, if you're gonna follow up with letters or whatever, like send whatever six months. Like, and 'cause you just never know. Life changes. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Cool. Thanks for hopping on. And just tell us a little bit about like who you are.

I know we didn't go very. Far deep into the background of it. That's fine. It's all good. I think it's just good for people to hear, like your philosophy, how you think about investing. Mm-hmm. Since we do a lot of, of like all of our flips, I've been together. So just kind of, I wanted people to hear some of that.

If they did wanna hear more about you or, you know, connect with you or something, I'll let you decide your level of access. How can, how can people learn more about your work?

Lawrence: Yeah. You've kind of challenged me a little bit on my social, because I currently don't have them on my phone, but I do have social media.

That's okay. Instagram, I'm stronger. Realestate. Yeah. I have a Facebook as well. You can message me there. Classic email, Basecamp Lawrence at gmail. Nice. Reach out to me there. Gotcha, gotcha.

James: Yeah. So what's with the, the stronger real estate? What's, what's that about?

Lawrence: Yeah, it was we'll do a little bit of background at the very, ah, there you go.

There you go. So a little bit first. Personal brand, I guess for, for real estate. It's kind of where I do all my investing stuff, but it's stronger 'cause amateur powerlifter. So kind of blended the two together. So. Nice. Yeah.

Jessi: Those are not AI muscles? No,

Lawrence: no. They're anchor arms. Like from SpongeBob is what they're Yeah.

That's funny. It's good. That's

Jessi: nice. I still have to use AI for mine. Hmm. It's alright.

James: Well, awesome. That's cool. That note. Thank you so much for joining us and sharing about yourself and if you would like to learn more about investing with us and what a partnership like that looks like and the way that we talked about we would love to get ahold of you and so, or get in contact with you so you can reach out to us at furlo.com.

You can also leave a comment wherever it is that you listen to podcasts and we do read all of them. So yeah. Thank you so much for listening and have a great day.