We Rank Each of Our Real Estate Investments from BEST To WORST | Ep 128

James
We bought our first place in 2009, and since then, we have bought 22 places. Pretty cool. And today, we're going to rank them best to worst. It's going to be good. And we're doing that on the Furlo Capital Real Estate Podcast. Where what do we do? Where we dive into the intricacies of passive real estate investing. Or today, we just kind of just. Talk about what we've done. And our mission is to equip people to invest wisely in both properties and people. And hopefully, we'll do that by showing you patterns of what we like and what we don't like so that we can build wealth and improve housing. I think I skipped the part in the middle, but that's okay because this is my wife, Jessi.

Jessi
I'm here, and I'm so excited to do some ranking. I'm just like, immediately, my brain is just like, okay, 22 places. Really? 22 places. Okay, and I

James
start listing them in my brain.

Jessi
I'm like, oh, I think I know what one is. Not quite sure what the bottom is. But I'm guessing.

James
Oh, I'm 100%. I'm going to start asking you some of these things.

Jessi
Oh, so good.

James
Yes, like I said, we've done 22 deals since 2000.

Jessi
That just makes me feel old. More than anything, I'm like, 22, that took some time, man.

James
It did take some time. It did. We did some rentals. We've done some flips. We've done a syndication. We've done some development, done some wholesale, all sorts of stuff. And for the most part, they're all in Oregon. But the lessons that we've done aren't. They apply all over the place. And so we're going to talk about why they're ranked where they are. Sure. And again,

Jessi
that is one of my questions. Is like, what criteria did you use to write? Was it the cutest? It was like, no, probably

James
yes. Like, you're like, how you do March Madness is based on how much you like the mascot, right? Yeah.

Jessi
That's, or like, no. Whether I recognize a school or not. That's yep.

James
Yeah. No, and again, my goal is To show the patterns of what we liked, what we didn't like, so that by the time we get to the end, you'll know just like here's what we would have done differently, or here's the kind of deals that James likes, at least and what he would do. So I have them all here listed out. So we're gonna go best. To worst. Best to worst. Best to worst. Not worst to best. And I'm, yeah, some of these worst ones are.

Jessi
I feel like we're going to end on a downer.

James
Oh, it's fine. It is what it is. I bet you can guess what number one is: lion. 100%. And why do you think that is? So, what is it first?

Jessi
It's a loving unit apartment building. Yep. I think it is the best return. On our investment?

James
Yeah, I wish I didn't do the math. I'm guessing the last time I did the math was 141%. Yeah. We haven't even sold it yet. We've owned it for 11. 8 years. Oh, I know, right? We bought it for $400,000. We ended up putting $50,000 worth of work into it. I estimate its value is worth about a million dollars right now. It's probably underselling it, to be honest. Okay. What do you think is number two?

Jessi
Probably first.

James
Nope. Baker Tower. Really? I know. I know.

Jessi
I would not have guessed that, but I just, it's so new that I'm

James
a grasp of the numbers. 7. 8 months? Yeah. And

Jessi
I haven't really wrapped my head around.

James
And honestly, the reason why I like it is it was the first syndication. Well, it's the only syndication, I guess, that I've done. It's a super cool building, which. Line apartments. Also, downtown Albany. Yeah. It's a multi-story building. Baker Tower is a downtown building. Multi-story, multi-tenant. I mean,

Jessi
Baker Tower is mixed use, which is just, it's different.

James
Which is different, yes, which I do. Love the mixed use. Yeah, that was always.

Jessi
There are, yeah, there are some strange kind of similarities of like shared spaces and Yeah. Yeah, the downtown, the multi-story,

James
old hundred-year-old building. Yep. There you go. Yeah, both of them are very old. Already showing some of the patterns. Yeah. How are you ranking them, though?

Jessi
This is on returns?

James
No, it's just however I think would be. Awesomeness.

Jessi
You are okay. So your criteria is: this was the best deal or

James
your most favorite? Sometimes, sometimes it's prompted by the financial return. Okay. But we get into the middle zone there.

Jessi
Okay, this is changing how I would rank them because I have to think about how you would rank them. Which is the ones that I like. Yeah. Yeah.

James
I don't know.

Jessi
Because First Avenue would be higher on my list.

James
Oh, it's it's I'll give you this, it's top five, and we already know it's the first two.

Jessi
Yep. So it's number three. Nope. It's gotta be four or five.

James
Number three would be our very first deal ever: Columbus. Columbus, which was a duplex, also in Albany. We owned it for almost 12 years, 11. 9 years.

Jessi
See, for sentimental reasons, that could be number one.

James
That's why it's at least top for me. It is sentimental, but I let the numbers rule the day. Right. Yeah. On the other two. And I like multi. And yeah.

Jessi
We waited. We waited for that deal. We totally did. We passed on it at one point. We waited when it made sense.

James
Yeah.

Jessi
And then I cried.

James
I cried. We bought that one for $180,000. We ended up selling it. For 345 12 years later. And because of our mortgage paydown and other stuff, our proceeds were just over 200,000.

Jessi
Those are such little baby numbers.

James
Oh, they're great. No, they're not baby. Those are awesome numbers.

Jessi
I mean, those are those. I just am thinking about the market today, and I'm like, 180,000. You can't get a duplex for 180,000. That's not a thing.

James
That's true.

Jessi
You know, ratio-wise and everything, like, I get it.

James
Okay, number four. Is first

Jessi
first

James
yeah, yeah, it was on First Avenue, hence the name for it. That's how we name most of our stuff. Yeah, it wasn't first ranked. We bought that one in 2013. For $62,000. It was a little two-bed, one bath. We moved into it. We jokingly said we bought a fixer-upper and then just didn't fix her up. We ended up selling it 8. 3 years later. For $242,000. That's insane. And with our proceed paydown, it was almost exactly the same as Columbus.

Jessi
There were some pretty sweet things about that one. Honestly, it's like, I don't, you can't. Necessarily planned for that. Like the whole roof thing, like it wouldn't qualify for financing because they were like, nah, it needs a new roof. It's really terrible. We went up there and was like, well, we brushed off all the moss. It's actually pretty decent.

James
Yeah, we never replaced it.

Jessi
Yeah. And so I feel like certain things like that really shifted in our favor.

James
Oh, yeah.

Jessi
And there was just, it had character. That house definitely had character. And so. When it came time to resell, like there were buyers. There were people who were like, oh, I like the location. I like the quaintness. I like the

James
entire upside out of the staircase. Like, it was actually, I saw figures. Pictures of it and looks awesome. Yeah. Okay, number five. Like racking my brain now. You're not gonna know this one. It's another, this is my first time doing it. Which is one of the reasons why I like it.

Jessi
Land?

James
No, it's 16th Avenue. It was my very first flip. Okay. And sub -2 deal and raising money deal.

Jessi
Yeah, so there was some complexities in there.

James
Yeah, yeah, that one was great. We owned it for 3. 6 months.

Jessi
That's a flip.

James
It was great.

Jessi
That's a quick

James
Flip. It was a quick flip. We ended up selling it. That was a classic where the guy was in foreclosure and it was not going to qualify for bank financing because it was in poor condition. And so we paid off. Where we caught him up on the foreclosure, took over the mortgage, and then we went in and we put on a new roof, fixed some other stuff, solved the immediate problems. Trashed out. We took, what was it, a 30-yard dumpster full of garbage? My word. Out. I did all that in a day. It was like a 12-hour day of exercise. It was great. And yeah, and then we had a friend who we knew was looking for a place, and so sold it to him as a fixed-rupper. And he's been going through and fixing it up. And he shows me photos every once in a while. And it's awesome.

Jessi
I can see why you would like that one because there's lots of layers of like. It was a different type of work, different type of financing. Yeah. You know, there was a relationship involved in it. Like, it had a lot, a lot of positives associated with it.

James
All right, number six on the list. The ones in the middle here, I'm just like. I know, they're hard. This is another first thing that I've never done before. Which is building a house from the ground up. Oh, all right. Yeah, some of these

Jessi
deals

James
I wasn't as involved in. Like early on,

Jessi
yeah, we lived in the property. I did some of the work. Some of them I'm like, okay.

James
I don't know about that. Yeah, you bought that place. It's awesome. It's currently under construction. It's

Jessi
I knew you were doing it.

James
Yeah, yeah.

Jessi
I don't know anything.

James
Yeah, so that one we still have it. We've had it for about 10 and a half months. All right. We'll be down in a couple of months and get it sold. And so we'll own it for about a year. What is it? We were building a single family home. It's a two bedroom, one bath. It already had a garage on it, but it was just Flat land. Wow. And so we contracted with Highline to build it. And yeah, it's been good. It's not without its own bumps, but it's been good. Sure. All right. Number seven. Was my first 1031.

Jessi
Ooh. Okay. What

James
was our first 1031? Yeah, that was into the warehouses. Uh-huh. The warehouses and the land. Three warehouses. I broke up the land separately. It's technically a separate game, but it's a different property. Got it. Okay. So I 'm not sure. I mean, it is. It's a separate, yeah, it's a separate unit. Yeah. So, yeah, yeah, yeah. Which I've had multiples that I've bought at the same time, and we'll see those later on the list as well. But yeah, it would say it's three blah blah blah. What is it? It's three warehouses plus a little office that goes with it.

Jessi
Which, what were the things we 1031 into

James
that? Yeah, so it was our first two duplexes and then that first avenue, which we haven't talked about. Yeah, we haven't talked about the other duplex. Yeah. Jackson. Correct. That's somewhere on this list. Somewhere. And so, yeah, we that one also, when we sold it, we made about 200,000. So we had about 600,000 to roll into the warehouses. And so that was why all those numbers worked. Yep. Number eight This is fourteenth this is my first

Jessi
co-living

James
Yeah.

Jessi
That place has some funky.

James
It's got 15 bedrooms. It's three stories. It's in Corvallis, mostly rented out to college kids.

Jessi
Yeah.

James
And that was another one I actually bought. It was also my first time using hard money to buy the property. Went through, fixed it up, did its thing, and then I refinanced it in long-term debt.

Jessi
Yeah, the management of that property is interesting. Because co-living just adds an a layer to things that's like, yeah, this is tricky. Like, how much do you manage did they manage themselves versus a property manager? Intervenes and sets rules.

James
Yeah, so we clean the common areas for everybody, which you normally don't have to worry about, but we do it. We've owned that one for 3. 3 years. It doesn't seem like it. It doesn't seem like it, does it? We've owned Sunnyside for 4. 8, by the way. Yeah, no, still relatively new.

Jessi
That was number eight.

James
That was number eight. Number nine. You're currently sitting in.

Jessi
Really?

James
Yeah.

Jessi
You would put our like primary home.

James
Yeah.

Jessi
Above other investments we've done.

James
Yeah.

Jessi
Why? I like it. It's a good home. It doesn't make any sense, though.

James
Not as an investment. It's a family investment. It's totally an investment.

Jessi
I mean,

James
I mean, not a m monetary one, but in our family.

Jessi
So I'm like, okay.

James
But remember, it was a total fixed wrapper. Remember the primary bathroom? Like you couldn't shower. It is true.

Jessi
But it ticked so many boxes that we had.

James
It was like

Jessi
location was perfect, single level. Perfect. Like the yard, perfect. Like,

James
and it uses a heat pump. And so, when we added solar panels, our heating and cooling effectively became free. Yes. Which is awesome. Someday, if we ever get an electric vehicle, that'll all be. Mostly paid for, which is nice because we have plenty of access. Yeah, I like this access. We're in my office space right now, my recording studio. It's awesome. I love it.

Jessi
Also, it has a cool covered RV space, which we're going to utilize.

James
So it's like we haven't rented it out.

Jessi
Yeah, we have been renting it out now.

James
Do some family stuff, which would be cool. Yeah. I think it's

Jessi
all right. All right.

James
It's middle of the pack, too. I mean, you know. Sure, sure, sure.

Jessi
It's not the best, but it's not the worst. Sure, sure, sure, sure.

James
Sure, sure, I do remember our

Jessi
I just I it's funny to me that like You have it on a list of investments, but very much it has been drilled in. Like your primary home is not an investment because it doesn't put money in your pockets. It's true. It definitely takes money out. Don't worry, I get it. I mean, we're adding value, and

James
it's all the properties we bought, and we do get

Jessi
non-monetary value, like you were talking about.

James
Totally, 100%. Oh my gosh! Wow! Did not expect that coming. You didn't know it was going to be on the list.

Jessi
I did not think it was even going to be on the list.

James
Okay. All right. Number 10. Another first. Lance. Dude, Weave. Yes. Do you remember which one, though?

Jessi
The one that you didn't even see. Yes, in Indiana.

James
Indeed. Indiana. Yeah. Yes, in there. That was nice. Yeah. I took a course on land flipping. And so I was like, cool, where am I going to buy it? And I decided south of Indiana was my spot. So I sent out letters, talked to people, made an offer, bought it, and then put it back on the market. Oh, I so remember. I owned that one for it was six and a half months. Is what it took me. It didn't seem that long

Jessi
looking back at it, but

James
I bought it for forty thousand dollars. 41 once I was doing all the closing costs. I ended up selling it for $75,000.

Jessi
I remember Personally, having mixed feelings about that one because it was like, I totally, I understand. You know, you bought it at a Decent price. And then someone paid more for it because that's what they were looking for and they were willing to do that. It also seemed like It's like some of those things that you see where people know particular types of furniture or like You know, things are worth more. Yes, yes, yes. And the common person just doesn't know that. And so, whatever, they take their table to Goodwill, and then someone's like, I bought this for $2 and I sold it for $6,000. And it's like, well, I get it. You're like taking advantage of the market and the opportunity and

James
what buyers know and adding the value to it.

Jessi
But to me, to me, that just feels a little like, oh. Like, why wouldn't you tell the original seller to do that?

James
Because she did not want to take the time to list it and wait for offers. She wanted to get rid of it today because she was moving and she inherited from her dad and she was getting some money and was having to move on.

Jessi
Similar to some of those, like. Whatever furniture flips or other flips.

James
I just don't want to. It's like, I can't. I don't have the tools. I don't have it. They can't do it. Yeah. Yep. So that they're willing to take a lower price. But I understand what you're saying. It can feel like you're taking advantage of the other person. Yeah. Though she was the one who told me the price. So, you know.

Jessi
Yeah.

James
Whatever.

Jessi
Which totally makes sense. And it was.

James
Yeah, that was cool.

Jessi
I remember you learned a lot.

James
I did learn a lot. I'm really

Jessi
like, huh. All right.

James
Okay. Number 11. Another kind of first, I guess. Maybe. It was the storage place, Jane J mini storage off of Harrison Street.

Jessi
That was the first

James
place we did. 70 storage units plus a single-family home. Yep. Yep. Ended up, we've held that one for six and a half years.

Jessi
My favorite thing about that one was

James
that'll let me quit my job.

Jessi
That's one. That makes it pretty cool. No, it no, it was just the turnaround of it because it was like, it was totally mismanaged, not kept up. And so it was like, ugh. Like, I remember walking around it and just being like, oh. And then realizing, like, okay, there's a pathway here. There's, there's a. A way forward to make this much better and sustainable, and all the things. So I saw that. But then we also, like, there are blackberries just like Totally. It was like enveloping the building on one on one side. It was so many blackberries. And I just remember the before and after of that being like. Whoa, like that's massive improvement. Yeah. Like certain properties, you get that, that you just have these big visual transformations. You're like, oh my gosh, that added value. I could see it.

James
Yeah, you know, yeah, I know it was cool. Yeah. Yeah. That was a fun one. Shout out to our yard. He's like, incredible. Turns out keeping track of 70 units is very difficult. That's a lot. It was just, it was a lot. Yeah. It was a lot. Okay. We're on the back half now. Okay. So that was the first one. That was top 11. Top 11. Now we're doing the next ones. Okay. So we're getting into the less exciting, but they're still good. Don't worry. These are still good for a little bit. Okay. Okay, so number 12 was our place in independence. Okay, it was a single-family home that we bought. Now, this one was cool because we owned it for 1. 8 months. And if I remember correctly, we cleaned the carpet.

Jessi
Was this a solid rock one?

James
Okay. Yeah. We cleaned the carpet. We fixed some drywall. We did the yard.

Jessi
That was it.

James
I think that was it. I think we might have done like some sort of spray.

Jessi
This was one of those types of properties where you're not fixing everything.

James
Correct.

Jessi
You're getting it to a point for an investor that's like, yeah, this is.

James
And what we and we pitched it to the next person of, because it was a three-bedroom, one bath, and there was a potential to add another bath. In it. And we decided not to do it. Right. And we sold it to the next person of like, hey, there's this project here. Live in it. Sure. Do it. Go through the permit process. You know, spend the time. Was that

Jessi
one of the ones also that It didn't qualify for financing and then it did?

James
No, it totally did. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was a situation where the guy who owned it, he was living there, but his mom. Was living there too, and she passed away, and it just hurt too much. And then he had this other deal that he was pursuing. He's like, I just need to get out. And so we helped him just to get out. All right. Number 13. Was it on 11th Street in Lebanon? That was our first full-on flip. Essentially, we tore the sucker back down to studs and redid everything. You spent $100,000 fixing it up.

Jessi
Did I go into that one?

James
You might have. It was that White House off of 34 -ish. Hmm. The kids knew it. There was a big field that was across the street.

Jessi
I think I, yeah, maybe at one point. So, anyways, that was one where that's not the one. Okay. That's not the one with the poo.

James
No.

Jessi
That one was up on the original.

James
That was 16. That was 16. That was ranked number five. Yeah. Where I had the

Jessi
which makes sense why it was ranked that way. Because, again, it was just like. Upside and

James
transformation. Yeah. One of my rules, right? Cat earns the smell of money. That one was turns out little kid poop is the also and dogs. Yeah, that was a lot. But no, 11th was, it's the back half. Just because it it took a lot longer. Let's see. It was that was also a 10. 2 month hold. We really thought it was going to be closer to six months, and it was just like The more we did, the more we're like, oh shoot, and we got to fix this, and we got to fix this, and we got to fix this. But it was super cool because we were able to do some seller financing. We raised money. Like, it was a cool deal.

Jessi
It worked out okay.

James
Yeah. The way it was structured was really neat.

Jessi
Would you say that, like, When you do deals like that and you and you 're taking out more , there's always that potential to be like the can of worms that you're like, okay, now while we found this, we can't just cover it up. See

James
the reason why I like the half. Repair case, you don't find things. Oh, hugging.

Jessi
Still back there. Someone else will do the big fix.

James
Yep. Yep. Yep. Makes sense. Okay, number 14 is what I have named James Storage Works because I bought it from a guy named James, and my name happens to be James, so we named it that. It's a combination It's 12 storage units, an apartment building, and then a warehouse. And that warehouse also has like a mini office and bathroom in it as well. It's in Flomuth. I have only had that one for almost six months. So it's not very long. Yeah. So it's still relatively new, but it's just a cool building, and I like cool buildings. But, you know, I mean,

Jessi
okay, so having like the JJ storage compared to this James Storage Works. Yeah. Like, how would you compare The storage to storage, as far as like, I because I've never been to the James Storage Works as far as like Quality size.

James
So JJ is mostly like smaller units, like 8 by 10. Oh,

Jessi
okay. So in my brain, this James storage works because it's like. Part of other things in my brain, it was like smaller units.

James
No, no, like you could. So, our friend who we're kicking out with a boat, like he could park his boat in there. It's there, it's like I think they're, I think they're 12 feet by 25 feet, if I remember correctly. Oh, I think they're quite 30. Like, they're big.

Jessi
So, it's like the big units at J and J.

James
I don't correct.

Jessi
Maybe bigger than the biggest.

James
Well, I guess we have it. We have like two or three units at JJ that are bigger. But yeah, no, so they're all big. And they're all the same size. They're all uniform. They don't yeah, should give you tours sometime. I know, I should go out there. I think I got one that's open for at least half a month more. Okay, number fifteen Is our Jackson Street, our second duplex? It's the back half.

Jessi
I remember that one.

James
Yeah.

Jessi
I also were still in the phase of like. DIYing a lot of like projects and planes. Yeah. And I just have good memories of like we did a paint project in there and just Spent time painting and listening to music. By we, you mean I did, dude. I painted too. Did you? I painted the kitchen. I remember had a bunch of corners and

James
yeah. Yeah, that was one where we didn't touch it. Let's see, we owned it for 8. 9 years. And I think for the first seven Yeah, we just did nothing. Didn't have to touch it. Tenants were there. They're happy. They paid. It was fine. Great. And then we had turnover. And yeah, that was. We got after it. Yeah. I remember I would work at HP and then in the evenings, I'd have a peanut butter jelly sandwich for dinner while driving over. And then I would work until one or two in the morning.

Jessi
Tons of hours into that place.

James
Yeah, but I did it in like three days. Yeah. That was the insane part because I just happened to have new tenants who were like, We want it. I was like, Okay, here we go. So I got after it. Yep. That was crazy. I think I had another friend come over and help paint, but I did a lot of podcasts. I did a whole audiobook. It was a thing.

Jessi
Yeah, I I feel like we learned a lot. Just tenant-wise from that place too, because it was fairly early on in our rental journey or whatever. And so it was just interesting. To figure out how to interact and how to have a relationship and encouragement and all those things.

James
Because at that point, we had our duplex, we lived on one side, rented out the other, and then this was the next one, so it was away. And that was when I was mowing lawns myself. Remember, I was putting the lawn mower on the back of the Jeep. I bought one of those little scooter trailers that I would put it on. And I remember one of the days I was mowing my lawn in one of the yards, and this dude just totally rolls up on a BMW bike. Knocks on the door, says hi, shuts the door. They do a little handshake, you know, whatever. And then he rides off. And I was like, I I think I just watched a drug deal go down. That bad. And so that tenant was not living there shortly after. Yep, it was all good. But that happened. But yeah, number 16. Is our five-unit in Sweet Home? That one we've owned for 7. 1 years. We bought it for $200,000. And it's got, yeah, five units on it. It's a cache machine, which is great. It has a little funkiness to it, too. Oh, it's not a little. It's very funky. It's 200 square feet. Three of the rooms. Like I guess three of them are like 200 square feet. I'm pretty sure one of them is slightly smaller. Yeah. And then and then just like a a normal house on it. And yeah, it's Those that is definitely a low-income neighborhood type of property, but the cash flow is amazing. But you just get funkiness on the tenant stuff because they're not all friends and Sure.

Jessi
And it's tied enough. The properties are close enough to each other that there's overlap.

James
They totally interact.

Jessi
Yeah. Yes. The driveways, the garbage, the dog poo, wherever it poos.

James
And that was when we did the line apartments. I removed everybody. And totally reset it. Yeah. And did it. This one I went, oh, we'll do a little bit differently. As vacancies come up, we'll make it work. Did not work as well. Yeah. And because it's just hard to change a culture without just totally resetting it. Sure. It happens.

Jessi
Plus, it's further away, too. So it's like, it's just that much more removed. You know, I feel like, yeah, for all of you. Yeah,

James
it's a solid 50-minute drive.

Jessi
Yeah. You would jet over there and take care of stuff. For this one, it was like, I'm going to make a plan, I'm going to group stuff together.

James
Oh, I used to when I would drive over there to give a tour of a place. And then the person would walk into a 200 square foot home and he'd go, Oh, this is really small. I was like, Yeah, I tried to tell you that. He goes, huh, it's a little too small. Oh my God. Okay. I shut the door and drive back home.

Jessi
That would be me, though, too. Like, I have to visually see it.

James
Well, so what I started doing was I. I made a floor plan, which was stupid easy. But then I would have measurements on it. And then when I would be on the phone, I would say, okay, what I want you to do is I want you to walk four steps that direction. And I want you to walk five steps the other direction. That's how big it is. Are you okay with it? Like, I really want you, and I would tell people What I don't want to have happen because I don't want to waste your time, yeah, where you get all excited, we go through the whole process, and then you see it and realize, oh, this is small for me because it is small. I need you to wrap your head around how small it is before you go. And I've really tried to emphasize that, and that's helped. It's that helped a lot. But oh my gosh, I, because I think there was one vacancy where I had where that happened to me like three times in a row. I was like, oh my gosh, this is killing me. It was such a long drive. Oh, it was so bad. Yep. Number 17 is one that I'm currently working on. It's Long Street. It's also a sweet home property. It's a flip. And the reason why it's ranked as low as it is is because we're in that phase of doing demo. Where we are finding the things. I'm like, God, I didn't budget for that one. Okay, here we go. Yeah, that's frustrating. We're in that phase. We just finished it, really. But so I'm like, I just don't love it. Right now. But you've finished finding things. I think so. We're back in the rebuild it up phase. That was one where initially we're going to do a half renovation. But as we got more into it, just because of The things that we saw, it turns out, had to do a full-on. Now, this one, we also bought it subject to the existing mortgage. And I feel really good about all the paperwork and everything that we did. I feel like we've got that dialed in finally. Yeah. And so that feels, um, that feels really good. But it is 17 out of 22.

Jessi
And the plan for that one is to finish the fixes and sell.

James
Yeah. Yep. Yep, we're not holding on. I mean, we could if we had to, because the financing is pretty stinking good. But yeah, no, we're just gonna fix it and sell it. Number eighteen. This is a passive investment of ours.

Jessi
Oh, the um

James
units it is

Jessi
30 or something? Nope. 300. There's a three. I think there's a three in there somewhere.

James
It's like 110. Oh. We own 1. 5% of it. It is Verta Crossing.

Jessi
Verta. That's what it is. Verta.

James
Yeah. Where did it get free from? I don't know why I don't have the number of units on here. I have no idea. But yeah, that's when we were passive investors. We put Chuck of Change into it and we've got a couple of checks, but nothing to sneeze at.

Jessi
I wasn't even nearly as involved with that one. Like, you would share numbers with me and gave me the idea, and all, like, you know, you, whatever, you told me about it. But I also was like , they're not giving you enough information.

James
Yeah.

Jessi
Like, you're kind of like, what did, like. Where's their plan? And what's the timeline? And what, like, you know?

James
Yeah. No.

Jessi
So I could see why that's ranked lower.

James
Yeah. Is it just now in theory? They're going to either refinance or sell it this year at some point. They're talking about the end of the year. So hopefully, we'll get a massive check back, in which case it'll jump very quickly at the list. I'll go, yeah. That was another ground up. They had land and they built everything from scratch. That's cool.

Jessi
See, that is something with several of these ones that you've mentioned that are like this is in progress. This is at this stage. This one, like theoretically, we're gonna have to me, like, it's a piece of real estate that I struggle with. I guess I'll put it that way, where it's like. You have a timeline, but it.

James
Which we've owned this one for 3. 7 years.

Jessi
Yeah. And it's like, you know, the timeline. And yeah, more than likely it will be a return, but it's not this like systematic, you know, unless you're buying and holding, that's all you're doing, and you have this guaranteed cash flow every single month.

James
Yeah.

Jessi
I don't know. It just, it's so cyclical. I don't know.

James
Well, they're just long-term investments at the end of the day. All of these things are, it's kind of like Except for flips. Sure. They're five to ten to twenty year time frames to get the money back out.

Jessi
Well, it's very even the types, the type of work that you're doing. It is so different than like , I got to the office, I clocked in, I did my deal, I clocked out, I'm done, I got paid. It's very much like, well, I did a bunch of work. And I am going to get paid, but it's not transactional like hour for hour. It's like, true. I don't know.

James
So I'm getting better about Charging an acquisition fee up front to help with some of that, which honestly just offsets the cost that I incurred. Sure. So I'm losing less up front. And trying to get repairs. That makes sense. No, because it is, but what that does is it's the same thing. I'm essentially pulling forward some of that revenue from the back end. Yep. So instead of making, I don't know, $25,000, I make $20,000 because I get $5,000 up front. And I'm just betting that I'm not going to lose money. And if I do, okay, I'm going to have to give it back. But yeah. Yeah. It is interesting. I agree. It's a different mindset. It's a different mindset. Totally. Okay. Number 19. Okay, we're getting there. These are the the retail buildings in Philomith. There's three retail buildings. Now, this one, and I guess the rest of them, well Not all of them, I guess. The reason why this one is ranked as low as it is is because I bought it for what it's worth and there's not a lot of upside. Yeah. And it's essentially a break-even deal. But In order for me to get the storage works place in Filomoth, I also had to buy this one. So that was one where Just like the sunny side and the land. I'm like, yeah, it's like, okay. It's like, all right, I'm going to get it. I don't think I'm going to lose a lot of money on it, but the other ones were so much more that even if I did lose a little bit of money on it, I'm okay with it. And it's kind of cool to have a retail spot, anyways. And so that's what I'm like, it's retail. And when you're driving downtown Filomotha, I can go, I own that place. And I guess the

Jessi
plan with that one is to hold it and just rent.

James
Yeah, eventually, I'll refinance it and I'll just hold on to it. And like I said, I maybe I'll get lucky in 20 years from now. It'll be worth a little something, but probably

Jessi
not. All right, there you go. It's fine. It's just there.

James
Or Philimoth will take off.

Jessi
It's just there on the list. It's just, yeah,

James
that's why it's level 19. For number 20. This is the other piece of land, the sunnyside land, which again, I have nothing on it. It's just land. I'm currently in the process of trying to sell it. So if you know, I'm interested in one and a half acres of land on I-5 with great visibility. Let me know. I'm interested. Yeah. But it's, yeah, it's just I had plans and all my plans have fallen through. So I'm like, I'm just going to sell it. Yeah. Just be done so.

Jessi
Well, that's that's the thing with that piece of property, I feel like. I don't know. It just hasn't gotten momentum.

James
Which part of it is just far enough away that and I just again the dream doesn't matter.

Jessi
I feel like for the right person, it would be great. Yeah. Like it's a prime spot on the highway. There's stuff you could do with it.

James
Yeah. And I just kept having better deals with them. So I was like, well, I'm going to do this one instead. That can wait. That's a higher return for me. Yeah. It's fine. Yeah. It's fine. Okay. Number 21. It's Thornton Lake. It was two properties where we split the lot.

Jessi
Yes.

James
We ended up owning that one for $11. 50.

Jessi
I know what $22 is. Just by process of elimination.

James
Yeah. But the 21 was it was two properties. We split the lot. Yeah. For our investors, it was a great deal. They all made money. They made their 12% return on it. It was great. For us, there were multiple things about this deal that I just didn't love. Working with the city was okay. There was one inspector who he took it was over a month to look at a single valve and go, Yep, it's there, which just killed me. Which, again, I'm paying 12%. That's 1% a month. I'm just like, I'm just doing the math in my head of like, oh my gosh. That's costing, it cost me $6,600 for him to delay. Yeah. Which I was just, I was just out of my pocket. It just killed me. What's the other? Yeah. And then we had some issues on the buyer side, and that was just frustrating to deal with, which honestly, I'll take it wasn't me. I didn't communicate as well and set expectations as well as we could have. And it, yeah, just caused a problem and it was frustrating. I've learned a lot and would very much, I would still do a split later because now I've learned a ton and I would do it totally differently. And our, um , What's he that our appraisal or no? Our not appraisal. Shoot, what's the one where they like they measured the land and stuff? Surveyor? Surveyor. That also just wasn't a great experience. Turned out like the person who was working with us went on maternity leave and didn't hand it off to anybody. And so there was just another like three months, like nothing happened. And we would call them, like, we don't know what you're talking about. We're like, what are you talking about? It was very frustrating. Yeah. Like, we'll just wait till he gets back. I'm like, dude, this cost me over six grand a month to just wait for this guy. So it was unbelievably frustrating, just the delays. And again, I think I would, we went with one who had the best price. And I think in the future, like When you account for the extra three months, I was like, oh my gosh, I would have paid 10 grand more, I guess, to have someone else go faster.

Jessi
Yeah.

James
I didn't know it. Now I do. There's that. And then the last one, this is the worst one that I've done.

Jessi
It was the mobile home.

James
The mobile home. I bought it for a dollar and ended up losing thirteen and a half thousand dollars on it because I did not it did not sell for what I thought it would be and that was how much we spent Let's see. We bought it. Yeah, Alex said. We bought it for a dollar. Ended up putting $39,000 into fixing it up, which, in retrospect, I was just like, it was. There were things that was a total give a mouse a cookie problem where we didn't just do the minimum. It was like, oh, if we're doing this, we should do this, and blah, blah, blah, blah. And we kept telling ourselves it would be worth a lot, and then it ended up selling for $25,000.

Jessi
Yeah.

James
We thought it was going to sell for like 50,000. Right. It was half of what it was. And it just, I don't know, because there was another one that did sell for that. And so, like, we weren't totally like just making up comp numbers, but it just. And honestly, part of the problem was that this particular park was 55 and older, and it was in Lebanon. There was just enough things where it just, but I mean, we comped it based on park sales. And I think we just like. For whatever reason, there was one that just didn't make sense. And I think the park had recently raised their rates too, which I did not put that together. Yeah. That the park rates had raised since that last one had sold, and that dramatically was like $1,200 a month. And so I just, there's a bunch of things there to the point now where I'm just like, I am like, I'm not interested in doing the mobile home stuff, even for a dollar. I mean, unless it was totally fixed up, but. But the problem that we were running into now is we do our normal numbers and we go, cool, we'll just cut that number in half. And so no one wants to sell to us for whatever those numbers are. I'm like, cool. I didn't really. Yeah, that was. We did not have any investors, so it was just me who lost money and /or me and my partner, which was sad. And thankfully, we had made money on other deals, so we were able to pay for it. But it was. That was a lame one.

Jessi
I would agree with you.

James
Yes.

Jessi
Definitely is on the bottom.

James
So those are our 22 deals. I want to recap. So, our best deals, at least for me. They kind of had like the thing in common often was it was something new and novel. Yeah, but they just had a great return as well. Like the deals made sense. The numbers were fantastic. That's kind of what those top ones were. And then the worst deals. For the most part, it was they were, uh, we either A, didn't make any money or not as much as we thought, and B, just operating it, doing the thing was hard, messy, and messy. That was my Yeah.

Jessi
Which some of those deals that did have a great return were also messy and had pieces that were like, oh, okay, we got to figure this out. Totally. But it almost made it worth it. Like it makes it worth it when you can see the return, and you're like, Yeah, okay, we did.

James
Well, and I've changed my mindset too a little bit, like with the house that we're building. We've had some weird stuff there that we just didn't foresee because we've never done it before. But I've really tried to have a mindset of like, no, I'm just learning how to do this because I know this is going to come up again. Because oftentimes you'll get a property where it's a house on a big lot. And you can split that lot. And for me, I'm going, okay, I've done a lot split and now I've done a build. I will have a deal that comes up eventually because we actually had one that we tried to get under contract, but we had it under contract and we just couldn't make the numbers work. Once we really got into it, we were like, ah, this doesn't work. We ended up backing out. And we just, in our heart of heart, we were like, there's a good deal here. I just don't know enough on how to do this to make it work. And then. Once now that we've done the development, we've gone back and retroactively run the numbers. Went, ah, this is what we would have done. We would have split the lot, sold that house, and used the revenue from that sale to then build. And all of the profit would have been in that house build. And how I know that because I'm now combining different strategies into another one. And so for the house build, I'm even like, man, even if it's a break-even, which it won't be, but. Even if it's break-even, I'm like, I'm okay with that because I'm learning and all this weird funkiness. The next time it's not going to happen. Yeah. And so, yeah, and same with a lot of people.

Jessi
Do you find that like Over the years, and all these 22 different deals, like we, I heard a lot of like, that was new. That was a first.

James
You did that differently. I love my shiny objects.

Jessi
Is it, but is that a piece of like You need that type of, like you're saying, to gain a better insight into real estate deals and how to do more interesting or more layered things. So that is actually an asset to try a bunch of different types of investments? Or like, do you think at some point you'll just be like, you know what? This is what works. We're going that way.

James
I mean, if I'm honest, probably not. I like the interesting, the hard deals that have something funky about them. So I tend to get attracted to those. I mean, and again, my ranking was. What I like. Sure. I definitely, if we ranked it just on financial, it would be a different ranking system.

Jessi
That would be interesting just to do financial ranking.

James
That's why I thought you were going to. Part of it was some of it aren't progress, so it's hard to. Right to it, and so I didn't do it that way. But I kind of have to take where I mean, and there's certain strategies that I'm like, ooh, I like this. Like doing the half fix, yeah, the half fix. I really like that. Have I but I'm not doing so much volume where I can ignore the other ones. I'm still in the I'll take anything because I just want to do more deals. Yeah, but yeah, I could Like I said, so my challenge to you, dear listener, if you've invested in multiple places, how would you rank your own portfolio? And don't necessarily think of it in terms of returns. Maybe think of it like, well, what would you do again? What is interesting to you? What was fun for whatever reason? I think that's a worthy exercise to try to do it. And yeah, that middle section, you're like, this has to go somewhere. I don't know. It's hard to, yeah, the top and the bottom are easy. Yeah. It's the middle of that are hard. And so my other question, which is kind of where you were headed, I guess, is if you had to bet everything on one strategy, based on what you've just heard or based on looking at your own, what would that be? What would you go after?

Jessi
Buy dumps and fix them up. Buy dumps and fix them up. I mean,

James
it's hard work

Jessi
and it's very messy, but it's

James
worthwhile. The returns are there. Yeah, and it's fun.

Jessi
That's value.

James
So there you go, which is honestly what we do. And if you would like to learn more about what that looks like, and maybe even read more about each of these different projects, because they are all on our website, you can do that at furlo.com. And you can also see, yeah, just more what it would be like to invest alongside us or to have us manage your project and help you out with that. So, with that, thanks for listening. Have a great day.